"... ' Anti-populism' is the simple ruling class formula for covering-up their real agenda, which is pro-militarist, pro-imperialist (globalization), pro-'rebels' (i.e. mercenary terrorists working for regime change), pro crisis makers and pro-financial swindlers. ..."
"... The economic origins of ' anti-populism' are rooted in the deep and repeated crises of capitalism and the need to deflect and discredit mass discontent and demoralize the popular classes in struggle. By demonizing ' populism', the elites seek to undermine the rising tide of anger over the elite-imposed wage cuts, the rise of low-paid temporary jobs and the massive increase in the reserve army of cheap immigrant labor to compete with displaced native workers. ..."
"... Demonization of independent popular movements ignores the fundamental programmatic differences and class politics of genuine populist struggles compared with the contemporary right-wing capitalist political scarecrows and clowns. ..."
"... The anti-populist ideologues label President Trump a 'populist' when his policies and proposals are the exact opposite. Trump champions the repeal of all pro-labor and work safety regulation, as well as the slashing of public health insurance programs while reducing corporate taxes for the ultra-elite. ..."
"... The media's ' anti-populists' ideologues denounce pro-business rightwing racists as ' populists' . In Italy, Finland, Holland, Austria, Germany and France anti-working class parties are called ' populist' for attacking immigrants instead of bankers and militarists. ..."
"... In other words, the key to understanding contemporary ' anti-populism' is to see its role in preempting and undermining the emergence of authentic populist movements while convincing middle class voters to continue to vote for crisis-prone, austerity-imposing neo-liberal regimes. ' Anti-populism' has become the opium (or OxyContin) of frightened middle class voters. ..."
Throughout the US and European corporate and state media, right and left, we are told that ' populism' has become
the overarching threat to democracy, freedom and . . . free markets. The media's ' anti-populism' campaign has been
used and abused by ruling elites and their academic and intellectual camp followers as the principal weapon to distract,
discredit and destroy the rising tide of mass discontent with ruling class-imposed austerity programs, the accelerating
concentration of wealth and the deepening inequalities.
We will begin by examining the conceptual manipulation of ' populism' and its multiple usages. Then we will turn
to the historic economic origins of populism and anti-populism. Finally, we will critically analyze the contemporary movements
and parties dubbed ' populist' by the ideologues of ' anti-populism' .
Conceptual Manipulation
In order to understand the current ideological manipulation accompanying ' anti-populism ' it is necessary to
examine the historical roots of populism as a popular movement.
Populism emerged during the 19 th and 20 th century as an ideology, movement and government in
opposition to autocracy, feudalism, capitalism, imperialism and socialism. In the United States, populist leaders led agrarian
struggles backed by millions of small farmers in opposition to bankers, railroad magnates and land speculators. Opposing
monopolistic practices of the 'robber barons', the populist movement supported broad-based commercial agriculture, access
to low interest farm credit and reduced transport costs.
In 19 th century Russia, the populists opposed the Tsar, the moneylenders and the burgeoning commercial
elites.
In early 20 th century India and China, populism took the form of nationalist agrarian movements seeking
to overthrow the imperial powers and their comprador collaborators.
In Latin America, from the 1930s onward, especially with the crises of export regimes, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia
and Peru, embraced a variety of populist, anti-imperialist governments. In Brazil, President Getulio Vargas's term (1951-1954)
was notable for the establishment of a national industrial program promoting the interests of urban industrial workers
despite banning independent working class trade unions and Marxist parties. In Argentina, President Juan Peron's first
terms (1946-1954) promoted large-scale working class organization, advanced social welfare programs and embraced nationalist
capitalist development.
In Bolivia, a worker-peasant revolution brought to power a nationalist party, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement
(MNR), which nationalized the tin mines, expropriated the latifundios and promoted national development during its rule
from 1952-1964.
In Peru, under President Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975), the government expropriated the coastal sugar plantations
and US oil fields and copper mines while promoting worker and agricultural cooperatives.
In all cases, the populist governments in Latin America were based on a coalition of nationalist capitalists, urban
workers and the rural poor. In some notable cases, nationalist military officers brought populist governments to power.
What they had in common was their opposition to foreign capital and its local supporters and exporters ('compradores'),
bankers and their elite military collaborators. Populists promoted 'third way' politics by opposing imperialism on the
right, and socialism and communism on the left. The populists supported the redistribution of wealth but not the expropriation
of property. They sought to reconcile national capitalists and urban workers. They opposed class struggle but supported
state intervention in the economy and import-substitution as a development strategy.
Imperialist powers were the leading anti-populists of that period. They defended property privileges and condemned nationalism
as 'authoritarian' and undemocratic. They demonized the mass support for populism as 'a threat to Western Christian civilization'.
Not infrequently, the anti-populists ideologues would label the national-populists as 'fascists' . . . even as they won
numerous elections at different times and in a variety of countries.
The historical experience of populism, in theory and practice, has nothing to do with what today's ' anti-populists'
in the media are calling ' populism' . In reality, current anti-populism is still a continuation of anti-communism
, a political weapon to disarm working class and popular movements. It advances the class interest of the ruling class.
Both 'anti's' have been orchestrated by ruling class ideologues seeking to blur the real nature of their 'pro-capitalist'
privileged agenda and practice. Presenting your program as 'pro-capitalist', pro-inequalities, pro-tax evasion and pro-state
subsidies for the elite is more difficult to defend at the ballot box than to claim to be ' anti-populist' .
' Anti-populism' is the simple ruling class formula for covering-up their real agenda, which is pro-militarist,
pro-imperialist (globalization), pro-'rebels' (i.e. mercenary terrorists working for regime change), pro crisis makers
and pro-financial swindlers.
The economic origins of ' anti-populism' are rooted in the deep and repeated crises of capitalism and the
need to deflect and discredit mass discontent and demoralize the popular classes in struggle. By demonizing ' populism',
the elites seek to undermine the rising tide of anger over the elite-imposed wage cuts, the rise of low-paid temporary
jobs and the massive increase in the reserve army of cheap immigrant labor to compete with displaced native workers.
Historic 'anti-populism' has its roots in the inability of capitalism to secure popular consent via elections. It reflects
their anger and frustration at their failure to grow the economy, to conquer and exploit independent countries and to finance
growing fiscal deficits.
The Amalgamation of Historical Populism with the Contemporary Fabricated Populism
What the current anti-populists ideologues label ' populism' has little to do with the historical movements.
Unlike all of the past populist governments, which sought to nationalize strategic industries, none of the current movements
and parties, denounced as 'populist' by the media, are anti-imperialists. In fact, the current ' populists' attack
the lowest classes and defend the imperialist-allied capitalist elites. The so-called current ' populists' support
imperialist wars and bank swindlers, unlike the historical populists who were anti-war and anti-bankers.
Ruling class ideologues simplistically conflate a motley collection of rightwing capitalist parties and organizations
with the pro-welfare state, pro-worker and pro-farmer parties of the past in order to discredit and undermine the burgeoning
popular multi-class movements and regimes.
Demonization of independent popular movements ignores the fundamental programmatic differences and class politics
of genuine populist struggles compared with the contemporary right-wing capitalist political scarecrows and clowns.
One has only to compare the currently demonized ' populist' Donald Trump with the truly populist US President
Franklin Roosevelt, who promoted social welfare, unionization, labor rights, increased taxes on the rich, income redistribution,
and genuine health and workplace safety legislation within a multi-class coalition to see how absurd the current media
campaign has become.
The anti-populist ideologues label President Trump a 'populist' when his policies and proposals are the exact
opposite. Trump champions the repeal of all pro-labor and work safety regulation, as well as the slashing of public health
insurance programs while reducing corporate taxes for the ultra-elite.
The media's ' anti-populists' ideologues denounce pro-business rightwing racists as ' populists' . In Italy, Finland,
Holland, Austria, Germany and France anti-working class parties are called ' populist' for attacking immigrants instead
of bankers and militarists.
In other words, the key to understanding contemporary ' anti-populism' is to see its role in preempting and undermining
the emergence of authentic populist movements while convincing middle class voters to continue to vote for crisis-prone,
austerity-imposing neo-liberal regimes. ' Anti-populism' has become the opium (or OxyContin) of frightened middle class
voters.
The anti-populism of the ruling class serves to confuse the 'right' with the 'left'; to sidelight the latter and promote
the former; to amalgamate rightwing 'rallies' with working class strikes; and to conflate rightwing demagogues with popular
mass leaders.
Unfortunately, too many leftist academics and pundits are loudly chanting in the 'anti-populist' chorus. They have failed
to see themselves among the shock troops of the right. The left ideologues join the ruling class in condemning the corporate
populists in the name of 'anti-fascism'. Leftwing writers, claiming to 'combat the far-right enemies of the people'
, overlook the fact that they are 'fellow-travelling' with an anti-populist ruling class, which has imposed savage cuts
in living standards, spread imperial wars of aggression resulting in millions of desperate refugees- not immigrants
–and concentrated immense wealth.
The bankruptcy of today's ' anti-populist' left will leave them sitting in their coffee shops, scratching at
fleas, as the mass popular movements take to the streets!
As we move into 2018, I am swinging away from the Republicans. I don't support the Paul Ryan "Better Way" agenda . I don't
support neoliberal economics. I think we have been going in the wrong direction since the 1970s
and don't want to continue going down this road.
Presidential Leadership and Abuse in the Workplace
Several Presidents have been accused of gross sexual abuse and humiliation of office staff
and interns, most ignobly William Jefferson Clinton. However, the Congressional Office of
Compliance, in accord with the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 does not collect
statistics on presidential abuses and financial settlements. Nevertheless, we can examine the
number of Congressional victims and payments during the tenures of the various Presidents
during the past 20 years. This can tell us if the Presidents chose to issue any directives or
exercise any leadership with regard to stopping the abuses occurring during their
administrations.
Under Presidents William Clinton and Barack Obama we have data for 12 years 1997-2000, and
2009-2016. Under President George W Bush and Donald Trump we have data for 9 years 2001-2008
and 2017.
Under the two Democratic Presidents, 148 legislative employees were abused and the Treasury
paid out approximately $5 million dollars and under the Republican Presidents, 116 were abused
and Treasury and over $12 million dollars was paid out.
Under the Democratic Presidents, the average number of abuse victims was 12 per year; under
the Republicans the average number was 13 per year. As in the case of Congressional leadership,
US Presidents of both parties showed remarkable bipartisan consistency in tolerating
Congressional abuse.
Congressional Abuse: The Larger Meaning
Workplace abuse by elected leaders in Washington is encouraged by Party cronyism, loyalties
and shameless bootlicking. It is reinforced by the structure of power pervasive in the ruling
class. Congress people exercise near total power over their employees because they are not
accountable to their peers or their voters. They are protected by their financial donors, the
special Congressional 'judicial' system and by the mass media with a complicity of silence.
The entire electoral system is based on a hierarchy of power, where those on the top can
demand subordination and enforce their demands for sexual submission with threats of
retaliation against the victim or the victim's outraged family members. This mirrors a feudal
plantation system.
However, like sporadic peasant uprisings in the Middle Ages, some employees rise up, resist
and demand justice. It is common to see Congressional abusers turn to their office managers,
often female, to act as 'capos' to first threaten and then buy off the accuser – using US
taxpayer funds. This added abuse never touches the wallet of the abuser or the office enforcer.
Compensation is paid by the US Treasury. The social and financial status of the abusers and the
abusers' families remain intact as they look forward to lucrative future employment as
lobbyists.
This does not occur in isolation from the broader structure of class and power.
The sexual exploitation of workers in the Halls of the US Congress is part of the larger
socio-economic system. Elected officials, who abuse their office employees and interns, share
the same values with corporate and cultural bosses, who exploit their workers and subordinates.
At an even larger level, they share the same values and culture with the ImperialState as it
brutalizes and rapes independent nations and peoples.
The system of abuse and exploitation by the Congress and the corporate, cultural, academic,
religious and political elite depends on complicit intermediaries who frequently come from
upwardly mobile groups. The most abusive legislators will hire upwardly mobile women as public
relations officers and office managers to recruit victims and, when necessary, arrange
pay-offs. In the corporate sphere, CEOs frequently rely on former plant workers, trade union
leaders, women and minorities to serve as 'labor relations' experts to provide a progressive
façade in order to oust dissidents and enforce directives persecuting whistleblowers. On
a global scale, the political warlords work hand in glove with the mass media and humanitarian
interventionist NGO's to demonize independent voices and to glorify the military as they
slaughter resistance fighters, while claiming to champion gender and minority rights. Thus, the
US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was widely propagandized and celebrated as the
'liberation of Afghan women'.
The Congressional perverts have their own private, secret mission: to abuse staff, to
nurture the rich, enforce silence and approve legislation to make taxpayers pay the bill.
Let us hope that the current ' Me Too !' movement against workplace sexual abuse
will grow to include a broader movement against the neo-feudalism within politics, business,
and culture and lead to a political movement uniting workers in all fields.
"... Gessen also worried that the Russia obsession was a deadly diversion from issues that ought to matter more to those claiming to oppose Trump in the name of democracy and the common good ..."
"... Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a resounding message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia. Rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and healthcare. ..."
Gessen felt
that the Russiagate gambit would flop, given a lack of smoking-gun evidence and sufficient
public interest, particularly among Republicans.
Gessen also worried that the Russia obsession was a deadly diversion from issues that
ought to matter more to those claiming to oppose Trump in the name of democracy and the common
good : racism, voter suppression (which may well have
elected Trump , by the way), health care, plutocracy, police- and prison-state-ism,
immigrant rights, economic exploitation and inequality, sexism and environmental ruination --
you know, stuff like that.
Some of the politically engaged populace noticed the problem early on. According to the
Washington political journal The Hill , last
summer ,
Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a resounding
message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia. Rank-and-file Democrats say the
Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried
about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and
healthcare.
Here we are now, half a year later, careening into a dystopian holiday season. With his
epically low approval rating of 32 percent
, the orange-tinted bad grandpa in the Oval Office has won a viciously regressive tax bill that
is widely rejected by the populace. The bill was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress
whose current
approval rating stands at 13 percent. It is a major legislative victory for the
Republicans, a party whose approval rating fell to an all-time
low of 29 percent at the end of September -- a party that tried to send a child molester to
the U.S. Senate.
"... Of course, the notion of 'reform' within the Democratic Party is an oxymoron. Its been around since Nader, when the corrupt-corporate Democrats tried to tell us that the way forward was to work within the corrupt-corporate Democratic Party and change things that way. ..."
"... And I see Steve Bannon trying to wage the fight within the Republican party that the fake-reformers in the Democrats never even tried . ie, numerous primary challenges to corrupt-corporate Democrats. ..."
"... Neither party represents any but the richest of the rich these days. Both parties lie to voters and try to pretend that they might actually give a damn about the rest of us. But the only sign of life that I see of anyone trying to fight back against this Bannon inside the Republicans. I'm not thrilled with Bannon, although he's not nearly as bad as the loony-lefties in the corrupt-corporate Democratic Party and their many satellites call him. But he's the only one putting up a fight. I just hope that maybe someone will run in primaries against the corrupt-corporate-Republicans who fake-represent the part of the map where I live. ..."
I was raised by Democrats, and used to vote for them. But these days, I think heck would
freeze over before I'd vote Democrat again. From my point of view, Bernie tried to pull them
back to sanity. But the hard core Clinton-corporate-corrupt Democrats have declared war on
any movement for reform within the Democratic Party. And there is no way that I'm voting for
any of these corrupt-corporate Democrats ever again.
Of course, the notion of 'reform' within the Democratic Party is an oxymoron. Its been
around since Nader, when the corrupt-corporate Democrats tried to tell us that the way
forward was to work within the corrupt-corporate Democratic Party and change things that way.
We saw the way the corrupt-corporate Democrats colluded and rigged the last Presidential
Primaries so that Corrupt-Corporate-Clinton was guaranteed the corrupt-corporate Democrat
nomination. That's a loud and clear message to anyone who thinks they can achieve change
within the corrupt-corporate-colluding-rigged Democratic Party.
Since I've always been anti-war, I've been forced to follow what anti-war movement there
is over to the Republicans. And I see Steve Bannon trying to wage the fight within the
Republican party that the fake-reformers in the Democrats never even tried . ie, numerous
primary challenges to corrupt-corporate Democrats. That never happened, and by 2012 I was
convinced that even the fake-reformers within the corrupt-corporate Democrats were fakes who
only wanted fund-raising but didn't really fight for reform.
Neither party represents any but the richest of the rich these days. Both parties lie to
voters and try to pretend that they might actually give a damn about the rest of us. But the
only sign of life that I see of anyone trying to fight back against this Bannon inside the
Republicans. I'm not thrilled with Bannon, although he's not nearly as bad as the
loony-lefties in the corrupt-corporate Democratic Party and their many satellites call him.
But he's the only one putting up a fight. I just hope that maybe someone will run in
primaries against the corrupt-corporate-Republicans who fake-represent the part of the map
where I live.
Neither party is on our side. The establishment in both parties is crooked and corrupt.
Someone needs to fight them. And I sure as heck won't vote for the corrupt and the crooked.
Since the Democrats are doubling down on corrupt and crooked and telling such big lies that
even Goebbels would blush, it doesn't look like I'll ever vote Dem0crat again.
"... Cohen, who has been quite vocal against the Russophobic witch hunt gripping the nation , believes that this falsified 35 page report is part of an "endgame" to mortally wound Trump before he even sets foot in the White House, by grasping at straws to paint him as a puppet of the Kremlin. The purpose of these overt attempts to cripple Trump, which have relied on ham-handed intelligence reports that, according to Cohen "even the New York Times referred to as lacking any evidence whatsoever," is to stop any kind of détente or cooperation with Russia. ..."
With eyebrows suspiciously furrowed, Tucker Carlson sat down tonight with NYU Professor of Russian Studies and contributor to
The Nation , Stephen Cohen, to discuss the 35 page #FakeNews dossier which has gripped the nation with nightmares of golden showers
and other perverted conduct which was to be used by Russia to keep Trump on a leash.
The left leaning Cohen, who holds a Ph.D. in government and Russian studies from Columbia, taught at Princeton for 30 years before
moving to NYU. He has spent a lifetime deeply immersed in US-Russian relations, having been both a long standing friend of Mikhail
Gorbachev and an advisor to President George H.W. Bush. His wife is also the editor of uber liberal " The Nation," so it's safe to
assume he's not shilling for Trump - and Tucker was right to go in with eyebrows guarded against such a heavyweight.
Cohen, who has been quite vocal against the Russophobic witch hunt
gripping the nation , believes that this
falsified 35 page report is part of an "endgame" to mortally wound Trump before he even sets foot in the White House, by grasping
at straws to paint him as a puppet of the Kremlin. The purpose of these overt attempts to cripple Trump, which have relied on ham-handed
intelligence reports that, according to Cohen "even the New York Times referred to as lacking any evidence whatsoever," is to stop
any kind of détente or cooperation with Russia.
Cohen believes that these dangerous accusations attempting to brand a US President as a puppet of a foreign government constitute
a "grave American national security threat."
"... The problem, however, is that there is no contradiction or supposed loss of democracy because the United States simply never was one. This is a difficult reality for many people to confront, and they are likely more inclined to immediately dismiss such a claim as preposterous rather than take the time to scrutinize the material historical record in order to see for themselves. Such a dismissive reaction is due in large part to what is perhaps the most successful public relations campaign in modern history. ..."
"... Second, when the elite colonial ruling class decided to sever ties from their homeland and establish an independent state for themselves, they did not found it as a democracy. On the contrary, they were fervently and explicitly opposed to democracy, like the vast majority of European Enlightenment thinkers. They understood it to be a dangerous and chaotic form of uneducated mob rule. For the so-called "founding fathers," the masses were not only incapable of ruling, but they were considered a threat to the hierarchical social structures purportedly necessary for good governance. In the words of John Adams, to take but one telling example, if the majority were given real power, they would redistribute wealth and dissolve the "subordination" so necessary for politics. ..."
"... When the eminent members of the landowning class met in 1787 to draw up a constitution, they regularly insisted in their debates on the need to establish a republic that kept at bay vile democracy, which was judged worse than "the filth of the common sewers" by the pro-Federalist editor William Cobbett. The new constitution provided for popular elections only in the House of Representatives, but in most states the right to vote was based on being a property owner, and women, the indigenous and slaves -- meaning the overwhelming majority of the population -- were simply excluded from the franchise. Senators were elected by state legislators, the President by electors chosen by the state legislators, and the Supreme Court was appointed by the President. ..."
"... It is in this context that Patrick Henry flatly proclaimed the most lucid of judgments: "it is not a democracy." George Mason further clarified the situation by describing the newly independent country as "a despotic aristocracy." ..."
"... When the American republic slowly came to be relabeled as a "democracy," there were no significant institutional modifications to justify the change in name. In other words, and this is the third point, the use of the term "democracy" to refer to an oligarchic republic simply meant that a different word was being used to describe the same basic phenomenon. ..."
"... Slowly but surely, the term "democracy" came to be used as a public relations term to re-brand a plutocratic oligarchy as an electoral regime that serves the interest of the people or demos . Meanwhile, the American holocaust continued unabated, along with chattel slavery, colonial expansion and top-down class warfare. ..."
"... In spite of certain minor changes over time, the U.S. republic has doggedly preserved its oligarchic structure, and this is readily apparent in the two major selling points of its contemporary "democratic" publicity campaign. The Establishment and its propagandists regularly insist that a structural aristocracy is a "democracy" because the latter is defined by the guarantee of certain fundamental rights (legal definition) and the holding of regular elections (procedural definition). This is, of course, a purely formal, abstract and largely negative understanding of democracy, which says nothing whatsoever about people having real, sustained power over the governing of their lives. ..."
"... To take but a final example of the myriad ways in which the U.S. is not, and has never been, a democracy, it is worth highlighting its consistent assault on movements of people power. Since WWII, it has endeavored to overthrow some 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected. ..."
"... It has also, according the meticulous calculations by William Blum in America's Deadliest Export: Democracy , grossly interfered in the elections of at least 30 countries, attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders, dropped bombs on more than 30 countries, and attempted to suppress populist movements in 20 countries. ..."
One of the most steadfast beliefs regarding the United States is that it is a democracy.
Whenever this conviction waivers slightly, it is almost always to point out detrimental
exceptions to core American values or foundational principles. For instance, aspiring critics
frequently bemoan a "loss of democracy" due to the election of clownish autocrats, draconian
measures on the part of the state, the revelation of extraordinary malfeasance or corruption,
deadly foreign interventions, or other such activities that are considered undemocratic
exceptions . The same is true for those whose critical framework consists in always juxtaposing
the actions of the U.S. government to its founding principles, highlighting the contradiction
between the two and clearly placing hope in its potential resolution.
The problem, however, is that there is no contradiction or supposed loss of democracy
because the United States simply never was one. This is a difficult reality for many people to
confront, and they are likely more inclined to immediately dismiss such a claim as preposterous
rather than take the time to scrutinize the material historical record in order to see for
themselves. Such a dismissive reaction is due in large part to what is perhaps the most
successful public relations campaign in modern history.
What will be seen, however, if this record is soberly and methodically inspected, is that a
country founded on elite, colonial rule based on the power of wealth -- a plutocratic colonial
oligarchy, in short -- has succeeded not only in buying the label of "democracy" to market
itself to the masses, but in having its citizenry, and many others, so socially and
psychologically invested in its nationalist origin myth that they refuse to hear lucid and
well-documented arguments to the contrary.
To begin to peel the scales from our eyes, let us outline in the restricted space of this
article, five patent reasons why the United States has never been a democracy (a more sustained
and developed argument is available in my book, Counter-History of the Present
).
To begin with, British colonial expansion into the Americas did not occur in the name of the
freedom and equality of the general population, or the conferral of power to the people. Those
who settled on the shores of the "new world," with few exceptions, did not respect the fact
that it was a very old world indeed, and that a vast indigenous population had been living
there for centuries. As soon as Columbus set foot, Europeans began robbing, enslaving and
killing the native inhabitants. The trans-Atlantic slave trade commenced almost immediately
thereafter, adding a countless number of Africans to the ongoing genocidal assault against the
indigenous population. Moreover, it is estimated that over half of the colonists who came to
North America from Europe during the colonial period were poor indentured servants, and women
were generally trapped in roles of domestic servitude. Rather than the land of the free and
equal, then, European colonial expansion to the Americas imposed a land of the colonizer and
the colonized, the master and the slave, the rich and the poor, the free and the un-free. The
former constituted, moreover, an infinitesimally small minority of the population, whereas the
overwhelming majority, meaning "the people," was subjected to death, slavery, servitude, and
unremitting socio-economic oppression.
Second, when the elite colonial ruling class decided to sever ties from their homeland and
establish an independent state for themselves, they did not found it as a democracy. On the
contrary, they were fervently and explicitly opposed to democracy, like the vast majority of
European Enlightenment thinkers. They understood it to be a dangerous and chaotic form of
uneducated mob rule. For the so-called "founding fathers," the masses were not only incapable
of ruling, but they were considered a threat to the hierarchical social structures purportedly
necessary for good governance. In the words of John Adams, to take but one telling example, if
the majority were given real power, they would redistribute wealth and dissolve the
"subordination" so necessary for politics.
When the eminent members of the landowning class met
in 1787 to draw up a constitution, they regularly insisted in their debates on the need to
establish a republic that kept at bay vile democracy, which was judged worse than "the filth of
the common sewers" by the pro-Federalist editor William Cobbett. The new constitution provided
for popular elections only in the House of Representatives, but in most states the right to
vote was based on being a property owner, and women, the indigenous and slaves -- meaning the
overwhelming majority of the population -- were simply excluded from the franchise. Senators
were elected by state legislators, the President by electors chosen by the state legislators,
and the Supreme Court was appointed by the President.
It is in this context that Patrick Henry
flatly proclaimed the most lucid of judgments: "it is not a democracy." George Mason further
clarified the situation by describing the newly independent country as "a despotic
aristocracy."
When the American republic slowly came to be relabeled as a "democracy," there were no
significant institutional modifications to justify the change in name. In other words, and this
is the third point, the use of the term "democracy" to refer to an oligarchic republic simply
meant that a different word was being used to describe the same basic phenomenon. This began
around the time of "Indian killer" Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign in the 1830s.
Presenting himself as a 'democrat,' he put forth an image of himself as an average man of the
people who was going to put a halt to the long reign of patricians from Virginia and
Massachusetts. Slowly but surely, the term "democracy" came to be used as a public relations
term to re-brand a plutocratic oligarchy as an electoral regime that serves the interest of the
people or demos . Meanwhile, the American holocaust continued unabated, along with chattel
slavery, colonial expansion and top-down class warfare.
In spite of certain minor changes over time, the U.S. republic has doggedly preserved its
oligarchic structure, and this is readily apparent in the two major selling points of its
contemporary "democratic" publicity campaign. The Establishment and its propagandists regularly
insist that a structural aristocracy is a "democracy" because the latter is defined by the
guarantee of certain fundamental rights (legal definition) and the holding of regular elections
(procedural definition). This is, of course, a purely formal, abstract and largely negative
understanding of democracy, which says nothing whatsoever about people having real, sustained
power over the governing of their lives.
However, even this hollow definition dissimulates the
extent to which, to begin with, the supposed equality before the law in the United States
presupposes an inequality before the law by excluding major sectors of the population: those
judged not to have the right to rights, and those considered to have lost their right to rights
(Native Americans, African-Americans and women for most of the country's history, and still
today in certain aspects, as well as immigrants, "criminals," minors, the "clinically insane,"
political dissidents, and so forth). Regarding elections, they are run in the United States as
long, multi-million dollar advertising campaigns in which the candidates and issues are
pre-selected by the corporate and party elite. The general population, the majority of whom do
not have the right to vote or decide not to exercise it, are given the "choice" -- overseen by
an undemocratic electoral college and embedded in a non-proportional representation scheme --
regarding which member of the aristocratic elite they would like to have rule over and oppress
them for the next four years. "Multivariate analysis indicates," according to
an important recent study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, "that economic elites and
organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S.
government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no
independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite
Domination [ ], but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy."
To take but a final example of the myriad ways in which the U.S. is not, and has never been,
a democracy, it is worth highlighting its consistent assault on movements of people power.
Since WWII, it has endeavored to overthrow some 50 foreign governments, most of which were
democratically elected.
It has also, according the meticulous calculations by William Blum in
America's
Deadliest Export: Democracy , grossly interfered in the elections of at least 30 countries,
attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders, dropped bombs on more than 30 countries,
and attempted to suppress populist movements in 20 countries. The record on the home front is
just as brutal. To take but one significant parallel example, there is ample evidence that the
FBI has been invested in a covert war against democracy. Beginning at least in the 1960s, and
likely continuing up to the present, the Bureau "extended its earlier clandestine operations
against the Communist party, committing its resources to undermining the Puerto Rico
independence movement, the Socialist Workers party, the civil rights movement, Black
nationalist movements, the Ku Klux Klan, segments of the peace movement, the student movement,
and the 'New Left' in general" ( Cointelpro: The FBI's Secret War on
Political Freedom , p. 22-23).
Consider, for instance, Judi Bari's summary of its assault
on the Socialist Workers Party: "From 1943-63, the federal civil rights case Socialist Workers
Party v. Attorney General documents decades of illegal FBI break-ins and 10 million pages of
surveillance records. The FBI paid an estimated 1,600 informants $1,680,592 and used 20,000
days of wiretaps to undermine legitimate political organizing."
Last month Seth Rich, a data analyst who worked for the DNC, was shot near his home in Washington DC. He was on the phone to his
girlfriend when it happened. Police were called to the scene and discovered the young man's body at roughly 4.20am. It was reported
that Rich was "covered in bruises", shot "several times" and "at least once in the back".
The New York Daily News reported:
" police have found little information to explain his death. At this time, there are no suspects, no motive and no witnesses
in Rich's murder.
While initial theories were that the killing was robbery or mugging gone wrong, the Washington Post said:
" There is no immediate indication that robbery was a motive in the attack but it has not been ruled out as a possibility."
Rich's family have also reported that nothing was taken:
" [Rich's] hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they
never took anything."
On August 9th Julian Assange gave an interview on Dutch television in which he seemed to imply that Rich's death was politically
motivated, and perhaps suggest he had been a source for the DNC e-mail leak:
That same day wikileaks tweeted that they were offering a $20,000 dollar reward for information on the killing of Mr Rich.
These are the facts of the case, so far. And they are undisputed.
I'm not going to take a position on the motive for Mr Rich's killing, or possible suspects. But I do want to point out the general
level of media silence. Take these facts and change the names – imagine Trump's email had been hacked, and then a staffer with possible
ties to wikileaks was inexplicably shot dead. Imagine this poor young man had been a Kremlin whistleblower, or a Chinese hacker,
or an Iranian blogger.
If this, as yet unsolved, murder had ties to anyone other than Hillary Clinton, would it be being so ritually and rigourously
ignored by the MSM?
"... In addition to Strzok's "gross negligence" --> "extremely careless" edit, McCabe's damage control team removed a key justification for elevating Clinton's actions to the standard of "gross negligence" - that being the " sheer volume " of classified material on Clinton's server. In the original draft, the "sheer volume" of material "supports an inference that the participants were grossly negligent in their handling of that information." ..."
"... It's also possible that the FBI, which was not allowed to inspect the DNC servers, was uncomfortable standing behind the conclusion of Russian hacking reached by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. ..."
"... Johnson's letter also questions an " insurance policy " referenced in a text message sent by demoted FBI investigator Peter Strzok to his mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page, which read " I want to believe the path you threw out to consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk." It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40...." ..."
"... One wonders if the "insurance policy" Strzok sent to Page on August 15, 2016 was in reference to the original counterintelligence operation launched against Trump of which Strzok became the lead investigator in "late July" 2016? Of note, Strzok reported directly to Bill Priestap - the director of Counterintelligence, who told James Comey not to inform congress that the FBI had launched a counterintelligence operation against then-candidate Trump, per Comey's March 20th testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. (h/t @TheLastRefuge2 ) ..."
"... That's not to say Hillary shouldn't have been prosecuted. But what we're seeing here looks like perfectly normal behavior once the decision has been made not to prosecute; get the statements to be consistent with the conclusion. In a bureaucracy, that requires a number of people to be involved. And it would necessarily include people who work for Hillary Clinton, since that's whose information is being discussed. ..."
"... And the stuff about how a foreign power might have, or might possibly have, accessed her emails is all BS too. We already know they weren't hacked, they were leaked. ..."
"... Maybe people who don't understand complicated organizations see something nefarious here, but nobody who does will. Nothing will come of this but some staged-for-TV dramatic pronouncements in the House, and on FOX News, and affiliated websites. There's nothing here. ..."
"... Debatable re. biggest story being kept quiet. The AWAN Brothers/Family is a Pakistani spy ring operating inside Congress for more than a decade, and we hear nothing. They had access to virtually everything in every important committee. They had access to the Congressional servers and all the emails. Biggest spy scandal in our nations hsitory, and........crickets. ..."
"... They have had a year to destroy the evidence. Why should the CIA controlled MSM report the truth? ..."
"... Precisely. That's actually a very good tool for decoding the Clintons and Obama. "You collaborated with Russia." Means "I collaborated with Saudi Arabia." It takes a little while and I haven't fully mastered it yet, but you can reverse alinsky-engineer their statements to figure out what they did. ..."
"... And get this, Flynn was set up! Yates had the transcript via the (illegal) FISA Court of warrant which relied on the Dirty Steele Dossier, when Flynn deviated from the transcript they charged him Lying to the FBI. Comey McCabe run around lying 24/7. Their is no fucking hope left! The swamp WINS ALWAYS. ..."
FBI Edits To Clinton Exoneration Go Far Beyond What Was Previously Known; Comey, McCabe, Strzok ImplicatedTyler Durden Dec 15, 2017 10:10 AM 0 SHARES
detailed in a
Thursday letter from committee chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok
The letter reveals specific edits made by senior FBI agents when Deputy Director Andrew McCabe exchanged drafts of Comey's statement
with senior FBI officials , including Peter Strzok, Strzok's direct supervisor
, E.W. "Bill" Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, and an unnamed employee from the Office of General Counsel (identified by
Newsweek as DOJ Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson) - in what was a coordinated
conspiracy among top FBI brass to decriminalize Clinton's conduct by changing legal terms and phrases, omitting key information,
and minimizing the role of the Intelligence Community in the email investigation. Doing so virtually assured that then-candidate
Hillary Clinton would not be prosecuted.
Heather Samuelson and Heather Mills
Also mentioned in the letter are the immunity agreements granted by the FBI in June 2016 to top Obama advisor Cheryl Mills and
aide Heather Samuelson - who helped decide which Clinton emails were destroyed before turning over the remaining 30,000 records to
the State Department. Of note, the FBI agreed to destroy evidence on devices owned by Mills and Samuelson which were turned over
in the investigation.
Sen. Johnson's letter reads:
According to documents produced by the FBI, FBI employees exchanged proposed edits to the draft statement. On May 6, Deputy
Director McCabe forwarded the draft statement to other senior FBI employees, including Peter Strzok, E.W. Priestap, Jonathan Moffa,
and an employee on the Office of General Counsel whose name has been redacted. While the precise dates of the edits and identities
of the editors are not apparent from the documents, the edits appear to change the tone and substance of Director Comey's statement
in at least three respects .
It was already known that Strzok - who was demoted to the FBI's HR department after anti-Trump text messages to his mistress were
uncovered by an internal FBI watchdog - was responsible for downgrading the language regarding Clinton's conduct from the criminal
charge of "gross negligence" to "extremely careless."
"Gross negligence" is a legal term of art in criminal law often associated with recklessness. According to Black's Law Dictionary,
gross negligence is " A severe degree of negligence taken as reckless disregard ," and " Blatant indifference to one's legal duty,
other's safety, or their rights ." "Extremely careless," on the other hand, is not a legal term of art.
According to an Attorney briefed on the matter, "extremely careless" is in fact a defense to "gross negligence": "What my client
did was 'careless', maybe even 'extremely careless,' but it was not 'gross negligence' your honor." The FBI would have no option
but to recommend prosecution if the phrase "gross negligence" had been left in.
18 U.S. Code § 793 "Gathering, transmitting or losing
defense information" specifically uses the phrase "gross negligence." Had Comey used the phrase, he would have essentially declared
that Hillary had broken the law.
In addition to Strzok's "gross negligence" --> "extremely careless" edit, McCabe's damage control team removed a key justification
for elevating Clinton's actions to the standard of "gross negligence" - that being the " sheer volume " of classified material on
Clinton's server. In the original draft, the "sheer volume" of material "supports an inference that the participants were grossly
negligent in their handling of that information."
Also removed from Comey's statement were all references to the Intelligence Community's involvement in investigating Clinton's
private email server.
Director Comey's original statement acknowledged the FBI had worked with its partners in the Intelligence Community to assess
potential damage from Secretary Clinton's use of a private email server. The original statement read:
[W]e have done extensive work with the assistance of our colleagues elsewhere in the Intelligence Community to understand what
indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the private email operation.
The edited version removed the references to the intelligence community:
[W]e have done extensive work [removed] to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection
with the personal e-mail operation.
Furthermore, the FBI edited Comey's statement to downgrade the probability that Clinton's server was hacked by hostile actors,
changing their language from "reasonably likely" to "possible" - an edit which eliminated yet another justification for the phrase
"Gross negligence." To put it another way, "reasonably likely" means the probability of a hack due to Clinton's negligence is above
50 percent, whereas the hack simply being "possible" is any probability above zero.
It's also possible that the FBI, which was not allowed to inspect the DNC servers, was uncomfortable standing behind the conclusion
of Russian hacking reached by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
The original draft read:
Given the combination of factors, we assess it is reasonably likely that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's
private email account."
The edited version from Director Comey's July 5 statement read:
Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal
e-mail account.
Johnson's letter also questions an "
insurance policy " referenced in a text message sent by demoted FBI investigator Peter Strzok to his mistress, FBI attorney Lisa
Page, which read " I want to believe the path you threw out to consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected
-- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk." It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40...."
One wonders if the "insurance policy" Strzok sent to Page on
August 15, 2016 was in reference to the original counterintelligence operation launched against Trump of which Strzok became
the lead investigator in "late July" 2016? Of note, Strzok reported directly to
Bill Priestap - the director of Counterintelligence, who told James Comey not to inform congress that the FBI had launched a
counterintelligence operation against then-candidate Trump, per Comey's March 20th testimony to the House Intelligence Committee.
(h/t @TheLastRefuge2 )
Transcript , James Comey Testimony to House Intel Committee, March 20, 2016
The letter from the Senate Committee concludes; "the edits to Director Comey's public statement, made months prior to the conclusion
of the FBI's investigation of Secretary Clinton's conduct, had a significant impact on the FBI's public evaluation of the implications
of her actions . This effort, seen in the light of the personal animus toward then-candidate Trump by senior FBI agents leading the
Clinton investigation and their apparent desire to create an "insurance policy" against Mr. Trump's election, raise profound questions
about the FBI's role and possible interference in the 2016y presidential election and the role of the same agents in Special Counsel
Mueller's investigation of President Trump ."
Johnson then asks the FBI to answer six questions:
Please provide the names of the Department of Justice (DOJ) employees who comprised the "mid-year review team" during the
FBI's investigation of Secretary Clinton's use of a private email server.
Please identify all FBI, DOJ, or other federal employees who edited or reviewed Director Comey's July 5, 2016 statement .
Please identify which individual made the marked changes in the documents produced to the Committee.
Please identify which FBI employee repeatedly changed the language in the final draft statement that described Secretary Clinton's
behavior as "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless. " What evidence supported these changes?
Please identify which FBI employee edited the draft statement to remove the reference to the Intelligence Community . On what
basis was this change made?
Please identify which FBI employee edited the draft statement to downgrade the FBI's assessment that it was "reasonably likely"
that hostile actors had gained access to Secretary Clinton's private email account to merely that than [sic] intrusion was "possible."
What evidence supported these changes?
Please provide unredacted copies of the drafts of Director Comey's statement, including comment bubbles , and explain the
basis for the redactions produced to date.
We are increasingly faced with the fact that the FBI's top ranks have been filled with political ideologues who helped Hillary
Clinton while pursuing the Russian influence narrative against Trump (perhaps as the "insurance" Strzok spoke of). Meanwhile, "hands
off" recused Attorney General Jeff Sessions and assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein don't seem very excited to explore the
issues with a second Special Counsel. As such, we are now almost entirely reliant on the various Committees of congress to pursue
justice in this matter. Perhaps when their investigations have concluded, President Trump will feel he has the political and legal
ammunition to truly clean house at the nation's swampiest agencies.
All I see in this story is that the FBI edits their work to make sure the terminology is consistent throughout. This is not
a smoking gun of anything, except bureaucratic procedure one would find anywhere any legal documents are prepared.
That's not to say Hillary shouldn't have been prosecuted. But what we're seeing here looks like perfectly normal behavior once
the decision has been made not to prosecute; get the statements to be consistent with the conclusion. In a bureaucracy, that requires
a number of people to be involved. And it would necessarily include people who work for Hillary Clinton, since that's whose information
is being discussed.
Now, if Hillary hadn't been such an arrogant bitch, we wouldn't be having this conversation. If she had just take the locked-down
Android of iOS phone they issued her, instead of having to forward everything to herself so she could use her stupid Blackberry
(which can't be locked down to State Dep't. specs), everything would have been both hunky and dory.
And the stuff about how a foreign power might have, or might possibly have, accessed her emails is all BS too. We already know
they weren't hacked, they were leaked.
Maybe people who don't understand complicated organizations see something nefarious here, but nobody who does will. Nothing
will come of this but some staged-for-TV dramatic pronouncements in the House, and on FOX News, and affiliated websites. There's
nothing here.
That obongo of all crooks is involved is a sure fact, but I'd like to see how many remaining defenders of the cause are still
motivated to lose everything for this thing...
In other terms, what are the defection rates in the dem party, because now this must be an avalanche.
Please, EVERYONE with a Twitter account send this message Every Day (tell your friends on facebook):
Mr. President, the time to purge the Obama-Clinton holdovers has long passed. Please get rid of them at once. Make your base
happy. Fire 100+ from DOJ - State - FBI. Hire William K. Black as Special Prosecutor
Debatable re. biggest story being kept quiet. The AWAN Brothers/Family is a Pakistani spy ring operating inside Congress for
more than a decade, and we hear nothing. They had access to virtually everything in every important committee. They had access
to the Congressional servers and all the emails. Biggest spy scandal in our nations hsitory, and........crickets.
Of course, they may all be related, since Debbie Wasserman-Shits brought them in and set them up, then intertwined their work
in Congress with their work for the DNC.
Just more theater. Throwing a bone to the few citizens who think for themselves. Giving us false hope the US legal system isn't
corrupt. This will never be prosecuted, because the deep state remains in control. They've had a year to destroy the incriminating
evidence.
Ryan and his buddies in Congress will make strained faces (as if taking a dump) and wring their hands saying they must hire
a "Special" Investigator to cover up this mess.
They tweet that crap all the time. Usually just a repeat with different names, but always blaming a Ruskie. About every 6 months
they hit on a twist in the wording that causes it to go viral.
Before Trump was elected , I thought the only way to get our country back was through a Military Coup, but it appears there
may be some light at the end of the tunnel.
I wonder if that light is coming from the soon to be gaping hole in the FBI's asshole when the extent of this political activism
by the agency eventually seeps into the public conciousness.
you can't clean up a mess of this magnitude. fire everyone in washington---senator, representative, fbi, cia, nsa ,etc and
start over---has NO chance of happenning
the only hope for a non violent solution is that a true leader emerges that every decent person can rally behind and respect,
honor and dignity become the norm. unfortunately, corruption has become a culture and i don't know if it can be eradicated
Just expose the Congress, McCabe, Lindsey, McCabe, Clinton, all Dem judges, Media, Hollywood, local government dems as pedos;
that will half-drain the swamp.
If Trump gets the swamp cleaned without a military coup, he will be one of our greatest Presidents. There will be people who
hate that more than they hate being in jail.
Precisely. That's actually a very good tool for decoding the Clintons and Obama. "You collaborated with Russia." Means
"I collaborated with Saudi Arabia." It takes a little while and I haven't fully mastered it yet, but you can reverse alinsky-engineer
their statements to figure out what they did.
And get this, Flynn was set up! Yates had the transcript via the (illegal) FISA Court of warrant which relied on the Dirty
Steele Dossier, when Flynn deviated from the transcript they charged him Lying to the FBI. Comey McCabe run around lying 24/7.
Their is no fucking hope left! The swamp WINS ALWAYS.
I have - it's was NBC Nightly News - they spent time on the damning emails from Strozk. Maybe 2-3 minutes. Normal news segment
time. Surprised the hell out of me.
the "MSM" needs to cover their own asses ...like "an insurance policy" just in case the truth comes out... best to be seen
reporting on the REAL issue at least for a couple minutes..
Hillary Clinton "actually listening to the people"??? Nonsense.
Democrats lost because she didn't bother to listen to the concerns of the working class.
Instead, she demonized and ridiculed them. If Democrats don't return to their one-time base
in the working class, we will be doomed to more Donald Trumps and more massive transfers of
wealth from those to work for a living to the very rich.
As a lifetime progressive, I categorically reject the neoliberal political philosophy of
both Clinton and Obama. In addition to being morally wrong, it is foolish, because in
kicking out both the working class and progressives like me, they don't have enough votes
to win elections. I also reject lying in order to undo the will of the American people.
Russia-gate is, from the "evidence" given, total BS.
The will of those stinking (not a word I would use) undesirables at Walmart was to raise
their collective middle fingers at the elites who have abandoned them and thrown them under
the bus. They were voting against phony promises of hope and change. They were voting
against NAFTA and the TPP. And guess what: Plenty of them would have voted for Bernie
Sanders.
"... If there were secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence such as might give rise to genuine concern that the national security of the United States might be compromised – for example because they were intended to swing the US election from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump – then the FBI would have a legitimate reason to investigate those contacts even if no actual crimes were committed during them. ..."
"... The point is however is that eighteen months after the start of the Russiagate investigation no evidence either of criminal acts or of secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy has come to light. ..."
"... There is no evidence of a criminal conspiracy by anyone in the Trump campaign involving the Russians. or the hacking of John Podesta's and the DNC's computers in order to steal emails from those computers and to have them published by Wikileaks; ..."
"... There is also no evidence of any secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the election which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy. ..."
"... If no evidence either of a criminal conspiracy or of inappropriate secret contacts by the Trump campaign and the Russians has been found after eighteen months of intense investigation by the biggest and mightiest national security and intelligence community on the planet, then any reasonable person would conclude that that must be because no such evidence exists. ..."
"... Some months I expressed doubts that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would countenance fishing expeditions . It turns out I was wrong. On any objective assessment it is exactly such fishing expeditions that the Mueller investigation is now engaging in. ..."
"... Deutsche Bank is a German bank not a Russian bank. To insinuate that the Russians control Deutsche Bank – one of the world's leading international banks – because Deutsche Bank has had some previous financial dealings with various Russian banks and businesses is quite simply preposterous. I doubt that there is a single important bank in Germany or Austria of which that could not also be said. ..."
"... Which again begs the question why? Why are Mueller and the Justice Department resorting to these increasingly desperate actions in order to prove something which it ought to be obvious by now cannot be proved? ..."
"... My colleague Alex Christoforou has recently pointed out that the recent indictment of Michael Flynn seems to have been partly intended to shield Mueller from dismissal and to keep his Russiagate investigation alive. Some time ago I made exactly the same point about the indictments against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and about the indictment against George Papadopoulos. ..."
"... Those indictments were issued directly after the Wall Street Journal published an editorial saying that Mueller should resign. ..."
"... It is the Wall Street Journal editorial which in fact provides the answer to Mueller's and Rosenstein's otherwise strange behaviour and to the way that Mueller has conducted the investigation up to now. The Wall Street Journal's editorial says that Mueller's past as the FBI's Director means that he is too close to the FBI to take an objective view of its actions. ..."
"... It is universally agreed that the FBI's then Director – Mueller's friend James Comey – broke protocols by the way he announced that Hillary Clinton had been cleared. ..."
"... By failing to bring charges against Hillary Clinton the FBI ensured that she would win the Democratic Party's nomination, and that she not Bernie Sanders would face off against Donald Trump in the election in the autumn. That is important because though the eventual – completely unexpected – election outcome was that Donald Trump won the election, which Hillary Clinton lost, every opinion poll which I have seen suggests that if the election had been between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump then Bernie Sanders would have won by a landslide. ..."
"... They played Sessions like a violin. Sessions recluses himself for a bullcrap Kisnyak speech, where he did not even meet him. Rosenstein then recommends Trump fire Comey -- who wanted to be fired so they would appoint a special prosecutor -- which Rosenstein does -- Mueller, to the acclamation of ALL of Con and the Senate-including Republicans. ..."
"... Trump was pissed because they removed his only defender from Mueller -- the head of the DOJ. He knew it was a setup, so went ballistic when he found out about Sessions recusing. ..."
"... Strzok was obviously at a VERY senior pay grade. It would be very surprising if HR had any jobs at Strzok's pay grade. ..."
"... once this special prosecutor is done, congress needs to rewrite the special prosecutor law to narrow their mandate to just the item allowed to be investigated - no fishing expeditions - enough of this stupidity - and maybe put a renewal clause in there so that it has to be renewed every 12 months... ..."
"... This is, and always has been a sideshow for the "true believers" in the Democrap party and all Hitlary supporters to accuse Trump of EXACTLY what Hitlary did ..."
Almost eighteen months after Obama's Justice Department and the FBI launched the Russiagate investigation, and seven months after
Special Counsel Robert Mueller took the investigation over, the sum total of what it has achieved is as follows
(1) an indictment of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates which concerns entirely their prior financial dealings, and which makes no
reference to the Russiagate collusion allegations;
(2) an indictment for lying to the FBI of George Papadopoulos, the junior volunteer staffer of the Trump campaign, who during
the 2016 Presidential election had certain contacts with members of a Moscow based Russian NGO, which he sought to pass off –
falsely and unsuccessfully – as more important than they really were, and which also does not touch on the Russiagate collusion
allegations; and
(3) an indictment for lying to the FBI of Michael Flynn arising from his perfectly legitimate and entirely legal contacts with
the Russian ambassador after the 2016 Presidential election, which also does not touch on the Russiagate collusion allegations,
and which looks as if it was brought about by an
act of entrapment
.
Of actual evidence to substantiate the claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election Mueller has
so far come up with nothing.
Here I wish to say something briefly about the nature of "collusion".
There is no criminal offence of "collusion" known to US law, which has led some to make the point that Mueller is investigating
a crime which does not exist.
There is some force to this point, but it is one which must be heavily qualified:
(1) Though there is no crime of "collusion" in US law, there most certainly is the crime of conspiracy to perform a criminal act.
Should it ever be established that members of the Trump campaign arranged with the Russians for the Russians to hack the DNC's
and John Podesta's computers and to steal the emails from those computers so that they could be published by Wikileaks, then since
hacking and theft are serious criminal acts a criminal conspiracy would be established, and it would be the entirely proper to do
to bring criminal charges against those who were involved in it.
This is the central allegation which lies behind the whole Russiagate case, and is the crime which Mueller is supposed to be investigating.
(2) The FBI is not merely a police and law enforcement agency. It is also the US's counter-espionage agency.
If there were secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence such as might give rise to genuine concern that
the national security of the United States might be compromised – for example because they were intended to swing the US election
from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump – then the FBI would have a legitimate reason to investigate those contacts even if no actual
crimes were committed during them.
Since impeachment is a purely political process and not a legal process, should it ever be established that there were such secret
contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence which might have placed the national security of the United States in
jeopardy, then I have no doubt that Congress would say that there were grounds for impeachment even if no criminal offences had been
committed during them.
The point is however is that eighteen months after the start of the Russiagate investigation no evidence either of criminal acts
or of secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence which might have placed the national security of the United
States in jeopardy has come to light.
Specifically:
(1) There is no evidence of a criminal conspiracy by anyone in the Trump campaign involving the Russians. or the hacking of
John Podesta's and the DNC's computers in order to steal emails from those computers and to have them published by Wikileaks;
and
(2) There is also no evidence of any secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the election
which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy.
Such contacts as did take place between the Trump campaign and the Russians were limited and innocuous and had no effect on the
outcome of the election. Specifically there is no evidence of any concerted action between the Trump campaign and the Russians to
swing the election from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.
As I have previously discussed, the meeting between Donald Trump Junior and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya is
not such evidence .
If no evidence either of a criminal conspiracy or of inappropriate secret contacts by the Trump campaign and the Russians has
been found after eighteen months of intense investigation by the biggest and mightiest national security and intelligence community
on the planet, then any reasonable person would conclude that that must be because no such evidence exists.
Why then is the investigation still continuing?
Some months I expressed doubts that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would
countenance fishing expeditions. It turns out I was wrong. On any objective assessment it is exactly such fishing expeditions that the Mueller investigation is
now engaging in.
How else to explain the strange decision to subpoena Deutsche Bank for information about loans granted by Deutsche Bank to Donald
Trump and his businesses?
Deutsche Bank is a German bank not a Russian bank. To insinuate that the Russians control Deutsche Bank – one of the world's leading
international banks – because Deutsche Bank has had some previous financial dealings with various Russian banks and businesses is
quite simply preposterous. I doubt that there is a single important bank in Germany or Austria of which that could not also be said.
Yet in the desperation to find some connection between Donald Trump and Russia it is to these absurdities that Mueller is reduced
to.
Which again begs the question why? Why are Mueller and the Justice Department resorting to these increasingly desperate actions
in order to prove something which it ought to be obvious by now cannot be proved?
My colleague Alex Christoforou has recently pointed out that the recent indictment of Michael Flynn seems to have been
partly intended to shield Mueller from dismissal and to keep his Russiagate investigation alive. Some time ago I made exactly the same point about
the indictments against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and about the indictment against George Papadopoulos.
Those indictments were issued directly after the Wall Street Journal published an
editorial saying that Mueller
should resign.
The indictment against Manafort and Gates looks sloppy and rushed. Perhaps I am wrong but there has to be at least a suspicion
that the indictments were issued in a hurry to still criticism of Mueller of the kind that was now appearing in the Wall Street Journal.
Presumably the reason the indictment against Flynn was delayed was because his lawyers had just signaled Flynn's interest in
a plea bargain, and it took a few more weeks of negotiating to work that out.
It is the Wall Street Journal editorial which in fact provides the answer to Mueller's and Rosenstein's otherwise strange behaviour
and to the way that Mueller has conducted the investigation up to now. The Wall Street Journal's editorial says that Mueller's past as the FBI's Director means that he is too close to the FBI to take
an objective view of its actions.
In fact the Wall Street Journal was more right than it perhaps realised. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the FBI's
actions are open to very serious criticism to say the least, and that Mueller is simply not the person who can be trusted to take
an objective view of those actions.
Over the course of the 2016 election the FBI cleared Hillary Clinton over her illegal use of a private server to route classified
emails whilst she was Secretary of State though it is universally agreed that she broke the law by doing so.
The FBI does not seem to have even considered investigating Hillary Clinton for possible obstruction of justice after it also
became known that she had actually destroyed thousands of her emails which passed through her private server, though that was an
obvious thing to do.
It is universally agreed that the FBI's then Director – Mueller's friend James Comey – broke protocols by the way he announced
that Hillary Clinton had been cleared.
By failing to bring charges against Hillary Clinton the FBI ensured that she would win the Democratic Party's nomination, and
that she not Bernie Sanders would face off against Donald Trump in the election in the autumn. That is important because though the eventual – completely unexpected – election outcome was that Donald Trump won the election,
which Hillary Clinton lost, every opinion poll which I have seen suggests that if the election had been between Bernie Sanders and
Donald Trump then Bernie Sanders would have won by a landslide.
In other words it was because of the FBI's actions in the first half of 2016 that Bernie Sanders is not now the President of the
United States.
In addition instead of independently investigating the DNC's claims that the Russians had hacked the DNC's and John Podesta's
computers, the FBI simply accepted the opinion of an expert – Crowdstrike – paid for by the DNC, which it is now known was partly
funded and was entirely controlled by the Hillary Clinton campaign, that hacks of those computers had actually taken place and that
the Russians were the perpetrators.
As a result Hillary Clinton was able to say during the election that the reason emails which had passed through those computers
and which showed her and her campaign in a bad light were being published by Wikileaks was because the Russians had stolen the emails
by hacking the computers in order to help Donald Trump.
It is now known that the FBI also met with Christopher Steele, the compiler of the Trump Dossier, who is now known to have been
in the pay of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign. The first meeting apparently took place in early July 2016, shortly before
the Russiagate investigation was launched.
Whilst there is some confusion about whether the FBI actually paid Steele for his information, it is now known that Steele was
in contact with the FBI throughout the election and continued to be so after, and that the FBI gave credence to his work.
Recently it has also come to light that Steele was also directly in touch with Obama's Justice Department, a fact which was only
disclosed recently.
The best
account of this has been provided by Byron York writing for The Washington Examiner
The department's Bruce Ohr, a career official, served as associate deputy attorney general at the time of the campaign. That
placed him just below the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, who ran the day-to-day operations of the department. In 2016,
Ohr's office was just steps away from Yates, who was later fired for defying President Trump's initial travel ban executive order
and still later became a prominent anti-Trump voice upon leaving the Justice Department.
Unbeknownst to investigators until recently, Ohr knew Steele and had repeated contacts with Steele when Steele was working
on the dossier. Ohr also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, head of Fusion GPS, the opposition research company that was
paid by the Clinton campaign to compile the dossier.
Word that Ohr met with Steele and Simpson, first reported by Fox News' James Rosen and Jake Gibson, was news to some current
officials in the Justice Department. Shortly after learning it, they demoted Ohr, taking away his associate deputy attorney general
title and moving him full time to another position running the department's organized crime drug enforcement task forces.
It is also now known that over the course of the election the FBI – on the basis of information in the Trump Dossier – obtained
at least one warrant from the FISA court which made it possible for it to undertake surveillance during and after the election of
persons belonging to involved the campaign team of Hillary Clinton's opponent Donald Trump.
In response to subpoenas issued at the instigation of the Congressman Devin Nunes the FBI has recently admitted that
the Trump Dossier cannot be verified
.
However the FBI and the Justice Department have so far failed to provide in response to these subpoenas information about the
precise role of the Trump Dossier in triggering the Russiagate investigation.
The FBI's and the Justice Department's failure to provide this information recently provoked an angry exchange between FBI Director
Christopher Wray and Congressman Jim Jordan during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.
During that hearing Jordan said to Wray the following
Let's remember a couple of things about the dossier. The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, which we now
know were one and the same, paid the law firm who paid Fusion GPS who paid Christopher Steele who then paid Russians to put together
a report that we call a dossier full of all kinds of fake news, National Enquirer garbage and it's been reported that this dossier
was all dressed up by the FBI, taken to the FISA court and presented as a legitimate intelligence document -- that it became the
basis for a warrant to spy on Americans.
In response Wray refused to say officially whether or not the Trump Dossier played any role in the FBI obtaining the FISA warrants.
This was so even though officials of the FBI – including former FBI Director James Comey – have slipped out in earlier Congressional
testimony that it did.
This is also despite the fact that this information is not classified and ought already to have been provided by the Justice Department
and the FBI in response to Congressman Nunes's subpoenas.
There is now talk of FBI Director Christopher Wray and of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein being held in contempt of Congress
because of the failure of the Justice Department and the FBI to comply with Congressman Nunes's subpoenas.
During the exchanges between Wray and Jordan at the hearing in the House Judiciary Committee Jordan also had this to say
Here's what I think -- I think Peter Strozk (sic) Mr. Super Agent at the FBI, I think he's the guy who took the application
to the FISA court and if that happened, if this happened , if you have the FBI working with a campaign, the Democrats' campaign,
taking opposition research, dressing it all up and turning it into an intelligence document so they can take it to the FISA court
so they can spy on the other campaign, if that happened, that is as wrong as it gets
Peter Strzok is the senior FBI official who is now known to have had a leading role in both the FBI's investigation of Hillary
Clinton's misuse of her private server and in the Russiagate investigation.
Strzok is now also known to have been the person who changed the wording in Comey's statement clearing Hillary Clinton for her
misuse of her private email server to say that Hillary Clinton had been "extremely careless'" as opposed to "grossly negligent".
Strzok – who was the FBI's deputy director for counter-intelligence – is now also known to have been the person who signed the
document which launched the Russiagate investigation in July 2016.
Fox News has
reported that Strzok was also the person who supervised the FBI's questioning of Michael Flynn. It is not clear whether this
covers the FBI's interview with Flynn on 24th January 2017 during which Flynn lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian
ambassador. However it is likely that it does.
If so then this is potentially important given that it was Flynn's lying to the FBI during this interview which made up the case
against him and to which he has now pleaded guilty. It is potentially even more important given the strong indications that Flynn's
interview with the FBI on 24th January 2017 was
a set-up intended
to entrap him by tricking him into lying to the FBI.
As the FBI's deputy director of counter-intelligence it is also highly likely that it was Strozk who was the official within the
FBI who supervised the FBI's contacts with Christopher Steele, and who would have been the official within the FBI who was provided
by Steele with the Trump Dossier and who would have made the first assessment of the Trump Dossier.
Recently it has been disclosed that Special Counsel Mueller sacked Strzok from the Russiagate investigation supposedly after it
was discovered that Strzok had been sending anti-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton messages to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer with whom he
was having an affair.
These messages were sent by Strzok to his lover during the election, but apparently only came to light in July this year, when
Mueller supposedly sacked Strzok because of them.
It seems that since then Strzok has been working in the FBI's human resources department, an astonishing demotion for the FBI's
former deputy director for counter-intelligence who was apparently previously considered the FBI's top expert on Russia.
Some people have questioned whether the sending of the messages could possibly be the true reason why Strzok was sacked. My colleague
Alex Christoforou has
reported on some
of the bafflement that this extraordinary sacking and demotion has caused.
Business Insider reports the anguished comments of former FBI officials incredulous that Strzok could have been sacked for such
a trivial reason. Here is what Business Insider
reports
one ex FBI official Mark Rossini as having said
It would be literally impossible for one human being to have the power to change or manipulate evidence or intelligence according
to their own political preferences. FBI agents, like anyone else, are human beings. We are allowed to have our political beliefs.
If anything, the overwhelming majority of agents are conservative Republicans.
This is obviously right. Though the ex-FBI officials questioned by Business Insider are clearly supporters of Strzok and critics
of Donald Trump,
the same point has been made from the other side of the political divide by Congressman Jim Jordan
If you get kicked off the Mueller team for being anti-Trump, there wouldn't be anybody left on the Mueller team. There has
to be more
Adding to the mystery about Strzok's sacking is why the FBI took five months to confirm it.
Mueller apparently sacked Strzok from the Russiagate investigation in July and it was apparently then that Strzok was simultaneously
sacked from his previous post of deputy director for counter-espionage and transferred to human resources. The FBI has however only
disclosed his sacking now, five months later and only in response to demands for information from Congressional investigators.
There is in fact an obvious explanation for Strzok's sacking and the strange circumstances surrounding it, and I am sure that
it is the one which Congressman Jordan had in mind during his angry exchanges with FBI Director Christopher Wray.
I suspect that Congressman Jordan believes that the true reason why Strzok was sacked is that Strzok's credibility had become
so tied to the Trump Dossier that when its credibility collapsed over the course of the summer when the FBI finally realised that
it could not be verified his credibility collapsed with it.
If so then I am sure that Congressman Jordan is right.
We now know from a variety of sources but first and foremost from the
testimony to Congress of Carter Page
that the Trump Dossier provided the frame narrative for the Russiagate investigation until just a few months ago.
We also know that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report about supposed Russian meddling in
the 2016 election which was shown by the US intelligence chiefs to President elect Trump during their stormy meeting with him on
8th January 2017.
The fact that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report shows that at the start of this year the
top officials of the FBI and of the US intelligence community – Comey, Clapper, Brennan and the rest – believed in its truth.
The June 2017 article in the Washington Post (discussed by me
here ) also all but confirms that it was
the Trump Dossier that provided the information which the CIA sent to President Obama in August 2016 which supposedly 'proved' that
the Russians were interfering in the election.
As the BBC has pointed out , it was also the
Trump Dossier which Congressman Adam Schiff – the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Community, who appears to be very close
to some of the FBI investigators involved in the Russiagate case – as well as the FBI's Russiagate investigators were using as the
narrative frame when questioning witnesses about their supposed role in Russiagate.
These facts make it highly likely that it was indeed the Trump Dossier which provided the information which the FBI used to obtain
all the surveillance warrants the FBI obtained from the FISA court during the 2016 election and afterwards.
Strzok's position as the FBI's deputy director for counter-intelligence makes it highly likely that he was the key official within
the FBI who decided that the Trump Dossier should be given credence, whilst his known actions during the Hillary Clinton private
server investigation and during the Russiagate investigation make it highly likely that it was he who was the official within the
FBI who sought and obtained the FISA warrants.
Given Strzok's central role in the Russiagate investigation going back all the way to its start in July 2016, there also has to
be a possibility that it was Strzok who was behind many of the leaks coming from the investigation which so destabilised the Trump
administration at the start of the year.
This once again points to the true scandal of the 2016 election.
On the strength of a fake Dossier paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign the Justice Department, the FBI and the
US intelligence community carried out surveillance during the election of US citizens who were members of the campaign team of Hillary
Clinton's opponent Donald Trump.
Given the hugely embarrassing implications of this for the FBI, it is completely understandable why Strzok, if he was the person
who was ultimately responsible for this debacle – as he very likely was – and if he was responsible for some of the leaks – as he
very likely also was – was sacked and exiled to human resources when it was finally concluded that the Trump Dossier upon which all
the FBI's actions were based could not be verified.
It would also explain why the FBI sought to keep Strzok's sacking secret, so that it was only disclosed five months after it happened
and then only in response to questions from Congressional investigators, with a cover story about inappropriate anti-Trump messages
being spread about in order to explain it.
This surely is also the reason why in defiance both of evidence and logic the Russiagate investigation continues.
Given the debacle the Justice Department, the FBI and the US intelligence community are facing, it is completely understandable
why they should want to keep the Russiagate investigation alive in order to draw attention away from their own activities.
Put in this way it is Robert Mueller's investigation which is the cover-up, and the surveillance which is the wrongdoing that
the cover up is trying to excuse or conceal, which is what
I said nine months ago in March .
When the suggestion of appointing a second Special Counsel was first floated last month the suggestion was that the focus of the
second Special Counsel's investigation would be the Uranium One affair.
That always struck me as misconceived not because there may not be things to investigate in the Uranium One case but because the
focus of any new investigation should be what happened during the 2016 election, not what happened during the Uranium one case.
Congressman Jordan has now correctly identified the surveillance of US citizens by the US national security bureaucracy during
the election as the primary focus of the proposed investigation to be conducted by the second Special Counsel.
In truth there should be no second Special Counsel. Since there is no Russiagate collusion to investigate the Russiagate investigation
– ie. the investigation headed by Mueller – should be wound up.
There should be only one Special Counsel tasked with looking into what is the real scandal of the 2016 election: the surveillance
of US citizens carried out during the election by the US national security bureaucracy on the basis of the Trump Dossier.
I remain intensely skeptical that this will happen. However the fact that some members of Congress such as Congressman Nunes (recently
cleared of charges that he acted inappropriately by disclosing details of the surveillance back in March) and Congressman Jordan
are starting to demand it is a hopeful sign.
Top Clinton Aides Face No Charges After Making False Statements To FBI
Neither of the Clinton associates, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, faced legal consequences for their misleading statements,
which they made in interviews last year with former FBI section chief Peter Strzok.
These are acts to overthrow the legitimate government of the USA and therefore constitute treason. Treason is still punishable
by death. It is time for some public hangings. Trump should declare martial law. Put Patraeus and Flint in charge and drain the
swamp like he promised...
Absolutely. This is not political, about justice or corruption or election coercion, this is about keeping the fires lit under
Trump, no matter how lame or lying, in the hopes that something, anything, will arise that could be used to unseat Trump. Something
that by itself would be controversial but ultimately a nothing-burger, but piled upon the months and years of lies used to build
a false consensus of corruption, criminality and impropriety of Trump. Their goal has always been to undermine Trump by convincing
the world that Trump is evil and unfit using nothing but lies, that without Trump's endless twitter counters would have buried
him by now. While they know that can't convince a significant majority that these lies are true, what they can do is convince
the majority that everyone else thinks it true, thereby in theory enabling them to unseat Trump with minimal resistance, assuming
many will simply stand down in the face of a PERCEIVED overwhelming majority.
This is about constructing a false premise that they can use minimal FACTS to confirm. They are trying and testing every day
this notion with continuing probes and jabs in hopes that something....anything, sticks.
Mueller is a lot of things, but he is a politician, and skilled at that, as he has survived years in Washington.
So why choose KNOWN partisans for your investigation? He may not have known about Strzok, but he surely knew about Weitsmann's
ties to HRC, about Rhee being Rhodes personal attorney,..so why put them on, knowing that the investigations credibility would
be damaged? No way most of this would not come out, just due to the constant leaks from the FBI/DOJ.
What is the real goal, other than taking Trump down and covering up FBI/DOJ/Obama Admin malfeasance? These goons are all highly
experienced swamp dwellers, so I think there is something that is being missed here..
" The fact that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report shows that at the start of this year
the top officials of the FBI and of the US intelligence community – Comey, Clapper, Brennan and the rest – believed in its truth.
"
Oh, bull crap. None of them believed a word of it, and at least some of them were in on the dossier's creation.
They just wanted to put over their impeach/resist/remove scam on us deplorables so they could hang on to power and maintain
secrecy over all their years of criminal activity.
The FBI is a fraud on the sheeple. Indoctrinated sheeple believe FBI testimony. The M.O. of the FBI is entrapment of victims
and entrapped witnesses against victims using their Form 302 interrogations. The FBI uses forensic evidence from which gullible
juries trust the FBI financed reports. Power corrupts. The power to be believed because of indoctrination corrupts absolutely.
Keep your powder dry. Hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
All this crap comes down to ONE THING: Sessions ... why he refuses to fire a mega-conflicted and corrupt POS Mueller...
Investigative reporter Sarah Carter hinted (last Friday?) that something big would be happening "probably within the next forty-eight
hours". She related this specifically to a comment that Sessions had been virtually invisible.
I will make a prediction:
THE COMING WEEK WILL BE A TUMULTUOUS WEEK FOR THOSE OBSESSED BY THE "RUSSIA COLLUSION CONSPIRACY" .
First, Sessions will announce significant findings and actions which will directly attack the Trump-Russia-Collusion narrative.
And then, the Democrats/Media/Hillary Campaign will launch a hystierical, viscious, demented political counter attack in a
final onslaught to take down Trump.
They played Sessions like a violin. Sessions recluses himself for a bullcrap Kisnyak speech, where he did not even meet him.
Rosenstein then recommends Trump fire Comey -- who wanted to be fired so they would appoint a special prosecutor -- which Rosenstein
does -- Mueller, to the acclamation of ALL of Con and the Senate-including Republicans.
When Trump tries to get out of the trap by leaking he is thinking about firing Sessions, Lispin Lindsey goes on television
to say that will not be allowed too happen. If he fires Sessions, Congress would not approve ANY of Trump's picks for DOJ-leaving
Rosenstein in charge anyway.
Trump was pissed because they removed his only defender from Mueller -- the head of the DOJ. He knew
it was a setup, so went ballistic when he found out about Sessions recusing.
There is good reason for optimism: Trumpus Maximus is on the case.
I remain intensely skeptical that this will happen. However the fact that some members of Congress such as Congressman Nunes
(recently cleared of charges that he acted inappropriately by disclosing details of the surveillance back in March) and Congressman
Jordan are starting to demand it is a hopeful sign.
The design has been exposed. It is now fairly clear WHAT the conspirators did.
We now enter the neutralization and mop-up phase.
And, very likely, people who know things will be EAGER to talk:
FBI agents, like anyone else, are human beings. We are allowed to have our political beliefs. If anything, the overwhelming
majority of agents are conservative Republicans.
Bloomberg fed a fake leak that Mueller had subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank. Democrats (Schiff) on the House Intelligence Committee fed fake information about Don Jr. that was leaked to CNN. Leading to
an embarrassing retraction. ABC's Brian Ross fed a fake leak about the Flynn indictment. Leading to an embarrassing retraction.
Maybe the operation that Sessions set up some time ago to catch leakers is bearing fruit after all. And Mueller should realize
that the ice is breaking up all around him.
once this special prosecutor is done, congress needs to rewrite the special prosecutor law to narrow their mandate to just
the item allowed to be investigated - no fishing expeditions - enough of this stupidity - and maybe put a renewal clause in there
so that it has to be renewed every 12 months...
This is, and always has been a sideshow for the "true believers" in the Democrap party and all Hitlary supporters to accuse
Trump of EXACTLY what Hitlary did, in the classic method of diversion. Sideshow magicians have been doing it for millenia--"Look
over there" while the real work is done elsewhere. The true believers don't want to believe that Hitlary and the Democrap party
are complicit in the selling of Uranium One to the Ruskies for $145 million. No, no, that was something completely different and
Hitlary is not guilty of selling out the interests of the US for money. Nope, Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election.
Yep, that's it.
Mueller is now the official head of a shit show that's coming apart at the seams. He was too stupid to even bring on ANY non-Hitlary
supporting leftists which could have given him a smidgen of equibility, instead he stacked the deck with sycophant libtard leftists
who by their very nature take away ANY concept of impartiality, and any jury on the planet would see through the connivance like
glass. My guess is he's far too stupid to stop, and I happily await the carnage of his actions as they decimate the Democrap party.
Currently in the USA only nationalist politicians display some level of courage and
authenticity. That's why they attract people.
The problem with superdelegates in Democratic Party is just the tip of the iceberg of the "Clinton transformation" of the
party. The Part is
now neoliberal party that have nothing to do with the democracy. At best it would qualify as a
moderate Republican wing.
Notable quotes:
"... This endless compromise won't work. The odds of the Dems intentionally trading their Big Money Corporate Supporters like Monsanto for the Working Class is somewhere between slim and none, at least in my lifetime. ..."
"... If the superdelegates were limited to currently serving Democratic members of Congress, currently serving Democratic state governors, and current or former Democratic Presidents and Vice-Presidents, it would be a huge improvement. ..."
"... No lobbyists, no big city mayors, and no state party bosses (unless they are also in one of the other permitted categories). ..."
"... I suppose it doesn't help that I watched the Truman & Wallace episodes of Oliver Stone's "Untold History of the United States" last night. But even before that I've been haunted by the image of shadow on the steps of Sumitomo Bank in Hiroshima, Japan. Recalling that image, the DNC's betrayals of the American people, and the short-sighted and self-serving actions of those who rule us -- detailed in trivialities by Norman Solomon -- combined these give fuller meaning to the comment Bernie Sanders made about those who rule us and their greatest concern about their place on the Titanic. ..."
"... Team D cares not a whit for its voters, but it cares very much for the concerns of big donors. ..."
"... under the new rules, those superdelegates would have to tie their votes on the convention's first ballot to the outcome of primaries and caucuses. In 2016, all superdelegates were allowed to support either candidate. ..."
"... In other words, will the practice of Clinton or the Clintonites locking the superdelegate vote up early just be merely reshaped by this process, with a new sheen of faux democracy, rather than inhibited? ..."
"... This is why the comment above by Quanka is astute: You have to tell the Democrats (and Republicans) that you won't owe your vote to them. And that you are going to burn down the party if it doesn't serve the commonwealth. ..."
"... See my post below when it comes out of moderation; Our country does have a progressive/populist tradition, but everything possible is done to erase it from contemporary memory. Now buried to memory is the history of the Non-Partisan League of North Dakota, the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota, and even the Reform Republicanism of the early 1900's (Wisconsin's Robert M. La Follette for instance). ..."
"... I hate to tell you, but the New York City subway actually costs $2.75. Another testament to the neoliberal con game, as practiced by the Metropolitan Transit Authority. ..."
"... What is ironic about this issue of superdelegates is that the so called "Democratic" party has them and the party of the elite, the Republicans, do not (well, they do, but at a much smaller % and they are required to vote for whoever won their respective state primary). What is also ironic is that the reason the Dems came up with this system was to prevent blowouts in the election. Carter and McGovern had gotten trounced. The feeling was that "wiser" heads, i.e. experienced politicians could steer the party toward a more electable candidate. And how did that work out for them? First time superdelegates voted in 1984, Mondale lost 49 out of 50 states to Reagan. ..."
"... The Democrat Party is run by a bunch of careerist hacks. This is why the GOP is actually more "democratic" (and got hijacked by Trump): because it's not run by careerist hacks who are more concerned about protecting their rice bowls than they are about being responsive to the electorate. These hacks got paid a billion dollars to run the losing 2016 campaign -- they "won" the election by their self-serving metric, and now get to pay themselves to "resist" the administration that they caused to be elected through their self-serving careerism. ..."
"... And now with current 'RussiaGate' nonsense and the rest of it, and all the wars, including the genocidal destruction of Libya, and some other things, I can never again vote for a Democrat, and I won't vote for a Republican either. I voted for a Socialist once but those votes were not counted because he could not satisfy the requirements to get on the ballot -- petitions and registering in over 200 districts in the state. No one decent gets through the machine. ..."
"... The DNC's Unity Commission's behavior confirms that the real goal of the leadership of the DNC is exactly the opposite of the name of the commission. So what is their real goal? To prevent the emergence of a progressive majority. In fact, this has been their goal for decades; and in fairness, they have been very successful in realizing it to the detriment of the majority of We the People. ..."
"... While I was at the post office, I had a conversation with a longtime friend who is now in the Arizona House of Representatives. She just got elected last year. Even though she is officially a Democratic Party member, she ran as a progressive and that's how she rolls in the House. Get this, she spent this morning addressing a conservative youth group and they loved it. Compared to what they usually hear from politicians, they found her speech refreshing. It was all about balanced policy, and if she posts a video, I will share it. Perhaps the DNC will pay attention. ..."
"... I approve of bringing up this suppressed history of our country's leftist, progressive, socialist, even communist strands, not to mention the multi racial and class political alliance, social organizations, and very frequently personal connections including marriages. Don't forget that the power structure used propaganda, legislation, the law, and armed mobs that often especially, but not only, in the South with rope necklaces, lead poisoning, or if you were "lucky" multi-decade prison terms, or just merely having your home/church/business burnt. This has never really stopped. Like when Jim Crow continues by other means, so did the anti-organization. Chicago, Detroit, the South,etc. Sadly, the black misleadership also help, albeit without the violence, after MLK and others, were no longer a problem. ..."
"... So centuries of poor whites, blacks, native Americans, religious leaders, even some business leaders and some upper class people, struggling together, usually dealing with violence and murder have been dropped into the memory hole. ..."
"... Some days I just want to start screaming and not stop. ..."
The Report is fair, but supporting things like reduction of Super Delegates from the
mid-700s to mid-200s is wrong! Complaining about lack of democracy within the Party means
getting rid of them altogether! That's just one small example.
This endless compromise won't work. The odds of the Dems intentionally trading their
Big Money Corporate Supporters like Monsanto for the Working Class is somewhere between slim
and none, at least in my lifetime.
It is a good start. If the superdelegates were limited to currently serving Democratic
members of Congress, currently serving Democratic state governors, and current or former
Democratic Presidents and Vice-Presidents, it would be a huge improvement.
No lobbyists, no
big city mayors, and no state party bosses (unless they are also in one of the other
permitted categories).
I can't point to any particulars -- but I felt something disingenuous about Norman Solomon
-- something 'off'. An even meaner thought came to mind as I listened to his complaints and
details of the DNC machinations -- Norman Solomon would be perfect to work for unity in the
Green Party. He could make theater of herding the Green cats and accomplish nothing in
particular.
I suppose it doesn't help that I watched the Truman & Wallace episodes of Oliver
Stone's "Untold History of the United States" last night. But even before that I've been
haunted by the image of shadow on the steps of Sumitomo Bank in Hiroshima, Japan. Recalling
that image, the DNC's betrayals of the American people, and the short-sighted and
self-serving actions of those who rule us -- detailed in trivialities by Norman Solomon --
combined these give fuller meaning to the comment Bernie Sanders made about those who rule us
and their greatest concern about their place on the Titanic.
But this time the DNC has no dying Roosevelt to tack a Truman onto.
Aye! and you can't burn a thing down by continuing to send it money, or lend it undying
support, or by continuing to vote for their horrible lesser evil moderate republican
candidates.
I quit the damned party as loudly as i could in november 2016 emails to all and sundry,
chewing them all new ones, as it were.
i never heard a word back, of course and the AI that runs the damned thing keeps sending
me emails begging for cash; and surveys,lol which i send back to them with my chicken scratch
all in the margins with my outrage and my considered opinions. i assume all that goes unread,
as well. perhaps if i incorporated and obtained a po box in the caymans or pulau or
somewhere
Short-term (2018)–Norman Solomon is right. Only the Democratic party is in a
position to defeat the rightists. In the longer term, Howie Hawkins's recent argument for a
new, genuinely working-class party is more convincing to me. It's a lot more work,
though.
The DNC may be becoming irrelevant, but individual Democratic politicians can monetize
their current positions as they stock their personal lifeboats before the Bernie Sanders
mentioned Titanic goes down..
Instead of thinking short term and trying stay in the Dim party real left wing people need
to take the long term view and start a new party which will be the only way forward.
In the draft proposal, a special national party commission calls for keeping some 400
members of the Democratic National Committee as automatic delegates to the convention.
But under the new rules, those superdelegates would have to tie their votes on the
convention's first ballot to the outcome of primaries and caucuses. In 2016, all
superdelegates were allowed to support either candidate.
And yet
Cohen and other Democrats stressed, however, that commission members have been busy
circulating amendments ahead of the commission's weekend gathering in metro Washington.
So, which superdelegates will remain and with what actual
constraints, and how far does this move the system away from the status quo? In light of
Solomon's interview, I do wonder about actuarial sleigh-of-hand here. Is there a way of
affecting a likely purge of 2020 Sanders/"grass-roots" aligned superdelegates now? Is there a
way of suggesting that the superdelegates must vote as the states' primaries/caucuses (thus
defanging them) but then not actually imposing any real penalty of these "party elders" and
such? (Will 2020 be about "unfaithful superdelegates voting their conscience against the
party rules for the greater good"?)
In other words, will the practice of Clinton or the Clintonites locking the
superdelegate vote up early just be merely reshaped by this process, with a new sheen of faux
democracy, rather than inhibited?
The report itself is worth reading. I downloaded it a while back when Lambert and Yves
first posted it.
Solomon gets Moore wrong. Moore is not a neo-fascist or fascist. Moore represents some
very deep-seated religious ideas that are prevalent in the South and in the border states.
When Naked Capitalism and other sources report a bishop of an African-American church making
rather ambiguous comments about the rock with the Ten Commandments, we see an ancient
religious attitude emerging:
Yet as many Southerners point out, the South has a progressive / populist tradition. And
where are the Democrats? To me, this is part of the thorough corruption of the party and its
deterioration into a fan club. Too many Democrats are looking for fascists and Rooskies.
People are fleeing the party, and various Democrats living the "Don't know much about
history" aspect of U.S. culture are desperately trying to pin the fascist label on people.
And what is the solution being offered? Fly in Jon Ossoff? He didn't live in the
congressional district where he ran anyway, going counter to another deeply held U.S.
tradition, that you live in your district.
This isn't about "smart" or not smart thinking. This is about people being so thoroughly
corrupt in their thinking that they can only frame questions corruptly and give corrupt
answers. Maybe I'm being hard on Solomon, but looking for Benito Mussolini in Alabama is
wrong history, wrong metaphor, wrong diagnosis, wrong meme.
Next up? The question and and answer of "gentle" "entitlement" "reform." Corrupt from its
very inception.
This is why the comment above by Quanka is astute: You have to tell the Democrats (and
Republicans) that you won't owe your vote to them. And that you are going to burn down the
party if it doesn't serve the commonwealth.
See my post below when it comes out of moderation; Our country does have a
progressive/populist tradition, but everything possible is done to erase it from contemporary
memory. Now buried to memory is the history of the Non-Partisan League of North Dakota, the
Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota, and even the Reform Republicanism of the early 1900's
(Wisconsin's Robert M. La Follette for instance).
Watt4Bob: You refer here and below to the states along the inland sea, in a sense, the
rather eccentric Great Lakes States. I'd add:
–Chicago agitators and the Haymarket "Riot" (which the police caused)
–The United Auto Workers (Flint strike among others).
–Unions and Youngstown.
–Jane Addams and her own ideas about building community and building peace.
–The Milwaukee Socialists and the mayoralty there.
–The whole rambunctious structure (if it's a structure) of neighborhood associations in
Chicago, where many of those involved in the Harold Washington campaign got their start.
–Henry Gerber, the Society for Human Rights, and the first agitation for acceptance of
gay people, 1924, Chicago. Who even knew that midwesterners thought about politico-sexual
themes?
Yes, there is very talented group of people here who simply have to cut down on the
distractions and get back to work.
Socialism was actually a powerful movement -- with elected officials -- all throughout the
Upper Midwest during the so-called Progressive Era and the 1920s. Part of this was a result
of German settlements; any Midwestern town with a significant population of Germans
(especially from Hamburg) had a strong socialist impulse. Often this was manifest in the
elected officials, but even where the Socialists didn't win elections, they were able to
influence policy.
I have little patience for the so-called "Democrats" who, as you said above "don't know
much about history".
Thank you for bringing those points up. I'd say that buzzwords like fascist and Nazi are
bull horned (as opposed to Republican dog whistles) only as a means to distract from actual
policy issues (vis-a-vis Bernie), but I wonder if it is the case that even the most cynical
Clintonites believe their own BS at this point. These narratives have taken on a life of
their own.
I don't think Norman Solomon has bad intentions. If anything he is appealing to pragmatism
and reason too strongly in a political environment that is unreasonable. Bernie does a much
better job at blowing the emotional horn just enough to fit the political zeitgeist while
maintaining an engine of actual policy issues to move his political machine. Historically,
this has always been a successful strategy for socialists, Americans love fire-brands.
As far as Norman's claims of fascism I just don't see how tossing around those terms adds
any strategic value to the political struggle against the right. It just comes across as
preaching to the choir. We (the left) all know Moore is an ass, calling him fascist doesn't
make that any more evident. The trick is trying to understand why he is still viable
politically to a significant number of people despite being an ass. This was the mistake made
with Trump. To loosely paraphrase Adolph Reed, calling something fascist or Nazi and $2.25
will get me a ride on the subway but it does nothing to develop action to counter right wing
agendas. The normalization of the right (Republicans) does not occur because they have
"better ideas" (their current tax bill shows they aren't even trying to appeal to 99% of
society) it is because the current left option in the USA (Democrats) are offering
no ideas , or certain members are not allowed to express ideas because of corporate power and
corporate-supported political power. Assuming I am directing this at the DNC, then who is
actually supporting the so-called fascists?
As goes fascism in the United States, I don't really think anyone has a good
definition. Some see it as a politics that are largely aesthetic as opposed to based on
discourse or debate. Some see it as a marriage of corporate power with state power with
police and military supremacy. By those two measures I think the USA is already deeply
fascist. Though it seems by the current measures, the only thing that make someone
unequivocally fascist (or Nazi) is their being a bigot. This simplistic view of fascism is an
insult to history, and all the people that either died fighting fascism or were sacrificed at
its political altar.
I hate to tell you, but the New York City subway actually costs $2.75. Another
testament to the neoliberal con game, as practiced by the Metropolitan Transit
Authority.
What is ironic about this issue of superdelegates is that the so called "Democratic"
party has them and the party of the elite, the Republicans, do not (well, they do, but at a
much smaller % and they are required to vote for whoever won their respective state primary).
What is also ironic is that the reason the Dems came up with this system was to prevent
blowouts in the election. Carter and McGovern had gotten trounced. The feeling was that
"wiser" heads, i.e. experienced politicians could steer the party toward a more electable
candidate. And how did that work out for them? First time superdelegates voted in 1984,
Mondale lost 49 out of 50 states to Reagan.
I think a little history would be useful at this point to help us understand that we've
been this way before.
As concerns the Minnesota Farmer-Labor party which later merged with the Minnesota
Democratic Party to form the DFL, which has lately devolved, IMO, Wellstone and Franken not
withstanding, to much more closely resemble the party of Clintonism than the party of the
young Hubert Humphrey.
The Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party emerged from the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota
and the Union Labor
Party in Duluth, Minnesota, on a platform of farmer and labor union protection,
government ownership of certain industries, and social security laws.[2] One of the primary
obstacles of the party, besides constant vilification on the pages of local and state
newspapers, was the difficulty of uniting the party's divergent base and maintaining
political union between rural farmers and urban laborers who often had little in common
other than the populist perception that they were an oppressed class of hardworking
producers exploited by a small elite.
That 'divergent base' thing ring a bell anyone?
"The farmer approached problems as a proprietor or petty capitalist. Relief to him meant
a mitigation of conditions that interfered with successful farming. It involved such things
as tax reduction, easier access to credit, and a floor under farm prices. His individualist
psychology did not create scruples against government aid, but he welcomed it only as long
as it improved agricultural conditions. When official paternalism took the form of public
works or the dole, he openly opposed it because assistance on such terms forced him to
abandon his chosen profession, to submerge his individuality in the labor crew, and to
suffer the humiliation of the bread line. Besides, a public works program required
increased revenue, and since the state relied heavily on the property tax, the cost of the
program seemed likely to fall primarily on him.
At the opposite end of the seesaw sat the city worker, who sought relief from the
hunger, exposure, and disease that followed the wake of unemployment. Dependent on an
impersonal industrial machine, he had sloughed off the frontier tradition of individualism
for the more serviceable doctrine of cooperation through trade unionism. Unlike the
depressed farmer, the unemployed worker often had no property or economic stake to protect.
He was largely immune to taxation and had nothing to lose by backing proposals to dilute
property rights or redistribute the wealth. Driven by the primitive instinct to survive,
the worker demanded financial relief measures from the state."
The upper-midwest was fly-over land long before the Wright brothers, and it makes perfect
sense that the the Minnesota Farmer-Labor, and its predecessor, the Non-Partisan League of
North Dakota should sprout here, where the effects of elite neglect/abuse and the related
Great Depression had left We the People feeling mis/unrepresented by the two
national parties.
Of course it's good to remember that Hubert Humphrey, and the Minnesota Democratic party
did not embrace the populist revolt until it had been successful on its own, in electing
multiple Minnesota Governors, Senators, and Representatives in the 1920-30's, but embrace it
they did, and from 1944 until the 1970's, the DFL stood for something a bit more than the
local franchise of the National Party.
I strongly encourage you to follow the links in the quotes above, you'll find the history
of, among other things, the Bank of North Dakota, still the only state-owned bank in the
country, founded in 1919 to allow ND farmers to break the strangle-hold that banks in
Minneapolis and Chicago held over the farmers of the northern plains, and demand of working
people for free, universal health-care.
So far, the Democratic party, sadly, including the DFL, seems dedicated to putting down
the populist revolt by its neglected base, but with some hard work maybe this time around we
can figure out how to shorten the time between being resisted and being embraced.
The enemies are perennial, so are the solutions, but populism did have a season of
successes in the first half of the 20th century, and there is no reason to think it couldn't
happen again.
Remember too, the Non Partisan League of
Alberta Canada, and was one of the principal champions of universal healthcare that Canadians
now enjoy.
I think incumbent Governors and Congress members have earned the right to be a super
delegate by virtue of having won their own election. Their re-election will be affected by
the top of the ticket.
If Repubs had been blessed with super delegates, would Trump have still won?
July 2016, after the primaries were over, the WaPo, that bastion of Dem estab groupthink,
suggested the GOP adopt super delegates to avoid another surprise primary outcome. And we see
how well not having super delegates turned out for the GOP.
"There are probably a few missteps I am forgetting. Priebus's spinelessness may well
result in an irretrievably divided party, not to mention a humiliating loss in a critical,
entirely winnable election. Priebus's successor had better learn some lessons from 2016. He
or she might also consider using super delegates. It turns out party grownups are needed.
This cycle they've been AWOL."
The Democrat Party is run by a bunch of careerist hacks. This is why the GOP is
actually more "democratic" (and got hijacked by Trump): because it's not run by careerist
hacks who are more concerned about protecting their rice bowls than they are about being
responsive to the electorate. These hacks got paid a billion dollars to run the losing 2016
campaign -- they "won" the election by their self-serving metric, and now get to pay
themselves to "resist" the administration that they caused to be elected through their
self-serving careerism.
They're not going to let go of the self-licking ice cream cone that the Democrat Party has
become until their comprehensive election losses make it obvious to the Wall Street Wing that
they're wasting their money. That day may be coming soon; however, the current coup d'etat in
Washington may render a party of $27 donors irrelevant
This: "until their comprehensive election losses make it obvious to the Wall Street Wing
that they're wasting their money. "^^^
A similar sentiment was included in all of the flurry of angry emails i sent hither and
yon when I quit the demparty right after the election. ie: the current course of pleasing the
donors is unsustainable if they continue to chase off their own base. what are the donors
paying for?
one would presume a voice in gooberment .meaning won seats,lol.
without voters, why would any self respecting conglomerate continue to shell out dough to the
demparty?
of course, all the hippie-punching and other abuse of their base makes perfect sense if the
demparty is, in truth, a ringer party for the oligarchs a pressure relief valve, like on the
side of a water heater
if, in other words, they pretend to be the "opposition" and "for the people"(tm) so all
us'n's don't go rabid and Wobbly.
This seems a more and more likely explanation every week.
Perhaps old age and failing memory is to blame, but I can't remember not hearing the
nonsense arguments of 'vote for the lesser of two evils and reform from within', and the fear
mongering about the right or Republicans winning. (Republicans used to have sort-of 'liberal'
members, like Lowell Weicker, who would make current Democrats look like fascists -- well, a
lot of them are really ). It never worked and everything just gets worse.
And now with current 'RussiaGate' nonsense and the rest of it, and all the wars,
including the genocidal destruction of Libya, and some other things, I can never again vote
for a Democrat, and I won't vote for a Republican either. I voted for a Socialist once but
those votes were not counted because he could not satisfy the requirements to get on the
ballot -- petitions and registering in over 200 districts in the state. No one decent gets
through the machine.
I've given up on both parties, and their phony elections -- there are no solutions there.
What is needed is to see through the games and destroy the machine. Not easy but there is no
other way. Solomon is part of the machine, and the so-called 'progressives' are not
progressive. We are at the point where the only possible solutions are radical -- striking at
the root. The collapse of the empire and capitalism (corporatism -- just a larval stage of
fascism) is coming one way or another because it is not sustainable -- and that which cannot
be sustained will not be. It's like how slavery and feudalism reached a point where they
could no longer survive as dominant systems, nor returned to as such (similar to how the gold
standard, or non-tech agricultural society can not be universally restored). The writing
finger moves on.
We can either see how the global wind of history and culture is blowing and intelligently
move ahead with it, or we can destroy ourselves. The action must be on the streets, in the
workplace, from the masses, in collective consciousness, and world wide. Democrat shills like
Solomon and clowns like Trump should be ignored as symptomatic noise.
The DNC's Unity Commission's behavior confirms that the real goal of the leadership of
the DNC is exactly the opposite of the name of the commission. So what is their real goal? To
prevent the emergence of a progressive majority. In fact, this has been their goal for
decades; and in fairness, they have been very successful in realizing it to the detriment of
the majority of We the People.
Thank you for shining the light on this latest episode of their actions for their
financial benefactors.
Just got back from running errands. While I was at the post office, I had a
conversation with a longtime friend who is now in the Arizona House of Representatives. She
just got elected last year. Even though she is officially a Democratic Party member, she ran
as a progressive and that's how she rolls in the House. Get this, she spent this morning
addressing a conservative youth group and they loved it. Compared to what they usually hear
from politicians, they found her speech refreshing. It was all about balanced policy, and if
she posts a video, I will share it. Perhaps the DNC will pay attention.
it's really not possible for the leaders at the national level of the Democratic Party
to have a close working relationship with the base when it's afraid of the base.
And strangely, this is a big reason for why after three plus decades, I am no longer an
active member of the party. If you treat the majority of American nation as dangerous,
deplorable, or at best just dumb, please don't be shocked when people start either start
ignoring you, or just try to get rid of.
I approve of bringing up this suppressed history of our country's leftist,
progressive, socialist, even communist strands, not to mention the multi racial and class
political alliance, social organizations, and very frequently personal connections including
marriages. Don't forget that the power structure used propaganda, legislation, the law, and
armed mobs that often especially, but not only, in the South with rope necklaces, lead
poisoning, or if you were "lucky" multi-decade prison terms, or just merely having your
home/church/business burnt. This has never really stopped. Like when Jim Crow continues by
other means, so did the anti-organization. Chicago, Detroit, the South,etc. Sadly, the black
misleadership also help, albeit without the violence, after MLK and others, were no longer a
problem.
So centuries of poor whites, blacks, native Americans, religious leaders, even some
business leaders and some upper class people, struggling together, usually dealing with
violence and murder have been dropped into the memory hole.
Some days I just want to start screaming and not stop.
"... The Demopublican War Party: United to shovel more money into the maw of the oligarch class while stealing dollars, services, and servitude from the working class. Reverse Robin Hood/Reverse Socialism in full effect. ..."
"... Currently, we have $20T debt but the U.S. govt is borrowing at short term rates in order to get this amazingly low debt service. ..."
"... Does anyone else believe that this is the game the U.S. govt is playing? If it is then I wonder what the consequences are in keeping short term interest rates at artificially low levels in perpetuity. ..."
"... I'll start taking the "deficit hawks" seriously when they start talking Defense procurement reform. Until then, its just "balance the budget on the backs of widows and orphans". ..."
"... For those who are fortunate enough not to live in these Benighted States: have pity upon us, especially those of us who done our best to fight against this horror show. Democraps are either just as bad or worse bc of their duplicity. The GOP is, at least, totally loud and proud of who they are, and no more dog whistles for them. ..."
"... poll end of October 2017 shows widespread fed up with government policies and war https://www.charleskochinstitute.org/news/cki-real-clear-politics-foreign-policy-poll/ ..."
"... It is impressive how the Democrats do nothing, but nothing at all against the catastrophic tax 'reform', instead - me too! ..."
"... I am still waiting on my Reagan trickle down. Reagan and fellow thieves stole social security funds to make their deficit look lower. Those funds have not been paid back....approximately $3,000,000,000,000. Now the dead beats are planning on slipping out of town. ..."
"... We should go back to the 1960 tax structure , the one in place after eight years of Eisenhower, so it should get plenty of Republican support, yes? ..."
"... You are already seeing the consequences of artificially low short term rates. Negative yielding sovereign European debt - meaning you pay to lend to some European governments. ..."
"... People don't understand what money is our how it is and can be created. They imagine it is like gold and limited in supply so that government can spend only from a finite supply which they must obtain by taxes or loans that require interest to be paid. This fable is about as true as Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. Money has no value but as an instrument of exchange. It can be created by government to pay for benefit of a nation. Instead we allow private bankers to create money via loans (no printing press needed its just a line item on a spread sheet on their computers which shows up in the borrowers account) The privately owned central bank system limits or increases the supply by various means in a cyclical manner which leads to boom and bust cycles in the economy. The rich get richer after each bust cycle since they have cash to acquire assets available at depressed prices ..."
"... There's no reason why with the current state of technology so much money is needed to campaign for office. Almost as if the MSM is conditioning us to believe it necessary. There's no reason some one can't run a campaign using social media, YouTube and video conferencing instead of advertising (on same MSM) travelling long distances to campaign rallies and broadcast advertising. Microdonations and volunteering assistance can take care of the rest. If there is a will, there's a way to run an outsider as a candidate. The recent death of Anderson reminded me of his difficulties running, but he ran at a time when none of these technologies existed. ..."
"... Churning out extra dosh works when it is part of a larger plan to increase productivity by encouraging people outta pointless 'shit industry' service jobs into either outright production like manufacturing or primary industry, or infrastructure investment like railways, roads, bridges & renewable energy projects. Just pumping fresh new bills into health n education will be great for those who work in these sectors, but is unlikely to create much flow on to the rest of the population. ..."
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Thursday said the tax cuts included in the tax reform
package Republican lawmakers crafted in conjunction with the Trump Administration have to be
deficit neutral so as to conform with budget reconciliation rules.
The U.S. Republican tax cut plan that President Donald Trump wants passed by the end of the
year is unlikely to trigger a big deficit expansion because it will spur more investment and
job growth, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told Reuters in an interview on
Wednesday.
"Paul Ryan deficit hawk is also a growth advocate. Paul Ryan deficit hawk also knows that you
have to have a faster growing economy, more jobs, bigger take-home pay, that means higher tax
revenues ," Ryan told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday."
The tax overhaul legislation that Ryan shepherded through the House -- the Senate takes up
its version this week -- would add at least $1 trillion to budget deficits over the next
decade, even when accounting for economic growth, according to independent tax analysts.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday said House Republicans will aim to cut spending
on Medicare, Medicaid and welfare programs next year as a way to trim the federal deficit .
"We're going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle
the debt and the deficit ," Ryan said during an interview on Ross Kaminsky's talk radio
show.
And no. The Democrats aren't any better. Look at the trillions Obama handed to Wall Street.
That wasn't even a tax cut, it was a give-away. Obamacare is a sham, willfully constructed in
way that makes sure it can't survive. The Democrats only pretend to care for the people. As
soon as they again have a majority and fake intent for pro-social reforms the Repubs will again
whine about the deficit and the Democrats will be happy to fold.
The Demopublican War Party: United to shovel more money into the maw of the oligarch class
while stealing dollars, services, and servitude from the working class. Reverse Robin
Hood/Reverse Socialism in full effect.
Indeed. Two faces, same coin. The msm desperately wants to keep the relevant the age-old
rope-a-dope of the Demotards vs. Rethuglicans 2K17! Jesus, ever-loving-Christ, though, you
fuck with social security and Medicare and you bring on the wrath of AARP's membership.
Release the BLUE-HAIRS!
Can't wait, but that is another struggle for another day. In the mean time, I notice that
even the mention of Paul Ryan elicits a shudder. Such a slime.
It [was] a remarkably low $240B as of 2016. Does this mean that the Fed can just keep short term
rates low or even reduce them, vis-a-vis the Japanese model, and allow U.S. govt debt to grow
to arbitrarily high levels?
Currently, we have $20T debt but the U.S. govt is borrowing at short term rates in order
to get this amazingly low debt service. Now let's suppose over the next 50yrs our national
debt grows to a ridiculous $100T, if the fed puts short term rates at 0.1% then our annual
debt service will still be at the same levels or less.
Does anyone else believe that this is the game the U.S. govt is playing?
If it is then I wonder what the consequences are in keeping short term interest rates at
artificially low levels in perpetuity.
Here's to the evolving True Political
Awakening .
Move beyond the two-faced monkeys; the 2-faced division-makers; the 2 lying parties. Move
beyond them into yourself, your own mind and thoughts, owned by no-one; a critical and
independent thinker who seeks the truth.
I'll start taking the "deficit hawks" seriously when they start talking Defense procurement
reform. Until then, its just "balance the budget on the backs of widows and orphans".
There was a large mound formed recently over the grave of former Republican senator from WI
Bob Lafollette Sr., this protrusion was caused by his rapidly spinning corpse.
For those who are fortunate enough not to live in these Benighted States: have pity upon us,
especially those of us who done our best to fight against this horror show.
Democraps are either just as bad or worse bc of their duplicity. The GOP is, at least,
totally loud and proud of who they are, and no more dog whistles for them.
The Democrats, all while the GOP Tax SCAM was being shoved down our gobs, wasted all of
their time and "emotions" on a witch hunt to toss Al Franken outta the Senate. Franken is not
my favorite Senator by a long shot, but this is yet another chapter of the Democraps ACORNing
their own purportedly in the name of "taking the moral high ground." My Aunt Fanny.
Complicit, greedy, conniving, venal, deplorable bastards the whole d*mn lot with the
possible exception of Bernie Sanders (no great shakes but the pick of the litter).
Ugh. Don't get me started on all of those dual Israeli/USA citizens in riddling our
Congress. They are ALL in favor of this Jerusalem travesty with Schmuck Schumer leading the
charge. That's not about Trump... or not much about Trump. I place blame on worthless scum
like Schumer.
This is why people voted for Trump: they could see the worthlessness of both parties. Of
course, voting for Trump was a complete Mug's game, as for sure, the way things have turned
out was a foregone conclusion.
I am still waiting on my Reagan trickle down. Reagan and fellow thieves stole social security
funds to make their deficit look lower. Those funds have not been paid back....approximately
$3,000,000,000,000. Now the dead beats are planning on slipping out of town.
We should go back to the 1960 tax structure , the one in
place after eight years of Eisenhower, so it should get plenty of Republican support, yes?
top rate on regular income: 91%
top rate on capital gains: 25%
top rate on corporate tax: 52%
The top income tax tier back then was $400,000 - adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars,
that's about $10 million. So anyone with an income of $10 million would still get a take-home
pay of $1 million a year. Seems like the right thing to do, doesn't it?
Good one b, the demodogs will stoop their feet point figures so they can raise lots of
$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to pay their friends the consultants and lose more seats. It's what they do
best.
I've almost given up. It's not just amerika; lookit Australia this week where the citizens
are being distracted by a same sex marriage beatup which should have been settled in 5
minutes years ago - meanwhile the last vestiges of Australia's ability to survive as a
sovereign state are being flogged off to anyone with a fat wedge in their kick.
Aotearoa isn't much better the 'new' government which was elected primarily because the
citizens were appalled to discover that for about the first time in 150 years, compatriots -
compatriots with jobs in 'the gig economy' were homeless in huge numbers, has just announced
that the previous government's housing policy was a total mess, and that fixing the problem
will be difficult -really Jacinda we never woulda guessed, I guess what yer really trying to
say is nothing is gonna change.
The englanders are in even worse trouble with their brexit mess, the political elite is
choosing to ignore a recent Northern Ireland poll which revealed that most people in the
north would rather hook up with Ireland than stay with an non EU UK, so the pols there are
arguing over semantics about the difference between "regulatory alignment" and "regulatory
equivalence" as it applies to Ulster while the pound is sinking so fast it is about to
establish equivalence with the euro by xmas.
No one is paying attention to what is really happening as in between giving us the lowdown on
which 2nd rate mummer was rude to a 3rd rate thespian and advertorials about the best
chronometer (who even wears a watch in 2017?) for that man in your life, the media simply
doesn't have the time much less the will to tell the citizens how quickly their lives are
about to go down the gurgler.
The only salient issue is - will the shit hit the fan before the laws are in place to
silence, lock up and butcher dissenters, or will there be a brief period where we hit the
barricades and have a moment of glory before humanity gets to enjoy serfdom Mk2?
b, have you really taken a look at federal government spending? What is the ratio of spending
by the German government between social programs and discretionary spending for defense,
agriculture subsidies, infrastructure, etc?
The majority of federal government spending is non-discretionary social entitlement
spending with the biggest being health care spending. Just Medicare & Medicaid is a third
of all federal government spending. Then you have to add health care spending for federal
government employees and members of Congress, Tricare and VA. With health care costs growing
at 9% each and every year as it has for the past 30 years, medical related expenditures as a
share of total federal government spending will continue to rise.
Deficits will continue to grow as these entitlement programs grow automatically as
eligibility grows. Even if all defense expenditures were zeroed out, the federal government
would still run a deficit.
You are already seeing the consequences of artificially low short term rates. Negative
yielding sovereign European debt - meaning you pay to lend to some European governments.
European junk bonds with 10 year duration yielding less than 10 yr US Treasury bond. Loss
making, junk rated European companies raising even more intermediate term debt at 0.001%.
Corporations borrowing to buy back stock. The Swiss National Bank creating money out of thin
air and owning $85 billion of US equity in major US companies like Apple & Google. The
Bank of Japan owning a third of all Japanese government bonds outstanding and the Top 10
holder of the companies in the Nikkei 100 index. Financial speculation off the charts across
the globe.
People don't understand what money is our how it is and can be created. They imagine it is
like gold and limited in supply so that government can spend only from a finite supply which
they must obtain by taxes or loans that require interest to be paid. This fable is about as true as Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. Money has no value but as an instrument of exchange. It can be created by government to
pay for benefit of a nation. Instead we allow private bankers to create money via loans (no
printing press needed its just a line item on a spread sheet on their computers which shows
up in the borrowers account) The privately owned central bank system limits or increases the
supply by various means in a cyclical manner which leads to boom and bust cycles in the
economy. The rich get richer after each bust cycle since they have cash to acquire assets
available at depressed prices
As for the debt owed by the US the privately owned Fed will ensure the government can
borrow whatever is needed for interest payments since they can create an infinite supply of
money by acquiring junk and calling them assets. Out pal OPEC (Saudis) keeps Petro dollar
(USD ) in demand and exchange rates are set within agreed upon limits by the worlds central
banks under the BIS, with input from various shadowy groups like Bilderbergers, trilaterals
and CFR. And if all else fails, an attack on the USD will result in the military option being
used
To remain in power corrupt governments rely on a citizen base that is uneducated or
misinformed, busy surviving to pay taxes and daily expenses, is dependent on government and
in debt and is well entertained. They must also be divided by religion, race, social, gender,
age and party (secular religion) and given a common external enemy to fear.
The system is working to perfection. Neoliberal economics is the icing on the cake and is
the gift that keeps on giving to the chosen ones.
Check out the pdf on money creation by the Bank of England
There's no reason why with the current state of technology so much money is needed to
campaign for office. Almost as if the MSM is conditioning us to believe it necessary. There's no reason some one can't run a campaign using social media, YouTube and video
conferencing instead of advertising (on same MSM) travelling long distances to campaign
rallies and broadcast advertising. Microdonations and volunteering assistance can take care
of the rest. If there is a will, there's a way to run an outsider as a candidate. The recent death of
Anderson reminded me of his difficulties running, but he ran at a time when none of these
technologies existed.
I think people are just too lazy to make the effort. Most elections people are just too
lazy to even vote.
While I agree that money can just be created there is a limit to that particularly when
low constraints on consumable supplies run parallel to established shortfalls on finite goods
such as houses, land, food etc. Inflation runs rampant and we weak humans distract ourselves
with cheap baubles instead of creating useful shit and putting a roof over the heads of our
children - "waddaya want for xmas kid, a freehold shithole or a new VR headset?" "I'll take
the vive Dad".
Churning out extra dosh works when it is part of a larger plan to increase productivity by
encouraging people outta pointless 'shit industry' service jobs into either outright
production like manufacturing or primary industry, or infrastructure investment like
railways, roads, bridges & renewable energy projects. Just pumping fresh new bills into
health n education will be great for those who work in these sectors, but is unlikely to
create much flow on to the rest of the population.
The Problem that The Economist wants to talk about? Public Outrage a.k.a. Populism.
The other less important problem that a magazine called The Economist might want to address, but which it doesn't want to talk
about: the economy is bust, and why.
Typical scenario for the last 18 years:
January - Private Equity Investor (PEI) has 20 million. He uses it a security to borrow 200 mio from Bank1 to buy
a company Widgets. Widgets is a solid manufacturing business with assets of land, factories, patents, a brand, good will and
no debts.
March - Widgets borrows 300 million from Bank2 – no problems, its a solid business – but here comes the bit
where it all goes criminal, but not illegal... Widgets pays out 300 million to PEI its owner as a dividend, who repays
200 to Bank1. PEI now has 100 million cash, and has done nothing for it. Widgets however has to pay 20 million in interest
per year. PEI now has 100 million.
July - Widgets also sells its assets: land, patents and so on and leases them back for 30 million a year. The sales
bring 200 million which Widgets also pays out to PEI its owner. PEI now has 300 million.
August - Widgets Pension Fund is 'restructured' bringing a liquid 150 million onto the balance sheet. Widgets has
liabilities to its pensioners with little to back them. 150 million is paid out to PEI as a special dividend., PEI now has
450 million.
December - PEI sells the business to a pension fund, for 100 million, less than he paid as it has a lot of debt,
but it is a good business. PEI now has 550
Recap: Widgets now has 300 million debt causing 20 million a year in interest, plus 30 million in leasing payments.
It has pension liabilities and the pension fund is almost worthless. PEI had 20 million at the start of the year and now has
550 million. But the business is still viable, as Widgets can meet its payments.
5 years later - Sadly hard times come. Turnover drops, prices drop, costs are cut, people lose their jobs, including
engineers, managers, the shop floor and the sales team who did real work for years, created real value, invented the patents,
built the brand. It doesn't help. The company has no stores of fat - it goes bust. The banks loans are sour. People lose their
jobs, the pensioners cannot be paid.
This happens 100 times so the banks are bust too, but get bailed out by the taxpayer (that's those guys who lost their jobs
and pensions at Widgets)
PEI lives happily in The Bahamas with the 550 million which he 'earned' in a fabulous year of 'value creation' made possible
by the power of free and light touch regulated markets.
Sadly, due to the complexity of all this the bright chaps at The Economist can not quite see why this is a slightly problematic
way to run an economy... Honi suit qui mal y pense.
And I feel like the Democrats get so distracted. They have been talking about sexual
harassment and stuff instead of the TAX BILL. It is so damn easy to get them to take their
eyes off the ball! and get played again and again. . . and TRAGIC given the consequences . .
.
It's the perfect "distraction". Allows them to engage in virtue-signaling and "fighting
for average Americans". It's all phony, they always "lose" in the end getting exactly what
they wanted in the first place, while not actually having to cast a vote for it.
It's all related, less safety net and more inequality means more desperation to take a
job, *ANY* job, means more women putting up with sexual harassment (and workplace bullying
and horrible and illegal workplace conditions etc.) as the price of a paycheck.
Horrible Toomey's re-election was a parallel to the Clinton/Trump fiasco. The Democrats
put up a corporate shill, Katie McGinty that no-one trusted.
"Former lobbyist Katie McGinty has spent three decades in politics getting rich off the
companies she regulated and subsidized. Now this master of the revolving-door wants
Pennsylvania voters to give her another perch in government: U.S. Senator." Washington
Examiner.
She was a Clintonite through and through, that everyone, much like $Hillary, could see
through.
To paraphrase the Beatles, you say you want a revolution but you don't really mean it. You
want more of the same because it makes you feel good to keep voting for your Senator or your
Congressman. The others are corrupt and evil, but your guys are good. If only the others were
like your guys. News flash: they are all your guys.
America is doomed. And so much the better. Despite all America has done for the world, it
has also been a brutal despot. America created consumerism, super-sizing and the Kardashians.
These are all unforgivable sins. America is probably the most persistently violent country in
the world both domestically and internationally. No other country has invaded or occupied so
much of the world, unless you count the known world in which case Macedonia wins.
This tax plan is what Americans want because they are pretty ignorant and stupid. They are
incapable of understanding basic math so they can't work out the details. They believe that
any tax cut is inherently good and all government is bad so that is also all that matters.
They honestly think they or their kids will one day be rich so they don't want to hurt rich
people. They also believe that millionaires got their money honestly and through hard work
because that is what they learned from their parents.
Just send a blank check to Goldman Sachs. Keep a bit to buy a gun which you can use to
either shoot up a McDonalds or blow your own brains out.
And some people still ask me why I left and don't want to come back. LOL
Macedonia of today is not the same are that conquered the world. They stole the name from
Greeks.
That being said, the US is ripe for a change. Every policy the current rulers enact seems
to make things better. However, I suspect a revolution would kill majority of the population
since it would disrupt the all important supply chains, so it does not seem viable.
However, a military takeover could be viable. If they are willing to wipe out the most
predatory portions of the ruling class, they could fix the healthcare system, install a
high-employment policy and take out the banks and even the military contractors. Which could
make them very popular.
Yeah, right. Have you seen our generals? They're just more of the same leeches we
have everywhere else in the 0.01%. Have you seen any of the other military dictatorships
around the world, like actually existing ones? They're all brilliantly corrupt and total
failures when it comes to running any sort of economy. Not to mention the total loss of civil
rights. Americans have this idiotic love of their military thanks to decades of effective
propaganda and think the rule of pampered generals would somehow be better than the right to
vote. Bleh.
This is a military dictatorship. The fourth and sixth amendments have been de facto
repealed. Trump cared about one thing and one thing only, namely to repeal the estate tax. He
is the ultimate con man and this was his biggest con. It is truly amazing how he accomplished
this. He has saved his family a billion $$$. He will now turn over governing to the generals
and Goldman Sachs. He may even retire. Truly amazing. One has to admire the sheer perversity
of it all. When will the American electorate get tired of being conned? The fact is they have
nothing but admiration for Trump. We live in a criminal culture, winner take all. America
loves its winners.
There is an old 2003 David Brooks column in which he mentions that
"The Democrats couldn't even persuade people to oppose the repeal of the estate tax, which
is explicitly for the mega-upper class. Al Gore, who ran a populist campaign, couldn't even
win the votes of white males who didn't go to college, whose incomes have stagnated over the
past decades and who were the explicit targets of his campaign. Why don't more Americans want
to distribute more wealth down to people like themselves?"
Then Brooks goes on to explain
"The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from a Time magazine survey
that asked people if they are in the top 1 percent of earners. Nineteen percent of Americans
say they are in the richest 1 percent and a further 20 percent expect to be someday. So right
away you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that
favored the top 1 percent, he was taking a direct shot at them."
The Republicans have conditioned people to believe government services (except for
defense/military) are run poorly and need to be "run like a business" for a profit.
The problem is that not all government services CAN be profitable (homeless care, mental
health care for the poor, EPA enforcement, OSHA enforcement). And when attempts are made to
privatize some government operations such as incarceration, the result is that the private
company tries to maximize profits by pushing for laws to incarcerate ever more people.
The history of the USA as viewed by outsiders, maybe 50 years hence, will be that of a
resource consuming nation that spent a vast fortune on military hardware and military
adventures when it had little to fear due to geography, a nation that touted an independent
press that was anything but, a nation that created a large media/entertainment industry which
helped to keep citizens in line, a nation that fostered an overly large (by 2 or 3 times per
Paul Whooley) parasitical financial industry that did not perform its prime capital
allocation task competently as it veered from bubble to bubble and a nation that managed to
spend great sums on medical care without covering all citizens.
But the USA does have a lot of guns and a lot of frustrated people.
Maybe Kevlar vests will be the fashion of the future?
The provision to do away with the estate tax, if not immediately, in the current versions
(House and Senate) is great news for the 1%, and bad for the rest of us.
And if more people are not against that (thanks for quoting the NYTImes article), it's the
failure of the rest of the media for not focusing more on it, but wasting time and energy on
fashion, sports, entertainment, etc.
he provision to do away with the estate tax . . . is great news for the 1%
I think it's even a little more extreme than that. The data is a few years old, but it is
only the top 0.6% who are affected by estate taxes in the United States. See the data at
these web sites:
The military adventures were largely in support of what Smedley Butler so accurately
called the Great "Racket" of Monroe Doctrine colonialism and rapacious extractive
"capitalism" aka "looting."
It took longer and costed the rich a bit more to buy up all the bits of government, but
the way they've done will likely be more compendious and lasting. Barring some "intervening
event(s)".
While Republicans show their true colors, im out there seeing a resurgence of civil
society. And im starting to reach Hard core Tea Party types. Jobs, Manufacturing, Actual
Policy.
Renegade ( ex-? ) Republican David Stockman NAILS IT TO THE WALL:
To be sure, some element of political calculus always lies behind legislation. For instance, the Dems didn't pass the Wagner
Act in 1935, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 or the Affordable Care Act of 2010 as exercises in pure civic virtue -- these measures
targeted huge constituencies with tens of millions of votes at stake.
Still, threadbare theories and untoward effects are just that; they can't be redeemed by the risible claim that this legislative
Rube Goldberg contraption being jammed through sight unseen ( in ACA redux fashion ) is for the benefit of the rank
and file Republican voters, and most especially not for the dispossessed independents and Dems of Flyover America who voted
for Trump out of protest against the failing status quo.
To the contrary. The GOP tax bill is of the lobbies, by the PACs and for the money. Period.
There is no higher purpose or even nugget of conservative economic principle to it. The battle cry of "pro-growth tax cuts"
is just a warmed over 35-year-old mantra from the Reagan era that does not remotely reflect the actual content of the bill
or disguise what it really is: namely, a cowardly infliction of more than $2 trillion of debt on future American taxpayers
in order to fund tax relief today for the GOP's K Street and Wall Street paymasters.
On a net basis, in fact, fully 97% of the $1.412 trillion revenue loss in the Senate Committee bill over the next decade
is attributable to the $1.369 trillion cost of cutting the corporate rate from 35% to 20% (and repeal of the related AMT).
All the rest of the massive bill is just a monumental zero-sum pot stirring operation.
Stockman, who knows federal budgeting better than most of us know the contents of our own homes, goes on to shred the tax bill
item by item, leaving a smoking, scorched-earth moonscape in his deadly rhetorical wake. And he's not done yet.
But Lordy, how he scourges the last hurrah of the know-nothing R party, just before it gets pounded senseless at the polls
next year. Bubble III is the last hope of the retrograde Republican Congressional rabble. But it's a 50/50 proposition at best
that our beloved bubble lasts through next November. :-(
thanks Jim, yes, this looks like it will knock the legs out of the "main st" economy, but over at versailles on the potomac
they'll be listening to/playing the fiddle and watching the country burn while guzzling 300 dollar scotch and and admiring their
campfire.
Right next to "Versailles on the Potomac" is the site of the former Bonus Army camp, Anacostia Flats. The burning of the Bonus
Army camp at Anacostia Flats could be seen, as a red glow, from the White House. Historians charitable to Herbert Hoover suggest
that Gen. Douglass MacArthur 'conned' Hoover into letting the Army 'disperse' the Bonus Army. The resulting spectacle can be said
to be one of the prime reasons why the American public rejected Hoover when he ran for re-election against Franklin Roosevelt.
I don't know if Hoover played the fiddle, but MacArthur was known to be able to play politicians like one.
The lesson here, if there is one, is that the present occupant of the White House had better be very circumspect about taking
advice from Generals.
"anacostia flats" bonus army raided by Wall Street General MacArthur which is reason in previous iteration of Wall Street power
grab by "American Liberty League", ("The Plot To Seize the White House"-Jules Archer) Marine General Smedley Butler felt forced
play whistle-blower, providing FDR leverage he needed to prosecute banksters.
Big River Bandido December 2, 2017 at 3:26 pm
The gist of the commenter's statement was true - Democrats are totally complicit in the end result of Republican economic and
foreign policy. Until now, Republicans could only deliver on their promises when Democrats helped them out. The Democrats' enabling
strategy eventually alienated their own core supporters. With this tax cut, the Republicans have shown, for the first time, the
ability to enact and sign their own legislation.
The Democrats basically accommodated the Republicans long enough to ensure their own irrelevance. They will not rise again
until their "mixed stances" and those who encourage them are purged.
"... By riding hatred of President Trump and spurring on the Russia-gate hysteria, Democrats hope to win in 2018 without a serious examination of why they lost support of key working- and middle-class voting blocs, says Andrew Spannaus. ..."
By riding hatred of President Trump and spurring on the Russia-gate hysteria, Democrats
hope to win in 2018 without a serious examination of why they lost support of key working- and
middle-class voting blocs, says Andrew Spannaus.
Victories in state-level elections in New Jersey and Virginia on Nov. 7 have buoyed
Democratic hopes for an anti-Trump wave among the population that will lead to a big victory in
next year's mid-term elections, and permanently damage President Trump heading towards 2020.
Yet there is significant risk in hoping that anti-Trump sentiment will be enough for the
Democrats to return to power.
The danger is that the considerable differences between the centrist faction, which for the
most part controls the party structure, and the progressive wing of the party, will be swept
under the rug in the name of unity, perpetuating the substantive problems that have alienated
important sections of the population from the party.
The power of opposition to Trump has been on display from the very beginning: It was more
than a bit ironic to see feminist protestors – properly exercising their right to protest
against a President who has made many derogatory comments towards women – hold up signs
defending the CIA during the Women's March on Inauguration Day Yes, in their zeal to oppose
Trump, both the center and the far left have been willing to embrace the battle led by a
limited but powerful grouping in the intelligence community to stop the President from his
stated intention of improving relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
This has become such a cause célèbre that people who would normally
look suspiciously at the motives of the CIA or other similar agencies seem unable to recognize
that the basic "crime" Trump is accused of is favoring diplomacy with a country most of the
institutions consider an enemy. With the media's help, it has apparently been decided that this
President does not have the right to influence policy, if the majority of the establishment
disagrees with his positions.
The major issue in the Democratic Party is obviously the economy. Sen. Bernie Sanders,
officially an Independent from Vermont, won 43 percent of the vote in the 2016 Democratic
primaries because he pushed a "populist," anti-system message that was heavily critical of
globalization, Wall Street and trade deals that have weakened the American middle class.
By riding hatred of President Trump and spurring on the Russia-gate hysteria, Democrats
hope to win in 2018 without a serious examination of why they lost support of key working- and
middle-class voting blocs, says Andrew Spannaus.
Victories in state-level elections in New Jersey and Virginia on Nov. 7 have buoyed
Democratic hopes for an anti-Trump wave among the population that will lead to a big victory in
next year's mid-term elections, and permanently damage President Trump heading towards 2020.
Yet there is significant risk in hoping that anti-Trump sentiment will be enough for the
Democrats to return to power.
The danger is that the considerable differences between the centrist faction, which for the
most part controls the party structure, and the progressive wing of the party, will be swept
under the rug in the name of unity, perpetuating the substantive problems that have alienated
important sections of the population from the party.
The power of opposition to Trump has been on display from the very beginning: It was more
than a bit ironic to see feminist protestors – properly exercising their right to protest
against a President who has made many derogatory comments towards women – hold up signs
defending the CIA during the Women's March on Inauguration Day Yes, in their zeal to oppose
Trump, both the center and the far left have been willing to embrace the battle led by a
limited but powerful grouping in the intelligence community to stop the President from his
stated intention of improving relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
This has become such a cause célèbre that people who would normally
look suspiciously at the motives of the CIA or other similar agencies seem unable to recognize
that the basic "crime" Trump is accused of is favoring diplomacy with a country most of the
institutions consider an enemy. With the media's help, it has apparently been decided that this
President does not have the right to influence policy, if the majority of the establishment
disagrees with his positions.
The major issue in the Democratic Party is obviously the economy. Sen. Bernie Sanders,
officially an Independent from Vermont, won 43 percent of the vote in the 2016 Democratic
primaries because he pushed a "populist," anti-system message that was heavily critical of
globalization, Wall Street and trade deals that have weakened the American middle class.
"... This is why the denial is happening. This is why the Russia hysteria is continuing. By using wedge politics and fear to separate the cultists from other perspectives, using approval and belonging to keep them addicted, shaming tactics to keep them from straying, and controlling the discourse on their end of the political spectrum, Democrats have created America's largest cult. ..."
"... That was a very interesting article and on the mark. But, Pence will be a good placeholder and keep the population largely complacent, But in 2020, the democratic cult MUST WIN. If the Republicans are smart, they will lay low and concede the Presidency by fielding the most ridiculous candidate possible (hard to imagine who that could be after Trump). ..."
What interests me is who the Democrats have in mind as a replacement if they manage to bring
down Trump. He still has quite a few supporters – amazing, I know – who would be
borderline homicidal toward anyone the Democrats wanted to shove into the ring, and it
absolutely could not be Hillary.
f Trump dies, resigns or is removed from office in the next four years, Vice President
Mike Pence would replace him in the White House.
I doubt Sanders would be chosen in 2020 – too many reminders of DNC corruption that
denied him the nomination. It will probably be someone new and likely a woman.
Yes, but the Democrats' efforts to bring down the government are surely not directed at
replacing Trump with Pence. Obviously, they want a Republican presidency to be replaced with
a Democratic one, or they would not be playing the victim so zealously. And Sanders is a
milksop who plumped for party unity even after learning how soundly he had been rogered by
Hillary and her coterie. There is not an American politician alive today who embodies the
American values idealists like to believe prevail in America. Not one.
This is why the denial is happening. This is why the Russia hysteria is continuing. By
using wedge politics and fear to separate the cultists from other perspectives, using
approval and belonging to keep them addicted, shaming tactics to keep them from straying, and
controlling the discourse on their end of the political spectrum, Democrats have created
America's largest cult.
That was a very interesting article and on the mark. But, Pence will be a good
placeholder and keep the population largely complacent, But in 2020, the democratic cult MUST
WIN. If the Republicans are smart, they will lay low and concede the Presidency by fielding
the most ridiculous candidate possible (hard to imagine who that could be after Trump).
I was thinking that a black woman candidate would be essentially doubling down after the
Clinton debacle. My bet, if I were a betting man, would be her or someone like her as the VP
pick with a simulacrum of Joe Biden or Al Gore as the presidential nominee. The Republicans
would run a weenie like Paul "Ly'ng Ryan" Ryan to get the lose over with as little pain as
possible.
FYI, the Ly'ng Ryan" nickname apparently originated from his claims of being a sub-3 hour
marathon runner. Marathon runners took strong exception at his casual and completely
unsubstantiated claims about impressive marathon times thus his name among the runner
community.
There was a post a while back indicating that anyone who believed Hillary Clinton had serious
health problems during her Presidential run was a dupe and fool of the non-MSM media
(apparently referring to yours truly among others). Well, lookie here:
An excerpt from WaPo details how horrified Donna Brazile and others in the DNC were
about Hillary's non-stop coughing fits and ill health. In fact, Hillary was so sick that
Brazile and others discussed replacing her with Biden as the Dem nominee after she
fainted.
Hillary's camp is furious with Brazile and lashed out at her over the grim picture she
painted of Hillary's health and campaign.
The Clinton Cult has apparently concluded that Brazile was controlled by the Kremlin per
this open letter signed by 100 of Cintons senior aides:
"We were shocked to learn the news that Donna Brazile actively considered overturning
the will of the Democratic voters by attempting to replace Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine as
the Democratic Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees. "It is particularly troubling and
puzzling that she would seemingly buy into false Russian-fueled propaganda, spread by both
the Russians and our opponent, about our candidate's health."
"... Their argument, if you can call it that, rests on the claim that a document which unquestionably shows inappropriate bias and collusion does not show inappropriate bias and collusion because it contains a paragraph which says the document should not be construed as containing inappropriate bias and collusion. This is really boring and stupid, but since the Clinton cult is circulating this nonsense all over social media I figure I should probably write something for people to refute it with. ..."
Dem Pundits Spent Yesterday Lying About DNC Primary Rigging Document
The establishment liberal spin machine has been working overtime the last 24 hours to make
it seem as though former acting DNC chair Donna Brazile had not admitted what she'd admitted in
an excerpt from her book published by Politico on Thursday.
Their argument, if you can call it that, rests on the claim that a document which unquestionably
shows inappropriate bias and collusion does not show inappropriate bias and collusion because
it contains a paragraph which says the document should not be construed as containing inappropriate
bias and collusion. This is really boring and stupid, but since the Clinton cult is circulating
this nonsense all over social media I figure I should probably write something for people to refute
it with.
"... The agreement -- signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to [DNC lawyer] Marc Elias -- specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings. ..."
"... A second difference in substance: Let's remember that for Clinton, the JFA enabled her campaign to circumvent contribution limits for large donors (Brazile: "Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400"). The Sanders campaign , by contrast, had no issue with maxed out donors: "During fall '15, 99.8% of Bernie donors could give again" (because it's awful hard to max out $27 at a time). ..."
"... That's pretty amazing, isn't it? Personnel is policy, as they say, and the Clinton campaign has made sure that the DNC's Communications Director and new hires in the senior staff in the communications, technology, and research departments will be acceptable to it. The Clinton campaign will also review all mass email and communcations (which explains why Brazile, as interim DNC chair, couldn't send out a press release without checking with Brooklyn. Since the notorious debate schedule was already controlled by Wasserman Schultz, there was no point messing about with it, I assume.) There is one place in this passage where the general election is mentioned, so let's look at it: ..."
"... Second, the DNC itself does not ..."
"... But I'd like to know how far up the editorial totem poles the fix went and how it was achieved. ..."
"... It has been a while since I handled a criminal defense case, but I am not sure that the agreement is not in fact, criminal. When the Sanders for President campaign signed an agreement and paid money in consideration of getting access to the voter file and when the state parties agreed to merge their fundraising efforts with the DNC and HFA, the commercial fraud laws applied to that relationship. Since the fundraising was done using interstate phone calls, letters, and emails and the voter file access was provided by electronic transmissions from servers in DC to end users in Burlington, Vermont that includes 18 USC 1341, 1343 and 1346 (mail, wire and honest services fraud). These laws do not just ban outright lying, but also the concealment of material facts that one has a duty to disclose. ..."
"... The DNC got into the position of selling themselves to the Clintons as they were $20 million in debt, right? I have read that the major reason for these debts was that the DNC had not shrunk itself since the last campaign and was paying out a ton of money for consultants doing Christ knows what. In fact, Obama also used the DNC to support a stack of his consultants as well as grifters gotta grift, right? ..."
"... My question is whether this was a deliberate ploy on Obama and the Clinton factions to put the DNC into such a vulnerable position before 2016 came along that when the time came, they had to take up an offer that they could not refuse. I have not heard if Obama has made any comments on this fiasco that took place on his watch and it seems nobody wants to call him out on it. In the Brazile case, it is not a matter of following the money but following the lack of money. ..."
"... "Both sides in the Democratic Party's current faction fight, as I see it, are in denial about the true nature and scope of the problem "Both responses are essentially utopian: They rest on the premise that the Democratic Party is still a functioning political organization and that the United States is still a functioning democracy." ..."
Long-time Democratic[1] operative Donna Brazile, interim chair of the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) after Debbie Wasserman Schultz was defenestrated[2], has, like two otherparticipants in
the 2016 Presidential election and at least one set of
observers , written a book, Hacked , and published a long excerpt from it four
days ago, in Politico
. Here is the key passage, in which Brazile paraphrases and quotes a conversation with Gary
Gensler, former of Goldman Sachs and the CFTC, and then the chief financial officer of the
Clinton campaign:
[Gensler] described the party as fully under the control of Hillary's campaign
, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life
support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using
the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a
maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for
contributions to state parties and a party's national committee.
Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write
an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund -- that figure
represented $10,000 to each of the 32 states' parties who were part of the Victory Fund
agreement -- $320,000 -- and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states
first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states
usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the
DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.
Yes, you read that right. Although the Hillary Victory Fund was billed as aiding the states,
in fact the states were simply pass-throughs, and the money went to the Clinton campaign. (This
is not news;
Politico covered the Victory Fun in 2016 : "The Democratic front-runner says she's raising
big checks to help state committees, but they've gotten to keep only 1 percent of the $60
million raised.")
"Wait," I said. "That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the
state party races. You're telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she
got the nomination?"
Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.
"That was the deal that Robby struck with Debbie," he explained, referring to campaign
manager Robby Mook. "It was to sustain the DNC. We sent the party nearly $20 million from
September until the convention, and more to prepare for the election."
After some research, Brazile finds a document ("the agreement") that spells out what "fully
under the control of Hillary's campaign" meant operationally:
The agreement -- signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a
copy to [DNC lawyer] Marc Elias -- specified that in exchange for raising money and investing
in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised.
Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and
it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult
with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
I had been wondering why it was that I couldn't write a press release without passing it
by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.
(Importantly, Gensler has not disputed this account, of which, assuming he's not vacationing
Antarctica, he must have been aware of, given the media uproar. We can therefore assume its
accurate). Note two aspects of this passage, which I'm quoting at such length to ensure we know
what Brazile actually charged. I've helpfully underlined them: (1) Brazile leads with the
money; that is, the Clinton Victory Fund, and (2) Brazile describes the DNC as "fully under the
control" of the Clinton campaign.
Predictably, an enormous controversy erupted, much of it over the weekend just passed, but
I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow of the talking points. (Glenn Greenwald provides an
excellent media critique in
"Four Viral Claims Spread by Journalists on Twitter in the Last Week Alone That Are False
"; all four have to do with this controversy[3].) I think the following three quotes are key,
the first two being oft-repeated talking points by Clinton loyalists:
"The joint fundraising agreements were the same for each campaign except for
the treasurer, and our understanding was that the DNC offered all of the presidential
campaigns the opportunity to set up a JFA and work with the DNC to coordinate on how those
funds were used to best prepare for the general election."
Question: Were the agreements "the same" for each campaign? (Perez focuses only on the JFA,
but that omits a separate Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the DNC and the Clinton
campaign, as we shall see below.)
Second, from 2005-9 DNC chair Howard Dean:
Question: Did the agreement apply only to the general election, and not the primary? (Dean
says "this memo," but he also omits the distinction between the MOU and the JFA.)
"We learned today from the former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile
that the Clinton campaign, in her view, did rig the presidential nominating process by
entering into an agreement to control day-to-day operations at the DNC," Tapper said,
continuing on to describe specific arms of the DNC the Clinton camp had a say over, including
strategy and staffing, noting that the agreement was "entered into in August of 2015," months
before Clinton won the nomination .
Tapper then asked, "Do you agree with the notion that it was rigged?" And
Warren responded simply: "Yes."
Question: Can we say that the 2016 Democratic primary was rigged? (Tapper uses the word
"rigged," and Warren adopts it, but a careful reading of Brazile's article shows that although
she uses the word, she does not actually make the claim.[4])
In this post, I'm going to answer each of these three questions by looking at the documents,
plural, in question (Spoiler: My answers are "No," "No," and "Yes," respectively.) Here is a
timeline of the documents:
8/27/2015 (
reported ): The Clinton-DNC Joint Fundraising Agreement (JFA).
Available for download at
WikiLeaks, hilariously enough.
8/26/2015 (signed): The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU, or "memo").
Available for
download at MSNBC. The MOU
characterized by NBC as a "side deal," specifies how the JFA is to be implemented. Hence,
"the agreement" comprises both documents; the JFA cannot be understood without the MOU, and
vice versa.
11/5/2105 (
reported
): The Sanders-DNC Joint Fundraising Agreement. I can't find a copy online, but it's
described by ABC here . If there is an MOU that accompanies the Sanders JFA, it has not
come to light, and presumably, by this point, it would have.
In summary, the Clinton JFA set up the Hillary Victory Fund scam , the MOU gave
Clinton control of (much of) the DNC apparatus, and (
according to Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver ) the Sanders JFA bought their campaign
access to the DNC voter list, and was never used for fundraising because the DNC never asked
the campaign to do any. So to answer the our first question, we'll look at the JFA. To answer
the second, we'll look at the MOU. And to answer the third, we'll see how all the evidence
balances out.
Were the Agreements "the Same" for Each Campaign?
Perez is wrong. The agreements were not at all the same, either formally or
substantively.
Formally, the agreements were not the same because the Clinton JFA had an MOU (the "side
deal") and the Sanders JFA did not.
ABC :
[T]he Clinton campaign Friday afternoon confirmed the existence of a memo between the DNC
and their campaign, which specifically outlines an expanded scope and interpretation of their
funding agreement . [R]epresentatives from Sanders' former campaign say they only signed a
basic, formulaic fundraising agreement that did not include any additional language about
joint messaging or staffing decision-making [as does the MOU].
Substantively, the agreements weren't the same either. The substance of the JFA was a scheme
enable the Hillary Victory Fund to collect "big checks" (as Politico puts it), supposedly
behalf of the state parties, but in reality treating them as conduits to the coffers of the
Clinton campaign. Page 3:
From time to time and in compliance with FECA, after expenses have been deducted from the
gross proceeds, the Victory Fund will transfer the net proceeds to the Committees according
to the Allocation Formula, as modified by any reallocation required.
"[T]he Committees" being the state party political committees, into whose accounts the
contributions were deposited, only to be immediately removed and transferred to the Clinton
campaign (at least for the states that signed entered into the agreement; a few did not).
However, the Sanders campaign wasn't in the business of collecting "big checks," being
small-donor driven. Hence the substance of the agreement could not have been the same.
ABC once more :
Former Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told ABC News Friday night that the campaign
entered the agreement with the party in November 2015 to facilitate the campaign's access to
the party's voter rolls. Weaver claims the DNC offered to credit any fundraising the senator
did for the party against the costs of access to the party's data costs, priced at $250,000.
But, Weaver continued, the party did not follow up about fundraising appearances for the
independent senator.
Instead, the Sanders campaign raised the $250,000 from small donors.
WaPo :
Weaver said the Sanders campaign decided early on to ignore the joint fundraising program
and raise small dollars on its own to pay for access to the voter file. "Who are the wealthy
people Bernie was going to bring to a fundraiser?" Weaver asked. "We had to buy the voter
file right before the primaries."
A second difference in substance: Let's remember that for Clinton, the JFA enabled her
campaign to circumvent contribution limits for large donors (Brazile: "Individuals who had
maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for
$353,400"). The Sanders campaign , by
contrast, had no issue with maxed out donors: "During fall '15, 99.8% of Bernie donors could
give again" (because it's awful hard to max out $27 at a time).
Suppose you were comparing two mortgages on different houses: One mortgage has a side deal
attached, the other does not. One is for a lavish facility and demands a complex financing
arrangement involving a third party. The other is for a fixer-upper and a lump sum is paid in
cash. Would you say those two mortgages are "the same," or not? Even if they both had the word
"Mortage" at the top of page one?
Did the Agreement Apply Only to the General Election, and not the Primary?
We now turn our attention to the MOU. Howard Dean,
sadly , is wrong. The MOU contains two key passages; the first describes the relationship
between Hillary for America (HFA; the Clinton campaign) and the DNC (Brazile: "fully under the
control of Hillary's campaign"), and the second is language on the general election. Let's take
each in turn. On control, pages 1 and 2:
With respect to the hiring of a DNC Communications Director , the DNC agrees
that no later than September 11, 2015 it will hire one of two candidates previously
identified as acceptable to HFA.
2. With respect to the hiring of future DNC senior staff in the communications,
technology, and research departments , in the case of vacancy, the DNC will maintain
the authority to make the final decision as between candidates acceptable to HFA. 3.
Agreement by the DNC that HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over
strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election
related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research. The DNC will provide HFA
advance opportunity to review on-line or mass email, communications that features a
particular Democratic primary candidate . This does not include any communications
related to primary debates – which will be exclusively controlled by the DNC. The DNC
will alert HFA in advance of mailing any direct mail communications that features a
particular Democratic primary candidate or his or her signature .
That's pretty amazing, isn't it? Personnel is policy, as they say, and the Clinton campaign
has made sure that the DNC's Communications Director and new hires in the senior staff in the
communications, technology, and research departments will be acceptable to it. The Clinton
campaign will also review all mass email and communcations (which explains why Brazile, as
interim DNC chair, couldn't send out a press release without checking with Brooklyn. Since the
notorious debate schedule was already controlled by Wasserman Schultz, there was no point
messing about with it, I assume.) There is one place in this passage where the general election
is mentioned, so let's look at it:
Agreement by the DNC that HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over
strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general
election[-]related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research.
At the most generous reading, the Clinton campaign has "joint authority" with the DNC over
"strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures." At the narrowest reading, given
that the "general-election[-]related qualifier applies only to "communications," the joint
authority applies to "strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and data,
technology, analytics, and research." And given that the Clinton campaign is writing the checks
that keep the DNC afloat, who do you think will have the whip hand in that "joint authority"
relationship?
Now to the clause that supposedly says the agreement (JFA + MOU) applies only to the general
election. Here it is, from page 3:
Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC's obligation of
impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed
under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and
not the Democratic Primary. Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with
other candidates
(Pause for hollow laughter, given Wasserman Schultz's defenestration, Brazile passing debate
questions to the Clinton campaign, etc.). First, even though Hoho seems to think it's
exculpatory, the clause is an obvious fig leaf.
Glenn Greenwald explains :
DNC and Clinton allies pointed to the fact that the agreement contained self-justifying
lawyer language claiming that it is "focused exclusively on preparations for the General,"
but
as Fischer noted that passage "is contradicted by the rest of the agreement." This would
be like creating a contract to explicitly bribe an elected official ("A will pay Politician B
to vote YES on Bill X"), then adding a throwaway paragraph with a legalistic disclaimer that
"nothing in this agreement is intended to constitute a bribe," and then have journalists cite
that paragraph to proclaim that no bribe happened even though the agreement on its face
explicitly says the opposite.
Second, the DNC itself does not believe that it has any "obligation of impartiality
and neutrality" whatever. From Wilding et al. v. DNC Services Corporation, D/B/A Democratic
National Committee and Deborah "Debbie" Wasserman Schultz (as cited
in Naked Capitalism here ), the DNC's lawyer, Mr. Spiva:
MR. SPIVA: [W}here you have a party that's saying, We're gonna, you know, choose our
standard bearer, and we're gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are
voluntarily deciding, we could have -- and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look,
we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that
way . That's not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also
been their right, and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party
politics to answer those questions.
Third, look at the institutional realities from point one on control. The Clinton campaign
had control over the Communications Director slot and major strategic decisions from
the moment the agreement was signed. Are we really to believe that they were behaving as
neutral parties? (One obvious way to have shown that would have been to release the MOU either
when it was signed.)
Can We Say that the 2016 Democratic Primary Was Rigged?
I found no evidence, none whatsoever. 'The only thing I found, which I said, I've found
the cancer but I'm not killing the patient,' was this memorandum that prevented the DNC from
running its own operation," Brazile added
I think Brazile is either overly charitable, or overly legalistic (perhaps confusing
"rigged" with "fixed," where only in the latter case is the outcome absolutely determined). I
also think she's wrong. The
dictionary definition of rigged is:
to manipulate fraudulently
There's ample evidence of rigging in both the JFA and the MOU. The JFA enabled the Hillary
Victory Fund, which was a fraudulent scheme to allow big donors to contribute to the Clinton
campaign by using the states as passthroughs. And the MOU enabled to Clinton campaign to
fraudulently manipulate the public and the press into the belief that the DNC was an
independent entity, when in fact it was a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the Clinton
campaign.
Conclusion
I know
we're not supposed to "relitigate" the 2016 campaign ; we're supposed to look forward and
not back. However, the demand not to "relitigate" assumes that the case is closed; as Brazile
shows, we're hardly through with the depositions, let alone prepared to render judgment. So,
when you hear "relitigate," think "silencing tactic," and ask yourself who and what silence
serves. And perhaps this post will provide a basis for further discussion. 119
comments
Likewise, confirms my decision to wash my hands of the party. If, by some miracle, a
candidate acceptable to my priorities is nominated, I will still vote for him/her, but the
party isn't getting any default support or any $.
People need to stop conflating the DNC with the Democratic Party. I realized I was doing
so and stopped.
The DNC is an organization for raising money to support Democratic Party candidates for US
President; its subsidiaries are, of course, the DCCC and the DSCC. The only reason they have
power to dictate to the actual party is because they hold the purse strings. That
Bernie and others have run successful campaigns, to one degree or another, without their
"help" is one of the reasons they're fighting so hard to maintain the status quo. If they're
shown to be redundant, the power of those who currently run it evaporates.
Saying "I'll never vote Democrat again" is, as my sainted mother used to say, cutting off
your nose to spite your face. Right now, if we're going to at least slow down the rocketing
juggernaut that is GOP/plutocratic ownership of our governments, we need to elect progressive
candidates. There's no time to create a third party that can compete, so we need to vote for
the candidates who are advancing a non-neoliberal/neocon agenda whatever party they run
under. It's mostly Democrats, at the moment, but a social media acquaintance spoke of a
clearly progressive candidate running for a local office as a Republican because that's how
she's registered.
One of the ways the GOP was so successful in conning the working people and small business
owners and others into buying their hogwash was by demonizing "the Democrats." Now, their
message that "Democrats" are nothing but crazy-headed hippies who want to take their money
and give it to other people is so deeply ingrained it's a hard row to how convincing them
just how big a lie it is. Indeed, I suspect I shocked a raging right-winger the other day
when I told him we agreed about Obama and Clinton, because his Fox-muddled mind firmly
believes a Democrat thinks Obama rules the heavens.
If we don't "vote Democrat" in the upcoming primaries, then the establishment local and
state parties are going to throw more New Democrats against the GOP and lose. That can't
happen.
Yes, thank you! People need to vote for the progressive candidates in the Democratic
primaries. If they don't, then the establishment candidates will easily win, and the national
government will continue to be dominated by both Republican and Democratic lap dogs of the
billionaires. And if there are a few progressive Republicans out there, sure, vote for them,
too.
I often wonder whether some of the people who admonish us to stop voting for Democrats are
really employed by one of the many Koch brothers organizations. Not all of them, of course,
and I'm not making an accusation against anyone who is commenting here. But if people don't
vote for progressive Democrats, the billionaires and the corporate advocates of
financialization will win.
Of course, appearances can be deceptive: Obama ran as a progressive candidate .
As a quick ready-reckoner -- the more a candidate bloviates on Identity issues, the less
likely they are (should they be elected) to be "progressive" on issues of substance: the
economy, tax, war/imperialism
Right! Where are these progressive democrats? I would love to support one other than
Bernie Sanders (yes I know he is not perfect and he is too old). But they don't seem to exist
at the national level. There seem to be mayoral and other municipal candidates on the right
track – just have no idea how to move those ideas onto the state or national level.
Maybe I am just cranky and pessimistic right now.
TYT did several interviews of "Justice Democrats", newbies running on a progressive
platform. Some of the interviews you could see Cenk Uynger almost cringing, and the usually
voluble Jimmy Dore very quiet as the candidates lacked public speaking skills, and
demonstrating a probable lack of political smarts necessary to maneuver any bureaucracy.
Without trial by fire at lower levels, learning how to run a government and get results,
then there is no way to judge the candidates.
Unless candidates like Roza Calderon a faster learn that is
apparent at this point, they the Justice Democrats can only win when "anyone but him/her"
applies ,
So it was our apathy that did it. It was our moral failure. "Really," says Algernon, in The Importance of Being Earnest, "if the lower orders don't
set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have
absolutely no sense of moral responsibility."
There's an important difference between being and voting Democrat. Actually, we already
have a defacto 3rd party, Independents/Unaffiliated, a larger block of voters than either
Republicans or Democrats.
With even greater numbers of Independents/Unaffiliated, we could be a force to be reckoned
with. Actually, we should recognize and own our power right now because we could decimate the
ranks of the Duopoly and make room for an actual third party. We can still vote for Democrats
of course, but they'll realize that they can't continue to take our votes for granted.
There's actually no good reason to remain a registered Democrat. You can still vote for
Democrats as an Independent/Unaffiliated voter. It's only for some presidential primaries and
caucuses that party registration is a limitation. If you live in one of those states, you can
temporarily register as a Democrat to vote, then revert to independent/unaffiliated
afterwards. Other than that, all other elections are open without regard to affiliation.
The Democrats and Republicans are two wings of the same bird of prey, and we're the prey
only because we haven't yet learned to fly to escape their talons. If we start owning our
power as free agents/Independent voters, that can change. While deep pocketed donors may have
the power to make the wheels turn for the Duopoly, those wheels can't go anywhere without our
votes. Since we don't have the power of money, we can at least exercise our political power
to stay out of their talons.
Independence is the way to fly. It's not just leverage, it's also the only way to clear
more space and demand for official third parties. Since the Duopoly refuses to change their
ways and repair the rigged system they created to keep only themselves in power, we can and
should abandon them in droves.
In order to vote in the New York State Democrat party primary you must be a registered
Democrat. In NY the primary is where most seats are won and lost. Being registered as a
Democrat is a necessary evil in some cases.
It has never been clear to me why a hostile takeover of the Democrats, followed by a
management purge and seizure of its assets, should be framed as "saving" the Democrat Party.
I think that's what a lot of Sanders people would like to do. It's also not clear to me why
people think the Democrats can simply be by-passed , and don't need to be assaulted,
and if from the inside, all the better.
As readers know, my experience with the Greens was poor (as it has been with others I have
talked to). This is especially sad since the GP in Maine had seemed to be viable. So, my fear
of the Greens is not fear of the un known, but fear of the known ; I worked
at dysfunctional non-profits before, and I don't need to do it again. Others, especially CP
activists, may differ in their experience, but that's mine. (Note that I was reinforced in my
priors by Stein's lawyer adopting the "Russian hacking" meme in Stein's post-election
lawsuits.)
if Bernie's primary campaign and support had been transferred to the Green Party, he
would have been a very serious contender,
I agree. But Sanders couldn't join the Green ticket, because he made a promise to support
the Democratic candidate, and unlike some politicians, he tries to keep his promises. So what did the Greens do? Instead of actively trying to gain the support of Sanders
primary voters, they nominated ideological purist Ajamu Baraka as their Vice Presidential
candidate, and he would not back down from unrealistic insulting criticism of Sanders. In
effect, the Greens chose to fail.
I am not interested in keeping the two party system. Either the country breaks apart, or we will have regional parties that can compete with
the Democrats and the Republicans.
How many clowns can dance on the head of a pin? Debating whether it feels better to have a
donkey or an elephant standing on your neck is a fools errand. Neither the Democrat or
Republican party is democratic or representative of any more than a handful of families from
the Billionaires Club. While they may favor different individuals in the ruling class,
neither faux-party has the slightest interest in the rabble who don't line their pockets and
provide protection against electoral defeat.
Elections are a stage managed charade in our kleptocracy. Expecting them to change
anything that matters, or alter the course of the Warfare State is pure delusion. First we
must have Collapse, then Chaos before we can have Change that we can believe in.
"First we must have Collapse, then Chaos before we can have Change that we can believe
in."
You are right -- although hopefully mere "crisis" will be sufficient for radical change
rather than complete collapse & chaos . Collapse & chaos may void any chance of
organised positive change. Having said that the signs are not good: see https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/06/the-ecosystem-is-breaking-down/
for the less than cheery news on ecosystem breakdown.
Both parties must be revealed unambiguously to the whole public as the completely morally
bankrupt, treasonous & vicious entities that socialists & progressives have known
them to be for decades.
The big problem with the Democrats is that they just kicked all the Progressives out and
actively oppose them. Voting for blue dogs doesn't get us anywhere.
You are correct about Carter. Zbigniew Brzezinski was a creature of the Rockefellers, and
he was Carter's Special Assistant for National Security. Prior to becoming President, Carter
was a member of the Trilateral Commission.
The rigging was obvious from the start. When nearly all the super delegates declared for
Clinton before a single primary was held, I read numerous reports that said the reason was
quid pro quo. The super delegates were to be given campaign money in exchange for their
support. The agreement proves it.
That, and what the DNC did to Bernie supporters during the convention, made me swear I'd
never give them a penny. I have only donated to specific candidates directly. Meanwhile, the
Dem establishment stubbornly remains clueless as to why it cannot regain the House and
Senate.
I have seen portions of the agreement (not sure if JFA or MOU) characterized as a "slush
fund" for consultants. Naturally, of course, but one might also wonder if that slush fund was
used to purchase any superdelegate votes. Pure speculation I didn't have time to run down, so
I left it on the cutting room floor.
G, a lot happened to Sanders supporters at the convention, too much to recap but you can
probably find stories about it. Many walked out but their seats were filled by paid
seat-fillers so the hall didn't look empty, also from what I understand paid seat-fillers
sometimes didn't let them take their seats. Signs were blocked, white noise was used to
muffle boos, etc.
Before the convention, many of the primaries had a lot of funny business (not all, I know
of no problems here in Texas). But California, Arizona, New York, Puerto Rico, Nevada and
others all had SERIOUS problems with things such as efforts to prevent Sanders supporters
from voting, questionable vote counting (such as at Nevada caucuses), efforts to make voting
difficult by having few poll places, etc., etc.
I think there were irregularities in Illinois, too. I recall that 6 counties did not have
enough Democratic ballots, and the Democratic Attorney General, a Clinton supporter, sued to
prevent voters in those counties from voting after election day. In Massachusetts, Bill Clinton illegally electioneered near or in a polling place. But the
authorities let him get away with it.
Great article Lambert. TheGreenwald article was helpful but yours is the icing on the
cake. Hopefully many will read this so that they do not get confused with all of the
Clintonista response to Brazile. Howard Dean must be suffering from early Alzheimer's to
write such a lie. But he has done it before.
It's hard for me to believe anyone can, with a straight face, suggest the 2 agreements are
equal.How can you have more than one agreement giving "the authority to make the final decision
" ??!!
Final means last, no? #corruptlosers
I know we're not supposed to "relitigate" the 2016 campaign; we're supposed to look
forward and not back. However, the demand not to "relitigate" assumes that the case is
closed; as Brazile shows, we're hardly through with the depositions, let alone prepared to
render judgment. So, when you hear "relitigate," think "silencing tactic," and ask yourself
who and what silence serves.
Well said. Regular contact with the centrist MSM recently is like being subjected to
hypnotism routines from 50s movies. "You are thinking forward, forward, forward. When I snap
my fingers you will feel fresh, eager to believe in the promises of the party of Franklin
Roosevelt and Barack Obama."
and yet FDR stood by while his own "Senator Sanders" – Henry Wallace was sidetracked
from his vice-presidency and legacy as FDR's successor (to the chagrin of Eleanor, among
many) by corporate dems James Byrnes, stooge for big oil and U.S. steel, who replaced Wallace
with Truman at 1944 dem convention
However, there certainly is no comparison, as you note, between obama's complete lack of
"transparency, oversight, accountability" regarding bush-cheney war crimes, Wall Street
frauds, destabilization of entire Middle-East, leading to republican trump administration,
and FDR
Most authors-historicans I have encountered believe FDR had no real idea how ill he
was
A while ago, I read a story about the DNC's misuse of unpaid interns. The story itself was
barfy enough, but what really shocked me was an aside asserting that even official elected
DNC members were barred from viewing the DNC's budget. ( http://paydayreport.com/unpaidinternsatdnc/
)
"Surely that can't be true," I said to myself. But it is! I looked up the DNC's charter
and bylaws and the standing budget committee is specifically exempted from article 9 section
12, which says that all official meetings of the DNC and its committees must be open to the
public and cannot involve voting by secret ballot. http://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.democrats.org/Downloads/DNC_Charter__Bylaws_9.17.15.pdf
"WTF kind of an organization is this?!" I thought. How on earth is that even legal?
Well, after the Brazile disclosure of the Clinton MOU, I went back to look at the DNC
charter/bylaws. You'll note on the first page the date the current version was
adopted–2 days after the MOU was signed!
Anyone wanna take a bet that the budget committee carveout was one of things that was
changed?
jsba, suggest you use the Wayback machine or another internet archive and look at prior
historical copies of DNC charter/bylaws, to identify the changes. Could be very illuminating
as to (possible) criminal intent?
I was wrong about the budget committee carveout–it's in this version as well (still
completely insane!).
The fact that it was amended 2 days after the MOU is, obviously, still extremely
suspicious. I don't have time to, but the 2009 version would be useful to identify possible
changes.
As much as I'd like to switch parties (hah) so as to add to the greater numbers of fleeing
formerly party faithful, I'm in one of those 'closed primary' states. My vote is already
nearly worthless (though I exercise my right every chance I get); to switch to a third party
would make sure I'm both excluded from the more interesting local party contests AND drowned
out in national contests. Lose/lose. Maybe if something like Maine's (currently under attack)
Ranked Choice Voting existed all over, I'd be less sour about the whole thing.
Yeah, you need people like Lambert willing to do the work. It is exhausting keeping up
with the truths, half truths and lies promulgated in the press and trying to figure out what
is true and what isn't.
I find it interesting that the agreement involved control of the IT/data infrastructure of
the DNC. Doesn't the DNC administer the democratic party registry? And with that observation,
wasn't there a lot of illegal party switching that caused a problem for some Democrats voting
in party restricted primaries that had their registration switched, so that they couldn't
take part in the primaries. Wouldn't it be interesting if the switched parties were on the
DNC record as donating to Bernie's campaign? Fixed, indeed.
Manipulations of the deplorable superdelegate system, with its covert quid pro quo payoffs
after the Clintons take power, was part of a seamless fix. Premature coronation by media and
party wigs after primary victories in red states no Democrat would win in the general
election helped ice it.
Perhaps revelations will turn up on mainstream media, from the Sabbath Gasbags to NPR,
knifing Bernie with Hillary talking points at every opportunity, when he wasn't being
ignored. Thomas Frank wrote persuasively on WaPo's bias in Swat Team in Harper's, and there
have been tidbits on off-record Clinton media cocktail parties and such. But I'd like to know
how far up the editorial totem poles the fix went and how it was achieved. Certainly Jeff
Bezos has a Washington wish list. I marveled at how many journalists suddenly sounded like
breathless valley girl propagandists. And still do. What faster way to tank journalism's
credibility than that perception?
I guess that's why after catching headlines more of my reading time shifts to alternative
offerings such as those presented here.
But I'd like to know how far up the editorial totem poles the fix went and how it was
achieved.
I worked as a journalist in America for over a decade. I cannot stress enough how
unnecessary such a literal fix would be. (Though doubtless words were and are exchanged
between concerned parties when needed.)
The hive-mind position of most U.S. journalists -- and especially of editors, who tend to
be the most compliant with the power-structure and often the stupidest people in the room --
was (and is) an automatical default to unquestioning support -- even worship -- of the
Democratic Party, its elite, and Clintonite neoliberalism.
I once wrote a long feature that got a crush-letter from Joe Lieberman's office. The
editors at the magazine in question were ecstatic and printed that letter as its own separate
feature in the next issue. Personally, I thought Leiberman was scum, but kept my qualms to
myself and was glad I used a byline.
It seems to me that the HRC campaign's JFA was expressly designed to -- and succeeded in
its design -- circumvent the statutory $2700 limit on direct campaign contributions. Yet I
have not seen commentary that suggests any laws were violated. What am I missing?
To me, it seemed that the Democratic Party had already decided for clinton before the
primaries, as at my local caucus the party had planted each neighborhood group with a party
faithful, not from the neighborhood, who would argue for clinton and fear monger about Trump.
I know this because I talked to the plant in my group, asked her where she lived, and
discovered it was not in my neighborhood; it was a different town. Others reported the
same.
Also, a Dem party leader came up to me and said "Sanders is not going to be the nominee"
and "When this is over (meaning the primary), then you'll be supporting Hillary, right?" I
told her to never assume anything.
So, thanks to Brazile, no matter her motivation, for providing proof of what we already
knew.
I think you don't see that skill set very much in party leaders because they so rarely
need for the party to win elections. They do need to be able to maintain control
over their parties, so they're great at being cutthroat and cheating. But apart from certain
important individual elections, the success of the party as a whole isn't a big priority for
them. There are spoils to divide either way.
I worked on the Sanders primary campaign in my city. I watched as the state/regional
leadership consistently tanked the gotv and other Sanders ground outreach while a few local
leaders working in smaller areas worked their hearts out on the ground. Surprisingly (or not)
the state/ regional leadership bailed to work on the HRC campaign within hours of closing the
primary office.
I swear, in one of her interviews on the past weekend, Brazile made a quick, underbreath,
reference to 'poor Seth Rich' in recounting the death threats aimed at her. Glad someone has
not forgotten that connection.
It has been a while since I handled a criminal defense case, but I am not sure that the
agreement is not in fact, criminal. When the Sanders for President campaign signed an
agreement and paid money in consideration of getting access to the voter file and when the
state parties agreed to merge their fundraising efforts with the DNC and HFA, the commercial
fraud laws applied to that relationship. Since the fundraising was done using interstate
phone calls, letters, and emails and the voter file access was provided by electronic
transmissions from servers in DC to end users in Burlington, Vermont that includes 18 USC
1341, 1343 and 1346 (mail, wire and honest services fraud). These laws do not just ban
outright lying, but also the concealment of material facts that one has a duty to
disclose.
Considering the importance of voter file access, it is impossible to imagine that your
chief competitor having joint authority over hiring the people who handle all your customer
service and monitor your compliance with voter file contract is not a material fact. If,
under DC contract law or FTC commerical regulations, these kinds of conflicts of interest are
mandatorily disclosable (I do not practice in DC but I doubt DC applies caveat emptor to that
degree), then 18 USC 1343 was broken and Jeff Sessions could indict everyone involved.
It is even worse for the state parties agreement. The DNC arguably has a duty of loyalty
to its state affiliates which makes agreeing to encourage them all to sign up even though it
is concealing its knowledge that the money will be allocated in a way that will be bad for at
least some of them seem utterly inconsistent with the honest services provisions of 1346. All
in all, it is probably a good thing for the DNC that the Sessions aides I went to law school
with paid less attention in criminal law that I did.
It seemed to me that the nondisclosure of material facts and of conflicts of interest
might, arguably, constitute some type of criminal activity and that Donna Brazile's
characterization of the agreement as "not a criminal act" was, perhaps, a bit too facile but
I did not know the specific statutes or claims that might be involved. I really appreciate
your detailed observations here.
"Not a dime's worth of difference."
When it comes to politics, it isn't Russians we need to worry about, it's Americans. That's
where the collusion is – between the parties.
It was the Republicans' turn, period. Jeff Sessions doubtless knows that.
Just want to point out that the state-party=>DNC pass-through is not at all new. Has
been active in some form and proportion in every presidential campaign since 1992 (mainly, or
at least nominally due to changes in FEC regulation), but really ramped up in and after
2008.
Pushback by states has decreased over time, as state party executive directors are now
almost always (even in off-cycle years) routed in from DC, instead of staffing from the local
pool of operatives.
One of the important impacts is on state legislatures. Gutted of necessary funding, and
discouraged (and sometimes contractually inhibited) from soliciting further funds on the
national level, state parties have little left in their coffers to support their legislative
candidates and committees (and forget about the bottom of the ticket).
So this kind of money hoovering is a significant factor in the national net loss of Dem
seats in state houses in non-"battleground" states.
During oral arguments in McCutcheon v. FEC three years ago, Justice Samuel Alito
dismissed the Campaign Legal Center's
analysis showing how, absent limits on the total amount that donors could give to
multiple political committees, candidates could use joint fundraising schemes to raise
huge, potentially corrupting contributions.
These scenarios, Justice Alito claimed, are "wild hypotheticals that are not obviously
plausible." Hillary Clinton, though, is proving that the Campaign Legal Center was right all
along.
I'm not at all a campaign finance expert. Perhaps readers will weigh in?
Yes, the amounts are new. Just saying this was the direction things were going for a while
already. Good will between DNC and state parties already at a low ebb, DWS a big part of
that.
As we know, the Citizens United Supreme Court decision allows corporations, individuals
and labor unions to make unlimited contributions to independent organizations that use the
money to support or defeat a candidate. Rules prohibit coordination between a candidate committee and an individual or
organization making "independent expenditures."
Clearly this was not the arrangement between the HVF, State Democratic Central Committees
participating in the PAC and the DNC. Hillary was pulling the strings at the DNC. But I'm just now appreciating that the Hillary Victory Fund is not a Super PAC.
Joint fundraising is fundraising conducted jointly by a political committee and one or
more other political committees or unregistered organizations. Joint fundraising rules
apply to:
Party committees;
Party organizations not registered as political committees;
Federal and/or nonfederal candidate committees;
Nonparty, unauthorized political committees (nonconnected PACs); and
Unregistered nonparty organizations. 11 CFR 102.17(a)(1)(i) and (2).
The HVF was the first joint fundraising committee between a presidential candidate and the
Democratic party since the 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision McCutcheon v FEC. A horrible
precedent at that!
McCutcheon declared a total limit on how much an individual can give federal candidates
and parties in a two-year cycle unconstitutional. Chief Justice Roberts opined, "The existing
aggregate limits may in fact encourage the movement of money away from entities subject to
disclosure."
Right!
The HVF demonstrates how rechanneling dark money from super PACs toward candidates and
parties doesn't stop unethical and undemocratic processes.
That the HVF was needed to balance the Obama debt is one thing. That the HVF can pass
through money from State committees to the DNC and then coordinate activities there while
passing off as a joint fundraising committee is another thing.
The rechanneling of hundreds of millions of dollars donated by rich D elites to bypass
individual contribution limits was a brilliant financial engineering feat–one that the
Rs will surely emulate.
Before conducting a joint fundraiser, all participants must enter into a written
agreement that identifies the JFR and states the allocation formula -- the amount or
percentage that the participants agree to use for allocating proceeds and expenses. 11 CFR
102.17(c)(1).
What was the allocation formula of the joint fundraising committee?
As the HVF fairy tale plays out, Clinton is the witch who lures Hansel and Gretel to the
forest with a castle of confections, with the intention to eat them.
Are Democrats capable of outsmarting the witches that want to cannibalize the party?
Thanks Lambert for this. As usual, you have seen around corners and cleared the mud from
the water. Thank God you like crawling through this sh*t, so that I at least don't have
to.
Our local radio host Warren Olney, on KCRW who started his show "To The Point" (which is
syndicated nationally on Public Radio International) during the 2000 Bush v Gore Supreme
Court crowning of Bush fiasco is doing a week long retrospective of the disintegration of
Americans' faith in "our" institutions (ha!) before he goes to a once a week podcast.
I have listened to him for 17 years and I don't know how he could stomach covering U.S.
society, politics, and culture during those years of non-ending sh*t show. He was fair to all
guests including some right wing loonies, but you never got the feeling he was going for
"balance." He always seemed to get the truth. Gonna sorely miss him.
So glad you are still on the case, and loving it. You have my gratitude, and soon, a
contribution.
How much of the $250,000 the Sanders campaign paid for the DNC voter list went to the
Clinton campaign? I am still wondering if this kind of thing has occurred in other elections?
As far as relitigating the primary goes, we should've had that fight back, if not in 2000,
then definitely in 2004. After Team Clinton, people who justified their sellouts and perfidy
with 'we must never have another McGovern or Carter', gave the GOP a gift of a unified
government that should have been the permanent end of their credibility. Because while
McGovern, Carter, and Mondale went down in flames they didn't so thoroughly destroy the
anti-reactionary institutions as badly as the Third Way did.
The endless 2016 primary is our punishment for giving these centrist vipers a second
chance.
I appreciate Lambert going through these documents and laying out the timeline. One of the
things that this read sparked for me was the realization the Joe Biden was elbowed out just
as much as Bernie Sanders. I didn't follow the Biden decision-making process at the time but
checking back on the timeline it seems like Clinton pre-empted any attempt by dear old Joe to
actually decide to run. Correct me if I'm wrong (as I may well be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden#2016_presidential_race
It doesn't take much elbowing to oust someone who was polling in single digits in his home
state. I donated to O'Malley's campaign before Bernie got in, and, regrettably, am still on
his mailing list.
The bottom line is that the political system is owned by the ruling oligarchy and that the
Democratic Establishment is in bed with them. If a serious candidate from the left poses a
challenge, they will rig the Primary against that candidate.
The Democratic Establishment is pretty much paid to lose and to make the consultant class
rich. Equally as importantly, they exist to co-opt the left.
Sure there are a few voices talking that make sense like Tulsi Gabbard. They are the
exception to a very corrupt party.
A big part of why the middle class has declined is because of the total betrayal of the
Democratic Party from the ideas behind the New Deal.
The DNC got into the position of selling themselves to the Clintons as they were $20
million in debt, right? I have read that the major reason for these debts was that the DNC
had not shrunk itself since the last campaign and was paying out a ton of money for
consultants doing Christ knows what. In fact, Obama also used the DNC to support a stack of
his consultants as well as grifters gotta grift, right?
My question is whether this was a deliberate ploy on Obama and the Clinton factions to put
the DNC into such a vulnerable position before 2016 came along that when the time came, they
had to take up an offer that they could not refuse. I have not heard if Obama has made any
comments on this fiasco that took place on his watch and it seems nobody wants to call him
out on it. In the Brazile case, it is not a matter of following the money but following the
lack of money.
"Both sides in the Democratic Party's current faction fight, as I see it, are in denial
about the true nature and scope of the problem
"Both responses are essentially utopian: They rest on the premise that the Democratic Party
is still a functioning political organization and that the United States is still a
functioning democracy."
Thanks. This was plain and simple money laundering to get around the Federal Election
Commission rules and regulations. That no one has been brought to justice shows how corrupt
the American political process is. It would great if you could post how you would reform it.
I would start with paper ballots counted in public and halt corporations from buying
elections.
If I understand the law correctly, this really wasn't money laundering, since laundered
money becomes dirty by virtue of its being the result of a crime (like drug dealers
depositing cash at HSBC (IIRC)). Handling money in a complex and obfuscated way is not, in itself, money laundering. I'm
not sure what the word is, though.
Violating campaign laws is a crime. Circumventing can often be shown to be violating. Need
a prosecutor willing to prosecute white collar crime, a rare breed for at least the last
decade.
But trump has been attacked by Clintons, and he has DOJ but nothing is happening.
Some very good points are made here. Carping about the inequities of the Democrat Party
establishment isn't going to change their behaviour. Too much lucre. One needs to change the
people running the party. From the ground up and with concrete regulatory features. Full
stop.
However, one might look to the UK Labour party to see how it reacted when J. Corbyn, a
lifelong member and activist, became leader of the party through grandee miscalculation. The
Thatcherist Blairites went ballastic and basically decided to destroy the party rather than
let a fairly mild democratic socialist offer an alternative to their beloved neoliberal
economic policies. Too much lucre. They almost destroyed Labour in Scotland and were intent
on defenestrating Labour in England, whilst retaining some feeble structure as a mock
substitute, so that the Tories would, in fact, become the one and only alternative.
The forces aligned against the democratic tendencies of ordinary citizens are formidable
and reach into every nook and cranny of our lives. They have the money, technological reach
and hence the power of capital and its persuasive abilities.
i dont think a campaign had owned the dnc like that before. i think it had nothing to do
with hilary being a good team player, and everything to do with money and juicy
consulting/lobbying jobs. and pointing this out is not "sulking". know your enemy, and don't
excuse their crimes and predations by an argument that "that's just the way things are".
I am a Bernie supporter. He was pushed to the side by the Dem's – a party to which I
belonged for forty years – in a total panic when it was shown to the Dem's that Bernie
was able to reach disaffected party members as myself by raising a large amount of money
through individual small donors.
That Bernie accomplished this feat was a huge factor, IMO, in why and how my former party
felt it necessary to malign and derail Bernie and his supporters before, during and after the
Democratic -meh – Nominating Convention.
The Dem's should have just named the Hillary for America Fund the Hillary for Hillary
Fund.
Hillary cares only for and about Hillary. She's the reason Trump is POTUS today.
My family has been Democrat for many generations. Most of my family members have,
unfortunately, BTFD on this one. I used to find them to be reasonable folk. Trump derangement
syndrome has infected them all. This is a common complaint these days.
Forgot to thank Lambert for all of his great care and hard work in putting this together
for us. Thank you, Lambert.
In Brazile's account I do believe I remember reading that my home state, CA, did not sign off
on the agreement with regard to the HFV fund. But I seem to remember that Naked Capitalism,
or perhaps in the commentariat here, did state that the Dem's here in CA were in an uproar
over Hillary Victory Fund taking all of the state party monies. Am I having a flashback or
did I actually remember this wrong? Anyone know?
I thought the most interesting thing about Brazile's comments to date was that Obama left
the DNC indebted and therefore more vulnerable to the highest bidder. Not easy to bail that
out on $27 donations. So typical of these Goldmanite administrations, this use of finance as
a political weapon.
"... the DNC agreed to let the Clinton campaign control the party's finances, strategy, donations, and staffing decisions in exchange for the Clinton campaign's financial help. ..."
"... At a time when many people and many voices are calling for unity within the Democratic party, it was really disturbing to see that there was kind of a purge of party officials from both the at large committee, as well as the executive committee within the DNC. That really had one common thread of the people who were booted out of those seats that they had held. Some for decades. The commonality was that these were people who had either supported Bernie Sanders for president or supported Keith Ellison for DNC chair, or both. ..."
"... Getting rid of the non democratic superdelegates who make up one third of all of the votes cast that a nominee needs to secure the nomination, and to secure open or same day registration primaries so that again, open the doors. Let's let everybody in and get involved in the process. ..."
"... In Roger Stone's book, The Making of the President 2016 ..."
"... Every piece of what we've learned so far, unfolding over months, is as bad as or worse than we had thought: The DNC works to engineer a Clinton/Trump match-up, the combination most likely to assure a Democratic loss . It vehemently denies that it is tilted favorably toward Clinton -- which turns out to be true, in a technical sense, because it is controlled by Clinton. ..."
"... Debbie will be the sacrificial lamb. Still waiting for anyone in the mainstream to publish the name "Awan". ..."
"... she's put her money where her mouth is numerous times now, beginning with leaving the DNC in protest over its unethical practices ..."
In
this Real
News Network interview , Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) responds to former interim chair
Donna Brazile's revelation that the Clinton campaign had effective control of the DNC. Gabbard
was a vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee until February 28, 2016, when she
resigned to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Primary.
AARON MATÉ: It's The Real News. I'm Aaron Maté. During the 2016 Democratic
primary, supporters of Bernie Sanders complained that the Democratic National Committee was
plagued by internal corruption, and rigging the nomination for Hillary Clinton. Well today, the
former interim chair of the DNC has come out to say exactly that. Writing for Politico, Donna
Brazile details a scheme wherein the Clinton campaign effectively took over the DNC. Facing a
major funding shortfall, the DNC agreed to let the Clinton campaign control the party's
finances, strategy, donations, and staffing decisions in exchange for the Clinton campaign's
financial help.
But, this did not happen after Clinton became the nominee. In fact, this agreement was made
in August 2015, months before a single primary vote was cast. Among many things, this meant
that the DNC was able to act as a money laundering operation for the Clinton campaign. Tens of
millions of dollars in donations to state democrats across the country ultimately was kicked
back to Clinton headquarters in Brooklyn, well, earlier I spoke to someone who has been a
prominent vocal critic of the DNC process from the start. Congressmember Tulsi Gabbard
represents Hawaii's second congressional district. She was vice chair of the DNC until February
2016 when she resigned to endorse senator Bernie Sanders. I spoke to her about Donna Brazil's
revelations. Congressmember Gabbard, welcome. Your response, what we've heard from Donna
Brazile today.
TULSI GABBARD: I was not surprised to read what she was detailing in what was printed today.
This was something that when I was vice chair of the DNC I didn't have knowledge of the
details, but it was something that some folks were actually talking about and were concerned
about at that time
AARON MATÉ: I want to quote more from Donna Brazile. She writes "If the fight had
been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which
one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the
party's integrity." She's referring especially to this financial arrangement in which the
Clinton camp gives the DNC money but in exchange, the DNC hands over control of basically every
single decision. Your thoughts on that? Were you surprised by her revelation?
TULSI GABBARD: Again, this is not something I wasn't privy to the inner workings of how
these decisions were made, because at that time the decisions were really ultimately coming
from the chair of the DNC. But I had heard some concerns from folks from different state
parties actually. Executive directors and chairs and people who were involved in the grassroots
organizing and trying to again increase involvement in the process. Their concerns around this
joint fundraising agreement that Donna Brazile talked about in her article and her book was
that the funds that were being raised through this agreement were not actually benefiting the
party, but they were kind of being used as a pass through for lack of a better word. Their
concerns again were about getting more support for the work that parties do on the ground and
grassroots organizing. Turning out the vote, going and knocking on doors. Doing all the things
that happened on the ground in states all across the country. Again, this was not something
that I was terribly surprised by in reading that Donna detailed, but it's something that hasn't
been laid out in the way that she has in this way.
AARON MATÉ: Yeah. She provides a figure when it comes to the money element. She says
that of $82 million that was raised in state fundraisers, less than half of 1%, half of 1% got
to go to the state parties, and said the rest went back to Brooklyn for the Clinton campaign.
What kind of difference do you think that made on the election outcome when it comes to
democratic efforts at the state level?
TULSI GABBARD: It's hard to say. I can't exactly quantify that. But I do know that some of
the state party officials who I had spoken to at different times during the campaign had
actually expressed these concerns and decided not to sign onto this joint fundraising agreement
for that specific reason. They saw at that point, look we're not going to be used by anyone's
campaign. If you want to talk about how to help strengthen local parties, let's have that
conversation, but this was clearly not an effort in that direction.
AARON MATÉ: You recently spoke out about some more decisions by the DNC at the
national level, in terms of their staffing of key committees. Can you comment there on what you
were most upset by, and your thoughts on what should be done?
TULSI GABBARD: At a time when many people and many voices are calling for unity within the
Democratic party, it was really disturbing to see that there was kind of a purge of party
officials from both the at large committee, as well as the executive committee within the DNC.
That really had one common thread of the people who were booted out of those seats that they
had held. Some for decades. The commonality was that these were people who had either supported
Bernie Sanders for president or supported Keith Ellison for DNC chair, or both. If the message
is that we're going to get rid of people who may have dissenting opinions, or may be calling
for different kinds of reform or retaliating for positions that they've taken this is not the
direction that the democratic party should be going in. The democratic party should be going in
the direction of openness, inclusiveness, transparency, accountability, which is why I've been
calling for two major but very basic kinds of reform. Getting rid of the non democratic superdelegates who make up one third of all of the votes cast that a nominee needs to secure
the nomination, and to secure open or same day registration primaries so that again, open the
doors. Let's let everybody in and get involved in the process.
She says that of $82 million that was raised in state fundraisers, less than half of 1%,
half of 1% got to go to the state parties, and said the rest went back to Brooklyn for the
Clinton campaign.
Great dot-connecting. Incredible irony that HRC's diversion of funds from swing states to
her high-spending campaign was one of the proximate causes of her losing the electoral
college.
Yep. Here in Maine, where the state party was part of the Victory Fund kick-back scheme,
Trump ended up winning one of the state's electoral votes (Maine allows splitting by
congressional district) -- the first time a Republican took a Maine electoral vote since
1988.
The link at the FEC was dated 9/16/15 and shows only 32 states and the Democratic Party of
the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Open Secrets shows 38 states eventually signed on to the Hillary Victory Fund shows 38
states (Iowa, NJ, Del, KS, NM and SD added), with each participating state a "beneficiary" of
around $3M. Nada to the Democratic Party of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. https://www.opensecrets.org/jfc/summary.php?id=C00586537
These $3M expenditures pale to Hillary for America ($120,822,326), DNC Services Corp
($55,639,930), Bully Pulpit Interactive ($40,881,995), and Chapman, Cubine et al
($25,432,057).
Incidentally, I was not able to track these funds at the Oregon Secretary of State with
Orestar, the online tool to search campaign finances. As I looked closely at the filings, it
appears the FEC requires expenditures by (not contributions to) the Democratic Party of
Oregon to federal political committees be recorded. I only see ~$275K contributed back
(aggregated expenditures) to "Democratic Party of Oregon Federal Account" and "Democratic
Party of Oregon Forward Oregon Transfer Down Acct." in the 2015 and 2016 calendar years
(though an additional $123,404.48 has gone to Democratic Party of Oregon Federal Account in
2017).
"Open Secrets shows 38 states eventually signed on to the Hillary Victory Fund shows 38
states (Iowa, NJ, Del, KS, NM and SD added) "
Oh, so that's why the KS Dem party officials claimed they couldn't afford $20k for
a mailer for Thompson in the KS-04 special election race this spring . A race he almost won,
without that help!
So for Wisconsin at least, it is not true that the state party made anything (even half of
1 percent) from the "joint" fundraising. Clinton took all but $4700 of the proceeds AND took
another $282,000 from the state party.
She says that of $82 million that was raised in state fundraisers, less than half of 1%,
half of 1% got to go to the state parties, and said the rest went back to Brooklyn for the
Clinton campaign.
Just like Charles Koch, she just wanted her fair share; all of it.
Tell me please, how is this different from republican efforts to exterminate Obama Care by
de-funding every bit of its supporting infrastructure?
Whether it was Hilary's intent to exterminate the Democratic party or not, the effect
seems quite similar.
At first, I didn't think that he was anything more than your classic identity politician.
Then I needed constituent service. Matter of fact, I needed it a couple of times. Let me tell
you, his staff aced it. They were that good.
As far as I am concerned, Raul has my vote for as long as he wants to stay in office.
Finally one shoe has dropped. The second one about to drop is that the DNC emails were not
hacked by Russia in any capacity, directly or indirectly by the Kremlin, whatever. They were
most probably leaked. HRC started the Russia hysteria when she called President Trump a
pupped of Putin in one of the debates. This is only one small example of her manipulative
arrogance.
Every piece of what we've learned so far, unfolding over months, is as bad as or
worse than we had thought: The DNC works to engineer a Clinton/Trump match-up, the
combination most likely to assure a Democratic loss . It vehemently denies
that it is tilted favorably toward Clinton -- which turns out to be true, in a technical
sense, because it is controlled by Clinton.
The establishment Democrats accuse
Sanders of not working for down-ballot Democrats while the DNC is siphoning money from the
states to help Clinton's campaign. "Maintaining ties to Wall Street makes economic
sense for Democrats and keeps their coffers full," one "pollster and senior political adviser
to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000" helpfully assures us two weeks ago in the NYT , except when it
doesn't, such as when Donna Brazile discovers, to her horror, that the party is, fact, broke,
probably due, in no small part, to paying consultants -- like the one writing in the
Times -- whose expertise has led the
decimation of the party. (And, on top of all that, the DNC, professing "unity," purges
long-time members who supported Bernie Sander or Keith Ellison and appoints anti-minimum wage
lobbyist Dan Halpern to the Finance Committee.)
Every part of the story turns out to be a colossal train wreck -- and all this
from establishment/élite types who spent the entire campaign season reminding everyone
else that they knew what was realistic, pragmatic, achievable, so on and so forth.
It's unreal, really.
" but it was something that some folks were actually talking about and were concerned
about at that time"
===================================
Why does this remind me of Harvey Weinstein?
its like deja vu or something
I think we have to go back and find out who 'endorsed' Harvey. How many? And we go back, research and publish the names of those who knew, and yet still endorsed
Hillary.
To be fair to Rep. Gabbard, the excerpt published by Ms. Brazile clearly indicates that
Rep. Wasserman-Shulz (DWS) was not keeping the rest of the DNC leadership fully informed of
relevant business and financial arrangements.
If Brazile's account is accurate, the question arises, why did the DNC board tolerate that
situation for so long, given their legal responsibilities? Given the anomalous behavior by
DWS, you have to wonder how the DNC board could have been comfortable in their roles, and why
action wasn't taken against DWS earlier. That leads one to a suspicion is that there was an
outside force supporting (controlling?) DWS and intimidating the others.
Ah yes, but Brazile's account is a self-serving CYA attempt to get ahead of a story that
was obvious as it was happening to anyone paying attention 18 months ago. Notice no mention
of passing debate questions from CNN to Clinton ahead of time. It undercuts your "bombshell"
if you have to say "it was rigged and I helped"
Debbie will be the sacrificial lamb. Still waiting for anyone in the mainstream to publish
the name "Awan".
Nearly a year after the Nov 2016 general election, this issue is finally beginning to be
elevated. Senator Elizabeth Warren also responded affirmatively to a question about whether
some primary elections were rigged against Sanders on PBS Newshour yesterday evening.
Somewhat related in terms of the scramble to get ahead of the Den estab breakdown: In an interesting coincidence the recent meeting of the AFL-CIO saw labor leaders say it's
time to stop automatically giving Dems support.
"The time has passed when we can passively settle for the lesser of two evils," reads
the main political resolution passed Tuesday by delegates. Lee Saunders, chair of the
AFL-CIO's political committee and president of AFSCME (link is external), and Randi
Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (link is external), introduced
the resolution. They lead the labor federation's two largest unions. Convention managers
yoked the resolution to another measure it also approved discussing a labor party, though not
by name. "
Many AFT members were very unhappy (understatement) when Weingarten announced support for
Hillary without first polling members. AFT lost a lot of members over that. I'm not sure this
isn't a PR scramble by labor leaders to keep their jobs, instead of any real change in
outlook. But it's an interesting data point about the current state-of-play.
AFT member here. I was livid about the sham endorsement "process" that happened; it was
rushed through, months before the first contest, with absolutely no consultation from the
rank and file. Weingarten's infamous text messages about the National Nurses Union basically solidified
for me that she's nothing but pond scum. She's not a teacher, she's an attorney. And clearly,
not a very clever one, at that. I am obligated to be an AFT member, and if I were only to
become a "partial" member I'd still be paying about 88% of the dues anyway. I still support
my AFT local.
The national AFT and its pathetic misleadership can go to hell.
If it's any consolation, your situation appears to be the norm with the long-established
unions. Their clearly-stated bias aside, the World Socialist Web Site covers labor disputes
and has shown over and over that the mainstream unions have sold their rank-and-file out.
Ironically, just this week I read where an activist group has done some major housecleaning
at the Teamsters -- and it only took them 41 years.
During the primary, the outrage among SEIU members when their Fearless Leader not only
announced for HRC but tried to pretend it was "what our people want" by posting to Facebook
photos of a half-dozen blue-shirted members heading out to knock on doors. It didn't go over
well.
Did Senator Warren admit that her refusal to endorse Bernie was bought by the Hillary
Victory Fund? In other words, does this indicate that the great fighter against Wall Street
corruption was bought off by Wall Street?
Was Massachusetts one of the participating states? She wouldn't have made any friends
there exposing the money-laundering, if so. And had Clinton beaten the odds and won, she
would have been toast, especially given she has a huge target on her back painted by the GOP.
The Clintons notoriously hold grudges, and have long memories.
The Margot Kidder piece in Counterpunch linked to in Montanamaven's
comment lists 31 of the 33 participating states. Massachusetts is one of them. (It's not
clear which are the other two states or why they aren't listed.)
I remember reading these things back then, and trying to forward them to HillBots I knew.
Without exception I was poo-poo'ed as a
tinfoil-hat-wearing-conspiracy-theorist-berniebro-whiner-misogynist-right-wing-conspiracy-member.
I'd love to say 'I told you so' to those peeps, but most of them are now fully occupied
looking under their beds for Russkis. :/
Not that I know Joseph Cannon, but check out his Cannonfire site .hysteric hysteria, deny,
RUSSKIS!, Brazile is a liar!!!, deny again, MORE RUUUUSSSKKKIIIIS!!!
to me it seems to be the 'I'm With Her' version of a Trumpsters pizzagate rantings .I
dunno, maybe I am missing something and my brain has already been washed and taken over by
Cyrillic Control Mechanisms
I read about this on Politico yesterday. Donna Brazile? This is the lady who leaked debate
topics to Clinton and was fired from CNN, right? It makes you wonder why she is writing about
this now. Opportunism in order to sell books? Revenge on Clinton? Or does she sense the wind
changing direction in the Democratic party?
Personally I think Donna Brazile, via her story and book, is trying get her version out as
she probably knows the Clinton Mafia will throw her under the bus as this story is finally
getting legs..with or without Donna Brazile's revelations.
As I've noted before her name is Mud with CNN, noone wants her to be a talking head. And
Clinton can no longer shelter her. What does she have left but airing the dirty laundry and
hoping for a payout?
Donna Brazile is wrong that this was not illegal, but only unethical. The Hillary Victory
Fund was set up to evade the campaign financing laws. There is a legal limit on how much an
individual can give to a candidate. Hillary's big donors had reached those limits. She
directed her donors who had exceeded the legal limits on direct contributions to her to give
to the DNC and state parties with the agreement that those entities would funnel the money
back to her.
That would seem to me to be evidence of intent to violate the law.
RICO? Would seem the big donors had to know what they were doing as well. But then I
recall the recent lawsuit where the party claimed it could do anything and the judge
agreed.
There is just no good reason for a party to operate in such a manner. Complete financial
transparency in real time whilst functioning in a democratic process among binding terms with
real membership seems to be the least people should expect.
All of which is why I am a member/participant of no party and find the process
illegitimate across the board. It really does come back to it's not just if you win or lose,
but how it's played.
" If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before
the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act
." -- Donna Brazile
I, too, beg to differ. Naturally a perp doesn't see their own twisted actions as
criminal.
But the basic principle behind campaign finance laws is transparency. Both the D and R
parties receive extensive direct and in-kind government financing, such as the free primary
elections which states run on their behalf. Consequently they are obliged to provide an
accurate accounting of funds received and paid.
Does anyone think Robert "Torquemada" Mueller couldn't indict both Hillary and Donna
Brazile on a whole laundry list of federal offenses, if he were actually looking for gross
electoral wrongdoing?
Re "Naturally a perp doesn't see their own twisted actions as criminal."
Remember Brazile is famous for complaining that people were trying to "criminalize
behavior that is normal", when they complained about the blatant pay-to-play behavior
revealed during the election.
Slightly off topic: The neolib Dem estab has just discovered – much to their
surprise, no doubt – that's it's one thing to run the neoliberal economic playbook on
the deplorables, but quite another thing to run the neoliberal playbook on their own
establishment's finances and organization, each for their own personal benefit.
The judge dismissed the lawsuit because federal court wasn't, in his opinion, the proper
channel for seeking redress, not because he agreed with the DNC's assertion it wasn't
required to abide by its charter.
"But not one of them alleges that they ever read the DNC's charter or heard the statements
they now claim are false before making their donations. And not one of them alleges that they
took action in reliance on the DNC's charter or the statements identified in the First
Amended Complaint (DE 8). Absent such allegations, these Plaintiffs lack standing."
People who knew and did not speak, would they be accessories?
From Wikipedia:
Knowledge of the crime[edit]
To be convicted of an accessory charge, the accused must generally be proved to have had
actual knowledge that a crime was going to be, or had been, committed. Furthermore, there
must be proof that the accessory knew that his or her action, or inaction, was helping the
criminals commit the crime, or evade detection, or escape. A person who unknowingly houses
a person who has just committed a crime, for instance, may not be charged with an accessory
offense because they did not have knowledge of the crime.
I believe you are most correct & thanks for altering the direction of the
comments.
The support for Sanders was a resonate echo of
support many of us felt for President Jimmy Carter.
How far we have traveled is well acknowledged when you see that Sanders lost.
For the purposes of the Naked Capitalism readers, who are studying how real money is
captured & used by the Jet Setter Classes, here we have a Politico so entrenched
her Unit used coercion & tricks to take for themselves all of the main tool, money,
required to make the Democratic Party a real Party.
(I refuse to see Hillary Clinton as the First Woman Nominated for the Presidency, &
consider her & her husband Bill, the Clinton Unit.)
I do chalk it up to the Clinton Unit's long & destructive influence as law makers &
breakers. What the Unit is about is clear when you look at their history in Haiti. We are to
get the leadership & economy same as the Haitians get.
The leak that in many cases there was no sincere link at all between what Clinton Unit II
said, and what she really believed & intended, meant we were to get another cipher.
"Look out kid/They keep it all hid. -Bob Dylan, comes to mind.
After Obama it is clear that the Democratic Party is and will be in the pocket of the
pirate parasites of the US Financial System.
The revolution has to take place below the jet setter classes stranglehold on who writes
the checks for what. (I'd be interested in knowing how much of whose money paid for the
Clinton Unit's Boeing.)
In the end we as a bunch of honest people who like justice in that form it takes in the
day to day demonstration of good ethical moorings, liked how Sanders got the money for his
campaign.
The Clinton Unit by taking money from down ballot candidates crippled the necessary
revolution being attempted by those actually fighting to strengthen the nation.
Is there a large and notable set of organized people who vote, lining up behind Tulsi
Gabbard as the next Great Hope of the Mope (GHOTM)? Able and willing to go to the mat for
her? Trusting that she is not just another screen on which people can project their
images?
Got to have leaders, don't we? Because most of us just go along, go along, go along But
leaders are just other flawed humans, so easy to corrupt and failing that, to remove from the
game board by other means Too bad the Occupy model, whatever that actually was/is, seems not
to work effectively, especially against the organized on the other side of the crowd-control
technologies
I don't think people learned/practiced an occupy model for the most part. Folk were
expected to bite off more than they could chew in due haste. Remember the media immediately
asking what are your demands before people could figure out wtf was going on beyond we are
the 99 percent? Establishing a new practice was of course difficult to do while wondering if
you would be busted for just being there. Like the problems with parties people just keep
rolling with what they know (top-down), hammering their familiar square peg in a round hole
– rather than attempt/establish new process.
We really have no idea what a democratic process looks like.
Trusting that she is not just another screen on which people can project their
images?
Always a valid concern, but she's put her money where her mouth is numerous times now,
beginning with leaving the DNC in protest over its unethical practices.
And also, it's not up to her, is it? That screen thing is not about what she is, it's
about what people do. On a practical level, that move that Gabbard decries -- killing off
local party organizations -- is truly a step the wrong way. Real citizens have more to do
than just project their images.
she's put her money where her mouth is numerous times now, beginning with leaving
the DNC in protest over its unethical practices
That isn't why Tulsi Gabbard resigned as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.
She resigned because the person in that position is supposed to remain neutral in
presidential primaries, and she decided she wanted to publicly endorse Sanders.
In other words, she was following the party rules. This separates her from all those DNC
officers who stayed on board while putting their thumbs on the scale for Clinton.
In order to survive, you have to trust SOMEBODY! Whom do you trust JT? I get what you are
saying and agree 100%, but what next? I think that is the meaning of accountability. You have
to trust someone and make that trust the basis for your life. Screw me over and you are out.
Mopes are mopes because they keep placing their trust in the wrong place or for whatever
social reason, don't have an option.
The twisted logic of Margaret Thatchers now famous line-" there is no society", is a case
in point. The entire quote is,"I think we've been through a period where too many people have
been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with
it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.'
They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society.
There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything
except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after
ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too
much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone
has first met an obligation."
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the champions of Neoliberalism and the recasting of
the Divine right of Kings as a means of ordering society. The Market is Supreme, the Noble
Families (Corporations and Insiders, the 10%, are in direct communion with the divine, and
the rest of us need to worship and obey. We have no power because we have not earned it. It
is a recasting of the Feudal order. But what she fails to articulate is the obligation of the
system to the people? In her ideology, there is no reciprocal obligation. The systems owes
nothing. It is a system where the powerful hold control and the subjects are held in check by
blind faith.
Thatcher is right for the wrong reasons. Trust starts with the family and successful,
healthy families have a better chance of surviving over time due to the natural support they
provide. But she takes for granted, or is totally blinded by her own history. The Feudal
order failed for a reason. It breeds war and corruption. It thrived on ignorance and
violence. Offer a different vision, and the power center shifts.
Leadership is important as everyone knows. With proper leadership, much is possible.
Leadership is achieved when guided by some vision or goal. Is it any wonder why individuals
that can communicate a vision of brotherhood and solidarity are killed or marginalized by
Authoritarians? Where collectivism is shunned at every turn. How the meaning of family values
is cynically turned on its head.
Obligation is right. What is screwed up is how obligations have been distorted, and
continue to be distorted in a capitalist system. If you believe in social evolution, then the
strength of the family unit can serve as the fundamental immortal unit that provides the
basis for continued human existence. It is a buffer against the excesses of the capitalist
system. It is the source from which positive change will come. Support the family unit by
guaranteeing affordable housing, healthcare, and work. A basic income firmly grounded in
social contribution. What institutions are left that have not been corrupted by the
Neoliberal disease?
The problem making inroads is that the current political power still thinks this is a
game. It is not. The first duty for people who desire a better world for themselves, their
families, and their future generations need to see the obligation to protect the commons,
their families being the basic unit connected to a larger whole.
By destroying the middle class, capitalists have sown the seeds of their own destruction.
How many people are willingly going to walk into bondage? The promise of Neoliberalism is
failing and the mopes/masses know it- they live it. They just don't know where to turn. It is
a slow motion grinding into dust.
Communities are begging for relief. The organizations that need to be constructed are ones
that allow people to extend themselves out into the world and take risks, at the same time,
providing them with the assurance and concrete reality that if they fail, there is a place or
institution that will not let them perish. Capitalists buy loyalty. Individuals in their club
always fail upwards. No one is EVER left behind.
There is nothing to prevent other groups from achieving that same sense of solidarity
except fear.
The same is true of the Republican party -- nationally it's owned by the Koch brothers and
other billionaires, and locally, pretty much the same. Neither organization is going away in
the near future.
The most powerful aspect of the last election cycle is the eye opening role that money
plays in politics. Everyone knows the fundamental influence money has, but the false
narrative that has been acting for decades was finally turned on its head. Namely, that large
sums of money are needed to compete in the political process and only by funneling that
capital flow into the pockets of corporate entities can anything get done. Sanders campaign
proved without a doubt that self financing is possible and money alone is not enough to carry
victory. Its who controls that money, and what can be done with it, are the important
factors. Money didn't win the election for Trump, corruption did.
The lies and crookedness of the existing power structure has been laid bare and only the
completely uninformed still believe it or are directly paid off by the process. No wonder
silence and an outside forces- RUSSIA- must be deployed. There is nothing left to mask the
class warfare. This process reminds me of rats fleeing a sinking ship, and good riddance-
they all need to drown or just scatter away into obscurity.
But until those money flows can be directed towards the commons, the corruption will not
be driven out of our society. Democracy will die.
The silence and obfuscation on these important developments just highlight the crisis
capitalism, as a system, is facing and how the existing political structure is incapable of
dealing with the problem. The level of corruption is the problem, along with the extent lies
and misinformation are needed to maintain control. It is dysfunctional.
Once again, the rallying cry is for a social guarantee. A guarantee for work, healthcare,
housing, and a basic standard of living. Neoliberalism says no to all the above. Their
worldview is that there are no guarantees. Only competition where the strong prevail and the
weak perish. Boiled down once again to the fight between socialism and capitalism. Third way
politics is no longer functional. Hard choices must be made.
But what is the source of that power? Physical strength? Intellect? Mind control- the
ability to convince others? All of the above? The mind returns to social evolution. Forces
trying to maintain the status quo and counter forces seeking to alter the system. The
constant tension of forces exerting pressure until something gives. The faults and cracks are
everywhere. What holds it together is the peoples willingness to exert pressure where they
are directed to by their leadership. There is a crisis of leadership.
Finally, people are waking up to the notion that following crooks and thieves does not
make their lives better or secure. The nation needs leaders who are not cynical opportunists,
here in America and around the world. As the Trump administration makes painfully obvious,
America's standing in the world diminishes in proportion to its level of naked corruption. We
have become that which we professed we were against. The next true Revolution must be that
Scoundrels cannot run the world. Yea, I know Utopia. But if you can't dream about Utopia what
do humans have? All that comes to mind is a capitalist nightmare. ( As seen from the
Bottom)
Just as the Soviet Union collapsed in a breathtaking short time, the Rube Goldberg
construction that is todays capitalist system might meet the same speedy end. Just as the old
guard soviet apparatchiks held on for dear life, supporting a known failed experiment due to
their privileged position, if feels like the capitalist system is headed for a similar fate.
A quick, catastrophic failure instead of a slow, incremental adjustment. A failure brought
about form outside forces and the system not being able to deal or cope.
Donna Brazile can now make money revealing how she and the Democratic party screwed over
working people in this country and lied to the constituency she was supposed to serve. If
this helps people understand how they are fundamentally mislead, if only indirectly and
unintended, all the better. Its NOT about the money alone, it shows what the cynical
manipulation of money makes you become.
Re "Once again, the rallying cry is for a social guarantee. A guarantee for work,
healthcare, housing, and a basic standard of living. Neoliberalism says no to all the above.
Their worldview is that there are no guarantees. Only competition where the strong prevail
and the weak perish."
One cannot get a government controlled by special interests and large corporations to
provide social guarantees that are worth a damn and won't be corrupted. Indeed, the heart of
the problem is that the New Deal guarantees and post-Depression regulations (e.g.
Glass-Steagall), or even the earlier antitrust laws, have all been eroded.
There is a historical American worldview, not neoliberal, but also not "Third Way", in
which there are no Big Brother guarantees, yet there is strong social protection of those in
need. It contains a greater level of self-reliance, in the sense that one does not place
one's hope in corruptible governments as the solution. And yet not self-reliance, because it
trusted in neighbors to help neighbors. And it also renounces personal greed as a prime
motivator. The pioneers had this worldview – self reliance with a recognition of a
common interest, and thus a moral duty, leading to a willingness to help others, building an
entire nation, one barn raising party at a time, so that their children would have a better
life.
I am no historian, but gut experience informs me that what you are talking about is a true
American sentiment. The desire for individual freedom struggling simultaneously to forge a
lasting social bond with your fellow countrymen. At its heart, our nation was formed in the
embrace of a contradiction. The promise of freedom connected to the chains of bondage. The
age old dilemma of the rights of the rulers over the ruled. Freedom was sought above all else
and the historical opportunity presented itself for a great experiment. Open land available
for occupation, far from a ruling power, devoid of a powerful local social force.
The delusion, and betrayal, is the fact that reconciling this contradiction is no longer
the driving force of American politics. Neoliberal ideology has short circuited the political
system- on should we say, perfected it in that the ruling elite in America never intended to
share power with the unwashed masses. With the destruction of a functioning two party system,
even the pretense cannot be upheld any longer. Without a viable opposition party, the power
of private property can do as it pleases- and is doing it.
In America, we just had lots of space to spread out into and put off the day of reckoning.
Well, that day has arrived.
You mention barn raising, but that is an Amish tradition, to my limited understanding, the
Amish rejected American culture and wished to separate themselves from the broader culture to
ensure that their values could be preserved. It is an honest attempt to live christian
values. They are a-political and want to be left alone. I can't say much for other christian
denominations other than they are connected at the hip to capitalist values. That is not
working out so well on a cognitive dissonance level.
The cooperation that you speak of is more along socialist lines. And once again on an
intuitive level, most sane and healthy human beings, this is their normal state. The default
desire is to aid a person in need or to take satisfaction from assisting your neighbor
instead of abusing them. This natural human desire is prevented from becoming embodied in a
political force because that would spell the end to individual opulence, and we can't have
that. Charity is acceptable, a natural state of care and social equality is unacceptable.
The question is can you have a secular society that is dedicated to human care? Or a
theocratic society that does not become bogged down in religious dogma. American Democracy
seemed to point in that direction but appears to have stalled out due to resistance and lack
of trying.
Big Brother guarantees is code language for destroying the social responsibilities
embodied in New Deal legislation. Functioning Democracy is supposed to protect from
corruption by being able to vote the crooks out. This becomes impossible when the crooks take
control of the government and citizens are convinced that their government itself is the
problem. You have the revolving door policy that we see today. National government captured
by special interests.
Until a two-pronged attack can be instituted on a large scale- communities taking care of
one another along with demand for honest representation by the government, only small scale
resistance will be possible. Evil and hardship will prevail.
As far as a greater level of self-reliance and not placing all one's hopes in corruptible
governments I definitely think that's what the radical labor movement aimed at, a lot of
bottom up left movements do, just have limited power these days. This is fighting back to
reclaim the wealth the 1% (or 1% of the 1%) have captured.
Charity likely doesn't even work with such inequality for several reasons: Although you
can always give a dollar to a homeless person, charity fails to do that much good when almost
all of the wealth in a society is controlled by fewer and fewer people to a greater and
greater degree. A bunch of paupers can only do so much in helping each other (except in
trying to fight to reclaim the wealth from the 1% of the 1%). They can't do much else when
the very few control the businesses, the agriculture, own most of the property and use their
charity (Bill Gate's charity as it were) as a means of control (whatever little good it may
or may not also do).
Has this happened in other elections? Is this a first? The counterpart of this story is
the nuts and bolts of how the U.S. press is controlled by various interests.
This is a story which should not disappear down the memory hole.
" This was something that when I was vice chair of the DNC I didn't have knowledge of the
details, but it was something that some folks were actually talking about and were concerned
about at that time"
Boy, is there a big question mark hanging over THAT. Apparently she didn't respond to the
rumors by asking impertinent questions. And if the vice-chair didn't know who really owned
the joint, it was a purely ornamental office. Rather like Ellison's now.
Brazile said in her Politico article that even she had a hard time finding out what was
going on. She said she couldn't even issue a press release without an okay from Brooklyn.
I knew the cat was in the bag the moment nearly all of the super delegates publicly
supported Hillary Clinton before a single primary was held. (Are you listening, Sen. Shumer?)
I also knew it had to be a quid pro quo because it was obvious they were doing it for
campaign money for their re-elections. A lot of this appeared in print long before Donna
Brazile "discovered" the affirming document. This, and the way Bernie supporters were treated
at the convention, is why I will never give the DNC a penny.
Tulsi seemed a bit tongue tied on some questions in her position and not knowing what was
going on? Not credible to me.
She gets credit for quitting and endorsing Bernie, and big credit for anti war, but she does
not have history as a progressive, though moving in that direction.
Similarly Liz is no progressive irrespective of anti bank position, though similarly inching
in that direction.
Both want to move up, seem to be sensing changing winds.
If Bernie runs, who would he pick? Both usefully female, but neither brings any ev's he won't
get anyway. Tulsi brings looks and youth and she endorsed Liz better at treasury, and she
might be happy there.
I think Liz would be a great Treasury Secretary. As for Bernie's VP pick, I think that
Tulsi would, ahem, appeal to a certain portion of our male electorate.
I also think that he could also do well by choosing Nina Turner as his VP. Unlike Tulsi,
whose oratorical style puts me to sleep, Nina knows how to sign, seal, and DELIVER a
speech.
Gabbard is a co-sponsor of all 4, and Jayapal is a co-sponsor of all but HR1587. I believe
you that Gabbard isn't always progressive, but she does pretty well most of the time, and
(for now) she's better than Jayapal on the very dangerous issue of antibiotic overuse.
I don't know people taking positions on things that aren't likely to pass isn't all that.
Ok if enough Dems were on board and they controlled congress or some Reps were AND they had a
president who wouldn't veto then maybe Medicare for All etc. Even getting enough Dems on
board to pass it even if they had the majority is a long way from where we are now.
However a constitutional amendment is in a whole other category of unlikely than that as
the requirement to get one passed are super majorities we are never going to see. So some of
the former may be difficult and mostly grandstanding at this point, but I really regard the
last as impossible.
Another way to take a public position is to refuse to co-sponsor high profile bills such
as these. People in the PACs notice if a member of Congress co-sponsors something that they
don't like, or if the member chooses to avoid co-sponsoring it.
Of course none of these bills will pass in the current Congress. However, it is important
to get some momentum for them so that they will have a greater chance in future Congresses,
and co-sponsorship is a way to generate some of that momentum.
HR676 has been introduced in every Congress since 2003, and this is the first Congress in
which it has gained more than 100 co-sponsors. HR1587 has also been introduced since 2003,
although it has always had a different bill number. Its number of co-sponsors has gone up and
down.
Perhaps too many people are paying too much attention to Trump's twitter account, and not
enough attention to the wonkish reality of how bills can become laws. People need to push
their Representatives to support these bills.
DNC has long stood for Democratic National CLUB not Committee. Under Perez, I see little
evidence of movement toward a "democratic" "committee." This is not about Anti-Sanders it is
apparently about maintaining Clintonism when the electorate wants more progressivism. DNC is
pushing many of us to vote for a qualified Republican over a Clintonite Democrat. That is
very stupid – very sad.
Good laws make a good society, bad laws make a bad society. Good people make better laws
than bad people.
All people are good, but some do more bad, sure, go ahead and think of it that way.
I only get to vote for people.
"The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to
talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with
economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats." Steve Bannon
It's not often your opponent does you the favor of telling you why you are losing. I
pissed away some money on the Democrats last election (not because I liked Hillary; I just
despise Trump). What I got for my money was four or five emails a day asking for more money.
That and the ignominious, gut-wrenching loss. Many of the emails were from Donna Brazile and
almost all of them were about identity politics issues, usually tsk-tsk'ing some nasty thing
Trump said about one group or another. I remember thinking how dumb this was. They already
had the identity politics voters and getting them to turn out was going to be a ground game
play. While they sang to their choir, Trump and Bannon were out energizing an aggrieved white
middle and working class, which could have been Hillary's. Non-stop ads with Trump's ugly
face on the screens of Pennsylvania and Ohio saying "you're fired" would have been good.
Every time the Democrats waxed indignant about an identity issue, they lost some more
aggrieved white voters, who took the message as further confirmation that the Dems really
didn't care about them and their problems. Trump walked right in. Comey's timing, the
Russians, etc all mattered, but net net the Democrats gave Trump the win. The top of their
organization is full of people who seem to be better at identity politics than anything else,
except maybe backstabbing. They're crap at strategy.
I strongly encourage those who have Democratic friends and relatives to be sure that those
friends and relatives have seen the article by Donna Brazile. Don't be afraid to be a pest
(although I do recommend politeness). Many of those friends and relatives will be voting in
primaries next year, and they need to know what is happening in the Democratic party.
It doesn't just indict Hillary, although that is what gets the focus, it is a condemnation
of Obama as well for leaving the Dem party in so much debt. So Obama as well sacrificed the
Dem party for his own campaign. By slightly different means (running up debt rather than
funneling money) but to the same end. What a self-seeking bunch, to the destruction of even
their own party, the Dem top ticket has been (yea cheeto is no better, but that's it's own
thing).
DNC Bylaws state that the Chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national
officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and
evenhandedness during the Democratic Party
Presidential nominating process.
Since that obviously didn't happen, I would assert that Hillary being the Democrat nominee
is null and void.
When they rig an election, everyone participates in the election (voting or running) is a
victim.
Even people watching it become victimized (like the quiz shows in the 1950s, TV viewers
were victims).
(So, you, me and all the other guys had the primary election stolen.)
And if Donna Brazile tells you it's rigged, it's not up to you, but up to all of us, to
absorb the insider information (you can't withhold all those secret details) and to decide on
the verdict.
"The victory fund agreement was signed in August 2015 and widely reported during the
course of the campaign, amplifying the friction between Sanders and the DNC that had already
been fueled by disagreements over the primary debate schedule and access to the party's voter
database."
oh well then nothing to see here, let's just go back to bashing russia.
Wasn't Brazile the one who said that while the DNC is supposed to be neutral, she was
working on behalf of Clinton over Bernie? So as we all knew, then and now, grifters gotta
grift and Brazile is no better than anyone else at the DNC who keeps failing upwards and
being rewarded for her part in the grift.
Scapegoating is a predictable social phenomenon during bad economic times.
In looks like DemoRats are supported by the Clinton faction in intelligence agencies,
especially CIA (which also controls the MSM), while Trump is supported by Pentagon brass. So
deposing Trump is more difficult in view of resources (including the number of contractors and
lobbyists) Pentagon has, even in comparison with CIA
That's why the color revolution initiated by DemoRats run into some difficulties.
So the dream of Trump impeachment so far remain a pipe dram, despite all Mueller dirt
digging. Exposure of Stele Dossier actually was a big set back for DemoRats.
At the same time military in Trump administration are definitely conducting slow purge of
Clinton loyalists from CIA and State Department. Brennan's Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers also
will be "downsized". They already were shown the door in Syria.
Notable quotes:
"... Stunned by the defection of working-class whites, many Democrats respond by calling these Trump voters "stupid" and hoping that Russia-gate will be the "deus ex machina" to restore Democratic power, as poet Phil Rockstroh explains. ..."
"... Recently, Democratic Party elites have purged progressives from positions of power within the Party; have been exposed in creating and promulgating, and swallowing whole the dodgy Russian Dossier subterfuge; ..."
"... Desperate liberals have convinced themselves that the risible, Russiagate fool's mythos will provide a deus ex machina miracle to rid the (sham) republic from the likes of boxy-suit-clad, two-legged toxic waste dump who ascended to the presidency due to the Democratic Party gaming their primary and nomination process for a candidate who performed the seemingly impossible -- to wit, preventing the craven Trump from defeating himself. ..."
"... The supercilious mindset is the result of an insularity borne of privilege. Moreover, when do liberals ever converse, one on one, with members of the laboring class, unless, of course, the situation involves the de facto master/servant relationship involved in a service industry exchange? ..."
"... On a personal basis, liberals with whom I used to clash when I was a resident of Manhattan, almost to a person, were completely removed from and, worse, utterly incurious, about the lives of the working class. ..."
"... The Liberal Class have, on an historical basis, acted as the buffer zone between leftist, minority, and laboring-class aspirations and the capitalist over-class -- i.e., the bestower of liberacrat privilege. As the man limned in lyric, "same as it ever was." Thus we come upon a reason for the mistrust held by people languishing on the boot-on-the-neck side of the capitalist class divide for economically privileged liberals. ..."
"... Thus we arrive at the question: How can they display such a yawning disconnect from reality? And we shamble into the tawdry reality: The Democratic Party elite and their cynical operatives possess the sum total of nada desire to be connected with anyone other than their economic elite benefactors -- withal, the only constituency to whom they possess any degree of fealty. ..."
"... Thus Democratic partisans cling to the salvation fantasy that an act of deus ex machina will soon be at hand. But how many times now has Trump's trajectory toward impeachment been assured by some new revelation yet nothing substantive comes of the vaporous evidence? ..."
"... The crackbrained fantasies shield Democratic partisans from being buffeted by the reckoning: They are affiliated with the go-to Party of Wall Street and of neoliberal and militarist imperium. ..."
"... Liberals had the Wall Street bagman and multicultural imperialist Obama's back. At present, after his two terms, he is luxuriating in the cash-redolent embrace of his High Dollar benefactors ..."
"... Unlike impoverished Blanche, blown and buffeted by circumstance into the seedy precincts of (un-gentrified) New Orleans' French Quarter, it is difficult to work up any degree of sympathy for contemporary Democrats, enclosed as they are in their insular, bristling, psychical citadels, from where they unloose volleys of supercilious scorn upon those who remain unmoved by their partisan casuistry and are rankled by the condescension they direct at those who are not graced with their privileged status. ..."
"... The careerism of the "respected" mass media commentators, journalists and talking heads could lead the world to nuclear war. Many of these whores know exactly what they're doing. Many of them know there was no attempt by the Kremlin to "hack" the election or otherwise interfere in the election but they feed the public repetitive nonsense over and over and over again. ..."
"... Washington has been virtually taken over by a militaristic-Zionist cabal that's currently dead set on destabilizing relationships among nuclear powers. The demonization towards the Kremlin at a time when the major media are fomenting a witch hunt atmosphere is breathtaking to behold. That liberals -- in their hatred of the big bad Trumpenstein -- are going along with this terrifying group think is one of the more irrational and incredible dynamics I've ever witnessed in my decades of following the politico-economic scene. ..."
"... I had been a lifelong Democrat, but after I got fooled by Obama, I left the party. ..."
"... Working class has been totally decimated. Poverty class is the norm. 50 percent of us are below the poverty line .Average incomes are at historical lows 30 thousand Fiat Us dollars per annum. The widest economic gap since the Gilded age. That in itself says alot. The so called liberal intellectual class /progressive has become the new propaganda wing for pax-amaericana. This is where the Right meets the left and fuse into this hydra like dystopia and incoherent dissonance. ..."
"... Gramsci used to refer to Trotsky as the whore of the fascist. Globalism under the guises of our progressives and social justice warriors have become the new totalitarian norm filled with confirmation bias and naked ignorance. They have created this glass bubble of reality that suits the masters of the universe and we the sheeple just sit by and watch the new Orwellian night mare. ..."
"... To paraphrase JFK – workers of America, blame not yourselves, blame capitalism, the economic system that keeps you down, down, down. ..."
"... Workers now blame the Democratic Party, their one time advocate. It's easy to see why. The elitist New Democrats think ordinary working people are beneath them, yet they kiss up to Wall Street, Big Pharma, and the military-industrial-security complex. Most Democrats I know care more about their investment in the soaring stock market than they do about the plight of American workers, whose quality of life and economic security is rapidly slipping away. ..."
"... Scapegoating is a predictable social phenomenon during bad economic times. For three-fourths of America, these are terrible economic times. They are bogged down by credit card debt, student loans, etc. They can't find any good paying jobs now that deindustrialization, offshoring, and the financialization of the economy has taken place. Which is worse: scapegoating or the short-term greed of the Wall-Street oligarchs, who hide their money overseas to avoid paying taxes, who fight against worker rights, who recklessly gamble with other people's money and expect the government to bail them out when they screw up? ..."
"... While it is true that the Democratic party is corrupt, millions of people such as yours truly have had affordable health care premiums for the last three years because of the Dems policy initiative. They also paid dearly for it in the following election. It's easy for the author – living in a country that's had a public health care system since the late 19th century – to lob stones. ..."
"... Democrats are terrible, but the Republicans are even worse. Somehow that doesn't make me feel good about the Democrats, who have become the Republican Lite-Party. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did more to move the country to the Right than any Republican could have done. ..."
"... Every single accomplishment of Bill Clinton was originally a Republican idea. ObamaCare came out a Republican think tank. Obama's TPP is a Republican program. Also, today Democrats are bigger warmongers than the Republicans. I most respectfully turn in my voter registration card. I am now a progressive Independent. ..."
"... Obama totally caved to the insurers' interests when he approved the federal version of "Romney-care" which we had in Massachusetts, after many, many people, including doctors, had urged him to institute single payer. So I don't buy that argument that "At least we got Obamacare from the Democrats". ..."
Stunned
by the defection of working-class whites, many Democrats respond by calling these Trump voters
"stupid" and hoping that Russia-gate will be the "deus ex machina" to restore Democratic power,
as poet Phil Rockstroh explains.
Recently, Democratic Party elites have purged progressives from positions of power
within the Party; have been exposed in creating and promulgating, and swallowing whole the
dodgy Russian Dossier subterfuge; and have gone round-heeled for war criminal and
torturer-in-chief George Bush the Lesser -- yet Democratic partisans and lesser-of-two-evils,
fainting-couch jockeys still retail in the fiction that the Democrats present a viable
alternative to their more crass Republican doppelgängers.
It must take hours of dedicated practice to become such virtuosos of self-deception.
Desperate liberals have convinced themselves that the risible, Russiagate fool's mythos
will provide a deus ex machina miracle to rid the (sham) republic from the likes of
boxy-suit-clad, two-legged toxic waste dump who ascended to the presidency due to the
Democratic Party gaming their primary and nomination process for a candidate who performed the
seemingly impossible -- to wit, preventing the craven Trump from defeating himself.
The best thing Republicans have going for them is, the Democrats themselves, from their
corrupt-to-their-reeking core leadership class down to their willfully and belligerently obtuse
rank-and-file. In particular, professional and political-class liberals' refusal even to
acknowledge the grim plight of the besieged U.S. working class, and when they deign to notice
their economic lessers, at all, they, as a rule, evince an aura of condescension and scorn.
Apropos, I recall a piece published in the New York Times after Trump's "pussy grabbing"
palaver came to light, late in the 2016 presidential campaign. Quoting from the article,
headlined: "Inside Trump Tower, an Increasingly Upset and Alone Donald Trump," published Oct 9,
2016:
"But the real source of comfort to Mr. Trump seemed to be the small band of supporters
waving Trump signs on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk outside the building. His fans clashed with
people walking by, including a woman who told a female Trump supporter that she should go
back to her 'trailer.'"
It is a given that Trump's misogynist remarks displayed the very emblem of mouth-breather
inanity. Yet the demeaning jibe bandied by the passing pedestrian, who I'm certain would
self-identify as "progressive" in her politics, was emblematic of liberal classism. When was
the last time you witnessed an affluent liberal expressing umbrage in regard to their caste's
proclivity for class-based shaming?
The supercilious mindset is the result of an insularity borne of privilege. Moreover,
when do liberals ever converse, one on one, with members of the laboring class, unless, of
course, the situation involves the de facto master/servant relationship involved in a service
industry exchange?
On a personal basis, liberals with whom I used to clash when I was a resident of
Manhattan, almost to a person, were completely removed from and, worse, utterly incurious,
about the lives of the working class. When traveling around my native South, for example,
when visiting my wife's family in the rural South Carolina Low Country, I found the people
there far more receptive to a socialist critique of the capitalist order than that of liberals.
Why? Unlike upscale liberals, the working class, on a day-by-day basis, endure perpetual
humiliation under depraved capitalism.
Why do liberals refuse to acknowledge class-based deprivation as a defining factor in the
angst and animus of the laboring class?
In short, an honest reckoning would cause Liberalcrats to acknowledge classism is, as is the
case with sexism and racism, hurtful, destructive, and flat-out reprehensible. Moreover, an
acknowledgement would call them to account for their own privilege thus revealing the
imperative to make amends and provide restitution for their complicity in the oppression
inflicted on the less fortunate by capitalism, the system that is the source of liberal
affluence and the progenitor of their snobbery.
A Buffer for the Rich
The Liberal Class have, on an historical basis, acted as the buffer zone between
leftist, minority, and laboring-class aspirations and the capitalist over-class -- i.e., the
bestower of liberacrat privilege. As the man limned in lyric, "same as it ever was." Thus we
come upon a reason for the mistrust held by people languishing on the boot-on-the-neck side of
the capitalist class divide for economically privileged liberals.
Moreover, when was a last time you noticed a laboring class person parroting that the
meany-pants Russian Bear ate poor, little Hillary's homework fool's mythos? The Cold War 2.0
tall tale that avers:
"Putin has penetrated the precious bodily fluids of the U.S. electoral system," as a
Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of the Liberal Class might rant, thereby coming off like a
liberal version of Alex Jones reading the minutes of a John Birch Society meeting, circa 1955,
on communist infiltration of the Ladies' Auxiliary Bingo Club, due to reports of an inordinate
number of winners wearing red poodle skirts.
In short, there is a howling, class chasm between the cultural criteria that separates
affluent liberals from the struggling laboring class. How could sneaky Vladi and his fake
news-wielding squads of internet Cossacks be responsible for the neoliberal economy, comprised
of low wage, no benefits, no future mcjobs, that plague the working life of the latter? Thus
the Russiagate storyline holds little resonance for downscale working people.
The rise of rightist demagogues and their angst-ridden, resentment-reeking followers, both
on an historical and present day basis, can be traced to a primary source: the loss of hope and
the daily doses of humiliation inflicted on the working class by capitalist economic despotism.
In the hollow regions of the psyche where hope has been banished, rage rises and fills the
aching void.
Adding to the host of miseries, an odious aspect of the capitalist greedscape imparts, in
both an overt and subliminal basis, the insidious message: The psychical injuries inflicted by
the economic order are caused by personal failings. If internalized, concomitant feelings of
shame will torment the mind of the sufferer -- feelings freighted with intense self-reproach
that tend to manifest themselves in a host of pathologies, e.g., intense anxiety and severe
depression.
Hence, the dark art of shame displacement, in the form of racist and xenophobic tropes, can
and will be retailed by demagogues. Don't blame the capitalist Plundering Class, they exhort,
instead blame immigrants and minorities (who, in reality, are also victims of capitalism's
inherent depravities) for your dismal prospects. Build an unscalable border wall, deport the
interlopers en masse, put an end to the practice of "reverse racism" (of which, polls reveal
the majority of white people, in utter defiance of reality, believe is widespread) then
America's greatness will be restored and the usurped futures of hard-working, true Americans
will be seized back from undeserving hordes of interlopers.
A deft demagogue's tropes of blame shifting can serve to dissipate feelings of aloneness and
mitigate the miasmic shame attendant to capitalist economic despotism, a phenomenon that
liberals, and history confirms the tragic fact, ignore at the peril of all concerned.
Russia-gate to the Rescue
And what is the Democrats plan? From all appearances, a full spectrum deployment of more of
the same.
Thus we arrive at the question: How can they display such a yawning disconnect from
reality? And we shamble into the tawdry reality: The Democratic Party elite and their cynical
operatives possess the sum total of nada desire to be connected with anyone other than their
economic elite benefactors -- withal, the only constituency to whom they possess any degree of
fealty.
Thus Democratic partisans cling to the salvation fantasy that an act of deus ex machina
will soon be at hand. But how many times now has Trump's trajectory toward impeachment been
assured by some new revelation yet nothing substantive comes of the vaporous evidence?
Present-day Democrats bring to mind the image of a sad, aged prom queen, passed over by
time, possessed by magical-thinking-borne fantasies involving the appearance of an imaginary
gentleman suitor whose arrival will restore her faded glory.
The crackbrained fantasies shield Democratic partisans from being buffeted by the
reckoning: They are affiliated with the go-to Party of Wall Street and of neoliberal and
militarist imperium.
It comes down to this: Almost everyone, at this point, sees through Trump's popinjay ways.
Barack Obama, aka former President Citigroup von Drone, was a far more effective con man. How
so? Liberals had the Wall Street bagman and multicultural imperialist Obama's back. At
present, after his two terms, he is luxuriating in the cash-redolent embrace of his High Dollar
benefactors , as all the while, bedecked in their broken tiara and torn prom dress
regalia, Democratic Party loyalist pine away for another sweet lie-proffering, political
Lothario to replace the likes of Obama's charming vapidity.
"I don't want realism. I want magic" -- Blanche DuBois, from Tennessee William stage play,
"A Streetcar Named Desire."
What a cringe-inducing sight it is. One almost could be moved to pity in regard to
Democrats' Blanche DuBois theatrics. But, of course, gentle, vulnerable Blanche never acted as
an apologist for drone murder nor blamed Russian meddling for her troubled plight.
Unlike impoverished Blanche, blown and buffeted by circumstance into the seedy precincts
of (un-gentrified) New Orleans' French Quarter, it is difficult to work up any degree of
sympathy for contemporary Democrats, enclosed as they are in their insular, bristling,
psychical citadels, from where they unloose volleys of supercilious scorn upon those who remain
unmoved by their partisan casuistry and are rankled by the condescension they direct at those
who are not graced with their privileged status.
Thanks Phil R. Yes the demodogs party is dead but it's leaders are still cashing in on the
same old song and dance. If the cash stops coming who knows just maybe it will become the
party of the people but only be kidnapped again by money. Money has no place in politics.
On the other hand, politics is all about money (one way or another), since time immorial.
(Even Native Americans had wars to survive – as did all Native Peoples worldwide, but
was that the same as "all about money", as it is these days?)
Brad Owen , November 1, 2017 at 7:15 am
The Beaver Wars of the 1600s have been forgotten, as competing Amerindian Nations were
egged on by the (British Empire was it? or the French Empire?? does it make any difference?)
to bring in the Beaver pelts in exchange for useful European wares (which, supposedly, lead
to the practice of scalping-as-proof-of-a-kill of defiant anti-imperial colonists??). I've
read where it was primarily the Beaver and his natural water-management ways that made this
Continent an Emerald Jewel. Who knew back then?
Brad Owen , November 1, 2017 at 7:27 am
Everyone's too busy with "smash & grab" capitalism, and the day's hall of booty, to
think about other things, I guess.
DFC , October 31, 2017 at 9:34 pm
This whole article can be summed up by this 6 minute video from a liberal Brit here:
President Trump: How & Why.. (trigger warning)
h**ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs
It is hysterical, but 100% on the mark. IMHO (NSFW)
Drew Hunkins , October 31, 2017 at 6:09 pm
The careerism of the "respected" mass media commentators, journalists and talking heads
could lead the world to nuclear war. Many of these whores know exactly what they're doing. Many of them know there was no
attempt by the Kremlin to "hack" the election or otherwise interfere in the election but they
feed the public repetitive nonsense over and over and over again.
That otherwise liberal minded, intelligent people are buying into this dangerous group
think is one of the more incredible things I've ever witnessed.
People's critical thinking faculties have left them. Otherwise intelligent people are
bereft of critical thinking skills when it comes to the big bad Trumpenstein and it's
horrifying to see this all play out.
Attack Trump for the right reasons, NOT because he desire rapprochement with Moscow and
dared to suggest the Washington empire should be reined in a bit. (Yes, he's a train wreck
when it comes to Iran, and he should be duly admonished for it, but that's NOT the reason the
mainstream media are going after him.)
Right now we need doves in Washington (if there are any left) trying their damnedest to
have a dialogue with Moscow. Just very recently the imbecilic Pence was at a nuclear launch
site in Minot ND pontificating to the assembled media and personnel about how they must be
fully prepared to launch! This is preposterous and dangerous lunacy.
Washington has been virtually taken over by a militaristic-Zionist cabal that's currently
dead set on destabilizing relationships among nuclear powers. The demonization towards the
Kremlin at a time when the major media are fomenting a witch hunt atmosphere is breathtaking
to behold. That liberals -- in their hatred of the big bad Trumpenstein -- are going along with this
terrifying group think is one of the more irrational and incredible dynamics I've ever
witnessed in my decades of following the politico-economic scene.
Hate Trump for the right reasons. Don't fall for a Paul Singer, Bill Kristol, et. al.,
orchestrated propaganda campaign.
Fitzgerald said the mark of a true intellectual is to hold two opposing views in one's
mind simultaneously and maintain the ability to function.
Abe , October 31, 2017 at 6:22 pm
Blanche DuBois: "I'm very adaptable to circumstances."
D.H. Fabian , October 31, 2017 at 6:37 pm
I've no idea if there was a "defection of white working class people." I personally doubt
it. What I do know: The Dem voting base had long consisted of the masses -- poor and middle
class, workers and the jobless, for the common good. The Clinton wing split this base wide
apart in the 1990s, middle class vs. poor, and the Obama years served to confirmed that this
split is permanent. With this, much work was done to increase racial tensions. Democrats
divided and conquered the Democratic Party.
Diane Pfaeffle , October 31, 2017 at 6:47 pm
I just find this to be nonsense. Why not call both political parties to the wood shed, why
are democrats so different from Republicans? We need to have an open discussion about how
both of our political parties are failing us.
I think of myself as a liberal, not a Democrat. I could give a rat's ass about the
Democratic Party. I listened to Perez double talk a reporter about questions on the Trump
Dossier. I watched Chris Hayes last night make a fool of himself interviewing yet again the
crazy Carter Page. I come here and read your meaningless rant about Democrats, and understand
completely why this country is in the position it is. Not only am I disgusted with
Republicans and Democrats, I am also tired of listening to the likes of you.
M. L. , October 31, 2017 at 9:47 pm
Diane, I think I know why this makes people feel defensive. I had been a lifelong
Democrat, but after I got fooled by Obama, I left the party. I consider myself "liberal" too,
especially socially. But I do think the author has good points. Though he seems to have a
disdainful attitude himself, perhaps due to some hard knocks he himself has experienced over
his lifetime, I definitely understand the argument he is making. This past election season
was so brutal.
I lost a couple of good friends because they could not abide my criticism of
Hillary and the Dems in general. They were furious at me for not voting for her. They, like
myself, are decidedly middle class with good educations. I know I have been priveledged to
have gone to college and thrived as a master's prepared NP for many years. But I see exactly
what he is saying about liberals and Dems in particular, who just never give a thought to our
country's despicable, destructive imperialism or the suffering of many of the working classes
among us. As a nurse, I saw it all up close and it was personal. Our country's leaders have
not had concern for our common good for decades now. Most of my friends can hear my socialist
points of view and my criticisms of our duopoly; they do not get offended. But some of them
are really quite obstinate. They are very comfortable and they do NOT like the fact that they
support bellicose, inhumane, and corrupt politicians "thrown in their faces."
FDR says it all. post Stevenson and JFK the dems died. We saw abit of it during the Carter
regime but by that time pax-amaericana settled in.
The so called liberals /progressives like most things related to politics and economics and i
might add sociology is living in a dangerous mind set of confirmation bias. Left right
paradigm has been polluted to the point it no longer means anything. Just think of the Reagan
regime when the masters of the universe came up with thew phrase REAGAN DEMOCRATS.
Working
class has been totally decimated. Poverty class is the norm. 50 percent of us are below the
poverty line .Average incomes are at historical lows 30 thousand Fiat Us dollars per annum.
The widest economic gap since the Gilded age. That in itself says alot. The so called liberal
intellectual class /progressive has become the new propaganda wing for pax-amaericana. This
is where the Right meets the left and fuse into this hydra like dystopia and incoherent
dissonance.
Here is where the Likes of Gianbattista Vico and Antonio Gramsci become more relevant today
than during their time.. Vico the father of national tribalisitic sovereignty and Gramsci the
father of debunking the marxist mythology of dialectical materialism.
Gramsci used to refer to Trotsky as the whore of the fascist. Globalism under the guises of
our progressives and social justice warriors have become the new totalitarian norm filled
with confirmation bias and naked ignorance. They have created this glass bubble of reality
that suits the masters of the universe and we the sheeple just sit by and watch the new
Orwellian night mare.
This new political cycle will bring the death to both parties be it the RNC or the DNC. Trump
has been a godsend and has basically taken us behind the Curtain of the Wizard of (OZ)
pax-Americana. the only people left believing this smoke and mirror and pony show are the
progressives the die hard america is great crowd .
jacobo , October 31, 2017 at 10:28 pm
To paraphrase JFK – workers of America, blame not yourselves, blame capitalism, the
economic system that keeps you down, down, down.
Unfortunately, for the survival of all
living beings, rather than attempt to figure out why and how the system is doing them in,
it's much easier and seemingly more direct to look for flesh & blood scapegoats
(immigrants, blacks, jews,etc. etc.) Not that it's all so complicated or that the answers
aren't available, but that for those feeling the pain of self-doubt and shame, scapegoating
allows a quick (albeit, temporary) fix for their psychic misery. On the other hand, even when
the worker figures things out, what then? Overthrow the system? Yes, but that's no easy task,
surely nothing the individual worker can accomplish by herself, requires organization, mass
participation as well as an agreed upon plan and vision. So much easier to seek immediate
lessening of one's suffering through scapegoating. Still, for the survival of all living
beings, change the world we must. How? Somehow, we must find a way to prove to the workers
that we not only understand their dire plight, but would like to sit down with them so that
together we might work out what needs to be done.
mike k , November 1, 2017 at 7:33 am
What to do? That's the ghost that hovers over our detailed analyses of all that's out of
joint with our times. That's the seemingly insoluble koan that haunts our dreams and waking
hours. A deeply asleep mass consciousness mightily resists being awakened to the danger
staring us in the face – we just don't want to see it
Larry Gates , November 1, 2017 at 12:28 pm
Workers now blame the Democratic Party, their one time advocate. It's easy to see why. The
elitist New Democrats think ordinary working people are beneath them, yet they kiss up to
Wall Street, Big Pharma, and the military-industrial-security complex. Most Democrats I know
care more about their investment in the soaring stock market than they do about the plight of
American workers, whose quality of life and economic security is rapidly slipping away.
Scapegoating is a predictable social phenomenon during bad economic times. For
three-fourths of America, these are terrible economic times. They are bogged down by credit
card debt, student loans, etc. They can't find any good paying jobs now that
deindustrialization, offshoring, and the financialization of the economy has taken place.
Which is worse: scapegoating or the short-term greed of the Wall-Street oligarchs, who hide
their money overseas to avoid paying taxes, who fight against worker rights, who recklessly
gamble with other people's money and expect the government to bail them out when they screw
up?
No political revolution is going to come from the elitist, well-educated professional
class who now control the Democratic Party. Intellectuals on the Left will have to reach out
to ordinary people who work from paycheck to paycheck. Hillary ignored them, and Hillary
lost.
Dave P. , November 1, 2017 at 1:18 pm
Larry Gates –
Excellent Comments. Perfectly said and very true. All my liberal friends are exactly as
you said. They are all well off and looking day and night at their stock portfolios and
investments, and looking down on the deplorables and all others below them like labor type
people which are mostly Hispanic here in California. In fact, some of them employ these
people in their homes. Many of these social friends come from homes which were rather well
off .
In my own home, there is always this bickering whenever we have labor or service people
like carpet cleaners, painters work in our home. I pay them generously or tip them if they
work for a company or other owners of business. My wife – a liberal and a very
committed Hillary devotee – always argues with me for overpaying/tipping them and not
concerned about money. Yet we go out and easily burn over a hundred dollars for dinner. It
depends from which background we come from and what we learned in our young age – my
parents were dirt poor farmers owning little over an acre of land. All these workers in
California and elsewhere and Hillary's deplorables are being exploited to run this War
Economy for the benefit of the upper classes and super rich.
It is a very good article, though quite a few words in it are rather complicated. A person
like me has to consult dictionary to find the meaning which becomes annoying. I hope that
Phil Rockstroh use simple words in his next article so that even Hillary's deplorables can
understand it easily.
Wm. Boyce , November 1, 2017 at 12:19 pm
While it is true that the Democratic party is corrupt, millions of people such as yours
truly have had affordable health care premiums for the last three years because of the Dems
policy initiative. They also paid dearly for it in the following election. It's easy for the
author – living in a country that's had a public health care system since the late 19th
century – to lob stones.
I don't think there's any comparison between the Republican party's corruption and the
Dems – the Democrats are rank amateurs compared with the current bunch of criminals
running the country. I'm amazed that so many people on this board are so out of touch.
Larry Gates , November 1, 2017 at 12:39 pm
Democrats are terrible, but the Republicans are even worse. Somehow that doesn't make me
feel good about the Democrats, who have become the Republican Lite-Party. Bill Clinton and
Barack Obama did more to move the country to the Right than any Republican could have done.
Every single accomplishment of Bill Clinton was originally a Republican idea. ObamaCare came
out a Republican think tank. Obama's TPP is a Republican program. Also, today Democrats are
bigger warmongers than the Republicans. I most respectfully turn in my voter registration
card. I am now a progressive Independent.
I worked in health care for years, and both parties ensured that health care was poorly
done for average Americans. FDR wanted a national health care plan as part of the New Deal,
but it's a wonder he got the New Deal through at all with Big Business mobilized against him.
Obama totally caved to the insurers' interests when he approved the federal version of
"Romney-care" which we had in Massachusetts, after many, many people, including doctors, had
urged him to institute single payer. So I don't buy that argument that "At least we got
Obamacare from the Democrats". And what Democrats are doing now with the Russia hysteria is
equal to wiping out what anyone might have thought made them "better than Republicans". Both
parties are in bed with Wall Street, Corporate Capitalism, and Warmongers.
"... The Republican Party is home to many a vile reactionary, but its principal function is, and long has been, to serve the most odious wing of the American ruling class. ..."
"... Being unfit and unprepared for the office he suddenly found himself holding, Trump had no choice but to call on seasoned Republican apparatchiks for help. Thus he ended up empowering the very people he had beaten into submission months before. ..."
"... Thus the Republican Party and the Donald became locked together in a bizarre marriage of convenience. Their unholy aliance has by now become a nightmare for all concerned. ..."
"... Moreover, with each passing day, the situation becomes more fraught – to the point that even Republican Senators, three of them so far, have already said "enough." ..."
"... Vice President Mike Pence, his constitutionally prescribed successor, is an opportunist too, but he is also a dedicated theocrat and a thoroughgoing reactionary. A skilled casting director could not have come up with a more suitable vector for spreading the plagues that Republican donors like the Koch brothers seek to let loose upon the world. ..."
"... With Pence in the Oval Office, the chances of nuclear annihilation would diminish, but everything else would be worse. Trump is temperamentally unable to play well with the denizens of the "adult daycare center" that official Washington has become. On the other hand, because his effect on people is more soporific than terrifying, and because he is, by nature, a "pragmatic" conservative -- a mirror image of what Clinton purported to be -- Pence could end up doing more to undermine progress than Trump could ever imagine. ..."
"... Therefore, Trump's demise, though necessary, would be a mixed blessing, at best. ..."
"... After all, Democrats are part of the problem too -- arguably, the major part – and they can hardly remain entirely indifferent to the concerns of voters who lean left. ..."
The Republican Party is home to many a vile reactionary, but its principal function is,
and long has been, to serve the most odious wing of the American ruling class.
Before Hillary Clinton threw away a sure victory last November, Donald Trump was well on the
way to blowing that dreadful party apart.
No credit is due him, however. The harm he was on track for causing was unintended. Trump
was not trying to do the GOP in; he was only promoting his brand and himself.
However, by stirring up longstanding rifts between the party's various factions, he
effectively put himself on the side of the angels. Without intending anything of the sort, and
without even trying, Trump turned himself into a scourge upon America's debilitating duopoly
party system.
As Election Day approached, it was unclear whether the GOP's Old Guard would ever be able to
put their genteel thing -- their WASPish Cosa Nostra -- back together again.
With Hillary Clinton in the White House, their odds were maybe fifty-fifty. Had the
Democrats nominated a less inept Clintonite like Joe Biden or an old school liberal like Bernie
Sanders, their odds would have been worse.
But then, to nearly everyone's surprise, including his own, Trump won -- or, rather, Clinton
lost, taking many a Democrat down with her. The debacle wasn't entirely her fault. For years,
the Democratic National Committee had been squandering its resources on getting Democratic
presidents elected, leaving down ticket Democrats wallowing in malign neglect.
And so, for a while, it looked like the GOP would not only survive Trump, but would thrive
because of him.
Even so, Republicans were not exactly riding on Trump's coattails. The party's grandees had
problems with the Donald, as did comparatively sane Republican office holders and office
seekers; so did Republican-leaning voters in the broader electorate. But with Clinton flubbing
so badly, none of this mattered.
Being unfit and unprepared for the office he suddenly found himself holding, Trump had
no choice but to call on seasoned Republican apparatchiks for help. Thus he ended up empowering
the very people he had beaten into submission months before.
Thus the Republican Party and the Donald became locked together in a bizarre marriage of
convenience. Their unholy aliance has by now become a nightmare for all concerned.
Moreover, with each passing day, the situation becomes more fraught – to the point
that even Republican Senators, three of them so far, have already said "enough."
Republicans continue to run the House and the Senate, and they occupy hosts of other top
government offices, but the Republican Party has gone into damage control mode. It had little
choice, inasmuch as its Trump induced, pre-election trajectory is back on track.
After only a brief hiatus, the chances are therefore good once again that if the country and
the world survive Trump, he will be remembered mainly for destroying the party that Abraham
Lincoln led a century and a half ago.
This is therefore a good time to give Republicans space to destroy themselves and each
other, cheering them on from the sidelines – especially as they turn on Trump and he
turns on them.
Saving the world from that menace is plainly of paramount importance, but it is important
not to lose sight of the fact that the alternative is arguably even more unpalatable. Trump is
an accidental malefactor; he goes where self-interest leads him. Vice President Mike Pence,
his constitutionally prescribed successor, is an opportunist too, but he is also a dedicated
theocrat and a thoroughgoing reactionary. A skilled casting director could not have come up
with a more suitable vector for spreading the plagues that Republican donors like the Koch
brothers seek to let loose upon the world.
With Pence in the Oval Office, the chances of nuclear annihilation would diminish, but
everything else would be worse. Trump is temperamentally unable to play well with the denizens
of the "adult daycare center" that official Washington has become. On the other hand, because
his effect on people is more soporific than terrifying, and because he is, by nature, a
"pragmatic" conservative -- a mirror image of what Clinton purported to be -- Pence could end
up doing more to undermine progress than Trump could ever imagine.
Therefore, Trump's demise, though necessary, would be a mixed blessing, at
best.
Trump is not likely to "self-impeach" any time soon; and. at this point, only persons who
have the ear of Republican bigwigs can do much of anything to hasten his departure from the
scene. But there are other ways to "deconstruct" the duopoly party system -- as Trump's
fascisant, pseudo-intellectual (formerly official, now unofficial) advisor, Steve
Bannon might infelicitously put it.
After all, Democrats are part of the problem too -- arguably, the major part – and
they can hardly remain entirely indifferent to the concerns of voters who lean left. ...
... ... ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge)
and POLITICAL KEY WORDS
(Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most
recent book is In Bad Faith: What's Wrong
With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College
Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and
the Politics of Illusion (AK Press
"... "It's difficult to imagine that a campaign chairman, that the head of the DNC would not know of an expenditure of this magnitude and significance. But perhaps there's something more going on here. But certainly it's worth additional questioning of those two witnesses," ..."
"... "more than anyone." ..."
"... On the same day, Elias' law firm, Perkins Coie, which represented the Clinton campaign and the DNC, confirmed it had hired Fusion GPS in April 2016. The funding arrangement brokered in the spring of 2016 lasted until right before the election, AP reported earlier this week, citing sources familiar with the matter. ..."
"... The document, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleged a compromising relationship between Trump and the Kremlin. It was finalized in December 2016, and published online by BuzzFeed in January. It contained unsubstantiated claims of links and allegations of deals between Moscow and the Trump campaign. ..."
"... It was funded initially by a Republican-funded journalism website, The Washington Free Beacon. However, the website insisted the enquiry had no Russian angle at that time. The alleged collusion between Trump and Russia became the focal point of the research after it was taken over by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). ..."
"... The Clinton campaign paid more than $5.6 million to Perkins Coie, recording the expenditures as "legal services," ..."
"... "legal and compliance consulting" ..."
"... "fake dossier," ..."
"... "Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier," ..."
"... "so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out." ..."
Several top Democrats should be summoned to testify before the US Senate Intelligence
Committee on the infamous Trump-Russia dossier, US Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has said. Her
remarks were prompted by new revelations linking the file to the Democratic Party and the
Clinton campaign, Collins, who is a member of the Senate's Intelligence Committee, was emphatic
that Hillary Clinton's election campaign manager, John Podesta, and the former head of the
Democratic National Committee (DNC), Debbie Wasserman Schultz, "absolutely need to be
recalled."
She added that they were most likely aware of the Democrats role in the preparation of this
document.
"It's difficult to imagine that a campaign chairman, that the head of the DNC would not
know of an expenditure of this magnitude and significance. But perhaps there's something more
going on here. But certainly it's worth additional questioning of those two witnesses,"
she told CBS' Face the Nation.
She said further that Marc Elias, a lawyer representing Hillary for America and the DNC,
should be questioned "more than anyone." On Tuesday, the Washington Post alleged that
Elias retained research firm Fusion GPS in April 2016 to continue research into Trump's alleged
coordination with Russia; and which later became known as the Steele dossier.
On the same day, Elias' law firm, Perkins Coie, which represented the Clinton campaign
and the DNC, confirmed it had hired Fusion GPS in April 2016. The funding arrangement brokered
in the spring of 2016 lasted until right before the election, AP reported earlier this week,
citing sources familiar with the matter.
The document, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleged a compromising
relationship between Trump and the Kremlin. It was finalized in December 2016, and published
online by BuzzFeed in January. It contained unsubstantiated claims of links and allegations of
deals between Moscow and the Trump campaign.
It was funded initially by a Republican-funded journalism website, The Washington Free
Beacon. However, the website insisted the enquiry had no Russian angle at that time. The
alleged collusion between Trump and Russia became the focal point of the research after it was
taken over by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The Clinton campaign paid more than $5.6 million to Perkins Coie, recording the
expenditures as "legal services," according to the Federal Election Commission. The
DNC paid the law firm more than $2.9 million for "legal and compliance consulting" and
reported $66,500 for research consulting.
Taking note of the recent revelations concerning the dossier, the US House Intelligence
Committee has been granted access to Fusion GPS bank account records as part of its
investigation into the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
On Sunday, Donald Trump lashed out in a series of tweets at the dossier and said something
should be done about Hillary Clinton's links to the "fake dossier," as the US
president put it.
"Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of
investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier," he wrote, later adding, that there is "so
much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out."
Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of
investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),....
Earlier this week, Trump said it is "commonly agreed" that there was no collusion
between his presidential bid and the Russian government, and accused Clinton of being the one
who really colluded with Russia.
Throughout What Happened , Clinton gives us a taste of her literary influences,
beginning each section, and each chapter, and sometimes inserting inside of chapters,
quotations from Harriet Tubman, Friedrich Nietzsche, A League of Their Own , Rainer
Maria Rilke, Eleanor Roosevelt, TS Eliot, George Bernard Shaw, Carl Sandburg, "a sign in my
house", Nora Ephron, Muriel Rukeyser, JM Barrie, Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Flannery O'Connor, WB Yeats, "a Chinese proverb", "an African
proverb", Fyodor Dostoevsky, Robert Frost, John F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela , Henry James, and Pope
John XIII. I do not know who any of those people are. It seems I've lost them along with every
other person in this book. But from the quotations, you can tell that each of them is an
advocate for kindness, perseverance, truth, and decency. You can see how each of them helped
shape Clinton and her thoughts.
After learning so much about Clinton, it is difficult to read her account of the campaign
itself when it arrives slightly more than halfway through the book. It is terrible to witness
the tragedy unfold. Clinton ran for president, she says early on, because she "thought I would
be good at the job." Others agree, including the current president, Barack Obama , who announces at her
convention that she is the most qualified candidate to ever run despite -- Clinton notes --
their disagreement on issues including environmental regulation and an unspecified conflict in
Syria (their respective positions are not detailed; however, my research indicates that Clinton
was widely believed to be "the most progressive candidate" in history, so one imagines that she
disapproved of President Obama's bellicose stance on the issue). But despite her
qualifications, or perhaps due to them, Clinton endures a cruelty and depth of opposition
unlike anything endured by a candidate for the presidency before her.
First, she faces a primary against a disruptive charlatan. Senator Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, she
tells us, but a socialist attempting to "disrupt" the party. Sanders is at once nearly
identical to Clinton on the issues ("because we agreed on so much, Bernie couldn't make an
argument against me in this area on policy, so he had to resort to innuendo and impugning my
character," she writes) and hopelessly reactionary -- a man willing to compromise on Clinton's
key issues of gun violence and racial justice in order to give free "ponies", "magic abs", and
taxpayer-funded college education to rich children. Sanders' supporters are vicious -- Clinton
calls them "Bernie Bros" twice in her book -- and go so far as to boo her at the Democratic
National Convention. Sanders himself, despite campaigning for Clinton (something she graciously
"appreciated"), refused to endorse her for nearly a month after the end of their contest.
Despite Clinton's record and character, Sanders attacked her integrity even after the delegate
math is done. This shameless new anti-Clinton strategy "[paves] the way for Donald Trump's
'Crooked Hillary' campaign" during the general and does "lasting damage" to the party.
None of this compares to what comes next. In a section called "Frustration," Clinton reveals
that it was not only her Republican opponent who she was up against in the general election
last year. Beyond Trump, Clinton must contend with a news media that operates under special
"Clinton rules" designed to make all of her behavior appear nefarious, most notably a server
management issue during her time at the State Department. She is attacked by Republican
congressmen and Senators, who haul her before pointless special committees in order to score
cheap political points on TV. She is "knifed" by FBI director James Comey, whose release of a
damning and unprecedented letter only days before the election costs Clinton essential margins
in several states. Beyond all of this, Clinton faces an unprecedented espionage effort by a man
named Vladimir Putin. Putin, Clinton tells us, has a personal grudge against her born of her
previous work as Secretary of State and in order to keep her from the presidency, he orders
Russian intelligence services to attack her candidacy on all fronts.
The Russians seed propaganda through American social media networks. They steal internal
emails from her campaign and release them at the most damaging possible times. They hack voting
systems and even collaborate directly with members of Trump's campaign. This was an act of war,
Clinton writes, and one cannot help but sense an unspoken anger at President Obama, who knew
what was going on, but chose not to make a public declaration.
In other reviews of What Happened, I have seen the claim that Clinton refuses to take
responsibility for her loss. Perhaps this is in reference to some other book or statement long
since lost to my memory, because in this book, it simply isn't true. In nearly every chapter,
Clinton repeats some version of the idea that the blame for losing the 2016 election rests with
her alone. It is only that given everything else we learn -- given the "tribalism" of the
electorate, the vendetta of the Russians, the opposition that she, like all subversive figures,
faced from even her own state's secret police -- given all of those things and how all of those
things are invariably mentioned either immediately before or immediately after any moment when
Clinton takes responsibility for her defeat, given all of that it is difficult to escape the
impression that while she might take the blame, no reasonable person would put the blame on
Clinton.
Indeed the strangest element of What Happened is the widespread belief, both within and
without the Clinton campaign, that she would win. I can only take her word that this was widely
believed, but it is difficult to fathom. The Clinton I discovered in these pages was a radical.
From the moment she left her position as president of Wellesley's Republican club (a detail she
mentioned, much to my shock, in the book's final pages), Clinton fought relentlessly against
the entrenched, reactionary forces of her nation. As a young woman, she demonstrated against
the imperial war in Vietnam. As an attorney, she was on the front lines against Jim Crow. In
public service, she stood up not only to despots like Vladimir Putin, but to the most powerful
corporations in the United States, proposing redistributive taxes and "truly universal" health
care, even flirting with a guaranteed basic income funded by capital derivatives from
nationalized resource services.
Writing about the decline of American labor solidarity, Clinton writes that "being part of a
union is an important part of someone's personal identity. It helps shape the way you view the
world and think about politics. When that's gone, it means a lot of people stop identifying
primarily as workers -- and voting accordingly -- and start identifying and voting as white,
male, rural, or all of the above." This account of class-consciousness puts Clinton to the left
of even celebrated American essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates. How could anyone be naïve enough to
believe that her victory was guaranteed? She was a radical taking on the establishment and the
establishment is never more vicious than when it is protecting itself from a figure who has
proven herself willing and able to defeat them. For the Clinton of What Happened to win the
Presidency in a country like the United States would have been miraculous. Nothing in the
history I can remember suggests that this was ever likely.
"... Also: "Now she is making what bar-napkin math suggests must be at least $700,000 a night." Since the theatre had 3,500 seats, and the reporter paid $200 for a seat in the top row of the upper balcony, he could be right about Clinton's gross. I'd love a transcript of one of these things . ..."
"Fear and loathing on Hillary Clinton's grievance tour" [
The Week ].
"Why, if you believe that miscellaneous 'Russians' -- at one point she referred to a generic character
named 'Igor,' which is funny if your level of engagement with Russian culture does not extend far
beyond Rocky and Bullwinkle horizons -- bought Twitter ads in the hope of targeting 60-
and 70-something union retirees in Macomb County, Michigan, would you not think you really
won?
Also: "Now she is making what bar-napkin math suggests must be at least $700,000 a night."
Since the theatre had 3,500 seats, and the reporter paid $200 for a seat in the top row of the upper
balcony, he could be right about Clinton's gross. I'd love a transcript of one of these things .
Hillary has achieved Mother Goddess status simply by achieving nothing -- except tons of cash.
The devotees of a cult are by definition deaf, blind and dumb. The deity encourages their fervour
daily by bestowing glamor and celebrity on their dull, everyday lives.
Regarding this piece: "Politics is not all that complicated. It is a game of incentives.
And, right now there is no incentive for Republicans to split from the President" [Amy
Walter, Cook Political Report].
I have to say thank you for putting me on to her writing. To my mind though the most
important point in the piece is this one:
Here's why this matters: Angry people vote. Complacent people sometimes vote and
sometimes don't. And dispirited or disillusioned people stay home.
That is the basics of all victories. If the DNC cared about winning as opposed to
fundraising they would take that to heart. But signing up voters it seems,is just not what
they *do* only slinging tote bags.
Portside article about NAFTA, unions, and Canadian unions: Here is a paragraph from the
underlying article at New York Magazine about the three sponsors:
On Wednesday, Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and Kirsten Gillibrand
announced their agreement -- and introduced legislation to ban "right-to-work" laws
throughout the United States.
[NY Mag article is dated 20 Sept 2017]
The sooner we collectively kill off the feudal idea of "right to work," the better. Right
now, though, we're only what -- sixty, seventy–years too late?
Why didn't Democrats pass legislation in 2009 to eliminate it?
It was one of the few policies that I could think of what would actually, you know, help
the win elections. But then I realized the the purpose of the DNC isn't actually to win
elections, it's to raise money from Wall Street, Hollywood and Silcon Valley to pay for
consultants.
Why didn't Democrats pass legislation in 2009 to eliminate it?
Yeah, Captain Hope'N-Change failed to deliver labor any meaningful legislation during his
eight years in office.
Labor was essentially told "We put some friendly faces on the NLRB and in the judiciary.
Be thankful, and forget about card check or right to work preemption."
And it's a bad look anyway. With the basically insurmountable barriers to organizing under
the Wagner Act these days, a focus on making sure the money keeps flowing, much of it ending
up in the Ds campaign coffers. How about repealing Taft-Hartley?
Maybe unions would be better off with less bureaucracy and more member participation. Do
it like the Wobs: you come to the meeting, you pay your dues, you voice your opinion and you
vote.
The Closed Shop
Jurisdictional Strikes
Secondary Boycotts
Common Situs Picketing
A Ban on Right-to-Work
A Ban on presidential interventions in strikes
Supervisor's Unions
Employer Nuetrality
Hopefully this happens before I die. I would absolutely love to see the yacht and learjet
owning class in tears!
They not only write themselves they've already been written and burned into the brain.
True or not, there they are. So what are you risking?
The thing is the D-time is well past the point (no House, no Senate, no Pres, vanishing
amount of Govs, vanishing amount of State leges..) where saying "That's not true!!" can be
considered a winning strategy, even if you could show me what you've won by saying it.
How about "hell yeah that's how we feel, America rocked (when we had strong labor)". Stand
up to the bully for once, again whaddya got to lose now. I often wonder what Steve Gilliard
would say at this point, he always made sure that us white people realized that something was
better than nothing when you were looking at absolutely nothing at all . but things have sunk
so low would he still feel that what has become nothing more than an orderly, but continuous
retreat should be sustained? Or is it time to dig in and really declare full throated
opposition?
(like the rest of your post, just think the time to avoid things is past)
Henry Moon Pie: So? Let's repeal the Wagner Act and Taft-Hartley. And let's not pre-defeat
ourselves.
Just as Lambert keeps reminding us, Who would have though five years ago that the momentum
is now toward single-payer health insurance even if the current couple of bills don't pass?
For years, John Conyers carried on the fight almost single-handedly. And now we have
influential physicians stumping for single-payer.
"... For Donald Trump, all attempts to gain a foothold in the USSR and then in Russia in 30 years of travel and negotiations failed. Moscow did not have a Trump Tower of its own, although Trump boasted every time that he had met the most important people and was just about to invest hundreds of millions in a project that would undoubtedly be successful. ..."
"... Trumps' largest business success in Russia was the presentation of a Trump Vodka at the Millionaire Fair 2007 in Moscow. This project was also a cleansing; In 2009 the sale of Trump Vodka was discontinued. ..."
"... puts his name on stuff ..."
"... (2) Zhirinovsky Is The Very Last Person Putin Would Use For A Proxy ..."
"... Such a delicate plan – to reach the election of a President of the US by means of Zhirinovsky – ensures a skeptical smile for every Russian at best. He is already seventy and has been at the head of a party with a misleading name for nearly thirty years. The Liberal Democratic Party is neither liberal nor democratic. If their policies are somehow characterized, then as right-wing populism. Zhirinovsky is known for shrill statements; He threatened, for example, to destroy the US by means of "gravitational weapons". ..."
"... Why Would Russian Intelligence Agencies Sources Have Talked to Steele? ..."
"... But the report, published on the BuzzFeed Internet portal, is full of inconsistencies and contradictions. The problem is not even that there are a lot of false facts. Even the assumption that agents of the Russian secret services are discussing the details with a former secretary of a hostile secret service in the midst of a highly secret operation by which a future President of the US is to be discredited appears strange. ..."
"... Exactly. For the intelligence community and Democrat reliance on Steele's dossier to be plausible, you have to assume 10-foot tall Russkis (1) with incredibly sophisticated strategic, operational, and technical capabilities, who have (2) performed the greatest intelligence feat of the 21st and ..."
"... Donald Trump went on Howard Stern for, like, decades. The stuff that's right out there for whoever wants to roll those tapes is just as "compromising" as anything in the dodgy dossier, or the "grab her by the pussy" tape, for that matter. As Kowaljow points out, none of it was mortally wounding to Trump; after all, if you're a volatility voter who wants to kick over the table in a rigged game, you don't care about the niceties. ..."
"... transition ..."
"... And that's before we get to ObamaCare, financial regulation, gutting or owning the CIA (which Trump needs to do, and fast), trade policy, NATO, China, and a myriad of other stories, all rich with human interest, powerful narratives, and plenty of potential for scandal. Any one of them worthy of A1 coverage, just like the Inaugural crowd size dogpile that's been going on for days. ..."
"... Instead, the press seems to be reproducing the last gasps of the Clinton campaign, which were all about the evils of Trump, the man. That tactic failed the Clinton campaign, again because volatility voters weren't concerned with the niceties. And the same tactic is failing the press now. ..."
In any case, a link to the following story in Hamburg's ridiculously sober-sided Die Zeit came
over the transom:
So schockiert von Trump wie alle anderen ("So shocked by Trump like everyone else"). The reporter
is Alexej Kowaljow
, a Russian journalist based in Moscow. Before anyone goes "ZOMG! The dude is Russian
!", everything Kowaljow writes is based on open sources or common-sense information presumably available
to citizens of any nation. The bottom line for me is that if the world is coming to believe that
Americans are idiots, it's not necessarily because Americans elected Trump as President.
I'm going to lay out two claims and two questions from Kowaljow's piece. In each case, I'll quote
the conventional, Steele and intelligence community-derived wisdom in our famously free press, and
then I'll quote Kowaljow. I think Kowaljow wins each time. Easily. I don't think Google Translate
handles irony well, but I sense that Kowaljow is deploying it freely.
(1) Trump's Supposed Business Dealings in Russia Are Commercial Puffery
Here's
the
section on Russia in Time's article on Trump's business dealings; it's representative. I'm going
to quote it all so you can savor it. Read it carefully.
Donald Trump's Many, Many Business Dealings in 1 Map
Russia
"For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia," Trump
tweeted
in July, one day before he called on the country to "find" a batch of emails deleted from
Hillary Clinton's private server. Nonetheless, Russia's extraordinary meddling in the 2016 U.S.
election-a declassified report released by U.S. intelligence agencies in January disclosed that
intercepted conversations captured senior Russian officials celebrating Trump's win-as well as
Trump's complimentary remarks about Russian President have stirred widespread questions about
the President-elect's pursuit of closer ties with Moscow. Several members of Trump's inner circle
have business links to Russia, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who
consulted for pro-Russia politicians in the Ukraine. Former foreign policy adviser Carter
Page worked in Russia and
maintains ties there.
During the presidential transition, former Georgia Congressman and Trump campaign surrogate
Jack Kingston
told a gathering of businessmen in Moscow that the President-elect could lift U.S. sanctions.
According to his own son, Trump has long relied on Russian customers as a source of income.
"Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Donald Trump
Jr.
told a Manhattan real estate conference in 2008 , according to an account posted on the website
of trade publication eTurboNews. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
Back to map .
Read that again, if you can stand it. Do you see the name of an actual business, owned by Trump?
Do you see the name of any businessperson who closed a deal with Trump? Do you, in fact, see any
reporting at all? At most, you see commercial puffery by Trump the Younger: "Russians [in Russia?]
make up a pretty [qualifier] disproportionate [whatever that means] cross-section [whatever that
means] of a lot of [qualifier] our assets."
Now Kowaljow (via Google Translate, so forgive any solecisms):
For Donald Trump, all attempts to gain a foothold in the USSR and then in Russia in 30
years of travel and negotiations failed. Moscow did not have a Trump Tower of its own, although
Trump boasted every time that he had met the most important people and was just about to invest
hundreds of millions in a project that would undoubtedly be successful.
Trumps' largest business success in Russia was the presentation of a Trump Vodka at the
Millionaire Fair 2007 in Moscow. This project was also a cleansing; In 2009 the sale of Trump
Vodka was discontinued.
Because think about it: Trump puts his name on stuff . Towers in Manhattan, hotels, casinos,
golf courses, steaks. Anything in Russia with Trump's name on it? Besides the failed vodka venture?
No? Case closed, then.
(2) Zhirinovsky Is The Very Last Person Putin Would Use For A Proxy
Five reasons intel community believes Russia interfered in election
The attacks dovetailed with other Russian disinformation campaigns
The report covers more than just the hacking effort. It also contains a detailed list account
of information warfare against the United States from Russia through other means.
Political party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who the report lists as a "pro-Kremlin proxy,"
said before the election that, if Trump won, Russia would 'drink champagne' to celebrate their
new ability to advance in Syria and Ukraine.
Now Kowaljow:
The report of the American intelligence services on the Russian interference in the US elections,
published at the beginning of January, was notoriously neglected by Russians, because the name
of Vladimir Zhirinovsky was mentioned among the "propaganda activities of Russia", which had announced
that in the event of an election victory of Trump champagne to want to drink.
Such a delicate plan – to reach the election of a President of the US by means of Zhirinovsky
– ensures a skeptical smile for every Russian at best. He is already seventy and has been at the
head of a party with a misleading name for nearly thirty years. The Liberal Democratic Party is
neither liberal nor democratic. If their policies are somehow characterized, then as right-wing
populism. Zhirinovsky is known for shrill statements; He threatened, for example, to destroy the
US by means of "gravitational weapons".
If, therefore, the Kremlin had indeed had the treacherous plan of helping Trump to power, it
would scarcely have been made known about Zhirinovsky.
The American equivalent would be. Give me a moment to think of an American politician who's both
so delusional and such a laughingstock that no American President could possibly
consider using them as a proxy in a devilishly complex informational warfare campaign Sara Palin?
Anthony Weiner? Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Na ga happen.
And now to the two questions.
(3) Why Would Russian Intelligence Agencies Sources Have Talked to Steele?
Kowaljow:
But the report, published on the BuzzFeed Internet portal, is full of inconsistencies and
contradictions. The problem is not even that there are a lot of false facts. Even the assumption
that agents of the Russian secret services are discussing the details with a former secretary
of a hostile secret service in the midst of a highly secret operation by which a future President
of the US is to be discredited appears strange.
Exactly. For the intelligence community and Democrat reliance on Steele's dossier to be plausible,
you have to assume 10-foot tall Russkis (1) with incredibly sophisticated strategic, operational,
and technical capabilities, who have (2) performed the greatest intelligence feat of the 21st
and 20th centuries, suborning the President of the United States, and whose intelligence agencies
are (3) leakly like a sieve. Does that make sense? (Of course, the devilish Russkis could have fed
Steele bad data, knowing he'd then feed it to the American intelligence agencies, who would lap it
up, but that's another narrative.)
(4) How Do You Compromise the Uncompromisable?
Funny how suddenly the word kompromat was everywhere, wasn't it? So sophisticated. Everybody
loves to learn a new word! Regarding the "Golden Showers" - more sophistication! - Kowaljow writes:
But even if such a compromise should exist, what sense should it have, since the most piquant
details have long been publicly discussed in public, and had no effect on the votes of the elected
president? Like all the other scandals trumps, which passed through the election campaign, they
also remained unresolved, including those who were concerned about sex.
This also includes what is known as a compromise, compromising material, that is, video shots
of the unsightly nature, which can destroy both the political career and the life of a person.
The word Kompromat shines today – as in the past Perestroika – in all headlines; It was not invented
in Russia, of course. But in Russia in the Yeltsin era, when the great clans in the power gave
bitter fights and intensively used the media, works of this kind have ended more than just a brilliant
career. General Prosecutor Jurij Skuratov was dismissed after a video had been shown in the country-wide
television channels: There, a person "who looks like the prosecutor's office" had sex with two
prostitutes.
Donald Trump went on Howard Stern for, like, decades. The stuff that's right out there for
whoever wants to roll those tapes is just as "compromising" as anything in the dodgy dossier, or
the "grab her by the pussy" tape, for that matter. As Kowaljow points out, none of it was mortally
wounding to Trump; after all, if you're a volatility voter who wants to kick over the table in a
rigged game, you don't care about the niceties.
Conclusion
It would be nice, wouldn't it, if our famously free press was actually covering the Trump
transition , instead of acting like their newsrooms are mountain redoubts for an irrendentist
Clinton campaign. It would be nice, for example, to know:
The content and impact of Trump's Executive Orders.
Ditto, regulations.
Personnel decisions below the Cabinet level. Who are the Flexians?
Obama policies that will remain in place, because both party establishments support them.
Charters, for example.
Republican inroads in Silicon Valley.
The future of the IRS, since Republicans have an axe to grind with it.
Mismatch between State expectations for infrastructure and Trump's implementation
And that's before we get to ObamaCare, financial regulation, gutting or owning the CIA (which
Trump needs to do, and fast), trade policy, NATO, China, and a myriad of other stories, all rich
with human interest, powerful narratives, and plenty of potential for scandal. Any one of them worthy
of A1 coverage, just like the Inaugural crowd size dogpile that's been going on for days.
Instead, the press seems to be reproducing the last gasps of the Clinton campaign, which were
all about the evils of Trump, the man. That tactic failed the Clinton campaign, again because volatility
voters weren't concerned with the niceties. And the same tactic is failing the press now. Failing
unless, of course, you're the sort of sleaze merchant who
downsizes the newsroom because, hey, it's all about the clicks.
"... BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said Mr Steele had previously been an intelligence officer - rather than agent - in MI6, who would have run a team of agents as an intelligence gatherer. ..."
"... Intelligence agencies considered the claims relevant enough to brief both Mr Trump and President Obama last week. ..."
"... But the allegations have not been independently substantiated or verified and some details have been challenged as incorrect by those who are mentioned. ..."
"... Mr Trump himself was briefed about the existence of the allegations by the US intelligence community last week but has since described them as fake news, accusing the US intelligence services of leaking the dossier. ..."
An ex-MI6 officer who is believed to have prepared memos claiming Russia has compromising material
on US President-elect Donald Trump is now in hiding, the BBC understands.
Christopher Steele, who runs a London-based intelligence firm, is believed to have left his home
this week.
The memos contain unsubstantiated claims that Russian security officials have compromising material
on Mr Trump.
The US president-elect said the claims were "fake news" and "phoney stuff".
Mr Steele has been widely named as the author of a series of memos - which have been published
as a dossier in some US media - containing extensive allegations about Mr Trump's personal life and
his campaign's relationship with the Russian state.
... ... ...
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said Mr Steele had previously been an intelligence officer
- rather than agent - in MI6, who would have run a team of agents as an intelligence gatherer.
However, as Mr Steele was now working in the private sector, our correspondent said, there was
"probably a fair bit of money involved" in the commissioning of the reports.
He said there was no evidence to substantiate the allegations and it was still possible the dossier
had been based on what "people had said" about Mr Trump "without any proof".
Donald J. Tump Twit
@realDonaldTrump
James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally
circulated. Made up, phony facts. Too bad!
... ... ...
Obama briefing
The 35-page dossier on Mr Trump - which is believed to have been commissioned initially by Republicans
opposed to Mr Trump - has been circulating in Washington for some time.
Media organisations, uncertain of its credibility, initially held back from publication. However,
the entire series of reports has now been posted online, with Mr Steele named as the author.
Intelligence agencies considered the claims relevant enough to brief both Mr Trump and President
Obama last week.
But the allegations have not been independently substantiated or verified and some details have
been challenged as incorrect by those who are mentioned.
Mr Trump himself was briefed about the existence of the allegations by the US intelligence community
last week but has since described them as fake news, accusing the US intelligence services of leaking
the dossier.
So guardian clearly supports Steele dossier. Nice... So the guy clearly tried to influence
the US election and Guardian neoliberal honchos and their Russophobic presstitutes (like Luke
Harding) are OK with it. They just complain about Russian influence. British elite hypocrisy in action...
Notable quotes:
"... Published in January by BuzzFeed , the dossier suggested that Donald Trump's team had colluded with Russian intelligence before the US election to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign. Citing unidentified sources, it said Trump had been "compromised" by Russia's FSB spy agency during a trip to Moscow in 2013. ..."
"... Trump dismissed the dossier as fake news and said Steele was a "failed spy". Vladimir Putin also rejected the dossier. His spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed Russia did not collect kompromat – compromising material – on Trump or anyone else. ..."
"... As head of MI6's Russia desk, Steele led the inquiry into Litvinenko's polonium poisoning, quickly concluding that this was a Russian state plot. He did not meet Litvinenko and was not his case officer, friends said. ..."
Christopher Steele speaks publicly for first time since the file was revealed and thanks
supporters for 'kind messages'
The former MI6 agent behind the
controversial Trump dossier has returned to work, nearly two months after its publication caused
an international scandal and furious denials from Washington and Moscow.
Christopher Steele posed for a photograph outside the office of his business intelligence company
Orbis in Victoria, London on Tuesday. Speaking for the first time since his
dossier was revealed , Steele said he had received messages of support.
"I'm now going to be focusing my efforts on supporting the broader interests of our company here,"
he told the Press Association. "I'd like to say a warm thank you to everyone who sent me kind messages
and support over the last few weeks."
Steele, who left British intelligence in 2009 and co-founded Orbis with an MI6 colleague, said
he would not comment substantively on the contents of the dossier: "Just to add, I won't be making
any further statements or comments at this time."
Published in January by BuzzFeed , the dossier suggested that Donald Trump's team had colluded
with Russian intelligence before the US election to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign. Citing unidentified
sources, it said Trump had been "compromised" by Russia's FSB spy agency during a trip to Moscow
in 2013.
It alleged that Trump was secretly videoed with Russian prostitutes in a suite in the Ritz-Carlton
hotel in Moscow. The prostitutes allegedly urinated on the bed used by Barack Obama during a presidential
visit.
Trump dismissed the dossier as fake news and said Steele was a "failed spy". Vladimir Putin
also rejected the dossier. His spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed
Russia did not collect
kompromat – compromising material – on Trump or anyone else.
Steele's friends say he has been keen to go back to work for some weeks. They insist he has not
been in hiding but has been keeping a low profile to avoid paparazzi who have been camped outside
his family home in Surrey.
Several of the lurid stories about him that have appeared in the press have been wrong, said friends.
The stories include claims that Steele met Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian dissident who was murdered
in 2006 with a radioactive cup of tea,
probably on Putin's orders .
As head of MI6's Russia desk, Steele led the inquiry into Litvinenko's polonium poisoning,
quickly concluding that this was a Russian state plot. He did not meet Litvinenko and was not his
case officer, friends said.
Is this CIA against Hillary Clinton. Did she cross some red line ? Why this revelation
happened now? What changed in deep state to allow such a revelation to surface.
Notable quotes:
"... Though neither the DNC nor the Clinton campaign worked directly with former British spy Christopher Steele as he compiled the document, the fact that Democrats funded the dossier – which includes information primarily gleaned from sources in Russia – ironically suggests the Democrats indirectly leveraged Russian sources to try and spread information of dubious veracity about a political opponent to try and sway an election ..."
"... Even though the scandalous accusations contained within the dossier weren't made public until after the vote, presumably waiting to see what foot the shoe would end up on, this would've provided serious grist for the collusion narrative, which we imagine would've been stretched to include the entire Republican establishment as accomplices. ..."
"... While it's impossible to determine exactly how much money was spent on the dossier, the Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie – the law firm of Clinton superattorney Marc Elias - $5.6 million in legal fees from June 2015 to December 2016, according to campaign finance records, and the DNC paid the firm $3.6 million in "legal and compliance consulting'' since Nov. 2015. Some of that money was presumably used to pay for the dossier. ..."
"... Steele previously worked in Russia for British intelligence. The dossier, which was primarily compiled in Moscow, is a compilation of reports Steele prepared for Fusion. Allegations contained in the dossier included claims the Russian government collected compromising information about Trump and the Kremlin was engaged in an active effort to assist his campaign for president. ..."
"... House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Dunes has tried to compel Fusion's founders to disclose who paid for the dossier, but all three of them pled the fifth during public testimony last week. Nunes has also tried subpoenaing the firm's bank records. ..."
"... The most salacious accusations contained in the dossier have not been verified, and may never be. Still, after the election, the FBI agreed to pay Steele to continue gathering intelligence about Trump and Russia, but the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele was publicly identified in news reports ..."
Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton
campaign jointly financed the creation of the infamous "Trump dossier," which helped inspire
the launch of the floundering investigations into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the
Russians.
Though neither the DNC nor the Clinton campaign worked directly with former British spy
Christopher Steele as he compiled the document, the fact that Democrats funded the dossier
– which includes information primarily gleaned from sources in Russia – ironically
suggests the Democrats indirectly leveraged Russian sources to try and spread information of
dubious veracity about a political opponent to try and sway an election.
Sound familiar?
Even though the scandalous accusations contained within the dossier weren't made public
until after the vote, presumably waiting to see what foot the shoe would end up on, this
would've provided serious grist for the collusion narrative, which we imagine would've been
stretched to include the entire Republican establishment as accomplices.
While it's impossible to determine exactly how much money was spent on the dossier, the
Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie – the law firm of Clinton superattorney Marc Elias -
$5.6 million in legal fees from June 2015 to December 2016, according to campaign finance
records, and the DNC paid the firm $3.6 million in "legal and compliance consulting'' since
Nov. 2015. Some of that money was presumably used to pay for the dossier.
Fusion GPS's work researching Trump began during the Republican presidential primaries when
an unidentified GOP donor reportedly hired the firm to dig into Trump's background. The
Republicans who were involved in the early stages of Fusion's efforts have not yet been
identified. Fusion GPS did not start off looking at Trump's Russia ties, but quickly realized
that those relationships would be a fruitful place to start,
WaPo reported.
Steele previously worked in Russia for British intelligence. The dossier, which was
primarily compiled in Moscow, is a compilation of reports Steele prepared for Fusion.
Allegations contained in the dossier included claims the Russian government collected
compromising information about Trump and the Kremlin was engaged in an active effort to assist
his campaign for president.
Fusion turned over Steele's reports and other research documents to Elias, and it's unclear
how much of it he shared with the campaign.
The revelation about who funded the dossier comes just days after Trump tweeted that the FBI
and DOJ should publicly reveal who hired Fusion GPS. And lo and behold, that information has
now been made public.
Officials behind the now discredited "Dossier" plead the Fifth. Justice Department and/or
FBI should immediately release who paid for it.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Dunes has tried to compel Fusion's founders to
disclose who paid for the dossier, but all three of them pled the fifth during public testimony
last week. Nunes has also tried subpoenaing the firm's bank records.
The most salacious accusations contained in the dossier have not been verified, and may
never be. Still, after the election, the FBI agreed to pay Steele to continue gathering
intelligence about Trump and Russia, but the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele
was publicly identified in news reports. Officials also decided to withhold information from
the dossier in an intelligence community report published in January alleging that Russian
entities had tried to sway the US election on behalf of the Russian government.
Of course, we still don't know who leaked the dossier to Buzzfeed and CNN back in January.
John McCain – one of the primary suspects – has repeatedly denied it, and Fusion
GPS has said in court documents that it didn't share the document with Buzzfeed. However, we do
known that in early January, then-FBI Director James B. Comey presented a two-page summary of
Steele's dossier to President Barack Obama and President-elect Trump.
It therefore strongly suggests that it was the FBI that was instrumental in spreading the
dossier to the media, most of which was too embarrassed to publish it until Buzzfeed came along
and did it... for the clicks.
So to summarize:
Hillary Clinton and the DNC paid to uncover and package dirt, whether factual or not, on
Trump which eventually found its way in the Trump dossier
In doing so, the Clintons and the DNC were effectively collaborating with "deep" sources,
both among the UK spy apparatus and inside Russia
Once Trump won, the FBI was instrumental in "leaking" the dossier to the mainstream media
and select still unknown recipients (the same way Comey "leaked" his personal notebooks just
a few months later, following his termination, to launch a probe of Trump).
The former head of the FBI who was supposed to probe Clinton's State Department - and the
Clinton Foundation - for a bribery and kickback scheme involving Russia's U.S. nuclear
business, is now investigating Trump for Russia collusion instead
But wait, it gets better: as Ken Vogel, formerly the chief investigative reporter at
Politico and currently at the NY Times just reported, " When I tried to report this story,
Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously, saying "You (or your sources)
are wrong."
When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back
vigorously, saying "You (or your sources) are wrong." https://t.co/B5BZwoaNhI
Another NYT reporter, Maggie Haberman, confirmed as much saying " Folks involved in
funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year ", and by folks she ultimately
means Hillary Clinton herself.
Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year https://t.co/vXKRV1wRJc
Which in light of the latest news suggests that Clinton was lying, which is not
surprising, especially when considering the recent "revelations" that the Clintons may
themselves have been involved in collusion with Russia over the infamous uranium deal.
Which brings us to the questionable role played by the FBI in all of this, and
ultimately, the role still being played by Robert Mueller. Here is the WSJ
,
Let's give plausible accounts of the known facts, then explain why demands that Robert
Mueller recuse himself from the Russia investigation may not be the fanciful partisan
grandstanding you imagine.
Here's a story consistent with what has been reported in the press -- how reliably
reported is uncertain. Democratic political opponents of Donald Trump financed a British
former spook who spread money among contacts in Russia, who in turn over drinks solicited
stories from their supposedly "connected" sources in Moscow. If these people were really
connected in any meaningful sense, then they made sure the stories they spun were
consistent with the interests of the regime, if not actually scripted by the regime. The
resulting Trump dossier then became a factor in Obama administration decisions to launch an
FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign , and after the election to
trumpet suspicions of Trump collusion with Russia.
We know of a second, possibly even more consequential way the FBI was effectively a
vehicle for Russian meddling in U.S. politics. Authoritative news reports say FBI chief
James Comey's intervention in the Hillary Clinton email matter was prompted by a Russian
intelligence document that his colleagues suspected was a Russian plant.
OK, Mr. Mueller was a former close colleague and leader but no longer part of the FBI
when these events occurred. This may or may not make him a questionable person to lead a
Russia-meddling investigation in which the FBI's own actions are necessarily a concern. But
now we come to the Rosatom disclosures last week in The Hill, a newspaper that covers
Congress.
Here's another story as plausible as we can make it based on credible reporting. After
the Cold War, in its own interest, the U.S. wanted to build bridges to the Russian nuclear
establishment. The Putin government, for national or commercial purposes, agreed and sought
to expand its nuclear business in the U.S.
Ah yes, the Clinton's own Russia collusion narrative which recently emerged to the
surface and which as of today is
being investigated by the House :
The purchase and consolidation of certain assets were facilitated by Canadian
entrepreneurs who gave large sums to the Clinton Foundation, and perhaps arranged a Bill
Clinton speech in Moscow for $500,000. A key transaction had to be approved by Hillary
Clinton's State Department.
Now we learn that, before and during these transactions, the FBI had uncovered a bribery
and kickback scheme involving Russia's U.S. nuclear business, and also received reports of
Russian officials seeking to curry favor through donations to the Clinton Foundation
This criminal activity was apparently not disclosed to agencies vetting the 2010
transfer of U.S. commercial nuclear assets to Russia . The FBI made no move to break up the
scheme until long after the transaction closed. Only five years later, the Justice
Department, in 2015, disclosed a plea deal with the Russian perpetrator so quietly that its
significance was missed until The Hill reported on the FBI investigation last week.
As the WSJ correctly notes, " for anyone who cares to look, the real problem here is
that the FBI itself is so thoroughly implicated in the Russia meddling story ."
Which then shifts the focus to the person who was, and again is, in charge of it all:
former FBI director, and current special prosecutor Robert Mueller:
The agency, when Mr. Mueller headed it, soft-pedaled an investigation highly
embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton as well as the Obama Russia reset policy . More recently, if
just one of two things is true -- Russia sponsored the Trump Dossier, or Russian fake
intelligence prompted Mr. Comey's email intervention -- then Russian operations, via their
impact on the FBI, influenced and continue to influence our politics in a way far more
consequential than any Facebook ad, the preoccupation of John McCain, who apparently cannot
behold a mountain if there's a molehill anywhere nearby.
Which means that Mr. Mueller has the means, motive and opportunity to obfuscate and
distract from matters embarrassing to the FBI, while pleasing a large part of the political
spectrum. He need only confine his focus to the flimsy, disingenuous but popular (with the
media) accusation that the shambolic Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
Mr. Mueller's tenure may not have bridged the two investigations, but James Comey's, Rod
Rosenstein's , Andrew Weissmann's , and Andrew McCabe's did. Mr. Rosenstein appointed Mr.
Mueller as special counsel. Mr. Weissmann now serves on Mr. Mueller's team. Mr. McCabe
remains deputy FBI director. All were involved in the nuclear racketeering matter and the
Russia meddling matter.
The punchline: it's not the Clintons that should be looked at, at least not at first -
their time will come. It's the FBI:
By any normal evidentiary, probative or journalistic measure, the big story here is the
FBI -- its politicized handling of Russian matters, and not competently so. To put it
bluntly, whatever its hip-pocket rationales along the way, the FBI would not have so much
to cover up now if it had not helped give us Mrs. Clinton as Democratic nominee and then,
in all likelihood, inadvertently helped Mr. Trump to the presidency
We eagerly look forward to Trump's furious tweetstorm once he learns of all of this...
and how long before he fires Mueller, in this case with cause.
Another day, another scandal in Washington, DC. Simultaneous opening of inquires that are designed to hurt Hillary and Bill were
complete surprise.
Why now? There was some change on deep state level that is now reflected in this news. Suddenly Uranium 1 scandal comes into the
forfront. And along with Steele dossier it is damaging to Clinton. Were Clintons "Weinsteinalized"? Should be expect "50 women"
phenomena
to be replayed.
There is some storm hitting the US "deep state". The reasons for this storm remains hidden. But attempt of Clintons to preserve
their leadership in Democratic Party after Hillary fiasco in 2016 now are again became questionable.>
Notable quotes:
"... Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier - The Washington Post The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump's connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said. ..."
"... After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ..."
"... Fusion GPS gave Steele's reports and other research documents to Elias, the people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear how or how much of that information was shared with the campaign and the DNC and who in those organizations was aware of the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele ..."
Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier - The Washington Post The Hillary Clinton campaign and
the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President
Trump's connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.
Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the
research.
After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI
and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before
that agreement, Fusion GPS's research into Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS's research through the end of October 2016,
days before Election Day.
Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele compiled the dossier on President Trump's alleged ties to Russia. (Victoria
Jones/AP)
Fusion GPS gave Steele's reports and other research documents to Elias, the people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear
how or how much of that information was shared with the campaign and the DNC and who in those organizations was aware of the roles
of Fusion GPS and Steele. One person close to the matter said the campaign and the DNC were not informed by the law firm of
Fusion GPS's role.
"... With the U.S. government offering tens of millions of dollars to combat Russian "propaganda and disinformation," it's perhaps not surprising that we see "researchers" such as Jonathan Albright of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University making the absurd accusation that the Russians have "basically turned [the Internet] into a sewer." ..."
"... I've been operating on the Internet since 1995 and I can assure you that the Internet has always been "a sewer" -- in that it has been home to crazy conspiracy theories, ugly personal insults, click-bait tabloid "news," and pretty much every vile prejudice you can think of. Whatever some Russians may or may not have done in buying $100,000 in ads on Facebook (compared to its $27 billion in annual revenue) or opening 201 Twitter accounts (out of Twitter's 328 million monthly users), the Russians are not responsible for the sewage coursing through the Internet. ..."
"... Even former Clinton political strategist Mark Penn has acknowledged the absurdity of thinking that such piddling amounts could have any impact on a $2.4 billion presidential campaign, plus all the billions of dollars worth of free-media attention to the conventions, debates, etc. Based on what's known about the Facebook ads, Penn calculated that "the actual electioneering [in battleground states] amounts to about $6,500." ..."
"... In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday, Penn added, "I have 40 years of experience in politics, and this Russian ad buy mostly after the election anyway, simply does not add up to a carefully targeted campaign to move voters. It takes tens of millions of dollars to deliver meaningful messages to the contested portion of the electorate." ..."
"... Occasionally, the U.S. mainstream media even acknowledges that fact. For instance, last November, The New York Times, which was then flogging the Russia-linked "fake news" theme , ran a relatively responsible article about a leading "fake news" Web site that the Times tracked down. It turned out to be an entrepreneurial effort by an unemployed Georgian student using a Web site in Tbilisi to make some money by promoting pro-Trump stories, whether true or not. ..."
"... The owner of the Web site, 22-year-old Beqa Latsabidse, said he had initially tried to push stories favorable to Hillary Clinton but that proved unprofitable so he switched to publishing anti-Clinton and pro-Trump articles, including made-up stories. In other words, the Times found no Russian connection. ..."
"... But the even larger Internet problem is that many "reputable" news sites, such as AOL, lure readers into clicking on some sensationalistic or misleading headline, which takes readers to a story that is often tabloid trash or an extreme exaggeration of what the headline promised. ..."
"... This reality about the Internet should be the larger context in which the Russia-gate story plays out, the miniscule nature of this Russian "meddling" even if these "suspected links to Russia" – as the Times initially described the 470 Facebook pages – turn out to be true. ..."
"... And, there is the issue of who decides what's true. PolitiFact continues to defend its false claim that Hillary Clinton was speaking the truth when – in referencing leaked Democratic emails last October – she claimed that the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies "have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election." ..."
"... That claim was always untrue because a reference to a consensus of the 17 intelligence agencies suggests a National Intelligence Estimate or similar product that seeks the judgments of the entire intelligence community. No NIE or community-wide study was ever done on this topic. ..."
"... Only later – in January 2017 – did a small subset of the intelligence community, what Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described as "hand-picked" analysts from three agencies – the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation – issue an "assessment" blaming the Russians while acknowledging a lack of actual evidence . ..."
"... In other words, the Jan. 6 "assessment" was comparable to the "stovepiped" intelligence that influenced many of the mistaken judgments of President George W. Bush's administration. In "stovepiped" intelligence, a selected group of analysts is closeted away and develops judgments without the benefit of other experts who might offer contradictory evidence or question the groupthink. ..."
Exclusive: As the Russia-gate hysteria spirals down from the implausible to the absurd,
almost every bad thing is blamed on the Russians, even how they turned the previously pristine
Internet into a "sewer," reports Robert Parry.
With the U.S. government offering tens of
millions of dollars to combat Russian "propaganda and disinformation," it's perhaps not
surprising that we see "researchers" such as Jonathan Albright of the Tow Center for Digital
Journalism at Columbia University making the absurd accusation that the Russians have
"basically turned [the Internet] into a sewer."
I've been operating on the Internet since 1995 and I can assure you that the Internet
has always been "a sewer" -- in that it has been home to crazy conspiracy theories, ugly
personal insults, click-bait tabloid "news," and pretty much every vile prejudice you can think
of. Whatever some Russians may or may not have done in buying $100,000 in ads on Facebook
(compared to its $27 billion in annual revenue) or opening 201 Twitter accounts (out of
Twitter's 328 million monthly users), the Russians are not responsible for the sewage coursing
through the Internet.
Americans, Europeans, Asians, Africans and pretty much every other segment of the world's
population didn't need Russian help to turn the Internet into an informational "sewer." But, of
course, fairness and proportionality have no place in today's Russia-gate frenzy.
After all, your "non-governmental organization" or your scholarly "think tank" is not likely
to get a piece of
the $160 million that the U.S. government authorized last December to counter primarily
Russian "propaganda and disinformation" if you explain that the Russians are at most
responsible for a tiny trickle of "sewage" compared to the vast rivers of "sewage" coming from
many other sources.
If you put the Russia-gate controversy in context, you also are not likely to have your
"research"
cited by The Washington Post as Albright did on Thursday because he supposedly found some
links at the home-décor/fashion site Pinterest to a few articles that derived from a few
of the 470 Facebook accounts and pages that Facebook suspects of having a link to Russia and
shut them down. (To put that 470 number into perspective, Facebook has about two billion
monthly users.)
Albright's full quote about the Russians allegedly exploiting various social media platforms
on the Internet was: "They've gone to every possible medium and basically turned it into a
sewer."
But let's look at the facts. According to Facebook, the suspected "Russian-linked" accounts
purchased $100,000 in ads from 2015 to 2017 (compared to Facebook's annual revenue of about $27
billion), with only 44 percent of those ads appearing before the 2016 election and many having
little or nothing to do with politics, which is curious if the Kremlin's goal was to help elect
Donald Trump and defeat Hillary Clinton.
Even former Clinton political strategist Mark Penn has acknowledged the absurdity of
thinking that such piddling amounts could have any impact on a $2.4 billion presidential
campaign, plus all the billions of dollars worth of free-media attention to the conventions,
debates, etc. Based on what's known about the Facebook ads, Penn calculated that "the actual
electioneering [in battleground states] amounts to about $6,500."
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday, Penn added, "I have 40 years of experience in
politics, and this Russian ad buy mostly after the election anyway, simply does not add up to a
carefully targeted campaign to move voters. It takes tens of millions of dollars to deliver
meaningful messages to the contested portion of the electorate."
Puppies and Pokemon
And, then there is the curious content. According to The New York Times, one of these
"Russian-linked" Facebook groups was dedicated to
photos of "adorable puppies." Of course, the Times tried hard to detect some sinister
motive behind the "puppies" page.
Similarly, CNN went wild over its own
"discovery" that one of the "Russian-linked" pages offered Amazon gift cards to people who
found "Pokémon Go" sites near scenes where police shot unarmed black men -- if you would
name the Pokémon after the victims.
"It's unclear what the people behind the contest hoped to accomplish, though it may have
been to remind people living near places where these incidents had taken place of what had
happened and to upset or anger them," CNN mused, adding:
"CNN has not found any evidence that any Pokémon Go users attempted to enter the
contest, or whether any of the Amazon Gift Cards that were promised were ever awarded -- or,
indeed, whether the people who designed the contest ever had any intention of awarding the
prizes."
So, these dastardly Russians are exploiting "adorable puppies" and want to "remind people"
about unarmed victims of police violence, clearly a masterful strategy to undermine American
democracy or – according to the original Russia-gate narrative – to elect Donald
Trump.
A New York Times article
on Wednesday acknowledged another inconvenient truth that unintentionally added more
perspective to the Russia-gate hysteria.
It turns out that some of the mainstream media's favorite "fact-checking" organizations are
home to Google ads that look like news items and lead readers to phony sites dressed up to
resemble People, Vogue or other legitimate content providers.
"None of the stories were true," the Times reported. "Yet as recently as late last week,
they were being promoted with prominent ads served by Google on PolitiFact and Snopes,
fact-checking sites created precisely to dispel such falsehoods."
There is obvious irony in PolitiFact and Snopes profiting off "fake news" by taking money
for these Google ads. But this reality also underscores the larger reality that fabricated news
articles – whether peddling lies about Melania Trump or a hot new celebrity or outlandish
Russian plots – are driven principally by the profit motive.
The Truth About Fake News
Occasionally, the U.S. mainstream media even acknowledges that fact. For instance, last
November, The New York Times, which was then flogging the
Russia-linked "fake news" theme , ran
a relatively responsible article about a leading "fake news" Web site that the Times
tracked down. It turned out to be an entrepreneurial effort by an unemployed Georgian student
using a Web site in Tbilisi to make some money by promoting pro-Trump stories, whether true or
not.
The owner of the Web site, 22-year-old Beqa Latsabidse, said he had initially tried to push
stories favorable to Hillary Clinton but that proved unprofitable so he switched to publishing
anti-Clinton and pro-Trump articles, including made-up stories. In other words, the Times found
no Russian connection.
The Times article on Wednesday revealed the additional problem of Google ads placed on
mainstream Internet sites leading readers to bogus news sites to get clicks and thus
advertising dollars. And, it turns out that PolitiFact and Snopes were at least unwittingly
profiting off these entrepreneurial ventures by running their ads. Again, there was no claim
here of Russian "links." It was all about good ole American greed.
But the even larger Internet problem is that many "reputable" news sites, such as AOL, lure
readers into clicking on some sensationalistic or misleading headline, which takes readers to a
story that is often tabloid trash or an extreme exaggeration of what the headline promised.
This reality about the Internet should be the larger context in which the Russia-gate story
plays out, the miniscule nature of this Russian "meddling" even if these "suspected links to
Russia" – as the Times initially described the 470 Facebook pages – turn out to be
true.
But there are no lucrative grants going to "researchers" who would put the trickle of
alleged Russian "sewage" into the context of the vast flow of Internet "sewage" that is even
flowing through the esteemed "fact-checking" sites of PolitiFact and Snopes.
There are also higher newspaper sales and better TV ratings if the mainstream media keeps
turning up new angles on Russia-gate, even as some of the old ones fall away as inconsequential
or meaningless (such as the Senate Intelligence Committee dismissing earlier controversies over
Sen. Jeff Sessions's brief meeting with the Russian ambassador at the Mayflower Hotel and minor
changes in the Republican platform).
Saying 'False' Is 'True'
And, there is the issue of who decides what's true. PolitiFact continues to
defend its false claim that Hillary Clinton was speaking the truth when – in
referencing leaked Democratic emails last October – she claimed that the 17 U.S.
intelligence agencies "have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks,
come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our
election."
That claim was always untrue because a reference to a consensus of the 17 intelligence
agencies suggests a National Intelligence Estimate or similar product that seeks the judgments
of the entire intelligence community. No NIE or community-wide study was ever done on this
topic.
Only later – in January 2017 – did a small subset of the intelligence
community, what Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described as
"hand-picked" analysts from three agencies – the Central Intelligence Agency,
National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation – issue an "assessment"
blaming the Russians while acknowledging
a lack of actual evidence .
In other words, the Jan. 6 "assessment" was comparable to the "stovepiped" intelligence
that influenced many of the mistaken judgments of President George W. Bush's administration. In
"stovepiped" intelligence, a selected group of analysts is closeted away and develops judgments
without the benefit of other experts who might offer contradictory evidence or question the
groupthink.
So, in many ways, Clinton's statement was the opposite of true both when she said it in 2016
and later in 2017 when she repeated
it in direct reference to the Jan. 6 assessment. If PolitiFact really cared about facts, it
would have corrected its earlier claim that Clinton was telling the truth, but the
fact-checking organization wouldn't budge -- even after The New York Times and The Associated
Press ran corrections.
In this context, PolitiFact showed its contempt even for conclusive evidence –
testimony from former DNI Clapper (corroborated by former CIA Director John Brennan) that the
17-agency claim was false. Instead, PolitiFact was determined to protect Clinton's false
statement from being described for what it was: false.
Of course, maybe PolitiFact is suffering from the arrogance of its elite status as an
arbiter of truth with its position on Google's First Draft coalition, a collection of
mainstream news outlets and fact-checkers which gets to decide what information is true and
what is not true -- for algorithms that then will exclude or downplay what's deemed
"false."
So, if PolitiFact says something is true – even if it's false – it becomes
"true." Thus, it's perhaps not entirely ironic that PolitiFact would collect money from Google
ads placed on its site by advertisers of fake news.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated
Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen
Narrative, either in print here or
as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com ).
David G , October 18, 2017 at 5:57 pm
I bet the Russians are responsible for all the naked lady internet pictures as well. Damn
you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, for polluting our purity.
TS , October 19, 2017 at 5:43 am
Two-thirds of a century ago, Arthur C. Clarke, who besides being a famous SF author,
conceived the concept of the communications satellite, published a short story in which the
Chinese use satellite broadcasting to flood the USA with porn in order spread moral
degeneracy. Wadya think?
Mr. Mueller! Mr. Mueller! Investigate who the owners of YouPorn are!
It's all a Chinese plot, not a Russian one!
Broompilot , October 19, 2017 at 1:55 pm
I second the motion!
Antiwar7 , October 19, 2017 at 7:48 pm
"Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rainwater, and
only pure-grain alcohol?"
richard vajs , October 20, 2017 at 7:50 am
And Vladimir keeps tempting me with offers of money that he found abandoned in Nigerian
banks and mysteriously bequeathed to me.
This sounds eerily similar to newspeak described by George Orwell "1984" in
Sam F , October 18, 2017 at 7:20 pm
The failure of Russia bashers to rank all nations on FB ads and accounts, proves that they
know they are lying. Random Russians (about 2% of the world population) may have spent 100K
on mostly apolitical ads on FB (about 0.0004%) and may have 470 accounts on FB (about
0.000025%). So Russians have far fewer FB ads and accounts per capita than the average
nation. Probably most developed nations have a higher per capita usage of FB, and many
individuals and companies may have a higher total usage of FB.
The fact that 160 million is spent to dig up phony evidence of Russian influence (totaling
about 0.13% of the investigation cost), proves that such "researchers" are paid liars; they
are the ones who should be prosecuted for subversion of democracy for personal gain.
The fact that all views may be found on internet does not make it a "sewer" because one
can view only what is useful. The Dems and Repubs regard the People as a sewer, because they
believe that power=virtue=money no matter how unethically they get it, to rationalize
oligarchy. They keep the most abusive and implausible ads out of mass media only because no
advertiser wants them, but of course they don't want the truth either.
JWalters , October 18, 2017 at 9:03 pm
Add MSNBC to the sources of sewage on the internet. I checked out MSNBC today, and they
are full-throttle on any kind of Russia-phobia. For those who read somewhat widely, it is
obvious they are not even trying to present a balanced picture of the actual evidence. It is
completely one-sided, and includes the trashiest trash of that one side. Their absolute lack
of integrity matches Fox on its worst days.
As someone who formerly watched MSNBC regularly, I am sickened at the obvious capituation
to the criminal Zionists who own the network. Have these people no decency? Apparently not.
Historians will judge them harshly.
Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 11:28 am
JWalters –
Yes. I completely agree with you. I am beginning to wonder if these people who are
spitting out this trashiest trash at MSNBC from their mouths every day for over a year now
are really sane people. I believe that along with politicians like Adam Schiff, these talk
show hosts have slid into complete madness. The way it is going now, I am afraid that If
these people are not removed, there is a danger of the whole country sliding into some form
of madness.
anonymous , October 20, 2017 at 2:12 pm
"Historians will judge them harshly."
The western civilisation galloped to worldly success on the twin horses of Greed and
Psychopathy. This also provided them the opportunity to write history as they wished.
Are historians judging them harshly now? They are themselves whores to whichever society
they belong to.
Anna , October 19, 2017 at 5:32 pm
Jonathan Albright, the Research Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism,
[email protected] . https://towcenter.org/about/who-we-are/
Mr. Albright is preparing for himself a feathered nest among other presstitutes swarming the
many ziocons' "think tanks," like the viciously russophobic (and unprofessional) Atlantic
Council that employs the ignoramus Eliot Higgins (a former salesman of ladies' underwear and
college dropout) and Dmitry Alperovitch of CrowdStrike fame, a Russophobe and threat to the
US national security
One can be sure that Jonathan Albright knows already all the answers (similar to Judy Miller)
and he is not interested in any proven expertise like the one provided by the Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/
.
Can anyone out there please supply me with a couple of Russian hit pieces that crippled
Hillary´s campaigne. Just askin, because I have never seen one.
Michael K Rohde , October 18, 2017 at 8:29 pm
You obviously haven't looked hard enough. I just finished the book "Shattered" and she had
no problem blaming the Russians when the emails of Podesta came out in the summer. It took
her a day or 2 to figure out that she couldn't blame the Arabs so the Russians were next up.
How could you have missed it?
Sam F , October 18, 2017 at 9:38 pm
He is likely asking for ads from Russia that actually could have served as "hit pieces"
against Clinton, versus her accusations.
I fear we must set aside our sarcasm and understand that this entire Russian narrative has
the ultimate goal of silencing any oppositional news sources to the corporate media. When we
hear that Facebook is seeking to hire people with national security clearances, which is made
to sound as if it's a good, responsible reaction to the "Russian ads" and is cheered on by
people who should know better, we need to get our tongues out of our cheeks and stay
alert.
A good friend, who is an activist battling the fracking industry in Colorado and blogging
about it, was urging people this week to sign petitions demanding more censorship on Facebook
to "prevent Russian propaganda." When I pointed out that, based on the Jan. 6 "report," which
condemned RT America for "criticizing the fracking industry" as proof it was a propaganda
organ, her blog is Russian propaganda. Did that change her mind? Nope. Her response was in
the category of "Better safe."
So, it appears Russia is not replacing "Muslim terrorists" as the "great danger" our
beloved and benevolent government must ask us to hand over our rights to combat. And people
who can't seem to get it through their heads the government is NOT their friend are marching
in lock-step to agree because it never occurs to them they, too, are a target.
Sam F , October 18, 2017 at 7:39 pm
Yes, the purpose of Russia bashing is to distract from the revelations of DNC corruption
by oligarchy (top ten Clinton donors all zionists), attack leakers as opponents of oligarchy,
and attack Russia in hope of benefits to the zionists in the Mideast.
Perhaps you meant to say that "Russia is [not] replacing "Muslim terrorists" as the 'great
danger' our beloved and benevolent government must ask us to hand over our rights to combat."
Or perhaps you meant that the Russia-gate gambit is not working.
Abe , October 18, 2017 at 8:32 pm
American psychologist Gustave Gilbert interviewed high-ranking Nazi leaders during the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. In 1947, Gilbert published part of his diary,
consisting of observations taken during interviews, interrogations, "eavesdropping" and
conversations with German prisoners, under the title Nuremberg Diary.
Hermann Goering, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, was founder of the
Gestapo and Head of the Luftwaffe.
From an 18 April 1946 interview with Gilbert in Goering's jail cell:
Hermann Goering: "Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a
farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back
to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor
in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after
all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple
matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a
Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
Gilbert: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter
through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare
wars."
Hermann Goering: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell
them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 12:44 am
Abe –
Good post. Yes, from all the wars initiated during the last half century what Hermann
Goring said is very true of U.S. The opposition to the Vietnam War later on was largely
because of the draft.
Bertrand Russell in his autobiography describes in length how they prepared the U.K.
public with outrageously false propaganda for War – World War I – against Germany
in 1914. Bertrand Russell was vehemently against the War with Germany and spent some time in
Jail for his activities to oppose the war.
Brad Owen , October 19, 2017 at 3:58 am
Based on what I have read about him, in his own words,on EIR, he was probably opposed to
war with Germany because he was already looking ahead to a revival of the "Imperial Rome"
situation we have in the Trans-Atlantic Community today, with its near-global Empire
(enforced by America), working on breaking up the last holdout:the Eurasian Quarter with
Russia, China, India, Iran, etc.
Dave P. , October 20, 2017 at 2:21 am
Yes Brad, Bertrand Russell did love England and was very proud of English Civilization and
it's contributions to the World. Considering his very aristocratic background, his
contributions to mathematics and Philosophy are laudable. And he was very much involved in
World peace and nuclear disarmament movements.
(Goering quote) ahh yes, sometimes it takes a cynical scoundrel to tell the truth!
T.Walsh , October 20, 2017 at 11:09 am
the major war criminals' trial ended in 1946, with the execution of the 10 major war
criminals taking place on October 16, 1946.
Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 8:48 pm
Elizabeth for the mere fact you are on this site may possibly be your reason for your
escape from the MSM as it is a propaganda tool, to be used by the Shadow Government to guide
your thought processes. (See YouTube Kevin Shipp for explanation for Shadow Government and
Deep State) other than that I think it safe to say we are living in an Orwellian predicted
state of mass communications, and for sure we are now living in a police state to accompany
our censored news. Joe
Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 10:02 pm
Here is something I feel may ring your bell when it comes to our maintaining a free press.
Read this .
"From the PR perspective, releasing one anti-Russia story after another helps cement a
narrative far better than an all-at-once approach to controlling the news cycle. The public
is now getting maximum effect from what I believe is a singular and cohesive effort to lay
the groundwork for global legislation to eradicate any dissent and particular dissent that is
pro-Russia or pro-Putin. The way the news cycle works, a campaign is best leveled across two
weeks, a month, or more, so that the desired audience is thoroughly indoctrinated with an
idea or a product. In this case, the product is an Orwellian eradication of freedom of speech
across the swath of the world's most used social media platforms. This is a direct result of
traditional media and the deep state having failed to defeat independents across these
platforms. People unwilling to bow to the CNN, BBC and the controlled media message, more or
less beat the globalist scheme online. So, the only choice and chance for the anti-Russia
message to succeed is with the complete takeover of ALL channels. As further proof of a
collective effort, listen to this Bloomberg interview the other day with Microsoft CEO Brad
Smith on the same "legislation" issues. Smith's rhetoric, syntax, and the flow of his
narrative mirror almost precisely the other social CEOs, the US legislators, and especially
the UK Government dialogue. All these technocrats feign concern over privacy protection and
free speech/free press issues, but their real agenda is the main story."
Here is the link for the rest of the essay to Phil Butler's important news story ..
When you read this keep in mind that the Russians weren't doing any backroom illegal
deals, because the Russians thought that they were dealing on the upside with the Obama White
House State Department. Where you may question this, is where our Obama State Department side
stepped the law to make money for those couple of Americans who fronted this deal. This is
the epitome of hypocrisy of the worst kind.
Disclaimer; please Clinton and Trump supporters try and attempt to see this scandal for
what it is. This fudging of the law to make a path for questionable donations is not a party
platform issue. It is an issue of integrity and honesty. Yes Trump is the worst, but after
you dig into the above link I provided, please don't come back at me screaming partisan
politics. This scandal doesn't deserve a two sided political debate, as much as it deserves
our attention, and what we do all should do about it.
Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 2:56 pm
Joe Tedesky –
Reading about this Russian Bribery case in buying interest in "Uranium One" reminds me
that Russians came a century or two late into this Capitalist Game. And they must be novices
and rather crude in this business of bribing. This Russia bribery case is just a puddle in
this vast Sea of Corruption to sell weapons, fighter jets, commercial airplanes, and other
things by U.S., U.K., French, Swedes or other Western Nations to the Third World countries
like India, Egypt, Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria etc. To make a sale of three or four
billion dollars they would bribe the ministers and other officials in those countries
probably with a 100 million dollars easily. Those of us who belong to the two worlds know it
much better. The Indian Newspapers used to be always full of it, whenever I visited.
And the bribe money stays in the Western banks with which those ministers and officials
sons and daughters buy extensive properties in these countries. In fact, these kind of issues
are the topic of conversation at these Ethnic parties of rather prosperous people to which we
do get invited once in a year or so – which minister or official bought what property
and where with this kind or other type of corruption money. There used to be stories about
Egyptian Presidents Sadat and Mubarak's sons playing around in U.S. having bought extensive
properties with the bribe money. For Indian Ministers and Officials U.S., Canada, Australia,
U.K., and New Zealand are the preferred destinations to buy the properties.
And as we know with the corruption money, rich Russians are buying all these homes and
other properties in Spain, U.S., U.K. and other Western Countries. It seems like Putin and
his team have stopped most of big time corruption but it is very hard to stop the other
corruption in this globalized free market economy, especially in countries where corruption
is the norm.
Same is true of these IMF loans to those Third World Countries. Most of the money ends up
in these Western Countries. The working class of those countries end up in paying back the
high interest loans.
This is the World we are trying to defend with these endless wars and Russia-Gate.
Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 11:20 pm
Dave I concur that even the Russians are not beyond corruption, but we are not talking
about the bad habits of the Russians, no we are talking about U.S. officials possibly
breaking the law. I'll bet Dave if I had taken you on a vandalizing spree when we were young
bad ass little hoodlums, and we got caught, that your father wouldn't have come after me, as
much as he would come after you, as he would have given you a well deserved good spanking for
your bad actions. So with that frame of mind I am keeping my focus with this Clinton escapade
right here at home.
I like that you did point out to how the Russians maybe new to this capitalistic new world
they suddenly find themselves in, but I would not doubt that even an old Soviet Commissar
would have reached under the table for a kickback of somekind to enrich himself, if the
occasion had arisen to do so. You know this Dave, that bribery has no political philosophy,
nor does it have a democratic or communist ideology to prevent the corrupted from being
corrupt.
I am not getting my hopes up that justice will be served with this FBI investigation into
Hillary and Bill's uranium finagling. Although I'm surmising this whole thing will get turned
around as a Sessions Trump attack upon the Clintons, and with that this episode of selling
off American assets for personal wealth benefits, will instead fade away from our news cycles
altogether. Just like the torture stuff went missing, and where did that go?
Dave I always look forward to hearing from you, because I think that you and I often have
many a good conversation. Joe
Dave P. , October 20, 2017 at 2:07 am
Yes Joe. I agree with you. The reason I wrote my comments was to make a point that Russian
businessmen are not the only one who are in the bribery business, the businessmen of other
Western Nations are doing the same thing. Yesterday on the Fox News the "Uranium One" bribery
case was the main News. Shawn Hannity was twisting his words to make it look like that it is
Putin who did it, and that it is Putin who gave all this 140 million as bribery to Clinton
Foundation. Actually , I think the 140 millions was given to the Clinton Foundation by the
trustees of the Company in Canada. And Russian officials probably greased the hands of a few
of them too.
Of course Clintons are directly involved in this case. Considering how Hillary Clinton has
been perpetuating this Russia-Gate hysteria, I hope some truth comes out to show that she may
be the real center of this Russia-Gate affair. But way the things in Washington are now,
probably they are going to whitewash the Hillary Clinton's role in this bribery scandal.
Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 10:55 pm
While my one comment i wanted for you to read is being moderated, and it is an important
comment, read how the Israeli's handle unwanted news broadcasting. When you read this think
of the Kristallnacht episode, and then wonder why the Israeli's would do such a terrible
thing similar to what they had encountered under Hitler's reign.
Be sure to see my comment I left above, which is being moderated. In the meantime go to
NEO New Eastern Outlook and read Phil Butler's shocking story, 'Globalist Counterpunch: Going
for the Media Knockout'.
backwardsevolution , October 19, 2017 at 3:41 am
Joe Tedesky – the Zionists had been working (long before Hitler) on getting the Jews
into Palestine. Read up on the Balfour Declaration. Hitler was helping them get out to
Palestine. During World War II, one of the top German officials (can't remember which one
right now) went to Palestine to have discussions with the Zionists. The Zionists basically
said to him: "Look, you're sending us lazy Jews. These guys aren't interested in
construction. Can't you raise more hell so that the harder-working Jews will want to leave
Germany and come to Palestine?"
I think if we ever find out the truth about what happened, we will be shocked.
Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 9:11 am
Edmund de Rothschild who was a big financier of Zionism in 1934 on the subject of
Palestine had said, "the struggle to put an end to the Wandering Jew, could not have as its
result, the creation of the Wandering Arab."
I personally can't see the legality of the 'Balfour Declaration', but before Zionist
trolls attack me, I must admit I'm no legal scholar.
I'll need to research that episode you speak of about the Germans meeting the Zionist.
It's not an easy part of the Zionist history to study. Unless, you backwardsevolution can
provide some references that would help to learn more about this fuzzy history.
Good to see you posting, for awhile your absence gave me concern that you are doing okay.
Joe
Skip Scott , October 19, 2017 at 8:38 am
Thanks for the links Joe. Both great articles.
Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 9:14 am
Your welcome Skip I'll apologize for my posting all these links, but I kind of went nuts
getting into the subject we are all talking about here, and more. Joe
Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 11:21 pm
Although this article by the Saker talks about the U.S. being prepared for war against
Iran it speaks to the bigger problem of who is America's puppet master.
Joe start with a book called The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black
Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 11:25 pm
I put it on my next book to read. Thanks Tannerhouser appreciate your recommendation.
Joe
dfc , October 18, 2017 at 8:55 pm
Elizabeth: Tell your good friend that once they get rid of the Russian propaganda
on Facebook they will coming after those that oppose the Fracking Industry next:
How Hillary Clinton's State Department Sold Fracking to the World
Sorry, but how naive or deeply in the bubble can one be? lol :(
Beverly Voelkelt , October 19, 2017 at 2:50 am
I agree Elizabeth. The ultimate objective is censorship and control, using the pretext of
keeping America safe from external meddling just like they enacted the Patroit Act to protect
us from the terrists they created.
Daniel , October 19, 2017 at 5:04 am
Thank you Elizabeth. Shutting down alternative voices is clearly the end game here.
David G , October 18, 2017 at 6:25 pm
I'm not crazy about Robert Parry's phrase, "the mistaken judgments of President George W.
Bush's administration".
The lying, murdering bastards were lying. It's their parents that made the mistake.
But I'll let it slide.
Tayo , October 18, 2017 at 6:29 pm
I've said this before and I'll say it again: I suggest Mueller focuses on Tinder too. I'm
betting there's something on there. Russians have been known to use honey pot plots.
D.H. Fabian , October 18, 2017 at 6:40 pm
Ah, but who is better at it -- Russia or the US? (And dare we even consider the power of
China to infiltrate political powers and the media?)
anon , October 18, 2017 at 7:46 pm
So do Martians and every other national, religious, and ethnic group on the planet, with
the US out in front. You will not trick more careful thinkers by attacking the target du
jour.
D.H. Fabian , October 18, 2017 at 6:38 pm
Yes, and over the past week or two, it appears that work is being redirected into holding
the vast military behemoth (?), Israel, accountable for our own political/policy choices.
Either way, the US is clearly in its post-reality era.
anon , October 18, 2017 at 7:49 pm
zio-alert
Abe , October 18, 2017 at 10:06 pm
The naked gun of post-reality Hasbara propaganda:
When Israeli influence on US foreign policy choices may be discussed, Hasbara troll "D.H.
Fabian" pops up to insist:
And what do you want to discuss Abe? That there is undue influence from Israel on the US
government? Maybe, but you could say the same thing about the pharmaceuticals, the MIC, big
oil and the bankers, just to begin the list.
If you and others wish to focus in on a single culprit (defined as anyone fighting for
their own self interests), fine. But there are opposing views that believe the picture is
bigger than the one you would like to paint.
Curious , October 19, 2017 at 1:26 am
WC, I don't want to speak for Abe, but I am wondering about your use of the word "maybe".
Since the last count of US politicians was 13 Senators, and 27 House Reps who are dual
citizens of Israel, does that not imply a conflict of interest just in those stats alone?
Israel doesn't allow dual citizenship in their political system as it is a security risk, so
why do we? I will wait for your reply.
WC , October 19, 2017 at 4:23 am
Curious.
I can't speak for the legalities that led to allowing dual citizenship in the House and
Senate, nor why Israel doesn't allow dual citizenship in their political system. Like a lot
of laws it is probably serving someone's best interests. ;)
As for the word "maybe" and how it relates to your overall question. Just because there
are dual citizen reps in government, does that automatically say they all vote in the
interests of Israel exclusively? And even if that were the case what makes them any different
from the rep sold out to the MIC, big oil, pharmaceuticals, bankers, etc., or combination of?
We'd then need to do a study of all of the sold-out politicians and chart the percentage of
each to the various interests they sold out to. At what percentage does Israel come into the
big picture?
No one is denying Israel has a certain influence on the US government, but given all of
the vested interests involved, the US also has a big stake in what happens in the region. I
also don't know what the overall game plan is, not just for the middle east but all of the
sordid shit going on everywhere. If old George is right about "The Big Club", I'm assuming
some group or combination of groups have some master plan for us all, so I am not ready to
label any group, country or entity good or bad at this stage of the game. If this somehow
leaves out the moral question, I am not idealistic enough to believe morality and
Geo-politics often work hand in hand. :)
Brad Owen , October 19, 2017 at 4:41 am
WCs point is valid and correct. The picture is MUCH bigger than a tiny desert country of a
few million Semites ruling the World. The actual picture is the outgrowth of the several,
world-wide, European Empires having united into one, gigantic "Roman Empire" (under
Synarchist directorship) and CAPTURED America, post WWII, to be its enforcer, working to
break the last holdout: the Eurasian Quarter including Iran, into a truly global Empire.
Israel was a strategy of the British Empire to preclude any revival of a Muslim Empire,
threatening its MENA holdings. The enemy is still the British Empire of the 1%er oligarchs in
City-of-London and Wall Street. The fact that NOBODY pays attention to this situation, and
obsesses over Israel, guarantees the success of the Plan.
anon , October 19, 2017 at 7:29 am
No, the problem of Mideast policy and oligarchy control of mass media is entirely due to
zionist influence, including all top ten donors to Clinton 2016. Ukraine and the entire
problem of surrounding and opposing Russia is due primarily to zionist influence, due to
their intervention in the Mideast, although the MIC is happy to join the corruption for war
anywhere. The others on your list "pharmaceuticals, big oil and the bankers" are involved in
other problems.
WC seeks to divert discussion from zionist influence by changing the subject.
anon , October 19, 2017 at 7:33 am
Brad, you will have a hard time explaining why US wars in the Mideast and surrounding
Russia are always for the benefit of Israel, if you think that ancient Venetians and British
aristocracy are running the show. Looks like a diversionary attack to me.
Abe , October 20, 2017 at 2:05 am
The naked solo of "D.H. Fabian" has surged into a Hasbara chorus. Where to begin.
Let's start with "Curious", who definitely does not speak for me.
The "dual citizens" canard is a stellar example of Inverted Hasbara (false flag
"anti-Israel", "anti-Zionist", frequently "anti-Jewish" or "anti-Semitic") propaganda that
gets ramped up whenever needed, but particularly Israel rains bombs on the neighborhood.
Like Conventional Hasbara (overtly pro-Israel or pro-Zionist) propaganda, the primary
purpose of Inverted Hasbara false flag propaganda is to divert attention from Israeli
military and government actions, and to provide cover for Israel Lobby activities
The Inverted Hasbara canard inserted by "Curious" came into prominence after the
Israel-initiated war Lebanon in 2006. Israel's shaky military performance, flooding of south
Lebanon cluster munitions, use of white phosphorus in civilian areas brought censure. Further
Israeli attacks on Gaza brought increasing pressure on the neocon-infested Bush
administration for its backing of Israel.
A Facebook post titled, "List of Politicians with Israeli Dual Citizenship," started
circulating. The post mentioned "U.S. government appointees who hold powerful positions and
who are dual American-Israeli citizens."
With the change of US administration in 2008, new versions of the post appeared with
headlines such as "Israeli Dual Citizens in the U.S. Congress and the Obama Administration."
Common versions included 22 officials currently or previously with the Obama administration,
27 House members and 13 senators.
The posts were false for a variety of reasons, not least of which was the
misrepresentation of Israeli nationality law. Israel does allow its citizens to hold dual (or
multiple) citizenship. A dual national is considered an Israeli citizen for all purposes, and
is entitled to enter Israel without a visa, stay in Israel according to his own desire,
engage in any profession and work with any employer according to Israeli law. An exception is
that under an additional law added to the Basic Law: the Knesset (Article 16A) according to
which Knesset members cannot pledge allegiance unless their foreign citizenship has been
revoked, if possible, under the laws of that country.
The Law of Return grants all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel and almost automatic
Israeli citizenship upon arrival in Israel. In the 1970s the Law of Return was expanded to
grant the same rights to the spouse of a Jew, the children of a Jew and their spouses, and
the grandchildren of a Jew and their spouses, provided that the Jew did not practice a
religion other than Judaism willingly. In 1999, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that Jews
or the descendants of Jews that actively practice a religion other than Judaism are not
entitled to immigrate to Israel as they would no longer be considered Jews under the Law of
Return, irrespective of their status under halacha (Jewish religious law).
Israeli law distinguishes between the Law of Return, which allows for Jews and their
descendants to immigrate to Israel, and Israel's nationality law, which formally grants
Israeli citizenship. In other words, the Law of Return does not itself determine Israeli
citizenship; it merely allows for Jews and their eligible descendants to permanently live in
Israel. Israel does, however, grant citizenship to those who immigrated under the Law of
Return if the applicant so desires.
A non-Israeli Jew or an eligible descendant of a non-Israeli Jew needs to request approval
to immigrate to Israel, a request which can be denied for a variety of reasons including (but
not limited to) possession of a criminal record, currently infected with a contagious
disease, or otherwise viewed as a threat to Israeli society. Within three months of arriving
in Israel under the Law of Return, immigrants automatically receive Israeli citizenship
unless they explicitly request not to.
In short, knowingly or not, "Curious" is spouting Inverted Hasbara propaganda.
Conventional Hasbara (pro-Israel, pro-Zionist) propagandists constantly attempt to portray
Israeli military threats against its neighbors, Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian
territory, Zionist claims of an "unconditional land grant covenant" for Israel, or the
manipulations of the Israel Lobby, as somehow all based on "the way the world really
works".
"WC" has repeatedly promoted a loony "realism" in the CN comments, claiming for example
that "The Jews aren't doing anything different than the rest have done since the beginning of
time."
The Conventional Hasbara troll refrain is that whatever Israel does "ain't no big
thing".
"D.H. Fabian", "WC" and others are not Hasbara trolls because we somehow "disagree". They
are Hasbara trolls because they promote propaganda for Israel.
Fellow travellers round out the Hasbara chorus.
Commenter anon discourses in absolutes such as "entirely due to zionist influence" and
"always for the benefit of Israel".
Commenter Brad Owen just can't understand why everyone "obsesses" over that "tiny desert
country" when "the Plan" outlined by LaRouche is sooo much more interesting.
Dave P. , October 20, 2017 at 11:55 am
Abe – An excellent analysis – very penetrating. Yes, I understand it very
clearly.
I am one of those who does not have the background in this area. However, reading the
largely British view oriented newspapers since I was fourteen , in a different land where at
that time during 1950's and early 60's, all viewpoints were discussed including the communist
Russian/Soviet side, and the Communist Chinese side too, one develops a balanced outlook on
the World events.
Reading your comments on Israel's citizenship laws, is very eye opening for me. Israel is
a very Racist State, which is kind of the opposite of what Jewish Writers write books in this
country about America being the melting pot. Some of us have already melted here. I sometimes
wonder, Jewish writers are writing all these books, but why don't they melt! Are they special
chosen people?
WC , October 20, 2017 at 4:59 pm
Let me first dispel the notion that I am trying to change the subject, as "anon" would
like to imply. What I am after is a proper perspective as opposed to something blown out of
proportion.
When it comes to the subject of Israel, Jews and Zionism, Abe would appear to be well
versed on the subject. He certainly cleared up "Curious"s question on dual citizenship!
With Abe and others on this site, Zionism is the big daddy culprit in the world today. I,
on the other hand, see it as simply one part of a bigger picture, which I am still trying to
get my head around, but I am quite certain it goes far beyond just a regional issue. In
reading what Abe has to say on this subject over the past few months, he may very well be
right about Zionist influence and a take no prisoners-type of resolve in pursuing their aims
(whatever that may be). But none of this has yet to convince me they are entirely wrong
either.
Which brings us to the subject of morality. Take a second look at what Abe has chosen to
cherry pick from what he sees as the "Hasbara chorus" – all pointing to "trolls" who
(he thinks) are in support of an all powerful and heartless sect. This is what is known as
being overly dramatic and speaks volumes about what Abe (and others on this site) view as the
most objectionable of all – the moral wrongs being committed. For the sake of
clarification "morality" is defined as "principles concerning the distinction between right
and wrong or good and bad behavior". Most of us who are not suffering from a mental disorder
can agree on what constitutes right and wrong at its purist level, but thrown into a world
filled with crime, corruption, greed, graft, hate, lust, sociopaths and psychopaths vying for
power, sectarian violence, a collapsing economy, inner city decay, and all of the vested
special interests jockeying to save their piece of the pie, what is right and wrong becomes
far more convoluted and mired in mud. Simply throwing perfect world idealism at the problem
will not fix it. In fact, it will get you as far as the miles of crucified Christians that
lined the road to Rome. Which is a hell of a way to prove you are so right in a world filled
with so much wrong.
Since the day I "slithered in" here, I have asked the same question over and over –
what are your REAL world solutions to REAL world problems? So far, the chorus of the Church
Of The Perfect World has offered up nothing. :)
Abe , October 20, 2017 at 6:07 pm
Making the same statements over and over again, "WC" is clearly "after" a Hasbara "proper
perspective" on Israel.
For example, in the CN comments on How Syria's Victory Reshapes Mideast (September 30,
2017), "WC" advanced three key Hasbara propaganda talking points concerning the illegal
50-year military occupation of Palestinian territory seized by Israel during the 1967
War:
– Spurious claims about "what realistically (not idealistically) can be done"
– Insistence that "Israel is not going to go back to the 1948 borders"
– Claims that the US "depends on a strong Israeli presence"
A leading canard of Hasbara propaganda and the Israeli right wing Neo-Zionist settlement
movement is the notion of an "unconditional land grant covenant" entitlement for Israel.
Land ownership was far more widespread than depicted in the fictions of Israeli
propaganda. In reality, the Israeli government knowingly confiscated privately owned
Palestinian land and construct a network of outposts and settlements.
Israel's many illegal activities in occupied Palestinian territory encompass Neo-Zionist
settlements, so-called "outposts" and declared "state land".
The United Nations has repeatedly upheld the view that Israel's construction of
settlements constitutes a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention (which provides
humanitarian protections for civilians in a war zone).
The 1967 "border" of Israel refers to the Green Line or 1949 Armistice demarcation line set
out in the Armistice Agreements between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria after the
1948 Arab–Israeli War.
The Green Line was intended as a demarcation line rather than a permanent border. The 1949
Armistice Agreements were clear (at Arab insistence) that they were not creating permanent
borders. The Egyptian–Israeli agreement, for example, stated that "the Armistice
Demarcation Line is not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary,
and is delineated without prejudice to rights, claims and positions of either Party to the
Armistice as regards ultimate settlement of the Palestine question."
Similar provisions are contained in the Armistice Agreements with Jordan and Syria. The
Agreement with Lebanon contained no such provisions, and was treated as the international
border between Israel and Lebanon, stipulating only that forces would be withdrawn to the
Israel–Lebanon border.
United Nations General Assembly Resolutions and statements by many international bodies
refer to the "pre-1967 borders" or the "1967 borders" of Israel and neighboring
countries.
According to international humanitarian law, the establishment of Israeli communities
inside the occupied Palestinian territories – settlements and outposts alike – is
forbidden. Despite this prohibition, Israel began building settlements in the West Bank
almost immediately following its occupation of the area in 1967.
Defenders of Israel's settlement policies, like David Friedman, the current United States
Ambassador to Israel, argue that the controversy over Israeli settlements in occupied
Palestinian territory is overblown.
The Israeli government and Israel Lobby advocates like Ambassador Friedman claim the
built-up area of settlements comprises only around 2% of the West Bank.
This Hasbara "2%" argument is at best ignorant, and at worst deliberately
disingenuous.
The "2%" figure is misleading because it refers restrictively to the amount of land
Israeli settlers have built on, but does not account for the multiple ways these settlements
create a massive, paralytic footprint in the illegally occupied Palestinian territory of the
West Bank.
Since 1967, Israel has taken control of around 50% of the land of the West Bank. And
almost all of that land has been given to the settlers or used for their benefit. Israel has
given almost 10% of the West Bank to settlers – by including it in the "municipal area"
of settlements. And it has given almost 34% of the West Bank to settlers – by placing
it under the jurisdiction of the Settlement "Regional Councils."
In addition, Israel has taken hundreds of kilometers of the West Bank to build
infrastructure to serve the settlements, including a network of roads that crisscross the
entire West Bank, dividing Palestinian cities and towns from each other, and imposing various
barriers to Palestinian movement and access, all for the benefit of the settlements.
Israel has used various means to do this, included by declaring much of the West Bank to
be "state land," taking over additional land for security purposes, and making it nearly
impossible for Palestinians to register claims of ownership to their own land.
The Israeli Supreme Court has repeatedly used the term "belligerent occupation" to
describe Israel's rule over the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that
the question of a previous sovereign claim to the West Bank and Gaza is irrelevant to whether
international laws relating to occupied territories should apply there.
Rather, the proper question – according to Israel's highest court – is one of
effective military control. In the words of the Supreme Court decision, "as long as the
military force exercises control over the territory, the laws of war will apply to it." (see:
HCJ 785/87, Afo v. Commander of IDF Forces in the West Bank).
The Palestinian territories were conquered by Israeli armed forces in the 1967 war.
Whether Israel claims that the war was forced upon it is irrelevant. The Palestinian
territory has been controlled and governed by the Israeli military ever since.
Who claimed the territories before they were occupied is immaterial. What is material is
that before 1967, Israel did not claim the territories.
Ariel Sharon, one of the principal architects of Israel's settlement building policy in
the West Bank and Gaza, recognized this reality. On May 26, 2003, then Israeli Prime Minister
Sharon told fellow Likud Party members: "You may not like the word, but what's happening is
occupation [using the Hebrew word "kibush," which is only used to mean "occupation"]. Holding
3.5 million Palestinians under occupation is a bad thing for Israel, for the Palestinians and
for the Israeli economy."
Whether one believes that these territories are legally occupied or not does not change
the basic facts: Israel is ruling over a population of millions of Palestinians who are not
Israeli citizens. Demographic projections indicate that Jews will soon be a minority in the
land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Real world solutions:
An end to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
An end to apartheid government and the beginning of real democracy in Israel.
What can be done now?
United States government sanctions against Israel for its 50-year military occupation of
Palestine, its apartheid social regime, and its arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The United States can require Israel to withdraw its forces to the 1967 line, and honor
the right of return to Palestinians who fled their homeland as a result of Israel's multiple
ethnic cleansing operations.
In addition, the United States can demand that immediately surrender its destabilizing
nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons arsenal or face severe U.S. action.
Hasbara trolls will keep trying to change the subject, continue muttering about "opposing
views" and some "bigger picture" picture", and repeatedly insist that an Israel armed with
weapons of mass destruction routinely attacking its neighbors "ain't no big thing".
Tannenhouser , October 20, 2017 at 10:30 am
Most of the ones in control of "pharmaceuticals, the MIC, big oil and the bankers" are
Israel firsters as well. Round and round we go eh?
This is probably as good a place as any to point out that it isn't just Russophobia at
work; Congress is hard at work to protect Israel's abominable human rights record from public
criticism as well. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act is squarely aimed at criminalizing advocates
of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement and has 50 co-sponsors in the
Senate. See
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/720?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22israel+anti-boycott+act%22%5D%7D&r=2
wapo says Hamas disarm because us and israel want them to.israel won't disarm
though.Boy.
Curious , October 18, 2017 at 6:44 pm
Thank you Mr Parry for actually taking the time to read the NYT or WaPo for your readers,
so we don't have to. There is only so much disinformation one can cram into our 'cranium soft
drives' regarding journalists with no ethics nor moral rudders.
It reminds me of watching Jon Stewarts Daily Show to check out the perverse drivel on Fox
News since to watch Fox myself would have damaged me beyond repair. Many of my friends are
already Humpty-Dumptied by the volume of fragmented info leeching into their bloodstreams by
140 character news.
Thank you for your fortitude in trying to debunk the news and 'outing' those editors who feel
they are insulated from critical analysis.
dahoit , October 19, 2017 at 12:36 pm
jon stewart?WTF?
Curious , October 19, 2017 at 8:56 pm
Well dahoit,
Just chalk it up to a historical reference as that is around the time I stopped watching TV,
having worked in the biz for some 30 years. I don't miss it either. Jon gave us a lot of
humor and a lot of clever, surreptitious info, and the way they captured the talking points
of the politicians by the use of their fast cuts was remarkable. There was a lot of political
content in a show meant to just be humorous. Sorry you feel otherwise.
fudmier , October 18, 2017 at 6:59 pm
EITHER OR, INC. (EOI) a secret subsidiary of Deep Sewer Election Manipulators, Inc
(DSEMI), a fraudulent make believe Russia company, that changes election outcomes, in foreign
countries, to conform the leadership of the foreign country with Russia foreign policy,
studied the most recent USA candidates and concluded Russia could not have found persons more
suited to Russian foreign policy than the candidates the USA had selected for its American
governed, to vote on. The case is not yet closed, EOI is still trying to decide if there is
or was a difference between the candidates..
Charles Misfeldt , October 18, 2017 at 7:44 pm
Our election process is so completely corrupted I doubt that a few thousand dollars of
Facebook ads that no one pays any attention to could sway the vote, I am much more concerned
about bribery, Israel, American Zionists, racists, corporations, evangelicals, dominionists,
white nationalists, anarchist's, conservatives, war profiteers, gerrymanders, vote purges,
vote repressors, voting machine hackers, seems like Russian's are pretty far down the
list.
Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 8:52 pm
Now you talking, let's get to the real stuff. Good one Charles. Joe
Peter Loeb , October 19, 2017 at 6:08 am
I don't have "FACEBOOK". Or any other "social media (whatever that may be.)
I don't "tweet" and the technology which we were once told would save
the world, has left me behind. I don't text. I have no smart phone
or cell.
I no longer have a TV of any description. Or cable with millions of things
you don't want to see anyway.
Only my mind is left. For some more years.
(J.M. Keynes: " in the long run we will all be dead."
Perhaps one has to have "social media" to be born in
this generation. Do you need it to exit?
Please accept my thoughts with my "asocial" [media]
appologies.
-- -Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
My "tweet"/message is only my fear that the NY Yankees
will be in the World Series where I can hate them with complete
impunity. (I was created a fan of the Washington Senators,
morphed into a Brooklyn Dodgers fan so the usually failing
Boston Red Sox fits me well. Being for that so-called "dodgers"
team on the west coast is a forced marriage at best.
Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 9:27 am
Peter screw Facebook and all the rest of that High Tech Big Brother Inc industry, and the
garbage they are promoting.
Also Peter do you have a little Walter Francis O'Malley voodoo doll to stick pins in it? I
also haven't followed baseball since Roberto Clemente died.
We kids use to skip school to go watch Clemente play. In fact in 1957 a young ball player
who the Pirates had acquired in somekind of trade with the Brooklyn Dodgers chased my seven
year old little butt out of right field when I wandered all confused onto the field. That
young rookie who chased my loss little being off the field, was none other than the great
number 21 Roberto Clemente.
Actually the only thing you left out Peter was the Braves moving to Atlanta. Take care
Peter, and let's play more ball in the daylight, and let's make it more affordable game to
watch again. Play ball & BDS. Joe
Thomas Phillips , October 19, 2017 at 12:30 pm
I'm envious now Joe. Roberto Clemente was one of my favorite baseball players. My no. 1
favorite, though, was Willie Mays. And speaking of the Braves moving to Atlanta, my father
took my brother and I there the first year the team was in Atlanta. The Giants were there for
a series with the Braves, and I got to see Mays play (my first and only time). I would have
loved to have been able to skip school and watch Clemente play.
On the subject of concern here, The Hill has a couple of stories on the zerohedge.com
story you referenced above. From what I read, it appears to me that if this is still an open
case with the FBI, Ms. Clinton (and Obama?) could possibly face criminal charges in this
matter. We can only hope. To Peter – I do have an old 1992 console TV, but no cable; so
I have no television to speak of. I have a VHS and DVD player though and watch old movies and
such on the old TV.
Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 2:42 pm
Thomas how cool. My buddies and I would purchase the left field bleacher seats for I think
fifty cents or maybe it was a dollar. Then around the third inning we would boogie on over
into the right field stands overlooking the great Roberto, and yell 'hey Roberto'. From right
field we kids would eye up the empty box seats off of third base. Somewhere about the sixth
or seventh inning we would sneakily slide into those empty box seats along third base side,
where you could see into the Pirate dugout along first. Now the Pirate dugout is along third.
The box seat ushers would back then justbsimply tell us kids to be good, and that they got a
pat on the back from management for filling up those empty box seats, because the television
cameras would pick that up. The best part was, we little hooky players did all of this on our
school lunch money.
About that FBI thing with Hillary I'm hoping this doesn't get written off as just another
Trump attack, and that this doesn't turn into another entertaining Benghazi hearing for
Hillary to elevate her status among her identity groupies. Joe
mark , October 18, 2017 at 7:46 pm
All this nonsense will soon die an evidence-free natural death, but rather than admit to
the lies the MSM will divert the Deplorables with some convenient scandal like the Weinstein
affair.
The effect of all this will be to hammer the final nails in the coffin of the political
establishment and its servile MSM. This process began with the Iraqi WMD lies, and now 6% of
the population believes what it sees in the MSM.
Skip Scott , October 19, 2017 at 8:47 am
mark-
I wish you were right, but with all the money being thrown around, and scumbag Mueller in
the mix, how this will end is anybody's guess. I'm also curious where you got the 6% figure.
Sounds like wishful thinking to me.
Great take Mr Parry
Smoke and mirrors to distract we the sheeple of this dying paradigm. Fascism alive and well
in the land of the free. The sheeple r now entering the critical stage, they have hit 20
percent. Dangerous times for the western masters of the universe. Get ready for more false
flags to keep the sheeple blinded from reality. The recent events globally with regards to
Iran, Syria and the DPRK are all their for distractions add the Russians ate my homework and
viola distraction heaven. But like I said more and more people in the US and the west are
turning off 1/5 to be exact and that spells trouble for the masters. They want war at all
costs 600 percent debt is not a sustainable economic system . IMF warning just the other day
that all it will take is one major European bank to crash and viola. So dangerous and
interesting times we r living. Is it by design in order to get their way.?I would say yes to
that.
Sam F , October 18, 2017 at 9:44 pm
Good notes. Incidentally you may intend the French "voila" rather than the musical
instrument "viola."
Skip Scott , October 20, 2017 at 3:37 pm
Voila, viola. Didn't Curly of the three stooges do a bit on that?
Michael K Rohde , October 18, 2017 at 8:27 pm
Should I say it? Shocker. NYT and HIllary are a potent team. Add on Google and CNN and you
have a formidable propaganda organization that is going to influence millions of American.
Plus Face Book and you have most of America covered without a dissenting voice. I used to be
one of their customers, reading and believing everything they put out until Judith Miller was
exposed with W and Scooter. I confess to a jaundiced eye since then. Unfortunately there
isn't a whole lot out there if you like to read good writers of relevant material. We have a
problem, Houston.
Joe Tedesky , October 18, 2017 at 9:07 pm
If it is possible to consider Russia helped throw the 2016 presidential election with 100k
spent over a three year period, then why not suspect and investigate the American MSM, who
gave Donald Trump 4.9 billion dollars worth of free media coverage? Surely you all may recall
the wall to wall commercial free cable network coverage Trump used to receive during the way
too long of a presidential campaign? Now we are being led to believe that a few haphazard
placed Russian adbuys on FB stool the election from 'it's my turn now boys' Hillary. Here I
must admit that as much as I would love to have a woman President, I would choose almost any
qualified women other than Hillary. But yeah, this Russia-gate nonsense is a creation of the
Shadow Government, who wants so badly to see Putin get thrown out of office, that they would
risk starting WWIII doing it.
Larry Gates , October 18, 2017 at 9:44 pm
A single person started all this nonsense: Hillary Clinton.
No need for America to be influenced to turn the internet into a sewer, America is doing
just fine on that with no help at all. The Russians are just mocking us over there, which is
perfectly understandable. In fact, from what I read, Russians are actually more religious and
concerned about immorality than Americans.
This whole thing is a joke, we know it, it's an attempt to control people, and I for one
am pretty sick of it and don't mind telling anyone just that. Let them sputter, stomp their
feet, or whatever. Keep it up, United States, and you'll be playing in the schoolyard all by
yourself!
Was the article below in corporate media? Link below:
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
-- -- -
Thousands of govt docs found on laptop of sex offender married to top Clinton adviser
Published time: 18 Oct, 2017 16:45Edited time: 18 Oct, 2017 18:37 https://www.rt.com/usa/407120-fbi-found-3k-docs-weiner/
It's amazing how the "mainstream media" has pushed this Russian collusion nonsense. What's
more amazing is how every time an article is published my these outlets claiming some new
evidence of Russian collusion, within 24 hours there's evidence to the contrary. I think the
whole Pokemon and Facebook claims are the lowest point in this Russian collusion nonsense.
The worst part is we won't see it end anytime soon
Sam F , October 19, 2017 at 7:38 am
Good points, Sam. There are many named "Sam" so please distinguish your pen name from
mine, perhaps with an initial. Thanks!
Drew Hunkins , October 19, 2017 at 12:46 am
Absolutely crucial and outstanding piece by Mr. Parry. His well thought out dissection of
Politifact is invigorating.
backwardsevolution , October 19, 2017 at 12:52 am
Peter Schweizer, author of "Clinton Cash", has been talking about the biggest Russian
bribe of all, the one no one wants to talk about – Uranium One. This deal may have been
the reason why $145 million ended up in Clinton Foundation coffers, all while Hillary Clinton
was Secretary of State.
Here is Peter Schweizer today on Tucker Carlson's program talking about it:
Her emails showed that HRC's internal polling proved her greatest vulnerability with her
supporters was when they were told the details of her uranium deal.
Skip Scott , October 19, 2017 at 9:03 am
Thanks for the link. Great interview. The real Russia-gate!
Your site has a lot of useful information for myself. I visit regularly. Hope to have more
quality items.
Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 1:33 am
Joe – I never had interest in conspiracy type stories and narratives like that.
However, after reading the zerohedge article in the link in your post, I am beginning to
seriously doubt the Seth Rich murder investigation findings by the Washington DC police
– I had some misgivings before about it too. I think there was not any significant
involvement by FBI in the case. And the Justice department under Loretta Lynch did not pursue
the investigation.
Knowing all kind of stories in the news about Clintons friend Vince Foster's death during
1990's , and many other episodes in Bill and Hillary Clinton's political life, I wonder about
the power and reach of this couple. And now this article and no investigation of this bribery
and corruption scandal during Obama's presidency. It all smells fishy.
Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 1:58 am
Dave not only as what you had mentioned, but the Seth Rich story seems to have become
taboo in our news. I realize what the Rich family requested, but when did ever a request from
the family ever get honored by the big media ever before? I'm not suggesting anything more,
than why is the Seth Rich murder appearing to be off limits, and further more with Seth's
death being in question and implicated to the Wikileaks 'Hillary Exposures' being Seth one of
those 'leakers', then take responsibility DNC and ask the same questions, or at least answer
the questions asked. I hope that made sense, because somehow it made sense to me.
The suggestion of any alternative to the establish narrative gets tossed to the wind. I
think this drip, drip, flood, of Russia collusion into the gears of American Government is a
way of America's Establishment, who is now in charge, way of going out with a bang. The world
is starting to realize it doesn't need the U.S., and the U.S. is doing everything in it's
power to help further that multi-polar world's growing realization that it doesn't.
Okay Dave. Joe
Dave P. , October 19, 2017 at 2:57 am
Joe, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has the power to initiate investigations into these
cases. However, it seems to me that the Ruling Elite/Deep State does not want to wash the
dirty linen in front of the whole World. It would be very embarrassing; it will show the true
picture of this whole sewage/swamp it is. Jeff Sessions or others in high places, have no
independence at all, even if they want to pursue their own course – which they rarely
do.
It seems like that all these investigations are a kind of smoke screen to hide the real
issues. During 1950's or 60's , people in this country mostly trusted the leaders and elected
officials. And majority of the leaders, whatever their policies or sides they took on issues,
had some integrity, depth, solidity and dignity about them. But it seems to me that these
days politicians do not have any of it. The same is true of the Media. This constant mindless
Russia-Gate hysteria being perpetuated by the elected leaders, Media, and pundits without any
thought or decorum is not worthy of a civilized country. Also, it is not good for the Country
or the World.
Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 9:34 am
Yes Dave the quality of accountability and responsibility in DC is sorely lacking of
concern to be honest, and do the right thing by its citizens. This is another reason why it's
good to talk these things over with you, and many of the others who post comments here.
Joe
Joe,Dave, glad you bring it up Russiagate seems to be providing a full eclipse of any
investigation into the Seth Rich murder and just whatever happened to his laptop?
Joe Tedesky , October 19, 2017 at 10:45 am
I think Bob the Rich investigation got filed under 'conspiracy theory do not touch' file.
Joe
backwardsevolution , October 19, 2017 at 1:39 am
Hours ago:
"Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley asked the attorney of a former FBI informant
Wednesday to allow her client to testify before his committee regarding the FBI's
investigation regarding kickbacks and bribery by the Russian state controlled nuclear company
that was approved to purchase twenty percent of United States uranium supply in 2010, Circa
has learned.
In a formal letter, Grassley, an Iowa Republican, asked Victoria Toensing, the lawyer
representing the former FBI informant, to allow her client, who says he worked as a voluntary
informant for the FBI, to be allowed to testify about the "crucial" eyewitness testimony he
provided to the FBI regarding members of the Russian subsidiary and other connected players
from 2009 until the FBI's prosecution of the defendants in 2014. [ ]
FBI officials told Circa the investigation could have prevented the sale of Uranium One,
which controlled 20 percent of U.S. uranium supply under U.S. law. The deal which required
approval by CFIUS, an inter-agency committee who reviews transactions that leads to a change
of control of a U.S. business to a foreign person or entity that may have an impact on the
national security of the United States. At the time of the Uranium One deal the panel was
chaired by then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and included then-Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and then-Attorney General Eric Holder."
This FBI informant was apparently gagged from speaking to Congress by either Loretta Lynch
or Eric Holder (I've heard both names). Why would they have done this?
Sven , October 19, 2017 at 1:44 am
Very well written article
Lee Francis , October 19, 2017 at 2:41 am
The whole Russia-Gate brouhaha has become a monumental bore. How anyone with a modicum of
intelligence and moral integrity can believe this garbage is beyond me. I salute Mr Parry for
his fortitude in clearing the Augean stables of this filth; it reminds of the old Bonnie
Raitt song, to wit – 'It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it." personally I can't
be bothered reading it anymore.
backwardsevolution , October 19, 2017 at 2:51 am
Stefan Molyneux does a great job in this 25-minute video where he outlines the absolute
corruption going on in the Banana Republic of Americastan on both the left and right.
He ends up by saying that all of the same actors (Rosenstein, McCabe, Mueller, Comey,
Lynch, Clinton) who were part of covering up Hillary's unsecured servers and Uranium One are
the very same people who are involved with going after Trump and his supposed collusion with
Russia. Same people. And the media seem to find no end of things to say about the latter,
while virtually ignoring the former.
Yes, Media ignores the other scandal while beating up 24/7 on Russian inference/collusion
in the Presidential Election. It is the same with the Foreign News. There was this more than
10,000 strong torchlit Neo-Nazi March in Kiev last Saturday. The pictures in the Sputnik News
of these neo-Nazis in the march were very threatening. I think that most of the Russians have
probably left West Ukraine. There was not even a mention of this March in the Los Angeles
Times.
However, a week before Alexander Navalny had this protest – 500 figure as given the
Western media – in Moscow. The picture was splashed across the entire page of Los
Angeles Times with a half page article, mostly beating up on Putin.
I rarely watch TV shows. However, this Tuesday, because of the some work going on our
house, I was home most of the day. My wife was watching TV starting in the afternoon well
into the evening – MSNBC, CNN, PBS newshour; Wolg Blitzer, Lawrence O'Donnell, Don
Lemon, Rachel Maddow, and others with all these so called experts invited to the shows. Just
about most of it was about beating up on Trump and Russia as if it is the only news in the
Country and in the World to report. It was really pathetic to hear all these nonsensical lies
and garbage coming out the mouths of these talk show hosts and experts. It is becoming Banana
Republic of Americanistan as you wrote.
backwardsevolution , October 19, 2017 at 4:04 am
Hi, Dave P. Yeah, I swear they have things on the shelf that are ready-to-go stories
whenever there's a lull in the Trump/Russia collusion nonsense. This last week they pulled
Harvey Weinstein off the shelf and crucified the guy (not that he shouldn't have been). If
this Uranium One deal gets legs, watch for some huge false flag to coincidentally appear to
take our minds off of it.
The biggest thing separating a "first world" country from a "third world" country is the
rule of law. Without it, you might as well hoist up a flag with a big yellow banana on it and
call it a day. Bananastan has a nice ring to it.
Cheers, Dave.
Lee Francis , October 19, 2017 at 8:10 am
"There was this more than 10,000 strong torchlit Neo-Nazi March in Kiev last Saturday." It
never happened, well according to the Washington Post (aka Pravda on the Potomac) or New York
Times (aka The Manhattan Beobachter) who, like the rest of the establishment media lie by
omission. Other things that didn't happen – the Odessa fire where 42 anti-Maidan
demonstrators were incinerated by the Banderist mob who actually applauded as the Union
Building went up like a torch with those unfortunate people not only trapped inside with the
entrances barricaded, but those who jumped out of windows to escape the flames (a bit like
9/11 in New York) were clubbed to death as they lie injured on the ground. The film is on
youtube if you can bear to watch it, I could only bear to watch it once. According to the
website of Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh, it was "another bright day in our national
history." A Svoboda parliamentary deputy added, "Bravo, Odessa . Let the Devils burn in
hell." These people are our allies, along of course with Jihadis in the middle east.
In his the British playwright Harold Pinter's last valediction nailed the propaganda
methodology of the western media with the phrase, 'even while it was happening it wasn't
happening.'
Dave P. , October 20, 2017 at 2:31 am
Lee Francis –
yes. The words : 'even while it was happening it wasn't happening.' It is from his Nobel
lecture. I read the text of Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter at that time – very
passionate lecture. Pinter had terminal throat cancer, he could not go to Sweden. I think he
sent his video of the Nobel lecture to be played.
It will be interesting to see how the so-called left leaning media like MSNBC and CNN spin
the Uranium One/Obama-Clinton State Department story. The right, especially Hannity on Fox,
are on it, also Tucker Carlson who is moderate mostly. When these pundits say "Russia", they
seem to imply "Putin" but that may not be the case. And they always want to imply the US is
beyond corrupt business deals, which is a joke. It's about time the Clinton case is cracked,
but with corruption rampant, who knows?
JeffS , October 19, 2017 at 9:34 am
The targeting of Pokemon Go users was especially nefarious because aren't about half of
those people below voting age? But when they finally are old enough to vote we can say that
they were influenced by Russia! And this is always reported in a serious tone and with a
straight face. I find the aftermath of the 2016 election to be 'Hillary'ous. The obviously
phony from the get-go Russia story was invented out of whole cloth to allow stunned Democrat
voters to engage in some sort extended online group therapy session. After a year many are
still working through the various stages of the grieving process, and some may actually reach
the final stage -- Acceptance (of the 2016 Election results)
mike k , October 19, 2017 at 1:07 pm
Good one!
Jamila Malluf , October 19, 2017 at 12:36 pm
Excellent Report! Consortium needs a video outlet somebody to give these reports. There
are many places other than YouTube you could use and I could become one of your Amateur video
editor :)
mike k , October 19, 2017 at 1:10 pm
The Rulers fear the internet.
Liam , October 19, 2017 at 3:01 pm
#MeToo – A Course In Deductive Reasoning: Separating Fact From Fiction Through The
Child Exploitation Of 8 Year Old Bana Alabed
I was glad to see that when H Clinton was in England, the RT ads all around were making
fun of the blame game. Someone needs to lighten up and stop the ludicrous nonsensical
year-long concentration on blaming Russia for the deep defects in almost all aspects of US
presence in our world. Observe Pres. Putin and nearly every other real leader getting on with
negotiations, agreements, constructive trade deals, ignoring the sinking ship led by the
Trumpet and the Republican Party, while the Dems slide down with them.
Realist , October 19, 2017 at 7:20 pm
I think the "Powers that be" in America actually believed it when Karl Rove announced to
the world that the U.S. government had the godlike power to create any reality of its own
choosing, the facts be damned, and the entire world would come to accept it and live by it,
like it or not. They've been incessantly trying to pound this square peg of a governing
philosophy into holes of a wide spectrum of geometric shapes ever since, believing that mere
proclamation made it so. Russia, China, Iran and any other country that does business with
this troika are evil. Moreover, any country that does not kowtow to Israel, or objects to its
extermination campaign against the Palestinian people, is evil. Even simply pursuing an
independent foreign policy not approved by Washington, as Iraq, Libya and Syria felt entitled
to do, is evil. Why? Because we say so. That should suffice for a reason. Disagree with us at
your peril. We have slaughtered millions of "evil-doers" in Middle Eastern Islamic states who
dared to disagree, and we have economically strapped our own "allies" in Europe to put the
screws to Russia. The key to escape from this predicament is how much more blowback, in terms
of displaced peoples, violated human rights, abridged sovereignty and shattered economies, is
Europe willing to tolerate in the wake of Washington's megalomaniacal dictates before it
stands up to the bully and stops supporting the madness. When does Macron, Merkel and May
(assuming they are the leaders whom others will follow in Europe) say "enough" and start
making demands on Washington, and not just on Washington's declared "enemies?"
And, if the internet has indeed become the world's "cloaca maxima," I'd say first look to
its inventors, founders, chief administrators and major users of the service, all of which
reside in the United States. In terms of volume, Russia is but a small-time user of the
service. If the object is to re-create a society such as described in the novel "1984," it is
certainly possible to censor the damned thing to the point where its just a tool of tyranny.
The "distinguished" men and corporations basically running the internet planetwide have
already conferred such authority to the Chinese government. Anything they don't want their
people to see is filtered out, compliments of Microsoft, Google, Facebook and the other heavy
hitters. Just looking at trends, rhetoric and the fact that the infrastructure is mostly
privately-owned, I can see the same thing coming to the West, unless the users demand
otherwise, vociferously and en masse.
Tannenhouser , October 20, 2017 at 4:19 pm
Trump is running point on the distraction op currently being run, to distract from the
actual crimes committed by the Blue section of the ruling political party. So far he played
his part brilliantly, knowingly or unknowingly, matters not.
Readers of Consortium News come from around the world, from very small towns with
populations in the few 1,000's to major cities with populations in the millions, and
everything size category in between. In each of those categories of population size, the
power is controlled by those possessing the greatest wealth inside that particular
population, whether small town, medium, semi-large or major city. One can describe each
category of population center as pyramidal in power structure, with those at the top of the
pyramid the wealthiest few who "pull the strings" of societies, and, as relates to war and
peace, the people who literally fire the first shots.
Identify those at the top of the world category pyramid, call them out for their war
crimes, and then humanity has a fighting chance for peace.
Curious , October 19, 2017 at 7:56 pm
For WC,
Thank you for your answer to my question. The 'reply' tab is gone on the thread so I will
reply here.
I believe I was trying to figure out the difference between "lawmakers" and the corporate
entities you mentioned. Obviously the lawmakers are heavily influenced by the money and the
lobbyists from the large corps which muddies the waters and makes it even more difficult to
find clarity between politicians and the big money players. When the US sends our military
into sovereign countries against international law, it's fair to ask whether it is at the
behest of corporate interests, or even Israels' geopolitical agenda, especially in the Middle
East.
The large corps you mentioned don't have the legal authority to send our military to foreign
lands and perform duties that have nothing to do with US defense (or do they?) and that is
why I try to understand the distinction between 40 dual citizens of Israel within the
'lawmakers' of our country and large corporations. When Israels 'allowance' from US tax
payers goes remarkably up in value, one has to wonder how and why that occurs when our own
country is suffering. That's all I wonder about. I won't distract any more from Mr. Parrys'
article.
GM , October 19, 2017 at 9:31 pm
If I recall correctly, Politifact is owned by the majority owners of the St Petersburg
times, which family is a major big Clinton donor.
Kevin Beck , October 20, 2017 at 9:01 am
I am curious whether Russia is really able to employ all these "marketing geniuses" to
affect elections throughout the world. If so, then America's greatest ad agencies need to
look to Moscow for new recruits, instead of within our business schools.
Maybe Politifact declares it? stance is based on an alternative fact?
But greetings from Finland. In here is in full swing a MSM war against so called fake
media, never mind the fact that many are the stories in fake media that have turned out to be
the truth -- or that we are supposed to be a civilized country with free speech.
Our government with the support of the MSM is using a term hatespeech to silence all
tongues telling a different tale; some convictions have been given even though our law does
not recognise hatespeech as a crime. The police nor the courts can not define exactly what
hatespeech is -- so it is what they want it to be.
"... "We know Russian agents used Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and even Pinterest to place targeted attack ads and negative stories intended not to hurt just me but to fan the flames of division in our society. Russians posed as Americans pretending to be LGBT and gun rights activists, even Muslims, saying things they knew would cause distress." ..."
"... She said some of the basics of the Russian interference in the 2016 election had been known, but "we were in the dark about the weaponisation of social media". She cited new research from Columbia University showing that attack ads on Facebook paid for in roubles were seen by 10 million people in crucial swing states and had been shared up to 340m times. ..."
"... Clinton said the matter of whether Trump's campaign cooperated with Russian interference was a subject for congressional investigation. But she called for anyone found guilty of such cooperation with Moscow to be subject to civil and criminal law. "The Russians are still playing on anything and everything they can to turn Americans against each other," she said. ..."
"... "In addition to hacking our elections, they are hacking our discourse and our unity. We are in the middle of a global struggle between liberal democracy and a rising tide of illiberalism and authoritarianism. This is a kind of new cold war and it is just getting starting." ..."
This power hungry woman are just plain vanilla incompetent: "The Russian campaign was
leading to nationalism in Europe, democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland, and a loss of
faith in democracy, she said."
Democrats had urged her to be silent after
her defeat to Trump but she was not going to go away, said Clinton. She vowed to play her part
in an attempt to win back Democratic seats in the forthcoming midterm elections. She admitted
she "just collapsed with real grief and disappointment" after her election defeat.
Clinton, who is touring the country to promote What Happened – her memoir reflecting
on the election defeat, told the BBC's Andrew Marr: "Looking at the Brexit vote now, it was a
precursor to some extent of what happened to us in the United States."
She decried the amount of fabricated information voters were given: "You know, the big lie
is a very potent tool and we've somewhat kept it at bay in western democracies, partly because
of the freedom of the press. There has to be some basic level of fact and evidence in all parts
of our society."
She urged Britain to be cautious about striking a trade deal with Trump, saying he did not
believe in free trade.
In other comments during the Cheltenham literary festival, she accused the Kremlin of waging
an information war throughout the 2016 US election process. The tactics "were a clear and
present danger to western democracy and it is right out of the Putin playbook", she said.
"We know Russian agents used Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and even Pinterest to place targeted
attack ads and negative stories intended not to hurt just me but to fan the flames of division
in our society. Russians posed as Americans pretending to be LGBT and gun rights activists,
even Muslims, saying things they knew would cause distress."
She said some of the basics of the Russian interference in the 2016 election had been known,
but "we were in the dark about the weaponisation of social media". She cited new research from
Columbia University showing that attack ads on Facebook paid for in roubles were seen by 10
million people in crucial swing states and had been shared up to 340m times.
Clinton said the matter of whether Trump's campaign cooperated with Russian interference was
a subject for congressional investigation. But she called for anyone found guilty of such
cooperation with Moscow to be subject to civil and criminal law. "The Russians are still
playing on anything and everything they can to turn Americans against each other," she
said.
"In addition to hacking our elections, they are hacking our discourse and our unity. We are
in the middle of a global struggle between liberal democracy and a rising tide of illiberalism
and authoritarianism. This is a kind of new cold war and it is just getting starting."
The Russian campaign was leading to nationalism in Europe, democratic backsliding in Hungary
and Poland, and a loss of faith in democracy, she said.
In an interview with the ABC's Four Corners program, to air on
Monday night, Clinton alleges that Assange cooperated with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin , to
disrupt the US election and damage her campaign for president.
"WikiLeaks is unfortunately now practically a fully owned subsidiary of Russian
intelligence," Clinton
told the ABC's Sarah Ferguson .
Describing Putin as a "dictator", Clinton said the damaging email leaks that crippled her
2016 candidacy were part of a coordinated operation against her, directed by the Russian
government.
Our intelligence community and other observers of Russia and Putin have said he held a grudge
against me because as secretary of state, I stood up against some of his actions, his
authoritarianism," Clinton told the ABC.
"But it's much bigger than that. He wants to destabilise democracy, he wants to undermine
America, he wants to go after the Atlantic alliance, and we consider Australia an extension of
that."
WikiLeaks received
thousands of hacked emails from accounts connected to the Democratic campaign allegedly stolen
by Russian operatives. The emails were released during a four-month period in the lead-up to
the US election.
Emails from the Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, were leaked on the same day –
7 October 2016 – the director of national intelligence and the secretary of homeland
security released a statement concluding the Russian government had been attempting to
interfere in the election.
Clinton told the ABC she believed the email leak was coordinated to disrupt the influence of
the Access Hollywood tape.
"WikiLeaks, which in the world in which we find ourselves promised hidden information,
promised some kind of secret that might be of influence, was a very clever, diabolical response
to the Hollywood Access tape," she said. "And I've no doubt in my mind that there was some
communication if not coordination to drop those the first time in response to the Hollywood
Access tape."
"I think he is part nihilist, part anarchist, part exhibitionist, part opportunist, who is
either actually on the payroll of the Kremlin or in some way supporting their propaganda
objectives, because of his resentment toward the United States, toward Europe," she said.
"He's like a lot of the voices that we're hearing now, which are expressing appreciation for
the macho authoritarianism of a Putin. And they claim to be acting in furtherance of
transparency, except they never go after the Kremlin or people on that side of the political
ledger."
Assange has denied the emails came from the Russian government or any other "state
parties".
In response to Clinton's comments, Assange said on Twitter there was "something wrong with
Hillary Clinton".
"It is not just her constant lying," he wrote. "It is not just that she throws off menacing
glares and seethes thwarted entitlement.
"Something much darker rides along with it. A cold creepiness rarely seen."
Julian Assange 🔹 (@JulianAssange)
There's something wrong with Hillary Clinton. It is not just her constant lying. It is not
just that she throws off menacing glares and seethes thwarted entitlement. Watch closely.
Something much darker rides along with it. A cold creepiness rarely seen. https://t.co/JNw2dkXgdu
Anybody who subscript of NYT, or WaPo after this fiasco is simply paying money for state
propaganda.
Notable quotes:
"... Committee Chairman Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) admitted as much in a press conference last Wednesday when he said: "We feel very confident that the ICA's accuracy is going to be supported by our committee. " ..."
"... Burr's statement is an example of "confirmation bias" which is the tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms one's own preexisting beliefs. In this case, Burr and his co-chair, Senator Mark Warner have already accepted the findings of a hastily slapped-together Intelligence report that was the work of "hand-picked" analysts who were likely chosen to produce conclusions that jibed with a particular political agenda. ..."
"... This is the basic claim of Russia meddling that has yet to be proved. As you can see, the charge is mixed with liberal doses of mind-reading mumbo-jumbo that reveal the authors' lack of objectivity. There's a considerable amount of speculation about Putin's motives and preferences which are based on pure conjecture. It's a bit shocking that professional analysts -- who are charged with providing our leaders with rock-solid intelligence related to matters of national security -- would indulge in this type of opinionated blather and psycho-babble. ..."
"... The ICA reads more like the text from a morning talk show than an Intelligence report. And what is it about this report that Burr finds so persuasive? It's beyond me. The report's greatest strength seems to be that no one has ever read it. If they had, they'd realize that it's nonsense. ..."
"... How can the committee conduct "100 interviews, comprising 250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts" without producing a shred of evidence that Russia meddled in the elections? How is that possible? The Committee's job is to prove its case not to merely pour over the minutia related to the investigation. No one really cares how many people testified or how much paperwork was involved. What people want is proof that Russia interfered with the elections or that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. That's the whole point of this exercise. And, on the collusion matter, at least we have something new to report. In a rare moment of candor, Burr blurted out this gem: "There are concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion? The committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I'm not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven't any." ..."
"... Let's cut to the chase: The committee is not getting to the bottom of the Russia hacking matter, because they don't want to get to the bottom of it. It's that simple. ..."
"... Brennan not only helped select the hand-picked analysts who authored the ICA, he also clearly has an animus towards Russia due to his frustrated attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al Assad which was thwarted by Putin. In other words, Brennan has a motive to mislead the Committee. He's biased. He has an ax to grind. In contrast, Assange has firsthand knowledge of what actually transpired with the DNC emails because he was the recipient of those emails. Has Assange been contacted by the Committee or asked to testify via Skype? ..."
"... It should be obvious by now that the real intention of the briefing was not to provide the public with more information, facts or evidence of Russian hacking, but to use the prestigious setting as a platform for disseminating more disinformation aimed at vilifying an emerging rival (Russia) that has blocked Washington's aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and threatens to unite the most populous and prosperous region in the world (Eurasia) into one massive free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Reasonable people must now consider the possibility that the Russia hacking narrative is an Information Operation (IO) devoid of any real substance which is designed to poison the publics perception of Russia. It is a domestic propaganda campaign that fits perfectly with the "Full Spectrum Dominance" theory of weaponizing media in a way that best achieves one's geopolitical objectives. The American people are again being manipulated so that powerful elites can lead the country to war. ..."
"... If the Senate can 'assess,' so can I! I assess that Hollywood hottie Jenifer Lawrence is secretly in love with me! Although I can't prove this, all of my assessments point to this as being fact. ..."
"... This report is as bogus as the "9/11 Commission Report". Both commissions members were hand-picked by those guys that have a vested interest in the right outcome. ..."
"... In the end, Robert Mueller, an Obama/Clinton/Comey/Brennan stooge, will produce some "evidence" about so-called Russian meddling as far-fetched this may be. And the fawning media will go for it. The American public will get the report, which it deserves. ..."
"... But what is missing is that this "Russian Hacking" story was not nonsense, it worked. After Trump was elected, the establishment panicked and went into full attack mode. The headlines were screaming, thought went out the window, it looked like Trump was going to be hounded out of office by force majeure. Then Trump buckled, and shot those missiles at the Syrian air base, and we are back on track throwing away trillions of dollars on endless pointless winless foreign wars in places of zero strategic interest to us. ..."
"... Having served its purpose, the Russian 'hacking' stories are tapering off, being continued more out of momentum and habit than true focused intent. Oh sure, the corporate press still publicly despises Trump, but the intensity is gone. They are just going through the motions, it is no longer important, just political theater. ..."
"... The people who came up with the Russian hacking story were not stupid. The logical weakness of the claim was never relevant. Unlike Dubya in Iraq, they got what they wanted. Mission accomplished. ..."
"... The inaptly named Intelligence Community just never busts out. However much it has gotten flat out wrong and however much it has flat out missed over the years, however much its blunders and mistakes have cost us and our victims in treasure and blood, it just never busts out. There is always an excuse. The closest the Borg ever came to any gesture towards accountability was the Church committee post Watergate, ancient history, lessons purposefully buried and lost to the legions of bureaucrats blundering their way through the last 40 years. ..."
"... Good article on something everyone who is well researched and truth seeking already knows; the Russian Collusion story is a hatchet job by incompetent political hacks. The only power they USED to have is an obsessive never give up faith in the power of lying. ..."
"... So what ? Truth is no longer an issue in USA politics: Christopher Lasch, 'The Culture of Narcissism, American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations', 1979, 1980, London ..."
"... Even today there was another AP hit piece about those 201 Russian Twitter handles, and zero perspective about the kind of math that renders 201 out of 24 billion a speck of dust. You really have to depend on a dumbed down population to get them to buy this stuff. ..."
"... If all we hear are endless allusions to what are just opinions, meetings, plans, criticism, etc what is being investigated? This is literally suggesting that some in Washington and US media are not mature enough, smart enough, or sane enough to be taken seriously. How are they planning to recover the basic level of rationality after this fiasco? ..."
The Senate Intelligence Committee has made it clear that it is not conducting an open and
independent investigation of alleged Russian hacking, but making a determined effort to support
a theory that was presented in the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment.
Committee Chairman Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) admitted as much in a press conference
last Wednesday when he said: "We feel very confident that the ICA's accuracy is going to be
supported by our committee. "
Burr's statement is an example of "confirmation bias" which is the tendency to interpret
information in a way that confirms one's own preexisting beliefs. In this case, Burr and his
co-chair, Senator Mark Warner have already accepted the findings of a hastily slapped-together
Intelligence report that was the work of "hand-picked" analysts who were likely chosen to
produce conclusions that jibed with a particular political agenda. In other words, the
intelligence was fixed to fit the policy. Burr of course has tried to conceal his prejudice by
pointing to the number of witnesses the Committee has interviewed and the volume of work that's
been produced. This is from an article at The Nation:
Since January 23, the committee and its staff have conducted more than 100 interviews,
comprising 250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts, and reviewed
more than 100,000 documents relevant to Russiagate. The staff, said Warner, has collectively
spent a total of 57 hours per day, seven days a week, since the committee opened its inquiry,
going through documents and transcripts, interviewing witnesses, and analyzing both
classified and unclassified material.
It all sounds very impressive, but if the goal is merely to lend credibility to unverified
assumptions, then what's the point? Let's take a look at a few excerpts from the report and see
whether Burr and Warner are justified in "feeling confident" in the ICA's accuracy. From the
Intelligence Community Assessment:
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at
the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US
democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential
presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference
for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.
This is the basic claim of Russia meddling that has yet to be proved. As you can see,
the charge is mixed with liberal doses of mind-reading mumbo-jumbo that reveal the authors'
lack of objectivity. There's a considerable amount of speculation about Putin's motives and
preferences which are based on pure conjecture. It's a bit shocking that professional analysts
-- who are charged with providing our leaders with rock-solid intelligence related to matters
of national security -- would indulge in this type of opinionated blather and
psycho-babble. It's also shocking that Burr and Warner think this gibberish should be
taken seriously.
Here's more from the ICA:
Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her
since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and
because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.
More mind-reading, more groundless speculation, more guessing what Putin thinks or doesn't
think. The ICA reads more like the text from a morning talk show than an Intelligence
report. And what is it about this report that Burr finds so persuasive? It's beyond me. The
report's greatest strength seems to be that no one has ever read it. If they had, they'd
realize that it's nonsense. Also, it would have been better if the ICA's authors had
avoided the amateur psychoanalysis and stuck to the point, Russia hacking. Dabbling in the
former seriously impacts the report's credibility.
To their credit, however, Burr and Warner have questioned all of the analysts who
contributed to the report. Check out this excerpt from The Nation:
"We have interviewed everybody who had a hand or a voice in the creation of the ICA," said
Burr. "We've spent nine times the amount of time that the IC [intelligence community] spent
putting the ICA together. We have reviewed all the supporting evidence that went into it and,
in addition to that, the things that went on the cutting-room floor that they may not have
found appropriate for the ICA, but we may have found relevant to our investigation." Burr
added that the committee's review included "highly classified intelligence reporting," and
they've interviewed every official in the Obama administration who had anything to do with
putting it together. ("Democrats and Republicans in Congress Agree: Russia Did It", The
Nation)
That's great, but where' the beef? How can the committee conduct "100 interviews,
comprising 250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts" without
producing a shred of evidence that Russia meddled in the elections? How is that possible? The
Committee's job is to prove its case not to merely pour over the minutia related to the
investigation. No one really cares how many people testified or how much paperwork was
involved. What people want is proof that Russia interfered with the elections or that members
of the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. That's the whole point of this exercise. And, on
the collusion matter, at least we have something new to report. In a rare moment of candor,
Burr blurted out this gem: "There are concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion? The
committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now,
I'm not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven't any."
Think about that. After "100 interviews, 250 hours of testimony, and 4000 transcript pages"
there's not the slightest hint of collusion. It's mindboggling. Why isn't this front page news?
Why haven't the New York Times or Washington Post run this in their headlines, after all,
they've hyped every other part of this story?
Could it be that Burr's admission doesn't mesh with the media's "Russia did it" narrative so
they decided to scrub the story altogether?
But it's not just collusion we're talking about here, there's also the broader issue of
Russia meddling. And what was striking about the press conference is that –after all the
interviews, all the testimony, and all the stacks of transcripts– the Committee has come
up with nothing; no eyewitness testimony supporting the original claims, no smoking gun, no
proof of domestic espionage, no evidence of Russian complicity, nothing. One big goose egg.
So here's a question for critical minded readers:
If the Senate Intelligence Committee has not found any proof that Russia hacked the 2016
elections, then why do senators' Burr and Warner still believe the ICA is reliable? It doesn't
really make sense, does it? Don't they require evidence to draw their conclusions? And doesn't
the burden of truth fall on the prosecution (or the investigators in this case)? Isn't a man
innocent until proven guilty or doesn't that rule apply to Russia?
Let's cut to the chase: The committee is not getting to the bottom of the Russia hacking
matter, because they don't want to get to the bottom of it. It's that simple. That's why
they have excluded any witnesses that may upset their preconceived theory of what happened.
Why, for example, would the committee chose to interview former CIA Director John Brennan
rather than WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange? Brennan not only helped select the
hand-picked analysts who authored the ICA, he also clearly has an animus towards Russia due to
his frustrated attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al Assad which was thwarted by
Putin. In other words, Brennan has a motive to mislead the Committee. He's biased. He has an ax
to grind. In contrast, Assange has firsthand knowledge of what actually transpired with the DNC
emails because he was the recipient of those emails. Has Assange been contacted by the
Committee or asked to testify via Skype?
Don't bet on it.
What about former UK ambassador Craig Murray, a WikiLeaks colleague, who has repeatedly
admitted that he knows the source of the DNC emails. Murray hasn't been asked to testify nor
has he even been contacted by the FBI on the matter. Apparently, the FBI has no interest in a
credible witness who can disprove the politically-motivated theory expounded in the ICA.
Then there's 30-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern and his group of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern has done extensive research on the topic and has
produced solid evidence that the DNC emails were "leaked" by an insider, not "hacked" by a
foreign government. McGovern's work squares with Assange and Murray's claim that Russia did not
hack the 2016 elections. Has McGovern been invited to testify?
How about Skip Folden, retired IBM Program Manager and Information Technology expert, whose
excellent report titled "Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge" also disproves the
hacking theory, as does The Nation's Patrick Lawrence whose riveting article at The Nation
titled "A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack" which thoroughly
obliterates the central claims of the ICA.
Finally, there's California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who met with Assange in August at
the Ecuadorian embassy in London and who was assured that Assange would provide hard evidence
(in the form of "a computer drive or other data-storage device") that the Russians were not
involved in the DNC email scandal.
Wouldn't you think that senate investigators would want to talk to a trusted colleague and
credible witness like Rohrabacher who said he could produce solid proof that the scandal, that
has dominated the headlines and roiled Washington for the better part of a year, was bogus?
Apparently not. Apparently Burr and his colleagues would rather avoid any witness or
evidence that conflicts with their increasingly-threadbare thesis.
So what conclusions can we draw from the Committee's behavior? Are Burr and Warner really
conducting an open and independent investigation of alleged Russia hacking or is this just a
witch hunt?
It should be obvious by now that the real intention of the briefing was not to provide
the public with more information, facts or evidence of Russian hacking, but to use the
prestigious setting as a platform for disseminating more disinformation aimed at vilifying an
emerging rival (Russia) that has blocked Washington's aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and
threatens to unite the most populous and prosperous region in the world (Eurasia) into one
massive free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Reasonable people must now
consider the possibility that the Russia hacking narrative is an Information Operation (IO)
devoid of any real substance which is designed to poison the publics perception of Russia. It
is a domestic propaganda campaign that fits perfectly with the "Full Spectrum Dominance" theory
of weaponizing media in a way that best achieves one's geopolitical objectives. The American
people are again being manipulated so that powerful elites can lead the country to war.
Where is this going? At some point in the next few years there will be a 'damning' report
that will regurgitate what has already been endlessly publicised: VIP's meet each other (the
horror!), somehow DNC emails got published, Facebook sold ads to 'Russia-linked' users, and
Pokemon Go, whatever. That will be described in sinister terms and RT will be thrown in. How
dare RT not to have the same views as CNN?
But what then? Let's even say that Trump is removed – he is at this point so
emasculated that keeping him in the White House is the most stabilising thing the
establishment could do. Is Congress going to declare a war on Russia? Or more sanctions? Are
they going to ban RT? Break diplomatic relations? None of that makes sense because any of
those moves would be more costly than beneficial, some dramatically so. Therefore nothing
will happen.
All that will remain is permanent bitterness towards Russia, and vice-versa. And much
reduced ability to do what the West has done for 75 years: heavy interference and media
campaigns inside foreign countries to influence elections. If 'meddling' is so bad, the
biggest meddlers – by far – will be less able to meddle. So how is this hysteria
helping?
Sanity in public life is a precious thing. Once abandoned, all kinds of strange things
start happening. Yeah, Pokemon GO – Putin was personally naming the characters to 'sow
division'. It sounds like something Stalin would accuse his 'cosmopolitan' enemies of doing.
This is really embarrassing.
Incorrect parsing of reality. It was not about getting Trump but it was about making Trump
administration to severe relations with Russia. It began with having Gen. Flynn fired. This
mission was accomplished. We have now worse relations with Russia than at the end of Obama
administration.
If the Senate can 'assess,' so can I! I assess that Hollywood hottie Jenifer Lawrence is secretly in love with me! Although I
can't prove this, all of my assessments point to this as being fact.
I have been convinced of the ridiculousness of the Russian-hacking/collusion
narrative/scandal since it was created in 2016.
I, too, smelled a rat and figured that it was all BS right from the get go. So much so
that I haven't followed it a bit. In fact it's so ridiculous on its face, that I have not and
probably will not, waste time reading the article even though MW is a good guy, an
unimpeachable source, a true journalist, and a fine writer.
Bless you, Mr Whitney, for having the energy to document what is no doubt a pack of lies
from the usual suspects.
I stumbled on this yesterday, and it suggests, to no one's surprise, that it's always
deja vu all over again. You'd think our "high IQ" masters would show a little
originality once in a while, and that we, "Low IQ" as we are, would finally learn that it's
all BS from the get-go.
Note the date.:
THESE books all belong to that literature of Katzenjammer which now flourishes so
amazingly in the United States t hey all embody attempts to find out what is the matter
with the Republic. I wish I could add that one or another of them solves the problem, or at
least contributes something to its illumination , but that would be going somewhat
beyond the facts.
-H.L. Mencken, Autopsy (4 Reviews), , September 1927 , pp. 123-125 –
PDF
This makes me suspect that Mike Whitney is a censorious coward on the model of Razib
Khan (thankfully expelled from unz.com) or even worse Paul Craig Roberts (who prohibits
comments entirely).
While I agree with you about the latter two, and have written them off accordingly, along
with Mercer, who I suspect "edits" (really, "purges" ) her comments too, I highly doubt that
MW falls into the same categories as those mentioned. At least MW doesn't use the word,
"insouciant" 3 or 4 times in every article!
If I am wrong and this article is simply strangely unpopular please let me know and I
will apologize.
The article isn't so much unpopular as the subject is wearying. It's the same crud all
over again,obviously false, and I suspect virtually everyone knows it. It's utterly boring
and I give MW a lot of credit for having the persistence to even face the mindless mess, let
alone think and write about it. He really is to be admired for that.
I've always thought it was a distraction as usual from other much more more important
things but utu has a better take on it.
it was about making Trump administration to severe relations with Russia. It began with
having Gen. Flynn fired. This mission was accomplished. We have now worse relations with
Russia than at the end of Obama administration. [ed note:And Flynn is gone too.]
I think that's a "Bingo!" and I also think you better formulate an apology and plan on
getting on yer knees to deliver it!
PS: I'm curious as to why you think this is of much interest at all. (Aside from utu's
take.)
We don't know who this author really is but, once again, what's interesting is that so
many people are still so scared of an investigation which is supposedly producing "no
evidence" (leaving aside Trump Junior's evidence, of course). If all this was a load of
nonsense, why make such a fuss about it? If there's nothing to this, an "effort to support a
theory", however "determined" will come up with nothing. The frantic attempts to kill off
Russiagate suggest that those who are making such attempts know, or believe, that there
actually is something to it which has not yet come to light. Probably something pretty dirty
by the sound of it. What if some part of the US intelligence services took part in the
manipulation of the election, either in collusion with the Russians or posing as Russians,
and Putin can prove it? That would certainly explain the plethora of retired intelligence
agents who are so assiduously defending a foreign government. If Putin really is innocent,
the common sense way to prove it is to let Russiagate take its natural course.
Reasonable people must now consider the possibility that the Russia hacking narrative is
an Information Operation (IO) devoid of any real substance which is designed to poison the
publics perception of Russia.
Really? Only "now"?! I thought it was pretty much clear from the beginning.
This report is as bogus as the "9/11 Commission Report". Both commissions members were
hand-picked by those guys that have a vested interest in the right outcome.
In the end,
Robert Mueller, an Obama/Clinton/Comey/Brennan stooge, will produce some "evidence" about
so-called Russian meddling as far-fetched this may be. And the fawning media will go for it.
The American public will get the report, which it deserves.
Indeed, well said. But what is missing is that this "Russian Hacking" story was not nonsense, it worked. After Trump was elected, the establishment panicked and went into full attack mode. The
headlines were screaming, thought went out the window, it looked like Trump was going to be
hounded out of office by force majeure. Then Trump buckled, and shot those missiles at the
Syrian air base, and we are back on track throwing away trillions of dollars on endless
pointless winless foreign wars in places of zero strategic interest to us.
Having served its purpose, the Russian 'hacking' stories are tapering off, being continued
more out of momentum and habit than true focused intent. Oh sure, the corporate press still
publicly despises Trump, but the intensity is gone. They are just going through the motions,
it is no longer important, just political theater.
The people who came up with the Russian hacking story were not stupid. The logical
weakness of the claim was never relevant. Unlike Dubya in Iraq, they got what they
wanted. Mission accomplished.
Mike – good article. The inaptly named Intelligence Community just never busts out. However much it has gotten
flat out wrong and however much it has flat out missed over the years, however much its
blunders and mistakes have cost us and our victims in treasure and blood, it just never busts
out. There is always an excuse. The closest the Borg ever came to any gesture towards
accountability was the Church committee post Watergate, ancient history, lessons purposefully
buried and lost to the legions of bureaucrats blundering their way through the last 40
years.
If it can be gotten wrong, the Borg will get it wrong; it will be gotten wrong at the worst
possible time; it will move on to get it wrong again. These are three things that you can
absolutely count on.
Good article on something everyone who is well researched and truth seeking already knows;
the Russian Collusion story is a hatchet job by incompetent political hacks. The only power
they USED to have is an obsessive never give up faith in the power of lying.
So what ?
Truth is no longer an issue in USA politics:
Christopher Lasch, 'The Culture of Narcissism, American Life in an Age of Diminishing
Expectations', 1979, 1980, London
@Mike Whitney Russia collusion does lack credibility, but you're still doing us a great
service by following the twists and turns of this beheaded snake. The details are worth
reading about, even if there isn't much to argue about regarding the conclusion. So thanks
for that.
Even today there was another AP hit piece about those 201 Russian Twitter handles, and
zero perspective about the kind of math that renders 201 out of 24 billion a speck of
dust. You really have to depend on a dumbed down population to get them to buy this stuff.
"If Putin really is innocent, the common sense way to prove it is to let Russiagate take
its natural course."
Innocent of what? What is it exactly that Russia supposedly did? Let me list a few
things that are still perfectly legal in our world (that would include US, I hope):
having an opinion, even if that opinion is not the same as NY Times/CNN/US State
Dept
expressing this opinion publicly, even spending money to spread that opinion
supporting the side in an election that you prefer – even in other countries
(everybody does this all the time, Obama flew to UK to campaign against Brexit)
publishing negative stuff about those you dislike (or who dislike you), e.g. their emails,
accounts, etc
spending money to spread your views – even on 'US-owned' platforms that are otherwise
operating all over the world, e.g. Facebook has 700 million active users, they cannot all be
in US
laughing or celebrating if what you preferred won (champagne for Trump)
meeting with foreigners from a country not in a state of war with you, or – God
forbid! – meeting with their ambassador.
None of the above is either unusual or illegal. It might not look good to some people, but
it is what international life has consisted for at least 200 years. If you call that
'meddling', you just might be too naive for the world as it is.
What is the 'natural course' for the investigation? If all we hear are endless allusions
to what are just opinions, meetings, plans, criticism, etc what is being investigated? This
is literally suggesting that some in Washington and US media are not mature enough, smart
enough, or sane enough to be taken seriously. How are they planning to recover the basic
level of rationality after this fiasco?
Putin named Pokemon GO characters after BLM victims to stir up racial hatreds in US. How
does one answer that? Where would you even start dealing with people who are capable of this
level of nonsense?
"... Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook. ..."
"... No, this discontent with the political establishment, corporate elites, and the mainstream media has nothing to do with any of that. It's not like global Capitalism, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (its last external ideological adversary), has been restructuring the entire planet in accordance with its geopolitical interests, or doing away with national sovereignty, and other nationalistic concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose in a world where a single ideological system (one backed by the most fearsome military in history) reigns completely unopposed. If that were the case, well, it might behoove us to question whether this outbreak of Nazism, racism, and other forms of "hate," was somehow connected to that historical development and maybe even try to articulate some sort of leftist analysis of that. ..."
"... a world where a single ideology rules the planet unopposed from without ..."
"... Brexit is about Britons who want their country back, a movement indeed getting stronger and stronger in EU member states, but ignored by the ruling 'elites'. ..."
"... A lot of these so called "revolutions" are fomented by the elite only to be subverted and perverted by them in the end. They've had a lot of practice co-opting revolutions and independence movements. ..."
"... "Independence" is now so fashionable (as was Communism among the "elite" back in the '30s), that they are even teaching and fostering independence to kids in kindergarten here in the US. That strikes me as most amusing. Imagine "learning" independence in state run brainwashing factories. ..."
Well all right, let's review what happened, or at least the official version of what
happened. Not Hillary Clinton's version of what happened, which Jeffrey St. Clair so
incisively skewered , but the Corporatocracy's version of what happened, which overlaps
with but is even more ridiculous than Clinton's ridiculous version. To do that, we need to
harken back to the peaceful Summer of 2016, (a/k/a the
"Summer of Fear" ), when the United States of America was still a shiny city upon a hill
whose beacon light guided freedom-loving people, the Nazis were still just a bunch of ass
clowns meeting in each other's mother's garages, and Russia was, well Russia was Russia.
Back then, as I'm sure you'll recall, Western democracy, was still primarily being menaced
by the lone
wolf terrorists, for absolutely no conceivable reason, apart from the terrorists' fanatical
desire to brutally murder all non-believers. The global Russo-Nazi Axis had not yet reared its
ugly head. President Obama, who, during his tenure, had single-handedly restored America to the
peaceful, prosperous, progressive paradise it had been before George W. Bush screwed it up, was
on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon slow
jamming home the TPP . The Wall Street banks had risen from the ashes of the 2008 financial
crisis, and were buying back all the foreclosed homes of the people they had fleeced with
subprime mortgages. American workers were enjoying the freedom and flexibility of the new gig
economy. Electioneering in the United States was underway, but it was early days. It was
already clear that Donald Trump was literally
the Second Coming of Hitler , but no one was terribly worried about him yet. The Republican
Party was in a shambles. Neither Trump nor any of the other contenders had any chance of
winning in November. Nor did Sanders, who had been defeated, fair and square, in the Democratic
primaries, mostly because of
his racist statements and crazy, quasi-Communist ideas. Basically, everything was hunky
dory. Yes, it was going to be terribly sad to have to bid farewell to Obama, who had bailed out
all those bankrupt Americans the Wall Street banks had taken to the cleaners, ended all of Bush
and Cheney's wars, closed down Guantanamo, and just generally served as a multicultural messiah
figure to affluent consumers throughout the free world, but Hope-and-Change was going to
continue. The talking heads were all in agreement Hillary Clinton was going to be President,
and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Little did we know at the time that an epidemic of Russo-Nazism had been festering just
beneath the surface of freedom-loving Western societies like some neo-fascist sebaceous cyst.
Apparently, millions of theretofore more or less normal citizens throughout the West had been
infected with a virulent strain of Russo-Nazi-engineered virus, because they simultaneously
began exhibiting the hallmark symptoms of what we now know as White Supremacist Behavioral
Disorder, or Fascist Oppositional Disorder (the folks who update the DSM are still arguing over
the official name). It started with the Brexit referendum, spread to America with the election
of Trump, and there have been a rash of outbreaks in Europe, like
the one we're currently experiencing in Germany . These fascistic symptoms have mostly
manifest as people refusing to vote as instructed, and expressing oppressive views on the
Internet, but there have also been more serious crimes, including several assaults and murders
perpetrated by white supremacists (which, of course, never happened when Obama was President,
because the Nazis hadn't been "emboldened" yet).
Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of
fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with
neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire
with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with
supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by
corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or
the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced
with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a
simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is
its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural
values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch
together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook.
No, this discontent with the political establishment, corporate elites, and the
mainstream media has nothing to do with any of that. It's not like global Capitalism, following
the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (its last external ideological adversary), has been restructuring
the entire planet in accordance with its geopolitical interests, or doing away with national
sovereignty, and other nationalistic concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose in a world
where a single ideological system (one backed by the most fearsome military in history) reigns
completely unopposed. If that were the case, well, it might behoove us to question whether this
outbreak of Nazism, racism, and other forms of "hate," was somehow connected to that historical
development and maybe even try to articulate some sort of leftist analysis of that.
This hypothetical leftist analysis might want to focus on how Capitalism is fundamentally
opposed to Despotism, and is essentially a value-decoding machine which renders everything and
everyone it touches essentially valueless interchangeable commodities whose worth is determined
by market forces, rather than by societies and cultures, or religions, or other despotic
systems (wherein values are established and enforced arbitrarily, by the despot, the church, or
the ruling party, or by a group of people who share an affinity and decide they want to live a
certain way). This is where it would get sort of tricky, because it (i.e., this hypothetical
analysis) would have to delve into the history of Capitalism, and how it evolved out of
medieval Despotism, and how it has been decoding despotic values for something like five
hundred years. This historical delving (which would probably be too long for people to read on
their phones) would demonstrate how Capitalism has been an essentially progressive force in
terms of getting us out of Despotism (which, for most folks, wasn't very much fun) by fomenting
bourgeois revolutions and imposing some semblance of democracy on societies. It would follow
Capitalism's inexorable advance all the way up to the Twentieth Century, in which its final
external ideological adversary, fake Communism, suddenly imploded, delivering us to the world
we now live in a world where a single ideology rules the planet unopposed from without
, and where any opposition to that global ideology can only be internal, or insurgent, in
nature (e.g, terrorism, extremism, and so on). Being a hypothetical leftist analysis,
it would, at this point, need to stress that, despite the fact that Capitalism helped deliver
us from Despotism, and improved the state of society generally (compared to most societies that
preceded it), we nonetheless would like to transcend it, or evolve out of it toward some type
of society where people, and everything else, including the biosphere we live in, are not
interchangeable, valueless commodities exchanged by members of a global corporatocracy who have
no essential values, or beliefs, or principles, other than the worship of money. After having
covered all that, we might want to offer more a nuanced view of the current neo-nationalist
reaction to the Corporatocracy's ongoing efforts to restructure and privatize the rest of the
planet. Not that we would support this reaction, or in any way refrain from calling
neo-nationalism what it is (i.e., reactionary, despotic, and doomed), but this nuanced view
we'd hypothetically offer, by analyzing the larger sociopolitical and historical forces at
play, might help us to see the way forward more clearly, and who knows, maybe eventually
propose some kind of credible leftist alternative to the "global neoliberalism vs.
neo-nationalism" double bind we appear to be hopelessly stuck in at the moment.
Luckily, we don't have to do that (i.e., articulate such a leftist analysis of any such
larger historical forces). Because there is no corporatocracy not really. That's just a fake
word the Russians made up and are spreading around on the Internet to distract us while the
Nazis take over. No, the logical explanation for Trump, Brexit, and anything else that
threatens the expansion of global Capitalism, and the freedom, democracy, and prosperity it
offers, is that millions of people across the world, all at once, for no apparent reason, woke
up one day full-blown fascists and started looking around for repulsive demagogues to swear
fanatical allegiance to. Yes, that makes a lot more sense than all that complicated stuff about
history and hegemonic ideological systems, which is probably just Russian propaganda anyway, in
which case there is absolutely no reason to read any boring year-old pieces, like this one in TheEuropeanFinancialReview , or this report by
Corporate Watch , from way back in the year 2000, about the rise of global corporate
power.
So, apologies for wasting your time with all that pseudo-Marxian gobbledygook. Let's just
pretend this never happened, and get back to more important matters, like statistically proving
that Donald Trump got elected President because of racism, misogyny, transphobia, xenophobia,
or some other type of behavioral disorder, and pulling down Confederate statues, or kneeling
during the National Anthem, or whatever happens to be trending this week. Oh, yeah, and
debating punching Nazis, or people wearing MAGA hats. We definitely need to sort all that out
before we can move ahead with helping the Corporatocracy remove Trump from office, or at least
ensure he remains surrounded by their loyal generals, CEOs, and Goldman Sachs guys until the
next election. Whatever we do, let's not get distracted by that stuff I just distracted you
with. I know, it's tempting, but, given what's at stake, we need to maintain our laser focus on
issues related to identity politics, or else well, you know, the Nazis win.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in
Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing
(USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
Yesterday evening on RT a USA lady, as usual forgot the name, spoke about the USA. In a
matter of fact tone she said things like 'they (Deep State) have got him (Trump) in the
box'.
They, Deep State again, are now wondering if they will continue to try to control the
world, or if they should stop the attempt, and retreat into the USA.
Also as matter of fact she said 'the CIA has always been the instrument of Deep State, from
Kenndy to Nine Eleven'.
Another statement was 'no president ever was in control'.
How USA citizens continue to believe they live in a democracy, I cannot understand.
Yesterday the intentions of the new Dutch government were made public, alas most Dutch
also dot not see that the Netherlands since 2005 no longer is a democracy, just a province of
Brussels.
Brexit is about Britons who want their country back, a movement indeed getting
stronger and stronger in EU member states, but ignored by the ruling 'elites'.
No doubt many do want their country back, but what concerns me is that all of a sudden we
have the concept of "independence" plastered all over the place. Such concepts don't get
promoted unless the ruling elites see ways to turn those sentiments to their favor.
A lot of these so called "revolutions" are fomented by the elite only to be subverted
and perverted by them in the end. They've had a lot of practice co-opting revolutions and
independence movements. (And everything else.)
"Independence" is now so fashionable (as was Communism among the "elite" back in the '30s),
that they are even teaching and fostering independence to kids in kindergarten here in the
US. That strikes me as most amusing. Imagine "learning" independence in state run
brainwashing factories.
"Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of
fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with
neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire
with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with
supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by
corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything,
or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and
replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which
is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because
exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their
eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer
brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on
Facebook."
Very impressed with this article, never really paid attention to CJ's articles but that is
now changing!
Neocons already poisoned the well of US-Russian cooperation. They already unleashes witch hunt in
best McCarthyism traditions. What else do they want ? Why they continue to waive this dead chicken?
Notable quotes:
"... people want is proof that Russia interfered with the elections or that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. That's the whole point of this exercise. And, on the collusion matter, at least we have something new to report. In a rare moment of candor, Burr blurted out this gem: ..."
"... Think about that. After "100 interviews, 250 hours of testimony, and 4000 transcript pages" there's not the slightest hint of collusion. It's mindboggling. Why isn't this front page news? Why haven't the New York Times or Washington Post run this in their headlines, after all, they've hyped every other part of this story? ..."
"... Let's cut to the chase: The committee is not getting to the bottom of the Russia hacking matter, because they don't want to get to the bottom of it. It's that simple. ..."
"... That's why they have excluded any witnesses that may upset their preconceived theory of what happened. Why, for example, would the committee chose to interview former CIA Director John Brennan rather than WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange? Brennan not only helped select the hand-picked analysts who authored the ICA, he also clearly has an animus towards Russia due to his frustrated attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al Assad which was thwarted by Putin. In other words, Brennan has a motive to mislead the Committee. He's biased. He has an ax to grind. In contrast, Assange has firsthand knowledge of what actually transpired with the DNC emails because he was the recipient of those emails. Has Assange been contacted by the Committee or asked to testify via Skype? ..."
"... It should be obvious by now that the real intention of the briefing was not to provide the public with more information, facts or evidence of Russian hacking, but to use the prestigious setting as a platform for disseminating more disinformation aimed at vilifying an emerging rival (Russia) that has blocked Washington's aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and threatens to unite the most populous and prosperous region in the world (Eurasia) into one massive free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok. ..."
"... Reasonable people must now consider the possibility that the Russia hacking narrative is an Information Operation (IO) devoid of any real substance which is designed to poison the publics perception of Russia. It is a domestic propaganda campaign that fits perfectly with the "Full Spectrum Dominance" theory of weaponizing media in a way that best achieves one's geopolitical objectives. The American people are again being manipulated so that powerful elites can lead the country to war. ..."
The Senate Intelligence Committee has made it clear that it is not conducting an open and independent
investigation of alleged Russian hacking, but making a determined effort to support a theory that
was presented in the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. Committee Chairman Senator
Richard Burr (R-N.C.) admitted as much in a press conference last Wednesday when he said:
We feel very confident that the ICA's accuracy is going to be supported by our committee.
Burr's statement is an example of "confirmation bias" which is the tendency to interpret information
in a way that confirms one's own preexisting beliefs. In this case, Burr and his co-chair, Senator
Mark Warner have already accepted the findings of a hastily slapped-together Intelligence report
that was the work of "hand-picked" analysts who were likely chosen to produce conclusions that jibed
with a particular political agenda. In other words, the intelligence was fixed to fit the policy.
Burr of course has tried to conceal his prejudice by pointing to the number of witnesses the Committee
has interviewed and the volume of work that's been produced. This is from an article at The Nation:
Since January 23, the committee and its staff have conducted more than 100 interviews, comprising
250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts, and reviewed more than 100,000
documents relevant to Russiagate. The staff, said Warner, has collectively spent a total of 57
hours per day, seven days a week, since the committee opened its inquiry, going through documents
and transcripts, interviewing witnesses, and analyzing both classified and unclassified material.
It all sounds very impressive, but if the goal is merely to lend credibility to unverified assumptions,
then what's the point?
Let's take a look at a few excerpts from the report and see whether Burr and Warner are justified
in "feeling confident" in the ICA's accuracy.
From the Intelligence Community Assessment:
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the
US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process,
denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess
Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have
high confidence in these judgments.
This is the basic claim of Russia meddling that has yet to be proved. As you can see, the charge
is mixed with liberal doses of mind-reading mumbo-jumbo that reveal the authors' lack of objectivity.
There's a considerable amount of speculation about Putin's motives and preferences which are based
on pure conjecture. It's a bit shocking that professional analysts– who are charged with providing
our leaders with rock-solid intelligence related to matters of national security– would indulge in
this type of opinionated blather and psycho-babble. It's also shocking that Burr and Warner think
this gibberish should be taken seriously.
Here's more from the ICA:
Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her
since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because
he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.
More mind-reading, more groundless speculation, more guessing what Putin thinks or doesn't think.
The ICA reads more like the text from a morning talk show than an Intelligence report. And what is
it about this report that Burr finds so persuasive? It's beyond me. The report's greatest strength
seems to be that no one has ever read it. If they had, they'd realize that it's nonsense. Also, it
would have been better if the ICA's authors had avoided the amateur psychoanalysis and stuck to the
point, Russia hacking. Dabbling in the former seriously impacts the report's credibility.
To their credit, however, Burr and Warner have questioned all of the analysts who contributed
to the report. Check out this excerpt from The Nation:
"We have interviewed everybody who had a hand or a voice in the creation of the ICA," said
Burr. "We've spent nine times the amount of time that the IC [intelligence community] spent putting
the ICA together. We have reviewed all the supporting evidence that went into it and, in addition
to that, the things that went on the cutting-room floor that they may not have found appropriate
for the ICA, but we may have found relevant to our investigation." Burr added that the committee's
review included "highly classified intelligence reporting," and they've interviewed every official
in the Obama administration who had anything to do with putting it together. ("Democrats and Republicans
in Congress Agree: Russia Did It", The Nation)
That's great, but where' the beef? How can the committee conduct "100 interviews, comprising 250
hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts" without producing a shred of evidence
that Russia meddled in the elections? How is that possible? The Committee's job is to prove its case
not to merely pour over the minutia related to the investigation. No one really cares how many people
testified or how much paperwork was involved. What people want is proof that Russia interfered with
the elections or that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. That's the whole point
of this exercise. And, on the collusion matter, at least we have something new to report. In a rare
moment of candor, Burr blurted out this gem:
"There are concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion? The committee continues to look into
all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I'm not going to even discuss any initial
findings because we haven't any."
Think about that. After "100 interviews, 250 hours of testimony, and 4000 transcript pages" there's
not the slightest hint of collusion. It's mindboggling. Why isn't this front page news? Why haven't
the New York Times or Washington Post run this in their headlines, after all, they've hyped every
other part of this story?
Could it be that Burr's admission doesn't mesh with the media's "Russia did it" narrative so they
decided to scrub the story altogether?
But it's not just collusion we're talking about here, there's also the broader issue of Russia
meddling. And what was striking about the press conference is that –after all the interviews, all
the testimony, and all the stacks of transcripts– the Committee has come up with nothing; no eyewitness
testimony supporting the original claims, no smoking gun, no proof of domestic espionage, no evidence
of Russian complicity, nothing. One big goose egg.
So here's a question for critical minded readers:
If the Senate Intelligence Committee has not found any proof that Russia hacked the 2016 elections,
then why do senators' Burr and Warner still believe the ICA is reliable? It doesn't really make sense,
does it? Don't they require evidence to draw their conclusions? And doesn't the burden of truth fall
on the prosecution (or the investigators in this case)? Isn't a man innocent until proven guilty
or doesn't that rule apply to Russia?
Let's cut to the chase: The committee is not getting to the bottom of the Russia hacking matter,
because they don't want to get to the bottom of it. It's that simple.
That's why they have excluded
any witnesses that may upset their preconceived theory of what happened. Why, for example, would
the committee chose to interview former CIA Director John Brennan rather than WikiLeaks founder,
Julian Assange? Brennan not only helped select the hand-picked analysts who authored the ICA, he
also clearly has an animus towards Russia due to his frustrated attempt to overthrow Syrian President
Bashar al Assad which was thwarted by Putin. In other words, Brennan has a motive to mislead the
Committee. He's biased. He has an ax to grind. In contrast, Assange has firsthand knowledge of what
actually transpired with the DNC emails because he was the recipient of those emails. Has Assange
been contacted by the Committee or asked to testify via Skype?
Don't bet on it.
What about former UK ambassador Craig Murray, a WikiLeaks colleague, who has repeatedly admitted
that he knows the source of the DNC emails. Murray hasn't been asked to testify nor has he even been
contacted by the FBI on the matter. Apparently, the FBI has no interest in a credible witness who
can disprove the politically-motivated theory expounded in the ICA.
Then there's 30-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern and his group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern has done extensive research on the topic and has produced solid evidence
that the DNC emails were "leaked" by an insider, not "hacked" by a foreign government. McGovern's
work squares with Assange and Murray's claim that Russia did not hack the 2016 elections. Has McGovern
been invited to testify?
How about Skip Folden, retired IBM Program Manager and Information Technology expert, whose excellent
report titled "Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge" also disproves the hacking theory,
as does The Nation's Patrick Lawrence whose riveting article at The Nation titled "A New Report Raises
Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack" which thoroughly obliterates the central claims of the
ICA.
Finally, there's California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who met with Assange in August at the
Ecuadorian embassy in London and who was assured that Assange would provide hard evidence (in the
form of "a computer drive or other data-storage device") that the Russians were not involved in the
DNC email scandal.
Wouldn't you think that senate investigators would want to talk to a trusted colleague and credible
witness like Rohrabacher who said he could produce solid proof that the scandal, that has dominated
the headlines and roiled Washington for the better part of a year, was bogus?
Apparently not. Apparently Burr and his colleagues would rather avoid any witness or evidence
that conflicts with their increasingly-threadbare thesis.
So what conclusions can we draw from the Committee's behavior? Are Burr and Warner really conducting
an open and independent investigation of alleged Russia hacking or is this just a witch hunt?
It should be obvious by now that the real intention of the briefing was not to provide the public
with more information, facts or evidence of Russian hacking, but to use the prestigious setting as
a platform for disseminating more disinformation aimed at vilifying an emerging rival (Russia) that
has blocked Washington's aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and threatens to unite the most populous
and prosperous region in the world (Eurasia) into one massive free trade zone spanning from Lisbon
to Vladivostok.
Reasonable people must now consider the possibility that the Russia hacking narrative
is an Information Operation (IO) devoid of any real substance which is designed to poison the publics
perception of Russia. It is a domestic propaganda campaign that fits perfectly with the "Full Spectrum
Dominance" theory of weaponizing media in a way that best achieves one's geopolitical objectives.
The American people are again being manipulated so that powerful elites can lead the country to war.
Like Obama before him Trump proved to be a very talented "bat and switcher".
Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump's presidential campaign took this cynical strategy farther than any of his Republican predecessors, openly reaching out to alienated working-class voters, the backbone of so many left-wing protest movements. ..."
"... Trump told us he was going to do something about Nafta, a left-wing bête noir since the 1990s. He promised to revive Glass Steagall. He claimed to care so very, very much about the people of the deindustrialized zones whose sufferings have been so thoroughly documented by left-wing authors. ..."
"... When Sanders decided to support HRC, I figured nothing will ever change. He built up a lot of hope (as did Obama), only to pull the rug out at the eleventh hour. ..."
"... Moving to the far towards the "progressive" left, the Democratic party abandoned the working and middle classes in favor of the coastal well to do city dwellers while trying to appeal to the "oppressed identity" single issue "groups". ..."
"... People got tired of losing their jobs to "globalization", with the government deciding what they can do with policies of "diversity", which is essentially a quota system, and with having ideologues and bureaucrats decide what is good or bad for them. ..."
"... If we lost the base of the Democratic party it wasn't because it was stolen from us. It was because it was given away. We started giving it away when we learned the wrong lesson after Ronald Reagan and thought that we had to move to the right with Bill Clinton to win the presidency. ..."
"... Clinton is the ultimate Swamp Creature,and large reason for her loss is that she spent more time with her high dollar donors then in swing states. How do you think the "Clinton Foundation" got so big? ..."
"... So the Democrats embraced the moneyed establishment because they felt they had to to win, while the Republicans denounced that same establishment but only as part of a bait-and-switch strategy. Meanwhile the establishment hedges their bets and wins no matter what the election outcome. ..."
"... I agree, the New Deal was quite leftist, in the sense that it acknowledged the crisis which had struck the working class. It's atypical in the history of the Democratic Party, which has been devoted to advancing the interests of U.S. corporations and since the Clinton years, those of multinational business consortia. But even the New Deal was a far cry from a revolutionary call to arms. In fact, it was meant to curtail such agitation. Roosevelt said as much. ..."
"... There is no left movement in Washington. Each is going after money from lobbyists. I just see the USA rapidly consuming itself and fragmenting. It has poor social, medical, policing programs. And it continues to digest itself in petty hate between the Democrats and Republicans. It really has no serious governance and worse its flagship superior court is now being sold to capitalism ..."
"... Identity politics is what the oligarchy is using to divide us. I just think it is counterproductive to battle each other when the upward mobility is being taken from us. I wish others could see it. ..."
"... Immigration restrictionists in the US have for decades fought the corporate establishment. In fact, we have fought what are probably the most powerful coalitions of special interests in human history, coalitions of corporate predators, Big Labor, Big Religion, Big Media, and Big Government. ..."
"... There are plenty of populists in the Republican Party, but the governing portion of the party is solidly neocon. Hence the battle between President Trump and the "17 intelligence agencies," and the remarkable undermining of Trump's foreign policy proposals by his own cabinet. ..."
"... Just as the progressive base of the Democratic Party is suppressed by the corporatists at the DNC and other centralized party organs, the Republican base is a captive to its Washington elite power brokers. ..."
"... Apparently 'isolationism' now means simply advocating for some restraint on endless global US military interventionism, hundreds and hundreds of bases in 80+ countries, and trillion dollar 'defence' budgets. ..."
"... I'll take an isolationist over a neo-con any day. ..."
"... The "traditional base" of the Democratic Party was destroyed long ago by de-industrialisation, hollowing of labor law, and now by opioids of the masses. The present day DNC is run by and for their army of contractors, lobbyists, bunglers, and wreckers. ..."
"... I hate to say it to you, but Trump voters who live in Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Iowa weren't looking for upscale living and calling for lower corporate taxes etc. One out of four WV residents are living under economic distress. They just want decent jobs and a government that represents working people, not the wealthy. ..."
here's was a moment in Steve Bannon's recent
60 Minutes interview when the former presidential advisor was asked what he's done to
drain "the swamp," the Trumpists' favorite metaphor for everything they hate about Washington DC.
Here was Bannon's reply: "The swamp is 50 years in the making. Let's talk about the swamp. The swamp
is a business model. It's a successful business model. It's a donor, consultant, K Street lobbyist,
politician ... 7 of the 9 wealthiest counties in America ring Washington, DC."
With a shock of recognition I knew immediately what Bannon meant, because what he was talking
about was the subject matter of my 2008 book, The Wrecking Crew – the interconnected eco-system of
corruption that makes Washington, DC so rich.
The first chapter of my book had been a description of those wealthy counties that ring Washington,
DC: the fine cars, the billowing homes, the expense-account restaurants. The rest of the book was
my attempt to explain the system that made possible the earthly paradise of Washington and – just
like Steve Bannon
– I did it by referring to a business model: the political donors and the K Street lobbyists, who
act in combination with politicians of the Tom DeLay variety.
My critique of Washington was distinctly from the left, and it astonished me to hear something
very close to my argument coming from the mouth of one of the nation's most prominent conservatives.
But in fact, Bannon has a long history of reaching out to the left – you might say, of swiping its
populist language and hijacking its causes.
In this space back in February, for example,
I described Bannon's bizarre 2010 pseudo-documentary about the financial crisis, which superficially
resembles actual documentaries, but which swerves to blame this failure of the deregulated financial
system on the counterculture of the 1960s.
Bannon's once-famous denunciation of Wall Street banks for their role in the financial crisis
is another example. His fondness for the author
Christopher Lasch is also revealing. As was his
admiring phone call
with Robert Kuttner, a well-known liberal editor, which happened just before Bannon left his high-ranking
White House job in August.
Mimicry is supposed to be a form of flattery, right
Dig a little deeper, and it sometimes seems like the history of the populist right – with its
calls to "organize discontent" and its endless war against "the establishment" and the "elites" –
is nothing but a history of reformatting left-wing ideas to fit the needs of the billionaire class.
Think of Ronald Reagan's (and Mike Pence's) deliberate reprise of Franklin Roosevelt. Or the constant
echoes of Depression-era themes and imagery that one heard from the Tea Party movement.
Donald Trump's presidential campaign took this cynical strategy farther than any of his Republican
predecessors, openly reaching out to alienated working-class voters, the backbone of so many left-wing
protest movements.
Trump told us he was going to do something about Nafta, a left-wing bête noir since the 1990s.
He promised to revive Glass Steagall. He claimed to care so very, very much about the people of the
deindustrialized zones whose sufferings have been so thoroughly documented by left-wing authors.
So many fine, militant words. So many clarion calls rousing the people against corrupt elites.
And now comes Steve Bannon, the terror of the Republican establishment, hectoring us about "the swamp"
with ideas so strikingly similar to my own.
Look at deeds rather than words, however, and it seems as though Trump and his gang have been
using The Wrecking Crew more as a how-to guide than anything else. In that book, for example, I pointed out that one of the hallmarks of modern conservative governance
is the placement of people who are hostile to the mission of federal agencies in positions of authority
in those very agencies.
This is an essential component of the Washington corruption Bannon loves to deplore – and yet
this is precisely what Bannon's man Trump has done. Betsy DeVos, a foe of public schools, is running
the Department of Education. Scott Pruitt, a veteran antagonist of the EPA, has been put in charge
of the EPA. Rick Perry now runs the Department of Energy, an agency he once proposed to abolish.
Another characteristic of the DC wrecking crew is a war on competence within the Federal bureaucracy
– and that, too, is back on, courtesy of the folks who rallied you against corruption so movingly
last year.
Lobbying ? The industry
appears to be gearing up for a return of its Reagan-era golden age. In the early days of the administration,
lobbyists were appointed en masse to team Trump and a brigade of brash new K Street personalities
is rising up to replace the old guard.
Privatization? The people in DC are trying it again, and this time on a gigantic scale. Trump's
ultra-populist infrastructure promise now seems to be little more than a vast scheme for encouraging
investment firms to take over the country's highways and bridges. Even the
dreams of privatized war are back, brought to you courtesy of the enterprising Erik Prince, a
familiar face from the worst days of the Iraq war.
Above it all towers the traditional Republican ideal of business-in-government. "The government
should be run like a great American company," is how Jared Kushner puts it this time around; and
with his private-jet-set cabinet Donald Trump is going to show the nation exactly what that philosophy
looks like.
All the elements are here. The conclusion is unquestionable. The wrecking crew is back.
And why is it back? Because, among other things,
Republicans are better
at fulminating against the wrecking crew than are Democrats. Maybe that's because Democratic leaders
feel it's inappropriate to use such blunt and crude language.
Maybe that's because, for 40 years or so, the leadership faction of the Democratic Party has been
at war with its own left wing, defining us out of the conversation, turning a deaf ear to our demands,
denouncing populism even as the right grabbed for it with both hands. Either way, the
Democrats seem to have
no intention of changing their approach now.
Maybe we on the left should take consolation in the things Steve Bannon says. Our own team may
not listen to us, but at least there's someone out there in a position of power who apparently does.
And mimicry is supposed to be a form of flattery, right?
No. All this is happening for one reason only: to steal the traditional base of the Democratic
Party out from under us. That it will also enrich countless contractors and lobbyists and bunglers
and wreckers is just a bonus.
On running the government like a business: That is exactly what the Trump regime is doing. Their
business model is the mob. And to be fair, the idea of running government like a business makes
precisely as much sense as running a business like a government.
Steve Bannon is part of the plan to de-democratize the USA and Republicans can only do that by
lying on an industrial scale, which they do very efficiently and effectively. Why the need? Because
although they are good at destruction, they are no good at all at building the nation or government.
The First Rule of Marketing says that if you give people what they want, they will give you
dollars. The billionaires who fund the Republicans again and again do so not because they believe
in good government, or have the slightest concern for the wealth, health and defense of the nation,
but because they get what they want. It's a purchasing contract.
"....to steal the traditional base of the Democratic Party out from under us"
They aren't your servants to do your bidding and wait your table. Nor your political property.
There is no more similarity of average working blokes to self-infatuated intellectuals of "the
left" than a potato to a hubcap.
Working people left the party because they plainly are no longer welcome except during the
brief hours when the polls are open.
I haven't the vaguest idea. When Sanders decided to support HRC, I figured nothing will ever
change. He built up a lot of hope (as did Obama), only to pull the rug out at the eleventh hour.
Moving to the far towards the "progressive" left, the Democratic party abandoned the working and
middle classes in favor of the coastal well to do city dwellers while trying to appeal to the
"oppressed identity" single issue "groups". The only answer it presented to all problems was more
government control over the economy and over all aspects of people's life. People got tired of
losing their jobs to "globalization", with the government deciding what they can do with policies
of "diversity", which is essentially a quota system, and with having ideologues and bureaucrats
decide what is good or bad for them.
TPP was a secret deal, which had written into it, its own right to trump the legal systems of
signatory countries with TPP-sponsored arbitration and even mediation judgments. Trump saw that
off on his first day.
If we lost the base of the Democratic party it wasn't because it was stolen from us. It was because
it was given away. We started giving it away when we learned the wrong lesson after Ronald Reagan
and thought that we had to move to the right with Bill Clinton to win the presidency.
It was later given away when we didn't accomplish much when we had the majorities in the House,
Senate and Presidency back in 2008. If Trump picked up our message it was because he took it,
it was because it was just sitting there waiting to be picked up.
Nonsense. Clinton is the ultimate Swamp Creature,and large reason for her loss is that she spent
more time with her high dollar donors then in swing states. How do you think the "Clinton Foundation"
got so big?
So the Democrats embraced the moneyed establishment because they felt they had to to win, while
the Republicans denounced that same establishment but only as part of a bait-and-switch strategy.
Meanwhile the establishment hedges their bets and wins no matter what the election outcome.
That is a good message. I'll be more supportive of the conservatives when they actually practice
what they preach. But please don't get me wrong. Not all conservatives are into white supremacy.
The problem I see is that if one is a white supremacist, the conservatives don't publicly denounce
that position. It makes many people of color feel alienated by conservatism. At least the left
openly denounces white supremacy. The right praises MLK but doesn't condemn those in Charlotteville.
They had a right to protest and the left shouldn't have tried to silence them. However it was
identity politics. They wouldn't be protecting the open display of the confederacy if they weren't
into identity politics. That message seems to get lost as conservatism frowns on identity politics.
I don't know what that refers to.
NAFTA passed under Clinton , but more importantly, so did the Uruguay Round of GATT. When the
Senate passed that (the House passed it to but technically the House doesn't ratify treaties),
it severely curtailed the USA's ability to negotiate our own trade deals. All members of the WTO
are vulnerable to financial penalties if any member nation tries to override the rulings set by
the WTO. Not only did Ralph Nader recognize this as a problem and try to run for president because
of it, so did Pat Buchanan. Buchanan saw this as lost sovereignty (in his words). Both Nader and
Buchanan were of course unsuccessful because we vote in an FPTP voting system which tends to eliminate
third parties form being successful.
The point is that Clinton forced Congress to pass the legislation just like Paulson forced
Congress to approve a bailout of the banks during the financial crisis. It wasn't really all the
republicans fault, but the oligarchy would have taken down the global economy if it didn't get
bailed out. Anyway the WTO has a policy on dumping:
both dems and reps rant and rave about China dumping steel but nothing ever gets done to stop
it because the WTO is there protecting China (or american companies making steel in China). Either
way the american steel worker gets screwed in the process and that is why populists hate globalism.
The American worker knows he's getting screwed but he may not be aware of the mechanism by which
he is getting screwed. The media rarely talks about the WTO because if the American worker knew
how he was getting screwed, he'd be screaming to get out of the WTO. Typically he only knows his
jobs are gone and where they are. However it was Clinton who did this and the idea that anybody
would even think of putting HRC back in the white house while she is still married to that dude
is due to utter ignorance of the fact of what he did when he was there the first time.
I think both Clinton and W should be in jail, but this isn't about W.
I agree, the New Deal was quite leftist, in the sense that it acknowledged the crisis which had
struck the working class. It's atypical in the history of the Democratic Party, which has been
devoted to advancing the interests of U.S. corporations and since the Clinton years, those of
multinational business consortia. But even the New Deal was a far cry from a revolutionary call
to arms. In fact, it was meant to curtail such agitation. Roosevelt said as much.
There is no left movement in Washington. Each is going after money from lobbyists. I just see
the USA rapidly consuming itself and fragmenting. It has poor social, medical, policing programs.
And it continues to digest itself in petty hate between the Democrats and Republicans. It really
has no serious governance and worse its flagship superior court is now being sold to capitalism.
Capitalism will fail as predicted by Marx and those who really know about it. It is our children
who will pick up the tab if they can survive.
> Identity politics is what the oligarchy is using to divide us.
Conservatives argue against identity politics. I don't know what the oligarchy is supposed to
be, in the context of the US. People in power often came from varied backgrounds, not usually
all that rich backgrounds.
> upward mobility is being taken from us
Upward from what? If you are poor, there's a lot of upward that might be possible, but if you
are middle class, whatever that means, you can't have everyone moving up or the definition of
middle class would change to them.
> The worst thing that happened to us, happened under Clinton
I don't know what that refers to. Welfare reform? Various changes to banking regulations? Allowing
bin Laden to hit us again and again but instead of doing what needed to be done, frolicking with
a young frisky intern in the Oval Office? I doubt Bush Sr would've done that.
> However if you stand up for the rights of one group and ignore the rights of another today some people still don't "get it".
They don't get what? When someone protests in the street, whether they are sweetness and light
or racist or whatever, they have the right to protest. Plenty of people would argue that "hate
speech" should be banned, them defining what "hate speech" means, of course. These people are
arguing against settled constitutional law.
> I tend to think the US citizen should be protected by the bill of rights and not necessarily those here illegally.
Yet not protecting everyone with due process, for example, is a violation of constitutional law.
I consider myself a populist. Not exactly from the left but certainly more left that right. Identity
politics is what the oligarchy is using to divide us. I just think it is counterproductive to
battle each other when the upward mobility is being taken from us. I wish others could see it.
The worst thing that happened to us, happened under Clinton, but rest assured; HW Bush would have
done it had he won the election in 92.
My point was that calling the Democratic Party a leftist party requires a notion of that term
drained of real meaning. The Democratic Party has always upheld the supremacy of capital and the
necessity of forestalling a revolution. I realize that in the United States plenty of people regard
President Obama and Hillary Clinton as communists, but that's simply a measure of how far to the
right political discourse stands there. The American left was eliminated from public life in the
1940s and 1950s with the suppression of the Communist Party, the purging of the unions and professions,
and strict mass indoctrination of the citizenry. And whenever new manifestations of leftist energy
have appeared, they have been met with unremitting hostility from liberal and conservative centers
of power.
Finally, the Democratic Party is a party not just of capital, but of empire. This was never
more true than in last year's election, in which Donald Trump was able to appeal to marginal voters
on the ambiguous claim that he was less warlike than Secretary Clinton. No, there's nothing in
the two party set-up which expresses the basic demands of the modern left- an end to imperialism,
nationalization of key industries, and so on. And when people restrict their political thinking
to the narrow range offered by a business oligopoly, they're going to be misreading their own
reality.
The Republican Party has a big problem in that its agenda has at best a small grassroots following
of perhaps 10% of the populace.
Meantime, populist-nationalism is in sync with the views of I would estimate at least 50% of
the US citizenry and perhaps as much as 60%. (the other 30% of the public are "progressives")
The establishment has maintained power by default. When our political system offers only a
choice between a "progressive" Democrat and an establishment Repubilcan, many voters choose the
latter as the lesser evil.
If and when voters actually are offered a genuine choice at the ballot box, watch out. I think
you will start seeing this played out on a grand scale in the 2018 and 2020 Republican primaries.
Fighting the corporate establishment has never been the exclusive province of the left.
Immigration restrictionists in the US have for decades fought the corporate establishment.
In fact, we have fought what are probably the most powerful coalitions of special interests in
human history, coalitions of corporate predators, Big Labor, Big Religion, Big Media, and Big
Government.
This movement is one of the grassroots pillars fueling Bannonism.
There are plenty of populists in the Republican Party, but the governing portion of the party
is solidly neocon. Hence the battle between President Trump and the "17 intelligence agencies,"
and the remarkable undermining of Trump's foreign policy proposals by his own cabinet.
Just as the progressive base of the Democratic Party is suppressed by the corporatists at the
DNC and other centralized party organs, the Republican base is a captive to its Washington elite
power brokers.
Thomas Frank's interesting and thoughtful pieces on the failure- or refusal- of the Democratic
Party to come to terms with the depths of voter disaffection form an interesting contrast with
the Guardian's DNC-supplied outlook. I suppose that's why he's been hired, to take up all that
slack as the paper trudges ever rightward. Here's a link to an extended recent interview he gave
with Paul Jay at The Real News.
Populist movements typically tend to involve more focus on complaining and raging about problems
than coming up with any real solutions for them, so it doesn't really matter whether members self-identify
as coming from the left or right. Given the Trump campaign was all about manipulation anyway,
with Trump just a puppet to distract the public from seeing the corprate take-over of the state,
it's not surprising they used a populist rhetoric, as seen in shock doctrine, that inherent rage
blinds them from seeing they are being manipulated.
The last time the Democrats actually offered something to the American people was the War on Poverty
and Civil Rights legislation by President Johnson in the 1960s. Other than the Democrats have
been acting like an extended PR arm of corporate America by performing sideshows on social issues
while failing to address the needs of working families. I clearly don't buy into the notion that
the Democrats are a tad better than the Republicans. No, the Democrats need to be radically to
the left like Bernie Sanders, not moderate Republican lite such as Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
This country simply cannot continue electing conservative governments all the time in Washington
DC.
Apparently 'isolationism' now means simply advocating for some restraint on endless global US
military interventionism, hundreds and hundreds of bases in 80+ countries, and trillion dollar
'defence' budgets.
A broken clock is right twice a day. Yes, Republican isolationists are the only ones in their
primarily interventionist party to ever make a principled critique of endless U.S. wars abroad.
Sadly, the Democrats are, with some honorable exceptions like Dennis Kucinich, as committed to
these endless wars as their partners across the aisle. This is one of the many reasons why Hillary
Clinton lost. However, Buchanan's xenophobia makes his brand of anti-imperialism shallow--he still
thinks "Western civilization" is superior to other cultures, and has denied the genocide against
Native Americans. His views about Jews are also rather creepy. That said, I'll take an isolationist
over a neo-con any day.
There is divisive manipulation on the left and the right, the pundits blame each other to keep
America divided. The right stereotypes the left while the left stereotypes the right . The working
class crazy white guy is oppressing the hispanic and blacks while the blacks and hispanic oppress
the working class white. The left pundits make fun of the working class while the right pundits
make fun of the left pundits. Both sides are entralled by business interests aka socoio-political
interests. Afterall, this is a business world where ppl have to put food on the table.America
is on the verge of becoming as divided as america was prior to the civil war. What am i supposed
to do? Join the resistence of division taking place on the left and the right? Protest against
another american at a divided left vs. right rally? Resistence is futile because resistence leads
to more division.
Excuse my unedites grammar semtence structure lack of sense and not serious online comment
Trump can't stop calling others
names - with the absurd stance
that he must bully people to create a sense of self respect.
Those who support Trump or Bannon generally have in common a refusal to see any viewpoint other
than their own.
They'll find a way to make most any belief, policy or decision which T&B uphold, look justified
or non-offensive in motives.
Trump runs every which way, so, there are bound to be a few things one finds agreeable (even from
the left). Bannon thinks democracy does not work. He'd like to see the federal government crash.
In fact, The USA has no true democracy. Like many developed
nations we are under the total
rule of organized business. Profit
is superior and normalized whereas basic human needs are
for the highest bid competition.
Greed older than Methuselah's
first breakfast. Bannon doesn't
have a vision for the betterment and uplift of society any more than anyone else. Who cannot can
see corporate greed has its tentacles around us? The common person on the street
knows the scheme. What to do about it finds us in the land of inertia. Next crash (it is coming)
the panicked cry for bailouts will
be near impossible to put-up with. With billions on the planet
we are in new territory, as to
resources and competition. A system which cannot survive with its hand in our pocket while claiming
free market enterprise
will even out the system on balance - meaning for investors, and head in sand more of the same.
The "base" of the Democratic party is now the same get rich ideologues of Clinton-ism who are
happy to lobby and privatise with as much enthusiasm as any right wing Republican/Conservative/Tea
Party ideologue. Every administration, Republican or Democratic, from Clinton, to Bush, to Obama,
has held to the same policies of the Reagan administration. The "traditional base" of the Democratic
Party was destroyed long ago by de-industrialisation, hollowing of labor law, and now by opioids
of the masses. The present day DNC is run by and for their army of contractors, lobbyists, bunglers,
and wreckers.
Yep - the big mistake with critters like Bannon is to ignore or dismiss everything they say and
fail to detect what resonance they are striking with what audience.
But it's awkward when you just read them and recognise grains of truthiness - they see the
same problems it's just their solutions are all wrong. But they are actually cutting the left's
grass - pinching the alienation and discontent that rightly belongs to progress, no? Now the NRA
have got 'em - not even the GOP.
Be yer unfinished civil war this... grinding away slowly ... so now the whole place is riven
by fear and suspicion - of race, wealth, cities, the guvvermint, of anything and everything really.
A deeply traumatised culture you've got sitting down there - victims real and imagined wandering
about and none of it getting fixed at all..
Not everyone or everywhere - but the most fearful and angry cluster are centred on the underlying
issues of the era of Lincoln. Trump is speaking for and to them. There can be no more nonsense
about lone gunmen - this is now part of US culture - systemic and systematic.
Yer 500 kiddies are just the price of open-carry freedoms according to the Vegas mayor. All
the same old folk-wisdoms: can't have laws that stop bad people being bad?... why should the 1%
of evildoers dictate our liberties?
But of course they do. That is how all laws work, whether murder or shoplifting - everyone
shows their bags. In fact they are arguing for lawlessness - vigilantism and John Wayne cowboy
myths. That's the Trump/Bannon audience ... National Enquirer readers packing heat .
#TheHouseAlwaysWins The author gets so close to putting his finger on the problem and then at
the last moment swerves off into partisan rhetoric. Wake up dude! Both of the things you think are opposite sides are out to get us.
The list below delineates the policies and initiatives that Hillary Clinton supported over course
of her political career (including as a loyal First Lady to Bill Clinton). They help explain the
depressed voter enthusiasm and turnout for the Dems among many of the groups to whom you say Frank,
as a "well-to-do white man" pining for "white working class revolution," owes an apology:
--Deregulation of the investment banks (and against reinstatement of Glass--Steagall)
--Deregulation of the telecommunications industry
--Deregulation of derivatives
--The destruction of welfare (which has caused the numbers living in extreme poverty to double
since its passage)
--The Omnibus Crime Bill (increased the prison population massively)
--NAFTA
--The sanctions regime against Iraq of the 1990s that killed 500,000 Iraqi children ("it was worth
it," said her friend Madeline Albright)
--The Defense of Marriage Act
--CAFTA (granted stealthy support)
--TPP
--Fracking
--The objectively-racist death penalty
--The private prison industry
--The Patriot Act
--The Iraq War
--The bombing of Libya
--Military intervention in Syria
--Israel's starvation blockade and blitzkrieg against Gaza
--The right-wing coup in Honduras
--Investor-friendly repression and cronyism in Haiti
--A 31 cents/hour minimum wage in Haiti (and against attempts to raise it)
--The recently announced 20 year, $1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) upgrade of the US's nuclear arsenal
--Historically-high numbers of deportations under the Obama Adm.
--Oil drilling in the Arctic
--The fight against free public university tuition
--The fight against single-payer health care
--Acceptance of tens of millions of dollars of corporate money
--Credit-card industry favored bankruptcy laws
--The bail-out of Wall Street
If you think America is bad, then try living in the UK.
The UK is a hotbed of religious nutters. Just look at Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, David
Cameron, and Theresa May.
The UK still has a "state-established" church (the Church of England). The UK's national anthem
' God Save the Queen ' mentions 'God' over 30 different times. And most British schools
are still faith-based and funded by the church. Also, abortion and gay marriage are still banned
in some parts of the UK, such as Northern Ireland.
Forget Donald Trump.... the UK is far more religious & dangerous.
Lol, yeah it's only the Rs that do bad stuff in DC. HRC was the Queen of the system described
above. An article designed to confuse those without eyes to see.
The interesting thing for me is the hate levels on the left which appear to be almost off the
scale at the moment. Identity politics seems to have a deep hold on your hearts.
The U.S. is more liberal & secular than ever. The election of Trump doesn't change that. According to a
2011 Pew Report , the U.S. now has the 3rd largest atheist population in the
world -- after China & Japan. On top of that, a
2015 Gallup Poll found that 60% of Americans would vote for an atheist President
-- a record number that continues to grow every year.
Additionally, gay marriage is legal in all
50 U.S. states. Marijuana is legal & taxed in
8 U.S. states. Euthanasia (assisted suicide) is legal in
6 U.S states -- including California (the largest state in America with over 40 million
people). Even prostitution is legal & regulated in some U.S. states, such as Nevada!
*Sign into Youtube to watch this video about legal
American brothels.
The U.S. constitution guarantees separation of Church & State -- unlike the UK, which still
has a "state-established" church (the Church of England).
Not really. They will be defeated in the next election and they are already facing charges and
prison time. This will not end with a bang, but with a whimper and whining like you've never heard.
There are many more in the one percent and the top 10% who are already disgusted with Mercer,
Koch, Trump and the whole Putin cabal. Evil is evil and splashing some fake christianity on their
hitler speeches is not fooling anyone but the already fooled; and they are a small lot getting
smaller every single day.
Most of Bannon's story about dear old dad is pure crap. He was already a right wing film-maker
before the 2008 meltdown, and dear old dad would still have his money if he had listened to his
two financier sons instead of the cable TV idiot Cramer. AT&T, in case you haven't heard, came
through the crash intact.
15 billion dollars worth of missiles being sold to Saudi Arabia ........ while a few days ago
Saudi Arabia goes to Moscow and talks to putin which is the first tie ever.......... so we sold
them weapons to what , aim at us........
So, do you preferred two thirds of the American population to live on welfare aid like Medicaid
which doesn't even covered dental and eye exams? As much you don't like the GOP approach to healthcare
reform, the Democrats would rather bailed out the insurance industry by making consumers to buy
unaffordable coverage and public assistance programs and refused to embraced Bernie Sanders approach
to universal healthcare. The Democratic Party simply has no ideas, just empty tough talk against
the President.
I hate to say it to you, but Trump voters who live in Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Iowa weren't looking for upscale living and calling for lower corporate taxes
etc. One out of four WV residents are living under economic distress. They just want decent jobs
and a government that represents working people, not the wealthy.
So, you're suggesting that Frank's political instincts are all wrong when he first wrote his
book thesis on "What's the matter with Kansas," which lays out the scanting indictment of the
pro-corporate wing of the Democratic Party and their wealthy supporters. Here's the reality
that you Clinton bots don't understand: the rest of the country is like Kansas, not glamour
LA or Wall Street NYC. People work in blue collar and grey collar professions, have modest
wealth, and some are involved in trade unions. Many don't have a college degree; many also
have no desires to go to a liberal arts school or state public university. Nearly eighty
percent of middle America have a high school diploma. Only thirty percent have a college BA
degree, and less than five percent have a advanced degree in Law or PH'D. Those numbers
haven't changed since the 1960s. And yet, the corporate ruling class which showers money to
both political parties have been selling the public a bill of false promises and lies about
the necessary of getting a college degree in order to find gainful employment with living
wages. Sorry, there isn't no living wage jobs. Our industrialized state has been devalued by
NAFTA, a pro-corporate trade deal signed by Bill Clinton in the 1990s, had destroyed the
fabric of mostly blue collar communities in middle America. Both Democrats and Republicans
all conspired to gut the entire working classes out of the middle class status and into the
underclass welfare state as a whole---first with welfare reform in the 1990s, followed by
Bush era tax cuts, getting rid of Glass-Stegeall, awarding companies with job outsourcing,
failure to provide affordable housing to the needy while selling risky sub-prime mortgages,
making our higher educational system as a luxury commodity, destroying our pension system and
replacing it with an inadequate 401K retirement package, allowing the one percent to hide
their money overseas in tax haven accounts, subsidizing the rich, and control the media
through corporate consolidation. We no longer have the ability to innovate, produce, or
create a thriving working class middle. Instead, corporate dominance in our politics and our
legal system makes it almost impossible to generate a fair, diverse, and expanding
opportunities economy on the basis of progressive regulations that is desperately needed.
What Frank had in mind is what the donor class within the Democratic Party is scared
about. That is, working people are being shoved aside due to the power of money in
government, and yet the Democratic Party has to changed its tune in order to regain the
working class voters in middle America.
Well, Bannon is partly right given the fact that our government has been at the wheel of
powerful lobbyists and wealthy donors for so long. However, given the dysfunctional and
unfortunate circumstances surrounding the Trump Administration in DC, the Democrats seem to
appear as aloof and tone deaf with the American people----a state of utter denial regarding a
major political party that just lost the Presidential election to a dingbat D list reality tv
star and real estate tycoon who has the mindset of a spoiled child.
The true reason behind Bannon's conquest for political votes is that the working class
here in the US have been totally neglected and left behind by eight years of Obama and the
last two terms of Bush Jr from the previous decade. Working people want actual middle class
jobs and a shot of a decent life in retirement, not welfare checks from the government.
The Left in English-speaking countries has been overtaken by upper-middle class people who
are obsessed with sexual identity and race. They are snobby towards working class people and
will abuse them as racist when they talk about problems with immigration or other social
groups with different coloured skin. I moved from the first group into the second, and I know
working class people are no more prejudiced than upper-middle class, but they don't have the
vocabulary to express it in a way that "educated" people will recognise.
This snobbery towards possible complexities in the life of working class people is damning
leftwing parties to continual oblivion.
(Working class people use blunt language, but they apply it to themselves equally. Those
higher up the social ladder are not used to hearing that type of language.)
Did anything I say indicate I support Trump? I described his administration as an
economically centrist "kleptocracy". Trump Jr. taking thinly veiled payoffs on the
speaking/grift circuit is par for the course.
In fact, Breitbart gets criticism on the right for being too gung ho in embracing Israel.
Steve Bannon quotes that give some of his supporters pause are things like "no media outlet
is more pro-Israel than Breitbart". I guess politics is a factor but most of us don't like
all the money we give them and how a major reason that the Muslim world is so angry at the
Western one is it's unflinching backing of Israel, no matter how much of the West Bank they
encroach upon, among other things.
The idea that Breitbart is anti-Semitic is an absurd Media Matters talking point going
back to an article calling Bill Kristol a "Renegade Jew". The article was, obviously, written
by a Jew. And the thrust of the article was that Bill Kristol (and others) making attempts to
steal the Republican nomination from Trump (as the Dems had from Bernie Sanders) would
ultimately harm Israel. So it was a Jew calling a Jew a Renegade Jew for making a decision he
believed was bad for the Jewish homeland.
I know it's all very confusing but hopefully that's cleared up now.
"I did it by referring to a business model: the political donors and the K Street lobbyists,
who act in combination with politicians of the Tom DeLay variety."
There are almost no members of Congress who are of any other sort than the "Tom Delay"
variety you refer to. Very nearly every single member is corrupt. The game is ruined. Perhaps
an end to gerrymandering (if we shoudl be so fortunate) will allow some mechanism for
changing the guard in Congress. We need to remove them all. They sold us out and we need to
exile them for life.
Don't think your rep is any better. This keeps us stuck.
I don't JUST yell Hillary. I also mentioned Obama and the rest of the criminals who make up
the Democratic Party. Whose list of proven criminality is simply staggering enough before you
get in to the mountains of very damning circumstantial stuff that begs investigation.
And when I mention the Democrats, you act as if it's some irrelevent non sequitur. IT IS
NOT. Please remember that the choice was Trump OR Hillary. So whenever people lament how
apparently terrible the President who has brought us 3.1% GDP growth for the first time in
years and well over a million new jobs along with finally insisting that the law needs to be
enforced for the first time in 8 years, the issue of the alternative to this IS of course
relevant.
As I said: Clinton is a part of the establishment. A real swamp monster. One of the really
big stinking ones, with huge wads of cash stuck to her blood soaked claws. Trump is not. And
by the very low bar set by the past few Presidents, just not being more of the same is an
improvement.
And by the way, Hillary Clinton did commit multiple felonies. The private server = felony
(whether "intent" was there or not, that was an irrelevant muddying of the waters). The
storing and forwarding of classified info on this server = felony (whether or not she, after
decades in government understood that (C) meant classified as it always had all along).
You seem to be taking Clinton Cash as evidence of something, but that is just a piece of
propaganda meant to sway the election. Where are your reputable sources?
There are some great videos on Youtube where he talks about economics.
HAHA yes where he deliberately lies about the cause of 2008.
Where he is now silent on cohn who is now in charge of economic policy.
So, while Cohn was overseeing one team inside Goldman Sachs preoccupied with
implementing the big short, he was in regular contact with others scrambling to offload its
subprime inventory. One Goldman trader described the mortgage-backed securities they were
selling as "shitty." Another complained in an email that they were being asked to "distribute
junk that nobody was dumb enough to take first time around." A December 28 email from Fabrice
"Fabulous Fab" Tourre, a Goldman vice president later convicted of fraud, instructed traders
to focus on less astute, "buy and hold" investors rather than "sophisticated hedge funds"
that "will be on the same side of the trade as we will." https://theintercept.com/2017/09/17/goldman-sachs-gary-cohn-donald-trump-administration
/
Then there is Mnuchin( Treasury secretary) the foreclosure king, who made a fortune on
taking peoples home, some for $1 mistake.
Why did republicans mot make up some laws to put them into prison. Why are they silent now
when trump is deregulating by executive order.
Talk about fake outrage putting in the people who caused the problems as the
solutions.
Spoken from someone who has obviously never listened to what Steve Bannon said or his
message.
You obviously don't know, for example, that his Dad - a union guy - lost half of his life
savings in the crash of 2008.
And you do not have a single quote where you can attribute "master race" stuff to Bannon.
That's literally a smear based on nothing, created by the Clinton people as revenge for his
role in the absolutely devastating expose Clinton Cash.
Those of us paying attention understand what he is: an unbelievably bright guy who was the
first man who successfully harnessed the informed outrage of the alternative media to have an
impact in national politics. He and Trump beat the rigging and achieved for the socially
conservative anti-deepstate people what Bernie Sanders was unable to achieve on the Left...
if he ever really had the stomach for the fight in the first place.
"That it will also enrich countless contractors and lobbyists and bunglers and wreckers is
just a bonus." Mmmm, maybe not a bonus so much as the objective, perhaps? As an aside, the
method of installing nomenclature to control agencies, such as the agency responsible for
granting broadcast licences, was described, if I recall correctly, in Josef Korbel's 1959
"The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia, 1938-1948". For a funny take on the
privatisation of perpetual military conflict, Christopher Buckley's "They Eat Puppies, Don't
They?" might provide a laugh, if you don't think about how closely it matches reality.
The proletariat, or at least the opioid threatened, white and marginalized cadre on show in
the Rust belt states, probably thought they had their man in DJT because he said what it took
to get himself elected in the vernacular they prefer, feeling its authenticity made them look
honest.. Ha! But look! They are no different from other vulnerables after all, and they will
be and are, being screwed over accordingly. Turkeys and Christmas, Foxes and henhouses, its
all been said and now its being done: educate yourselves, folks.. before its too late.
Yep, judge em solely on their actions. Trump is about entrenching the corporate coup d'etat.
Expanding the swamp, not draining it. The question is now, after Citizens United and with a
conservative SCOTUS in perpetuity, whether it's too wide and deep ever to be drained.
Chris Hedges, who is doubtless a courageous journalist and an intelligent commentator, suggests
that if we are to discuss the anti-Russia campaign realistically, as baseless in fact, and as
contrived for an effect and to further/protect some particular interests, we can hardly avoid the
question: Who or what interest is served by the anti-Russia campaign?
An interesting observation "The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political
party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid
for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of
the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out."
The other relevant observation is that there is no American left. It was destroyed as a
political movement. The USA is a right wing country.
Notable quotes:
"... This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. ..."
"... It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country. ..."
"... The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions. ..."
"... Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. ..."
"... The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater. ..."
"... These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes. ..."
"... The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced. ..."
"... The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the "left." ..."
"... Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left -- not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease. ..."
"... For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so that Cold War "liberals" equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch. ..."
"... The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down. ..."
"... The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't win prizes. You won't get grants. ..."
"... The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison! ..."
"... Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors. ..."
But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It's really premised
on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these
emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn't make
any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where
I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party.
This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic
Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their
policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of
color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union
jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour.
It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the
1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of
the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation,
a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations.
It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the
right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they
have done to the country.
Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities,
where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over
three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control.
They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population
that becomes restive.
The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face
its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's assault
on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the destruction of our
economy and our democratic institutions.
Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why
they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without
Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn't actually function
as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations
arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or
the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile
political theater.
These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political
process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes.
... ... ...
DN: Let's come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability
to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various
intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation
of this?
CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business
of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They
speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat
what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable
news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue
streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on
"Celebrity Apprentice," has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity,
meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying,
racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused
by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque.
I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq
War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby,
Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story
the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can't
go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming
the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any
rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie.
The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or
Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave these lies
the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and
one the paper has never faced.
DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who
pitch it to them.
CH: It's not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA The CIA wasn't buying the
"weapons of mass destruction" hysteria.
DN: It goes the other way too?
CH: Sure. Because if you're trying to have access to a senior official, you'll constantly be putting
in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see
you, it's usually because they have something to sell you.
DN: The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself
as the "left."
CH: Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left --
not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories,
that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate
and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the
rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom
of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease.
If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this
cartoonish vision of politics.
The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements
under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor
movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged
the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so that Cold War "liberals" equated
capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France.
There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon.
But here we almost have to begin from scratch.
I've battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they're kind of poster children
for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis.
We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already
hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient
organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down.
So Trump's not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with
people who consider themselves part of the left.
The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique.
You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't win prizes. You
won't get grants. The New York Times , if they review your book, will turn it over to a
dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it -- as he did with my last book. The elite schools,
and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate
the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much
less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly
stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates
of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!
Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they
run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual,
cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these
people: traitors.
Hedges doesn't seem to understand that the "Resistance" is openly and obviously working
FOR Deepstate. They do not resist wars and globalism and monopolistic corporations. They
resist everyone who questions the war. They resist nationalism and localism.
Nothing mysterious or hidden about this, no ulterior motive or bankshot. It's explicitly
stated in every poster and shout and beating.
US Congress allowed to drag itself into this propaganda swamp by politized Intelligence community, which became a major political
player, that can dictate Congress what to do and what not to do. Now it is not that easy to get out of this "intelligence swamp"
Notable quotes:
"... The 2017 ICA on Russia was conceived in an atmosphere of despair and denial, birthed by Democrats and Republicans alike who were stunned by Trump's surprise electoral victory in November 2016. To say that this issue was a political event would be a gross understatement; the 2017 Russian ICA will go down in history as one of the most politicized intelligence documents ever, regardless of the degree of accuracy eventually afforded its contents. The very fact that the document is given the sobriquet "Intelligence Community" is itself a political act, designed to impart a degree of scrutiny and community consensus that simply did not exist when it came to the production of that document, or the classified reports that it was derived from. ..."
"... This was a report prepared by handpicked analysts ..."
"... iven the firestorm of political intrigue and controversy initiated by the publication of this document, the notion of a "general consensus" regarding the level of trust imparted to it by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee does not engender confidence. ..."
"... It was this document that spawned the issue of "collusion." While Sens. Burr and Warner can state that "collusion" is still an open issue, the fact of the matter is that, in this regard, Trump and his campaign advisors have already been found guilty in the court of public opinion, especially among those members of the public and the media who were vehemently opposed to his candidacy and ultimate victory. ..."
"... One need only review the comments of the various Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee, their counterparts serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the various experts and pundits in the media, to underscore the degree to which prejudice has "worked its evil" when it comes to the issue of collusion and the Trump campaign in this regard. ..."
"... purchase of advertisements on various social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, by the Russians or their proxies. With regard to these advertisements, Senator Burr painted a dire picture. "It seems," he declared, "that the overall theme of the Russian involvement in the US elections was to create chaos at every level." ..."
"... No one wants to be told that they have been victims of a con; this is especially true when dealing with the sacred trust imparted to the American citizenry by the Constitution of the United States regarding the free and fair election of those who will represent us in higher office. American politics, for better or worse, is about the personal connection a given candidate has with the voter, a gut feeling that this person shares common values and beliefs. ..."
"... the percentage of Americans that participate in national elections is low. Those that do tend to be people who care enough about one or more issues to actually get out and vote. To categorize these dedicated citizens as brain-dead dupes who are susceptible to social media-based click advertisements is an insult to American democracy. ..."
"... There is a world of difference between Russian intelligence services allegedly hacking politically sensitive emails and selectively releasing them for the sole purpose of undermining a given Presidential candidate's electoral prospects, and mimicking social media-based advertisements addressing issues that are already at play in an election. The Russians didn't invent the ongoing debate in the United States over gun control (i.e., the "Second Amendment" issue), race relations (the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri) or immigration ("The Wall"). ..."
"... These were, and remain, core issues that are at the heart of the American domestic political discourse, regardless of where one stands. You either know the issues, or you don't; it is an insult to the American voter to suggest that they are so malleable that $100,000 of targeted social media-based advertisements can swing their vote, even if 10 million of them viewed it. ..."
The 'briefing' is just another exercise in preferred narrative boosting.
The co-chairmen of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a press briefing Thursday on the status of their ongoing investigation
into Russian meddling in the American electoral process. Content-wise, the press briefing and the question and answer session were
an exercise in information futility -- they provided little substance and nothing new. The investigation was still ongoing, the senators
explained, and there was still work to be done.
Nine months into the Committee's work, the best Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), could offer was that there
was "general consensus" among committee members and their staff that they trust the findings of the Intelligence Community Assessment
(ICA) of January 2017, which gave high confidence to the charge that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election. The issue
of possible collusion between Russia and members of the campaign of Donald Trump, however, "is still open."
Frankly speaking, this isn't good enough.
The 2017 ICA on Russia was conceived in an atmosphere of despair and denial, birthed by Democrats and Republicans alike who
were stunned by Trump's surprise electoral victory in November 2016. To say that this issue was a political event would be a gross
understatement; the 2017 Russian ICA will go down in history as one of the most politicized intelligence documents ever, regardless
of the degree of accuracy eventually afforded its contents. The very fact that the document is given the sobriquet "Intelligence
Community" is itself a political act, designed to impart a degree of scrutiny and community consensus that simply did not exist when
it came to the production of that document, or the classified reports that it was derived from.
This was a report prepared by handpicked analysts from three of the Intelligence Community's sixteen agencies (the
CIA, NSA, and FBI) who operated outside of the National Intelligence Council (the venue for the production of Intelligence Community
products such as the Russian ICA), and void of the direction and supervision of a dedicated National Intelligence Officer. Overcoming
this deficient family tree represents a high hurdle, even before the issue of the credibility of the sources and methods used to
underpin the ICA's findings are discussed. Given the firestorm of political intrigue and controversy initiated by the publication
of this document, the notion of a "general consensus" regarding the level of trust imparted to it by the Senate Select Intelligence
Committee does not engender confidence.
It was this document that spawned the issue of "collusion." While Sens. Burr and Warner can state that "collusion" is still
an open issue, the fact of the matter is that, in this regard, Trump and his campaign advisors have already been found guilty in
the court of public opinion, especially among those members of the public and the media who were vehemently opposed to his candidacy
and ultimate victory. Insofar as the committee's investigation serves as a legitimate search for truth, it does so as a post-conviction
appeal. However, as the distinguished Supreme Court Justice Joseph McKenna noted in his opinion in Berger v. United States
(1921):
The remedy by appeal is inadequate. It comes after the trial, and, if prejudice exist, it has worked its evil and a judgment
of it in a reviewing tribunal is precarious. It goes there fortified by presumptions, and nothing can be more elusive of estimate
or decision than a disposition of a mind in which there is a personal ingredient.
One need only review the comments of the various Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee, their counterparts serving
on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the various experts and pundits in the media, to underscore the
degree to which prejudice has "worked its evil" when it comes to the issue of collusion and the Trump campaign in this regard.
The two senators proceeded to touch on a new angle recently introduced into their investigation, that of the purchase of advertisements
on various social media platforms, including
Facebook and Twitter, by the
Russians or their proxies. With regard to these advertisements, Senator Burr painted a dire picture. "It seems," he declared, "that
the overall theme of the Russian involvement in the US elections was to create chaos at every level."
No one wants to be told that they have been victims of a con; this is especially true when dealing with the sacred trust imparted
to the American citizenry by the Constitution of the United States regarding the free and fair election of those who will represent
us in higher office. American politics, for better or worse, is about the personal connection a given candidate has with the voter,
a gut feeling that this person shares common values and beliefs.
Nevertheless, the percentage of Americans that participate in national elections is low. Those that do tend to be people who
care enough about one or more issues to actually get out and vote. To categorize these dedicated citizens as brain-dead dupes who
are susceptible to social media-based click advertisements is an insult to American democracy.
There is a world of difference between Russian intelligence services allegedly hacking politically sensitive emails and selectively
releasing them for the sole purpose of undermining a given Presidential candidate's electoral prospects, and mimicking social media-based
advertisements addressing issues that are already at play in an election. The Russians didn't invent the ongoing debate in the United
States over gun control (i.e., the "Second Amendment" issue), race relations (the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri)
or immigration ("The Wall").
These were, and remain, core issues that are at the heart of the American domestic political discourse, regardless of where
one stands. You either know the issues, or you don't; it is an insult to the American voter to suggest that they are so malleable
that $100,000 of targeted social media-based advertisements can swing their vote, even if 10 million of them viewed it.
The take away from the press briefing given by Senator's Burr and Warner was two-fold: One, the Russians meddled, and two, we
don't know if Trump colluded with the Russians. The fact that America is nine months into this investigation with little more to
show now than what could have been said at the start is, in and of itself, an American political tragedy. The Trump administration
has been hobbled by the inertia of this and other investigations derived from the question of Russian meddling. That this process
may yet vindicate President Trump isn't justification for the process itself; in such a case the delay will have hurt more than the
truth. As William Penn, the founder of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, so eloquently noted:
Delays have been more injurious than direct Injustice. They too often starve those they dare not deny. The very Winner is made
a Loser, because he pays twice for his own; like those who purchase Estates Mortgaged before to the full value.
Our law says that to delay Justice is Injustice. Not to have a Right, and not to come of it, differs little. Refuse or Dispatch
is the Duty of a Good Officer.
Senators Burr and Warner, together with their fellow members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and their respective
staffs, would do well to heed those words.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control
treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of "Deal
of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West's Road to War" (Clarity Press, 2017).
"... I'd like to see this: President Rand Paul, VP Tulsi Gabbard, chief of staff Ron Paul, and Sec. of Defense Wesley Clark, for starters. ..."
"... "In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." ..."
People need to learn, relearn, and talk to others about this. Let's admit it: today's Republicans
& Democrats are just two sides of the same coin. We ought to just call them what they really all
are -- "Neocons."
Both sides need to be replaced by truly independent voters giving strength to an administration
that is neither R nor D, and that should be the Libertarians. Trump is not one, but he's
going to end up making the way for them during his four years.
I'd like to see this: President Rand Paul, VP Tulsi Gabbard, chief of staff Ron Paul, and
Sec. of Defense Wesley Clark, for starters.
It was either Mark Twain or Samuel Clemens who said "In the beginning of a change
the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid
join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
This is particular dirty campaign to implicate Trump and delegitimize his victory is a part of
color revolution against Trump.
The other noble purpose is to find a scapegoat for the
current problems, especially in Democratic Party, and to preserve Clinton neoliberals rule over
the party for a few more futile years.
Notable quotes:
"... Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump. ..."
"... The mini-ads were bought to promote click-bait pages and sites. These pages and sites were created and then promoted to sell further advertisement. The media though, has still not understood the issue. ..."
"... A few thousand users will come and look at a page. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or the rant against LGBT and further spread the page. Some will click the promoted Google ads. Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can automatize, rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scale-able and parts of it can be automatized. ..."
"... This is, in essence, the same business model traditional media publishers use. One creates "news" and controversies to attract readers. The attention of the readers is then sold to advertisers. The business is no longer a limited to a few rich oligarchic. One no longer needs reporters or a printing press to join in. Anyone can now take part in it. ..."
"... We learned after the election that some youths in Macedonia created whole "news"-websites filled with highly attractive but fake partisan stories. They were not interested in the veracity or political direction of their content. Their only interest was to attract viewers. They made thousands of dollars by selling advertisements on their sites: ..."
"... The teen said his monthly revenue was in the four figures, a considerable sum in a country where the average monthly pay is 360 euros ($383). As he navigated his site's statistics, he dropped nuggets of journalism advice. ..."
"... After the mystery of "Russian" $3 ads for "adorable puppies" pages on Facebook has been solved, Congress and the New York Times will have to move on. There next subject is probably the "Russian influence campaign" on Youtube. ..."
"... Russian Car Crash Compilations have for years attracted millions of viewers. The "Russians" want to increase road rage on U.S. highways. This again will - according to expert Clinton Watts - "amplify divisive political issues across the political spectrum". ..."
"... "Russian interference" in Western faux democracies is just more Fake News that distracts from the real issues. And all those real issues come down to this: the need to reign in the oligarchs. This is very easy to do via progressive taxation (with no loopholes). ..."
"... The two words that the establishment fears most: Progressive Taxation . ..."
"... Great article. I especially like the tactful way that modern clickbait farming is obliquely tied to the MSM business model. Facebook and Google have a lot to answer for. ..."
"... Russia gate, since it is unnecessarily mentally exhausting and intellectually futile, it is namely pure provocation and as such it should be ignored and not proliferated even in its criticism making a fakes news a real news by sole fact of mentioning it on the respectable independent sites. ..."
"... The whole digital media and ad business that have built the Google and Facebook media juggernauts is all a giant scam. Smart advertisers like P&G are recognizing it for what it is and will slowly pullback. It is only a matter of time before others catch on and these companies will bleed ad revenues. ..."
Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were
claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of
Trump.
It now turns out that these Facebook ads had nothing to do with the election. The mini-ads
were bought to promote click-bait pages and sites. These pages and sites were created and then
promoted to sell further advertisement. The media though, has still not understood the
issue.
Providing new evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Facebook disclosed on
Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button
issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.
...
The disclosure adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign,
which American intelligence agencies concluded was designed to damage Hillary Clinton and
boost Donald J. Trump during the election.
Like any Congress investigation the current one concerned with Facebook ads is leaking like
a sieve. What oozes out makes little sense.
If "Russia" aimed to make Congress and U.S. media a laughing stock it surely achieved
that.
Today the NYT says that the ads
were posted "in disguise" by "the Russians" to promote variously themed Facebook pages:
There was "Defend the 2nd," a Facebook page for gun-rights supporters, festooned with
firearms and tough rhetoric. There was a rainbow-hued page for gay rights activists, "LGBT
United." There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies
that spread across the site with the help of paid ads
No one has explained how these pages are supposed to be connected to a Russian "influence"
campaign. It is unexplained how these are supposed to connected to the 2016 election. That is
simply asserted because Facebook said, for unknown reasons, that these ads may have come from
some Russian agency. How Facebook has determined that is not known.
With each detail that leaks from the "Russian ads" investigation the propaganda framework of
"election manipulation" falls further apart:
Late Monday, Facebook said in a post that about 10 million people had seen the ads in
question. About 44 percent of the ads were seen before the 2016 election and the rest after,
the company said
The original story propagandized that "Russia" intended to influence the election in favor
of Trump. But why then was the majority of the ads in questions run later after November 9? And
how would an animal-lovers page with adorable puppy pictures help to achieve Trumps election
victory?
Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That's because advertising auctions are
designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as
a result.
...
For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent.
Of the 3,000 ads Facebook originally claimed were "Russian" only 2,200 were ever viewed.
Most of the advertisements were mini-ads which, for the price of a coffee, promoted private
pages related to hobbies and a wide spectrum of controversial issues. The majority of the ads
ran after the election.
All that "adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign ...
designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election"?
No.
But the NYT still finds "experts" who believe in the "Russian influence" nonsense and find
the most stupid reasons to justify their claims:
Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in
Philadelphia, said Russia had been entrepreneurial in trying to develop diverse channels of
influence. Some, like the dogs page, may have been created without a specific goal and held
in reserve for future use.
Puppy pictures for "future use"? Nonsense. Lunacy! The pages described and the ads leading to them are typical click-bait, not a political
influence op.
The for-profit scheme runs as follows: One builds pages with "hot" stuff that attracts lots of viewers. One creates ad-space on
these pages and fills it with Google ads. One promotes the spiked pages by buying $3 Facebook
mini-ads for them.
A few thousand users will come and look at a page. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or
the rant against LGBT and further spread the page. Some will click the promoted Google ads.
Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can automatize, rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort
for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scale-able and parts of it can be
automatized.
This is, in essence, the same business model traditional media publishers use. One creates
"news" and controversies to attract readers. The attention of the readers is then sold to
advertisers. The business is no longer a limited to a few rich oligarchic. One no longer needs
reporters or a printing press to join in. Anyone can now take part in it.
We learned after
the election that some youths in Macedonia created whole "news"-websites filled with highly
attractive but fake partisan stories. They were not interested in the veracity or political
direction of their content. Their only interest was to attract viewers. They made thousands of
dollars by selling advertisements on their sites:
The teen said his monthly revenue was in the four figures, a considerable sum in a country
where the average monthly pay is 360 euros ($383). As he navigated his site's statistics, he
dropped nuggets of journalism advice.
"You have to write what people want to see, not what you want to show," he said, scrolling
through The Political Insider's stories as a large banner read "ARREST HILLARY NOW."
The 3,000 Facebook ads Congress is investigating are part of a similar scheme. The mini-ads
promoted pages with hot button issues and click-bait puppy pictures. These pages were
themselves created to generate ad-clicks and revenue. As Facebook claims that "Russia" is
behind them, we will likely find some Russian teens who simply repeated the scheme their
Macedonian friends were running on.
With its "Russian influence" scare campaign the NYT follows the same business model. It is
producing fake news which attracts viewers and readers who's attention is then sold to
advertisers. Facebook is also profiting from this. Its current piecemeal release of vague
information keeps its name in the news.
After the mystery of "Russian" $3 ads for "adorable puppies" pages on Facebook has been
solved, Congress and the New York Times will have to move on. There next subject is probably
the "Russian influence campaign" on Youtube.
Russian Car Crash
Compilations have for years attracted millions of viewers. The "Russians" want to increase
road rage on U.S. highways. This again will - according to expert Clinton Watts - "amplify
divisive political issues across the political spectrum".
The car crash compilations, like the puppy pages, are another sign that Russia is waging war
against the people of the United States!
You don't believe that? You should. Trust your experienced politician!
This gets more chilling daily : now we learn Russia targeted Americans on Facebook by
"demographics, geography, gender & interests," across websites & devices, reached
millions, kept going after Nov. An attack on all Americans, not just HRC campaign washingtonpost.com/business/econo
It indeed gets more chilling. It's fall. It also generates ad revenue.
Posted by b on October 3, 2017 at 02:09 PM |
Permalink
"Russian interference" in Western faux democracies is just more Fake News that distracts from
the real issues. And all those real issues come down to this: the need to reign in the
oligarchs.
This is very easy to do via progressive taxation (with no loopholes).
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
The two words that the establishment fears most: Progressive Taxation .
You're presenting a very good concept/meme to understand: Fake news is click bait for
gain.
The same can be said for any sensationalism or shocking event - like the Kurdish
referendum, like the Catalonia referendum, like the Vegas shooting - or like confrontational
or dogmatic comments in threads about those events.
Everywhere we turn someone is trying to game us for some kind of gain. What matters is to
step back from the front lines where our sense is accosted and offended, to step back from
the automatic reflex, and to remember that someone triggered that reflex, deliberately, for
their gain, not ours.
We have to reside in reason and equanimity, because the moment we indulge in our righteous
anger or our strong convictions, the odds are extremely good that someone is playing us.
It's a wicked world, but in fact we live in an age when we can see its meta
characteristics like never before.
Jesus Christ, every friggin day we hear about Russians and then the next the lies falls
apart, STILL the stupid dumb liberal media keep coming up with new conspiracies spread them
as fact, and then try justify them even when they get debunked!
These people are indeed lunatic.
What we see is the biggest psyop., propaganda disinformation campaig ever in the western
media, far more powerful than "nuclear Iraq" of 2003.
Still, and this should be a warning, majority of people in EU/US believe this
nonsense.
I lol'd. But seriously the next step is a false flag implicating Russia. They're getting
nowhere assassinating Russian diplomats and shooting down Russian aircraft, both military and
civilian. Even overthrowing governments who are Russia-friendly hasn't seem to provoke a
response.
But I consider the domestic Russia buzz to be performance art, and I imagine it's become
even grating to some of its participants. How could it not be, unless everyone is heavily
medicated(a lot certainly are)? Anyway it's by design that the western media and the
political classes they serve need a script, they're incapable of discussing actual issues.
Independence has been made quaint.
The line between politics and product marketing has gone.
But no matter if "the Russians" influenced the US election or not - after all that is what
most countries do to each other - the FBI is correct that to be able to target audiences
according to demographics and individual traits is a powerful tool.
The newspapers had a clear agenda. An editorial in The New York Times, headlined In the
Terror by Radio, was used to censure the relatively new medium of radio, which was becoming
a serious competitor in providing news and advertising. "Radio is new but it has adult
responsibilities. It has not mastered itself or the material it uses," said the editorial
leader comment on November 1 1938. In an excellent piece in Slate magazine in 2013,
Jefferson Pooley (associate professor of media and communication at Muhlenberg College) and
Michael J Socolow (associate professor of communication and journalism at the University of
Maine) looked at the continuing popularity of the myth of mass panic and they took to task
NPR's Radiolab programme about the incident and the Radiolab assertion that "The United
States experienced a kind of mass hysteria that we've never seen before." Pooley and
Socolow wrote: "How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America's newspapers.
... AND IT'S NOT A GOOD IDEA TO COPY ORSON WELLES . . . In February 1949, Leonardo Paez and
Eduardo Alcaraz produced a Spanish-language version of Welles's 1938 script for Radio Quito
in Ecuador. The broadcast set off panic. Quito police and fire brigades rushed out of town
to fight the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was
fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths,
including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew. The offices Radio Quito, and El Comercio,
a local newspaper that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of
unidentified flying objects in the days preceding the broadcast, were both burned to the
ground.
Jackrabbit 2
No - the two words the Capital system fears the most are SURPLUS VALUE , the control of the
'profit principle' for social not private ends .
Jesus Christ, every friggin day we hear about Russians and then the next the lies falls
apart, STILL the stupid dumb liberal media keep coming up with new conspiracies spread them
as fact, and then try justify them even when they get debunked!
These people are indeed lunatic.
somebody | Oct 3, 2017 3:11:44 PM | 9 The American panic was a myth, the Equadorian panic in 1949 not so much. I listened to this
Radiolab podcast about same ... the details of how they pulled it off in a one-radio station
country pre-internet are interesting and valuable (they widely advertised a very popular music
program which was then "interrupted" by the hoax to ensure near-universal audience (including
the police and other authorities). Very very fews were "in on the joke" and it wasn't a
joke.
whole page on WooW:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/91622-war-of-the-worlds/
Great article.
I especially like the tactful way that modern clickbait farming is obliquely tied to the MSM
business model.
Facebook and Google have a lot to answer for.
"Lankford shocked the world this week by revealing that "Russian Internet trolls" were
stoking the NFL kneeling debate. ... Conservative outlets like Breitbart and Newsmax and
Fox played up the "Russians stoked the kneeling controversy" angle because it was in their
interest to suggest that domestic support for kneeling protests is less than what it
appears....
The Post reported that Lankford's office had cited one of "Boston Antifa's"
tweets. But the example offered read suspiciously like a young net-savvy American goofing
on antifa stereotypes "More gender inclusivity with NFL fans and gluten free options at
stadiums We're liking the new NFL #NewNFL #TakeAKnee #TakeTheKnee." ...
The group was most
likely a pair of yahoos from Oregon named Alexis Esteb and Brandon Krebs. "
Pity Rolling Stone got caught up in that fake college rape allegation, they have actually
done some solid reporting. Every MSM outlet has had multiple fake stories, so should RS be
shunned for life for one bad story?
It is time that sane part of independent media understood that there is no more need to
rationally respond to psychotic delusions of Deep State puppets in Russia gate, since it is
unnecessarily mentally exhausting and intellectually futile, it is namely pure provocation
and as such it should be ignored and not proliferated even in its criticism making a fakes
news a real news by sole fact of mentioning it on the respectable independent sites.
There are only two effective responses to provocation namely silence or violence, anything
else plays the book of provocateurs.
Now they're seriously undermining their claims of intentionality ... as well as their wildly
inflated claims effect on outcome or even effective "undermining" ... again, compared to
Citizens United and the long-count of 2000 ... negligible....
And still insisting that Hillary Clinton is Russia's Darth Vader against whom unlimited
resources are marshalled because she must be stopped ... even though she damn near won... and
the reasons she lost seems unrelated to such vagaries as the DNC e-mails or facebook
campaigns (unless you believe she had a god-given right to each and every vote)
Why do you think this is important enough to make the effort to write another blog entry B?
Everyone who wants to know that this is all fantasy knows by now.
'Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were
claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor
of Trump.
This is the same US congress that regularly marches off to Israel to receive orders
This isn't about the "truth" (or lies) wrt Russian involvement, it's about the
increasingly rapid failure of the Government/Establishment's narrative ...
Increasingly they can't even keep their accusations "alive" for more than a few days ...
and some of their accusations (like the one here, that some "Russian" sites were created and
not used, but to be held for use at some future date) become fairly ridiculous ... and the
"remedy" to "Russians" creating clickbait sites for some future nefarious use, I think can
only be banning all Russians from creating sites ... or maybe using facebook altogether ...
all with no evidence of evil-doers actually doing evil...
It's rather like Jared Kushner's now THIRD previously undisclosed private e-mail account
... fool me once versus how disorganized/dumb/arrogant/crooked is this guy?
Sorry to be off topic but yesterday the Saker of the Vineyard published a couple of articles
about Catalonia. The first was a diatribe, a nasty hatchet job on the Catalan people which
included the following referring to the Catalan people:
"The Problems they have because with their corruption, inefficiency, mismanagement,
inability and sometimes the simplest stupidity, are always the fault of others (read
Spaniards here) which gives them "carte blanche" to keep going on with it."
"... They (the independistas) are NATIONAL SOCIALIST (aka NAZI) in their Ideology"
Then Saker published an article by Peter Koenig that was reasonable and what we have come
to expect. Then he forbade all comments on either of the two articles. My comment was banned,
which simply said in my opinion from working for fourteen years in Spain that the Catalans
were extremely efficient in comparison with their Madrid counterparts.
I must admit that I became a fan of watching those Russian car crashes that were captured by
the cams many russian drivers keep on their dash boards. Some of these were very funny. I was
not aware that made me a victim of Putin propaganda. In any case, they are not that
interesting anymore once they were commercialized. That was about 10 years ago.
The whole digital media and ad business that have built the Google and Facebook media
juggernauts is all a giant scam. Smart advertisers like P&G are recognizing it for what
it is and will slowly pullback. It is only a matter of time before others catch on and these
companies will bleed ad revenues.
OT - more from comedy central - daily USA press briefing from today...
"QUESTION: On Iran, would you and the State Department say, as Secretary Mattis said
today, that staying in the JCPOA would be in the U.S. national interest?
MS NAUERT: Yeah.
QUESTION: Is this a position you share?
MS NAUERT: So I'm certainly familiar with what Secretary Mattis said on Capitol Hill
today. Secretary Mattis, of course, one of many people who is providing expertise and counsel
to the President on the issue of Iran and the JCPOA. The President is getting lots of
information on that. We have about 12 days or so, I think, to make our determination for the
next JCPOA guideline.
The administration looks at JCPOA as – the fault in the JCPOA as not looking at the
totality of Iran's bad behavior. Secretary Tillerson talked about that at length at the UN
General Assembly. So did the President as well. We know that Iran is responsible for terror
attacks. We know that Iran arms the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which leads to a more miserable
failed state, awful situation in Yemen, for example. We know what they're doing in Syria.
Where you find the Iranian Government, you can often find terrible things happening in the
world. This administration is very clear about highlighting that and will look at Iran in
sort of its totality of all of its bad behaviors, not just the nuclear deal.
I don't want to get ahead of the discussions that are ongoing with this – within the
administration, as it pertains to Iran. The President has said he's made he's decision, and
so I don't want to speak on behalf of the President, and he'll just have to make that
determination when he's ready to do so."
"... The Bush and Clinton dynasties were destroyed by the media-saturated lure of the pseudo-populist billionaire with narcissist sensibilities and ugly, fascist proclivities. The monumental election of Trump was a desperate and xenophobic cry of human hearts for a way out from under the devastation of a disintegrating neoliberal order – a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness. ..."
"... This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future. ..."
"... In this sense, Trump's election was enabled by the neoliberal policies of the Clintons and Obama that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable citizens. The progressive populism of Bernie Sanders nearly toppled the establishment of the Democratic party but Clinton and Obama came to the rescue to preserve the status quo. And I do believe Sanders would have beat Trump to avert this neofascist outcome! ..."
"... The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang ..."
"... The white house and congress are now dominated by tea party politicians who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand.....read Breitbart news to see how Thatcher and Reagan are idolised. ..."
"... if you think the era of "neo liberalism" is over, you are in deep denial! ..."
"... The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad. ..."
"... Didn't Obama say to Wall Street ''I'm the only one standing between you and the lynch mob? Give me money and I'll make it all go away''. Then came into office and went we won't prosecute the Banks not Bush for a false war because we don't look back. ..."
"... He did not ignore, he actively, willingly, knowingly protected them. At the end of the day Obama is wolf in sheep's clothing. Exactly like HRC he has a public and a private position. He is a gifted speaker who knows how to say all the right, progressive liberal things to get people to go along much better than HRC ever did. ..."
"... Even when he had the Presidency, House and Senate, he never once introduced any progressive liberal policy. He didn't need Republican support to do it, yet he never even tried. ..."
The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of
Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded
to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians.
The Bush and Clinton dynasties were destroyed by the media-saturated lure of the pseudo-populist
billionaire with narcissist sensibilities and ugly, fascist proclivities. The monumental election
of Trump was a desperate and xenophobic cry of human hearts for a way out from under the devastation
of a disintegrating neoliberal order – a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness.
White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the economic
neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens
also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated
Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process.
This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism
to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility
and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that
threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive
fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic
and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future.
What is to be done? First we must try to tell the truth and a condition of truth is to allow suffering
to speak. For 40 years, neoliberals lived in a world of denial and indifference to the suffering
of poor and working people and obsessed with the spectacle of success. Second we must bear witness
to justice. We must ground our truth-telling in a willingness to suffer and sacrifice as we resist
domination. Third we must remember courageous exemplars like Martin Luther King Jr, who provide moral
and spiritual inspiration as we build multiracial alliances to combat poverty and xenophobia, Wall
Street crimes and war crimes, global warming and police abuse – and to protect precious rights and
liberties.
The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic
gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing
inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad.
Rightwing attacks on Obama – and Trump-inspired racist hatred of him – have made it nearly impossible
to hear the progressive critiques of Obama. The president has been reluctant to target black suffering
– be it in overcrowded prisons, decrepit schools or declining workplaces. Yet, despite that, we get
celebrations of the neoliberal status quo couched in racial symbolism and personal legacy. Meanwhile,
poor and working class citizens of all colors have continued to suffer in relative silence.
In this sense, Trump's election was enabled by the neoliberal policies of the Clintons and
Obama that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable citizens. The progressive populism of Bernie
Sanders nearly toppled the establishment of the Democratic party but Clinton and Obama came to the
rescue to preserve the status quo. And I do believe Sanders would have beat Trump to avert this neofascist
outcome!
In this bleak moment, we must inspire each other driven by a democratic soulcraft of integrity,
courage, empathy and a mature sense of history – even as it seems our democracy is slipping away.
We must not turn away from the forgotten people of US foreign policy – such as Palestinians under
Israeli occupation, Yemen's civilians killed by US-sponsored Saudi troops or Africans subject to
expanding US military presence.
As one whose great family and people survived and thrived through slavery, Jim Crow and lynching,
Trump's neofascist rhetoric and predictable authoritarian reign is just another ugly moment that
calls forth the best of who we are and what we can do.
For us in these times, to even have hope is too abstract, too detached, too spectatorial. Instead
we must be a hope, a participant and a force for good as we face this catastrophe.
theomatica -> MSP1984 17 Nov 2016 6:40
To be replaced by a form of capitalism that is constrained by national interests. An ideology
that wishes to uses the forces of capitalism within a market limited only by national boundaries
which aims for more self sufficiency only importing goods the nation can not itself source.
farga 17 Nov 2016 6:35
The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang.
Really? The white house and congress are now dominated by tea party politicians who worship
at the altar of Ayn Rand.....read Breitbart news to see how Thatcher and Reagan are idolised.
That in recent decades middle ground politicians have strayed from the true faith....and now
its time to go back - popular capitalism, small government, low taxes.
if you think the era of "neo liberalism" is over, you are in deep denial!
Social36 -> farga 17 Nov 2016 8:33
Maybe, West should have written that we're now in neoliberal, neofascist era!
ForSparta -> farga 17 Nov 2016 14:24
Well in all fairness, Donald Trump (horse's ass) did say he'd 'pump' money into the middle
classes thus abandoning 'trickle down'. His plan/ideology is also to increase corporate tax revenues
overall by reducing the level of corporation tax -- the aim being to entice corporations to repatriate
wealth currently held overseas. Plus he has proposed an infrastructure spending spree, a fiscal
stimulus not a monetary one. When you add in tax cuts the middle classes will feel flushed and
it is within that demographic that most businesses and hence jobs are created. I think his short
game has every chance of doing what he said it would.
SeeNOevilHearNOevil 17 Nov 2016 6:36
The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words
and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners,
oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians
abroad.
Didn't Obama say to Wall Street ''I'm the only one standing between you and the lynch mob?
Give me money and I'll make it all go away''. Then came into office and went we won't prosecute
the Banks not Bush for a false war because we don't look back.
He did not ignore, he actively, willingly, knowingly protected them. At the end of the
day Obama is wolf in sheep's clothing. Exactly like HRC he has a public and a private position.
He is a gifted speaker who knows how to say all the right, progressive liberal things to get people
to go along much better than HRC ever did.
But that lip service is where his progressive views begin and stop. It's the very reason none
of his promises never translated into actions and I will argue that he was the biggest and smoothest
scam artist to enter the white house who got even though that wholly opposed centre-right policies,
to flip and support them vehemently. Even when he had the Presidency, House and Senate, he
never once introduced any progressive liberal policy. He didn't need Republican support to do
it, yet he never even tried.
ProbablyOnTopic 17 Nov 2016 6:37
I agree with some of this, but do we really have to throw around hysterical terms like 'fascist'
at every opportunity? It's as bad as when people call the left 'cultural Marxists'.
LithophaneFurcifera -> ProbablyOnTopic 17 Nov 2016 7:05
True, it's sloganeering that drowns out any nuance, whoever does it. Whenever a political term
is coined, you can be assured that its use and meaning will eventually be extended to the point
that it becomes less effective at characterising the very groups that it was coined to characterise.
Keep "fascist" for Mussolini and "cultural Marxist" for Adorno, unless and until others show
such strong resemblances that the link can't seriously be denied.
I agree about the importance of recognising the suffering of the poor and building alliances
beyond, and not primarily defined by, race though.
l0Ho5LG4wWcFJsKg 17 Nov 2016 6:40
Hang about Trump is the embodiment of neo-liberalism. It's neo-liberalism with republican tea
party in control. He's not going to smash the system that served him so well, the years he manipulated
and cheated, why would he want to change it.
garrylee -> l0Ho5LG4wWcFJsKg 17 Nov 2016 9:38
West's point is that it's beyond Trump's control. The scales have fallen from peoples eyes. They
now see the deceit of neo-liberalism. And once they see through the charlatan Trump and the rest
of the fascists, they will, hopefully, come to realize the only antidote to neo-liberalism is
a planned economy.
Nash25 17 Nov 2016 6:40
This excellent analysis by professor West places the current political situation in a proper
historical context.
However, I fear that neo-liberalism may not be quite "dead" as he argues.
Most of the Democratic party's "establishment" politicians, who conspired to sabotage the populist
Sanders's campaign, still dominate the party, and they, in turn, are controlled by the giant corporations
who fund their campaigns.
Democrat Chuck Schumer is now the Senate minority leader, and he is the loyal servant of the
big Wall Street investment banks.
Sanders and Warren are the only two Democratic leaders who are not neo-liberals, and I fear
that they will once again be marginalized.
Rank and file Democrats must organize at the local and state level to remove these corrupt
neo-liberals from all party leadership positions. This will take many years, and it will be very
difficult.
VenetianBlind 17 Nov 2016 6:42
Not sure Neo-Liberalism has ended. All they have done is get rid of the middle man.
macfeegal 17 Nov 2016 6:46
It would seem that there is a great deal of over simplifying going on; some of the articles
represent an hysteric response and the vision of sack cloth and ashes prevails among those who
could not see that the wheels were coming off the bus. The use of the term 'liberal' has become
another buzz word - there are many different forms of liberalism and creating yet another sound
byte does little to illuminate anything.
Making appeals to restore what has been lost reflects badly upon the central political parties,
with their 30 year long rightward drift and their legacy of sucking up to corporate lobbyists,
systems managers, box tickers and consultants. You can't give away sovereign political power to
a bunch of right wing quangos who worship private wealth and its accumulation without suffering
the consequences. The article makes no contribution (and neither have many of the others of late)
to any kind of alternative to either neo-liberalism or the vacuum that has become a question mark
with the dark face of the devil behind it.
We are in uncharted waters. The conventional Left was totally discredited by1982 and all we've
had since are various forms of modifications of Thatcher's imported American vision. There has
been no opposition to this system for over 40 years - so where do we get the idea that democracy
has any real meaning? Yes, we can vote for the Greens, or one of the lesser known minority parties,
but of course people don't; they tend to go with what is portrayed as the orthodoxy and they've
been badly let down by it.
It would be a real breath of fresh air to see articles which offer some kind of analysis that
demonstrates tangible options to deal with the multiple crises we are suffering. Perhaps we might
start with a consideration that if our political institutions are prone to being haunted by the
ghost of the 1930's, the state itself could be seen as part of the problem rather than any solution.
Why is it that every other institution is considered to be past its sell by date and we still
believe in a phantom of democracy? Discuss.
VenetianBlind -> macfeegal 17 Nov 2016 7:00
I have spent hours trying to see solutions around Neo-Liberalism and find that governments
have basically signed away any control over the economy so nothing they can do. There are no solutions.
Maybe that is the starting point. The solution for workers left behind in Neo-Liberal language
is they must move. It demands labor mobility. It is not possible to dictate where jobs are created.
I see too much fiddly around the edges, the best start is to say they cannot fix the problem.
If they keep making false promises then things will just get dire as.
"... It's pathetic and immature that Clinton can't accept personal responsibility for her loss. She was a terrible candidate and had a hard time defeating Bernie. Only for the super-delegates in California, Bernie would have beaten her. ..."
"... But of course Donald Trump didn't play any part in her losing. She simply did not connect with people. To her it was like she had an entitlement because of her name. ..."
It's pathetic and immature that Clinton can't accept personal responsibility
for her loss. She was a terrible candidate and had a hard time defeating Bernie. Only for the super-delegates
in California, Bernie would have beaten her.
But, according to Hillary, 'What Happened' was ...
Suburban women didn't like her
The Russians interferred
The FBI and James Comey
Facebook
Twitter
Wikileaks
Bernie Sanders
TV Executives
Cable News
Fake News
The Democrats
The Republicans
Low informed voters
The 'Deplorables'
Content farms in Macedonia
Obama winning two terms
Bad polling numbers
But of course Donald Trump didn't play any part in her losing. She simply did not connect with
people. To her it was like she had an entitlement because of her name.
NYT = neocon/neolib fear mongering and neo-McCarthyism.
If we assume that Russians can control election machine, the question arise about the CIA
role in the US elections. They are much more powerful and that's their home turf. And they
can pretend to be Russians of Chinese at will. Then they can cry "Thief" to divert
attention. Does this that promoting Russia hacking story
they implicitly reveal to us that elections are controlled by Deep State and electronic voting
machines and voter rosters are just a tool to this end. They allow to get rid of human vote counting
and that alone makes hijacking of the election results really easy. machine magically calculates the
votes and you are done. As Stalin said it doesn't matter how people are voting, what matters is
who is calculating the votes.
Dems should concentrate on removing neoliberal/Clinton wing of the Party from the leadership and
making it at lease "A New Deal" Party, not sold to Wall Steer bunch of fear
mongering neocons.
Anti-Russian campaign is designed to sabotage those efforts.
Notable quotes:
"... All of the reported troubles are simple computer hiccups that would not have occurred in a more reasonable election system build on paper and pencil balloting. All the computer troubles have various innocent causes ..."
"... Moreover, there was no chance that these troubles in one district would have effected the general election. There was thereby no motive for anyone to hack these systems: ..."
"... The NYT headline is an outrageous lie. It promotes as causal fact completely unproven interference and troubles for which, as the article notes, plenty of other reason might exist. It is politically irresponsible. Only two out of ten people read beyond the headlines. Even fewer will read down to paragraph five and recognize that the headline lies. All others will have been willfully misled by the editors of the New York Times. ..."
"... The whole "Russian hacking" issue is a series of big lies designed and promulgated by Democratic partisans (specifically Brennan and Clapper who were then at the head of U.S. intelligence services) ..."
"... The New York Times, and other media, present these lies as facts while not providing any evidence for them. In many cases they hide behind " intelligence reports " without noting suspiciously mealymouthed caveats in those subjective "assessments" of obviously partisan authors. Hard facts contradicting their conclusions are simply ignored and not reported at all. ..."
"... "Never trust a computer with anything important." I have been relentlessly campaigning against the use of voting machines, particularly voting computers, since 2004. I have demanded openly hand counted paper ballots in hundreds of blog posts, and even have a website promoting this. ..."
"... At the end of the day it is obvious that the Deep State Syndicate controls the machines, and thus the elections. And then they have the nerve to demand that we must beware of "Russian hacking"! ..."
"... The whole Russia stole my homework meme is getting fairly old and it makes me wonder what they are really hiding with this ongoing obfuscation of the facts......if the drums of war are loud enough will they drown out the calls for justice by any of the current or recent politicians? ..."
The last piece
pointed out that the NYT headline "
U.N. Peacekeepers in Lebanon Get Stronger Inspection Powers for Hezbollah Arms " was 100% fake
news. The UNIFIL U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon were not getting any stronger inspection powers. The
relevant UN Security Resolution, which renewed UNIFIL's mandate, had made no such changes. No further
inspection powers were authorized.
Today we find another similarly
lying headline in the New York Times.
Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny
By NICOLE PERLROTH, MICHAEL WINES and MATTHEW ROSENBERGSEPT. 1, 2017
The piece is about minor technical election trouble in a district irrelevant to the presidential
election outcome. Contradicting the headline it notes in paragraph five:
There are plenty of other reasons for such breakdowns -- local officials blamed human error and
software malfunctions -- and no clear-cut evidence of digital sabotage has emerged, much less a
Russian role in it
"We don't know if any of the problems were an accident, or the random problems you get with
computer systems, or whether it was a local hacker, or actual malfeasance by a sovereign nation-state,"
said Michael Daniel, who served as the cybersecurity coordinator in the Obama White House.
"If you really want to know what happened, you'd have to do a lot of forensics, a lot of research
and investigation, and you may not find out even then."
...
the firm had not conducted any malware analysis or checked to see if any of the e-poll book
software was altered, adding that the report produced more questions than answers.
All of the reported troubles are simple computer hiccups that would not have occurred in a more
reasonable election system build on paper and pencil balloting. All the computer troubles have various
innocent causes. The officials handling these systems deny that any "Russian hacking" was involved.
Moreover, there was no chance that these troubles in one district would have effected the general
election. There was thereby no motive for anyone to hack these systems:
Despite the disruptions, a record number of votes were cast in Durham, following a pattern there
of overwhelming support for Democratic presidential candidates , this time Hillary Clinton.
The NYT headline is an outrageous lie. It promotes as causal fact completely unproven interference
and troubles for which, as the article notes, plenty of other reason might exist. It is politically
irresponsible. Only two out of ten people read beyond the headlines. Even fewer will read down to
paragraph five and recognize that the headline lies. All others will have been willfully misled by
the editors of the New York Times.
This scheme is the gist of ALL reporting about the alleged "Russian hacking" of the U.S. presidential
election. There exists zero evidence that Russia was involved in anything related to it. No evidence
-none at all- links the publishing of DNC papers or of Clinton counselor Podesta's emails to Russia.
Thousands of other circumstances, people or political entities might have had their hands in the
issue. There is
zero evidence that Russia was involved at all.
The whole "Russian hacking" issue is a series of big lies designed and promulgated by Democratic
partisans (specifically Brennan and Clapper who were then at the head of U.S. intelligence services)
to:
cover up for Hillary Clinton's and
the DNC's failure in the election and to
build up Russia as a public enemy to justify unnecessary military spending and other imperial
racketeering.
The New York Times, and other media, present these lies as facts while not providing any evidence
for them. In many cases they hide behind "
intelligence reports " without noting suspiciously mealymouthed caveats in those subjective "assessments"
of obviously partisan authors. Hard facts contradicting their conclusions are simply ignored and
not reported at all.
Posted by b on September 1, 2017 at 11:26 PM |
Permalink
Look at what happened today in San Francisco - after ordering the Russians to shut down their
embassy there in an unreasonably short timeframe, they then had the fire department respond to
smoke coming out of the chimney of the building. Conveniently this brings attention to the situation
and continues the narrative of 'ongoing conflict' to the American people.
The end of this story
has already decided. It didn't matter who won the election, it doesn't matter that the people
chose the candidate who wanted peace, and it doesn't matter that there wasn't any Russian election
hacking.
"Never trust a computer with anything important." I have been relentlessly campaigning against
the use of voting machines, particularly voting computers, since 2004. I have demanded openly
hand counted paper ballots in hundreds of blog posts, and even have a website promoting this.
At the end of the day it is obvious that the Deep State Syndicate controls the machines,
and thus the elections. And then they have the nerve to demand that we must beware of "Russian
hacking"!
The whole Russia stole my homework meme is getting fairly old and it makes me wonder what
they are really hiding with this ongoing obfuscation of the facts......if the drums of war are
loud enough will they drown out the calls for justice by any of the current or recent politicians?
Yes, of course.....thats the plan.....is it working?
If not, invade Venezuela on some pretext and claim ownership of their oil....someone has to
make Israel look reasonable.
"We don't know if any of the problems were an accident, or the random problems you get with
computer systems, or whether it was a local hacker, or actual malfeasance by a sovereign nation-state,"
said Michael Daniel, who served as the cybersecurity coordinator in the Obama White House.
"If you really want to know what happened, you'd have to do a lot of forensics, a lot of research
and investigation, and you may not find out even then."
...
the firm had not conducted any malware analysis or checked to see if any of the e-poll book
software was altered, adding that the report produced more questions than answers.
They don't even know what happened. Best blame it on the Russians anyway.
B of course realizes that the headline of an article is almost never written by author but by
an editor.
Such as blatant nonsense at NYT and elsewhere I think is possible when author wanting to get
published on good NYT page would lie to editor about its contents.
Of course Editor is no idiot and in old American tradition of pretending and deniability does
not read it to cover his/her butt and hence this obvious crap get published epitomizing a failure
{actually Orwellian success] of editor to vet the paper, as long as bosses are happy with insinuations
however baseless.
...
Of course Editor is no idiot and in old American tradition of pretending and deniability does
not read it to cover his/her butt and hence this obvious crap get published epitomizing a failure
{actually Orwellian success] of editor to vet the paper, as long as bosses are happy with insinuations
however baseless.
Posted by: Kalen | Sep 2, 2017 3:22:15 AM | 6
I like the theory that NYT's sub-editors are too lazy/busy/careless to read the articles they're
paid to summarise and add an appealing headline. It's certainly food for thought when pondering
possible Chain Of Command issues within the MSM.
When I was a regular lurker at What's Left, one notable aspect was the frequency with which
Gowans' most stunning revelations were sourced from the nether regions of articles published in
the NYT, WaPo et al.
What this all speaks of is ineptitude and malfeasance at all levels of government. Lies covering
more lies. The only things that gets done in Washington iare covering asses and those, like their
wars without end, are complete and utter failures. That the Clinton mob are sore losers and press
on with delegitimization of a clown president who, unlike the wicked witch of the West, feigned
disinterest in war and won what's left of a hollowed out presidency is theatre of the absurd par
excellence. Build the fence around the beltway and keep the psychopaths in the asylum in.
Moreover, there was no chance that these troubles in one district would have effected the general
election. There was thereby no motive for anyone to hack these systems:
Plenty wrong with that logic...gosh...give it some thought...a tiny bit will help there...
yeah - more stories on pussy riot.. a story like how pussy riot ate george soros, or putins breakfast
would be good..... when i read the nyt, i want a story filled with lies and deception... i'm running
away from reality and heading straight for the nyt, lol..
...
Plenty wrong with that logic...gosh...give it some thought...a tiny bit will help there...
Posted by: doug | Sep 2, 2017 10:44:46 AM | 10
It would only be a logical fallacy if it said... "Moreover, there was no chance that these
troubles in more than one district would have effected the general election." ...but
it doesn't, so it isn't.
She has recently joined the Gramps McCain war monger club and told TYT's Cenk Uygur in an
interview that she thinks "Russia" is the most important issue for 2018. She gone full Dem
idiot and has lost my vote (yes, in Mass) but then again, every vote I ever cast for DemocRATs
has been a disappointment. Kerry for Senator and POTUS, Obomber once, Warren once. It's too
much, and I'm done with them for good.
Reply
Joshua88
Mass Independent
September 1 2017, 3:45 p.m.
Her economic message and message of equity/fairness are
consistent.
I know about her support for the defense industry.
I did not know how she feels about Russia.
I know she didn't vote against sanctions and war funding, as well as not speaking out against
drones, etc.
All I can tell you is that, as an Independent, I am extremely harsh, disgusted, and fed up
with the Dems. They are the hopeless party. I listened to Rep Joe Crowley early this morning.
Christalmighty – these people ought to be put out of their misery.
What gives me optimism is that: How easy is it to tweet Ms Slaughter to say, Nobody believes
you; Joe Crowley, you are out of your mind. Keep thinking these thoughts and you will LOSE
2018? Very easy, I am sure.
Your nicknames are so sophomoric – are you about twelve/thirteen?
Reply
Mass
Independent
Joshua88
September 1 2017, 5:39 p.m.
So while we basically agree on our politicians, you take issue
with my nicknames for them? How sophomoric of you.
I am equally disgusted and fed up with them, so I try to get under their skin (too).
Reply
sglover
September 1 2017, 2:42 p.m.
Google aside, Slaughter's perch at this Beltway feeding trough
just goes to show how for somebody like her, the sweet gigs keep on coming no matter how much
or how often you fuck up. How many idiotic military adventures has Slaughter advocated?
Naturally, neither she nor anybody she knows ever has to pay the cost of her crackpot
enthusiasms ..
Reply
Mass Independent
sglover
September 1 2017, 3:24 p.m.
For all her liberal schooling, her "evolution" as a Hillary
NeoCon type is complete. These are the DemocRATS who are ruining the country–with the
help of their corporately owned counterparts, the Rethuglicans.
Reply
free
September 1 2017, 2:12 p.m.
Corporatins are a creation of the US state and proxies of the
US state. That's particularly clear in the case of google-NSA, facebook-NSA, amazon,NSA.
PAYPAL-EBAY-NSA etc.
It's quite unlkely tht the US nazi government is going to do anything against those
companies because the US gov't has no reason to cut its own arms.
Reply
Nonsenseyousay
free
September 1 2017, 2:19 p.m.
Welcome to Earth, but that is not how things work here in the
United States.
Reply
free
Nonsenseyousay
September 1 2017, 3:18 p.m.
What the fuck do you mean. That is exactly how things work in
the american cesspool.
Reply
Alferrer
September 1 2017, 12:37 p.m.
Our politicians are for sale.
Reply
GhostofTeddyRoosevelt
September 1 2017, 11:59 a.m.
As a libertarian, i am pretty much hands off the market.
However, many tech firms have gotten to a point of no return. At some point the Sherman Act
needs to be enlisted.
In the 70s Standard Oil was busted for a lot less. Google, Amazon, Fakebook, Apple, need
strutiny and likely busted as well.
I also would put a few large ag & chemical interests into this mix.
The control they wield is no longer acceptable.
Reply
Joe
September 1 2017, 11:10 a.m.
This goes to show you how Google is using its monopoly power
to crush dissent and destroy its rivals. If there was ever a textbook case of monopolistic
abuse that calls out for antitrust action, this is it.
Reply
Darren Douglas
September 1 2017, 10:04 a.m.
Time to split up Google (search, Gmail, YouTube, etc.) and
maybe Amazon (Washington Post, Whole Foods, etc.). Google in particular is a potentially
harmful monopoly for freedom of speech.
Reply
Elizabeth
September 1 2017, 9:46 a.m.
Great reporting! THANK YOU
Reply
Benito Mussolini
September 1 2017, 9:45 a.m.
Washington is a marketplace for buying and selling influence.
If you drain the swamp, it doesn't make the marketplace disappear, just renders it transparent.
Google's behavior does not seem exceptional, at least when compared with the machinations of
Big Oil and the Military-Industrial complex. As far as I know, Google isn't agitating for the
invasion of any foreign countries.
So said Raghuram Rajan, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, during a keynote address
he gave at the Stigler Center's
conference on the political economy of finance that took place in June.
Rajan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, spoke about
the "concentrated and devastating" impact of technology and trade on blue-collar communities in
areas like the Midwest, the anger toward "totally discredited" elites following the 2008 financial
crisis, and the subsequent rise of populist nationalism, seen as a way to restore a sense of community
via exclusion.
In his talk, Rajan focused on three questions related to current populist discontent: 1. Why is
anger focused on trade? 2. Why now? 3. Why do so many voters turn to far-right nationalist movements?
"Pointing fingers at these communities and telling them they don't understand is not the right
answer," he warned. "In many ways, the kind of angst that we see in industrial countries today
is similar to the bleak times [of] the 1920s and 1930s. Most people in industrial countries used
to believe that their children would have a better future than their already pleasant present.
Today this is no longer true." ...
There's quite a bit more. I don't agree with everything he (Raghuram) says, but thought it might
provoke discussion.
The understanding of exploitation
Of wage earning production workers
Is a better base then the 18 th century liberal ideal of equality
Exploitation and oppression are obviously not the same
even if they make synergistic team mates oftener then not
So long as " them " are blatantly oppressed
It's easy to Forget you are exploited
Unlike oppression
Exploitation can be so stealthy
So not part of the common description of the surface of daily life
Calls for equality must include a careful answer to the question
" equal with who ? "
Unearned equality is not seen as fair to those who wanna believe they earned their status
Add in the obvious :
To be part of a successful movement aimed at Exclusion of some " thems " or other
Is narcotic
Just as fighting exclusion can be a narcotic too for " thems "
But fighting against exclusion coming from among a privileged rank among
The community of would be excluders
That is a bummer
A thankless act of sanctimony
Unless you spiritually join the " thems"
Now what have we got ?
Jim Crow thrived for decades it only ended
When black arms and hands in the field at noon ...by the tens of millions
were no longer necessary to Dixie
"Pointing fingers at these communities and telling them they don't understand is not the right
answer," he warned. "In many ways, the kind of angst that we see in industrial countries today
is similar to the bleak times [of] the 1920s and 1930s. Most people in industrial countries used
to believe that their children would have a better future than their already pleasant present.
Today this is no longer true." ...
I thought this sort of thinking was widely accepted only in 2016 we were told by the center
left that no it's not true.
"Rajan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, spoke
about the "concentrated and devastating" impact of technology and trade on blue-collar communities
in areas like the Midwest, the anger toward "totally discredited" elites following the 2008 financial
crisis, and the subsequent rise of populist nationalism, seen as a way to restore a sense of community
via exclusion."
Instead the center left is arguing that workers have nothing to complain about and besides
they're racist/sexist.
'"These communities have become disempowered partly for economic reasons but partly also because
decision-making has increasingly been centralized toward state governments, national governments,
and multilateral [agreements]," said Rajan. In the European Union, he noted, the concentration
of decision-making in Brussels has led to a lot of discontent.'
I'd suggest that this part is not true. Communities have become politically disempowered in
large part because they have become economically disempowered. A shrinking economy means a shrinking
tax base and less funds to do things locally. Even if the local government attempts to rebuild
by recruiting other employers, they end up in a race to the bottom with other communities in a
similar situation.
I'd also suggest that the largest part of the "discontent" in the EU is not because of any
"concentration of decision-making", but because local (and regional, and national) politicians
have used the EU as a convenient scapegoat for any required, but unpopular action.
"... In evaluating Plaintiffs' claims at this stage, the Court assumes their allegations are true -- that the DNC and Wasserman Schultz held a palpable bias in favor Clinton and sought to propel her ahead of her Democratic opponent, ..."
"... The order reaffirmed that the primaries were tipped in Hillary Clinton's favor, but the court's authority to intervene in a court of law is limited. ..."
"... "The Court thus assumes that the DNC and Wasserman Schultz preferred Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president over Bernie Sanders or any other Democratic candidate. It assumes that they stockpiled information useful to the Clinton campaign. It assumes that they devoted their resources to assist Clinton in securing the party's nomination and opposing other Democratic candidates. And it assumes that they engaged in these surreptitious acts while publically proclaiming they were completely neutral, fair, and impartial. This Order therefore concerns only technical matters of pleading and subject-matter jurisdiction." ..."
In June 2016, a
class
action lawsuit
was filed against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and former
DNC
Chair
Debbie Wasserman Schultz for violating the DNC Charter by rigging the Democratic presidential
primaries for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders. Even former Senate Minority Leader Harry
Reid
admitted
in July 2016, ""I knew!everybody knew!that this was not a fair deal." He added
adding that Debbie Wasserman Schultz should have resigned much sooner than she did. The
lawsuit
was filed to push the
DNC
to
admit their wrongdoing and provide Bernie Sanders supporters, who supported him financially
with millions of dollars in campaign contributions, with restitution for being cheated.
On August 25, 2017, Federal Judge William Zloch,
dismissed
the lawsuit
after several months of litigation in which
DNC
attorneys argued that the DNC would be well within their rights to rig primaries and select
their own candidate. "
In evaluating Plaintiffs' claims at this stage, the Court assumes their
allegations are true -- that the DNC and Wasserman Schultz held a palpable bias in favor Clinton
and sought to propel her ahead of her Democratic opponent,
" the court order dismissing the
lawsuit stated.
The order then explained why the lawsuit would be dismissed. "The Court must now decide
whether Plaintiffs have suffered a concrete injury particularized to them, or one certainly
impending, that is traceable to the DNC and its former chair's conduct!the keys to entering
federal court. The Court holds that they have not." The court added that it did not consider
this within its jurisdiction. "Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, possessing
'only that power authorized by Constitution and statute.'"
The order reaffirmed that the primaries were tipped in Hillary Clinton's favor, but the
court's authority to intervene in a court of law is limited.
"The Court thus assumes that the DNC and Wasserman Schultz preferred Hillary Clinton as the
Democratic candidate for president over Bernie Sanders or any other Democratic candidate. It
assumes that they stockpiled information useful to the Clinton campaign. It assumes that they
devoted their resources to assist Clinton in securing the party's nomination and opposing other
Democratic candidates. And it assumes that they engaged in these surreptitious acts while
publically proclaiming they were completely neutral, fair, and impartial. This Order therefore
concerns only technical matters of pleading and subject-matter jurisdiction."
At this time, it's unclear if the attorneys who filed the class action lawsuit, Jared and
Elizabeth Beck, will pursue other legal recourse regarding the 2016 Democratic primaries.
The USA started to imitate post-Maydan Ukraine: another war with statues... "Identity
politics" flourishing in some unusual areas like history of the country. Which like in
Ukraine is pretty divisive.
McAuliffe was co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, and was one of her superdelegates
at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Notable quotes:
"... The thrust appears to be to undercut components of his base while ratcheting up indignation. WaPo and the Times dribble out salacious "news" stories that, often as not, are substance free but written in a hyperbolic style that assumes a kind of intrinsic Trump guilt and leaps from there. They know better. No doubt they rationalize this as meeting kind with kind. ..."
"... It reminds me of the coverage in the run up to Nixon's resignation. Except this one's on steroids. I believe the DC folks fully expect Trump to be removed and now are focusing on the strategy that accrues the maximum benefit to their party. Unfortunately, things strongly favor the Democrats. ..."
"... Democrats want to drag this out as long as possible and enjoy the chipping away at segments of the Republican base while the Republicans want to clear the path before the midterms. However, the Republican officials, much as many or most can't stand Trump, have to weave a thin line because taking action against Trump would kill them in the primaries and possibly in the general. ..."
"... So the Democrats are licking their chops and hoping this can continue until the midterms with the expectation they will then control Congress. ..."
"... Some of you still don't get it. Trump isn't our last chance. Its your last chance. Yet still so many of you oxygen thieves still insist RUSSIA is the reason Hillary lost. You guys are going to agitate your way into a CW because you can't accept you lost. Many of you agitating are fat, slow, and stupid, with no idea how to survive. ..."
"... From day one after the unexpected (for the punditry class and their media coherts) elections results everybody was piling on Trump. The stories abound about his Russia Collusion (after one year of investigation not even a smoke signal) or his narcistic attitudes (mind you LeeG Trump always addresses people as We where as Humble Obama always addresses in the first person). ..."
"... I get this feeling the Swamp doesn't want a President who will at least try to do something for the American people rather than promises (Remember Hope and Change ala Obama, he got the Change quite a bit of it for him and his Banker Pals from what is left of the treasury and we the people are left with Hope). ..."
"... Someone on the last thread said in a very elegant way that what binds us Americans together is one thing, economic opportunity for all. I believe that was Trump's election platform, with the "for all" emphasized frequently. ..."
"... There is quite the precedent for the media treating trump as they do, Putin has been treated quite similarly, as well as any other politician the media cars disagree with [neocons/neolibs]... ..."
"... I think, during the election campaign, the negative media coverage may have well be a boon to him. Anyone who listened to the media, and then actually turned up at a Trump rally to see for himself, immediately got the idea that the media is full of shit. I think this won Trump a fair number of converts. ..."
"... But I think by now they are just over the top. It almost reminds me of Soviet denunciations of old communists who have fallen out of favor. ..."
"... The one clear thing is that there is a coup attempt to get rid of Donald Trump led by globalist media and supra-national corporate intelligence agents. Charlottesville may well be due to the total incompetence of the democratic governor and mayor. ..."
"... On the other hand, the razing of Confederate Memorials started in democrat controlled New Orleans and immediately spread to Baltimore. This is purposeful like blaming Russia for losing the 2016 election. ..."
"... The unrest here at home is due to the forever wars, outsourcing jobs, tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity. Under stress societies revert to their old beliefs and myths. John Brennon, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are scorpions; they can't help themselves. After regime change was forced on Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine; a color revolution has been ignited here in the USA; damn the consequences. We are the only ones that can stop it by pointing out what is really happening. ..."
"... What I see in my Democrat dominated county is that the blue collar folks are noting this overt coup attempt and while they didn't vote for Trump are beginning to become sympathetic towards him. I sense this is in part due to the massive mistrust of the MSM and the political establishment who are viewed as completely self-serving. ..."
"... I read a transcript of the entirety of Trump's news conference upon which CBS and others are basing their claims that Trump is "defending white supremacists," and at no point did he come within hand grenade distance of doing anything of the sort. What he did do is accuse the left wing group of being at fault along with the right wing group in causing the violence, and he did not even claim that they were equally at fault. ..."
"... There is no doubt whatever that his statement was entirely accurate, if in no other respect in that the left's decision to engage in proximate confrontation was certain to cause violence and was, in fact, designed to do so regardless of who threw the first punch. CBS and other media of its caliber are completely avoiding mentioning that aspect of the confrontation. ..."
"... CBS et. al. have been touting the left's possession of not one but two permits for public assembly, but they carefully do not point out that the permits were for two areas well removed from the area where the conflict occurred, and that they did not have a permit to assemble in that area. ..."
"... The media is flailing with the horror of Trump's advocacy of racial division, but it is the Democratic Party which has for more than a decade pursued the policy of "identity politics," and the media which has prated endlessly about "who will get the black vote" or "how Hispanics will vote" in every election. ..."
"... As a firm believer in the media efforts to sabotage Trump and a former supporter (now agnostic, trending negative - Goldman Sachs swamp creatures in the Oval Office????), he greatly disappointed me. First, i will state, that I do not believe Trump is antisemitic (no antisemite will surround himself with rich Jewish Bankers). ..."
"... It doesn't matter whether Trump is getting a raw deal or not. Politics has nothing to do with fairness. ..."
"... But when you've lost Bob Corker, and even Newt Gingrich is getting wobbly, when Fox News is having a hard time finding Republicans willing to go on and defend Trump, you don't need to be Nostradamus to see what's going to happen. ..."
The media, and political elite, pile on is precisely what I expect. The chattering political classes
have converged on the belief that Trump is not only incompetent, but dangerous. And his few allies
are increasingly uncertain of their future.
The thrust appears to be to undercut components of his base while ratcheting up indignation.
WaPo and the Times dribble out salacious "news" stories that, often as not, are substance free
but written in a hyperbolic style that assumes a kind of intrinsic Trump guilt and leaps from
there. They know better. No doubt they rationalize this as meeting kind with kind. Trump
is the epitome of the salesman that believes he can sell anything to anyone with the right pitch.
Reporters that might normally be restrained by actual facts and a degree of fairness simply are
no longer so constrained.
It reminds me of the coverage in the run up to Nixon's resignation. Except this one's on
steroids. I believe the DC folks fully expect Trump to be removed and now are focusing on the
strategy that accrues the maximum benefit to their party. Unfortunately, things strongly favor
the Democrats.
Democrats want to drag this out as long as possible and enjoy the chipping away at segments
of the Republican base while the Republicans want to clear the path before the midterms. However,
the Republican officials, much as many or most can't stand Trump, have to weave a thin line because
taking action against Trump would kill them in the primaries and possibly in the general.
So the Democrats are licking their chops and hoping this can continue until the midterms
with the expectation they will then control Congress. After that they will happily dispatch
Trump with some discovered impeachable crime. At that point it won't be hard to get enough Republicans
to go along.
The Republicans can only hope to convince Trump to resign well prior to the midterms. They
hope they won't have to go on record with a vote and get nailed in the elections.
In the meantime the country is going to go through hell.
Yes, we are staring into the depths and the abyss has begun to take note of us. BTW the US
was put back together after the CW/WBS on the basis of an understanding that the Confederates
would accept the situation and the North would not interfere with their cultural rituals.
There was a general amnesty for former Confederates in the 1870s and a number of them became
US senators, Consuls General overseas and state governors.
That period of attempted reconciliation has now ended. Who can imagine the "Gone With the Win"
Pulitzer and Best Picture of the Year now? pl
Some of you still don't get it. Trump isn't our last chance. Its your last chance. Yet still
so many of you oxygen thieves still insist RUSSIA is the reason Hillary lost. You guys are going
to agitate your way into a CW because you can't accept you lost. Many of you agitating are fat,
slow, and stupid, with no idea how to survive.
I totally disagree with you LeeG. From day one after the unexpected (for the punditry class
and their media coherts) elections results everybody was piling on Trump. The stories abound about
his Russia Collusion (after one year of investigation not even a smoke signal) or his narcistic
attitudes (mind you LeeG Trump always addresses people as We where as Humble Obama always addresses
in the first person).
I get this feeling the Swamp doesn't want a President who will at least try to do something
for the American people rather than promises (Remember Hope and Change ala Obama, he got the Change
quite a bit of it for him and his Banker Pals from what is left of the treasury and we the people
are left with Hope). I hope he will succeed but I learnt that we will always be left with
Hope!
That last tweet is from the Green Party candidate for VP. Those are just a few examples from
a quick Google search before I get back to work. Those of you with more disposable time will surely
find more.
Someone on the last thread said in a very elegant way that what binds us Americans together
is one thing, economic opportunity for all. I believe that was Trump's election platform, with
the "for all" emphasized frequently.
I believe Charlottsville was a staged catalyst to bring about Trump's downfall, there
seems now to be a "full-court press" against him. If he survives this latest attempt, I'll be
both surprised and in awe of his political skills. If he doesn't survive I'll (and many others,
no matter the "legality of the process") will consider it a coup d'etat and start to think of
a different way to prepare for the future.
There is quite the precedent for the media treating trump as they do, Putin has been treated
quite similarly, as well as any other politician the media cars disagree with [neocons/neolibs]...
I think, during the election campaign, the negative media coverage may have well be a boon
to him. Anyone who listened to the media, and then actually turned up at a Trump rally to see
for himself, immediately got the idea that the media is full of shit. I think this won Trump a
fair number of converts.
But I think by now they are just over the top. It almost reminds me of Soviet denunciations
of old communists who have fallen out of favor.
As far as statue removal goes: There should be legal ways of deciding such things democratically.
There should also be the possibility of relocating the statues in question. I imagine that there
should be plenty of private properties who are willing to host these statues on their land.
This should be quite soundly protected by the US constitution.
That these monuments got, iirc, erected long after the war is nothing unusual. Same is true
for monuments to the white army, of which there are now a couple in Russia.
As far as the civil war goes, my sympathies lie with the Union, I would not be, more then a
100 years after the war, be averse to monuments depicting the common Confederate Soldier.
I can understand the statue toppler somewhat. If someone would place a Bandera statue in my surroundings,
I would try to wreck it. I may be willing to tolerate a Petljura statue, probably a also Wrangel
or Denikin statue, but not a Vlassov or Shuskevich statue.
Imho Lees "wickedness", historically speaking, simply isn't anything extraordinary.
Col., thank you for this comment. I grew up in the "North" and recall the centenary of the Civil
War as featured in _Life_ magazine. I was fascinated by the history, the uniforms and the composition
of the various armies as well as their arms. I would add to that the devastating use of grapeshot.
I knew the biographies of the various generals on both sides and their relative effectiveness.
I would urge others to read Faulkner's _Intruder in the Dust_ to gain some understanding of the
Reconstruction and carpetbagging.
I believe the choice to remove the monument as opposed to some other measure, such as the bit
of history you offer, was highly incendiary. I also find it interesting that the ACLU is taking
up their case in regard to free-speech:
http://tinyurl.com/ybdkrcaz
I was living in Chicago when the Skokie protest occurred.
"They came to Charlottesville to do harm. They came armed and were looking for a fight."
I agree. This means Governor McAuliffe failed in his duty to the people of the Commonwealth
and so did the Mayor of Charlottesville and the senior members of the police forces present in
the city. Congradulations to the alt-left.
They - the left - previously came to DC to do harm - on flag day no less. Namely the Bernie
Bro James Hodgkinson, domestic terrorist, who attempted to assasinate Steve Scalise and a number
of other elected representatives. The left did not denounce him nor his cause. Sadly they did
not even denounce the people who actually betrayed him - those who rigged the Democratic primary:
Donna Brazile and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
The one clear thing is that there is a coup attempt to get rid of Donald Trump led by globalist
media and supra-national corporate intelligence agents. Charlottesville may well be due to the
total incompetence of the democratic governor and mayor.
On the other hand, the razing of Confederate Memorials started in democrat controlled New
Orleans and immediately spread to Baltimore. This is purposeful like blaming Russia for losing
the 2016 election.
The protestors on both divides were organized and spoiling for a fight.
The unrest here at home is due to the forever wars, outsourcing jobs, tax cuts for the
wealthy and austerity. Under stress societies revert to their old beliefs and myths. John Brennon,
Lindsey Graham, John McCain, George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are scorpions; they can't help themselves.
After regime change was forced on Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine; a color revolution has been
ignited here in the USA; damn the consequences. We are the only ones that can stop it by pointing
out what is really happening.
It seems to me that this brouhaha may work in Trump's favor. The more different things they accuse
Trump of (without evidence), the more diluted their message becomes.
I think the Borg's collective hysteria can be explained by the "unite the right" theme of the
Charlottesville Rally. A lot of Trump supporters are very angry, and if they start marching next
to people who are carrying signs that blame "the Jews" for America's problems, then anti-Zionist
(or even outright anti-Semitic) thinking might start to go mainstream. The Borg would do well
to work to address the Trump supporters legitimate grievances. There are a number of different
ways that things might get very ugly if they don't. Unfortunately the establishment just wants
to heap abuse on the Trump supporters and I think that approach is myopic.
There will always be an outrage du jour for the NeverTrumpers. The Jake Tapper, Rachel Maddow,
Morning Joe & Mika ain't gonna quit. And it seems it's ratings gold for them. Of course McCain
and his office wife and the rest of the establishment crew also have to come out to ring the obligatory
bell and say how awful Trump's tweet was.
What I see in my Democrat dominated county is that the blue collar folks are noting this
overt coup attempt and while they didn't vote for Trump are beginning to become sympathetic towards
him. I sense this is in part due to the massive mistrust of the MSM and the political establishment
who are viewed as completely self-serving.
It is illegal in the Commonwealth of Virginia to wear a mask that covers one's face in most public
settings.
LEOs in Central Va encountered this exact requirement when a man in a motorcycle helmet entered
a Walmart on Rt 29 in 2012. Several customers reported him to 911 because they believed him to
being acting suspiciously. He was detained in Albemarle County and was eventually submitted for
mental health evaluation.
This is not a law that Charlottesville police would be unfamiliar with.
Chomsky:
"As for Antifa, it's a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were. "It's a major
gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant."
"what they do is often wrong in principle – like blocking talks – and [the movement] is generally
self-destructive."
"When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it's the toughest and most brutal who
win – and we know who that is. That's quite apart from the opportunity costs – the loss of the
opportunity for education, organizing, and serious and constructive activism."
I read a transcript of the entirety of Trump's news conference upon which CBS and others are basing
their claims that Trump is "defending white supremacists," and at no point did he come within
hand grenade distance of doing anything of the sort. What he did do is accuse the left wing group
of being at fault along with the right wing group in causing the violence, and he did not even
claim that they were equally at fault.
There is no doubt whatever that his statement was entirely accurate, if in no other respect
in that the left's decision to engage in proximate confrontation was certain to cause violence
and was, in fact, designed to do so regardless of who threw the first punch. CBS and other media
of its caliber are completely avoiding mentioning that aspect of the confrontation.
CBS et. al. have been touting the left's possession of not one but two permits for public assembly,
but they carefully do not point out that the permits were for two areas well removed from the
area where the conflict occurred, and that they did not have a permit to assemble in that area.
A pundit on CBS claimed that "if they went" to the park in question, which of course they did,
"they would not have been arrested because it was a public park." He failed to mention that large
groups still are required to have a permit to assemble in a public park.
The media is flailing with the horror of Trump's advocacy of racial division, but it is the
Democratic Party which has for more than a decade pursued the policy of "identity politics," and
the media which has prated endlessly about "who will get the black vote" or "how Hispanics will
vote" in every election.
Lars, but they came with a legal permit to protest and knew what they would be facing. The anti-protestors
including ANTIFA had a large number of people being paid to be there and funded by Soros and were
there illegally. The same mechanisms were in place to ramp up protests like in Ferguson which
were violent and this response was no different.
However, the Virginia Governor a crony of the Clintons, ordered a police stand down and no
effort was made to separate the groups. I remind you also that open carry is legal in Virginia.
So, IMHO this was deliberately set up for a lethal confrontation by the people on the left.
I will also remind you that the American Nazi Party and the American Communist Party among others,
are perfectly legal in the US as is the KKK. Believing and saying what you want, no matter how
offensive, is legal under the First Amendment. Actively discriminating against someone is not
legal but speech is. Say what you want but that is the Constitution.
Your last paragraph is a suitably Leftist post-modern ideological oversimplification of an
infinitely complex phenomenon. It also reveals a great deal of what motivates the SJW Left:
" As for the notion that this is a 'cultural issue', I quote: 'Whenever I hear the word
culture, I reach for my revolver.' 'Culture' is the means by which some people oppress others.
It's much like 'civilization' or 'ethics' or 'morality' - a tool to beat people over the head
who have something you want. "
First, it is a cultural issue. It's an issue between people who accept this culture as a necessary
but flawed, yet incrementally improvable structure for carrying out a relatively peaceful existence
among one another, and those whose grudging, bitter misanthropy has led them to the conclusion
that the whole thing isn't fair (i.e. easy) so fuck it, burn it all down. In no uncertain terms,
this is the ethos driving the radical Left.
Second, I don't know exactly which culture created you, but I'm fairly sure it was a western
liberal democracy, as I'm fairly certain is the case with almost all Leftists these days, regardless
of how radical. And I'm also fairly certain the culture you decry is the western liberal democratic
culture in its current iterations. But before you or anyone else lights the fuse on that, remember
that the very culture you want to burn down because it's so loathsome, that's the thing that gave
you that shiny device you use to connect with the world, it's the thing that taught you how to
articulate your thoughts into written and spoken word, so that you could then go out and bitch
about it, and it even lets you bitch about it, freely and with no consequences. This "civilization"
is the thing that gives rise to the "morals" and "ethics" that allow you to take your shiny gadgets
to a coffee shop, where the barista makes your favorite beverage, instead of simply smashing you
over the head and taking your shiny gadgets because he wants them. These principles didn't arise
out of thin air, and neither did you, me, or anyone else. This culture is an agreed-upon game
that most of us play to ensure we stand a chance at getting though this with as little suffering
as possible. It's not perfect, but it works better than anything else I've seen in history.
In his inimitable fashion, I'll grant Tyler (and the Colonel, as well) the creditable foresight
to call this one. Those of you who find yourselves wishing, hoping, agitating, and activisting
for an overturn of the election result, and/or of traditional American culture in general would
do well to take their warnings seriously.
If traditional American culture is so deeply and irredeemably corrupt, I must ask, what's your
alternative? And how do you mean to install it? I would at least like to know that. Regardless
of your answer to question one, if your answer to question two is "revolution", well then you
and anyone else on that wagon better be prepared to suffer, and to increase many fold the overall
quotient of human suffering in the world. Because that's what it will take.
You want your revolution, but you also want your Wi-Fi to keep working.
You want your revolution, but you also want your hybrid car.
You want your revolution, but you also want your safe spaces, such as your bed when you sleep
at night.
If you think you can manage all that by way of shouting down, race baiting, character assassinating,
and social shaming, without bearing the great burden of suffering that all revolutions entail,
you have bitter days ahead. And there are literally millions of Americans who will oppose you
along the way. And unlike the kulaks when the Bolsheviks rode into town, they see you coming
and they're ready for you. And if you insist on taking it as far as you can, it won't be pretty,
and it won't be cinematic. Just a lot of tragedy for everyone involved. But one side will win,
and my guess is it'll be the guys like Tyler. It's not my desire or aim to see any of that happen.
It's just how I see things falling out on their current trajectory.
The situation calls to mind a quote from a black radical, spoken-word group from Harlem who
were around in the early to mid 60s, called the Last Poets. The line goes, "Speak not of revolution
until you are willing to eat rats to survive." Just something to think about when you advocate
burning it all down.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) has added his name to a growing list of public officials
in state governments encouraging the removal of Confederate statues and memorials throughout the
South. Late in the day on Wednesday McAuliffe released an official statement saying monuments
of Confederate leaders have now become "flashpoints for hatred, division and violence" in a reference
to the weekend of violence which shook Charlottesville as white nationalists rallied against the
city's planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. McAuliffe further described the monuments as
"a barrier to progress" and appealed to state and local governments to take action. The governor
said:
As we attempt to heal and learn from the tragic events in Charlottesville, I encourage Virginia's
localities and the General Assembly – which are vested with the legal authority – to take down
these monuments and relocate them to museums or more appropriate settings. I hope we can all now
agree that these symbols are a barrier to progress, inclusion and equality in Virginia and, while
the decision may not be mine to make...
It seems the push for monument removal is now picking up steam, with cities like Baltimore
simply deciding to act briskly while claiming anti-racism and concern for public safety. Of course,
the irony in all this is that the White nationalist and supremacist groups which showed up in
force at Charlottesville and which are even now planning a major protest in Lexington, Kentucky,
are actually themselves likely hastening the removal of these monuments through their repugnant
racial ideology, symbols, and flags.
Bishop James Dukes, a pastor at Liberation Christian Center located on Chicago's south side,
is demanding that the city of Chicago re-dedicate two parks in the area that are named after former
presidents George Washington and Andrew Jackson. His reasons? Dukes says that monuments honoring
men who owned slaves have no place in the black community, even if those men once led the free
world.
Salve, Publius. Thanks for the article. Col. Lang made an excellent point in the comments' section
that the Confederate memorials represent the reconciliation between the North and the South. The
same argument is presented in a lengthier fashion in this morning's TAC
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-confederate-monuments-represent-reconciliation/
. That reconciliation could have been handled much better, i.e. without endorsing Jim Crow. I
wish more monuments were erected to commemorate Longstreet and Cleburne, JB Hood and Hardee. I
wish there was more Lee and less Forrest. Nonetheless, the important historical point is that
a national reconciliation occurred. Removing the statues is a symbolic act which undoes the national
reconciliation. The past which is being erased is not the Civil War but the civil peace which
followed it. That is tragic.
IMO, most of the problems majority of people (specially the ruling class) have with Donald Trump'
presidency is that, he acts and is an accidental president, Ironically, everybody including, him,
possibly you, and me who voted for him knows this and is not willing to take his presidency serious
and act as such. IMO, he happens to run for president, when the country, due to setbacks and defeat
on multiple choice wars, as well as national economic misfortunes and misshapes, including mass
negligence of working class, was in dismay and a big social divide, as of the result, majority
decided to vote for some one outside of familiar cemented in DC ruling class knowing he is not
qualified and is a BS artist. IMO that is what took place, which at the end of the day, ends of
to be same.
" Removing the statues is a symbolic act which undoes the national reconciliation."
That is the intent. The coalition of urban and coastal ethnic populists and economic elites
has been for increased concentration and expansion of federal power at the expense of the states,
especially the Southern states, for generations. This wave of agitprop with NGO and MSM backing
is intended to undo the constitutional election and return the left to power at the federal level.
I agree with most of Trump's policy positions, but he is negating these positions with his out-of-control
mouth and tweets.
As much as I have nothing but contempt and loathing for the "establishment" (Dems, Republicans,
especially the media, the "intelligence" community and the rest of the permanent government),
Trump doesn't seem to comprehend that he can't get anything done without taming some of these
elements, all of whom are SERIOUSLY opposed to him as a threat to their sinecures and riches.
"Who is this OUTSIDER to come in and think that he in charge of OUR government?"
What seems like a balanced eyewitness account of Charlottesville that suggests that although the
radicals on both sides brought the violence, it was the police who allowed it to happen.
The need to keep protesters away from counter-protesters particular when both are tooled should
be obvious to anyone, but not so with the protest in Charlottevlle.
-"Trump isnt our last chance. Its your last chance."
Reminds me of the 60's and the SDS and their ilk. A large part of the under 30 crowd idolized
Mao's Little Red Book and convinced themselves the "revolution" was imminent. So many times I
heard the phrase "Up Against the Wall, MFs." Stupid fools. Back then people found each other by
"teach-ins" and the so called "underground press." In those days it took a larger fraction to
be able to blow in each other's ear and convince themselves they were the future "vanguard."
These days, with the internet, it is far easier for a smaller fraction to gravitate to an echo
chamber, reinforce group think, and believe their numbers are much larger than what, in reality,
exists. This happens across the board. It's a rabbit hole Tyler. Don't go down it.
Yes, Forts Bragg, Hood, Lee, AP Hill, Benning, etc., started as temporary camps during WW1
and were so named to encourage Southern participation in the war. The South had been reluctant
about the Spanish War. Wade Hampton, governor of SC said of that war, "Let the North fight. the
South knows the cost of war." pl
I would like to share my viewpoint. As a firm believer in the media efforts to sabotage Trump
and a former supporter (now agnostic, trending negative - Goldman Sachs swamp creatures in the
Oval Office????), he greatly disappointed me. First, i will state, that I do not believe Trump
is antisemitic (no antisemite will surround himself with rich Jewish Bankers).
But violence on all sides is absolute BS. Nazi violence gets its own sentence and language at least as strong as the language he has
no trouble hitting ISIS with. Didn't hear that. So I guess in his mind, the threat the US faced
from Nazis during WW2 was less than a ragtag, 3rd world guerilla force whose only successes are
because of 1. US, Saudi, and other weapons, and their war on unstable third world countries. Give
me a break - did he never watch a John Wayne movie as a kid?
When I discuss nazi's, F-bombs are dropped. I support the right of nazi's to march and spew
their vitriolic hatred, and even more strongly support the right of free speech to counter their
filth with facts and arguments and history.
I am sorry, but Antifa was not fighting against the
US in WW2. If one wants to critique Antifa, or another group, that criticism belongs in a separate
paragraph or better in another press conference. Taking 2 days to do so, and then walking it back,
is the hallmark of a political idiot (or a billionaire who listens to no one and lives in his
own mental echo chamber).
If Trump gets his info and opinions from TV news, despite having the $80+ billion US Intel
system at his beck and call, he is the largest idiot on the planet.
It doesn't matter whether Trump is getting a raw deal or not. Politics has nothing to do with
fairness.
But when you've lost Bob Corker, and even Newt Gingrich is getting wobbly, when Fox News is
having a hard time finding Republicans willing to go on and defend Trump, you don't need to be
Nostradamus to see what's going to happen.
"... Trump is attacked. The ACLU is attacked. Peace activists opposed to the CIA's regime change operation in Syria are attacked. Tucker Carlson is attacked. Everyone attacked that the CIA and various other aspects of the Deep State want attacked as if the MSM were all sent the same talking points memo. ..."
In the aftermath of competing protests in Charlottesville a wave of dismantling of
Confederate statues is on the rise. Overnight Baltimore
took
down
four Confederate statues. One of these honored Confederate soldiers and sailors,
another one Confederate women. Elsewhere statues were
toppled or defiled
.
The Charlottesville conflict itself was about the intent to dismantle a statue of General
Robert E. Lee, a commander of the Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The
activist part of the political right protested against the take down, the activist part of the
political left protested against those protests. According to a number of witnesses
quoted
in the LA Times sub-groups on both sides came prepared for and readily engaged in violence.
In 2003 a U.S. military tank pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein on Firdos Square in
Baghdad. Narrowly shot TV picture made it look as if a group of Iraqis were doing this. But
they were mere actors within
a U.S. propaganda show
.
Pulling down the statue demonstrated a lack of respect towards those who had fought under,
worked for or somewhat supported Saddam Hussein. It helped to incite the resistance against the
U.S. occupation.
The right-wing nutters who, under U.S. direction, forcefully toppled the legitimate
government of Ukraine
pulled
down
hundreds of the remaining Lenin statues in the country. Veterans who fought under the
Soviets in the second world war
took this
as
a sign of disrespect. Others saw this as an attack on their fond memories of better times and
protected them
. The forceful erasement of history further split the country:
"It's not like if you go east they want Lenin but if you go west they want to destroy him,"
Mr. Gobert said. "These differences don't only go through geography, they go through
generations, through social criteria and economic criteria, through the urban and the rural."
Statues standing in cities and places are much more than veneration of one person or group.
They are symbols, landmarks and fragments of personal memories:
"One guy said he didn't really care about Lenin, but the statue was at the center of the
village and it was the place he kissed his wife for the first time," Mr. Gobert said. "When
the statue went down it was part of his personal history that went away."
Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery. But there are few historic
figures without fail. Did not George Washington "own" slaves? Did not Lyndon B. Johnson lie
about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and launched an unjust huge war against non-white people
under false pretense? At least some people will think of that when they see their statues.
Should those also be taken down?
As time passes the meaning of a monument changes. While it may have been erected with a
certain ideology or concept
in
mind
, the view on it will change over time:
[The Charlottesville statue] was unveiled by Lee's great-granddaughter at a ceremony in May
1924. As was the custom on these occasions it was accompanied by a parade and speeches. In
the dedication address, Lee was celebrated as a hero, who embodied "the moral greatness of
the Old South", and as a proponent of reconciliation between the two sections. The war itself
was remembered as a conflict between "interpretations of our Constitution" and between
"ideals of democracy."
The white racists who came to "protect" the statue in Charlottesville will hardly have done
so in the name of reconciliation. Nor will those who had come to violently oppose them. Lee was
a racist. Those who came to "defend" the statue were mostly "white supremacy" racists. I am all
for protesting against them.
But the issue here is bigger. We must not forget that statues have multiple meanings and
messages. Lee was also the man who
wrote
:
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest
joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead
of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down. The park in
Charlottesville, in which the statue stands, was recently renamed from Lee Park into
Emancipation Park. It makes sense to keep the statue there to reflect on the contrast between
it and the new park name.
Old monuments and statues must not (only) be seen as glorifications within their time. They
are reminders of history. With a bit of education they can become valuable occasions of
reflection.
George Orwell wrote in his book 1984: "The most effective way to destroy people is to deny
and obliterate their own understanding of their history." People do not want to be destroyed.
They will fight against attempts to do so. Taking down monuments or statues without a very wide
consent will split a society. A large part of the U.S. people voted for Trump. One gets the
impression that the current wave of statue take downs is seen as well deserved "punishment" for
those who voted wrongly - i.e. not for Hillary Clinton. While many Trump voters will dislike
statues of Robert Lee, they will understand that dislike the campaign to take them down even
more.
That may be the intend of some people behind the current quarrel. The radicalization on
opposing sides may have a purpose. The Trump camp can use it to cover up its plans to further
disenfranchise they people. The fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural disputes to
cover for its lack of political resistance to Trump's plans.
Anyone who wants to stoke the fires with this issue should be careful what they wish
for.
"That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down."
How about the fact that he was a traitor?
"George Orwell wrote in his book 1984: 'The most effective way to destroy people is to
deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.'"
The only reason statues of traitors like Lee exist is because the South likes to engage in
'Lost Cause' revisionism; to pretend these were noble people fighting for something other
than the right to own human beings as pets.
erasing history seems part of the goal.. i feel the usa has never really addressed
racism.. the issue hasn't gone away and remains a deep wound that has yet to heal.. events
like this probably don't help.
The statues of Lee and his ilk should come down because they are TRAITORS who deserve no
honor. Washington and Jefferson may have owned slaves but they were PATRIOTS. Its really that
simple.
I don't want to get derailed into the rights or wrongs of toppling statues. I wonder whose
brilliant idea it was to start this trend
right at this particular tinder box moment.
That said, the USA has never ever truly confronted either: 1) the systemic genocide of the
Native Americans earlier in our history; and b) what slavery really meant and was. NO
reconciliation has ever really been done about either of these barbarous acts. Rather, at
best/most, we're handed platitudes and lip service that purports that we've "moved on" from
said barbarity - well I guess WHITES (I'm one) have. But Native Americans - witness what
happened to them at Standing Rock recently - and minorities, especially African Americans,
are pretty much not permitted to move on. Witness the unending police murders of AA men
across the country, where, routinely, most of the cops get off scott-free.
To quote b:
The Trump camp can use it to cover up its plans to further disenfranchise they people. The
fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural disputes to cover for its lack of
political resistance to Trump's plans.
While I dislike to descend into the liturgy of Both Siderism, it's completely true that
both Rs and Ds enjoy and use pitting the rubes in the 99% against one another because it
means that the rapine, plunder & pillaging by the Oligarchs and their pet poodles in
Congress & the White House can continue apace with alacrity. And: That's Exactly What's
Happening.
The Oligarchs could give a flying fig about Heather Heyer's murder, nor could they give a
stuff about US citizens cracking each other's skulls in a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Gives an opening for increasing the Police State and cracking down on our freedumbs and
liberties, etc.
I heard or read somewhere that Nancy Pelosi & Chuck Schumer are absolutely committed
to not impeaching Donald Trump because it means all the Ds have to do is Sweet Eff All and
just "represent" themselves as the Anti-Trump, while, yes, enjoying the "benefits" of the
programs/policies/legislation enacted by the Trump Admin. I have no link and certainly cannot
prove this assertion, but it sure seems likely. Just frickin' great.
Lee was not a racist; I'd say you are addressing your own overblown egos. The U.S. Civil War
was long in coming. During the 1830's during Andrew Jackson's presidency, and John Calhoun's
vice-presidency, at an annual state dinner, the custom of toasts was used to present
political views. Jackson toasted the Union of the states, saying "The Union, it must be
preserved." Calhoun's toast was next, "The Union, next to our liberty, most dear."
Calhoun was a proponent of the Doctrine of Nullification, wherein if a national law
inflicted harm on any state, the state could nullify the law, until such time as a
negotiation of a satisfactory outcome could come about. The absolute Unionists were outraged
by such an idea.
My memory tells me that the invention of the cotton gin made cotton a good crop, but that you
needed the slaves. Slaves represented the major money invested in this operation. Free the
slaves and make slave holders poor. Rich people didn't like that idea. I think maybe the
cotton was made into cloth in the factories up north. Just saying.
How would 'addressing the problem' actually work? Should all native Americans and people of
colour go to Washington to be presented with $1 million each by grovelling white men?
But, the memorials to GW, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
et al
, does
not honor them for owning slaves. Memorials of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis,
et
al
, is because they took up arms against a legitimate government simply to support of a
vile system.
@6
The manufacturing states put export duties on the agricultural states, and tariffs on British
imported cloth. The English mills were undercutting the U.S. mills prices for a number of
reasons, not the least of which was they were more experienced in the industry.
The difference between a statue of Lee vs. a statue of Washington, Jefferson, LBJ, etc., is
that Washington, Jefferson, and LBJ did some good things to earn our respect even though they
did a lot of bad things, too. The Confederacy did no good things. It would be like erecting a
statue to honor Hitler's SS.
If there were statues honoring the SS, would anyone be surprised if Jews objected? Why
then does anyone fail to understand why blacks object to Confederate symbols?
I would, however, support statues that depict a Confederate surrendering. Perhaps the
statue of Lee on a horse could be replaced with a statue of Lee surrendering to Grant?
I am not a fan of the "counter-protests." Martin Luther King never "counter-protested" a
KKK rally. A counter-protest is a good way to start a fight, but a poor way to win hearts and
minds. It bothers me when the 99% fight among themselves. Our real enemy is the 1%.
George Washington "the father of our country" was a slave owner, a rapist and a murderer.
What do we expect from his descendants?
should we remove his face of the dollar bill and destroy his statues?
The civil war was due to economic reasons, free labor is good business.
Now cheap Mexican-labor ( the new type of slavery) is good business to the other side.
when will the new civil war in the US start?
@b
Many years ago, within the leadership of my student organization, I initiated to rename the
University I was attending, which was named after a communist ideological former state acting
figure, with very bloody hands, co-responsible for the death of tenths of thousands and
thousands of people. Today I still think, that educational and cultural institutions (and
many more) should be named either neutral, or by persons with cultural background and with
impeccable moral history, no many to be found. On the other side, I opposed the removal of
the very statue of the same person at a nearby public plaza - and there it stands today - as
a rather painful reminder of the past bloody history of my country, that went through a
conflict, that today seems so bizarre. Wherever I go, I look into black abyss, knowing, that
the very culture I belong to (the so called Christian Liberal Free Western World) has
inflicted so many horrors and crimes against other nations and ethnic groups, its even
difficult to count. Karlheinz Deschner wrote 10 books, titled "The Criminal History of
Christianity (Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums - on YT you can find videos him reading
from it). Yes, this is the very civilization, we Westerners originate from. It was deadly for
centuries - and its about time to change this. And keeping the memory of our so bloody
history, will help us to find the right and hopefully more peaceful solutions in the future.
Don`t tear down monuments or change street names, but give them the so often shameful
meaning, they had in history.
Then southern states have no business being part of United States of America since their
history and customs are not honored. That is good overall I think. Best for the world.
Southern states are very unlikely to attack any other sovereign state thousands of miles
away, but all united as unitary state, we can see how persistent in their aggression on the
rest of the world they are. 222 years out of its 239 years US has been aggressor:
https://www.infowars.com/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/
Time to break US lust for attacking, invading and raiding other countries.
what little of this history i know - which is to say very little - kgw reflects what i have
read.. the problem is way deeper.. if you want to address racism, you are going to have to
pull down most of the statues in the usa today of historical figures..
if - that is why way you think it will matter, lol.. forgot to add that.. otherwise, forget
pulling down statues and see if you can address the real issue - like @4 rukidding and some
others here are addressing..
A little false equivalency anyone? I'm sure Adolph Hitler had some reasonable remarks at some
point in his life, so, I guess we should tolerate a few statues of him also? States rights as
the cause for the U$A's civil war? baloney, it was about the murder and enslavement of
millions of humans.
Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in Their Game" still
spells out
unsurpassed the divide and
rule strategy, to my mind. Powers that be are rubbing their hands with satisfaction at this
point, one would think.
I like your observation, b, that statues don't necessarily represent what they did when
they were erected. It's an important point. It meant something at the time, but now it's a
part of today's heritage, and has often taken on some of your own meaning. To destroy your
own heritage is a self-limiting thing, and Orwell's point is well taken. Perhaps people
without history have nowhere in the present to stand.
Have to add, slavery wasn't the cause for the war. It was centralization, rights of the
states. Yankees wanted strong central government with wide array of power, Southerners
didn't. Yankees were supported by London banking families and their banking allies or agents
in the US, Southerners were on their own. I personally think Southerners were much better
soldiers, more honorable and courageous, but we lacked industrial capacity and financial
funds. I could be biased having Southern blood, but my opinion anyway.
therevolutionwas@10 - Have to agree. The events leading up to the US Civil War and the war
itself were for reasons far more numerous and complex then slavery. Emancipation was a
fortunate and desirable outcome and slavery was an issue, but saying the entire war was about
ending slavery is the same as saying WW II was mostly about stopping Nazis from killing jews.
Dumbing down history serves nobody.
Still wondering how specifically the 'real issue' can be addressed. I don't think any amount
of money will compensate plains Indians .actually some are quite well off due to casinos. But
the days of buffalo hunting are gone and white people will not be going back where they came
from. As for blacks in urban ghettos you could build them nice houses in the suburbs but I
doubt if that will fix the drugs/gangs problem.
"That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down."
If the sole criteria for taking down any statues was that a man was a 'racist', meaning
that he hated people of color/hated black people, can we assume then that all those who owned
slaves were also racist?
Then all the statues in the whole country of Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Monroe and
perhaps all the Founding Daddies who owned slaves, should be removed. I am playing devil's
advocate here.
Fashions come and go.... and so the vices of yesterday are virtues today; and the virtues
of yesterday are vices today.
Bernard is correct at the end: "The fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural
disputes to cover for its lack of political resistance to Trump's plans." The Demos have
nothing, so they tend to fall back on their identity politics.
....In total, twelve presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives, eight of whom
owned slaves while serving as president. George Washington was the first president to own
slaves, including while he was president. Zachary Taylor was the last president to own slaves
during his presidency, and Ulysses S. Grant was the last president to have owned a slave at
some point in his life.
Pitting people against people by inciting and validating fringe groups is a tried and true
social manipulation ploy.....and it seems to be working as intended.
Focus is on this conflict gets folks riled up and myopic about who the real enemies of
society really are.....and then that riled up energy is transferred to bigger conflicts like
war between nations.....with gobs of "our side is more righteous" propaganda
Humanity has been played like this for centuries now and our extinction would probably be
a kinder future for the Cosmos since we don't seem to be evolving beyond power/control based
governance.
And yes, as Dan Lynch wrote just above: "It bothers me when the 99% fight among
themselves. Our real enemy is the 1%"
Robert E. Lee a racist? No, he was a man of his time. B, you blew it with this one. You have
confused what you don't know with what you think you know.
Now, if Lee was a racist, what about this guy?
From Lincoln's Speech, Sept. 18, 1858.
"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I
was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people.
While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the
question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in
regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about
in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not
nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM
HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever
forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch
as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior
and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the superior position
assigned to the white race."
All states who joined the confederation cited the "need" and "right" to uphold slavery in
their individual declarations. To say that the civil war was not about this point is strongly
misleading. Like all wars there were several named and unnamed reasons. Slavery was the most
cited point.
The argument of rather unlimited "state rights" is simply the demand of a minority to
argue for the right to ignore majority decisions. With universal state rights a union can
never be a union. There is no point to it. What is needed (and was done) is to segregate
certain fields wherein the union decides from other policy fields that fall solely within the
rights of member states. The conflict over which fields should belong where hardly ever
ends.
P. S.--If it were up to me, I'd tear down monuments to most of the U$A's
presidents for perpetuating and abetting the rise of an empire who has enslaved and murdered
millions around the globe, simply for profits for the few. Economic slavery has replaced the
iron shackles, but the murder is still murder...
P. S.--If it were up to me, I'd tear down monuments to most of the U$A's presidents for
perpetuating and abetting the rise of an empire who has enslaved and murdered millions around
the globe, simply for profits for the few. Economic slavery has replaced the iron shackles,
but the murder is still murder...
Posted by: ben | Aug 16, 2017 2:45:29 PM |
28
/div
The Northern manufacturers were exploiting the South and wanted to continue doing so. They
didn't much care that the raw materials came from slave labor.
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to encourage slave rebellion
(meaning
fewer white Southern men available for military service)
and to punish the South.
Yet, while slavery ended when the North won, we all know how that turned out. For nearly
100 years
(and some might say, even today)
, many black people were still virtual
slaves due to discrimination and poor education.
B@27: you're missing a couple of very basic points.
First, not all states that seceded issued declarations. Virginia, for example, of which
the 'racist' Robert E. Leehailed, only seceded after Lincoln made his move on fort sumter. In
fact, Virginia had voted against secession just prior but, as with 3 other southern states,
seceded when Lincoln called for them to supply troops for his war.
Speaking of declarations of causes, have a look at the cherokee declaration. Yes, united
indian tribes fought for the confederacy.
Finally, the causes for secession are not the causes for war. Secession is what the
southerners did. War is what Lincoln did. One should not have automatically led to the
other.
Well, just reading the comments here it is obvious that there are several versions of history
taught at different times in the last century. If not, then all of us would "know" the real
reason for the CW - there would be no need for discussion. What is also obvious is that this
delving back into a muddied history, the defacing of formerly meaningful objects, the
thrusting of certain "rights" into the face of anyone even questioning them - all of it is
working. It is working extremely well in distracting us from things like the numerous
economic bubbles, the deep state scratching at war or chaos everywhere, politicians who are
at best prevaricating prostitutes and at worst thieves enriching themselves at our expense as
we struggle to maintain in the face of their idiocy.
It simply doesn't MATTER what started the Civil War - it ought to be enough to look at the
death toll on BOTH sides and know we don't need to go there again.
Who stands to gain from this? Because it surely isn't the historically ignorant antifa
bunch, who are against everything that includes a moral boundary. It isn't the alt-right, who
get nothing but egg on their face and decimation of position by virtue of many being "white".
CUI BONO?
The single answer is threefold: media, the government and the military - who continue to
refuse to address any of our problems - and feed us a diet of revolting pablum and
double-speak.
Honestly, congress passed a law legalizing propaganda - did anyone notice? Did anyone
factor in that they allowed themselves freedom to lie to anyone and everyone? It wasn't done
for show - it was done to deny future accountability.
Don't let this site get bogged down in history that is being constantly rewritten on
Wikipedia. Don't buy into the left/right division process. Don't let your self identify with
either group, as they are being led by provocateurs.
The lies we know of regarding Iraq, Syria, Libya - aren't they enough to force people to
disbelieve our media completely? The HUGE lies in our media about what is going on in
Venezuela should be quite enough (bastante suficiente) to make most people simply disbelieve.
But they cannot because they are only allowed to see and hear what our government approves -
and for our government, lying is quite legal now.
Let the emotions go - they are pushed via media to force you to think in white or black,
right or left, old vs young - any way that is divisive. Getting beaten for a statue would
likely make the guy who posed for it laugh his butt off most likely...
Speaking of Lincoln's quotes, here is a good one to dispel the myth about slavery being the
cause of war.
Pres. Abraham Lincoln: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do
so, and I have no inclination to do so."
I the civil war was for the most part connected with the federal reserve central bank
charter right which unionist Yankees frightful about possible restraints of bankers rights
were keen to give London banking families unrestricted rights to do whatever they please in
the US. Other reasons exclusively included expanding federal government powers. Adding
personal income tax would be unimaginable prior to CW. Creation of all those fed gov agencies
too. It was all made possible by London bankers' servants Yankees.
The civil war in the US was not really started because of slavery. Robert E. Lee did not
join the south and fight the north in order to preserve slavery, in his mind it was state's
rights. Lincoln did not start the civil war to free the slaves.
You're right. The Emancipation Act was an afterthought really because Europe had turned
against the idea of slavery before the Civil War broke out, in fact was repelled by it, and
Lincoln knew that it would hurt commerce.
The southern states felt they had a right to secede, using the tenth amendment as the legal
basis. It states simply " The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people.".
Furthermore, the union of states was referred to many times by the founders as a compact.
Under the theory of compacts, when one party doesn't honor said compact, it is rendered
null.
Slavery, regardless of how we may feel today, was a legal and federally protected
institution. With the rise of the republican party, a campaign of agitation towards the south
and slavery had begun. It is this agitation towards a legal institution that rankled
southerners.
The south saw this coming well before the election of Lincoln. William seward, the
favorite to win the election, gave a speech in l858 called "the irrepressible conflict". The
south well knew of this and saw the writing on the wall if a republican was elected
president.
When reading the declarations of causes, this background should be kept in mind if one
wants to understand the southern position. Or, one can just count how many times the word
'slavery' appears like a word cloud.
Probably the best articulated statement on the southern position was south Carolina's
"address to the slaveholding states".
I'm afraid if you go back in time, no US president can be saved from a well-deserved statue
toppling. Including Abraham Lincoln, the hypocrite who DID NOT, and I repeat, DID NOT abolish
slavery. The U.S "elite" has always been rotten through and through, so good luck with those
statues.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/the-clintons-had-slaves
You used Lincoln's inaugural address to show that the war was not over slavery. It's plain
enough coming from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Lincoln, in that same inaugural address, stated what the war would be fought over ......
and it was revenue.
Here's the quote:
The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places
belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be
necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among
the people anywhere.
As a rare book dealer and history buff with thirty-odd years of experience reading and
studying original civil war era periodicals and documents, a fact stands out for me about
these now-controversial statues. None is from the civil war period. Many, like the Lee statue
in this article, date to the 1920's, which was the era of the second Ku Klux Klan. The
infamous movie "Birth of a Nation" inspired the nationwide revival of that faded terrorist
group. The year that statue was dedicated a hundred thousand Klansmen paraded in full regalia
in the streets of Washington.
The children and grandchildren of the men who had taken up arms against the United States
had by then completed a very flattering myth about 1861 - 1865. Consider too that
romanticized lost cause mythology was integral to the regional spirit long before the
rebellion. The Scots Irish who settled the American south carried with them the long memory
their forebears' defeats at the Boyne and Culloden, at the hands of the English – the
very ancestors of the hated Yankees living to the north of their new homeland.
Note also that many more CSA statues and memorials were built in the 1960s, as symbols of
defiance of the civil rights movement of that era. The War for the Union was fought at its
heart because the elite of the old south refused to accept the result of a fair and free
democratic election, but for those who came after, white supremacy became the comforting myth
that rationalized their ancestors' incredibly foolish treason.
"Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery."
Would this have been written in his time? Would it be written today in other countries
(Africa included) where slavery (aka human trafficking) is big business today?
I'm disappointed that Moon of Alabama, usually so astute in its presentations, would print
this article.
That the many statutes of America's founding fathers should be re-evaluated is actually a
great idea. Many of these people were simply oligarchs who wanted to be the top of the
pyramid instead of the British. Many owned slaves and perpetuated slavery. Others, like
Andrew Jackson were legitimate psychopaths. Pretty much all of them cheered the genocide of
Native Americans. So maybe we *should* have different heros.
Using the logic b spells out above, one could argue that statues of Nazis should be
allowed too, after all they did come up with the Autobahn (modern highways), jet engines, and
viable rockets, all technology used all over the world. Some patriotic, well meaning Germans
fought in the Wehrmacht, don't they deserve statues, too? What about the Banderists and
Forest Brothers? The Imperial Japanese? Don't those well-meaning fascists deserve to
celebrate their heritage?
But simply saying that idea out loud is enough to realize what a crock that notion is.
Nazis and fascists don't deserve statues, neither do confederates. Neither do most Americans,
for that matter.
Trying to make some moral equivalence between NeoNazis and the leftists who oppose them is
about as silly as it gets. I don't support violence against these idiots, and they have the
same rights as anyone else in expressing their opinion. But to paint legit NeoNazis and the
leftists opposing them (admittedly in a very juvenile manner) in the same brush ("Both sides
came prepared for violence") is utter hogwash. We don't give Nazis a pass in Ukraine, don't
give them a pass in Palestine, and we sure as hell don't give them a pass in the US. It
doesn't matter what hypocritical liberal snowflake is on the other side of the barricade, the
Nazi is still a f*****g Nazi.
"Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery."
b, you have just displayed your ignorance of the character of Robert E. Lee, why he
fought, and what he fought for. To give you the short n sweet of it, General Lee was a
Christian gentleman respected by those in the North as well as the South. He fought the
Federal leviathan as it had chosen to make war on what he considered to be his home and
country--the State of Virginia. The issue at hand was not racism and slavery but Federal
tyranny. Lincoln himself said he had no quarrel with slavery and as long as the South paid
the Federal leviathan its taxes, the South was free to go. Make a visit to Paul Craig Roberts
site for his latest essay which explains the world of the 1860s American scene much more
eloquently than I can ...
b is completely wrong in thread. The USA has been a highly racist power system historically
where killing non-Whites has been a major historical policy. Lee is not merely a racist, he
epitomizes this policy and is a symbol of it. Attacking racist symbols is essential to
destroying racism.
Historicus@38: that 'fair and free democratic election' was replete with Lincoln supporters
printing counterfeit tickets to the convention in order to shut out seward supporters.
The gambit worked and the rest, as they say, is history.
james @2--You are 1000000000% correct. And given the current state-of-affairs, will
continue to fester for another century if not more thanks to historical ignorance and elite
Machiavellian maneuvering.
Southern Extremist self-proclaimed Fire Eaters were the ones that started the war as they
took the bait Lincoln cunningly offered them. If they'd been kept away from the coastal
artillery at Charlestown, the lanyard they pulled may have remained still and war avoided for
the moment. The advent of the US Civil War can be blamed totally on the Constitution and
those who wrote it, although they had no clue as to the fuse they lit.
Chattel Slavery was introduced in the Western Hemisphere because the enslaved First
Peoples died off and the sugar plantations needed laborers. Rice, tobacco, indigo, "Naval
Stores," and other related cash crops were the next. Cotton only became part of the mix when
the cotton gin made greatly lessened the expense of its processing. But, cotton wore out the
thin Southern soils, so it cotton plantations slowly marched West thus making Mexican lands
attractive for conquest. But slaves were used for so much more--particularly the draining of
swamps and construction of port works. The capital base for modern capitalism was made
possible by slavery--a sentence you will NOT read in any history textbook. There are a great
many books written on the subject; I suggest starting with Marcus Rediker's
The Slave
Ship: A Human History
, followed by Eric Williams's classic
Capitalism and Slavery
, Edward Baptist's
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American
Capitalism
, and John Clarke's
Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery
and the Rise of European Capitalism
.
There are even more books published about the war itself. But as many have pointed out,
it's learning about the reasons for the war that's most important. Vice President Henry
Wilson was the first to write a very detailed 3 volume history of those reasons,
Rise and
Fall of the Slave Power in America
beginning in 1872, and they are rare books indeed;
fortunately, they've been digitized and can be found here,
https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Wilson%2C+Henry%2C+1812-1875%22
Perhaps the most complete is Allan Nevins 8 volume
Ordeal of the Union
, although for
me it begins too late in 1847,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordeal_of_the_Union
Finally, no study of the period's complete without examining the unraveling and utter
dysfunction of the political process that occurred between 1856 and 1860 that allowed Lincoln
to win the presidency, Roy Nichols's
The Disruption of American Democracy
illustrates
that best.
The US Civil War can't be boiled down to having just one cause; it's causes were multiple,
although slavery--being an economic and social system--resides at its core. As an historian,
I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of historical relevance,
although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as wrong; better to
display the Spirit of '76 flag if stars and stripes are to be displayed. (I wonder what will
become of the UK's Union Jack if Scotland votes to leave the UK.) Personal display of the
Stars and Bars for me amounts to a political statement which people within the Outlaw US
Empire still have the right to express despite the animus it directs at myself and other
non-Anglo ethnicities. (I'm Germanic Visigoth with Spanish surname--people are surprised at
my color when they hear my name.)
The current deep dysfunction in the Outlaw US Empire's domestic politics mirrors that of
the latter 1850s somewhat but the reasons are entirely different yet solvable--IF--the
populous can gain a high degree of solidarity.
There's also the school of thought that holds that Honest Abe freed the slaves in order that
northern industrialists could acquire replacements for workers lost in the war.
@37
Aye Woogs. All about expanding fed gov powers, most of which was focused on permanent central
banking charter. Many forget that central banking charter had been in place before CW in the
US and that great statesman Andrew Jackson repelled it. The first central banking charter
caused terrible economic suffering, which is why it was repelled. People had more sense then.
Not so much now.
"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United
States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the
funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided
the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I
take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families.
That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin
fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I
have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal I will rout you out!"
~Andrew Jackson
It saddens me that so many buy into the South fought for slavery. That story line was used in
the same manner that Weapons of Mass Destruction was used to war with Iraq. The difference is
the internet was able to get the truth out. Doesn't do much good to argue as most believe the
Confederate slavery propaganda. The US is done as a nation. A thousand different groups that
hate each other preaching no hate. Yes it will limp along for a while but it's done for.
many thanks for the history, and the books. I read Murray's essay and consider it a good
take....
".... As an historian, I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of
historical relevance, although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as
wrong..."
I have to agree.
& there is at least one sane (african american) person in LA, as per below article
"....Los Angeles resident Monique Edwards says historical monuments, like the Confederate
statue removed from Hollywood Forever Cemetery, need to be preserved and used as teachable
moments...."
Yankees wanted strong central government with wide array of power, Southerners didn't.
Yankees were supported by London banking families and their banking allies or agents in the
US, Southerners were on their own.
I recall that it was the slavers that wanted the central government to enforce the
Fugitive Slave Act
even in states that outlawed slavery; it was the slavers that
insisted that slavery be legal in the new territories, regardless of the wishes of the
settlers.
Also, the London industrial and banking interest strongly supported the breakaway slavers
because:
(1) It was the slave produced cotton that fueled the textile industry in England.
(2) Imported British ¨prestige¨ items found a ready market with the nouveau riche
planters grown fat on stolen labor.
(3) A Balkanized NA would be more subject to pressure from the ¨Mother Country.¨
(4) Lincoln refused to borrow from the bankers and printed ¨greenbacks¨ to finance
the war; this infuriated the bankers.
Neo-Confederate revisionism creates mythical history, in a large part, by attempting to
deify vile human beings.
Ben@26: Lincoln stated that he would only use force to collect imposts and duties.
The first battle of the war (actually more a skirmish) was the battle of Phillipi in
western Virginia in early June, l86l.
To the best of my knowledge, there were no customs houses in western Virginia as it was
not a port of entry. This was simply an invasion by the union army at Lincoln's command that
revealed his true colors. The war was Lincoln's war, plain and simple.
@51
Joey, I would like yo offer you fairy dust to buy. Interested? Luckily we should part our
ways soon. Should have happened ages ago if you ask me. Your history is not our own. You were
aggressors fighting for foreign entity. Time for us to part I think. have your own history
and say whatever you want there. We will have ours.
In my view, b is comparing a modern sensibility on race relations with that of a mid 19th
century confederate leader and so with this bad thesis it is quite easy to dismiss this post
entirely. Was the north that much more enlightened on the treatent of blacks? I think not.
Was the emancipation proclamation largely a political gesture to incite ire and violence not
only among southerners but also slaves living in these states towards their owners?
Meanwhile, the effect of such a proclamation was exempt on states where said effect would not
"pinch" the south. The north, if anything, was even more racist using blacks as a means
towards the end to consolidate power even more centrally.
It honestly reads like most neutral apologetic drivel out of the "other" msm which is on
the ropes right now from an all-out wholly political assault. If you truly wanted to educate
people on their history you would stand up for fair and honest discourse. Make no mistake,
this is all about obscuration and historical-revisionism. Globalists gotta eat.
"Slavery as an institution, is a moral &political evil in any Country... I think it
however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race... The blacks are immeasurably
better off." Robert E. Lee
Sounds like a man with opinions, but without the burning fire to see that evil enshrined
in a state-policy towards blacks. Basically, one condemns him for sharing a popular view of
the day. CALL THE THOUGHT POLICE!
From a British point of view, Washington and Jefferson were traitors as well.
As for Lee, he was racist, but doesn't seem to have been more racist than the average Yankee.
No more racist than Sherman or Lincoln, and less racist than many of the Confederate top
guys, for instance.
Then, there's the nutjob idea that forcefully taking down other statues in the South will
make these guys "win". At least, the Lee statue had a more or less legal and democratic
process going on, which is the only way to go if you don't want to look like a Taliban.
Really, did these idiots not understand that bringing down Confederate statues without due
process will massively piss off most of the locals? Do they really want the local hardliners
to come armed and ready to use their guns, one of these days? Is this the plan all along, to
spark another civil war for asshat reasons?
(Like B, toppling Saddam and communist statues was the very first thing I thought of. As
if these poor fools had just been freed from a terrible dictatorship, instead of nothing
having changed or been won at all in the last months)
I agree with Woogs (25). How stoopid are we ? History has been re-written and manipulated
going back a long way. Most of the readers here know that our "masters" , and their versions
of history are not accurate. Yet here we are arguing and such ... " he was good...NO He was
bad...." acting as if we know truth from fiction. Back then, as now, it was all planned.
Divide and conquer. Slavery was the "excuse" for war. The Power Elite" were based in Europe
at that time and saw America as a real threat to their global rule. It was becoming too
strong and so needed to be divided. Thus the people of those times were played....just as we
are today. Manipulated into war. Of course America despite the Civil War , continued to grow
and prosper so the elite devised another plan. Plan "B" has worked better than they could
have ever imagined. They have infected the "soul" of America and the infection is spreading
rapidly.Everyone , please re-read oilman2 comments (31)
Thanks B, precisely my thinking. It has a smell of vendetta. And I believe this sort of old
testament thinking is very common in the u.s. of A. What's currently happening will further
alienate both sides and lead to even more urgent need to externalize an internal problem via
more wars.
In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that there were over 1,500 "symbols of
the Confederacy in public spaces" in the United States. The majority of them are located,
as one might expect, in the 11 states that seceded from the union, but as Vice aptly points
out, some can be found in Union states (New York, for example has three, Pennsylvania,
four) and at least 22 of them are located in states that didn't even exist during the Civil
War.
How can that be possible? Because largely, Confederate monuments were built during two
key periods of American history: the beginnings of Jim Crow in the 1920s and the civil
rights movement in the early 1950s and 1960s.
To be sure, some sprung up in the years following the Confederacy's defeat (the concept
of a Confederate memorial day dates back to back to 1866 and was still officially observed
by the governments of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as of the publication of
the Southern Poverty Law Center's report), and some continue to be built!USA Today notes
that 35 Confederate monuments have been erected in North Carolina since 2000.
But when these statues!be they historical place markers, or myth-building icons of Lee
or Stonewall Jackson!were built seems to suggest these monuments have very little to do
with paying tribute to the Civil War dead and everything to do with erecting monuments to
black disenfranchisement, segregation, and 20th-century racial tension.
I don't know if b. realizes how many German monuments got destroyed because people did not
wish to recall this particular part of history, the bomb raids of the allies helped, of
course, but there are cemeteries of Marx, Engels and Lenin statues, and
only revisionists recall what was destroyed
after WWII
.
Young people need some space to breath. They don't need monuments of war heros.
b wrote "Statues standing in cities and places are much more than veneration of one person or
group. They are symbols, landmarks and fragments of personal memories..."
Symbols indeed, traits in cultural landscapes. This piece may add another dimension to the
importance of cultural landscape in the context of this conversation:
"To this day, the question remains: why would the Southerners remember and celebrate a losing
team, and how come the non-Southerners care about it so passionately? A convenient answer
revolves around the issue of slavery; i.e., a commemoration of the era of slavery for the
former, and, for the latter, the feeling that the landscape reminders of that era should be
entirely erased."
and
"In the past two decades, the American(s)' intervention has brought down the statues of
Hussein, Gaddafi, Davis, and Lee respectively. Internationally, the work seems to be
completed. Domestically, the next stage will be removing the names of highways, libraries,
parks, and schools of the men who have not done an illegal act. Eventually, all such traits
in the cultural landscape of Virginia may steadily disappear, because they are symbols of
Confederacy."
http://www.zokpavlovic.com/conflict/the-war-between-the-states-of-mind-in-virginia-and-elsewhere/
It warms my heart that you are not a racist. But who really gives a fuck? And what makes you
think not favoring your own kind like every other racial and ethnic group does makes you a
better than those of your own racial group?? Something is wrong with you.
You are certainly entitled to your attitudes, hatreds, memories, affinities and such. You
are not entitled to your own history. History is what happened. Quit lying about it!
Lee is the past. Obama is the present. The 'Nobel Peace Prize' winner ran more concurrent
wars than any other president. He inaugurated the state execution of US citizens by drone
based on secret evidence presented in secret courts. He was in charge when ISIS was created
by the US Maw machine. What about removing his Nobel Peace Prize?
A long time ago Christians destroyed the old god's statues because they were pagan and didn't
comply with their religion (or is it ideology?). Muslims followed and did the same on what
was left. They even do that now when ISIS blows up ancient monuments.
What is next? Burning books? Lets burn the library of Alexandria once again...
Joeymac 69:
I didn't mean the Charlottesville mess was done without due process. I refer to the cases
that have happened these last few days - a trend that won't stop overnight.
Extremists from both sides aren't making friends on the other ones, and obviously are only
making matters worse.
Somebody 63:
"It is futile to discuss what the confederacy was then, when white supremacy groups consider
them their home today."
That's the whole fucking problem. By this logic, nobody should listen to Wagner or read
Nietzsche anymore. Screw that. Assholes and criminals from now should be judged according to
current values, laws and opinions, based on their very own crimes. People, groups, states,
religions from the past should be judged according to their very own actions as well, and not
based on what some idiot would fantasize they were 1.500 years later.
Looks like the Lee apologetics and claims that the war was about state's rights (go read the
CSA constitution, it tramples the rights of its own member states to *not* be slave holding)
or tariffs are alive and well in these comments. That's what these statues represent: the
utter perversion of the historical record. And as pointed out @38, none of these statues are
from anywhere near the Civil War or Reconstruction era.
I think anyone and everyone who instigates a successful campaign to destroy a memorial which
glorifies war should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace & Sanity and be memorialised in
bronze, nearby, as a permanent reminder that war WAS a racket, until Reason prevailed.
No offense intended.
Arch-propagandist Rove said "[Those] in what we call the reality-based community, [who]
believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not
the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our
own reality [e.g Russia hacked the election]. And while you're studying that
reality!judiciously, as you will!we'll act again, creating other new realities [e.g. Neo-Nazi
White Supremacism], which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're
history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
There is a coup underway to get rid of Trump [who's 'unpardonable crime' seems to be that
he isn't going along with the War Party]. The War Party will try anything, anything, if there
is a hope that it will work to get rid of him. When Trump launched the cruise missiles
against Syria, there was a moment's silence, totally spooky given all the bs that was flying
... Would he start a war with Russia? Would Trump go all the way with that, as Clinton
probably would have done? When the attack fizzled out, the chorus resumed their attacks as
though nothing had happened.
Their tactical attacks change as they are revealed to be fakes. The current attack,
probably using War Party provacateurs operating on both sides, is the next tactical phase -
out with 'Russian Hacking the Election', in with 'Trump White Supremacist Nazi'. If there is
the standard CIA regime change plan behind this (as outlined by John Perkins and seen in
Ukraine, Libya, Syria)] and the relatively passive actions don't work, they will ultimately
resort to hard violence. At that stage, they resort to using snipers to kill people on both
sides.
The anti-fas' are supposedly liberal, anti-gun, but there already have been stories of
them training with weapons, even working with the Kurds in Syria so the ground is laid for
their use of weapons. There are those on the Trump side who would relish the excuse for gun
violence irrespective on consequence so the whole thing could spiral out of control very
rapidly and very dangerously.
Disclosure - I do not support Trump [or any US politico for that matter]. The whole US
political system is totally corrupt and morally bankrupt. Those that rise [or more accurately
those that are allowed to rise] to the top reflect that corruption and bankruptcy. This could
get very very messy.
There's nothing wrong with being racist. Racism is simply preference for one's extended
family. 'b' calls the admittedly rather goony lot at C'ville 'white supremacists'. But do
they want to enslave blacks or rule over non-whites? No. In fact most of the alt-right lament
the slave trade and all its ills, including mixing two groups who, as Lincoln pointed out,
had no future together. What the left wants to do is reduce Confederate American heritage and
culture down to the slavery issue, despite the fact only a few Southerners owned slaves.
Now, within ethnic European countries, should whites be supreme? You're goddamn right they
should. Just as the Japanese should practice 'yellow supremacy', and so on and so forth. Most
of you lot here, being liberals, will be in favour of no fault divorce. You understand there
can be irreconcilable differences which in way suggest either person is objectively bad. The
same applies to disparate ethnicities. If white Slovaks and Czechs can't get one, why would
white and non-white groups?
You lefties need to have a serious moral dialogue over your rejection of
ethno-nationalism! Time to get on the right side of history! Have you noticed the alt-right,
despite being comprised of 'hateful bigots', is favourably disposed toward Iran, Syria, and
Russia? That's because we consistently apply principles which can protect our racially,
culturally, religiously, and ethnically diverse planet, and mitigate conflict. But the woke
woke left (not a typo) meanwhile has to 'resist' imperialism by constantly vilifying America.
ITS NOT THAT I'M IN FAVOUR OF ASSAD OR PUTIN, ITS JUST THAT AMERICA IS SO NAUGHTY! OH, HOW
BASE ARE OUR MOTIVES. OH, WHAT A POX WE ARE. Weak tea. You have no theoretical arguments
against liberal interventionism or neoconservativism.
Newsflash folks. Hillary Clinton doesn't fundamentally differ from you in principle. She
merely differs on what methods should be employed to achieve Kojeve's universal homogeneous
state. Most of you just want to replace global capitalism with global socialism. Seen how
occupy wall street turned out? Didn't make a dent. See how your precious POCs voted for the
neoliberal war monger? Diversity increases the power of capital. The only force which can
beat globalization is primordial tribalism.
Lee actually thought the Civil War an awful tragedy. He was asked to choose between his
state and his country. That's not much different from being asked to choose between your
family and your clan.
Lee was a racist.
That might be true, depending on one's definition of a racist. But then, why should Abraham
Lincoln get a pass? It's well known that he did not start the Civil War to end slavery --
that idea only occurred to him halfway through the conflict. But there's also the fact that,
while he was never a great fan of slavery, he apparently did not believe in the natural
equality of the races, and
he
even once professed to have no intention of granting blacks equality under the law:
"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was
really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While
I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the
question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in
regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about
in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not
nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM
HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will
forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And
inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position
of superior and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the
superior position assigned to the white race."
It turns out that history's a complicated thing! To bad it wasn't all written by Hollywood
with a bunch of cartoon villains and heroes ...
One gets the impression that the current wave of statue take downs is seen as well deserved
"punishment" for those who voted wrongly - i.e. not for Hillary Clinton. While many Trump
voters will dislike statues of Robert Lee, they will understand that dislike the campaign
to take them down even more.
You nailed it, b. The way things are headed, I now wonder if I will someday be arrested
for owning Lynard Skynard albums (the covers of which usually had Confederate battle flags)
or for having watched Dukes of Hazard shows as a child. It's starting to get that crazy.
Anyway, thanks for running a sane blog in a mad world!
Good interview with a Black, female pastor in Charlottsville who was in church when the march
began Friday night. They caught a lot that wasn't on network news.
"Don't let this site get bogged down in history that is being constantly rewritten on
Wikipedia. Don't buy into the left/right division process. Don't let your self identify with
either group, as they are being led by provocateurs.
The lies we know of regarding Iraq, Syria, Libya - aren't they enough to force people to
disbelieve our media completely? The HUGE lies in our media about what is going on in
Venezuela should be quite enough (bastante suficiente) to make most people simply disbelieve.
But they cannot because they are only allowed to see and hear what our government approves -
and for our government, lying is quite legal now.
Let the emotions go - they are pushed via media to force you to think in white or black,
right or left, old vs young - any way that is divisive. Getting beaten for a statue would
likely make the guy who posed for it laugh his butt off most likely..."
Posted by: Oilman2 | Aug 16, 2017 3:09:32 PM | 31
Well said. Hope to see your thoughts in the future.
And as always, Karlof1 you have some insights I rarely get ever else (especially not in a
comment section)
______________________________
"The US Civil War can't be boiled down to having just one cause; it's causes were
multiple, although slavery--being an economic and social system--resides at its core. As an
historian, I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of historical
relevance, although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as wrong;
better to display the Spirit of '76 flag if stars and stripes are to be displayed. (I wonder
what will become of the UK's Union Jack if Scotland votes to leave the UK.) Personal display
of the Stars and Bars for me amounts to a political statement which people within the Outlaw
US Empire still have the right to express despite the animus it directs at myself and other
non-Anglo ethnicities. (I'm Germanic Visigoth with Spanish surname--people are surprised at
my color when they hear my name.)
The current deep dysfunction in the Outlaw US Empire's domestic politics mirrors that of
the latter 1850s somewhat but the reasons are entirely different yet solvable--IF--the
populous can gain a high degree of solidarity."
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 16, 2017 3:51:18 PM | 45
____________________________
Also, somebody @63, very poignant to mention. While I could care less whether about some
statues stand or fall (it helps living outside the empire), to deny that they are (generally)
symbols of racism, or were built with that in mind, is a little off base in my eyes. Going to
repost this quote because I think it had quite a bit of value in this discussion.
"In 2016 the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that there were over 1,500 "symbols of
thE Confederacy in public spaces" in the United States. The majority of them are located, as
one might expect, in the 11 states that seceded from the union, but as Vice aptly points out,
some can be found in Union states (New York, for example has three, Pennsylvania, four) and
at least 22 of them are located in states that didn't even exist during the Civil War.
How can that be possible? Because largely, Confederate monuments were built during two key
periods of American history: the beginnings of Jim Crow in the 1920s and the civil rights
movement in the early 1950s and 1960s.
To be sure, some sprung up in the years following the Confederacy's defeat (the concept of
a Confederate memorial day dates back to back to 1866 and was still officially observed by
the governments of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as of the publication of the
Southern Poverty Law Center's report), and some continue to be built!USA Today notes that 35
Confederate monuments have been erected in North Carolina since 2000.
But when these statues!be they historical place markers, or myth-building icons of Lee or
Stonewall Jackson!were built seems to suggest these monuments have very little to do with
paying tribute to the Civil War dead and everything to do with erecting monuments to black
disenfranchisement, segregation, and 20th-century racial tension."
Racism means zero understanding or tolerance of other people/cultures, an attitude that
ones own culture or skin colour or group is far superior to those 'others'.
Hear, hear. Generally, a resurgence of American nationalism WILL take the form of populist
socialism because it will mark a turning away from the global police state which America is
leading currently and will replace it with nationalistic spending on socialist programs with
an emphasis on decreased military spending. This will continue ideally until a balance of low
taxation and government regulation form a true economy which begins at a local level from the
ground up.
In 1861, the vice-president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, offered this
foundational explanation of the Confederate cause:
"Its corner-stone rests, upon the
great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to
the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
This, our new government, is the
first, in the history of the world,
based upon this great physical, philosophical, and
moral truth.
"
how much public space in the US should be dedicated to monuments honoring these people in
the coming century? and for the children and grandchildren of slaves walking by them every
day? what about their heritage? and the public monuments to the indigenous people of this
land who we genocided? oh right, as a country we have still not even officially recognized
that genocide. monuments should not be solely a reflection of the past, but of the future, of
who we want to be. who we choose to recognize in our public spaces says a lot about us.
It's pretty fair too say several of the "alt-right" leaders who planned this event agent are
provocateurs or Sheep Dipped assets running honeypot "white nationalist" operations.
You can see from the make-up of the phony "Nazis" in the groups and their continued use of
various propaganda that serves only to tie people and movements OPPOSED by the Deep State to
"Nazis" and racist ideology, you can see how on the ground level, this event has psyop
planners' fingerprints all over it.
It's also fair too say the complicit media's near universal take on the event signals a
uniform, ready-made reaction more than likely dictated to them from a single source.
Trump is attacked. The ACLU is attacked. Peace activists opposed to the CIA's regime
change operation in Syria are attacked. Tucker Carlson is attacked. Everyone attacked that
the CIA and various other aspects of the Deep State want attacked as if the MSM were all sent
the same talking points memo.
And keep in mind, this all comes right after the news was starting to pick up on the story
that the Deep State's bullshit narrative about a "Russian hack" was falling apart.
Also keep in mind it comes at a time when 600,000 Syrians returned home after the CIA's
terrorist regime change operation fell apart.
The statues were erected when the KKK was at its peak, to keep the blacks in their place.
They started getting torn down after the 2015 massacre of black churchgoers by a Nazi. For
once, don't blame Clinton.
My only argument with your post is "Chattel Slavery was introduced in the Western
Hemisphere"
Chattel = movable property as opposed to your house. In that day and long before women and
children were chattel.
Thinking about what might have been might help. If the south had won would we have had a
strong enough central government to create and give corporate charters and vast rights of way
to railroads which then cross our nation. Would states have created their own individual
banking systems negating the need for the all controlling Federal reserve? Would states have
their own military units willing to join other states to repel an attack instead of the MIC
which treats the rest of the world like expendable slaves?
Before our constitution there was the Articles of Confederation. Article 1,2+3.....
Article I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America."
Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every
Power, Jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the
United States, in Congress assembled.
Article III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with
each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and
general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or
attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any
other pretense whatever.
This first set of laws in the new world was later undone in a secret convention with
Madison, input from Jefferson and others found on our money and other honorariums. 1868 gave
us the 14th amendment to the constitution that freed all who are born within this nation and
were given equal rights. (Not saying that this worked for all slaves. Within a few years this
was used to create corporate persons with access to the bill of rights.
I am thinking there were many reasons that people who lived in those times had to fight
for what they did. We today are not in a position to judge why individuals fought. Certainly
many poor white southerners who owned no slaves at all fought and died. Was it to keep slaves
they did not own enslaved or did they fight and die for issues around protection of local or
state rights, freedoms and way of life?
Histories are written and paid for by the winners who control that particular present time
for the glorification of those rulers. A vast removal of historical artifacts speaks of a
weak nation fading into the west's need to clean up some points from history of mean and
brutal behaviors which we as a nation support now in the present but try and make it about
others.
A paragragh here from lemur 77 comment...
"Now, within ethnic European countries, should whites be supreme? You're goddamn right they
should. Just as the Japanese should practice 'yellow supremacy', and so on and so forth. Most
of you lot here, being liberals, will be in favour of no fault divorce. You understand there
can be irreconcilable differences which in way suggest either person is objectively bad. The
same applies to disparate ethnicities. If white Slovaks and Czechs can't get one, why would
white and non-white groups?"
What is the United States of America? It is made up of British, French, Spanish and
Russian territories aquired or conquered, the original colonists in turn taking them from the
native inhabitants. The US has had a largley open imigration policy, people of all cultures,
languages and skin colours and religions.
Why should white Europeans be supreme in the US lemur?
The following is the guts of a posting from Raw Story that I see as quite related.
"
White House senior strategist Steve Bannon is rejoicing at the criticism President Donald
Trump is receiving for defending white nationalism.
Bannon phoned The American Prospect progressive writer and editor Robert Kuttner Tuesday,
according to his analysis of the interview.
In the interview, Bannon dismissed ethno-nationalists as irrelevant.
"Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element," Bannon noted.
"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.
Bannon claimed to welcome the intense criticism Trump has received.
"The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want
them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go
with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."
Kuttner described Bannon as being in "high spirits" during the call
"You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and
therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of events in Charlottesville, he is widely
blamed for his boss's continuing indulgence of white supremacists," Kuttner explained. "But
Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of
taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his
rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury."
"They're wetting themselves," Bannon said of opponents he planned to oust at State and
Defense.
"
Curtis 6 isn't me. However, I somewhat agree with the point.
Joe 41
Very true. Lee saw himself as defending Virginia. Slavery was the chief issue used in the
states declarations of secession. But the end goal was a separate govt (that actually banned
the importation of new slaves).
Nemesis 57
Excellent. Racism was bad in the North, too.
Strange how the left are pulling down statues of democrats, and the right are fighting to
have them stand. The confederates were democrats, but nobody seem to remember that now
anymore.
Nothing strange about it. The Democrats dropped the southern racists and the Republicans
picked them up with the Southern Strategy. It's all pretty well documented. The current
Republicans are not heirs to Lincoln in any meaningful way.
...."The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I
want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we
go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.".....
Those who make silly talk about "Patriots and Traitors" (Swallows and Amazons?) are being
obtuse about their history. The whole system was racist through and through, depended upon it
and was built upon it, starting with the very first rapacious sorties inland from the swampy
coast.
Some excellent commentary here, including james's percipient notes, Grieved's point,
RUKidding's and karlof1's, perry's observations and speculations.
Aside, this "99% v.1%" discourse is disempowering and one has to ask whose interests such
talk and attendant disempowerment serve.
This is a meaningful post on a touchy subject. Global Brahmins are looting the developed
world. Color revolutions and ethnic rifts make great fire sales. In a sane world, old
monuments would molder away in obscurity. Instead a faux resistance to divide and conquer the
little people has commenced. But, it is careening out of control due to austerity and job
loss. Deplorable Bushwhackers are fighting for tribalism and supremacy. After the 27 year old
war in Iraq, subjected Sunnis turned to their ethnic myths and traditions to fight back;
obliterating two ancient cities and themselves. The Chaos is coming west.
The problem is that people focus on the effects of history, like slavery and the holocaust,
but if you go into the causes and context of these events, then you get accused of
rationalizing them. Yet being ignorant of the causes is when history gets repeated. By the
time another seriously bad effect rises, it's too late.
As for slavery, it's not as though peoples lives haven't been thoroughly commodified before
and continue to be. Yes, slavery in the early part of this country was horrendous and the
resulting racism arose from the more reptilian parts of people's minds, but that part still
exists and needs to be better understood, not dismissed.
It should also be noted that if it wasn't for slavery, the African American population would
otherwise only be about as large as the Arab American population. It is a bit like being the
offspring of a rape. It might the absolute worst aspect of your life, but you wouldn't be
here otherwise. It's the Native Americans who really got screwed in the deal, but there are
not nearly enough of them left, to get much notice.
PS,
For those who know their legal history, no, I'm not using a pseudonym. There is a lot of
family history in this country, from well before it was a country.
"... There is nothing "pragmatic" about ignoring the fact that Sanders, a once unknown senator from the 49th largest state in America, was able to raise $44m in one month against a celebrity front-runner who coalesced the Democratic establishment around her candidacy like few who came before her. ..."
"... There is nothing "pragmatic" about ignoring that Sanders was easily able to broaden his appeal "beyond the coasts" in the Democratic primary, losing urban centers to Clinton while dominating many rural parts of the country, including Montana, a state he won by eight percentage points. ..."
"... And it's reality-defying to say the party can't turn to a septuagenarian as its nominee when Trump, at age 70, just became president. None of Trump's supporters cared that he was trying to become oldest man to ever take office and no one cheering on Sanders cares that he is 75 going on 76. ..."
"... For political journalists and operatives inside the Beltway carapace, the siren call of centrism will always have appeal. It promises pain-free bipartisanship, a return to the way things used to be. It stands for little, so it can't court too much controversy. For anyone who knows bad policy can mean the difference between life and death – the poorest and the invisible, the sufferers on the margins – it offers nothing. And it never will. ..."
"... Obama in an empty suit worked well. Now if Kamala looks good, she probably has a nice book deal in her future. Obama in a skirt? Looks promising. ..."
.............................
Everything about this is odd, and speaks to the tone-deafness of a rudderless political party and
the antiquated ways reporters continue to frame our politics. In a time of yawning income inequality
and instability, with a bulk of young Americans rightfully pessimistic about their futures, there
is nothing Pollyannaish about running a campaign that can somehow speak to this despair.
Healthcare in America is a travesty and single-payer is not without its flaws – but it remains
a more humane way forward, putting people ahead of predatory insurance companies.
There is nothing "pragmatic" about ignoring the fact that Sanders, a once unknown senator
from the 49th largest state in America, was able to raise $44m in one month against a celebrity front-runner
who coalesced the Democratic establishment around her candidacy like few who came before her.
There is nothing "pragmatic" about ignoring that Sanders was easily able to broaden his appeal
"beyond the coasts" in the Democratic primary, losing urban centers to Clinton while dominating many
rural parts of the country, including Montana, a state he won by eight percentage points.
And it's reality-defying to say the party can't turn to a septuagenarian as its nominee when
Trump, at age 70, just became president. None of Trump's supporters cared that he was trying to become
oldest man to ever take office and no one cheering on Sanders cares that he is 75 going on 76.
An elderly candidate with a compelling message for people in desperate need of change in their
lives will throttle someone much younger and milquetoast, every time.
For political journalists and operatives inside the Beltway carapace, the siren call of centrism
will always have appeal. It promises pain-free bipartisanship, a return to the way things used to
be. It stands for little, so it can't court too much controversy. For anyone who knows bad policy
can mean the difference between life and death – the poorest and the invisible, the sufferers on
the margins – it offers nothing. And it never will.
max Book is just anothe "Yascha about Russia" type, that Masha Gessen represents so vividly.
The problem with him is that time of neocon prominance is solidly in the past and now unpleasant
question about the cost from the US people of their reckless foreign policies get into some
newspapers and managines. They cost the USA tremedous anount of money (as in trillions) and those
money consititute a large portion of the national debt. Critiques so far were very weak and
partially suppressed voices, but defeat of neocon warmonger Hillary signify some break with
the past.
Notable quotes:
"... National Interest ..."
"... Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump. This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird our policies." ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. . . . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject. ..."
"... New York Observer ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . . . Nobody is paying attention to it, " ..."
This week's primetime knife fights with Max Boot and Ralph Peters are emblematic of the
battle for the soul of the American Right.
To be sure, Carlson rejects the term
"neoconservatism,"
and implicitly, its corollary on the Democratic side, liberal internationalism. In 2016, "the reigning
Republican foreign-policy view, you can call it neoconservatism, or interventionism, or whatever you
want to call it" was rejected, he explained in a wide-ranging interview with the National Interest
Friday.
"But I don't like the term 'neoconservatism,'" he says, "because I don't even know what it means.
I think it describes the people rather than their ideas, which is what I'm interested in. And to
be perfectly honest . . . I have a lot of friends who have been described as neocons, people I really
love, sincerely. And they are offended by it. So I don't use it," Carlson said.
But Carlson's recent segments on foreign policy conducted with Lt. Col.
Ralph Peters and the prominent neoconservative journalist and author
Max Boot were acrimonious even by Carlsonian standards. In a discussion on Syria, Russia and
Iran, a visibly upset Boot accused Carlson of being "immoral" and taking foreign-policy positions
to curry favor with the White House, keep up his
ratings , and by proxy, benefit financially. Boot says that Carlson "basically parrots whatever
the pro-Trump line is that Fox viewers want to see. If Trump came out strongly against Putin tomorrow,
I imagine Tucker would echo this as faithfully as the pro-Russia arguments he echoes today." But
is this assessment fair?
Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention
for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented
publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According
to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life
that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump.
This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And
we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird
our policies."
Even if Carlson doesn't want to use the label neocon to describe some of those ideas, Boot is
not so bashful. In 2005, Boot wrote an essay called
"Neocons May Get
the Last Laugh." Carlson "has become a Trump acolyte in pursuit of ratings," says Boot, also
interviewed by the National Interest . "I bet if it were President Clinton accused of colluding
with the Russians, Tucker would be outraged and calling for impeachment if not execution. But since
it's Trump, then it's all a big joke to him," Boot says. Carlson vociferously dissents from such
assessments: "This is what dumb people do. They can't assess the merits of an argument. . . . I'm
not talking about Syria, and Russia, and Iran because of ratings. That's absurd. I can't imagine
those were anywhere near the most highly-rated segments that night. That's not why I wanted to do
it."
But Carlson insists, "I have been saying the same thing for fifteen years. Now I have a T.V. show
that people watch, so my views are better known. But it shouldn't be a surprise. I supported Trump
to the extent he articulated beliefs that I agree with. . . . And I don't support Trump to the extent
that his actions deviate from those beliefs," Carlson said. Boot on Fox said that Carlson is "too
smart" for this kind of argument. But Carlson has bucked the Trump line, notably on Trump's April
7 strikes in Syria. "When the Trump administration threw a bunch of cruise missiles into Syria for
no obvious reason, on the basis of a pretext that I
question . . . I questioned [the decision] immediately. On T.V. I was on the air when that happened.
I think, maybe seven minutes into my show. . . . I thought this was reckless."
But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. .
. . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his
assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone
clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to
have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject.
Boot objects to what he sees as a cavalier attitude on the part of Carlson and others toward allegations
of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and also toward the deaths of citizens of other countries.
"You are laughing about the fact that Russia is interfering in our election process. That to me is
immoral," Boot told Carlson on his show. "This is the level of dumbness and McCarthyism in Washington
right now," says Carlson. "I think it has the virtue of making Max Boot feel like a good person.
Like he's on God's team, or something like that. But how does that serve the interest of the country?
It doesn't." Carlson says that Donald Trump, Jr.'s emails aren't nearly as important as who is going
to lead Syria, which he says Boot and others have no plan for successfully occupying. Boot, by contrast,
sees the U.S. administration as dangerously flirting with working with Russia, Iran and Syrian president
Bashar al-Assad. "For whatever reason, Trump is pro-Putin, no one knows why, and he's taken a good
chunk of the GOP along with him," Boot says.
On Fox last Wednesday, Boot reminded Carlson that he originally supported the 2003 Iraq decision.
"You supported the invasion of Iraq," Boot said, before repeating, "You supported the invasion of
Iraq." Carlson conceded that, but it seems the invasion was a bona fide turning point. It's most
important to parse whether Carlson has a long record of anti-interventionism, or if he's merely
sniffing the throne of the president (who, dubiously, may have opposed the 2003 invasion). "I
think it's a total nightmare and disaster, and I'm ashamed that I went against my own instincts in
supporting it," Carlson told the New York Observer in early 2004. "It's something I'll never
do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who's smarter than I am, and I shouldn't have
done that. . . . I'm enraged by it, actually." Carlson told the National Interest that he's
felt this way since seeing Iraq for himself in December 2003.
The evidence points heavily toward a sincere conversion on Carlson's part, or preexisting conviction
that was briefly overcome by the beat of the war drums. Carlson did work for the Weekly Standard
, perhaps the most prominent neoconservative magazine, in the 1990s and early 2000s. Carlson today
speaks respectfully of William Kristol, its founding editor, but has concluded that he is all wet.
On foreign policy, the people Carlson speaks most warmly about are genuine hard left-wingers: Glenn
Greenwald, a vociferous critic of both economic neoliberalism and neoconservatism; the anti-establishment
journalist Michael Tracey; Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation ; and her husband,
Stephen Cohen, the Russia expert and critic of U.S. foreign policy.
"The only people in American public life who are raising these questions are on the traditional
left: not lifestyle liberals, not the Williamsburg (Brooklyn) group, not liberals in D.C., not Nancy
Pelosi." He calls the expertise of establishment sources on matters like Syria "more shallow than
I even imagined." On his MSNBC show, which was canceled for poor ratings, he cavorted with noninterventionist
stalwarts such as
Ron Paul , the 2008 and 2012 antiwar GOP candidate, and Patrick J. Buchanan. "No one is smarter
than Pat Buchanan," he said
last year of the man whose ideas many say laid the groundwork for Trump's political success.
Carlson has risen to the pinnacle of cable news, succeeding Bill O'Reilly. It wasn't always clear
an antiwar take would vault someone to such prominence. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney could
be president (Boot has advised the latter two). But here he is, and it's likely no coincidence that
Carlson got a show after Trump's election, starting at the 7 p.m. slot, before swiftly moving to
the 9 p.m. slot to replace Trump antagonist Megyn Kelly, and just as quickly replacing O'Reilly at
the top slot, 8 p.m. Boot, on the other hand, declared in 2016 that the Republican Party was
dead , before it went on to hold Congress and most state houses, and of course take the presidency.
He's still at the Council on Foreign Relations and writes for the New York Times (this seems
to clearly annoy Carlson: "It tells you everything about the low standards of the American foreign-policy
establishment").
Boot wrote in 2003 in the Weekly Standard that the fall of Saddam Hussein's government
"may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history" comparable to "events like the storming
of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which everything is different." He continued,
"If the occupation goes well (admittedly a big if ), it may mark the moment when the powerful
antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and
began to transform the region for the better."
Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate
what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate
is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our
interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these
decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment
going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . .
. Nobody is paying attention to it, "
Carlson seems intent on pressing the issue. The previous night, in his debate with Peters, the
retired lieutenant colonel said that Carlson sounded like Charles Lindbergh, who opposed U.S. intervention
against Nazi Germany before 1941. "This particular strain of Republican foreign policy has almost
no constituency. Nobody agrees with it. I mean there's not actually a large group of people outside
of New York, Washington or L.A. who think any of this is a good idea," Carlson says. "All I am is
an asker of obvious questions. And that's enough to reveal these people have no idea what they're
talking about. None."
Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest . Follow him on Twitter:
@CurtMills .
"... "We need to be talking about impeachment constantly. If you're an elected Dem & you're not talking impeachment or 25th amendment then find a new party," Scott Dworkin, senior adviser to Democratic Coalition Against Trump, on Twitter. ..."
"... "Voters are getting plenty about the Russia story, and they don't need candidates' help making that case. I think it's a fundamental mistake to make this election a referendum on impeachment. That means it's not an election on a health care bill that will raise premiums and take more than 22 million people off of their health care," Zac Petkanas, Democratic strategist, former aide to Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... "All of that (on Russia) is going to come out, and if a politician was lacking in courage and never did anything about it, I think they will pay dearly for it, and they should. But if you're a governor candidate next year, you're a lot smarter saying, 'Here's what I'm going to do about jobs and education and wages' than weighing in every day on issues outside your control." David Pepper, Ohio Democratic Party chairman. ..."
"... The only two Democrats, out of that random sample, who are going "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" I mean "Russia, Russia, Russia," are Dworkin and Galland from MoveOn. I think this blog knows quite a bit about MoveOn, so I don't need to mention it, and the only other person talking about it, is someone who is trying to make his name by impeaching Trump. ..."
ucgsblog says:
July 16, 2017 at 7:21 pm Sorry about being MIA, I'm probably going to be MIA until mid-August,
but in the meantime, here's an interesting article:
"We know that we can be an America that works for everyone, because we believe that our diversity
is our greatest strength. And we believe that when we put hope on the ballot we do well, and when
we allow others to put fear in the eyes of people we don't do so hot," Tom Perez, chairman of the
Democratic National Committee.
___
"We need to be talking about impeachment constantly. If you're an elected Dem & you're not
talking impeachment or 25th amendment then find a new party," Scott Dworkin, senior adviser to Democratic
Coalition Against Trump, on Twitter.
___
"We're advising groups to pay attention to Russia, but the bottom line is they're trying to take
your health care away. That should be the focus. Eye on the prize," Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible.
___
"I focus a lot on good-paying jobs, student loan issues, health care and the effort to repeal
the Affordable Care Act. Those are the issues that are at the top of (voters') minds. I don't think
(the Russia investigation) has to interfere with our conversation about every day matters in people's
lives," Jason Crow, Democratic candidate in Colorado's 6th Congressional District.
___
"Voters are getting plenty about the Russia story, and they don't need candidates' help making
that case. I think it's a fundamental mistake to make this election a referendum on impeachment.
That means it's not an election on a health care bill that will raise premiums and take more than
22 million people off of their health care," Zac Petkanas, Democratic strategist, former aide to
Hillary Clinton.
___
"We will both defend the integrity of our democracy (on the Russian investigation) and we will
defend access to health care for tens of millions of people. The resistance is big enough and sophisticated
enough to track both of those urgent and important issues," Anna Galland, executive director of Moveon.org
Civic Action.
___
"All of that (on Russia) is going to come out, and if a politician was lacking in courage
and never did anything about it, I think they will pay dearly for it, and they should. But if you're
a governor candidate next year, you're a lot smarter saying, 'Here's what I'm going to do about jobs
and education and wages' than weighing in every day on issues outside your control." David Pepper,
Ohio Democratic Party chairman.
___
"We need to be able to explain what we're for just as emphatically as who we are against. Voters
need to hear you talking about them more than they hear you talking about yourself, your opponent
or the president." Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana.
!!!!!!-
The only two Democrats, out of that random sample, who are going "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia"
I mean "Russia, Russia, Russia," are Dworkin and Galland from MoveOn. I think this blog knows quite
a bit about MoveOn, so I don't need to mention it, and the only other person talking about it, is
someone who is trying to make his name by impeaching Trump.
Looks like the DNC is slowly starting to realize what voters want, despite inner party special
interest groups. Levin and Crow summarize mainstream Democrats, so I'll just requote them:
"We're advising groups to pay attention to Russia, but the bottom line is they're trying to take
your health care away. That should be the focus. Eye on the prize I focus a lot on good-paying jobs,
student loan issues, health care and the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Those are the
issues that are at the top of (voters') minds. I don't think (the Russia investigation) has to interfere
with our conversation about every day matters in people's lives"
Will the DNC lose in 2018, because they're beholden to inner-party special interests? Stay tuned.
Say what you will about Trump, but he certainly made politics a lot more entertaining to watch. Not
sure if that's good or bad, but I'm getting popcorn.
"... Oh, it was glorious fun, yielding the kind of satisfaction that us anti-interventionists rarely get to enjoy: not one but two prominent neoconservatives who have been wrong about everything for the past decade – yet never held accountable – getting taken down on national television. Tucker Carlson, whose show is a shining light of reason in a fast-darkening world, has performed a public service by demolishing both Ralph Peters and Max Boot on successive shows. But these two encounters with evil weren't just fun to watch, they're also highly instructive for what they tell us about the essential weakness of the War Party and its failing strategy for winning over the American people. ..."
"... For the neocons, it's always 1938. The enemy is always the reincarnation of Hitler, and anyone who questions the wisdom of war is denounced as an "appeaser" in the fashion of Neville Chamberlain or Lindbergh. ..."
"... Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com . ..."
Oh, it was glorious fun, yielding the kind of satisfaction that us anti-interventionists
rarely get to enjoy: not one but two prominent neoconservatives who have been wrong about
everything for the past decade – yet never held accountable – getting taken down on
national television. Tucker Carlson, whose show is a shining light of reason in a
fast-darkening world, has performed a public service by demolishing both Ralph Peters and Max
Boot on successive shows. But these two encounters with evil weren't just fun to watch, they're
also highly instructive for what they tell us about the essential weakness of the War Party and
its failing strategy for winning over the American people.
Tucker's first victim was Ralph Peters , an alleged "military expert" who's been a fixture
on Fox News since before the Iraq war, of which he was a rabid proponent. Tucker starts out the
program by noting that ISIS "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may have been killed in a Russian
airstrike and that the talk in Washington is now moving away from defeating ISIS and focusing
on Iran as the principal enemy. He asks why is this? Why not take a moment to celebrate the
death of Baghdadi and acknowledge that we have certain common interests with the Russians?
Peters leaps into overstatement, as is his wont: "We can't have an alliance with terrorists,
and the Russians are terrorists. They're not Islamists, but they are terrorists." He then
alleges that the Russians aren't really fighting ISIS, but instead are bombing hospitals,
children, and "our allies" (i.e. the radical Islamist Syrian rebels trained and funded by the
CIA and allied with al-Qaeda and al-Nusra). The Russians "hate the United States," and "we have
nothing in common with the Russians" –nothing!" The Russians, says Peters, are paving the
way for the Iranians – the real evil in the region – to "build up an empire from
Afghanistan to the Mediterranean." Ah yes, the "
Shia crescent " which the Israelis and their amen corner in the US have been warning
against since before the Iraq war. Yet Tucker points out that over 3,000 Americans have been
killed by terrorists in the US, and "none of them are Shi'ites: all of [these terrorists] have
been Sunni extremists who are supported by the Saudis who are supposed to be our allies." And
while we're on the subject: "Why," asks Tucker, "if we're so afraid of Iran did we kill Saddam
Hussein, thereby empowering Iran?"
"Because we were stupid," says Peters.
Oh boy! Peters was one of the most militant advocates of
the Iraq war: we were "stupid," I suppose, to listen to him. Yet Tucker lets this ride
momentarily, saving his big guns for the moment when he takes out Peters completely. And Peters
walks right into it when Tucker wonders why we can't cooperate with Russia, since both
countries are under assault from Sunni terrorists:
PETERS: You sound like Charles Lindbergh in 1938 saying Hitler hasn't attacked us.
TUCKER: I beg your pardon? You cannot compare me to somebody who makes apologies for
Hitler. And I don't think Putin is comparable.
PETERS: I think Putin is.
TUCKER: I think it is a grotesque overstatement actually. I think it's insane.
PETERS: Fine, you can think it's insane all you want.
For the neocons, it's always 1938. The enemy is always the reincarnation of
Hitler, and anyone who questions the wisdom of war is denounced as an "appeaser" in the fashion
of Neville Chamberlain or Lindbergh. Yet no one ever examines and challenges the assumption
behind this rhetorical trope, which is that war with the enemy of the moment – whether it
be Saddam Hussein, the Iranian ayatollahs, or Vladimir Putin – is inevitable and
imminent. If Putin is Hitler, and Russia is Nazi Germany, then we must take the analogy all the
way and assume that we'll be at war with the Kremlin shortly.
After all, Charles Lindbergh's opponents in the great debate of the 1940s openly said that
Hitler, who posed an existential threat to the West, had to be destroyed, and that this goal
could not be achieved short of war. Of course, Franklin Roosevelt pretended that this wasn't
so, and pledged repeatedly that we weren't going to war, but secretly he manipulated events so
that war was practically inevitable. Meanwhile, the more honest elements of the War Party
openly proclaimed that we had to aid Britain and get into the war.
Is this what Peters and his gaggle of neocons are advocating – that we go to war with
nuclear-armed Russia and annihilate much of the world in a radioactive Armageddon? It certainly
seems that way. The Hitler-Lindbergh trope certainly does more than merely imply that.
Clearly riled by the attempt to smear him, Tucker, the neocon slayer, then moves in for the
kill:
I would hate to go back and read your columns assuring America that taking out Saddam Hussein
will make the region calmer, more peaceful, and America safer, when in fact it has been the
opposite and it has empowered Russia and Iran, the two countries you say you fear most
– let's be totally honest, we don't always know the outcomes.
They are not entirely predictable so maybe we should lower that a little bit rather than
calling people accommodationist.
This is what the neocons hate: reminding them of their record is like showing a
vampire a crucifix. Why should we listen to Peters, who's been wrong about everything for
decades? Peters' response is the typical neocon riposte to all honest questions about their
policies and record: you're a traitor, you're "cheering on Vladimir Putin!" To which Tucker has
the perfect America Firster answer:
I'm cheering for America as always. Our interests ought to come first and to the extent that
making temporary alliances with other countries serves our interests, I'm in favor of that.
Making sweeping moral claims – grotesque ones – comparing people to Hitler
advances the ball not one inch and blinds us to reality.
Peters has no real argument, and so he resorts to the method that's become routine
in American politics: accuse your opponent of being a foreign agent. Tucker, says Peters, is an
"apologist" not only for Putin but also for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Again, Tucker
answers smears with cold logic:
So because I'm asking rational questions about what's best for America I'm a friend to
strongmen and dictators? That is a conversation stopper, not a beginning of a rational
conversation. My only point is when Syria was run by Assad 10% of the population was
Christian and they lived in relative peace.
And that's really the whole point: the War Party wants to stop the conversation.
They don't want a debate – when, really, have we ever had a fair debate in this country
over foreign policy? They depend on fear, innuendo, and ad hominem "arguments" to drag us into
war after war – and Tucker is having none of it.
So why is any of this important? After all, it's just a TV show, and as amusing as it is to
watch a prominent neocon get creamed, what doe it all mean in the end? Well, it matters because
Tucker didn't start out talking sense on foreign policy. He started out, in short, as a
conventional conservative, but then something happened. As he put it to Peters at the end of
the segment:
I want to act in America's interest and stop making shallow, sweeping claims about countries
we don't fully understand and hope everything will be fine in the end. I saw that happen and
it didn't work.
What's true isn't self-evident, at least to those of us who aren't omniscient.
Many conservatives, as well as the country as a whole, learned something as they saw the
disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria unfold. On the right, many have rejected the
neoconservative "idealism" that destroyed the Middle East and unleashed ISIS. When Donald Trump
stood before the South Carolina GOP debate and told the assembled mandarins that we were lied
into the Iraq war, the chattering classes declared that he was finished – yet he won that
primary, and went on to win the nomination, precisely because Republican voters were ready to
hear that message.
Indeed, Trump's "America First" skepticism when it comes to foreign wars made
the crucial difference in the election , as a recent study shows :
communities hard hit by our endless wars put him over the top in the key states of Wisconsin,
Michigan, and Pennsylvania. This, and not "Russian meddling," handed him the White House.
Tucker Carlson's ideological evolution limns the transformation of the American right in the
age of Trump: while Trump is not, by a long shot, a consistent anti-interventionist, Tucker
comes pretty close. He is, at least, a realist with a pronounced antipathy for foreign
adventurism, and that is a big step forward from the neoconservative orthodoxy that has bathed
much of the world in blood.
Perhaps the neocons, having been trounced in round one, thought Boot could do better: they
were mistaken. Tucker took him apart simply by letting him talk: Boot didn't answer a single
question put to him, and, in the course of it all, as Boot resorted to the typical ad hominems,
Tucker made a cogent point:
[T]o dismiss people who disagree with you as immoral – which is your habit –
isn't a useful form of debate, it's a kind of moral preening, and it's little odd coming from
you, who really has been consistently wrong in the most flagrant and flamboyant way for over
a decade. And so, you have to sort of wonder, like –
BOOT: What have I been wrong about, Tucker? What have I been wrong about?
CARLSON: Well, having watch you carefully and known you for a long time, I recall vividly
when you said that if we were to topple the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, the region
will be much safer and the people who took their place would help us in the global war on
terror. Of course it didn't happen –
Boot starts to completely melt down at this point, screeching "You supported the
Iraq war!" To which Tucker trenchantly replies:
I've been wrong about a ton of things, you try to learn your lesson. But when you get out
there in the New York Times and say, we really should have done more to depose Qaddafi,
because you know, Libya is going to be better when that happens. And then to hear you say we
need to knock off the Assad regime and things will be better in Syria, he sort of wonder
like, well, maybe we should choose another professions. Selling insurance, something you're
good at. I guess that's kind of the point. Are there no sanctions for being as wrong as you
have?
Why oh why should we listen to Peters and Boot and their fellow neocons, who have
been – literally – dead wrong about everything: their crackbrained ideology has led
to untold thousands of deaths since September 11, 2001 alone. And for what?
In the end, Boot falls back on the usual non-arguments: Tucker is "immoral" because he
denies that Trump is a Russian agent, and persists in asking questions about our foreign policy
of endless intervention in the Middle East. Tucker keeps asking why Boot thinks Russia is the
main threat to the United States, and Boot finally answers: "Because they are the only country
that can destroy us with a nuclear strike."
To a rational person, the implications of this are obvious: in that case, shouldn't we be
trying to reach some sort of détente, or even achieve a degree of cooperation with Moscow?
Oh, but no, because you see the Russians are inherently evil, we have "nothing" in common with
them – in which case, war is inevitable.
At which point, Tucker avers: "Okay. I am beginning to think that your judgment has been
clouded by ideology, I don't fully understand where it's coming from but I will let our viewers
decide."
I know where it's coming from. Tucker's viewers may not know that Boot is a Russian
immigrant, who – like so many of our Russophobic warmongers – arrived on our shores
with his hatred of the motherland packed in his suitcase. There's a whole platoon of them:
Cathy Young, who recently released her polemic
arguing for a new cold war with Russia in the pages ofReason magazine; Atlantic writer and
tweeter of anti-Trump obscenities Julia Ioffe, whose visceral hatred for her homeland is a
veritable monomania; Gary Kasparov, the former chess champion who spends most of his energy
plotting revenge against Vladimir Putin and a Russian electorate that has consistently rejected
his hopeless presidential campaigns, and I could go on but you get the picture.
As the new cold war envelopes the country, wrapping us in its icy embrace and freezing all
rational discussion of foreign policy, a few people stand out as brave exceptions to the
groupthinking mass of the chattering classes: among the most visible and articulate are Tucker
Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, journalist Michael Tracey, Prof. Stephen Cohen, and of course our own
Ron Paul. I tip my hat to them, in gratitude and admiration, for they represent the one thing
we need right now: hope. The hope that this madness will pass, that we'll beat back this latest
War Party offensive, and enjoy a return to what passes these days for normalcy.
"... "Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?" ..."
"... Progressives joined the FBI/CIA's 'Russian Bear' conspiracy: " Russia intervened and decided the Presidential election" – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street's candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that 'their constituents', the masses, had rejected Madame Clinton and preferred 'the Donald'. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient 'white trash' electorate of 'Deploralandia'. ..."
"... Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former 'Director Comey' of the FBI, and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger or footprints. ..."
"... Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more! ..."
"... Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being 'weak' on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They chided him for his lack support for Israel's suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump's embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen! ..."
"... Thank you for putting your finger on the main problem right there in the first paragraph. There were exceptions of course. I supported Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Primary that gave us the first black etc. But I never voted for Obama. Throughout the Cheney Admin I pleaded with progressives to bolt the party. ..."
"... This is an excellent summary of the evolution of "progressives" into modern militarist fascists who tolerate identity politics diversity. There is little to add to Mr. Petras' commentary. ..."
"... Barak Obama is America's biggest con man who accomplished nothing "progressive" during eight years at the top, and didn't even try. (Obamacare is an insurance industry idea supported by most Republicans, which is why it recently survived.) Anyone who still likes Obama should read about his actions since he left office. Obama quickly signed a $65 million "book deal", which can only be a kickback since there is no way the publisher can sell enough books about his meaningless presidency to justify that sum. Obama doesn't get royalties based on sales, but gets the money up front for a book he has yet to write, and will have someone do that for him. (Book deals and speaking fees are legal forms of bribery in the USA.) ..."
"... Then Obama embarked on 100 days of ultra expensive foreign vacations with taxpayers covering the Secret Service protection costs. He didn't appear at charity fundraisers, didn't campaign for Democrats, and didn't help build homes for the poor like Jimmy Carter. He returns from vacation this week and his first speech will be at a Wall Street firm that will pay him $400,000, then he travels to Europe for more paid speeches. ..."
"... They chose power over principles. Nobel War Prize winner Obomber was a particularly egregious chameleon, hiding his sociopathy through two elections before unleashing his racist warmongering in full flower throughout his second term. ..."
"... Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act ..."
Over the past quarter century progressive writers, activists and academics have followed a trajectory
from left to right – with each presidential campaign seeming to move them further to the right. Beginning
in the 1990's progressives mobilized millions in opposition to wars, voicing demands for the transformation
of the US's corporate for-profit medical system into a national 'Medicare For All' public
program. They condemned the notorious Wall Street swindlers and denounced police state legislation
and violence. But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who
pursued the exact opposite agenda.
Over time this political contrast between program and practice led to the transformation of the
Progressives. And what we see today are US progressives embracing and promoting the politics of the
far right.
To understand this transformation we will begin by identifying who and what the progressives are
and describe their historical role. We will then proceed to identify their trajectory over the recent
decades.
We will outline the contours of recent Presidential campaigns where Progressives were deeply
involved.
We will focus on the dynamics of political regression: From resistance to submission, from
retreat to surrender.
We will conclude by discussing the end result: The Progressives' large-scale, long-term embrace
of far-right ideology and practice.
Progressives by Name and Posture
Progressives purport to embrace 'progress', the growth of the economy, the enrichment of society
and freedom from arbitrary government. Central to the Progressive agenda was the end of elite corruption
and good governance, based on democratic procedures.
Progressives prided themselves as appealing to 'reason, diplomacy and conciliation', not brute
force and wars. They upheld the sovereignty of other nations and eschewed militarism and armed intervention.
Progressives proposed a vision of their fellow citizens pursuing incremental evolution toward
the 'good society', free from the foreign entanglements, which had entrapped the people in unjust
wars.
Progressives in Historical Perspective
In the early part of the 20th century, progressives favored political equality while opposing
extra-parliamentary social transformations. They supported gender equality and environmental preservation
while failing to give prominence to the struggles of workers and African Americans.
They denounced militarism 'in general' but supported a series of 'wars to end all wars'
. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home
and bloody imperial wars overseas. By the middle of the 20th century, different strands emerged
under the progressive umbrella. Progressives split between traditional good government advocates
and modernists who backed socio-economic reforms, civil liberties and rights.
Progressives supported legislation to regulate monopolies, encouraged collective bargaining and
defended the Bill of Rights.
Progressives opposed wars and militarism in theory until their government went to war.
Lacking an effective third political party, progressives came to see themselves as the 'left
wing' of the Democratic Party, allies of labor and civil rights movements and defenders of civil
liberties.
Progressives joined civil rights leaders in marches, but mostly relied on legal and
electoral means to advance African American rights.
Progressives played a pivotal role in fighting McCarthyism, though ultimately it was the Secretary
of the Army and the military high command that brought Senator McCarthy to his knees.
Progressives provided legal defense when the social movements disrupted the House UnAmerican Activities
Committee.
They popularized the legislative arguments that eventually outlawed segregation, but it was courageous
Afro-American leaders heading mass movements that won the struggle for integration and civil rights.
In many ways the Progressives complemented the mass struggles, but their limits were defined by
the constraints of their membership in the Democratic Party.
The alliance between Progressives and social movements peaked in the late sixties to mid-1970's
when the Progressives followed the lead of dynamic and advancing social movements and community organizers
especially in opposition to the wars in Indochina and the military draft.
The Retreat of the Progressives
By the late 1970's the Progressives had cut their anchor to the social movements, as the anti-war,
civil rights and labor movements lost their impetus (and direction).
The numbers of progressives within the left wing of the Democratic Party increased through recruitment
from earlier social movements. Paradoxically, while their 'numbers' were up, their caliber had declined,
as they sought to 'fit in' with the pro-business, pro-war agenda of their President's party.
Without the pressure of the 'populist street' the 'Progressives-turned-Democrats' adapted
to the corporate culture in the Party. The Progressives signed off on a fatal compromise: The corporate
elite secured the electoral party while the Progressives were allowed to write enlightened manifestos
about the candidates and their programs . . . which were quickly dismissed once the Democrats took
office. Yet the ability to influence the 'electoral rhetoric' was seen by the Progressives as a sufficient
justification for remaining inside the Democratic Party.
Moreover the Progressives argued that by strengthening their presence in the Democratic Party,
(their self-proclaimed 'boring from within' strategy), they would capture the party membership,
neutralize the pro-corporation, militarist elements that nominated the president and peacefully transform
the party into a 'vehicle for progressive changes'.
Upon their successful 'deep penetration' the Progressives, now cut off from the increasingly disorganized
mass social movements, coopted and bought out many prominent black, labor and civil liberty activists
and leaders, while collaborating with what they dubbed the more malleable 'centrist' Democrats.
These mythical creatures were really pro-corporate Democrats who condescended to occasionally converse
with the Progressives while working for the Wall Street and Pentagon elite.
The Retreat of the Progressives: The Clinton Decade
Progressives adapted the 'crab strategy': Moving side-ways and then backwards but never forward.
Progressives mounted candidates in the Presidential primaries, which were predictably defeated
by the corporate Party apparatus, and then submitted immediately to the outcome. The election of
President 'Bill' Clinton launched a period of unrestrained financial plunder, major wars of aggression
in Europe (Yugoslavia) and the Middle East (Iraq), a military intervention in Somalia and secured
Israel's victory over any remnant of a secular Palestinian leadership as well as its destruction
of Lebanon!
Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent
over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act, thereby opening
the floodgates for massive speculation on Wall Street through the previously regulated banking sector.
When President Clinton gutted welfare programs, forcing single mothers to take minimum-wage jobs
without provision for safe childcare, millions of poor white and minority women were forced to abandon
their children to dangerous makeshift arrangements in order to retain any residual public support
and access to minimal health care. Progressives looked the other way.
Progressives followed Clinton's deep throated thrust toward the far right, as he outsourced manufacturing
jobs to Mexico (NAFTA) and re-appointed Federal Reserve's free market, Ayn Rand-fanatic, Alan Greenspan.
Progressives repeatedly kneeled before President Clinton marking their submission to the Democrats'
'hard right' policies.
The election of Republican President G. W. Bush (2001-2009) permitted Progressive's to temporarily
trot out and burnish their anti-war, anti-Wall Street credentials. Out in the street, they protested
Bush's savage invasion of Iraq (but not the destruction of Afghanistan). They protested the media
reports of torture in Abu Ghraib under Bush, but not the massive bombing and starvation of millions
of Iraqis that had occurred under Clinton. Progressives protested the expulsion of immigrants from
Mexico and Central America, but were silent over the brutal uprooting of refugees resulting from
US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the systematic destruction of their nations' infrastructure.
Progressives embraced Israel's bombing, jailing and torture of Palestinians by voting unanimously
in favor of increasing the annual $3 billion dollar military handouts to the brutal Jewish State.
They supported Israel's bombing and slaughter in Lebanon.
Progressives were in retreat, but retained a muffled voice and inconsequential vote in favor of
peace, justice and civil liberties. They kept a certain distance from the worst of the police state
decrees by the Republican Administration.
Progressives and Obama: From Retreat to Surrender
While Progressives maintained their tepid commitment to civil liberties, and their highly 'leveraged'
hopes for peace in the Middle East, they jumped uncritically into the highly choreographed Democratic
Party campaign for Barack Obama, 'Wall Street's First Black President'.
Progressives had given up their quest to 'realign' the Democratic Party 'from within':
they turned from serious tourism to permanent residency. Progressives provided the foot soldiers
for the election and re-election of the warmongering 'Peace Candidate' Obama. After the election,
Progressives rushed to join the lower echelons of his Administration. Black and white politicos joined
hands in their heroic struggle to erase the last vestiges of the Progressives' historical legacy.
Obama increased the number of Bush-era imperial wars to attacking seven weak nations under American's
'First Black' President's bombardment, while the Progressives ensured that the streets were quiet
and empty.
When Obama provided trillions of dollars of public money to rescue Wall Street and the bankers,
while sacrificing two million poor and middle class mortgage holders, the Progressives only criticized
the bankers who received the bailout, but not Obama's Presidential decision to protect and reward
the mega-swindlers.
Under the Obama regime social inequalities within the United States grew at an unprecedented rate.
The Police State Patriot Act was massively extended to give President Obama the power to order the
assassination of US citizens abroad without judicial process. The Progressives did not resign when
Obama's 'kill orders' extended to the 'mistaken' murder of his target's children and other family
member, as well as unidentified bystanders. The icon carriers still paraded their banner of the
'first black American President' when tens of thousands of black Libyans and immigrant workers
were slaughtered in his regime-change war against President Gadhafi.
Obama surpassed the record of all previous Republican office holders in terms of the massive numbers
of immigrant workers arrested and expelled – 2 million. Progressives applauded the Latino protestors
while supporting the policies of their 'first black President'.
Progressive accepted that multiple wars, Wall Street bailouts and the extended police state were
now the price they would pay to remain part of the "Democratic coalition' (sic).
The deeper the Progressives swilled at the Democratic Party trough, the more they embraced the
Obama's free market agenda and the more they ignored the increasing impoverishment, exploitation
and medical industry-led opioid addiction of American workers that was shortening their lives. Under
Obama, the Progressives totally abandoned the historic American working class, accepting their degradation
into what Madam Hillary Clinton curtly dismissed as the 'deplorables'.
With the Obama Presidency, the Progressive retreat turned into a rout, surrendering with one flaccid
caveat: the Democratic Party 'Socialist' Bernie Sanders, who had voted 90% of the time with the Corporate
Party, had revived a bastardized military-welfare state agenda.
Sander's Progressive demagogy shouted and rasped on the campaign trail, beguiling the young electorate.
The 'Bernie' eventually 'sheep-dogged' his supporters into the pro-war Democratic Party corral.
Sanders revived an illusion of the pre-1990 progressive agenda, promising resistance while demanding
voter submission to Wall Street warlord Hillary Clinton. After Sanders' round up of the motley progressive
herd, he staked them tightly to the far-right Wall Street war mongering Hillary Clinton. The Progressives
not only embraced Madame Secretary Clinton's nuclear option and virulent anti-working class agenda,
they embellished it by focusing on Republican billionaire Trump's demagogic, nationalist, working
class rhetoric which was designed to agitate 'the deplorables'. They even turned on the working
class voters, dismissing them as 'irredeemable' racists and illiterates or 'white trash' when
they turned to support Trump in massive numbers in the 'fly-over' states of the central US.
Progressives, allied with the police state, the mass media and the war machine worked to defeat
and impeach Trump. Progressives surrendered completely to the Democratic Party and started to advocate
its far right agenda. Hysterical McCarthyism against anyone who questioned the Democrats' promotion
of war with Russia, mass media lies and manipulation of street protest against Republican elected
officials became the centerpieces of the Progressive agenda. The working class and farmers had disappeared
from their bastardized 'identity-centered' ideology.
Guilt by association spread throughout Progressive politics. Progressives embraced J. Edgar Hoover's
FBI tactics: "Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian
banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?" For progressives, 'Russia-gate'
defined the real focus of contemporary political struggle in this huge, complex, nuclear-armed superpower.
Progressives joined the FBI/CIA's 'Russian Bear' conspiracy: "Russia intervened and decided
the Presidential election" – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted
against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street's candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference
was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that 'their constituents', the masses, had rejected
Madame Clinton and preferred 'the Donald'. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly
elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient 'white trash' electorate
of 'Deploralandia'.
Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former 'Director Comey' of the FBI,
and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger
or footprints.
The Progressives' far right - turn earned them hours and space on the mass media as long
as they breathlessly savaged and insulted President Trump and his family members. When they managed
to provoke him into a blind rage . . . they added the newly invented charge of 'psychologically
unfit to lead' – presenting cheap psychobabble as grounds for impeachment. Finally! American
Progressives were on their way to achieving their first and only political transformation: a Presidential
coup d'état on behalf of the Far Right!
Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement
and betrayal!
In return, President Trump began to 'out-militarize' the Progressives by escalating US involvement
in the Middle East and South China Sea. They swooned with joy when Trump ordered a missile strike
against the Syrian government as Damascus engaged in a life and death struggle against mercenary
terrorists. They dubbed the petulant release of Patriot missiles 'Presidential'.
Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over
2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million
more!
Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained
when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives
out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being 'weak' on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They
chided him for his lack support for Israel's suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump's
embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions
of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological
weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen!
Conclusion
Progressives turned full circle from supporting welfare to embracing Wall Street; from preaching
peaceful co-existence to demanding a dozen wars; from recognizing the humanity and rights of undocumented
immigrants to their expulsion under their 'First Black' President; from thoughtful mass media critics
to servile media megaphones; from defenders of civil liberties to boosters for the police state;
from staunch opponents of J. Edgar Hoover and his 'dirty tricks' to camp followers for the 'intelligence
community' in its deep state campaign to overturn a national election.
Progressives moved from fighting and resisting the Right to submitting and retreating; from retreating
to surrendering and finally embracing the far right.
Doing all that and more within the Democratic Party, Progressives retain and deepen their ties
with the mass media, the security apparatus and the military machine, while occasionally digging
up some Bernie Sanders-type demagogue to arouse an army of voters away from effective resistance
to mindless collaboration.
But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued
the exact opposite agenda.
Thank you for putting your finger on the main problem right there in the first paragraph.
There were exceptions of course. I supported Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Primary that gave
us the first black etc. But I never voted for Obama. Throughout the Cheney Admin I pleaded with
progressives to bolt the party.
This piece accurately traces the path from Progressive to Maoist. It's a pity the Republican
Party is also a piece of shit. I think it was Sara Palin who said "We have two parties. Pick one."
This should be our collective epitaph.
This is an excellent summary of the evolution of "progressives" into modern militarist
fascists who tolerate identity politics diversity. There is little to add to Mr. Petras' commentary.
"Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as
appeasement and betrayal!"
Perhaps the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is joyously gloating as progressives (and democrats)
take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican
Activities Committee.
The great Jimmy Dore is a big thorn for the Democrats. From my blog:
Apr 29, 2017 – Obama is Scum!
Barak Obama is America's biggest con man who accomplished nothing "progressive" during
eight years at the top, and didn't even try. (Obamacare is an insurance industry idea supported
by most Republicans, which is why it recently survived.) Anyone who still likes Obama should read
about his actions since he left office. Obama quickly signed a $65 million "book deal", which
can only be a kickback since there is no way the publisher can sell enough books about his meaningless
presidency to justify that sum. Obama doesn't get royalties based on sales, but gets the money
up front for a book he has yet to write, and will have someone do that for him. (Book deals and
speaking fees are legal forms of bribery in the USA.)
Then Obama embarked on 100 days of ultra expensive foreign vacations with taxpayers covering
the Secret Service protection costs. He didn't appear at charity fundraisers, didn't campaign
for Democrats, and didn't help build homes for the poor like Jimmy Carter. He returns from vacation
this week and his first speech will be at a Wall Street firm that will pay him $400,000, then
he travels to Europe for more paid speeches.
Obama gets over $200,000 a year in retirement, just got a $65 million deal, so doesn't need
more money. Why would a multi-millionaire ex-president fly around the globe collecting huge speaking
fees from world corporations just after his political party was devastated in elections because
Americans think the Democratic party represents Wall Street? The great Jimmy Dore expressed his
outrage at Obama and the corrupt Democratic party in this great video.
Left in the good old days meant socialist, socialist meant that governments had the duty of
redistributing income from rich to poor. Alas in Europe, after 'socialists' became pro EU and
pro globalisation, they in fact became neoliberal. Both in France and the Netherlands 'socialist'
parties virtually disappeared.
So what nowadays is left, does anyone know ?
Then the word 'progressive'. The word suggests improvement, but what is improvement, improvement
for whom ? There are those who see the possibility for euthanasia as an improvement, there are
thos who see euthanasia as a great sin.
Discussions about left and progressive are meaningless without properly defining the concepts.
They chose power over principles. Nobel War Prize winner Obomber was a particularly egregious
chameleon, hiding his sociopathy through two elections before unleashing his racist warmongering
in full flower throughout his second term. But, hey, the brother now has five mansions, collects
half a mill per speech to the Chosen People on Wall Street, and parties for months at a time at
exclusive resorts for billionaires only.
Obviously, he's got the world by the tail and you don't. Hope he comes to the same end as Gaddaffi
and Ceaușescu. Maybe the survivors of nuclear Armageddon can hold a double necktie party with
Killary as the second honored guest that day.
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home
and bloody imperial wars overseas.
You left out the other Roosevelt.
Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party
bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act
Hilarious!
Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump
for promising to eventually expel 5 million more!
so it's not just conservative conspiracy theory stuff as some might argue.
Still, the overall point of this essay isn't affected all that much. Open borders is still
a "right wing" (in the sense this author uses the term) policy–pro-Wall Street, pro-Big Business.
So Obama was still doing the bidding of the donor class in their quest for cheap labor.
I've seen pro-immigration types try to use the Obama-deportation thing to argue that we don't
need more hardcore policies. After all, even the progressive Democrat Obama was on the ball when
it came to policing our borders, right?! Who needed Trump?
@Carlton Meyer If Jimmy keeps up these attacks on Wall Street, the Banksters, and rent-seekers
he is going to get run out of the Progressive movement for dog-whistling virulent Anti-Semitism.
Look at how the media screams at Trump every time he mentions Wall Street and the banks.
Mr. Petra has penned an excellent and very astute piece. Allow me a little satire on our progressive
friends, entitled "The path to hell is paved with good intentions".
The early socialist/progressive travellers were well-intentioned but naïve in their understanding
of human nature and fanatical about their agenda. To move the human herd forward, they had no
compulsions about resorting to harsher and harsher prodding and whipping. They felt entitled to
employ these means because, so they were convinced, man has to be pushed to move forward and they,
the "progressives", were the best qualified to lead the herd. Scoundrels, psychopaths, moral defectives,
and sundry other rascals then joined in the whipping game, some out of the sheer joy of wielding
the whip, others to better line their pockets.
So the "progressive" journey degenerates into a forced march. The march becomes the progress,
becoming both the means and the end at the same time. Look at the so-called "progressive" today
and you will see the fanatic and the whip-wielder, steadfast about the correctness of his beliefs.
Tell him/her/it that you are a man or a woman and he retorts "No, you are free to choose, you
are genderless". What if you decline such freedom? "Well, then you are a bigot, we will thrash
you out of your bigotry", replies the progressive. "May I, dear Sir/Madam/Whatever, keep my hard-earned
money in my pocket for my and my family's use" you ask. "No, you first have to pay for our peace-making
wars, then pay for the upkeep of refugees, besides which you owe a lot of back taxes that are
necessary to run this wonderful Big Government of ours that is leading you towards greener and
greener pastures", shouts back the progressive.
Fed up, disgusted, and a little scared, you desperately seek a way out of this progress. "No
way", scream the march leaders. "We will be forever in your ears, sometimes whispering, sometimes
screaming; we will take over your brain to improve your mind; we will saturate you with images
on the box 24/7 and employ all sorts of imagery to make you progress. And if it all fails, we
will simply pack you and others like you in a basket of deplorables and forget about you at election
time."
Knowing who is "progressive" and know who is "far-right" is like knowing who is "fascist" and
who is not. For obvious historical reasons, the Russian like to throw the "fascist" slogan against
anyone who is a non-Russian nationalist. However, I accept the eminent historian Carroll Quigley's
definition of fascism as the incorporation of society and the state onto single entity on a permanent
war footing. The state controls everything in a radically authoritarian social structure. As Quigley
states, the Soviet Union was the most complete embodiment of fascism in WWII. In WWII Germany,
on the other hand, industry retained its independence and in WWII Italy fascism was no more than
an empty slogan.
Same for "progressives". Everyone wants to be "progressive", right? Who wants to be "anti-progressive"?
However, at the end of the day, "progressive" through verbal slights of hand has been nothing
more than a euphemism for "socialist" or, in the extreme, "communist" the verbal slight-of-hand
because we don't tend to use the latter terms in American political discourse.
"Progressives" morphing into a new "far-right" in America is no more mysterious than the Soviet
Union morphing from Leninism to Stalinism or, the Jewish (Trotskyite) globalists fleeing Stalinist
nationalism and then morphing into, first, "Scoop" Jackson Democrats and then into Bushite Republicans.
As you might notice, the real issue is the authoritarian vs. the non-authoritarian state. In
this context, an authoritarian government and social order (as in communism and neoconservatism)
are practical pre-requisites necessity to force humanity to transition to their New World Order.
Again, the defining characteristic of fascism is the unitary state enforced via an authoritarian
political and social structure. Ideological rigor is enforced via the police powers of the state
along with judicial activism and political correctness. Ring a bell?
In the ongoing contest between Trump and the remnants of the American "progressive" movement,
who are the populists and who the authoritarians? Who are the democrats and who are the fascists?
I would say that who lands where in this dichotomy is obvious.
@Alfa158 Is Jimmy Dore really a "Progressive?" (and what does that mean, anyway?) Isn't Jimmy's
show hosted by the Young Turks Network, which is unabashedly Libertarian?
Anyway, what's so great about "the Progressive movement?" Seems to me, they're just pathetic
sheepdogs for the war-crazed Dems. Jimmy should be supporting the #UNRIG movement ("Beyond Trump
& Sanders") for ALL Americans:
On 1 May 2017 Cynthia McKinney, Ellen Brown, and Robert Steele launched
Petras, for some reason, low balls the number of people ejected from assets when the mafia
came to seize real estate in the name of the ruling class and their expensive wars, morality,
the Constitution or whatever shit they could make up to fuck huge numbers of people over. Undoubtedly
just like 9/11, the whole thing was planned in advance. Political whores are clearly useless when
the system is at such extremes.
Banks like Capital One specialize in getting a signature and "giving" a car loan to someone
they know won't be able to pay, but is simply being used, shaken down and repossessed for corporate
gain. " No one held a gun to their head! " Get ready, the police state will in fact put a gun
to your head.
Depending on the time period in question, which might be the case here, more than 20 million
people were put out of homes and/or bankrupted with more to come. Clearly a bipartisan effort
featuring widespread criminal conduct across the country – an attack on the population to sustain
militarism.
If I may add:
"and you also have to dearly pay for you being white male heterosexual for oppressing all colored,
all the women and all the sexually different through the history".
"And if it all fails, we will simply pack you and others like you in a basket of deplorables
and forget about you at election time. If we see that you still don't get with the program we
will reeducate you. Should you resist that in any way we'll incarcerate you. And, no, normal legal
procedure does not work with racists/bigots/haters/whatever we don't like".
"Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement
and betrayal!"
Perhaps the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is joyously gloating as progressives (and democrats)
take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican
Activities Committee.
take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House
UnAmerican Activities Committee
which itself was a progressive invention. There was no "right wing" anywhere in sight when
it was estsblished in 1938.
"... Cohen's appearance on Carlson's show last night demonstrated again at what a blistering pace public opinion in the West about Putin and Russia is shifting, for the better. ..."
"... Cohen is always good, but last night he nailed it, calling the media's coverage of Hamburg 'pornography'. ..."
"... It was just a year ago, pre-Trump, that professor Cohen was banned from all the networks, from any major media outlet, and being relentlessly pilloried by the neocon media for being a naive fool for defending Putin and Russia. ..."
"... "The first thing you notice is just how much the press is rooting for this meeting between our president and the Russian President to fail. It's a kind of pornography. Just as there's no love in pornography, there's no American national interest in this bashing of Trump and Putin. ..."
"... Carlson tried to draw Cohen out about who exactly in Washington is so against Assad, and why, and Cohen deflected, demurring - 'I don't know - I'm not an expert'. Of course he knows, as does Carlson - it is an unholy alliance of Israel, Saudi Arabia and their neocon friends in Washington and the media who are pushing this criminal policy, who support ISIS, deliberately. But they can't say so, because, ... well, because. Ask Rupert Murdoch. ..."
Cohen's appearance on Carlson's show last night demonstrated again at what a blistering pace public opinion in the West about
Putin and Russia is shifting, for the better.
Cohen is always good, but last night he nailed it, calling the media's coverage of Hamburg 'pornography'.
Ahh, the power of the apt phrase.
It was just a year ago, pre-Trump, that professor Cohen was banned from all the networks, from any major media outlet, and
being relentlessly pilloried by the neocon media for being a naive fool for defending Putin and Russia.
Last night he was the featured guest on the most watched news show in the country, being cheered on by the host, who has him on
as a regular. And Cohen isn't remotely a conservative. He is a contributing editor at the arch-liberal Nation magazine, of which
his wife is the editor. It doesn't really get pinker than that.
Some choice quotes here, but the whole thing is worth a listen:
"The first thing you notice is just how much the press is rooting for this meeting between our president and the Russian
President to fail. It's a kind of pornography. Just as there's no love in pornography, there's no American national interest in
this bashing of Trump and Putin.
As a historian let me tell you the headline I would write instead:
"What we witnessed today in Hamburg was a potentially historic new detente. an anti-cold-war partnership begun by Trump and
Putin but meanwhile attempts to sabotage it escalate." I've seen a lot of summits between American and Russian presidents, ...
and I think what we saw today was potentially the most fateful meeting ... since the Cold War.
The reason is, is that the relationship with Russia is so dangerous and we have a president who might have been crippled or
cowed by these Russiagate attacks ... yet he was not. He was politically courageous. It went well. They got important things done.
I think maybe today we witnessed president Trump emerging as an American statesman."
Cohen goes on to say that the US should ally with Assad, Iran, and Russia to crush ISIS, with Carlson bobbing his head up and
down in emphatic agreement.
Carlson tried to draw Cohen out about who exactly in Washington is so against Assad, and why, and Cohen deflected, demurring
- 'I don't know - I'm not an expert'. Of course he knows, as does Carlson - it is an unholy alliance of Israel, Saudi Arabia and
their neocon friends in Washington and the media who are pushing this criminal policy, who support ISIS, deliberately. But they can't
say so, because, ... well, because. Ask Rupert Murdoch.
Things are getting better in the US media, but we aren't quite able to call a spade a spade in the land of the free and the home
of the brave.
"... In the wake of a string of special-election defeats, an increasing number of Democrats are calling for an adjustment in party messaging, one that swings the focus from Russia to the economy. The outcome of the 2018 elections, they say, hinges on how well the Democrats manage that shift. ..."
"... "We can't just talk about Russia because people back in Ohio aren't really talking that much about Russia, about Putin, about Michael Flynn," Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) told MSNBC Thursday. "They're trying to figure out how they're going to make the mortgage payment, how they're going to pay for their kids to go to college, what their energy bill looks like." ..."
"... John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands . ..."
Shortly after Democrat Jon Ossoff lost a close race in Georgia this
month, Democrats began to speak up about the electoral implications of RussiaGate.
Reports
The Hill
:
In the wake of a string of special-election defeats, an increasing number of
Democrats are calling for an adjustment in party messaging, one that swings the focus from
Russia to the economy. The outcome of the 2018 elections, they say, hinges on how well the
Democrats manage that shift.
"We can't just talk about Russia because people back in Ohio aren't really talking
that much about Russia, about Putin, about Michael Flynn," Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) told
MSNBC Thursday. "They're trying to figure out how they're going to make the mortgage
payment, how they're going to pay for their kids to go to college, what their energy bill
looks like."
At one level, this same debate recurs every election cycle - do people care more about
foreign policy questions or pocketbook issues? The answer is almost always: the economy. At
another level, the debate is about whether Trump's unpopularity can be used against him. It's
another enduring debate: take advantage of the incumbent's negatives or field a positive
alternative? As the 2004 and 2012 election results suggest, the opposition has to offer
something intrinsically appealing or risk defeat.
... ... ...
According to the
triple backlash argument
, Trump
benefited from a worldwide rejection of [neo]liberalism: economically, politically, and
culturally. Large sections of the United States that didn't benefit from economic
globalization watched the disappearance of well-paying jobs from the Rust Belt, rural areas
and small towns, and certain big cities.
These residents of
America
B
blamed politicians from both parties for pushing economic reforms that shifted wealth
upward and out of their communities. And they also blamed a range of "others" for what was
wrong with the country: immigrants, people of color, social liberals. This
economic-political-cultural backlash prepared the ground for a political outsider with an
anti-immigrant agenda and a promise to revive America's sunset industries.
The triple hack argument is much more focused. Trump "hacked" the system in three
important ways, exploiting vulnerabilities to gain his narrow win.
The first hack was of the Electoral College. Trump didn't care about the popular vote. He
knew that he could write off large swathes of the American electorate and concentrate his
forces in a few swing states. So, for instance, the campaign
pulled
resources
out of Virginia, an otherwise important state for Republicans to win, to focus
on the Midwest.
The second hack was the news media. The Trump campaign exploited the mainstream media's
fascination with the outrageous by constantly feeding it new outrages. It also generated a
spate of "fake news" about Hillary Clinton that it distributed on the margins, in places like
Breitbart News and through social media like Facebook and Trump's own Twitter account. Here,
Russian journalists and trolls played a role, though probably not a pivotal one.
Finally, the campaign hacked Facebook in two critical ways. It poured money into an
advertising campaign tailored to the preferences of over 200 million Americans contained in
... ... ...
The investigation into Russian meddling in the American election has inevitably acquired a
partisan taint. The Democrats have used it to question the legitimacy of the election and of
the Trump administration more generally. Trump and the Republicans have accused their
detractors of conducting a witch-hunt.
...
a supposed
effort to "demonize"
Vladimir Putin as part of a campaign to revive Cold War tensions
between Washington and Moscow.
... ... ...
Donald Trump has an answer for the crisis of liberalism and the triple
backlash that produced his electoral victory.
He's challenged the existing global economy by pulling the United States out of the Trans
Pacific Partnership and has promised to tear up - or significantly renegotiate - a number of
other trade deals. He's challenged the liberal administrative state by attempting to gut
social welfare and the government regulatory apparatus across the board. He's challenged
liberal norms of inclusion with his travel ban, an anti-immigrant crusade, and other policies
that will adversely affect women, people of color, and the LGBT community
... ... ...
Russia versus jobs is in some ways a false dichotomy. Progressives have to
devise a comprehensive alternative that responds to both the challenge of Russia and the
failures of liberalism. If we don't, we'll not only lose the mid-terms and the next
presidential election in the United States. We'll lose the planet.
John Feffer is the
director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel
Splinterlands
.
"... Chairperson, the designated Vice Chair as provided for in Article Two, Section 12(b) of the Bylaws, or the next highest ranking officer of the National Committee present at the meeting shall preside. Section 4. The National Chairperson shall serve full time and shall receive such compensation asmay be determined by agreement between the Chairperson and the Democratic National Committee. In the conduct and management of the affairs and procedures of the Democratic National Committee, particularly as they apply to the preparation and conduct of the Presidential nomination process, the Chairperson shall exercise impartiality and evenhandedness as between the Presidential candidates and campaigns. The Chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and evenhandedness during the Democratic Party Presidential nominating process. ..."
In June of 2016 Jared and Elizabeth Beck filed a lawsuit in Florida against the DNC, (Wilding
v.s. DNC Services Corporation) known mostly online as the #DNCFRAUDLAWSUIT. The case has
slowly wound its way through the courts but has picked up steam in 2017 as court transcripts
and allegations of intimidation have become public.
The plaintiffs have filed a class action suit on behalf of three classes of people,
arguing that the DNC must return all donations given in the 2016 cycle to Bernie Sanders
Donors, DNC Donors and Democrats in general. Why? They claim the DNC defrauded donors in the
2016 primary by failing to remain neutral during the contest. Article 5 section 4 of the
DNC bylaws state
s:
CHARTER
Chairperson, the designated Vice Chair as provided for in Article Two, Section 12(b)
of the Bylaws, or the next highest ranking officer of the National Committee present at the
meeting shall preside. Section 4. The National Chairperson shall serve full time and shall
receive such compensation asmay be determined by agreement between the Chairperson and the
Democratic National Committee. In the conduct and management of the affairs and procedures of
the Democratic National Committee, particularly as they apply to the preparation and conduct
of the Presidential nomination process, the Chairperson shall exercise impartiality and
evenhandedness as between the Presidential candidates and campaigns. The Chairperson shall be
responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National
Committee maintain impartiality and evenhandedness during the Democratic Party Presidential
nominating process.
Beck and Beck cite the hacked emails from Wikileaks as evidence of Democratic Party
leaders tampering with the primary process.
Populism is a weasel word that is use by neoliberal MSM to delitimize the resistance. This is a typical neoliberal thinking.
Financial globalization is different from trade. It is more of neocolonialism that racket, as is
the case with trade.
Notable quotes:
"... Financial globalisation appears to have produced adverse distributional impacts within countries as well, in part through its effect on incidence and severity of financial crises. Most noteworthy is the recent analysis by Furceri et al. (2017) that looks at 224 episodes of capital account liberalisation. They find that capital-account liberalisation leads to statistically significant and long-lasting declines in the labour share of income and corresponding increases in the Gini coefficient of income inequality and in the shares of top 1%, 5%, and 10% of income. Further, capital mobility shifts both the tax burden and the burden of economic shocks onto the immobile factor, labour. ..."
"... I suggest that the fact that these two countries are arguably the most unequal in the advanced world has something to do with this. Also, on many measures I believe these two countries appear to be the most 'damaged' societies in the advanced world – levels of relationship breakdown, teenage crime, drug use, teenage pregnancies etc. I doubt this is a coincidence. ..."
"... Forced Free Trade was intended to be destructive to American society, and it was . . . exactly as intended. Millions of jobs were abolished here and shipped to foreign countries used as economic aggression platforms against America. So of course American society became damaged as the American economy became mass-jobicided. On purpose. With malice aforethought. ..."
"... "Populism" seems to me to be a pejorative term used to delegitimize the grievances of the economically disenfranchised and dismiss them derision. ..."
"... In the capitalist economies globalization is/was inevitable; the outcome is easy to observe ..and suffer under. ..."
"... they never get into the nitty-gritty of the "immobility" of the general populations who have been crushed by the lost jobs, homes, families, lives ..."
"... This piece was a lengthy run-on Econ 101 bollocks. Not only does the writer dismiss debt/interest and the effects of rentier banking, but they come off as very simplistic. Reads like some sheltered preppy attempt at explaining populism ..."
"... But like almost all economists, Rodrik is ignoring the political part of political economy. Historically, humanity has developed two organizational forms to select and steer toward preferred economic destinies: governments of nation states, and corporations. ..."
"... The liberalization of trade has come, I would argue, with a huge political cost no economist has reckoned yet. Instead, economists are whining about the reaction to this political cost without facing up to the political cost itself. Or even accept its legitimacy. ..."
"... Second, there are massive negative effects of trade liberalization that economists simply refuse to look at. Arbitration of environmental and worker safety laws and regulations is one. ..."
"... As I have argued elsewhere, the most important economic activity a society engages in us the development and diffusion of new science and technology. ..."
"... Rodrik is also wrong about the historical origins of agrarian populism in USA. It was not trade, but the oligopoly power of railroads, farm equipment makers, and banks that were the original grievances of the Grangers, Farmers Alliances after the Civil War. ..."
"... The salient characteristic of populism is favoring the people vs. the establishment. The whole left/right dichotomy is a creation of the establishment, used to divide the public and PREVENT an effective populist backlash. As Gore Vidal astutely pointed out decades ago, there is really only one party in the U.S. – the Property Party – and the Ds and Rs are just two heads of the same hydra. Especially in the past 10 years or so. ..."
'Populism' is a loose label that encompasses a diverse set of movements. The term originates from
the late 19th century, when a coalition of farmers, workers, and miners in the US rallied against
the Gold Standard and the Northeastern banking and finance establishment. Latin America has a long
tradition of populism going back to the 1930s, and exemplified by Peronism. Today populism spans
a wide gamut of political movements, including anti-euro and anti-immigrant parties in Europe, Syriza
and Podemos in Greece and Spain, Trump's anti-trade nativism in the US, the economic populism of
Chavez in Latin America, and many others in between. What all these share is an anti-establishment
orientation, a claim to speak for the people against the elites, opposition to liberal economics
and globalisation, and often (but not always) a penchant for authoritarian governance.
The populist backlash may have been a surprise to many, but it really should not have been in
light of economic history and economic theory.
Take history first. The first era of globalisation under the Gold Standard produced the first
self-conscious populist movement in history, as noted above. In trade, finance, and immigration,
political backlash was not late in coming. The decline in world agricultural prices in 1870s and
1880s produced pressure for resumption in import protection. With the exception of Britain, nearly
all European countries raised agricultural tariffs towards the end of the 19th century. Immigration
limits also began to appear in the late 19th century. The United States Congress passed in 1882 the
infamous Chinese Exclusion Act that restricted Chinese immigration specifically. Japanese immigration
was restricted in 1907. And the Gold Standard aroused farmers' ire because it was seen to produce
tight credit conditions and a deflationary effect on agricultural prices. In a speech at the Democratic
national convention of 1896, the populist firebrand William Jennings Bryan uttered the famous words:
"You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
To anyone familiar with the basic economics of trade and financial integration, the politically
contentious nature of globalisation should not be a surprise. The workhorse models with which international
economists work tend to have strong redistributive implications. One of the most remarkable theorems
in economics is the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, which generates very sharp distributional implications
from opening up to trade. Specifically, in a model with two goods and two factors of production,
with full inter-sectoral mobility of the factors, owners of one of the two factors are made necessarily
worse off with the opening to trade. The factor which is used intensively in the importable good
must experience a decline in its real earnings.
The Stolper-Samuelson theorem assumes very specific conditions. But there is one Stolper-Samuelson-like
result that is extremely general, and which can be stated as follows. Under competitive conditions,
as long as the importable good(s) continue to be produced at home – that is, ruling out complete
specialisation – there is always at least one factor of production that is rendered worse off by
the liberalisation of trade. In other words, trade generically produces losers. Redistribution is
the flip side of the gains from trade; no pain, no gain.
Economic theory has an additional implication, which is less well recognised. In relative terms,
the redistributive effects of liberalisation get larger and tend to swamp the net gains as the trade
barriers in question become smaller. The ratio of redistribution to net gains rises as trade liberalisation
tackles progressively lower barriers.
The logic is simple. Consider the denominator of this ratio first. It is a standard result in
public finance that the efficiency cost of a tax increases with the square of the tax rate. Since
an import tariff is a tax on imports, the same convexity applies to tariffs as well. Small tariffs
have very small distorting effects; large tariffs have very large negative effects. Correspondingly,
the efficiency gains of trade liberalisation become progressively smaller as the barriers get lower.
The redistributive effects, on the other hand, are roughly linear with respect to price changes and
are invariant, at the margin, to the magnitude of the barriers. Putting these two facts together,
we have the result just stated, namely that the losses incurred by adversely affected groups per
dollar of efficiency gain are higher the lower the barrier that is removed.
Evidence is in line with these theoretical expectations. For example, in the case of NAFTA, Hakobyan
and McLaren (2016) have found very large adverse effects for an "important minority" of US workers,
while Caliendo and Parro (2015) estimate that the overall gains to the US economy from the agreement
were minute (a "welfare" gain of 0.08%).
In principle, the gains from trade can be redistributed to compensate the losers and ensure no
identifiable group is left behind. Trade openness has been greatly facilitated in Europe by the creation
of welfare states. But the US, which became a truly open economy relatively late, did not move in
the same direction. This may account for why imports from specific trade partners such as China or
Mexico are so much more contentious in the US.
Economists understand that trade causes job displacement and income losses for some groups. But
they have a harder time making sense of why trade gets picked on so much by populists both on the
right and the left. After all, imports are only one source of churn in labour markets, and typically
not even the most important source. What is it that renders trade so much more salient politically?
Perhaps trade is a convenient scapegoat. But there is another, deeper issue that renders redistribution
caused by trade more contentious than other forms of competition or technological change. Sometimes
international trade involves types of competition that are ruled out at home because they violate
widely held domestic norms or social understandings. When such "blocked exchanges" (Walzer 1983)
are enabled through trade they raise difficult questions of distributive justice. What arouses popular
opposition is not inequality per se, but perceived unfairness.
Financial globalisation is in principle similar to trade insofar as it generates overall economic
benefits. Nevertheless, the economics profession's current views on financial globalisation can be
best described as ambivalent. Most of the scepticism is directed at short-term financial flows, which
are associated with financial crises and other excesses. Long-term flows and direct foreign investment
in particular are generally still viewed favourably. Direct foreign investment tends to be more stable
and growth-promoting. But there is evidence that it has produced shifts in taxation and bargaining
power that are adverse to labour.
The boom-and-bust cycle associated with capital inflows has long been familiar to developing nations.
Prior to the Global Crisis, there was a presumption that such problems were largely the province
of poorer countries. Advanced economies, with their better institutions and regulation, would be
insulated from financial crises induced by financial globalisation. It did not quite turn out that
way. In the US, the housing bubble, excessive risk-taking, and over-leveraging during the years leading
up to the crisis were amplified by capital inflows from the rest of the world. In the Eurozone, financial
integration, on a regional scale, played an even larger role. Credit booms fostered by interest-rate
convergence would eventually turn into bust and sustained economic collapses in Greece, Spain, Portugal,
and Ireland once credit dried up in the immediate aftermath of the crisis in the US.
Financial globalisation appears to have produced adverse distributional impacts within countries
as well, in part through its effect on incidence and severity of financial crises. Most noteworthy
is the recent analysis by Furceri et al. (2017) that looks at 224 episodes of capital account liberalisation.
They find that capital-account liberalisation leads to statistically significant and long-lasting
declines in the labour share of income and corresponding increases in the Gini coefficient of income
inequality and in the shares of top 1%, 5%, and 10% of income. Further, capital mobility shifts both
the tax burden and the burden of economic shocks onto the immobile factor, labour.
The populist backlash may have been predictable, but the specific form it took was less so. Populism
comes in different versions. It is useful to distinguish between left-wing and right-wing variants
of populism, which differ with respect to the societal cleavages that populist politicians highlight
and render salient. The US progressive movement and most Latin American populism took a left-wing
form. Donald Trump and European populism today represent, with some instructive exceptions, the right-wing
variant (Figure 2). What accounts for the emergence of right-wing versus left-wing variants of opposition
to globalization?
Figure 2 Contrasting patterns of populism in Europe and Latin America
Notes : See Rodrik (2017) for sources and methods.
I suggest that these different reactions are related to the forms in which globalisation shocks
make themselves felt in society (Rodrik 2017). It is easier for populist politicians to mobilise
along ethno-national/cultural cleavages when the globalisation shock becomes salient in the form
of immigration and refugees. That is largely the story of advanced countries in Europe. On the other
hand, it is easier to mobilise along income/social class lines when the globalisation shock takes
the form mainly of trade, finance, and foreign investment. That in turn is the case with southern
Europe and Latin America. The US, where arguably both types of shocks have become highly salient
recently, has produced populists of both stripes (Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump).
It is important to distinguish between the demand and supply sides of the rise in populism. The
economic anxiety and distributional struggles exacerbated by globalisation generate a base for populism,
but do not necessarily determine its political orientation. The relative salience of available cleavages
and the narratives provided by populist leaders are what provides direction and content to the grievances.
Overlooking this distinction can obscure the respective roles of economic and cultural factors in
driving populist politics.
Finally, it is important to emphasise that globalization has not been the only force at play -
nor necessarily even the most important one. Changes in technology, rise of winner-take-all markets,
erosion of labour market protections, and decline of norms restricting pay differentials all have
played their part. These developments are not entirely independent from globalisation, insofar as
they both fostered globalization and were reinforced by it. But neither can they be reduced to it.
Nevertheless, economic history and economic theory both give us strong reasons to believe that advanced
stages of globalisation are prone to populist backlash.
One question he does not address is why the opposition to globalization has had its most obvious
consequences in two countries:- the US and the UK with Trump and Brexit respectively.
I suggest
that the fact that these two countries are arguably the most unequal in the advanced world has
something to do with this. Also, on many measures I believe these two countries appear to be the
most 'damaged' societies in the advanced world – levels of relationship breakdown, teenage crime,
drug use, teenage pregnancies etc. I doubt this is a coincidence.
For me the lessons are obvious
– ensure the benefits of increased trade are distributed among all affected, not just some; act
to prevent excessive inequality; nurture people so that their lives are happier.
re: "ensure the benefits of increased trade are distributed among all affected"
Note that for the recent TPP, industry executives and senior government officials were well
represented for the drafting of the agreement, labor and environmental groups were not.
There simply may be no mechanism to "ensure the benefits are distributed among all affected"
in the USA political climate as those benefits are grabbed by favored groups, who don't want to
re-distribute them later.
Some USA politicians argue for passing flawed legislation while suggesting they will fix it
later, as I remember California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein stating when she voted for
Bush Jr's Medicare Part D ("buy elderly votes for Republicans").
It has been about 15 years, and I don't remember any reform efforts on Medicare Part D from
Di-Fi.
Legislation should be approached with the anticipated inequality problems solved FIRST when
wealthy and powerful interests are only anticipating increased wealth via "free trade". Instead,
the political process gifts first to the wealthy and powerful first and adopts a "we'll fix it
later" attitude for those harmed. And the same process occurs, the wealthy/powerful subsequently
strongly resist sharing their newly acquired "free trade" wealth increment with the free trade
losers..
If the USA adopted a "fix inequality first" requirement, one wonders if these free trade bills
would get much purchase with the elite.
Forced Free Trade was intended to be destructive to American society, and it was . . . exactly
as intended.
Millions of jobs were abolished here and shipped to foreign countries used as economic aggression
platforms against America. So of course American society became damaged as the American economy
became mass-jobicided. On purpose. With malice aforethought.
NAFTA Bill Clinton lit the fuse to the bomb which finally exploded under his lovely wife Hillary
in 2016.
The big problem I find in this analysis is that it completely forgets how different countries
use fiscal/financial policies to play merchantilistic games under globalization.
Yves, thanks for posting this from Dani Rodrik - whose clear thinking is always worthwhile.
It's an excellent, succinct post. Still, one 'ouch': "Redistribution is the flip side of the gains
from trade; no pain, no gain."
This is dehumanizing glibness that we cannot afford. The pain spreads like wildfire. It burns
down houses, savings, jobs, communities, bridges, roads, health and health care, education, food
systems, air, water, the 'real' economy, civility, shared values - in short everything for billions
of human beings - all while sickening, isolating and killing.
The gain? Yes, as you so often point out, cui bono? But, really it goes beyond even that question.
It requires asking, "Is this gain so obscene to arguably be no gain at all because its price for
those who cannot have too many homes and yachts and so forth is the loss of humanity?
Consider, for example, Mitch McConnell. He cannot reasonably be considered human. At all. And,
before the trolls create any gifs for the Teenager-In-Chief, one could say the same - or almost
the same - for any number of flexians who denominate themselves D or R (e.g. Jamie Gorelick).
No pain, no gain? Fine for getting into better shape or choosing to get better at some discipline.
It's an abominable abstraction, though, for describing phenomena now so far along toward planet-o-cide.
"Populism" seems to me to be a pejorative term used to delegitimize the grievances of the economically
disenfranchised and dismiss them derision.
Another categorization that I find less than apt, outmoded
and a misnomer is the phrase "advanced economies", especially given that level of industrialization
and gdp per capita are the key metrics used to arrive at these classifications. Globalization
has shifted most industrial activity away from countries that invested in rapid industrialization
post WW2 to countries with large pools of readily exploitable labour while gdp per capita numbers
include sections of the population with no direct participation in creating economic output (and
the growth of these marginalized sections is trending ever upward).
Meanwhile the financial benefits
of growing GDP numbers gush ever upwards to the financial-political elites instead of "trickling
downwards" as we are told they should, inequality grows unabated, stress related diseases eat
away at the bodies of otherwise young men and women etc. I'm not sure any of these dynamics, which
describe perfectly what is happening in many so called advanced economies, are the mark of societies
that should describe themselves as "advanced"
Sorry, but the original populist movement in the US called themselves the Populists or the
Populist Party. Being popular is good. You are the one who is assigning a pejorative tone to it.
Populism is widely used in the mainstream media, and even in the so called alternative media,
as a really pejorative term. That is what he means (I would say).
"What all these share is an anti-establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the people
against the elites, opposition to liberal economics and globalisation, and often (but not always)
a penchant for authoritarian governance."
On the other hand:
"What all these share is an establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the elites against
the people, support for liberal economics and globalisation, and always a penchant for authoritarian
governance."
"Financial globalisation appears to have produced adverse distributional impacts within countries
as well, in part through its effect on incidence and severity of financial crises. Most noteworthy
is the recent analysis by Furceri et al. (2017) that looks at 224 episodes of capital account
liberalisation. They find that capital-account liberalisation leads to statistically significant
and long-lasting declines in the labour share of income and corresponding increases in the Gini
coefficient of income inequality and in the shares of top 1%, 5%, and 10% of income. Further,
capital mobility shifts both the tax burden and the burden of economic shocks onto the immobile
factor, labour."
So, translated, Rodrick is saying that the free flow of money across borders, while people
are confined within these artificial constraints, results in all the riches flowing to the fat
cats and all the taxes, famines, wars, droughts, floods and other natural disasters being dumped
upon the peasants.
The Lakota, roaming the grassy plains of the North American mid-continent, glorified their
'fat cats,' the hunters who brought back the bison which provided food, shelter and clothing to
the people. And the rule was that the spoils of the hunt were shared unequally; the old, women
and children got the choice high calorie fatty parts. The more that a hunter gave away, the more
he was revered.
The Lakota, after some decades of interaction with the European invaders, bestowed on them
a disparaging soubriquet: wasi'chu. It means 'fat-taker;' someone who is greedy, taking all the
best parts for himself and leaving nothing for the people.
"So, translated, Rodrick is saying that the free flow of money across borders, while people
are confined within these artificial constraints .."
Nailed it!!
That's something that has always bothered me it's great for the propagandists to acclaim globalization
but they never get into the nitty-gritty of the "immobility" of the general populations who have
been crushed by the lost jobs, homes, families, lives .there should be a murderous outrage against
this kind of globalized exploitation and the consequent sufferings. Oh, but I forgot! It's all
about the money that is supposed to give incentive to those who are left behind to "recoup",
"regroup" and in today's age develop some kind of "app" to make up for all those losses .
In the
capitalist economies globalization is/was inevitable; the outcome is easy to observe ..and suffer
under.
they never get into the nitty-gritty of the "immobility" of the general populations who
have been crushed by the lost jobs, homes, families, lives
That's a feature, not a bug. Notice that big corporations are all in favor of globalization
except when it comes to things like labor law. Then, somehow, local is better.
"The economic anxiety and distributional struggles exacerbated by globalization generate a
base for populism, but do not necessarily determine its political orientation. The relative salience
of available cleavages and the narratives provided by populist leaders are what provides direction
and content to the grievances. "
Excellent and interesting point. Which political party presents itself as a believable tool
for redress affects the direction populism will take, making itself available as supply to the
existing populist demand. That should provide for 100 years of political science research.
Anonymous2 : "For me the lessons are obvious – ensure the benefits of increased trade are distributed
among all affected, not just some; act to prevent excessive inequality; nurture people so that
their lives are happier."
It ought to be but sadly I fear our politicians are bought. I am unsure I have the solution
. In the past when things got really bad I suspect people ended up with a major war before these
sorts of problems could be addressed. I doubt that is going to be a solution this time.
This piece was a lengthy run-on Econ 101 bollocks. Not only does the writer dismiss debt/interest
and the effects of rentier banking, but they come off as very simplistic. Reads like some sheltered
preppy attempt at explaining populism
Yep, Rodrik has been writing about these things for decades and has a remarkable talent for
never actually getting anywhere. He's particularly enamored by the neoliberal shiny toy of "skills",
as if predation, looting, and fraud simply don't exist.
This is a prime example of what is wrong with professional economic thinking. First, note that
Rodrik is nominally on our side: socially progressive, conscious of the increasingly frightful
cost of enviro externalities, etc.
But like almost all economists, Rodrik is ignoring the political
part of political economy. Historically, humanity has developed two organizational forms to select
and steer toward preferred economic destinies: governments of nation states, and corporations.
Only nation states provide the mass of people any form and extent of political participation in
determining their own destiny. The failure of corporations to provide political participation
can probably be recited my almost all readers of NC. Indeed, a key problem of the past few decades
is that corp.s have increasingly marginalized the role of nation states and mass political participation.
The liberalization of trade has come, I would argue, with a huge political cost no economist has
reckoned yet. Instead, economists are whining about the reaction to this political cost without
facing up to the political cost itself. Or even accept its legitimacy.
Second, there are massive negative effects of trade liberalization that economists simply refuse
to look at. Arbitration of environmental and worker safety laws and regulations is one. Another
is the aftereffects of the economic dislocations Rodrik alludes to.
One is the increasing constriction
of government budgets. These in turn have caused a scaling back of science R&D which I believe
will have huge but incalculable negative effects in coming years. How do you measure the cost
of failing to find a cure for a disease? Or failing to develop technologies to reverse climate
change? Or just to double the charge duration of electric batteries under load? As I have argued
elsewhere, the most important economic activity a society engages in us the development and diffusion
of new science and technology.
Intellectually poisoned by his social environment perhaps. The biggest problems with this piece
were its sweeping generalizations about unquantified socio-political trends. The things that academic
economists are least trained in; the things they speak about in passing without much thought.
I.e. Descriptions of political 'populism' that lumps Peronists, 19th century U.S. prairie populists,
Trump, and Sanders all into one neat category. Because, social movements driven by immiseration
of the common man are interchangeable like paper cups at a fast food restaurant.
Agree with much of what you comment .I believe that the conditions you describe are conveniently
dismissed by the pro economists as: "Externalities" LOL!! They seem to dump everything that doesn't
correlate to their dream of "Free Markets", "Globalization", etc .into that category .you gotta
love 'em!!
Rodrik is also wrong about the historical origins of agrarian populism in USA. It was not trade,
but the oligopoly power of railroads, farm equipment makers, and banks that were the original
grievances of the Grangers, Farmers Alliances after the Civil War.
In fact, the best historian of USA agrarian populism, Lawrence Goodwyn, argued that it was
exactly the populists' reluctant alliance with Byran in the 1896 election that destroyed the populist
movement. It was not so much an issue of the gold standard, as it was "hard money" vs "soft money"
: gold AND silver vs the populists' preference for greenbacks, and currency and credit issued
by US Treasury instead of the eastern banks.
A rough analogy is that Byran was the Hillary Clinton
of his day, with the voters not given any way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or
the House of Morgan.
"the oligopoly power of railroads, farm equipment makers, and banks that were the original
grievances "
That power was expressed in total control of the Congress and Presidential office. Then, as
now, the 80-90% of the voters had neither R or D party that represented their economic, property,
and safety interests. Given the same economic circumstances, if one party truly pushed for ameliorating
regulations or programs the populist movement would be unnecessary. Yes, Bryan was allowed to
run (and he had a large following) and to speak at the Dem convention, much like Bernie today.
The "Bourbon Democrats" kept firm control of the party and downed Jennings' programs just as the
neolib Dem estab today keep control of the party out of the hands of progressives.
an aside: among many things, the progressives pushed for good government (ending cronyism),
trust busting, and honest trade, i.e not selling unfit tinned and bottled food as wholesome food.
Today, we could use an "honest contracts and dealings" act to regulate the theft committed by
what the banks call "honest contract enforcement", complete with forges documents. (Upton Sinclair
wrote The Jungle (1906) about the meatpacking industry. What would he make of today's mortgage
industry, or insurance industry, for example.)
For an author and article so interested in international trade, I'm fascinated by the lack
of evidence or argumentation that trade is the problem. The real issue being described here is
excessive inequality delivered through authoritarianism, not international trade. The intra-city
divergence between a hospital administrator and a home health aid is a much bigger problem in
the US than trade across national borders. The empire abroad and the police state at home is a
much bigger problem than competition from China or Mexico. Etc. Blaming international trade for
domestic policies (and opposition to them) is just simple misdirection and xenophobia, nothing
more.
I take exception to most of Prof. Rodrik's post, which is filled with factual and/or logical
inaccuracies.
"Populism appears to be a recent phenomenon, but it has been on the rise for quite some time
(Figure 1)."
Wrong. Pretending that a historical generic is somehow new Populism has been around since
at least the time of Jesus or William Wallace or the American Revolution or FDR.
"What all these share is an anti-establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the people
against the elites, opposition to liberal economics and globalisation, and often (but not always)
a penchant for authoritarian governance."
Wrong. Creating a straw man through overgeneralization. Just because one country's "populism"
appears to have taken on a certain color, does not mean the current populist movement in another
part of the world will be the same. The only essential characteristics of populism are the anti-establishment
orientation and seeking policies that will redress an imbalance in which some elites have aggrandized
themselves unjustly at the expense of the rest of the people. The rest of the items in the list
above are straw men in a generalization. Rise of authoritarian (non-democratic) governance after
a populist uprising implies the rise of a new elite and would be a failure, a derailing of the
populist movement – not a characteristic of it.
"Correspondingly, the efficiency gains of trade liberalisation become progressively smaller
as the barriers get lower."
If, in fact, we were seeing lower trade barriers, and this was driving populism, this whole
line of reasoning might have some value. But as it is, well over half the US economy is either
loaded with barriers, subject to monopolistic pricing, or has not seen any "trade liberalization".
Pharmaceuticals, despite being commodities, have no common global price the way, say, oil does.
Oil hasn't had lowered barriers, though, and thus doesn't count in favor of the argument either.
When China, Japan and Europe drop their import barriers, and all of them plus the U.S. get serious
about antitrust enforcement, there might be a case to be made
"It is useful to distinguish between left-wing and right-wing variants of populism"
Actually it isn't. The salient characteristic of populism is favoring the people vs. the establishment.
The whole left/right dichotomy is a creation of the establishment, used to divide the public and
PREVENT an effective populist backlash. As Gore Vidal astutely pointed out decades ago, there
is really only one party in the U.S. – the Property Party – and the Ds and Rs are just two heads
of the same hydra. Especially in the past 10 years or so.
About the only thing the author gets right is the admission that certain economic policies
unjustly create pain among many groups of people, leading to popular retribution. But that's not
insightful, especially since he fails to address the issue quantitatively and identify WHICH policies
have created the bulk of the pain. For instance, was more damage done by globalization, or by
the multi-trillion-$ fleecing of the U.S. middle class by the bankers and federal reserve during
the recent housing bubble and aftermath? What about the more recent ongoing fleecing of the government
and the people by the healthcare cartels, at about $1.5-2 trillion/year in the U.S.?
What arouses popular opposition is not inequality per se, but perceived unfairness.
Which is the primary worldview setting for the neo-reactionary right in America. Everything
is a question of whether or not ones income was "fairly earned."
So you get government employees
and union members voting for politicians who've practically declared war against those voters'
class, but vote for them anyway because they set their arguments in a mode of fairness morality:
You can vote for the party of hard workers, or the party of handouts to the lazy. Which is why
China keeps getting depicted as a currency manipulator and exploiter of free trade agreements.
Economic rivals can only succeed via "cheating," not being industrious like the US.
That describes a number of my relatives and their friends. They are union members and government
employees yet hold hard right-wing views and are always complaining about lazy moochers living
on welfare. I ask them why they love the Republicans so much when this same party demonizes union
members and public employees as overpaid and lazy and the usual answer is that Republicans are
talking about some other unions or other government employees, usually teachers.
I suspect that the people in my anecdote hate public school teachers and their unions because
they are often female and non-white or teach in areas with a lot of minority children. I see this
a lot with white guys in traditional masculine industrial unions. They sometimes look down on
unions in fields that have many female and non-white members, teachers being the best example
I can think of.
"... To put it perhaps bluntly, neoconservatism serves the Washington war machine, where the prevailing idea of "American exceptionalism" is "liberal democracy" forced on a reluctant world at gunpoint. Mainstream Republicans have also promoted the dominance of neoconservatism's flipside which we mentioned earlier, neoliberalism. Neoliberal economics underwrites the global capitalist consensus, as its public intellectuals, the first of whom were Hayek and Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006), championed the unregulated market, rejected all forms of state-directed central planning (though they seemed okay with planning if corporations were doing it), lauded the privatization of public services (even prisons!), and recommended austerity to deal with public debt. Neoliberalism could be described by anyone who sought to do so as the triumph of the real Masters even if they'd never heard of Hegel: global-corporate CEOs able to buy political classes, tech billionaires often in bed with the deep state, hedge fund billionaires, corporate media pundits assuring us that all is well in the ship of state (or was until Trump got elected), Hollywood celebrities to keep us titillated and distracted, well-paid court economists and other court intellectuals to scold us against "populist" inclinations because, after all, There Is No Alternative! ..."
and understand why working class whites voted so
overwhelmingly for Trump. (
Note
: that author was not supporting Trump
and probably finds the alt-right horrifying.)
The alt-right, we should note, rejects the
"movement" conservatism of the mainstream GOP as dead - compromised,
intimidated, out of ideas, having no idea what it wants to conserve. For
decades now mainstream Republicans have been walking gingerly around issues
like affirmative action, because they are scared of their shadows of being
called racists - a fact hardly lost on the Left. The result is a movement that
has spent itself, and has little left to say. Think again of last year's GOP
debates and how Trump owned them. Mainstream Republicans floundered helplessly
in the face of his command of both mass media and social media. At the same
time, one heard no new ideas at all from Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or
even Mitt Romney at one point. Mostly they just embarrassed themselves (and in
the case of Bush, the original favorite of corporate insiders, wasted over $100
million in donor money).
Moreover, the bulk of GOP "satellite"
institutions, the many "think tanks" (e.g., Heritage) and its major
publications (e.g.,
National Review
,
Human Events
, "conservative"
syndicated columnists such as George Will, etc.), attacked Trump, but
communicated no forward-looking path for the country. This was not lost on the
alt-right.
The mainstream GOP has furthered not
conservatism but
neo
conservatism. The differences are, uh,
huge --
To put it perhaps bluntly, neoconservatism serves the Washington war machine,
where the prevailing idea of "American exceptionalism" is "liberal democracy"
forced on a reluctant world at gunpoint. Mainstream Republicans have also
promoted the dominance of neoconservatism's flipside which we mentioned
earlier, neoliberalism. Neoliberal economics underwrites the global capitalist
consensus, as its public intellectuals, the first of whom were Hayek and Milton
Friedman (1912 – 2006), championed the unregulated market, rejected all forms
of state-directed central planning (though they seemed okay with planning if
corporations were doing it), lauded the privatization of public services (even
prisons!), and recommended austerity to deal with public debt. Neoliberalism
could be described by anyone who sought to do so as the triumph of the real
Masters even if they'd never heard of Hegel: global-corporate CEOs able to buy
political classes, tech billionaires often in bed with the deep state, hedge
fund billionaires, corporate media pundits assuring us that all is well in the
ship of state (or was until Trump got elected), Hollywood celebrities to keep
us titillated and distracted, well-paid court economists and other court
intellectuals to scold us against "populist" inclinations because, after all,
There Is No Alternative!
Against all this, the alt-right raises its
fist and says,
Hell No, We Won't Go!
We demand our identity as white
Americans, the right to preserve our own culture, and the right to live and
associate with those of our choice!
So after all of this explication, why do I
see the alt-right as an understandable and perhaps even justifiable response to
our current situation, but otherwise at least partly wrongheaded,
philosophically and culturally?
Recent history should help clarify matters. Generalized
open borders policies born of a multiculturalist mindset do not result in
stable mass societies. If they fail for a society of around 67 million people
(roughly the population of France), then assuredly they won't work for one of
over 325 million people (that of the U.S.). Such policies cannot work for those
who do not consciously choose them, which is most people. The term
the
masses
sounds derogatory. It need not be. It simply means the majority,
those who are
average
, who go off experience and habit, whose lives are
circumscribed by what affects them directly (family, work, church, filing a tax
return once a year, etc.), who rarely think outside the boxes these supply, and
who bring to the table the talents and skills they have, along with their
individual hopes, dreams, fears, sweet spots, and pain points. They are often
very good at what they've learned to do. Most can generally take care of
themselves, so long as their lives are not disrupted by forces they neither
understand nor can control. Most prefer the company of people like them, who
think like them, who can relate to them, will trust them because they've known
each other all their lives in some cases, and with whom they would be
comfortable sharing a beer.
Interfere with these people, force them down
paths not of their choosing, and barring the appearance of a Donald Trump you
might not have a rebellion on your hands, but you will almost surely get slow
but increasing dysfunction, as is the clearly the case with many working class
white people who voted for Trump: the one population whose fortunes are
shrinking along with their numbers, and whose tendencies toward chronic health
problems, substance abuse, suicide, etc., are rising.
Other things being equal, I'd allow them
(including those white people who find that the alt-right is making sense) to
live as they see fit and be left alone. If they wish to separate, then let them
separate. This is what the alt-right gets "right."
But before they depart I'd ask them: instead
of rejecting just left-wing Hegelianism, why not reject the entire Hegelian
paradigm? The embrace of right-wing Hegelianism is what the alt-right gets
"wrong." The Master-Slave dichotomy may have seemed necessary, but never truly
was. It was always an academic construct laid on top of a far more complex
reality. Slave-consciousness may be overcome, in time, by
self-reliance
consciousness: a large frontage road alongside the Enlightenment superhighway
of modernity, less traveled but fruitful for those who did. What is good and
right about self-reliance consciousness is its absence of ethnic or gender
specificity. White Europeans of various nationalities other than British chose
it for decades when they came to the U.S. as immigrants with nothing but the
shirts on their backs. They devoted themselves to the ways of their new home,
learning English, and in many cases became successful business owners. Asians
followed suit. They had a rougher ride, but also succeeded. Their children went
on to earn doctorates in physics and engineering. "White privilege" did not
stop them.
In American mass political culture, however,
self-reliance was replaced by a sense of entitlement:
government should take
care of us
. The Fabian-inspired New Deal has proven to have its dark side,
this being chronic dependency on government (i.e., on taxpayers) and, in
practice, has rendered ever more people vulnerable to being taken advantage of
by predatory corporations (Big Insurance, Big Pharma). Obvious example: health
care. One could write extensively on the dangers of too much comfort and
convenience, especially for those who grow up immersed in it, absent any sense
of the work that went into producing it. But that, too, is an essay for another
day.
But just note in passing - and
this is of
crucial importance
: before separating, one must consider that
the price
of separation and community self-determination in a world dominated by
globalized power elites is self-reliance at a community level
.
For example, speaking hypothetically, were a
state or group of states to secede from the U.S. today, they would relinquish
any right their people might have thought they had to Social Security,
Medicare, and so on. Relinquishing these systems of dependency would be part of
what they'd signed off on. What to put in place of those until they could
transition back to self-reliance would become a major issue, and quickly!
Moreover, "populist" economics requires
self-reliance because if "populists" are elected in a country, the economically
powerful pull their investments and/or remove their operations, understandably
fearful of the nationalization which happened in Chile when Salvador Allende
was elected president in 1970. When a Hugo Chávez becomes president in a
Venezuela, the corporate movers and shakers pull out. What happens: the economy
tanks. Jobs vanish. Distribution systems collapse. Goods become scarce; price
inflation soars. The "populists" are blamed for the debacle.
Without self-reliance at both an individual
and community level, especially after decades of living in a relatively
advancing civilization, it is a given that one's standard of living will drop.
Venezuela has learned this the hard way! In the real world, there are only two
ways of maintaining a given standard of living. One is to depend on others to
supply it. The other is to work to sustain it. One of these might be
sustainable in the long run. The other is not. Readers who have followed me
this far will be intelligent enough to discern which is which.
"... Start at 2:25. Chris Hayes to Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell: "How long are you allowed to go before you retroactively file as a foreign agent?" Note Swalwell's carefully phrased non-answers, as well as Hayes' seeming failure to know that not registering is a very common practice. (If video doesn't play in your browser, go here and listen, again starting at 2:25.) ..."
"... The big story is that these chicken-little stories all seam to serve as cover for the bought-and-paid for chicken little politicians ..while those elected politicians who give a damp about their office and those they represent are sidelined. ..."
"... And why do you thing tyrants, despots, emirs and dictators generously donated so much to the phoney Foundation? Because they wanted to further its good works, just like the Saudis are very worried about AIDS prevention? No, they wanted to buy influence. And Clinton gave them what they wanted. And why did these same tyrants, despots, emits and dictators stop donating once Clinton lost? Because she could no longer deliver. ..."
"... Corruption in high places is the norm. It is childish, all this virtue signaling. I would respect the sore losers more if they were honest they want to put Obama in as President for Life the US is Haiti now. Or the Kissinger faction of the MIC could install one of our TV generals as our version of Gen. Pinochet. ..."
"... It was the filthy Clintonites who gave us Trump to begin with. ..."
"... No doubt plenty of insulating layers if money-laundering took place via real estate, though its worth plumbing those depths. But given Trump appointees' soft-ball approach to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, I'd guess that's an arena well worth the time of journalists, insulating layers or not. I recall Sheldon Adelson's disdain for the FCPA likely increasing his fervor to dump Democrats. ..."
"... as I keep reminding people, you can turn on the spigot of MacCarthyism, and you may think that you can turn off that spigot, but you can't. In the case of Joe MacCarthy himself, it didn't truly end till about the time of his premature death from alcoholism. ..."
"... One aspect of the now-thoroughly-rotten system in the U S of A is the constant contesting of election results. As Lambert Strether keeps writing, the electronic voting machines are a black hole, and both parties have been engaged in debasing the vote and diminishing the size of the electorate. The gravamen in both parties is that the voters don't know what they are doing and the ballots aren't being counted properly. Maybe we can do something about that ..."
"... This is an implicit warning about impeachment. I interpret this as a recommendation to vigorously oppose Trump's actions over the next three and a half years, and to effectively campaign against him in 2020. Trump really is a terrible President, but Mike Pence would be terrible, too. And so would Hillary Clinton, but I hope we won't have to worry about her any more. ..."
"... In case you're wondering why I think that Trump is a terrible President, here's a short summary: ..."
"... None of the left-leaning writers who have been pooh-poohing the Russia investigation* have demonstrated a working knowledge of counterintelligence. I've also noticed that they correlate a lack of publicly-known evidence to an actual absence of evidence, which is the purview of the investigation. Investigators will be holding any evidence they discover close to their vests for obvious reasons, but even more so in this case because some of the evidence will have origins where sources and methods will statutorily need to be concealed. ..."
"... If they had anything concrete on Trump we've have heard about it by now. The spooks have been leaking for months – they aren't going to suddenly clam up if they've discovered something that's actually a crime. ..."
"... Until someone presents actual evidence, this investigation is nothing more than Democrat payback for Benghazi, which itself was a BS investigation in search of a crime that went on for years. Unfortunately for sHillary, a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while and they did manage to uncover actual criminality in her case (and brushed it right under the rug). ..."
"... Russia disseminates propaganda that (it hopes) will sway the American election in a direction more favorable to their interests! ..."
"... This is what gets me. We're supposed to me a great power, and we're going nuts on this stuff. It's like an elephant panicking at the sight of a mouse. The political class has lost its grip entirely. ..."
"... How sad, then, that the Pied Piper email showed that the Clinton campaign wanted Trump for their opponent. Or Was she ..."
"... OK, so you are saying that we should trust the word of anonymous leakers from the intelligence community, that is, anonymous leaks from a pack of proven perjurers, torturers, and entrapment artists, all on the basis of supposed evidence that we are not allowed to see. ..."
"... For that matter, how do we know the leakers even exist? When some media outlet wants to publish some made-up story, they can just attribute it to an anonymous source. ..."
"... As Constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz pointed out, the DOJ reports to the President. Trump was completely within his authority to give instructions to Comey and fire him. Dershowitz also points out Trump can pardon anyone, including himself. But Trump doesn't read and oddly no one seems to have clued him in on what Dershowitz has said. ..."
...Gaius quotes Matt Taibbi's line of thought that the relentless Trump investigations will eventually
turn up something, most likely money laundering. However, it's not clear that that can be pinned
on Trump. For real estate transactions, it is the bank, not the property owner, that is responsible
for anti-money-laundering checks. So unless Trump was accepting cash or other payment outside the
banking system, it's going to be hard to make that stick. The one area where he could be vulnerable
is his casinos. However, if I read this history of his casinos correctly,
Trump
could have been pretty much out of that business since 1995 via putting the casinos in a public
entity (although he could have continued to collect fees as a manager). Wikipedia hedges its bets
and says Trump
has been out
of the picture since at least 2011 . He only gets licensing fees and has nada to do with management
and operations. So even if Trump got dirty money, and in particular dirty Russian money, it's hard
to see how that begins to translate into influence over his Presidency, particularly since any such
shady activity took place before Trump was even semi-seriously considering a Presidential bid.
By Gaius Publius
, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to
DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter
@Gaius_Publius ,
Tumblr and
Facebook . GP article archive
here . Originally published at
DownWithTyranny
Start at 2:25. Chris Hayes to Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell: "How long are you allowed to
go before you retroactively file as a foreign agent?" Note Swalwell's carefully phrased non-answers,
as well as Hayes' seeming failure to know that not registering is a very common practice. (If video
doesn't play in your browser, go here and listen, again starting at 2:25.)
"And most pitiful of all that I heard was the voice of the daughter of Priam, of Cassandra" - Homer, The Odyssey
,
Book 11
PRIAM: What noise, what shriek is this? TROILUS: 'Tis our mad sister; I do know her voice. It is Cassandra.
-Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida ,
Act II, scene 2 "I'll be your Cassandra this week."
-Yours truly
So much of this story is hidden from view, and so much of the past has to be erased to conform
to what's presently painted as true.
Example of the latter: Did you remember that Robert Mueller and Bush's FBI were behind the
highly
suspicious (and likely covered-up) 2001 anthrax investigation - Robert Mueller, today's man of
absolute integrity? Did you remember that James Comey was the man behind the
destruction of the mind of Jose Padilla , just so that Bush could have a terrorist he could point
to having caught - James Comey, today's man of doing always what's right? If you forgot all that
in the rush to canonize them, don't count on the media to remind you - they have
another purpose .
Yes, I'll be your Cassandra this week, the one destined
not to be believed . To what
do I refer? Read on.
How Many Foreign Agents Register as Foreign Agents? A Number Far Smaller Than "All"
Today let's look at one of the original sins pointed to by those trying to take down Trump, leaving
entirely aside whether Trump needs taking down (which he does). That sin - Michael Flynn and Paul
Manafort's failing to register as "foreign agents" (of Turkey and Ukraine, respectively, not Russia)
until very after the fact.
See the Chris Hayes video at the top for Hayes' question to Rep. Eric Swalwell about that. Hayes
to Swalwell: "How long are you allowed to go before you retroactively file as a foreign agent?" What
Swalwell should have answered: "Almost forever by modern American practice."
Jonathan Marshall,
writing at investigative journalist Robert Parry's Consortium News, has this to say about the
current crop of unregistered foreign agents (my emphasis throughout):
The Open Secret of Foreign Lobbying
The alleged hacking of the Hillary Clinton campaign's emails and the numerous contacts of Donald
Trump's circle with Russian officials, oligarchs and mobsters have triggered any number of investigations
into Moscow's alleged efforts to influence the 2016 election and the new administration .
In contrast, as journalist Robert Parry recently
noted , American politicians and the media have been notably silent about other examples of
foreign interference in U.S. national politics. In part that's because supporters of more successful
foreign pressure groups have enough clout to
downplay or deny their very existence . In part it's also because America's political system
is so riddled with big money that jaded insiders rarely question the status quo of influence
peddling by other nations .
The subject of his discussion is the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Under the Act,
failure to properly register carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines.
Marshall notes that while the influence of foreign agents was of great national concern during World
War I and World War II, very little is done today to require or enforce FARA registration:
Since the end of World War II, however, enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act
has been notably lax. Its effectiveness has been stymied by political resistance from lobby supporters
as well as by the law's many loopholes -
including Justice Department's admission that FARA "does not authorize the government to inspect
records of those not registered under the Act."
A 2016 audit
by the inspector general of the Department of Justice
determined that half of FARA registrations and 62 percent of initial registrations
were filed late , and 15 percent of registrants simply stopped filing for periods of
six months or more. It also determined that the Department of Justice brought only seven criminal
cases under FARA from 1966 to 2015, and filed no civil injunctions since 1991 .
The result - almost no one registers who doesn't want to.
Here's Russia-savvy
Matt Taibbi , who is looking at the whole Russia-Trump investigation and wonders what's being
investigated. Note his comments about FARA at the end of this quote:
When James Comey was fired I didn't know what to think, because so much of this story
is still hidden from view .
Certainly firing an FBI director who has announced the existence of an investigation targeting
your campaign is going to be improper in almost every case. And in his post-firing rants about
tapes and loyalty, President Trump validated every criticism of him as an impetuous, unstable,
unfit executive who additionally is ignorant of the law and lunges for authoritarian solutions
in a crisis.
But it's our job in the media to be bothered by little details, and the strange timeline of
the Trump-Russia investigation qualifies as a conspicuous loose end.
[So] What exactly is the FBI investigating? Why was it kept secret from other intelligence
chiefs, if that's what happened? That matters, if we're trying to gauge what happened last week.
Is it a FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) case involving former National Security Adviser
Michael Flynn or a lower-level knucklehead like Carter Page?
Since FARA is violated more or less daily in Washington and largely ignored by authorities
unless it involves someone without political connections (an awful lot of important people
in Washington who appear to be making fortunes lobbying for foreign countries are merely engaged
in "litigation support," if you ask them), it would be somewhat anticlimactic to find out that
this was the alleged crime underlying our current white-hot constitutional crisis.
Is it something more serious than a FARA case, like money-laundering for instance, involving
someone higher up in the Trump campaign? That would indeed be disturbing, and it would surely
be improper – possibly even impeachable, depending upon what exactly happened behind the scenes
– for Trump to get in the way of such a case playing itself out.
But even a case like that would be very different from espionage and treason . Gutting
a money-laundering case involving a campaign staffer would be more like garden-variety corruption
than the cloak-and-dagger nightmares currently consuming the popular imagination.
Sticking narrowly with FARA for the moment, if this were just a FARA case, it would be more than
"somewhat anticlimactic to find out that this was the alleged crime underlying our current white-hot
constitutional crisis." It would be, not to put to fine a point on it, highly indicative that something
else is going on, that other hands are involved, just as the highly suspicious circumstances around
the takedown of Eliot Spitzer indicate the presence of other hands and other actors.
My best guess, for what it's worth, is that Trump-Russia will devolve into a money-laundering
case, and if it does, Trump will likely survive it, since so many others in the big money world do
the same thing. But let's stick with unregistered foreign agents a bit longer.
John McCain, Randy Scheuneman and the Nation of Georgia
Do you remember the 2008 story about McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann, who claimed he no longer
represented the nation of Georgia while advising the McCain campaign, even though his small (two-person)
firm still retained their business?
In the current [2008] crisis, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia fell into a Soviet trap
by moving troops into the disputed territory of South Ossetia and raining artillery and rocket
fire on the South Ossetian capital city of Tskhinvali, with a still undetermined loss of civilian
life. As in 1956, the Soviets responded with overwhelming force and additional loss of life. Once
again the United States could offer only words, not concrete aid to the Georgians.
It is difficult to believe that, like the Hungarians in 1956, the Georgians in 2008 could
have taken such action without believing that they could expect support from the United States
. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denies that the Bush administration was the agent provocateur
in Georgia. To the contrary, a State Department source said that she explicitly warned President
Saakashvili in July to avoid provoking Russia.
If this information is correct, then, by inference, John McCain emerges as the most likely
suspect as agent provocateur . First, McCain had a unique and privileged pipeline to President
Saakashvili (shown to the right in the photo to the right). McCain's top foreign policy advisor,
Randy Scheunemann, was a partner in a two-man firm that served as a paid lobbyist for the Georgian
government . Scheunemann continued receiving compensation from the firm until the McCain campaign
imposed new restrictions on lobbyists in mid-May. Scheunemann reportedly helped arrange a telephone
conversation between McCain and Saakashvili on April 17 of this year, while he was still being
paid by Georgia...
McCain has benefited politically from the crisis in Georgia. McCain's swift and belligerent
response to the Soviet actions in Georgia has bolstered his shaky standing with the right-wing
of the Republican Party. McCain has also used the Georgian situation to assert his credentials
as the hardened warrior ready to do battle against a resurgent Russia. He has pointedly contrasted
his foreign policy experience with that of his Democratic opponent Barack Obama. Since the
crisis erupted, McCain has focused like a laser on Georgia, to great effect . According to
a Quinnipiac
University National Poll released on August 19 he has gained four points on Obama since their
last poll in mid-July and leads his rival by a two to one margin as the candidate best qualified
to deal with Russia.
Was Scheunemann a paid lobbyist for Georgia at the time of these events? He says no. Others
aren't so sure :
Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning watchdog
group, said Scheunemann still has a conflict of interest because his small firm continues to represent
foreign clients. The records that show Scheunemann ceased representing foreign countries as of
March 1 also show his partner, Michael Mitchell, remains registered to represent the three nations.
Mitchell said Tuesday that Scheunemann no longer has any role with Orion Strategies but declined
to say whether Scheunemann still is receiving income or profits from the firm .
If almost no one registers under FARA who doesn't want to, what's the crime if Flynn didn't register?
The answer seems to be, because he's Trump appointee Michael Flynn, and FARA is a stick his
enemies can beat him with, while they're looking for something better.
The fact that FARA is a stick almost no one is beaten with, matters not at all, it seems.
Not to Democratic politicians and appointees; and not to many journalists either.
An Investigation in Search of a Crime
Questioning the Michael Flynn investigation leads us (and Matt Taibbi) down a further rabbit hole,
which includes two questions: what's being investigated, and how did this investigation start?
Short answer to the first question - no one knows, since unlike the Watergate break-in, this whole
effort didn't start with a crime that needed investigating. It seems to have started with an investigation
(how to get rid of Trump) in search of a crime. And one that still hasn't found evidence of one.
Journalist Robert Parry, who himself was a key Iran-Contra investigator,
makes the same point :
In Watergate , five burglars were caught inside the DNC offices on June 17, 1972, as
they sought to plant more bugs on Democratic phones. (An earlier break-in in May had installed
two bugs, but one didn't work.) Nixon then proceeded to mount a cover-up of his 1972 campaign's
role in funding the break-in and other abuses of power.
In Iran-Contra , Reagan secretly authorized weapons sales to Iran, which was then designated
a terrorist state, without informing Congress, a violation of the Arms Export Control Act. He
also kept Congress in the dark about his belated signing of a related intelligence "finding."
And the creation of slush funds to finance the Nicaraguan Contras represented an evasion of the
U.S. Constitution.
There was also the attendant Iran-Contra cover-up mounted both by the Reagan White House and
later the George H.W. Bush White House, which culminated in Bush's Christmas Eve 1992 pardons
of six Iran-Contra defendants as special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh
was zeroing in on possible indictment of Bush for withholding evidence.
By contrast , Russia-gate has been a "scandal" in search of a specific crime. President
Barack Obama's intelligence chieftains have alleged – without presenting any clear evidence –
that the Russian government hacked into the emails of the Democratic National Committee and of
Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta and released those emails via WikiLeaks and other
Internet sites. (The Russians and WikiLeaks have both denied the accusations.)
The DNC emails revealed that senior Democrats did not maintain their required independence
regarding the primaries by seeking to hurt Sen. Bernie Sanders and help Clinton. The Podesta emails
pulled back the curtain on Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street banks and on pay-to-play features
of the Clinton Foundation.
Hacking into personal computers is a crime, but the U.S. government has yet to bring any
formal charges against specific individuals supposedly responsible for the hacking of the
Democratic emails. There also has been no evidence that Donald Trump's campaign colluded with
Russians in the hacking.
Lacking any precise evidence of this cyber-crime or of a conspiracy between Russia and the
Trump campaign, Obama's Justice Department holdovers and now special prosecutor Robert Mueller
have sought to build "process crimes," around false statements to investigators and possible
obstruction of justice.
I've yet to see actual evidence of an underlying crime - lots of smoke, which is fine as a starting
point, but no fire, even after months of looking (and months of official leaking about every damning
thing in sight). This makes the current investigation strongly reminiscent of the Whitewater investigation,
another case of Alice (sorry, Ken Starr) jumping into every hole she could find looking for a route
to Wonderland. Ken Starr finally found one, perjury about a blow job. Will Mueller find something
more incriminating? He's still looking too.
Note that none of this means Trump doesn't deserve getting rid of . It just means that
how he's gotten rid of matters. (As you ponder this, consider what you think would be fair
to do to a Democratic president. I guarantee what happens to Trump will be repeated.)
What Was the Sally Yates Accusation Against Flynn Really About?
Short answer to the second question of my two "further rabbit hole" questions - How did this investigation
start? - may be the Sally Yates accusation that Flynn was someone who could be blackmailed.
Here's Parry on that (same link):
In the case of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser,
acting Attorney General Sally Yates used the archaic Logan Act of 1799 to create a predicate for
the FBI to interrogate Flynn about a Dec. 29, 2016 conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak, i.e., after Trump's election but before the Inauguration .
Green Party leader Jill Stein and retired Lt. General Michael Flynn attending a dinner marking
the RT network's 10-year anniversary in Moscow, December 2015, sitting at the same table as Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
The Logan Act, which has never resulted in a prosecution in 218 years , was enacted
during the period of the Alien and Sedition Acts to bar private citizens from negotiating on their
own with foreign governments. It was never intended to apply to a national security adviser
of an elected President, albeit before he was sworn in.
But it became the predicate for the FBI interrogation - and the FBI agents were armed with
a transcript of the intercepted Kislyak-Flynn phone call so they could catch Flynn on any gaps
in his recollection, which might have been made even hazier because he was on vacation in the
Dominican Republic when Kislyak called.
Yates also concocted a bizarre argument that the discrepancies between Flynn's account of the
call and the transcript left him open to Russian blackmail although how that would work – since
the Russians surely assumed that Kislyak's calls would be monitored by U.S. intelligence and
thus offered them no leverage with Flynn – was never explained.
Still, Flynn's failure to recount the phone call precisely and the controversy stirred up around
it became the basis for an obstruction of justice investigation of Flynn and led to President
Trump's firing Flynn on Feb. 13.
Do I need, Cassandra-like, to say this again? None of this means that Trump doesn't deserve
getting rid of . It just means that how he's gotten rid of matters.
"So Much of the Story Is Still Hidden From View"
I'm not taking Robert Parry as the final word on this, but he's one word on this, and his
word isn't nothing. If we were looking down rabbit holes for the source of this investigation,
for where all this anti-Trump action started, I don't think Yates' concerns are where it begins.
What I do know is that Manafort and Flynn not registering as foreign agents puts them squarely
in the mainstream of Washington political practice. The fact that these are suddenly crimes of the
century makes me just a tad suspicious that, in Matt Taibbi's words, "so much of this story is still
hidden from view."
I warned you - I'll be your Cassandra this week. crime
I would think that a crime in search of an investigation would be Clinton's private server
while at state and, the tie in thru the Clinton foundation .just saying.
The big story is that these chicken-little stories all seam to serve as cover for the bought-and-paid
for chicken little politicians ..while those elected politicians who give a damp about their office
and those they represent are sidelined.
While some might think there is some tie in with donations to the Clinton Foundation and favors
granted by the political wing of the Clinton Conglomerate and the sudden dissolution of said donations
after the toppling of Dame Clinton by Der Trumpf it appears all such talk originates in the fever
swamp of the right wing echo chamber and it's shot caller the GRU.
Present us evidence that the GRU has any influence, much less is the "shot-caller" with respect
to the "right-wing echo chamber".
And why do you thing tyrants, despots, emirs and dictators generously donated so much to the
phoney Foundation? Because they wanted to further its good works, just like the Saudis are very
worried about AIDS prevention? No, they wanted to buy influence. And Clinton gave them what they wanted. And why did these same tyrants, despots, emits and dictators stop donating once Clinton lost?
Because she could no longer deliver.
I cannot tell if Ed's comment is straight or satire or snarcasm or what. The internet is a
poor place to try such things.
I am going to take it as a straight comment. The Clintons have been grooming Chelsea for public
office and will try desperately to get her elected to something somewhere. That way, they will
still have influence to peddle and their Family of Foundations will still be worth something.
I hope Chelsea's wanna-have political career is strangled in the cradle. And hosed down with
napalm and incinerated down to some windblown ashes.
That investigation has been firmly crammed down the rabbit hole and cemented over.
If it had taken place in a nation where laws meant anything it would have likely disclosed:
Clinton set up a private computer server center to control the information about her background,
financial dealings, and political arrangements while serving as Secretary of State in the Obama
administration.
Obama was aware of the arrangement
Clinton transferred classified and top secrete documents to her private server. This is by
definition theft.
Clinton defied subpoenas, refused to turn over documents, and destroyed evidence. This is
by definition obstruction of justice.
In spite of being informed that the server was not secure, Clinton placed classified and sensitive
national security information on the server. This is equivalent to printing the same documents
on paper and walking through Central Park throwing them at the squirrels. And it fits the legal
definition of treason.
Failure to prosecute Clinton is graphic proof that the US is not a nation of laws, but rather
one where power, bribes and influence peddling determine who the law applies to.
Corruption in high places is the norm. It is childish, all this virtue signaling. I would respect
the sore losers more if they were honest they want to put Obama in as President for Life the
US is Haiti now. Or the Kissinger faction of the MIC could install one of our TV generals as our
version of Gen. Pinochet.
Since he won't be impeached, I assume Gaius meant Trump should be assassinated? In the USA
every four years we have the opportunity to battle over the control of voting machine software,
voter disqualification and hanging chads. But if we want to change Presidents in mid-stream the
traditional method is to have them shot.
It was the filthy Clintonites who gave us Trump to begin with. Let Trump be smeared all over
their face and shoved way deep up their noses till 2020. And if the Clintonite scum give us another Clintonite nominee in 2020, then let Trump be elected
all over again. I'll vote for that.
As regards the 2008 Georgian situation discussed here, Russia seems to have been referred to
as Soviet . Twice. This happened for some years in the '90s but it is rather late to
do so these days. Maybe I misunderstood something?
You did not misunderstand; yes, the author of that article was sloppy. He was switching back
and forth between events of 1956 and 2008, and he failed to adequately proofread what he wrote
about 2008.
Gaius offers a realistic and well-put caution for Democrats and journalists taking their eye
off the ball of the Mnuchin crowd.
I've a good friend who's exasperated when I utter such blasphemies, asking how I could have
missed the constant swell of opinion by Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, Joe Scarborough, Rachel Meadow,
etc
When I reply that prospects outside the courts of comedians and MSNBC infotainment pundits
goosing their base are different – and I'm not so sure I'd prefer a less crass and crazed President
Pence armed with Trumpster strategies – I'm asked "But what about justice?!!!"
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
No doubt plenty of insulating layers if money-laundering took place via real estate, though
its worth plumbing those depths. But given Trump appointees' soft-ball approach to the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act, I'd guess that's an arena well worth the time of journalists, insulating
layers or not. I recall Sheldon Adelson's disdain for the FCPA likely increasing his fervor to
dump Democrats.
And let's apply the justice to everyone , not just the "enemy camp" of whoever happens
to be speaking.
And let's apply justice to those at the top first. Only after cleaning out all the top, most
privileged layers, then the layers beneath them, should justice be applied to those at the bottom
socio-economic layers. IOW, the opposite of the strategy we've seen applied over most of our history
in many or most places.
Yves Smith: Thanks for this. Astute observations. And as I keep reminding people, you can turn
on the spigot of MacCarthyism, and you may think that you can turn off that spigot, but you can't.
In the case of Joe MacCarthy himself, it didn't truly end till about the time of his premature
death from alcoholism.
Hence the observation above in the posting that the rightwingers will pull out the same techniques
if a Democrat wins the next election.
One aspect of the now-thoroughly-rotten system in the U S of A is the constant contesting of
election results. As Lambert Strether keeps writing, the electronic voting machines are a black
hole, and both parties have been engaged in debasing the vote and diminishing the size of the
electorate. The gravamen in both parties is that the voters don't know what they are doing and
the ballots aren't being counted properly. Maybe we can do something about that
I'm sure readers will be shocked to learn that the electoral system referred to is that used
in Venezuela in 2012. And it will be the rare person who can distinguish between a superior system
for conducting an election and a result that they don't like.
Do I need, Cassandra-like, to say this again? None of this means that Trump doesn't deserve
getting rid of.
No. You didn't need to say it even once. Another interesting analysis utterly ruined by the writer's incessant feverish need to virtue
signal himself as a Trump hater. Ugh!
You write an article chock-full of information clearly pointing to corruption, venality, un-democratic
machinations, and still you feel the need to repeat over and over and over again that does not
mean that you don't want to remove Trump. Remove him? Like how, Gaius? And why? Why not remove the people you write about in your article? Why not say 40 times you want to
remove them. Undemocratically, of course. As you say in your article, be careful of how the talk about removing people one does not like.
You're a Cassandra alright. And methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Note that none of this means Trump doesn't deserve getting rid of. It just means that how
he's gotten rid of matters. (As you ponder this, consider what you think would be fair to do
to a Democratic president. I guarantee what happens to Trump will be repeated.)
This is an implicit warning about impeachment. I interpret this as a recommendation to
vigorously oppose Trump's actions over the next three and a half years, and to effectively campaign
against him in 2020. Trump really is a terrible President, but Mike Pence would be terrible, too.
And so would Hillary Clinton, but I hope we won't have to worry about her any more.
In case you're wondering why I think that Trump is a terrible President, here's a short
summary:
Scott Pruitt
Betsy DeVos
Jeff Sessions
Steven Mnuchin
Tom Price
Neil Gorsuch
There are other reasons, but that list should suffice for now.
None of the left-leaning writers who have been pooh-poohing the Russia investigation* have
demonstrated a working knowledge of counterintelligence. I've also noticed that they correlate
a lack of publicly-known evidence to an actual absence of evidence, which is the purview of the
investigation. Investigators will be holding any evidence they discover close to their vests for
obvious reasons, but even more so in this case because some of the evidence will have origins
where sources and methods will statutorily need to be concealed.
Furthermore, many of these writers appear to be unfamiliar with the case law governing the
major features of the case. Yes, money laundering may be a part of the case and a financial blog
may emphasize that aspect of the case because that's what they're familiar with, but what we're
fundamentally looking at is possible violations of the Espionage Act, as well as the obstruction
of justice by certain players to hide their involvement. Not a single one of these articles (or
any of the cable news shows) have taken note of one of the juiciest and obscure pieces of evidence
that's right there out in the open, if you'd been following this as closely as I have. As much
as I admire Gaius Publius and Matt Taibbi, and trust their reporting within their demonstrated
and reliable competencies, neither have really written about intelligence activities in a thoroughgoing
manner in order to be identified as journalists specializing in matters pertaining to intelligence,
espionage, spies. Publius writes about political economy and Taibbi is as "Russia savvy" as your
average Russian citizen; maybe less so. And being Russia savvy does not make you FSB savvy. Now
if Sy Hersh wrote something about L'Affaire Russe, that would be worth seriously considering.
*I won't even address the seriousness or motives of the people on the right who have been pooh-poohing
the Russia investigation. But it is curious for otherwise "GOP-savvy" lefties to align with people
who spout Fox News talking points all the live long day, and who are wrong about everything, all
the time, and not in a "broken clock tells correct time twice a day" sort of way.
If they had anything concrete on Trump we've have heard about it by now. The spooks have been
leaking for months – they aren't going to suddenly clam up if they've discovered something that's
actually a crime.
Until someone presents actual evidence, this investigation is nothing more than Democrat payback
for Benghazi, which itself was a BS investigation in search of a crime that went on for years.
Unfortunately for sHillary, a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while and they did manage to
uncover actual criminality in her case (and brushed it right under the rug).
Just what makes Putin "the enemy"? Russia disseminates propaganda that (it hopes) will sway the American election in a direction
more favorable to their interests! and in other news, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
> Russia disseminates propaganda that (it hopes) will sway the American election in a direction
more favorable to their interests!
This is what gets me. We're supposed to me a great power, and we're going nuts on this stuff.
It's like an elephant panicking at the sight of a mouse. The political class has lost its grip
entirely.
> Putin must be delighted to have a vainglorious ignoramus presiding over a US government paralyzed
by division
How sad, then, that the Pied Piper email showed that the Clinton campaign wanted Trump for
their opponent. Or Was she Putin's stooge? Perhaps the server she left open to the world
for three months with no password provided the Russkis with some kompromat ? Really,
there's as much evidence for that theory as anything else
> so must also likewise concede that there may be more there than you suppose
So either there's something there or there isn't. That does seem to exhaust the possibilities.
If only Maddow, the Clintonites, whichever factions in the intelligence community that are
driving the "drip, drip, drip" of stories, the Jeff Bezos Shopper, cable, and all the access journalists
writing it all up would take such a balanced perspective .
OK, so you are saying that we should trust the word of anonymous leakers from the intelligence
community, that is, anonymous leaks from a pack of proven perjurers, torturers, and entrapment
artists, all on the basis of supposed evidence that we are not allowed to see.
Because secret squirrel counterintelligence. Ah, now I get it.
We don't know who the leakers are. They're anonymous, but they willingly associate themselves
with an intelligence community, the very organizations that commit perjury, that engage in torture,
that do entrapment, all on a regular basis. Not to mention other crimes for which men have hung,
such as gin up up evidence to drive this country towards aggressive war. So nothing to be suspicious
of here.
These organizations have been leaking on a regular basis but they have not leaked evidence.
That by itself is suspicious, since in a white collar crime case, a serial killer case, etc. we
don't usually have a flood of anonymous leaks coming from supposed investigators.
Nor in a garden-variety criminal investigation do we have the suspect laid out in advance,
and any leaks are intended to make the suspect guilty in the mind of the public, before charges
or brought or a crime is determined.
For that matter, how do we know the leakers even exist? When some media outlet wants to publish
some made-up story, they can just attribute it to an anonymous source.
Nope. Telling us prawns to wait until the evidence is in, or, worse, that only the specialists
can be trusted, is one of the tactics of repression that the elite use while they are busy manufacturing
and/or hiding said evidence. And surely by now we all know that "specialists" have no clothes.
If you want serious analysis by seriously non-left people who have broken rocks in the quarry
of intelligence, you can read Sic Semper Tyrannis. They have offered some hi-valu input on this
whole "Putin diddit" deal.
They also offered some hi-valu input on the Hillary server matter. And Colonel Lang had a thing
or three to say about the Clinton Family of Foundations . . . including a little-remarked-upon
stealth-laundry-pipeline registered in Canada.
Philip Giraldi has also written guest-posts at Sic Semper Tyrannis from time to time. The name
"Philip Giraldi' is one of the pickable subject-category names on the right side of the SST homepage.
> Not a single one of these articles (or any of the cable news shows) have taken note of one
of the juiciest and obscure pieces of evidence that's right there out in the open, if you'd been
following this as closely as I have.
Or, you know, probable cause to investigate based on very public admissions. Production before
a grand jury is secret under penalty of criminal prosecution. Once probable cause is affirmed,
then the indictments will be under seal for what could be some time. I think it's probable that
there may already be indictments against some of the players. DJT may already be a John Doe. The
Fed GJ's in DC are three months long, the current one wrapping up third week of August [a guess
based on past experience as a 3rd party]. Expect movement early this fall.
As Constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz pointed out, the DOJ reports to the President. Trump
was completely within his authority to give instructions to Comey and fire him. Dershowitz also
points out Trump can pardon anyone, including himself. But Trump doesn't read and oddly no one
seems to have clued him in on what Dershowitz has said.
Nixon was a completely different case. There had been an actual crime, a break in. Archibald
Cox was an special prosecutor appointed by Congress. Firing him raised Constitutional issues.
If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, read the complaint in "Kriss et al v. BayRock
Group LLC et al" [ 1:10-cv-03959-LGS-DCF ] in NY Southern District. It's a RICO. It goes from
the 46-story Trump SoHo condo-hotel on Spring Street to Iceland [?] and beyond. Then check out
DJT's deposition in Trilogy Properties "LLC et al v. SB Hotel Associates LLC et al" [ 1:09cv21406
] and his D&O doc production.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
I've said repeatedly that people should stop hyperventilating about Trump and Russia and if
anything should be bothered that he was in business with a crook, as in Felix Sater. I was on
this long ago. Sater is Brighton Beach mafia. That means Jewish mafia, BTW; he worked Jewish connections
overseas. He's not connected to anyone of any importance in Russia. No one with any sophistication
would do business with a felon who turned state's evidence. Means he can't be trusted (by upstanding
people, because he's a crook, and by crooks, because he sang like a canary).
On the latest one, "
GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn ," unlocked
at the WSJ, the main source, long-time Republican oppo researcher Peter W. Smith, left the land
of the living on May 14 of this year, at the age of 81. So, on the up side, we've finally got a source with a name. On the down side, he's dead.
Do better!
I can't stand Tucker Carlson from his time as a loyal footsoldier in the ranks of the George Dubya Bush Apologist Army, but it's
easy to feel in synch with him here just because CNN is so deservedly hated. Can't argue with your conclusions, either.
Then this will make you chuckle Mark – when I was discussing CNN at a meeting, one of the smarter analysts commented: "yet another
reason to hate CNN is because they're making Tucker Carlson look good! Why doesn't anyone bring that up?"
The room responded with laughter. Remember the days when CNN used to claim that they're "the most trusted name in news" – well
they're not doing that anymore:
"In the poll published Wednesday by Rasmussen Reports, 1,000 likely voters were asked to describe their media viewing habits.
Seventy-five percent said they watch at least some form of cable news each week, with 42 percent saying they most frequently watch
Fox News, 35 percent usually choosing CNN, and 19 percent favoring MSNBC. An even 50 percent of frequent Fox News viewers agreed
with a followup question, "Do you trust the political news you are getting?" By comparison, 43 percent of frequent MSNBC viewers
and just 33 percent of those who mostly watch CNN said they trust their political news."
"For instance, on Tuesday, over the course of the day, CNN was only able to attract a measly 670,000 viewers. For context,
MSNBC nearly doubled this number; Fox News nearly tripled it. CNN has almost always lagged a bit behind MSNBC in total viewers,
but not like this."
Why couldn't it be 620,000? The reason I'm asking, is because 6.2 million Americans watched Putin's interview with Megyn Kelly.
I'm not yet sure about Stone's Putin Interviews – but that number also seems to be very positive and in the millions. Of course
losing to Discovery Channel didn't help CNN:
"Furthermore, throughout this same quarter, CNN lost to MSNBC in total and primetime demo viewers. This is the first time since
2014 that CNN has lost that demo crown to its leftwing rival. In total viewers last quarter, among all cable news channels, Fox
News placed first, MSNBC third, and CNN is all alone in tenth place, just barely ahead of Investigative Discovery, a second-tier
offshoot of the Discovery Network."
I predicted this would happen back when they fucked up their coverage of the Ossetian War. Now I'm just watching the train-wreck,
thinking "am I really eating the best tasting popcorn? Have I finally found it?"
I hope they are driven right out of existence – I can't wait to see Wolf Blitzer sitting on a bench outside Hope Cottage in downtown
Halifax, bleary-eyed and waiting for the free soup line to open. All of a journalist's enemies should be among the corrupt mages
of the state apparatus – when the common man earnestly prays for you to be brought low, you've lost your way, and are feeding
on a projected image of yourself. I think it's safe to say that we have seen the most precipitous decline in ethics in journalism,
this past decade, that has occurred since its humble beginnings.
Democrats Help Corporate Donors Block California Health
Care Measure, And Progressives Lose Again
BY DAVID SIROTA ON 06/26/17 AT 4:06 PM
As Republican lawmakers grapple with their unpopular bill
to repeal Obamacare, Democrats have tried to present a united
front on health care. But for all their populist rhetoric
against insurance and drug companies, Democratic powerbrokers
and their allies remain deeply divided on the issue - to the
point where a political civil war has spilled into the open
in America's largest state.
In California last week, Democratic state Assembly Speaker
Anthony Rendon helped his and his party's corporate donors
block a Democrat-sponsored bill to create a universal health
care program in which the government would be the single
payer.
Rendon's decision shows how progressives' ideal of
universal health care remains elusive - even in a liberal
state where government already foots 70 percent of the total
health care bill.
Until Rendon's move, things seemed to be looking up for
Democratic single-payer proponents in deep blue California,
which has been hammered by insurance premium increases.
There, the Democratic Party - which originally created
Medicare - just added a legislative supermajority to a
Democratic-controlled state government that oversees the
world's sixth largest economy. That 2016 election victory
came as a poll showed nearly two-thirds of Californians
support the creation of a taxpayer-funded universal health
care system in a state whose population is roughly the size
of Canada - which already has such a system.
California's highest-profile federal Democratic lawmaker
recently endorsed state efforts to create single-payer
systems, and 25 members of its congressional delegation had
signed on to sponsor a federal single-payer bill.
Meanwhile, after Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had
twice vetoed state single-payer legislation, California in
2010 elected a governor who had previously campaigned for
president on a pledge to support such a system. Other
statewide elected officials had also declared their support
for single-payer, including the current lieutenant governor,
who promised to enact a universal health care program if he
is wins the governorship in 2018.
None of that, though, made the difference: Late Friday,
Rendon announced that even though a single-payer bill had
passed the Democratic-controlled state senate, he would not
permit the bill to be voted on by the Assembly this year.
"As someone who has long been a supporter of single payer,
I am encouraged by the conversation begun by Senate Bill
562," Rendon said. But "senators who voted for SB 562 noted
there are potentially fatal flaws in the bill, including the
fact it does not address many serious issues, such as
financing, delivery of care, cost controls, or the realities
of needed action by the Trump Administration and voters to
make SB 562 a genuine piece of legislation."
Since 2012, Rendon has taken in more than $82,000 from
business groups and healthcare corporations that are listed
in state documents opposed the measure, according to an
International Business Times review of data amassed by the
National Institute on Money In State Politics. In all, he has
received more than $101,000 from pharmaceutical companies and
another $50,000 from major health insurers.
In the same time, the California Democratic Party has
received more than $1.2 million from the specific groups
opposing the bill, and more than $2.2 million from
pharmaceutical and health insurance industry donors. That
includes a $100,000 infusion of cash from Blue Shield of
California in the waning days of the 2016 election - just
before state records show the insurer began lobbying against
the single-payer bill.
While Rendon oversees a supermajority, it had never been
clear that Assembly Democrats would muster the two-thirds
vote needed under the state constitution to add the new taxes
needed to fund the single-payer system proposed by the
senate-passed bill. That is because the Democratic Assembly
caucus includes progressive legislators but also more
conservative members who are closer to business interests.
In addition to the money given to Rendon, the groups
opposing the single-payer measure have delivered more than
$1.5 million to Democratic assembly members since the 2012
election cycle. In all, the 55 Democratic members of the
80-seat Assembly have received more than $2.7 million from
donors in the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries
in just the last three election cycles.
Complicating matters for this year's single-payer bill was
the fact that the pharmaceutical industry had just spent more
than $100 million to defeat a 2016 ballot measure in
California aimed at lowering drug prices. That wave of money
was a powerful reminder that major industries opposed to
single-payer have virtually unlimited resources to spend
against California's Democratic incumbents in the next
election if those Democrats ultimately try to pass a bill.
"Subject To Enormous Uncertainty"
The episode in California was the latest defeat for
single-payer health care advocates, who have faced a string
of losses at the hands of Democrats whose party has continued
to attract significant cash from the health care industries
that benefit from the current system.
In the last decade, Barack Obama raised millions of
dollars from health care industry donors and then backed off
his previous support for single-payer. He and other
administration officials explicitly declared that the
Affordable Care Act would not become a Medicare-for-all
system. The Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate then failed to
pass a proposal to create a publicly run insurance option to
compete with private insurers.
More recently, Vermont's Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin
abandoned his state's high-profile push for single-payer in
2014 - just as he was serving as chairman of the Democratic
Governors Association, a group whose top donors included
UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross, AstraZeneca and the
pharmaceutical industry's trade association.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's
campaign was boosted by millions of dollars from health care
industry donors, and she derided Bernie Sanders for pushing
single payer, saying such an idea would "never, ever come to
pass." In the same 2106 election, prominent Democratic Party
consultants helped lead an insurer-funded campaign - backed
by prominent Democratic lawmakers - to kill a single-payer
ballot measure in Colorado.
And yet despite those defeats, single-payer advocates were
thinking big at the beginning of 2017. Heading into the new
legislative sessions, Democrats controlled both governorships
and legislatures in six states - and another
Democratic-leaning state with a Democratic governor, New
York, appeared to have legislative support for single-payer.
With its Democratic supermajority, California was the biggest
focus of attention among progressive healthcare advocates.
According to a June report by California senate analysts,
the single-payer legislation that was introduced in
Sacramento this year would have created a government agency
called Healthy California that would be "required to provide
comprehensive universal single-payer health care coverage
system for all California residents." The program would have
been prohibited from charging participants premiums and
co-pays and would have covered "all medical care determined
to be medically appropriate by the members' health care
provider," according to the Senate report.
While the report said fiscal estimates "are subject to
enormous uncertainty," it projected that $200 billion worth
of existing federal, state and local health care spending
would offset about half of the estimated $400 billion annual
cost. Shifting that money, though, could require California
to secure waivers from the federal government that would
allow it to redirect the federal money into the new program.
The original bill did not include a specific tax proposal
to raise the rest of the needed revenue. However, the report
estimated that the other $200 billion could be funded by
moving state payroll taxes up to 15 percent , a levy the
report said "would be offset to a large degree by reduced
spending on health care coverage by employers and employees."
"The Only Health Care System That Makes Any Sense"
At the start of California's legislative session, bill
proponents pitched the sweeping measure as a way to protect
the state from Trump administration health care policy. They
may have been banking on support from California's top
Democrat, Gov. Jerry Brown, who endorsed single payer during
his 1992 presidential campaign.
"I believe the only health care system that makes any
sense is a single-payer system," Brown said during a March
1992 Democratic presidential forum. "I don't see any way,
after having worked on this problem in the largest state in
the union, which, after all, has the highest medical costs,
to really contain costs without establishing a single payer
for all basic services."
But as the the California legislation began moving
forward, Brown cast doubts on it in comments to reporters in
March.
"Where do you get the extra money?...This is the whole
question. I don't even get ... how do you do that?" said
Brown, who has collected more than a quarter-million dollars
of campaign contributions from groups opposing the bill.
Supporters of the legislation tried to answer the
governor's question with a detailed economic analysis
asserting that the legislation could save the state money
through lower administrative costs and drug prices.
"Providing full universal coverage would increase overall
system costs by about 10 percent, but ... single payer system
could produce savings of about 18 percent," concluded a May
2017 study led by University of Massachusetts-Amherst
economist Robert Pollin. "The proposed single-payer system
could provide decent health care for all California residents
while still reducing net overall costs by about 8 percent
relative to the existing system."
That same month, U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi
- California's highest-ranking federal official -- seemed to
give the idea a boost. At a Capitol Hill press conference,
she said "the comfort level with a broader base of the
American people is not there yet" for a federal
Medicare-for-all bill, but she promoted state efforts.
"I say to people, if you want that, do it in your states.
States are laboratories. It can work out. It is the least
expensive, least administrative way to go about this," she
said. "States are a good place to start."
Economist Pollin echoed that argument, telling IBT that
the California situation is fundamentally different than
Vermont, which in 2014 abandoned its high-profile effort to
create the nation's first state-based single-payer system.
While single-payer could still be feasible in small states,
he said, the concept was particularly well suited to a very
large state like California.
"The issue of bargaining power is important relative to
pharmaceutical companies, and that's one big area of
savings," he told IBT. "If the pharmaceutical companies say
we're not interested in selling to Vermont, they can walk
away from Vermont. But they can't do the same thing with
California because it's too large a market. It's the same
thing with doctors - they are not going to run away from a
market of 33 million people just because their reimbursement
rates will be at Medicare levels. And the state of California
is already used to running big operations, so it has the
administrative power to do this kind of thing."
"Woefully Incomplete"
Despite Brown's lack of support, and opposition from
Republican lawmakers and health insurers, the California
senate passed the single-payer bill in June. Vermont Sen.
Bernie Sanders pressed the Democratic governor and California
lawmakers to enact the bill.
"As we sit here tonight, the California state senate has
passed single-payer," Sanders told a gathering of thousands
of activists in Chicago. "Now it's up to the California House
and the governor to do the right thing and help us transform
health care in this country by leading the way."
All of the pressure, however, was not enough to persuade
Rendon. Calling the legislation "woefully incomplete," he
announced that "SB 562 will remain in the Assembly Rules
Committee until further notice."
The move was instantly polarizing. Inside the labor
movement, the California branch of the Service Employees
International Union - which has long supported single-payer
health care - issued a statement supporting Rendon's
decision, saying the organization wants changes to the
legislation. SEIU's affiliates have previously negotiated a
collective bargaining agreement with insurer Kaiser
Permanente, which would be "dismantled" under the
single-payer bill, according to Kaiser's lobbyist.
By contrast, the California Nurses Association, which
represents 100,000 unionized nurses in the state, slammed
Rendon, asserting that he had acted "in secret in the
interests of the profiteering insurance companies" and that
he had "destroy[ed] the aspirations of millions of
Californians for guaranteed health care."
The internecine attacks were equally fierce within the
Democratic Party.
"Today's announcement that the Assembly will not be moving
forward on single-payer, Medicare-for-All healthcare for
California at this time is an unambiguous disappointment for
all of us who believe that healthcare is a right for every
Californian," said newly elected California Democratic Party
chairman Eric Bauman, who until the middle of June had worked
in the Assembly speaker's office under Rendon, and ran his
Southern California office. "We understand that SB 562 is a
work in progress, but we believe it should keep moving
forward, especially in light of the widespread suffering that
will occur if Trump and Congressional Republicans succeed in
passing their cold-blooded, morally bankrupt so-called
healthcare legislation."
Perhaps seeking to bridge the divide, Rendon left open the
possibility that the bill will come up next year.
"Because this is the first year of a two-year session,
this action does not mean SB 562 is dead," he said. "In fact,
it leaves open the exact deep discussion and debate the
senators who voted for SB 562 repeatedly said is needed. The
Senate can use that time to fill the holes in SB 562 and pass
and send to the Assembly workable legislation that addresses
financing, delivery of care, and cost control."
Rendon's focus on financing underscored the fact that
passing tax increases to generate hundreds of billions of
dollars of new revenue is generally no easy political task -
and such initiatives can be particularly tricky in
California. There, a 1988-passed measure called Proposition
98 typically requires that a significant amount of any new
tax revenue must go to education. Another 1979 measure known
as the Gann limit also aims to restrict spending increases.
Funding a single-payer system could require complex
legislation or even a separate ballot measure.
Bill proponents, though, say those potential roadblocks
are navigable within the scope of the bill they are pushing.
In an interview with IBT, Michael Lighty of the California
Nurses Association noted that the Senate version of the
legislation included language to make sure that the new
health care system would not launch unless state officials
certified that adequate funding was available.
"The speaker says the bill is 'woefully incomplete' but he
stopped the process that would have completed it," Lighty
said. "We have a failsafe mechanism in the legislation. In
the event anticipated monies are not available from whatever
source for whatever reason, we can address it before full
program operation. There are all sorts of options, but you
can't do any of it if the bill doesn't move forward."
Bauman told IBT that despite the opposition within his own
party, he expects progressive Democrats to continue pushing
for single payer.
"What Democratic activists need to be doing every day is
educating our elected officials and the public on just how
important the fight for health care is, and on why this is
the moral and ethical fight of the day," he said.
"Yes the California Senate pased(sic) a "single
payer" proposal but it is not moving in the House until
someone does the hard work of deciding: (a) what are the
details about what is being provided; and (b) how it will be
paid for."
"... By Norman Solomon, the coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." ..."
"... The Hill ..."
"... "While the voters have a keen interest in any Russian election interference, they are concerned that the investigations have become a distraction for the president and Congress that is hurting rather than helping the country." ..."
"... In early spring, the former communications director of the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign, Jennifer Palmieri, summarized the post-election approach in a Washington Post ..."
"... Polling data now indicate how wrong such claims are. ..."
"... Initially in lockstep this year, Democrats on Capitol Hill probably didn't give it a second thought if they read my article published by The Hill ..."
"... I find political strategy-speak such as "an adjustment in party messaging" to be sickening. The Democrats still seem to be talking about manipulating perception, rather than actually doing anything fundamentally different. ..."
"... Identity politics is basically a divide and rule strategy to keep progressive candidates off the ballot, the real purpose of the Democratic Party establishment. That is what they are being paid for. ..."
"... The first world has had enough neolib, pendulum has started moving the other way. Macron shows the desperation to try something new without embracing right wing LePen an option not available here, so revulsion to neolib resulted in Trump.. ..."
"... There are already significant legal barriers to the creation of a new party. Both parties will probably gang up on any new party development too. ..."
"... The Dims – because that's what these people truly are – will just assume that they haven't put enough effort into "Russia" and go triple- or quadruple-up on every failed candidate, strategy, platform, message, consultant, focus-group and whatever else a sane leadership should by now have been tarring, feathering and releasing the hounds upon. ..."
"... for Dims. The Russia thing is irresistible because it's supposed to get nationalistic rubes to turn against Trump while sucking up to the military-industrial complex. And yet, it didn't work during the campaign either. ..."
"... The fixation of Clintonites, or frustrated dems with russiagate is very telling and well explained here. It strikes me how the russiagate has treated so uncritically by the "liberal" press in Spain. ..."
"... Even if "evidence" would appear after all this time, do we not suspect it has been cooked in the truth-telling factories of the FBI, CIA, and NSA, all in bed with right-wing warmongers who own both parties ( not just Republicans – sorry, integer )? ..."
"... Comment was to your saying the security establishment "which is primarily GOP owned or aligned". Both parties, in a sense, "own" it, and use segments of it to advantage when necessary. But further, both the parties and agencies are "owned" by the power of capital as it is currently operating, and this power behind the throne makes the security and party establishment dance. You and I are on the ground, trying to avoid the footwork. ..."
"... This is one reason why russiagate is inevitable. Who wants to tell the donors that the Team D brain trust pissed away a billion and a half, with nothing to show for it? But if the election was somehow stolen (eeevil Russkies!) then it wasn't really Team D's fault you see, and then ..."
"... The entire Russia-gate issue ignores/insults the voters the Democrats hope to influence. To some extent, the Democrats are telling the deplorable Trump voters, "The Russians influenced you to vote for Trump, someone who you have been aware of for many years, over the other well-known candidate Hillary Clinton" ..."
"... The Trump voter is probably more than a little irritated to have their voting actions viewed this way, they do not see themselves influenced by the Russians and do not understand why the Russians COULD significantly influence the election when the USA spends so much money on the CIA, FBI, NSA and US military. ..."
"... The entire Russia-gate issue ignores/insults the voters the Democrats hope to influence. ..."
"... To some extent, the Democrats are telling the deplorable Trump voters, "The Russians influenced you to vote for Trump, someone who you have been aware of for many years, over the other well-known candidate Hillary Clinton" ..."
"... Unfortunately for the voters Bill Clinton and Obama and the Dem estab are neoliberals. Bill and O were neoliberals running in New Deal clothing. The current Dem estab is neolib. A better "message" sans better policies isn't any better than focusing on Russia, imo. ..."
"... Gore Vidal (among others) used to point out that the dirty little secret of America's anti-communist right was that they were actually jealous of the brutal tactics the commies could use against their dissenters and secretly – and in many cases, not so secretly – wished they could do the same thing here. ..."
"... What if "RussiaGate" was only really intended to pressure Trump hard against any diplomatic rapprochement with a country the Neocons have targeted? ..."
"... Trump's foreign policy has been relentlessly steered into a direction the Clintons always intended to take it. Ticking off the last countries on Israel's 'enemy list' as compiled by the PNAC creeps. Recall the statement of Col. Wilkerson or one of those old guard people who wandered into an office in the Pentagon to find that there was a list of countries to be destroyed, starting with Iraq and ending finally with Iran. Syria and Libya were on it. ..."
"... This whole thing is about a high level grand strategic plan that involves destabilizing and overthrowing governments the US and Israel find annoying and insufficiently obeisant. The ultimate goal will be breaking the Russian Federation into a bunch of independent statelets. This isn't 'conspiracy theory' – it's what Brzezinski advocated and aligns neatly with the needs of the military-industrial-financial complex and its obsession with total control over world energy supplies as a lever for domination. ..."
"... Cold, you bring up a topic often ignored that I find highly credible. The Deep State with all its power to manufacture information and create chaos has a long-standing interest in maintaining Russiaphobia. The Soviet Union was certainly the best enemy they have ever known. Without it trillions of dollars of armaments would have never been sold and billions of dollars of spy agency bureaucracies never have been funded. ..."
"... This has been mission accomplished for the Dems. You just have to assume they want the country to move right. ..."
By Norman Solomon, the coordinator of the online activist group
RootsAction.org
and
the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author
of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep
Spinning Us to Death."
The plan for Democrats to run against
Russia may be falling apart.
After squandering much of the last six months on faulting Russians for the
horrific presidency of Donald Trump
After blaming America's dire shortfalls of democracy on plutocrats in Russia
more than on plutocrats in America
After largely marketing the brand of their own party as more anti-Russian
than pro-working-people
After stampeding many Democratic Party-aligned organizations, pundits and
activists into fixating more on Russia than on the thousand chronic cuts to
democracy here at home
After soaking up countless hours of TV airtime and vast quantities of ink
and zillions of pixels to denounce Russia in place of offering progressive
remedies to the deep economic worries of American voters
Now, Democrats in Congress and other party leaders are starting to face an
emerging reality: The "winning issue" of Russia is a losing issue.
The results of a reliable new nationwide poll - and what members of Congress
keep hearing when they actually listen to constituents back home - cry out for
a drastic reorientation of Democratic Party passions. And a growing number of
Democrats in Congress are getting the message.
"Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a
resounding message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia,"
The
Hill
reported
over
the weekend. In sharp contrast to their party's top spokespeople,
"rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue
with district voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic
concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and healthcare."
The Hill
coverage added: "In the wake of a string of
special-election defeats, an increasing number of Democrats are calling for an
adjustment in party messaging, one that swings the focus from Russia to the
economy. The outcome of the 2018 elections, they say, hinges on how well the
Democrats manage that shift."
Such assessments aren't just impressionistic or anecdotal. A major poll has
just reached conclusions that indicate party leaders have been operating under
political illusions.
Conducted last week, the Harvard-Harris national poll found a big disconnect
between the Russia obsession of Democratic Party elites in Washington and
voters around the country.
The poll "reveals the risks inherent for the Democrats, who are hoping to
make big gains - or even win back the House - in 2018,"
The Hill
reported.
"The survey found that while 58 percent of voters said they're concerned that
Trump may have business dealings with Moscow, 73 percent said they're worried
that the ongoing investigations are preventing Congress from tackling issues
more vital to them."
The co-director of the Harvard-Harris poll, Mark Penn,
commented
on
the results: "While the voters have a keen interest in any Russian election
interference, they are concerned that the investigations have become a
distraction for the president and Congress that is hurting rather than helping
the country."
Such incoming data are sparking more outspoken dissent from House Democrats
who want to get re-elected as well as depose Republicans from majority power.
In short, if you don't want a GOP speaker of the House, wise up to the politics
at play across the country.
Vermont Congressman Peter Welch, a progressive Democrat, put it this way:
"We should be focused relentlessly on economic improvement [and] we should stay
away from just piling on the criticism of Trump, whether it's about Russia,
whether it's about Comey. Because that has its own independent dynamic, it's
going to happen on its own without us piling on."
Welch said, "We're much better off if we just do the hard work of coming up
with an agenda. Talking about Trump and Russia doesn't create an agenda."
Creating a compelling agenda would mean rejecting what has become the rote
reflex of Democratic Party leadership - keep hammering Trump as a Kremlin tool.
In a typical recent comment, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pounded away at
a talking point already so worn out that it has the appearance of a bent nail:
"What do the Russians have on Donald Trump?"
In contrast, another House Democrat, Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, said:
"If you see me treating Russia and criticisms of the president and things like
that as a secondary matter, it's because that's how my constituents feel about
it."
But ever since the election last November, Democratic congressional leaders
have been placing the party's bets heavily on the Russia horse. And it's now
pulling up lame.
Yes, a truly independent investigation is needed to probe charges that the
Russian government interfered with the U.S. election. And investigators should
also dig to find out if there's actual evidence that Trump or his campaign
operatives engaged in nefarious activities before or after the election. At the
same time, let's get a grip. The partisan grandstanding on Capitol Hill, by
leading Republicans and Democrats, hardly qualifies as "independent."
In the top strata of the national Democratic Party, and especially for the
Clinton wing of the party, blaming Russia has been of visceral importance. A
recent book about Hillary Clinton's latest presidential campaign - "Shattered,"
by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes - includes a revealing passage.
"Within 24 hours of her concession speech," the authors report, campaign
manager Robby Mook and campaign chair John Podesta "assembled her
communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the
election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up."
At that meeting, "they went over the script they would pitch to the press
and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument."
In early spring, the former communications director of the 2016 Clinton
presidential campaign, Jennifer Palmieri, summarized the post-election approach
in a Washington Post
opinion
piece
:
"If we make plain that what Russia has done is nothing less than an attack on
our republic, the public will be with us. And the more we talk about it, the
more they'll be with us."
Polling data now indicate how wrong such claims are.
Initially in lockstep this year, Democrats on Capitol Hill probably didn't
give it a second thought if they read my
article
published
by
The Hill
nearly six months ago under the headline "Democrats Are
Playing With Fire on Russia." At the outset, I warned that "the most cohesive
message from congressional Democrats is: blame Russia. The party leaders have
doubled down on an approach that got nowhere during the presidential campaign -
trying to tie the Kremlin around Donald Trump's neck."
And I added: "Still more interested in playing to the press gallery than
speaking directly to the economic distress of voters in the Rust Belt and
elsewhere who handed the presidency to Trump, top Democrats would much rather
scapegoat Vladimir Putin than scrutinize how they've lost touch with
working-class voters."
But my main emphasis in that January 9 article was that "the emerging
incendiary rhetoric against Russia is extremely dangerous. It could lead to a
military confrontation between two countries that each has thousands of nuclear
weapons."
I noted that "enthusiasm for banging the drum against Putin is fast becoming
a big part of the Democratic Party's public identity in 2017. And - insidiously
- that's apt to give the party a long-term political stake in further
demonizing the Russian government."
My article pointed out: "The reality is grim, and potentially catastrophic
beyond comprehension. By pushing to further polarize with the Kremlin,
congressional Democrats are increasing the chances of a military confrontation
with Russia."
Here's a question worth pondering: How much time do members of Congress
spend thinking about ways to reduce the risks of nuclear holocaust, compared to
how much time they spend thinking about getting re-elected?
In political terms,
The Hill
's June 24 news article headlined "Dems
Push Leaders to Talk Less About Russia" should be a wakeup call. Held in the
thrall of Russia-bashing incantations since early winter, some Democrats in
Congress have started to realize that they must break the spell. But they will
need help from constituents willing to bluntly
tell
them to snap out of it
.
If there is to be a human future on this planet, it will require
real
diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia
, the world's two nuclear-weapons
superpowers. Meanwhile - even if the nuclear threat from continuing to escalate
hostility toward Russia doesn't rank high on the list of Democrats' concerns on
Capitol Hill - maybe the prospects of failure in the elections next year will
compel a major change. It's time for the dangerous anti-Russia fever to break.
The "Russiagate" farce had its waterloo moment when three CNN faux
journalists were asked kindly to resign for being too faux even for the Clinton
News Network.
Yes, the Democrat politicians who have enough functioning brain cells to
actually go back to their districts and meet with their random constituents can
plainly see that the people want this BS to come to and end immediately if not
three months ago.
Thanks for the link – confirms what I've suspected for months.
If any of y'all have about 9 minutes to spare, this vid. is really
interesting (& damning).
Debates about whether the Democrat wing of the Property Party should
change its PR focus from trying to manufacture Russiaphobia to pretending to
care about the welfare of the working class are worse than debating about
how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's embarrassing to watch a
highly intelligent group of people like the NC readership engage in
discussions like this while ignoring the facts before them.
The US is not a democracy. Policies bear little or no correspondence to
the desires of the vast majority of citizens while being highly correlated
with the belief systems and self-interest of a tiny ruling class.
Elections are circuses organized for the distraction of the underclasses. They are never contested on the basis of fundamental issues
that determine the future of the country. Rather, they are pissing contests
between advertising agencies who employ all means at hand to temporarily
manipulate public opinion.
Regardless of which party wins, promises in party platforms are
meaningless the day after the election and have little correlation to
candidate behavior.
It follows that it matters little which candidate/figurehead is elected
since they are simply entertainment, while the country continues to be
governed by the banksters, war hawks, medical extortionists, and greedhead
trillionaires who own it.
NC has diligently documented the bankster fraud that characterized the
2007-2008 financial meltdown. Exactly how many of the perpetrators of this
massive theft went to prison?
The US has been at permanent war in the middle east for 20 years under
Democrat and Republican administrations, employing fabrication of events,
torture of prisoners, shock and awe bombing attacks, assassination by remote
control drones, false flag attacks, and proxy funding of Islamic terrorist
organizations. How many CIA torturers, generals, and politicians have been
held accountable for their lies and war crimes?
By "people who have been living in terror" I assume your mean
people who find themselves on the Trump banned country list? Unjust
and anti-humanitarian perhaps, but hardly equivalent to terrorism.
Terrorism is when your wedding party is bombed by a drone being
piloted by a computer operator half a world away because the cyber spy
satellites have detected too many cell phone conversations directed at
one of the guests. Terrorism is when a delusional religious
fundamentalist straps explosives to her body and blows herself up in a
crowded nightclub. And terrorism is when a government funds the
anti-human belief systems that lead to such mad acts.
The first and foremost action should be government funded
elections. Take the money out of politics. Open up ballot access.
Election day should be a national holiday. Paper ballots publicly
counted. Free electioneering on our public airwaves. Run off elections
so that the elected truly have a mandate. The malefactors of wealth
completely control the electoral process. Tall order but nothing else
can be accomplished unless we take back the electoral system,
foundation of democracy.
I find political strategy-speak such as "an adjustment in party
messaging" to be sickening. The Democrats still seem to be talking about
manipulating perception, rather than actually doing anything
fundamentally different.
That was absolutely Nancy Pelosi's line on CBS the other morning.
We're not doing anything wrong we're just not getting our message out
there. Delusional bought and paid for party hack. She has got to go.
Agree. Here's slight modification of one of you points:
Elections are circuses organized for the distraction of the underclasses.
They are never contested on the basis of fundamental issues
that determine the future of the country.
Rather, they are pissing
contests between advertising agencies who employ all means at hand to
temporarily manipulate public opinion
while maximizing their
revenue.
All largely true; however, there remains a large contingent of non-NC
readers (and traditional Democrat supporters) who remain unaware of most
of this and who need to be convinced. Many of these people are our
friends and relatives, and penetrating their illusions is essential if we
are ever to reform the Democrat party by starving its more problematic
members of voter support. The four points you mentioned, while largely
accepted by NC readers, remain very much to be demonstrated when talking
to these kind of people. We can't just lead with something like "Hillary
is a warmongering crony capitalist who sold out the working class a long
time ago." They will switch off if we do. We need to offer concrete,
real-world examples that demonstrate it, along with the necessary context
for them to understand the problem. If they follow along with the
arguments then they will eventually reach the conclusion on their own.
While this article may not be telling NC readers anything they don't
already know, it's a good example of a narrative that we can use in those
situations.
Trojan Horse. It's the Guardian(and CNN) saying: "we deal with faux news
the moment it happens. Look at how clean we are!" The entire MSM will jump
all over this and pretend they've cleaned house, fixed the one isolated
incident, therefore we can once again trust them to be the truth tellers
they are. A wonderful script for the Lefties and the pseudo-Left media, like
the Guardian. It's BS because they lie all the time about everything!
1. The Democratic establishment has vortexed the party's narrative energy
into hysteria about Russia (a state with a lower GDP than South Korea). It
is starkly obvious that were it not for this hysteria insurgent narratives
of the type promoted by Bernie Sanders would rapidly dominate the party's
base and its relationship with the public. Without the "We didn't
lose–Russia won" narrative the party's elite and those who exist under its
patronage would be purged for being electorally incompetent and
ideologically passé. The collapse of the Democratic vote over the last eight
years is at every level, city, state, Congressional and presidential. It
corresponds to the domination of Democratic decision making structures by a
professional, educated, urban service class and to the shocking decline in
health and longevity of white males, who together with their wives,
daughters, mothers, etc. comprise 63% of the US population (2010 census).
Unlike other industrialized countries US male real wages (all ethnic groups
combined) have not increased since 1973. In trying to stimulate engagement
of non-whites and women Democrats have aggressively promoted identity
politics. This short-term tactic has led to the inevitable strategic
catastrophe of the white and male super majorities responding by seeing
themselves as an unserviced political identity group. Consequently in
response to sotto-voce suggestions that Trump would service this group 53%
of all men voted for Trump, 53% of white women and 63% of white men (PEW
Research).
2. The Trump-Russia collusion narrative is a political dead end. Despite
vast resources, enormous incentives and a year of investigation, Democratic
senators who have seen the classified intelligence at the CIA such as
Senator Feinstein (as recently as March) are forced to admit that there is
no evidence of collusion
[
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BS5amEq7Fc
]. Without collusion, we are
left with the Democratic establishment blaming the public for being repelled
by the words of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party establishment. Is
it a problem that the public discovered what Hillary Clinton said to Goldman
Sachs and what party elites said about fixing the DNC primaries against
Bernie Sanders? A party elite that maintains that it is the "crime of the
century" for the public and their membership to discover how they behave and
what they believe invites scorn.
3. The Democrat establishment needs the support of the security sector
and media barons to push this diversionary conspiracy agenda, so they
ingratiate themselves with these two classes leading to further perceptions
that the Democrats act on behalf of an entrenched power elite. Eventually,
Trump or Pence will 'merge' with the security state leaving Democrats in a
vulnerable position having talked up two deeply unaccountable traditionally
Republican-aligned organizations, in particular, the CIA and the FBI, who
will be turned against them. Other than domestic diversion and geopolitical
destabilization the primary result of the Russian narrative is increased
influence and funding for the security sector which is primarily GOP owned
or aligned.
4. The twin result is to place the primary self-interest concerns of most
Americans, class competition, freedom from crime and ill health and the
empowerment of their children, into the shadows and project the Democrats as
close to DC and media elites. This has further cemented Trump's
anti-establishment positioning and fettered attacks on Trump's run away
embrace of robber barons, dictators and gravitas-free buffoons like the
CIA's Mike Pompeo.
5. GOP/Trump has open goals everywhere: broken promises, inequality,
economy, healthcare, militarization, Goldman Sachs, Saudi Arabia & cronyism,
but the Democrat establishment can't kick these goals since the Russian
collusion narrative has consumed all its energy and it is entangled with
many of the same groups behind Trump's policies.
6. The Democratic base should move to start a new party since the party
elite shows no signs that they will give up power. This can be done quickly
and cheaply as a result of the internet and databases of peoples' political
preferences. This reality is proven in practice with the rapid construction
of the Macron, Sanders and Trump campaigns from nothing. The existing
Democratic party may well have negative reputational capital, stimulating a
Macron-style clean slate approach. Regardless, in the face of such a threat,
the Democratic establishment will either concede control or, as in the case
of Macron, be eliminated by the new structure.
I agree with 6. The fact that the Dems reacted to their presidential loss
by immediately accusing their opponent of treason shows how low they have
sunk. Perhaps they thought they were justified in imitating Trump's own
shoot from the lip style but someone has to be the adult in the room.
Meanwhile the country's two leading newspapers turn themselves into social
media sites. The ruling class seems to be cracking up.
Suggested name for new third party: the Not Crazy party.
integer
June 27, 2017 at 5:16 am
Thanks for that!
Again and Again and Again:
"It corresponds to the domination of Democratic decision making structures
by a professional, educated, urban service class and to the shocking decline
in health and longevity of white males, who together with their wives,
daughters, mothers, etc. comprise 63% of the US population (2010 census).
Unlike other industrialized countries US male real wages (all ethnic
groups combined) have not increased since 1973.
In trying to
stimulate engagement of non-whites and women Democrats have aggressively
promoted identity politics. This short-term tactic has led to the inevitable
strategic catastrophe of the white and male super majorities responding by
seeing themselves as an unserviced political identity group. Consequently in
response to sotto-voce suggestions that Trump would service this group 53%
of all men voted for Trump, 53% of white women and 63% of white men (PEW
Research)."
Identity politics is basically a divide and rule strategy to keep
progressive candidates off the ballot, the real purpose of the Democratic
Party establishment. That is what they are being paid for.
The only way to create a new party of actual importance is for it to not
be originated from disenfranchised republicans or disenfranchised democrats,
lest it be branded as extreme by existing power structures, and be resigned
to a fate similar to the libertarian and green parties, which are spoilers
at best.
It would need to be a party that grows out of the moderate center. This
is doable, because will all the gerrymandering they are becoming the least
represented block of voters, that is compounded by the fact that in general
98% of the population are not represented by their representatives anyways.
The center is open to facts and reasonable arguments as to policy
solutions, such as single payer and a restructured health care industry.
That is the executable path to republican and or democrat obsolescence.
The first world has had enough neolib, pendulum has started moving the
other way. Macron shows the desperation to try something new without
embracing right wing LePen an option not available here, so revulsion to
neolib resulted in Trump..
Course, the something new macron is just neolib with a pretty face,
French will be disappointed, either the left will join forces next time or
French desperation will bring LE Pen to power.
Fully agree dems have hollowed themselves out enough to create a vacuum,
country desperate for third party. New media is displacing corp mouthpieces,
never been easier to start new. Still think take over greens, make
functional, because ballot access hard to get, particularly with dems
fighting tooth and nail. Come to think of it, maybe they're not completely
dysfunctional, they did manage to get on the ballot in most states, not
easy, and certainly dems didn't help, they hate the greens.
Dems 30, reps 30, indies 40.
Bernie heading progressive greens gets 1/3 dems, 1/6 reps, 3/4 indies? 45 in
three way race is landslide.
In response to point number six:
There are already significant legal barriers to the creation of a new
party. Both parties will probably gang up on any new party development too.
Secondly, Macron can't be compared to Trump/Sanders. He's just
neoliberalism's Potemkin village in France. Both Trump/Sanders aren't really
comparable as they both contained genuine political outsiders such as Bannon
in Trump's case. I wouldn't compare Melenchon to Sanders either. Melenchon
kinda seems like the Le Pen of the French left. By which I mean he would
govern as a authoritarian.
The Dims – because that's what these people truly are – will just assume
that they haven't put enough effort into "Russia" and go triple- or
quadruple-up on every failed candidate, strategy, platform, message,
consultant, focus-group and whatever else a sane leadership should by now have
been tarring, feathering and releasing the hounds upon.
Just imagine the staff meetings: 'We gotta be right eventually, because
Vince Lombardi said: "Winners never quit and quitters never win"' and politics
is exactly like football. "Ohhh How Deep. Surely advice like that is worth
paying 50 kUSD for".
+ for Dims. The Russia thing is irresistible because it's supposed to get
nationalistic rubes to turn against Trump while sucking up to the
military-industrial complex. And yet, it didn't work during the campaign
either.
'If you are constantly pounding the pudding, shrieking endlessly, and
hysterically so, about the evils of the PUTIN and his supposed
orange-coiffed minion, while refusing to look into a mirror !!! . You just
might be a DIMOCRAT !"
The fixation of Clintonites, or frustrated dems with russiagate is very
telling and well explained here. It strikes me how the russiagate has treated
so uncritically by the "liberal" press in Spain. Nobody, and I say nobody, has
even thougth twice about the political risks associated with the demonization
of Russia that coincides with Ukraine isues and natural gas supplies in Europe.
Interestingly Germans have recently agreed with Russia a new pipeline through
the Baltic sea and there is clamor against these agreement amongst other
European countries that do not benefit from the pipeline, and apparently the
clamor is leaded by the US (the supposedly pro Russian Trump government).
and the German journalists, print or TV were ready 2014 like their
colleges were1933, when Goebbels called . And no physical threat this time,
only probe of character.
And as the Germans since long have learnt to be eager to please their masters they did the trick
again, alas now, when they are the paragons of
success in the west.
But the president Donald, thank God, is disclosing all veils and Putin is
showing a
decent kind of leader on the planet.
Cheers from Bavaria's
So the bottom line is that Hillary, who wouldn't work for anything better
than ObamaCare, is ending up sacrificing ObamaCare itself, all because she got
in a powder about people not buying her messageless campaign? We are literally
a handful of days away from losing not only ObamaCare, but Medicaid as well,
and the Democratic establishment has no strategy except to worry that Bernie
Sanders might score a few points for merely repeating back to the party's base
what that base was already saying? Forty years of trying to create a "centrist"
third party is in shambles, and these people still believe they are entitled to
lead what little remains of the party of the working people.
No wonder we were supposed to worry about the Russians. It was the furthest
place they could find from where the problem really was.
As a side note, no one is mentioning the "progressive" bloggers and news
sites (Young Turks, Majority Report, I'm lookin' at ya) who jumped on this
bandwagon after showing support for Sanders, then switched to standard form to
oppose the "fascist" Trump. It says to me that, just like the more well-known
Democratic Party fronts who could have made an effort to show independence,
they are ultimately fronts, just more distantly positioned for maximum
believability. It all smells, and progressives need to examine their principles
before looking to these "saviors".
Even if "evidence" would appear after all this time, do we not suspect it
has been cooked in the truth-telling factories of the FBI, CIA, and NSA, all in
bed with right-wing warmongers who own both parties (not just Republicans –
sorry, integer)? If anything shows the necessity of party realignment (creating
new ones to replace existing), this idiocy is not just a brick in the wall, but
an entire edifice.
Even if "evidence" would appear after all this time, do we not
suspect it has been cooked in the truth-telling factories of the FBI, CIA,
and NSA, all in bed with right-wing warmongers who own both parties (
not
just Republicans – sorry, integer
)?
Disappointed to read this, as I have never made that claim.
Comment was to your saying the security establishment "which is
primarily GOP owned or aligned".
Both parties, in a sense, "own" it, and use segments of it to
advantage when necessary. But further, both the parties and agencies are
"owned" by the power of capital as it is currently operating, and this
power behind the throne makes the security and party establishment dance.
You and I are on the ground, trying to avoid the footwork.
It looks like the Fusion GPS Trump dossier, that is the basis for all of the
Russian collusion accusations, is getting ready to become even more of a major
embarrassment, hence all the talk about backing away from the current strategy.
Even Planned Parenthood hired this opposition research firm to get dirt on
right to lifers. Your tax dollars and donations at work.
Ahah! Most Americans don't learn foreign languages. This is irrefutable
proof of a fifth columnist element in America plotting against Moose and
Squirrel. Somebody tell the Hillary campaign!
If Hillary with her celebrity and money can't win, what does it say about
the potential future political dreams of the Dems who enthusiastically
supported her? Or even corporate gigs? What good is a Democrat who can't
deliver?
NBCNews has hired Greta, Megan Kelly, and now Hugh Hewitt. The NYT hired
a host of climate change deniers.
For the Clintonistas especially, why would anyone hire them again? It's
really no different on their part than the "OMG Nader" narrative. In an
election with voter suppression, misleading ballots, bizarre recounts, Joe
Lieberman, high youth non-Cuban Hispanic turnout for Shrub, Katherine
Harris, and the fantasy of simply winning Tennessee, who did Democrats
blame? A powerless figure in Nader.
This is one reason why russiagate is inevitable. Who wants to tell the donors that the Team D brain trust pissed away a
billion and a half, with nothing to show for it?
But if the election was somehow stolen (eeevil Russkies!) then it wasn't
really Team D's fault you see, and then
Problem is, anyone smart enough to earn that much dough is likely too
smart to fall for the Russia stole the election BS, which is why
Dumbocrats' fundraising has cratered.
The entire Russia-gate issue ignores/insults the voters the Democrats hope
to influence.
To some extent, the Democrats are telling the deplorable Trump voters, "The
Russians influenced you to vote for Trump, someone who you have been aware of
for many years, over the other well-known candidate Hillary Clinton"
The Trump voter is probably more than a little irritated to have their
voting actions viewed this way, they do not see themselves influenced by the
Russians and do not understand why the Russians COULD significantly influence
the election when the USA spends so much money on the CIA, FBI, NSA and US
military.
The USA is also widely viewed as attempting to influence elections overseas,
with none other than Senator Hillary Clinton recorded stating that 'We should
have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win' in a
Palestine election.
The entire Russia-gate issue ignores/insults the voters the Democrats
hope to influence.
To some extent, the Democrats are telling the deplorable Trump
voters, "The Russians influenced you to vote for Trump, someone who you have
been aware of for many years, over the other well-known candidate Hillary
Clinton"
I think this is not right. The Dems have no interest in the votes of the
deplorables. What only matters is the meme that HRC should have won. The
charitable interpretation is that DNC is still convinced that demographics
are in their favor (in the long run). So they do not have to diss their
corporate patrons and offer real help to real people; they just need to hold
out long enough for the demographics to kick in. The meme that HRC should
have won is a rationale for staying the course.
Of course, the uncharitable explanation is that they would rather lose
than change.
"As James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid" when running Bill
Clinton's Presidential campaign.
The Democrats need to see this is still good guidance."
Yes, it is. Unfortunately for the voters Bill Clinton and Obama and the Dem estab are neoliberals. Bill and O were neoliberals running in New Deal
clothing. The current Dem estab is neolib. A better "message" sans better
policies isn't any better than focusing on Russia, imo.
Please just go away, Hillary and Hillary clones.
When you think about it, increasing ever so slightly the risk of actual
nuclear war, damaging the Democratic party, and doing untold damage to
legitimate (hate to use the word anymore) "progressive" causes is more or less
the end-game of all this.
And all in service of, what? Vindicating the failures of the inane pundit
class? (God forbid) setting up Hillary 2020?
Shameful shit right there
Even on a purely political level, the whole Russiagate bullshit was doomed
to failure, methinks.
Gore Vidal (among others) used to point out that the dirty little secret of
America's anti-communist right was that they were actually
jealous
of
the brutal tactics the commies could use against their dissenters and secretly
– and in many cases, not so secretly – wished they could do the same thing
here. It wasn't that long ago that the right wing blog-o-sphere and certain wingnut writers were all swooning over Putin's manliness (as opposed to Obama's
alleged 'weakness') like a pack of horny schoolgirls. The dumb bastards were
composing mash notes to the butch Mr. Putin. It was embarrassing.
So if the Dem "leadership" was hoping to turn our own home-grown
reactionaries against Trump over being in bed with Putin, they should have
known better. We all know the right are hypocrites. Even if there
was
anything to Russiagate, they wouldn't care. And the rest of us wouldn't give a
shit, not if it meant ignoring every other problem that needs dealing with.
Since it's all a bunch of bullshit anyway
What if "RussiaGate" was only really intended to pressure Trump hard against
any diplomatic rapprochement with a country the Neocons have targeted?
Trump's foreign policy has been relentlessly steered into a direction the
Clintons always intended to take it. Ticking off the last countries on Israel's
'enemy list' as compiled by the PNAC creeps. Recall the statement of Col.
Wilkerson or one of those old guard people who wandered into an office in the
Pentagon to find that there was a list of countries to be destroyed, starting
with Iraq and ending finally with Iran. Syria and Libya were on it.
This whole thing is about a high level grand strategic plan that involves
destabilizing and overthrowing governments the US and Israel find annoying and
insufficiently obeisant. The ultimate goal will be breaking the Russian
Federation into a bunch of independent statelets. This isn't 'conspiracy
theory' – it's what Brzezinski advocated and aligns neatly with the needs of
the military-industrial-financial complex and its obsession with total control
over world energy supplies as a lever for domination.
Assad is really secondary to the main goals of:
Getting the Russian naval presence out of the Mediterranean (note that Nuland -another PNAC operative- leverages unhappiness with the corruption in
Ukraine to install a fascistic government that would certainly have seized the
Russian naval assets at Sevastopol had Russia not seized the Crimea.
Turning Isreal's neighbors into a collection Mad Max style bantu-stans that
can be manipulated easily by Saudi -which is ironically Israel's ally.
Controlling energy transit and access points.
Again, I'm not saying anything that isn't in the record.
Per Clark, "He said: "Sir, it's worse than that. He said – he pulled up a
piece of paper off his desk – he said: "I just got this memo from the
Secretary of Defense's office. It says we're going to attack and destroy the
governments in 7 countries in five years – we're going to start with Iraq,
and then we're going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and
Iran.""
It was all supposed to occur within 5 years, so by 2008 the dream would
have been accomplished.
But maybe the neocons haven't given up, not installing HRC was a downer,
but maybe Trump can be pulled into line..
Cold, you bring up a topic often ignored that I find highly credible. The
Deep State with all its power to manufacture information and create chaos
has a long-standing interest in maintaining Russiaphobia. The Soviet Union
was certainly the best enemy they have ever known. Without it trillions of
dollars of armaments would have never been sold and billions of dollars of
spy agency bureaucracies never have been funded.
The real power centers in the US are the bankster cabal, robber baron
capitalists, medical extortionists, and the Homeland Insecurity war hawks.
The first three have nothing to fear from a Trump presidency– indeed they
probably will fare better than if the Clinton Crime Syndicate had triumphed.
However (to the extent that he actually stands for anything) Trump's goal of
defusing tensions with Russia and doing oil deals with them is a direct
threat to the War Hawks, and more than sufficient reason to cut him off at
the knees
You do fall into the trap of repeating Deep State propaganda though.
Russia did not seize Crimea. Crimea has been part of the Russian sphere of
influence for generations. It probably is as much Russian as Texas is
American. It's temporary incorporation into Ukraine when the Soviet Union
fractured probably had as much to do with Khrushchev being Ukrainian as it
had to do with creating the best fit. And when the choice was put before a
popular referendum in 2014, 83% of the population turned out to vote and
96.77% voted to join the Russian Federation. Try getting that kind of turn
out and consensus in an American election! And even if there was plenty of
arm twisting behind the scenes, its hard to believe that the result didn't
represent the actual choice of the citizens.
Re Crimea – you're correct of course. The Texas analogy is pretty
good. There was no distinction between Russians and Ukrainians during the
time of the Czars anyway. The territory used to be controlled by the
Hellenes and then the Byzantines. The Germans wanted to annex it as part
of their war goals in ww2
"... "They're trying to figure out how they're going to make the mortgage payment, how they're going to pay for their kids to go to college, what their energy bill looks like ." ..."
But rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district
voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and
the cost of education and healthcare.
In the wake of a string of special-election defeats, an increasing number of Democrats are
calling for an adjustment in party messaging, one that swings the focus from Russia to the economy.
The outcome of the 2018 elections, they say, hinges on how well the Democrats manage that shift.
"We can't just talk about Russia because people back in Ohio aren't really talking that
much about Russia, about Putin, about Michael Flynn," Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) told MSNBC Thursday.
"They're trying to figure out how they're going to make the mortgage payment, how they're going
to pay for their kids to go to college, what their energy bill looks like .
####
Reality bites? There are only a finite amount of resources available and the more spend on
Russia bashing means less on domestic issues that people actually vote on, not foreign policy.
We'll see, but even seguing to blaming Obama for 'not doing anything about Russian hacking' doesn't
seem to cut it, though it does allow the Democrats to lightly step back without having to admit
that they are full of bs all along. It's the usual 'never admit you are wrong/lying', just change
the conversation and forget all that has gone before.
"They're trying to figure out how they're going to make the mortgage payment, how they're
going to pay for their kids to go to college, what their energy bill looks like ."
America has never been so well-off that there was not a significant demographic which was absorbed
with those worries. But the Democrats always act as if they had just discovered it through careful
research and lots of listening to the voters. Bullshit.
And the Republicans are no different – both go through these periods of soul-searching, resulting
in great enlightenment and epiphany, when it's really nothing more than "Our message is not resonating
with voters. They're pissed off with us. We must be doing something wrong. Until we find out what
it is, let's go with 'You talked – we listened. We hear you, and we feel your pain'"
"... Being in control of the losing party is still being in control: deals can be made, hands can be shaken, backs can be rubbed. A reformed progressive party means that the current elite lose their relevance, influence and power. And they will have none of that. ..."
"... "Change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class is left intact after a revolution against them." Dems have been running away from Henry Wallace (Roosevelt too) since way before my time. ..."
"... outside ..."
"... The Dems are never going to change unless challenged from outside the party. Sanders' Titanic analogy isn't particularly valid since the first class passengers in this case have their own private lifeboats. ..."
"... Pelosi, Schumer, Clinton, Hoyer. They are all old. In 5 years time, the whole Democratic party could change. There is a saying attributed to Max Planck, "Science advances one funeral at a time.", I suggest the same applies to politics. ..."
"... I'm not sure how you look at the last election cycle and conclude that the 'Democrat' party is even remotely capable of reform from within. For all of Mr. Sanders laudable goals, I think he is still suffering from the delusion that enough people in the party have the courage and moral conviction to do the right thing rather than looking out for their own skin. The money suggests otherwise. ..."
"... These closet elitists espouse popular progressive policies on their face, but when push comes to shove they will happily throw a few people under the bus if it means they won't have to wait in line for their morning latte at Starbucks. ..."
"... Freud, referring to nationalism. called it "the narcissism of superficial differences." It seems to apply very well here, too. ..."
"... Fascinating stuff really, how in America Socialism=USSR=Stalin=Terrorism=Obama. Reminds me of that excellent wikileaks document talking about how they are content to have erased civics and worked to create a clueless population ..."
The quote in the title of this piece is from
Bernie Sanders
, said in a recent interview with David Sirota. Here's just a
part (emphasis and paragraphing mine):
Sirota:
The Democratic Party leadership has lost the White House,
Congress, 1,000 state legislative seats and many governorships. Why is the
party still run by the same group of people who delivered that electoral
record?
Sanders:
Because there are people who, as I often say,
would
rather have first class seats going down with the Titanic, rather than
change the course of the ship
. There are people who have spent their
entire lives in the Democratic Party, there are people who've invested a
whole lot of money into the Democratic Party,
they think the Democratic
Party belongs to them
. You know, they own a home, they may own a boat,
they may own the Democratic Party.
I mean, that's just the way people are, and I think there is reluctance
on some, not all, by the way - I mean, I ran around this country and I met
with the Democratic Party leaders in almost every state in the country. Some
of them made it very clear they did not want to open the door to working
people, they did not want to open to door to young people. They wanted to
maintain the status quo.
On the other hand, I will tell you, there are party leaders around the
country that said, "You know what, Bernie? There's a lot of young people out
there who want to get involved. We think that's a great idea, and we want
them involved."
Those who said "You know what, Bernie? There's a lot of young people out
there who want to get involved. We think that's a great idea" - they don't run
the Party when it comes to its top layers of leadership. Not by a very long
shot.
For the Message to Change, the Leadership Must Change
So what's a progressive to do? It should be obvious. The Democratic Party
has to change its policy offering, from "You can't have what all of you want"
to "If the people want a better life, we will give it to them."
Yet this is not so easily done.
For the message to change, the leadership
must also change.
Which raises the critical question: How do we depose Chuck Schumer, Nancy
Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and the rest of their kind and make people like Bernie
Sanders and Jeff Merkley the Party leaders instead?
After all, if someone like Bernie Sanders isn't Senate Majority Leader, if a
Sanders-like politician (Ted Lieu perhaps) isn't Speaker of the House, what's
the point of electing more back-bench progressives, more "supporting cast"
players?
If there's no way to do that - and soon, given the ticking clock - we're
Sisphus pushing the same heavy bolder up the same high hill, year after year,
decade after decade, till we die or the game is finally truly over. 2018 is
around the bend. 2020 is coming.
Après ça, le déluge
. Not much time to
solve this one.
Completely filling the Second Class cabins on the Titanic with
our
people (that is, populating Congress with progressives who are nevertheless
kept from leadership and control) won't change what goes on in the Captain's
cabin and on the bridge.
Put more simply,
we need to control the Party
, or when the clock
truly runs out, all this effort will truly have been pointless. I'm not
fatalistic. I assume there's a way. So here's my first shot at an answer.
Elected Progressives Must Openly Rebel Against Their "Leaders"
In order for the revolution inside the Democratic Party to work, our elected
progressive congressional representatives senators, must work to depose Pelosi
and Schumer (etc.) and take power.
More - they must do it
visibly,
effectively and now
, in order to convince the 42% of voters that
someone
inside the Party is trying to knock these people out of the Captain's chair.
We voters and activists have our own challenges. This is the challenge for
the electeds we've already put in place. If our elected progressives don't do
this - or won't do this - "tick-tick-tick" says the world-historical clock on
the wall. And we can all go down together, steerage and First Class alike.
It's time to step up, elected progressives. It's also time to be
seen to
step up
. Read the Paul Craig Roberts quote at the top again. If the
Party's failed leaders aren't deposed, the revolution will have failed.
It's a moment for real courage, and moments of courage bring moments of
great fear. I understand that this kind of open rebellion, open public
confrontation, a palace coup in front of the TV cameras, is frightening.
It's also necessary.
My ask: If you agree, write to your favorite elected progressive and say so.
No more gravy train for Democratic elites. Meat and potatoes for voters
instead.
Complete the Sanders revolution by changing House and Senate
leadership - now.
I know this puts some very good people on the spot. But maybe that's a
feature, yes?
Though I believe climate change is well past the point that it can be
mitigated, the attempt to depose the corporate democrats is a noble enough
endeavor.
Stephen Jaffe is running against Nancy Pelosi, a very thoughtful and
progressive candidate.
I'm sure these guys could use any help anyone is willing to offer. I believe
they are both against PAC money, but they can accept donations through actblue.
Yeah but so we have two
white men
running against women, and on
top of that if my google is correct Jaffe is > 70yrs old?
No disrespect to the quality of the candidates, but . seems like more
wheel spinning. Like I keep saying, I don't trust Tulsi as far as I can
throw my gas guzzler, but she has the kind of profile we need.
Yes, she does. But she's from Hawai'i, and a 50 state strategy is
needed. Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein are both Californians, and
they're a couple of phonies. Despite the difficulties, any progressive
Democrats who oppose them in the primaries deserve to be seriously
considered for support. Here are some more web sites for these
candidates:
I love the spike in 2007 from Dems to Independents. That would be about the
time Pelosi said "impeachment is off the table." They came back to vote for
Obama and have been cratering ever since. And Pelosi is still there. But the
problem is: the leadership has not been developing any new leaders. Pelosi is a
disaster but whoever might replace could easily be worse.
I shake my head in wonder at how 'middle America" seems to have been
suckered by Trump, and continues to vote against its self-interest. Yet I
see a comment with a 'conditional but(t) about Pelosi, and I think, "Well,
that is just as inane?"
We need to dump BOTH sides of the same neocon , self-interested corrupt
to the core coin, BOTH parties, and completely re-tool.
The collective 'we' must come up with a simple platform, over 300 new
candidates for congress, as many candidates as there are for the upcoming
Senate seats, in the next 18 months. Tall order, but, it really is up to
'us'. We 'the people'.
The platform that would rally the votes, or a Constitutional convention
and re-work that would satiate the broad center of America is daunting if
even possible.
I have trotted out some ideas, and they just don't resonate with closest
like-minded friends, so how am I going to gain traction with folks that are
of a deeper opposite philosophical perspective?
– Single payor, one system, NOT insurance, but care: same one for
congress, the president, the military, and lowly tax mules like me
– No-deduction, simplified flat-rate income tax with four tiers, 5% 12% 20%
top rate 40%- you tell me where we draw the gross income lines between the %
rates
-Tax return has taxpayer- directed check boxes in front of a simplified
matrix of 'government' , where individuals choose where they want their
money to go. Initial 10 year period of a declining sliding scale- 90% goes
general fund first year, 80% 2nd year, and so on so that by year 10 each
taxpayor only gives 10% to the general fund, 90% is taxpayor-directed
(direct democracy?) Allows lead time for the government to see the direction
the nation, and not the elected officials, want to see their money go
(infrastructure? Bombs and depleted uranium bullets destined for distant
shores and brown people? National Parks and monuments? Starving disabled
widows and children? Public universities and Community College/ Trade
Schools?
-Currency tied to BTU/ energy– value of BTUs based on full-life cycle costs-
including carbon or waste management externalities (Coal, oil/gas, nukes,
hydro) analyzed energy units– incentivize individuals to print their own
money with rooftop solar, wind, conservation, etc ( a new Gold standard
:This is where all the displaced accountants and insurance/ medical staff
can go after the tax code is simplified )
-Reintroduce The Draft, with mandatory service to include civilian work
corps, get parents involved in directing our elected 'reps' to ponder the
slelf licking ice cream cone of perpetual war
I'm sure I am missing many things but boy, between Trump. Pelosi,
McConnell, Schumer, Ryan, Gianforte, we are according to my values and
preferences headed in a 180 degree wrong direction!
Honestly, at this point, every single vote cast in the presidential
election could be argued as being "against one's best interests". This
hackneyed phrase needs to subsume under real qualitative analysis.
it's going to be against one's self interest in all likelihood as
the system one lives in is against most of our self-interest
(including our corrupt money drenched political system). Some votes
can at best be damage control, which I suppose is in one's self
interest to a degree, but only to a degree.
This entire discussion is based upon the false premise that there
are two political parties in the United States. Objectively there is
only one party- the War Party, Empire Party, Kleptocracy Party- call
it whatever you wish. Within it are two factions with slightly
different players and ownership, but both are totally unrepresentative
of the real interests of 99.99% of the citizens.
From the standpoint of the commoners, the two parties are similar to
football teams where fan support is based upon social conformity and
quasi-religious delusion. Loyalty is fostered by staging huge circuses
where the two contestants compete to see which one can fabricate the
most appealing set of lies which they never intend to try to
implement.
"Change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class is left intact
after a revolution against them" The idea that one of these "political
parties" can be captured and transformed into something other than its
very essence is ludicrous. What exactly does the displaced ruling
class (not being) left intact mean? Nancy Pelosi finally succumbing to
old age? Pelosi, Obama, or Trump are hardly the ruling class- merely
its' hired servants who can be replaced. Having the ruling class
overthrown is more likely to mean the Buffets, Bezos', and Dimons of
the world thrown into a maximum security cell In Guantanamo or burned
at the stake than a mere shuffling of political actors.
And Gaius, what basis do you have for calling Trump the worst
presidential candidate in modern history? In order to achieve that
honor he will have to outperform Obama, he of the silver tongue who
ruled for 8 years as a "progressive" while overseeing the destruction
of the middle class, enabling the financialiization of the economy and
the greatest transfer of wealth in history, and becoming the world's
most prolific assassin using a fleet of remote controlled drones. Or
be more evil than George Bush, who sat in the back row of an
elementary classroom while Dick Cheney stage managed the false flag
attack upon New York and the Pentagon and used that to turn the
country into a Homeland Insecurity police state. Granted, Trump is
trying hard to be even more destructive than his predecessors, but he
hasn't yet succeeded.
You effectively echo my thoughts, Mr Horse. The children of the
American Revolution are afraid to revolt perhaps they fear they
will be demoted to economy class on the Titanic if they rebel?
Missing 2 big ones:
1. MONEY IS NOT SPEECH, and shall be subject to regulation by legislation
and/or administrative rules;
2. Corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE and have absolutely ZERO inherent rights.
Any rights assigned to corporations by legislation shall be subordinate
to those of living beings.
The U.S. Constitution IS ONE F'D UP DOCUMENT, that makes things so
hard to change.
But really since it seems this requires an amendment to change
these things, and that is nearly impossible to achieve (well we
haven't had a new amendment in 45 years unless you count congressional
pay – yea approaching near half a century without one), it does just
underscore what a screwed up political construct we live under.
I've always liked Gavin Bryars but just read the above is on Tom Waits' top
ten list of music favorites. So here's something he did with Bryars, also part
of the sinking of the Titanic:
[ Long laundry list horror show of Obama/Clinton bundlers lobbying to
advance Trump agenda. At the end:]
The Intercept spoke to several progressive activists who
expressed outrage that leading Democratic Party officials are now
advancing the Trump agenda, but were reluctant to comment on the
record, for fear of angering powerful Democrats. But a few activists,
like Democracy Sping's Newkirk, decided to speak on the record.
Becky Bond, an activist and former Bernie Sanders adviser who also
spoke out, said, "When Democratic insiders team up with Comcast and
the private prison industry, they make it pretty difficult to see how
the party can recruit relationships with the voters it needs to bring
back into the fold."
"Destroying the internet and maximizing the profitability of mass
incarceration," she added, "is not what I would call a winning
strategy for Democrats who want to take back power in 2018."
If the DNC wanted input from granola crunchers, they would ask for it.
Or, rather, have Blue State Digital ask for it and bill the DNC six
figures.
The doctor has correctly diagnosed the disease, but there is no cure; the
prognosis is terminal. The D party are American to the core: grifting,
hustling, murdering, stealing, tech-douchebaggery, vagina-hatted buffoonery,
egotistical, self-obsessed anti-social psychopathic angry drunks of selfish
parents. I.e, all-American.
"By my count, with the Georgia election Democrats have just blown their
fifth chance in a row to make a new first impression"
Direct and simple. Publius has it right, like Hillel:
"There was an incident involving a Gentile who came before Shammai and said
to him: 'Convert me to Judaism on condition that you will teach me the entire
Torah while I stand on one foot.' Shammai pushed the man away with the building
rod he was holding. Undeterred, the man then came before Hillel with the same
request. Hillel said to him, 'That which is hateful unto you, do not do unto
your neighbor. This is the whole Torah, all the rest is commentary.'" (
Shabbat
31a)
Imagine this scenario with a fast-food worker, a coal miner, an adjunct
professor, a docks trucker. (Evidently Ossoff didn't imagine this, as reports
surface that he didn't campaign for these kind of voters.)
Do not exploit. Single-payer. Debt relief. Free tuition. It's not going to
be easy, but there's no need for fear.
As much as I would like to see a viable third party that owes nothing to the
POS legacy Dems, it does seem like the more likely scenario is a takeover of
the entire party apparatus and leadership.
Actually, the line is by Nobel Laureate, Bob Dylan, from "All Along the
Watchtower." which was, importantly, preceded by the line, "There's no
reason to talk softly now."
"Change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class is left intact
after a revolution against them .
I don't even detect this as a sincere goal among progressives/demos
which is yet another reason I'm not d partying.
If anyone takes over the party without changing nearly every process then
they are just seeking the same results by new faces.
Binding platform/policy established and maintained by as many
people/votes as possible. And this should be done by nearly anyone but
candidates/office holders. Officeholders should represent with instructions
much like a jurist.
True party membership.
No more caucus. Individual private votes on paper ballots for all party
processes. All off which must be counted immediately. Votes should be
scheduled far in advance, with no last minute changes to questions/issues as
we witnessed when given glimpses of inner party shenanigans.
Transparent, real time monitoring of all incoming and outgoing funds.
Down to the office pencils and after hours beers if on party or contracted
dimes.
Otherwise it's a private anti-democratic exclusionary party and you ain't
in it.
Being in control of the losing party is still being in control: deals can be
made, hands can be shaken, backs can be rubbed. A reformed progressive party
means that the current elite lose their relevance, influence and power. And
they will have none of that.
"Change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class is left intact after a
revolution against them."
Dems have been running away from Henry Wallace (Roosevelt too) since way before
my time.
Michael Hudson said this back on this site in March:
"It seems that only a new party can achieve these aims. At the time these
essays are going to press, Sanders has committed himself to working within the
Democratic Party. But that stance is based on his assumption that somehow he
can recruit enough activists to take over the party from Its Donor Class.
I suspect he will fail. In any case, it is easier to begin afresh than to
try to re-design a party (or any institution) dominated by resistance to
change, and whose idea of economic growth is a pastiche of tax cuts and
deregulation. Both U.S. parties are committed to this neoliberal program – and
seek to blame foreign enemies for the fact that its effect is to continue
squeezing living standards and bloating the financial sector."
Further I find it hard to conclude that the Democratic party is salvagable
reading the post here. They have proven time and time again where their
interest lie.
Unless there is a mutiny on the horizon for the democrats, maybe it is
better to abandon ship!
Donor money attracts the status seekers pushing for the status quo,
guaranteeing low voter turnout. Leaders probably love it when the dissenters
just give up and become even more individualistic.
A new party needs to get started promoting:
– pension protections
– universal healthcare
– affordable post secondary education
Interesting how Macron managed to recruit enough members of parliament
to make his EM party viable – just that easily he ousted and replaced
people. I thought it was all too smooth. Here it's a cat fight all the
way. And in the end party politics gets corroded anyway. I'm thinking a
party is secondary to policy, because it is always shifting. Whereas some
bedrock policy, regardless of which "party" might be marching for it, can
survive all the ups and downs of sack-of-potato politics. What we need is
a movement that demands human rights. A constitutional convention would
just be another cat fight – we need to start demanding the basics, as you
list them and maybe a few more like a jobs guarantee program – the right
to work for a living wage.
Human rights are too nebulous: one could see walking down the
street holding a gun a god given right while the other sees being able
to walk in a gun free city
a god given right.
Job guarantees are just as nebulous. Instead of offering job
guarantees, you'd have to guarantee the creation of specific jobs:
cleaning polluted areas, universal daycare, research into X, etc.
I don't think you can compare the situ with the Dems to Macron's
feeble sweep up. He's a Globalist banker construct, a cutout. Obama v
2.0 a la Français. IMHO, of course.
Thank you. The Dems are never going to change unless challenged from
outside
the party. Sanders' Titanic analogy isn't particularly valid
since the first class passengers in this case have their own private
lifeboats. Of course you can get melodramatic and claim the fate of the
world is at stake and therefore the planet itself is the Titanic due to AGW
but that's a problem much bigger than political parties and changing one for
the other isn't likely to make much of a difference.
Since the article brings up Walmart and Amazon perhaps they could serve
as better analogies. They aren't really monopolies of course since they fear
competition including each other and that may be all they fear. I see this
in my own town as new competitors move in and Walmart cleans up its stores,
offers new services etc.
So Michael Hudson had it right. Sanders would have made far more of a
difference if he had started a third party rather than sheepdogging for the
Dems. The barriers are huge and designed to be so but the people running the
Dem party are not going to step aside for our convenience. It's the duopoly
system itself that needs to be overturned and not this perpetual
suggestion–that we've been hearing forever–that the Dems somehow reform
themselves. Their idea of reform is to bring on somebody like Obama to fix
the p.r.
>Sanders would have made far more of a difference if he had started a
third party
Not sure I agree with this. Now you can possibly convince me that he
should, but I feel strongly that the initial attack right in the belly of
the beast was necessary. Now everybody's heard of him, know who he is.
He's on the TeeVee, he brings them eyeballs.
If he started a third party he would have just been ignored in the
media, and the media is all.
He could have started a third party with the justification that the
DNC sabotaged him. We'll never know what would have been the outcome
in 2016, but since I see Bernie as a "first pancake" (don't eat it but
it's necessary to get things going) breaking with the Dem. Party would
have been important on several levels.
You are absolutely correct - as a third party candidate, Sanders
would have received even less media coverage than he did get from the
mainstream media. I think he would have done better than the Greens,
but he still would have lost badly. One of the major lessons of 2016
is that the deck is heavily stacked against third parties in the
United States; neither the Greens nor the Libertarians
in
combination
could muster 5% of the Presidential vote. To
ignore that lesson would be tragic.
In a 4-way election for President of the United States today,
06/10/16, with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders,
and Gary Johnson all candidates on the ballot, Trump defeats
Clinton 35% to 32%, with Sanders at 18% and Johnson at 4%,
according to SurveyUSA research conducted for The Guardian. Of
those who vote for Sanders if his name is on the ballot, 73% say
theirs is a vote "for" Sanders, 19% say theirs is a vote
"against" Trump, and 7% say theirs is a vote "against" Clinton.
In a 4-way election for President with Sanders' name not on
the ballot, Clinton defeats Trump 39% to 36%, with Johnson at 6%
and Jill Stein at 4%. 5% of all voters tell SurveyUSA they would
"stay home and not vote" in this ballot constellation. Of those
who vote for Sanders when Sanders' name appears on the ballot,
13% say they will stay home if Sanders name is not on the
ballot, 41% vote for Clinton, 15% vote for Johnson, 11% vote for
Stein, and 7% defect to Trump.
I can't help but think that as Sanders got to put his message
out at the debates, when most voters are just starting to tune in,
and then with comey and pussy grabbing there would be a significant
shift to the only not insane candidate with a shot. That is if the
media didn't go ape shit on him for 'handing the election to trump'
as soon as he decided to go 3rd party. That is a big IF, but now I
wonder how much of an effect that would have had with how much
everyone loves the media ..
The Dems are never going to change unless challenged from outside
the party.
Sanders' Titanic analogy isn't particularly valid since the first
class passengers in this case have their own private lifeboats.
To your point the first, it is not an either-or situation. And think
how effective it would be if the Dem Party leadership was challenged from
*both* inside and outside!
To your point the second, the *very* first class passengers feel
assured that they have lifeboats (and they could be wrong), but the
hangers on? Not really. They have not adequately prepared, they are as
few paychecks from disaster as the rest of us are, they are riding on
their employers' ticket, and that is why they are hanging on to the
"donor class" like grim death. The actual "donor class" doesn't pull the
levers of power, they have staff to do that. It is the staff that we are
after.
Pelosi, Schumer, Clinton, Hoyer. They are all old. In 5 years time, the
whole Democratic party could change. There is a saying attributed to Max
Planck, "Science advances one funeral at a time.", I suggest the same
applies to politics.
The history of third parties in the U.S. is not encouraging. Much as I
respect Michael Hudson's writings on economics I tend to adhere to the
writings of G. William Domhoff for analysis of power.
[ http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/class_domination.html ] From the
section "The Power Elite and Government":
" there can be only two main parties due to the structure of the
government and the nature of the electoral rules."
"The fact that Americans select a president instead of a parliament, and
elect legislators from "single-member" geographical areas (states for the
Senate, districts for the House) leads to a two-party system because in
these "winner-take-all" elections a vote for a third party is a vote for the
person's least desired choice. A vote for a very liberal party instead of
the Democrats, for example, actually helps the Republicans."
This last election cycle the Democratic Party too plainly exposed its
empty hull within. It appears vulnerable to take over by mutiny or pirates
from within.
Abandoning ship? - That sounds like a good way to drown. Neither of the
main alternative parties show promise and riding the currents of the present
seas will not carry us to a new island home.
The current situation is an echo of the post-Civil-War elections when the
Farmers' Alliance and Peoples' Party actually elected officials from local
to Federal. They lost, ultimately, to J.P.Morgan and his interests, but
sparked genuine change (a central bank, among other things).
I'm not sure how you look at the last election cycle and conclude that the
'Democrat' party is even remotely capable of reform from within. For all of Mr.
Sanders laudable goals, I think he is still suffering from the delusion that
enough people in the party have the courage and moral conviction to do the
right thing rather than looking out for their own skin. The money suggests
otherwise.
I think it has been proven rather conclusively that political animals are
first and foremost self-serving creatures. That being said, it's probably time
people take the bull by the horns and proceed with forming a party that
actually represents their collective interests rather than "the system".
I have been involved in a discussion group with some highly intelligent
people (mostly PhD types here), and it is fascinating how many of them will
apologize for the destruction created by the previous administration's
policies. These people aren't necessarily wealthy, but they see themselves as
the "resistance" when they are part and parcel part of the problem.
They, like many in the 'Democrat' party, still cling to the Hamiltonian
principles that have alienated so much of the country. Obama was a perfect
example of how destructive this mindset can be. These closet elitists espouse
popular progressive policies on their face, but when push comes to shove they
will happily throw a few people under the bus if it means they won't have to
wait in line for their morning latte at Starbucks. These faux progressives see
themselves as the thinkers and leaders in modern society (much like Orwell's
Animal Farm pigs), and they have no intention of letting the peons without
proper pedigrees institute change which would level the playing field for a
more just and humane social and economic structure.
These closet elitists espouse popular progressive policies on their
face, but when push comes to shove they will happily throw a few people
under the bus if it means they won't have to wait in line for their morning
latte at Starbucks.
This is a perfect definition of a dem tribalist, in all but words they
are the exact same as those suburban republicans the dem party so
desperately longs for, but will never have for the simple reason they are
tribalists as well.
Dems are enraged enough to don little pink hats and march by the
millions, not because of gross inequality, injustice or global warming, but
because their moderate Republican lost.
They say they hate racists and racism, but they steadfastly support the
policies that institutionalize racism. Mass incarceration, economic
injustice, global war, the biggest drivers are just fine with them. The
racism they don't like is the crass kind displayed by individuals that they
see or here. Not really because it's racist but because it tarnishes their
virtue bubble.
Dems are moderate suburban Republicans who don't have stiff enough
constitutions to see, and own the effects of the policies they support. They
are delusional hypocrites.
The crooked leadership in the DimRat party are only interested in fooling
people so they can collect campaign contributions which they promptly lop
off for their personal gain. They don't if they win or lose an election as
long as they can fool people and loot campaign money. They'll swindle the
honest people who stay within the DimRat party and throw them away like used
rags. The people who desire to change the party from within are deluded.
Bernie might have meant well and spoken some truths but when push came to
shove, he ran back to Momma! Let's get with the program and support a third
pary like the Greens who already have registration in ove 40 states.
I washed my hands of the Democrat Party and national politics after the
primary, with the exception of a possible Constitutional convention, which I
see as the best chance we have to dismantle the American empire peaceably. I'll
still vote, as disruptively as I can, but I'm not investing my energy in
national issues only to be left a dry husk. Rather, that energy is being
focused on my garden, my community, and my family.
Your comment is appreciated, perhaps more than you realize. One can
feel quite alone in a decision like this when the massed crowd insists on
marching off the cliff and expects me to not only go along, but to agree
that it is a good idea. Thank you.
Yep. Many, many more. We should create a secret handshake to
identify one another in public. Or maybe we identify our comrades
by the dirt under their fingernails, or the beet left dangling from
their back pocket as a sign of solidarity.
I don't think you are alone at all. I have been planning similarly
for the past 3 years and know several other people who are doing the
same. We have paid off mortgages, pinched pennies and are living a
simple, anti-materialistic life with the end goal of moving to a
rural/small town where we can be largely self-sustaining, focus on our
communities and make due with a much smaller income.
That being said-I will continue to use my voice (in any way that I
can) to express my outrage at the current state of the USA .
Yes! And you can find us at the local community food and music
festivals across North America. National politics has become a
toxic playground for futile argument.
I'm not investing my energy in national issues only to be left a dry
husk. Rather, that energy is being focused on my garden, my community,
and my family.
Simply voting in the Democratic primary doesn't take a lot of energy.
Your family and your community could benefit if you do so (I'm not sure
about your garden).
I strongly second this view! Independents and the alienated [David, by
the lake you seem "alienated"] should register to one of the two parties
- preferably Democratic. Registering for a party means you can vote in
that party's primary and it means you might be called by pollsters and
receive requests for contributions - all offering great potential for
disrupting which are not otherwise available to Independents and the
alienated.
Not that I'm happy with what he does or plans to do, but isn't Trump
already doing a pretty good job of dismantling the American empire?
Given our circumstances, and the patterns of history, isn't it a delusion
for the anti-imperialist Left to think that the empire will shrink/dissolve
into something resembling its preferred model, whatever that is? In fact,
doesn't history show cronies/grifters/looters/shitheel relatives (think
Kushner) as the ones who inherit a failing empire, and get their skim from
the excess energy/capital generated by it collapse?
I've no patience at all for the "Putin did it" memes, but according to
the Caligula/Nero model of imperial decline, he'd have been wise to do
everything in his power to get Trump elected, since Donnie is likely to do
more to undermine the empire than anyone imaginable.
In the BBC series "I Claudius" - Claudius believed favoring Nero would
help bring a return of the Republic.
My chief hope from Trump was that he might draw down our Military and
stop a few of our ruinous wars. Instead he seems to have "outsourced"
control and direction of the Military to the Military. And Trump's
domestic agenda seems oriented toward reducing most of the population to
the condition of self-supporting slaves transferring what wealth they
still hold into the hands of the very wealthy. I suppose this is one way
to dismantle the American Empire.
Trump and the GOP are doing exactly what they do. This might be
dismantling (privatizing) society, but this is what they are and have
been so for many years. They are malevolent, but relatively honest about
it.
The Dems, however, speak through their hats. They are also malevolent,
but do not broadcast it. They are masters of scapegoating and
rationalization. They have been moving right since at least the Carter
Presidency (yes, Carter) and appear to covet the GOP so much that they
have effectively become the GOP of 5 to 10 years ago on a sliding scale.
Since every election is The Most Important EVAH ™, they have kept those
attempting to move the party back to the left unhappily in the party as
"they have nowhere else to go". But the results over the last 50 years
reveal the Dems as liars, and eventually the lessor of 2 evils strategy
(not a typo – they are for lease) stops working as people slowly realize
that the benefits of voting blue no matter who are minimal. Thus the
increase in independents on the above graph.
We have hit the point, globally IMO, where people have had enough.
"Vote GOP/fascist, and those empty-promise Dems/liberals will suffer with
us- and we get to keep our guns." Or don't vote at all. Schadenfreude is
a powerful motivator.
The Dems were the party of conservatives back in the 1800s (remember
slavery?), took a little detour in the 1930s, and have reverted to what
they were. The left (not the vichy-left that is left only relative to the
GOP, but the progressive left) has
no
representation in
US politics. The future for progressives lies outside of the Dem party –
let the aristocratic Dems and GOP become one party with 2 factions
discriminated by the amount of bible thumping they do.
Progressives need to start over very publicly, and the sooner the
better. They need to clearly, loudly describe what they will do, how they
intend to do it, and how it will benefit people. Corbyn and Sanders have
demonstrated that there is a significant fraction of the population that
will support this. It also uses the existing Schadenfreude as a political
tool.
\rant)
"For the message to change, the leadership must change."
For the Democratic-Party leadership to change, we have to get the new
message [we will give you a better life] through to them. They're not listening
to that new [old-school] message, because roughly half of us will vote for them
no matter what the message is [say, the alternative is worse, ya' know] and the
other half of us don't vote at all [read: what difference does it make?].
Let's address that last part first. We should be able to convince the people
that their votes would make a difference if only they'd cast them for at least
five consecutive election cycles. That might entail electing more of the same
sort of Democrats that we have today. But if voter participation on the
Democratic side of the choice increased sufficiently and persistently, then
even the worst of the Democrats would have to remove the tampons from their
ears to hear the people demanding a better life.
Be advised, though, that when the better life arrives–as it briefly did
following the GI Bill, The Interstate Highway Act, the expansion of the
suburbs, the era of urban decay and municipal budget crises wrought by bond
down-grading–a fair number of the people will become Republicans and the great
cycle of rent-seeking expropriation will begin anew.
The foolish Democrats continue to send our house "surveys" as part of their
begging. Usually I just throw them out or write a brief, nasty message in red
marker. This time, with the two that are awaiting my action, I'm going to add a
more detailed "get rid of Pelosi, Schumer, Hoyer etc." message.
Having worked in a Congressional office, I know that I'm not really
"communicating" with anyone, but perhaps if they get a few more of these
specific "suggestions," a light will go on in their lizard brains.
You are saying "socialist" like it's a bad thing. Ever gone for a drive?
To the library? You just dealt with two socialist entities, roads and
libraries. I could go on, but the hour is getting late.
Fascinating stuff really, how in America
Socialism=USSR=Stalin=Terrorism=Obama.
Reminds me of that excellent wikileaks document talking about how they
are content to have erased civics and worked to create a clueless
population
Bernie played it masterfully, disrupting the democrat party and exposing
the fraud, while maintaining an operational voice as a senator. The
aforementioned elites would like nothing more than seeing him go away.
The entrenched power within the Democrat Party in Washington lies with
the campaign committees (DNC, DCCC, DSCC) who are under the thumb of some of
the most sleazy, corrupt people in politics - Democrat
"consultants".
There will be no kind of change without decapitating the party of those
scumbags. They, in turn, owe their jobs to the members of Congress who are
elected by their caucus to "oversee" those campaign committees. DCCC is
headed by Pelosi apparatchiks Lujan and Israel. Israel, in particular, is a
poster child for the corrupt, antideluvian Democrat Party hack. Similar
dynamics apply in the Senate, although the caucus "leaders" are not always
what they appear to be on paper. (Feinstein has long been the "leader" of
the Senate Democrats, though she has never held the title.)
The Democrats are dead to me and have been since 2006 when they "took
impeachment off the table" and acquiesced to the "surge" in Iraq. Whatever
inclination I might have had to remain with them was shattered in the 2008
primaries when any candidate voicing actual progressive thoughts was shunted
aside by the party leadership and their media sycophants in favor of the two
most conservative, war mongering (take another look at the second Obama-McCain
debate if you think only Hellary was a war monger) , corporate/MIC lackeys.
It doesn't matter how many elections Pelosi, Schumer, et. al. lose or how
hollowed out their representation in Congress and state houses become, They
will continue to be supported by the mega-rich neoliberal establishment,
celebrities, tech elites and the coastal intelligentsia. Without an outside
challenge from the left nothing will change inside the party since they are
correct in their observation that the left "have nowhere else to go", well
except to stay home (like they did in 2016). This will result in more Trumps
(who are smarter and more competent than the original model) and then the Dems
will play the "unity" and "resistance" cards.
I agree with 99% of what you say but, if they continue to lose then they
will not be supported by the mega-rich etc.
The sad thing is we now have the Imperial Presidency, and I'd still
probably bet (lightly) against Trump in 2020 so the Dems will probably get
the Presidency again without Congress and the country will continue to spin
its wheels.
They have been losing for decades now and yet they
do
continue to be supported by the mega rich. That's not going to dry up any
time soon as those types do like to hedge their bets.
The Imperial Presidency didn't start in January. And I'll remind you
that statusquObama had a Democrat majority in the House and a
supermajority in the Senate when he took office. He had no need to
compromise with the other side and could have pushed through any truly
progressive reforms that he and the Democrats wanted to and yet the
wheels continued to spin. All that came of that was a pro-corporate
health insurance scam that is now on its last legs.
Please don't continue to labor under the delusion that if only they
controlled more branches of government things would be different. If they
actually wanted to help out the working class in this country they would
have done so already. That they'd rather lose than help the 'deplorables'
has become abundantly clear.
It's ALL one party with a scrum at the margins. St. Bernie stands atop the
burning dumpster, railing about the injustice of it all, while being consumed
by its flames. This is an Empire backed by a full-blown Police State. Nobody is
going anywhere.
You are now free to go about your business enjoying the benefits of our
consumer society. Thank you.
Democratic consultants are to politics as mutual fund managers are to Wall
Street: Put on fronts of intelligence, talent, and insight well beyond their
abilities, act like their expertise is crucial for success when their actual
track record is mixed at best, act like their much more important to the
process than they really are, and it doesn't matter if they win or lose, they
get their hefty fees regardless.
Reforming the so-called Democratic Party is impossible in my opinion. It's
torn between a corporate leadership (appeal progressives) and its regressive
fringes. Let it burn to the ground and make a new party, for true progressives
(am I going in the direction of a "no true Scotsman"?), who would represent the
interests of "We, the people".
Then you have the real radicals, BLM, AntiFa, and the
n
th wave
intersectional feminists, respectively crying about "systemic oppression",
"goddamn nazis everywhere", "the Patriarchy", and collectively: "fugg da
po-pos!". Yes, the Republicans also have their corporate leadership and
fringes, but actual nazis and delusional AnCaps seem a lot less vocal or
significant (at least from Europe) compared to any riot or the madness at the
Evergreen State College. Then again, this is coming from someone living in
Europe, so my perspective isn't very good. Still, I don't feel really good
about the self-proclaimed Leader of the Free World (which it actually used to
be) devolving further.
That's why as small donors, people need to starve the beast--no
contributions to the any DC-based organization (to culturally appropriate
Ronald Reagan).
Support local individuals. Even $20 spent on a losing well-chosen local
state rep. is better spent than $10 for the DNC.
I like the description of the Ossoff race as a Pyrrhic loss – so much
invested by Dems into a candidate with so little to offer, that the loss
looms larger than it would otherwise.
I'm for trying anything that might work, inside or outside the D Party. I
am convinced the rules of the game in the US make it almost impossible for a
3rd Party to succeed. But there is no permanent reason the D Party has to be
one of the two.
The problem/difficulty with taking over the D Party is not just the
handful of leaders in DC. By my count, there are maybe 20 truly
left-progressive Dems in the House and no more than 5 in the Senate (being
truly charitable to people like Warren). So changing the nature of D
representation in DC with require primary-ing the vast majority of current
DC Dems. So the question is, does it make more sense to try to do this in D
primaries and try to take over the D Party apparatus – no doubt against
virtually the entire existing apparatus – or to run a complete slate of 3rd
party candidates in Nov elections. I used to think the former strategy has a
much higher likelihood of success. Now I am not so sure.
One concept that may help here is "party system." We are in the sixth party
system of the U S of A. And it sure looks like we are opening the door to the
seventh party system. So ruling out "third parties" isn't a great idea: Both of
the political parties (D and R) are structures that are dry-rotted. One kick
may send either or both tumbling. In some respects, Trump won the nomination
because Republican voters perceived how corrupted the Republican party is. (He
may be the stereotypical spoiled American businessperson, but to Republican
voters, he was somehow more "real" and "new" than Romney, the well-scrubbed
spoiled Republican businessperson.)
The parties aren't permanent. Is anyone nostalgic for the Whigs? Should we
argue that there was no way to get rid of the American Party (the
Know-Nothings)?
Sanders: "Because there are people who, as I often say, would rather have
first class seats going down with the Titanic, rather than change the course of
the ship."
And then there are those propaganda-gulping people who think that someday
they too will get one of those 1st class berths if they just keep going along
with what the elite wants
I can't believe some of the people I meet who think that somehow that the
neoliberal game plan is going to make their lives better someday
Many here commenting upon G. P.'s post truly hope and wish for change (heard
this one before?), both within the Democratic Party and outside. In both cases,
the answers and suggestions given are very innocent.
To cleanse the entire nation of the influence of corporate cash, corrupted
lackeys, and warmongers is absolutely necessary to accomplish both of those
goals, and we often do not see this nor do we see any method to be used. How
can anyone have the slimmest belief that the moneyed interests, their toadies,
and the hired hands at DoD, State, the Fed, and NSA, FBI, CIA, etc. will go
peacefully into the night when we challenge their puppets within the twin
parties of death? Will they not double down on preserving this system that
promises so much to them? Have they not killed those opposing them in other
countries, as well as here in the good ol' USA? What do we do when we go to
phase two (sorry- a wannabe poet)?
I'd like to see a discussion based upon that reality, with backup plans to
initiate and defend a strategy that knows a "win" in one area of division of
this system guarantees nothing until total victory over the entire ball of wax
is accomplished. In short, we have no global ideology, no encompassing
My gut feeling is that the working poor know, deep in their bones, it was
never as simple as presented by radicals of the sixties or those of us who have
not thought this through to its conclusion. That is why they "oppose" such
ideas and presentations (and, partly, due to well-earned suspicion that some
ideas are meant to rope the poor into a losing proposition, all the better to
hang them out to dry, eh?).
Plan piecemeal, if you must, but "act locally, think globally" means more
than just a surrender to local politics and school board elections. It can also
mean your whole philosophical outlook and approach to the question " after
this, what do we do?".
"around here" it's long been known that the reality is the dems can't win
a school board election. You don't need a gut feeling. Their demise is as
certain as their inability to see it coming.
The sad truth is that history's lurches and spurts are usually the result
of great violence–wars, revolutions. The Russian revolution shaped the
history of the 20th century because the western oligarchs were so afraid
that would happen to them that they had–temporarily it seems–to make
concessions to the welfare state. Their other tactic was to try to destroy
the source of the infection. Hitler and those backing him really had
eliminating the Commies as their principal concern. Lots in the west were
hoping he'd do it and this carried on into the Cold War.
At any rate while waiting for the cataclysm we can at least nibble at the
edges and try to revive the Left to a degree. Sitting around worrying about
what's going on with the hopeless Dems probably isn't all that useful.
All true. But we are a young species still, and the world has changed
so much in the last 100 years that I'm not sure how much of what happened
before sets limits on what we can achieve going forward.
OTOH I certainly agree with Mike that electoral politics is just the
tip of the iceberg. OTO we won't really know what we are up against until
we have some electoral power. But, just as one example, I am not at all
convinced that the grunts in the military would back a soft (or hard)
coup against a left populist with a real strategy and political operation
to improve the lives of most people. (I do think most cops probably
would.) And it is still the case that corporations need customers to make
money – in both the 1910's and 1930's, there were important splits in the
world of big business that provided openings for left politics. One of
our biggest problems is that a huge proportion of the remaining
manufacturing in this country feeds the MIC and it will be hard to get
working people to oppose that.
I did my part for the Sanders revolution by voting for Trump, who campaigned
far to the left of Clinton. But I'm just a het white male brocialist, so what
do I know.
Just one quibble. I don't want us to be at cross purposes. We have a global
way of doing things – for lack of a better description it is "capitalism" but
it falls way short of replacing government – even tho' it has been trying to do
just that for a century. Government is basically a distribution system – the
more equitable the better – and we still rely on Government to deliver. That is
one side of the coin. And it is, so far, all about money. The other side of the
coin is the planet, which has been polluted and exploited almost beyond
recovery by a human population that is way too big and a blind faith in
capitalism and trade. We are already living a contradiction. And we need to fix
it quickly. In order for policies to do us any good they have to repair the
planet while they keep us all alive at some level of comfort. An angry
revolution that has all sides talking past each other won't help anybody. It
will just waste precious time. And I submit that politics is the art of talking
past each other. We need to get above it.
Gov't is more than just distribution – it also structures the whole
capitalist market system – there is no capitalism without limited liability,
bankruptcy, contract law, etc. None of that should be taken as given or
unchangeable.
"If there were only one man in the world, he would have a lot of
problems, but none of them would be legal ones. Add a second inhabitant,
and we have the possibility of conflict. Both of us try to pick the same
apple from the same branch. I track the deer I wounded only to find that
y ou have killed it, butchered it, and are in the process of cooking and
eating it.
The obvious solution is violence. It is not a very good solution; if
we employ it, our little world may shrink back down to one person, or
perhaps none. A better solution, one that all known human societies have
found, is a system of legal rules explicit or implicit, some reasonably
peaceful way of determining, when desires conflict, who gets to do what
and what happens if he doesn't "
David Friedman, "Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and
Why It Matters"
", unless one wishes to scale the mountain of deliberate, structural
impediments to forming a viable, 50-state third party."
Excuses, excuses. You'd rather scale the mountain of impediments to
reforming the "Democrat" party?
After many years of mountain climbing (figurative), and many, many
discussions with apologists for repeating what didn't work before, I've
concluded the real determinant is not a rational calculation implied by Gaius'
above quote; it's personality. Some people have a much lower tolerance for
betrayal, and a lower attachment to institutions, than others. Personally, I
walked away in disgust when Slick Willy was president and I realized he was
really a Republican – only worse, because of the betrayal. So did others.
Others don't react that way; instead, they stay attached to the institution
and hope to overturn its power structure. I think Bernie's extremely impressive
campaign demonstrated the essential futility of that approach. So did thousands
of Bernie supporters who turned around and joined the Green Party as soon as he
lost. (Oregon has other more-or-less leftwing parties, so I don't think we
caught them all.) The proportion changes over time because it depends on the
severity of the provocation; deliberately choosing the weaker candidate, and
cheating to do it, even in the face of a Trump candidacy, was a very severe
provocation.
OTOH, I'm beginning to wonder what it will take to finish the job; the total
self-immolation of the Dems – or maybe of the country? Just as individuals have
breaking points, so do populations; where is it? My worst fear, and I now
consider it quite likely, is that we shoot right past overturning the party
structure to outright violent insurrection. It's easy to joke about
torches-and-pitchforks, but I'm getting too old for that sort of thing, and the
human costs are truly forbidding.
Politicians, like most people, do difficult things for only two reasons.
Either they have to do them, or they really want to do them. No one does them
because they think it would be a fine idea if someone does them someday.
This means that any strategy like the one proposed in this article needs to
explain how we're going to convince our congress people that they have to
oppose their leaders, not that it's a good idea. When progressives are willing,
in sufficient numbers, to either vote for and support someone else or keep
their votes and support in their pockets will those politicians think that what
we want them to do this. Short of that, no amount of pleading or shaking our
fists is going to matter.
If enough progressives in each Democratically-controlled district are
willing to publicly state they'll withhold their votes and support until this
happens, it has a chance of happening. Otherwise, I don't see how it's going to
be any more of a priority than all the other things we want that aren't being
done.
I think most voters are very wary of the government's ability to deliver
anything in terms of actual services what they want is money from them in some
form or another.
People will vote Democrat again and then they will vote Republican but there
isn't going to be some sea change in the actual policies either way.
Disgusted "liberal". Am I even a "liberal" anymore? I loathe the I-word and the
J-word now with a purple passion. If I see an article from Wapo or NYT or any
of the other "msm", I don't read it. I stopped watching ANY tv, and exclusively
read those who didn't lie about Iraq 2003. What the hell AM I? I despise
Republicans, but the Dems didn't oppose their wars. Now I despise the Dems, and
the right-wingnuts are starting to make sense. Is this cognitive dissonance?
Bizzaro-world? I am one CONFUSED puppy.
Thank you PG
Thoughtful comment.
The Democrats are every bit as much on board with the
wars and the destruction of the working class as are the Republicans.
Where are the respectable liberals in this country?
I despise Democrats as you despise Republicans.
Now I despise them both. I have little loyalty for my government and do not
trust anything that they do.
"... Until elites stand down and stop the brutal squeeze , expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate the whole of the Neoliberal Era , there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently militarized "order" to entirely suppress it. ..."
"... Mes petits sous, mon petit cri de coeur. ..."
"... But the elite aren't going to stand down, whatever that might mean. The elite aren't really the "elite", they are owners and controllers of certain flows of economic activity. We need to call it what it is and actively organize against it. Publius's essay seems too passive at points, too passive voice. (Yes, it's a cry from the heart in a prophetic mode, and on that level, I'm with it.) ..."
"... American Psycho ..."
"... The college students I deal with have internalized a lot of this. In their minds, TINA is reality. Everything balances for the individual on a razor's edge of failure of will or knowledge or hacktivity. It's all personal, almost never collective - it's a failure toward parents or peers or, even more grandly, what success means in America. ..."
"... unions don't matter in our TINA. Corporations do. ..."
"... our system promotes specialists and disregards generalists this leads to a population of individualists who can't see the big picture. ..."
"... That social contract is hard to pin down and define – probably has different meanings to all of us, but you are right, it is breaking down. We no longer feel that our governments are working for us. ..."
"... Increasing population, decreasing resources, increasingly expensive remaining resources on a per unit basis, unresolved trashing of the environment and an political economy that forces people to do more with less all the time (productivity improvement is mandatory, not optional, to handle the exponential function) much pain will happen even if everyone is equal. ..."
"... "Social contract:" nice Enlightment construct, out of University by City. Not a real thing, just a very incomplete shorthand to attempt to fiddle the masses and give a name to meta-livability. ..."
"... Always with the "contract" meme, as if there are no more durable and substantive notions of how humans in small and large groups might organize and interact Or maybe the notion is the best that can be achieved? ..."
"... JTMcFee, you have provided the most important aspect to this mirage of 'social contract'. The "remedies" clearly available to lawless legislation rest outside the realm of a contract which has never existed. ..."
"... Unconscionable clauses are now separately initialed in an "I dare you to sue me" shaming gambit. Meanwhile the mythical Social Contract has been atomized into 7 1/2 billion personal contracts with unstated, shifting remedies wholly tied to the depths of pockets. ..."
"... Here in oh-so-individualistic Chicago, I have been noting the fraying for some time: It isn't just the massacres in the highly segregated black neighborhoods, some of which are now in terminal decline as the inhabitants, justifiably, flee. The typical Chicagoan wanders the streets connected to a phone, so as to avoid eye contact, all the while dressed in what look like castoffs. Meanwhile, Midwesterners, who tend to be heavy, are advertisements for the obesity epidemic: Yet obesity has a metaphorical meaning as the coat of lipids that a person wears to keep the world away. ..."
"... My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash: Think Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. ..."
"... The class war continues, and the upper class has won. As commenter relstprof notes, any kind of concerted action is now nearly impossible. Instead of the term "social contract," I might substitute "solidarity." Is there solidarity? No, solidarity was destroyed as a policy of the Reagan administration, as well as by fantasies that Americans are individualistic, and here we are, 40 years later, dealing with the rubble of the Obama administration and the Trump administration. ..."
"... The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the public space/environment as a shared, common good. Thus, streets, parks and public space might be soiled by litter that nobody cares to put away in trash bins properly, while simultaneously the interior of houses/apartments, and attached gardens if any, are kept meticulously clean. ..."
"... The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the public space/environment as a shared, common good. ..."
"... There *is* no public space anymore. Every public good, every public space is now fair game for commercial exploitation. ..."
"... The importance of the end of solidarity – that is, of the almost-murderous impulses by the upper classes to destroy any kind of solidarity. ..."
"... "Conditions will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement or relief." ..."
"... "Four Futures" ..."
"... Reminds me of that one quip I saw from a guy who, why he always had to have two pigs to eat up his garbage, said that if he had only one pig, it will eat only when it wants to, but if there were two pigs, each one would eat so the other pig won't get to it first. Our current economic system in a nutshell – pigs eating crap so deny it to others first. "Greed is good". ..."
"... Don't know that the two avenues Gaius mentioned are the only two roads our society can travel. In support of this view, I recall a visit to a secondary city in Russia for a few weeks in the early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Those were difficult times economically and psychologically for ordinary citizens of that country. Alcoholism was rampant, emotional illness and suicide rates among men of working age were high, mortality rates generally were rising sharply, and birth rates were falling. Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful and educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class, and the related emergence of organized criminal networks. There was also adequate food, and critical public infrastructure was maintained, keeping in mind this was shortly after the Chernobyl disaster. ..."
Yves here. I have been saying for some years that I did not think we would see a revolution, but
more and more individuals acting out violently. That's partly the result of how community and social
bonds have weakened as a result of neoliberalism but also because the officialdom has effective ways
of blocking protests. With the overwhelming majority of people using smartphones, they are constantly
surveilled. And the coordinated 17-city paramilitary crackdown on Occupy Wall Street shows how the
officialdom moved against non-violent protests. Police have gotten only more military surplus toys
since then, and crowd-dispersion technology like sound cannons only continues to advance. The only
way a rebellion could succeed would be for it to be truly mass scale (as in over a million people
in a single city) or by targeting crucial infrastructure.
By Gaius Publius
, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to
DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter
@Gaius_Publius ,
Tumblr and
Facebook . GP article archive
here . Originally published at
DownWithTyranny
"[T]he super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues
to grow. An
analysis of
2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion
in total wealth. As of
June 8,
2017 , the world's richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average,
each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people."
-Paul Buchheit,
Alternet
"Congressman Steve Scalise, Three Others Shot at Alexandria, Virginia, Baseball Field"
-NBC News,
June 14, 2017
"4 killed, including gunman, in shooting at UPS facility in San Francisco"
-ABC7News,
June 14, 2017
"Seriously? Another multiple shooting? So many guns. So many nut-bars. So many angry
nut-bars with guns."
-MarianneW via
Twitter
"We live in a world where "multiple dead" in San Francisco shooting can't cut through
the news of another shooting in the same day."
-SamT via
Twitter
"If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood, expect the victims to
put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty. I'm not arguing for social war; I'm
arguing for justice and peace."
-
Yours truly
When the social contract breaks from above, it breaks from below as well.
Until elites stand down and stop the
brutal squeeze , expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come
apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate
the whole of the
Neoliberal
Era , there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There
are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently
militarized "order" to entirely suppress it.
As with the climate, I'm concerned about the short term for sure - the storm that kills this year,
the hurricane that kills the next - but I'm also concerned about the longer term as well. If the
beatings
from "our betters" won't stop until our acceptance of their "serve the rich" policies improves,
the beatings will never stop, and both sides will take up the cudgel.
Then where will we be?
America's Most Abundant Manufactured Product May Be Pain
I look out the window and see more and more homeless people, noticeably more than last year and
the year before. And they're noticeably scruffier, less "kemp," if that makes sense to you (it does
if you live, as I do, in a community that includes a number of them as neighbors).
The squeeze hasn't let up, and those getting squeezed out of society have nowhere to drain to
but down - physically, economically, emotionally. The
Case-Deaton study speaks volumes to this point. The less fortunate economically are already dying
of drugs and despair. If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just
remotely maybe possible they'll also aim their anger out as well?
The pot isn't boiling yet - these shootings are random, individualized - but they seem to be piling
on top of each other. A hard-boiling, over-flowing pot may not be far behind. That's concerning as
well, much moreso than even the random horrid events we recoil at today.
Many More Ways Than One to Be a Denier
My comparison above to the climate problem was deliberate. It's not just the occasional storms
we see that matter. It's also that, seen over time, those storms are increasing, marking a trend
that matters even more. As with climate, the whole can indeed be greater than its parts. There's
more than one way in which to be a denier of change.
These are not just metaphors. The country is already in a
pre-revolutionary state ; that's one huge reason people chose Trump over Clinton, and would have
chosen Sanders over Trump. The Big Squeeze has to stop, or this will be just the beginning of a long
and painful path. We're on a track that nations we have watched - tightly "ordered" states, highly
chaotic ones - have trod already. While we look at them in pity, their example stares back at us.
But the elite aren't going to stand down, whatever that might mean. The elite aren't really
the "elite", they are owners and controllers of certain flows of economic activity. We need to
call it what it is and actively organize against it. Publius's essay seems too passive at points,
too passive voice. (Yes, it's a cry from the heart in a prophetic mode, and on that level, I'm
with it.)
"If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just remotely maybe possible
they'll also aim their anger out as well?"
Not necessarily. What Lacan called the "Big Other" is quite powerful. We internalize a lot
of socio-economic junk from our cultural inheritance, especially as it's been configured over
the last 40 years - our values, our body images, our criteria for judgment, our sense of what
material well-being consists, etc. Ellis's American Psycho is the great satire of our
time, and this time is not quite over yet. Dismemberment reigns.
The college students I deal with have internalized a lot of this. In their minds, TINA
is reality. Everything balances for the individual on a razor's edge of failure of will or knowledge
or hacktivity. It's all personal, almost never collective - it's a failure toward parents or peers
or, even more grandly, what success means in America.
The idea that agency could be a collective action of a union for a strike isn't even on the
horizon. And at the same time, these same students don't bat an eye at socialism. They're willing
to listen.
But unions don't matter in our TINA. Corporations do.
Most of the elite do not understand the money system. They do not understand how different
sectors have benefitted from policies and/or subsidies that increased the money flows into these.
So they think they deserve their money more than those who toiled in sectors with less support.
Furthermore, our system promotes specialists and disregards generalists this leads to a population
of individualists who can't see the big picture.
Thank you Gaius, a thoughtful post. That social contract is hard to pin down and define – probably
has different meanings to all of us, but you are right, it is breaking down. We no longer feel
that our governments are working for us.
Of tangential interest, Turnbull has just announced another gun amnesty targeting guns that
people no longer need and a tightening of some of the ownership laws.
One problem is the use of the term "social contract", implying that there is some kind of agreement
( = consensus) on what that is. I don't remember signing any "contract".
I fear for my friends, I fear for my family.
They do not know how ravenous the hounds behind nor ahead are. For myself? I imagine myself the same in a Mad Max world. It will be more clear, and perception shattering, to most whose lives allow the ignoring of
gradual chokeholds, be them political or economic, but those of us who struggle daily, yearly,
decadely with both, will only say Welcome to the party, pals.
Increasing population, decreasing resources, increasingly expensive remaining resources on
a per unit basis, unresolved trashing of the environment and an political economy that forces
people to do more with less all the time (productivity improvement is mandatory, not optional,
to handle the exponential function) much pain will happen even if everyone is equal.
Each person
does what is right in their own eyes, but the net effect is impoverishment and destruction. Life
is unfair, indeed. A social contract is a mutual suicide pact, whether you renegotiate it or not.
This is Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club, is we don't speak of Fight Club. Go to the gym,
toughen up, while you still can.
"Social contract:" nice Enlightment construct, out of University by City. Not a real thing,
just a very incomplete shorthand to attempt to fiddle the masses and give a name to meta-livability.
Always with the "contract" meme, as if there are no more durable and substantive notions of
how humans in small and large groups might organize and interact Or maybe the notion is the best
that can be achieved? Recalling that as my Contracts professor in law school emphasized over and
over, in "contracts" there are no rights in the absence of effective remedies. It being a Boston
law school, the notion was echoed in Torts, and in Commercial Paper and Sales and, tellingly,
in Constitutional Law and Federal Jurisdiction, and even in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure.
No remedy, no right. What remedies are there in "the system," for the "other halves" of the "social
contract," the "have-naught" halves?
When honest "remedies under law" become nugatory, there's always the recourse to direct action
of course with zero guarantee of redress
"What remedies are there in "the system," for the "other halves" of the "social contract,"
the "have-naught" halves?"
Ah yes the ultimate remedy is outright rebellion against the highest authorities .with as you
say, " zero guarantee of redress."
But, history teaches us that that path will be taken ..the streets. It doesn't (didn't) take a
genius to see what was coming back in the late 1960's on .regarding the beginnings of the revolt(s)
by big money against organized labor. Having been very involved in observing, studying and actually
active in certain groups back then, the US was acting out in other countries particularly in the
Southern Hemisphere, against any social progression, repressing, arresting (thru its surrogates)
torturing, killing any individuals or groups that opposed that infamous theory of "free market
capitalism". It had a very definite "creep" effect, northwards to the mainstream US because so
many of our major corporations were deeply involved with our covert intelligence operatives and
objectives (along with USAID and NED). I used to tell my friends about what was happening and
they would look at me as if I was a lunatic. The agency for change would be "organized labor",
but now, today that agency has been trashed enough where so many of the young have no clue as
to what it all means. The ultimate agenda along with "globalization" is the complete repression
of any opposition to the " spread of money markets" around the world". The US intends to lead;
whether the US citizenry does is another matter. Hence the streets.
JTMcFee, you have provided the most important aspect to this mirage of 'social contract'. The
"remedies" clearly available to lawless legislation rest outside the realm of a contract which
has never existed.
The Social Contract, ephemeral, reflects perfectly what contracts have become. Older rulings
frequently labeled clauses unconscionable - a tacit recognition that so few of the darn things
are actually agreed upon. Rather, a party with resources, options and security imposes the agreement
on a party in some form of crisis (nowadays the ever present crisis of paycheck to paycheck living
– or worse). Never mind informational asymmetries, necessity drives us into crappy rental agreements
and debt promises with eyes wide open. And suddenly we're all agents of the state.
Unconscionable clauses are now separately initialed in an "I dare you to sue me" shaming gambit.
Meanwhile the mythical Social Contract has been atomized into 7 1/2 billion personal contracts
with unstated, shifting remedies wholly tied to the depths of pockets.
Solidarity, of course. Hard when Identity politics lubricate a labor market that insists on
specialization, and talented children of privilege somehow manage to navigate the new entrepreneurism
while talented others look on in frustration. The resistance insists on being leaderless (fueled
in part IMHO by the uncomfortable fact that effective leaders are regularly killed or co-opted).
And the overriding message of resistance is negative: "Stop it!"
But that's where we are. Again, just my opinion: but the pivotal step away from the jackpot
is to convince or coerce our wealthiest not to cash in. Stop making and saving so much stinking
money, y'all.
and there's the Karma bec. even now we see a private banking system synthesizing an economy
to maintain asset values and profits and they have the nerve to blame it on social spending.
I think Giaus's term 'Denier' is perfect for all those vested practitioners of profit-capitalism
at any cost. They've already failed miserably. For the most part they're just too proud to admit
it and, naturally, they wanna hang on to "their" money. I don't think it will take a revolution
– in fact it would be better if no chaos ensued – just let these arrogant goofballs stew in their
own juice a while longer. They are killing themselves.
When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we
have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have
seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were. I see children playing on the
grass; their voices are shrill and discordant as children's are; they are restive and quarrelsome;
they cannot agree to any common plan; their play annoys them; it goes poorly. And one says, let
us make Jack the master; Jack knows all about it; Jack will tell us what each is to do and we
shall all agree. But Jack is like all the rest; Helen is discontented with her part and Henry
with his, and soon they fall again into their old state. No, the children must learn to play by
themselves; there is no Jack the master. And in the end slowly and with infinite disappointment
they do learn a little; they learn to forbear, to reckon with another, accept a little where they
wanted much, to live and let live, to yield when they must yield; perhaps, we may hope, not to
take all they can. But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another,
to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to
go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten
the game. -Learned Hand
Here in oh-so-individualistic Chicago, I have been noting the fraying for some time: It isn't
just the massacres in the highly segregated black neighborhoods, some of which are now in terminal
decline as the inhabitants, justifiably, flee. The typical Chicagoan wanders the streets connected
to a phone, so as to avoid eye contact, all the while dressed in what look like castoffs. Meanwhile,
Midwesterners, who tend to be heavy, are advertisements for the obesity epidemic: Yet obesity
has a metaphorical meaning as the coat of lipids that a person wears to keep the world away.
My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash: Think
Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. Some trash is carefully posed: Cups with straws on windsills, awaiting the Paris Agreement Pixie, who will clean up after these oh-so-earnest environmentalists.
Meanwhile, I just got a message from my car-share service: They are cutting back on the number
of cars on offer. Too much vandalism.
Are these things caused by pressure from above? Yes, in part: The class war continues, and
the upper class has won. As commenter relstprof notes, any kind of concerted action is now nearly
impossible. Instead of the term "social contract," I might substitute "solidarity." Is there solidarity?
No, solidarity was destroyed as a policy of the Reagan administration, as well as by fantasies
that Americans are individualistic, and here we are, 40 years later, dealing with the rubble of
the Obama administration and the Trump administration.
DJG: My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash:
Think Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. Some trash is carefully posed: Cups with straws
on windsills, awaiting the Paris Agreement Pixie, who will clean up after these oh-so-earnest
environmentalists.
Yes, the trash bit is hard to understand. What does it stand for? Does it mean, We can infinitely
disregard our surroundings by throwing away plastic, cardboard, metal and paper and nothing will
happen? Does it mean, There is more where that came from! Does it mean, I don't care a fig for
the earth? Does it mean, Human beings are stupid and, unlike pigs, mess up their immediate environment
and move on? Does it mean, Nothing–that we are just nihilists waiting to die? I am so fed up with
the garbage strewn on the roads and in the woods where I live; I used to pick it up and could
collect as much as 9 garbage bags of junk in 9 days during a 4 kilometer walk. I don't pick up
any more because I am 77 and cannot keep doing it.
However, I am certain that strewn garbage will surely be the last national flag waving in the
breeze as the anthem plays junk music and we all succumb to our terrible future.
Related to this, I thought one day of who probably NEVER gets any appreciation but strives
to make things nicer, anyone planning or planting the highway strips (government workers maybe
although it could be convicts also unfortunately, I'm not sure). Yes highways are ugly, yes they
will destroy the world, but some of the planting strips are sometimes genuinely nice. So they
add some niceness to the ugly and people still litter of course.
The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the
public space/environment as a shared, common good. Thus, streets, parks and public space might be soiled by litter that nobody cares to put away
in trash bins properly, while simultaneously the interior of houses/apartments, and attached gardens
if any, are kept meticulously clean.
Basically, the world people care about stops outside their dwellings, because they do not feel
it is "theirs" or that they participate in its possession in a genuine way. It belongs to the
"town administration", or to a "private corporation", or to the "government" - and if they feel
they have no say in the ownership, management, regulation and benefits thereof, why should they
care? Let the town administration/government/corporation do the clean-up - we already pay enough
taxes/fees/tolls, and "they" are always putting up more restrictions on how to use everything,
so
In conclusion: the phenomenon of litter/trash is another manifestation of a fraying social
contract.
The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population
views the public space/environment as a shared, common good.
There *is* no public space anymore. Every public good, every public space is now fair game
for commercial exploitation.
I live in NYC, and just yesterday as I attempted to refill my MetroCard, the machine told me
it was expired and I had to replace it. The replacement card doesn't look at all like a MetroCard
with the familiar yellow and black graphic saying "MetroCard". Instead? It's an ad. For a fucking
insurance company. And so now, every single time that I go somewhere on the subway, I have to
see an ad from Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
The importance of the end of solidarity – that is, of the almost-murderous impulses by the upper
classes to destroy any kind of solidarity. From Yves's posting of Yanis Varoufakis's analysis
of the newest terms of the continuing destruction of Greece:
With regard to labour market reforms, the Eurogroup welcomes the adopted legislation safeguarding
previous reforms on collective bargaining and bringing collective dismissals in line with best
EU practices.
I see! "Safeguarding previous reforms on collective bargaining" refers, of course, to the 2012
removal of the right to collective bargaining and the end to trades union representation for each
and every Greek worker. Our government was elected in January 2015 with an express mandate to
restore these workers' and trades unions' rights. Prime Minister Tsipras has repeatedly pledged
to do so, even after our falling out and my resignation in July 2015. Now, yesterday, his government
consented to this piece of Eurogroup triumphalism that celebrates the 'safeguarding' of the 2012
'reforms'. In short, the SYRIZA government has capitulated on this issue too: Workers' and trades'
unions' rights will not be restored. And, as if that were not bad enough, "collective dismissals"
will be brought "in line with best EU practices". What this means is that the last remaining constraints
on corporations, i.e. a restriction on what percentage of workers can be fired each month, is
relaxed. Make no mistake: The Eurogroup is telling us that, now that employers are guaranteed
the absence of trades unions, and the right to fire more workers, growth enhancement will follow
suit! Let's not hold our breath!
The so-called "Elites"? Stand down? Right.
Every year I look up the cardinal topics discussed at the larger economic forums and conferences
(mainly Davos and G8), and some variation of "The consequences of rising inequality" is a recurring
one. Despite this, nothing ever comes out if them. I imagine they go something like this:
"-Oh hi Mark. Racism is bad.
-Definitely. So is inequality, right, Tim?
-Sure, wish we could do something about it. HEY GUYS, HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT MY NEW SCHEME TO BUY
OUT NEW AND UPCOMING COMPANIES TO MAKE MORE MONEY?"
A wet dream come true, both for an AnCap and a communist conspiracy theorist. I'm by no means
either. However, I think capitalism has already failed and can't go on for much longer. Conditions
will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement or relief.
"Conditions will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement
or relief." Frase's Quadrant Four. Hierarchy + Scarcity = Exterminism (From "Four Futures" )
Reminds me of that one quip I saw from a guy who, why he always had to have two pigs to eat
up his garbage, said that if he had only one pig, it will eat only when it wants to, but if there
were two pigs, each one would eat so the other pig won't get to it first. Our current economic system in a nutshell – pigs eating crap so deny it to others first.
"Greed is good".
Don't know that the two avenues Gaius mentioned are the only two roads our society can travel.
In support of this view, I recall a visit to a secondary city in Russia for a few weeks in the
early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Those were difficult times economically and psychologically
for ordinary citizens of that country. Alcoholism was rampant, emotional illness and suicide rates
among men of working age were high, mortality rates generally were rising sharply, and birth rates
were falling. Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful
and educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class,
and the related emergence of organized criminal networks. There was also adequate food, and critical
public infrastructure was maintained, keeping in mind this was shortly after the Chernobyl disaster.
Here in the US the New Deal and other legislation helped preserve social order in the 1930s.
Yves also raises an important point in her preface that can provide support for the center by
those who are able to do so under the current economic framework. That glue is to participate
in one's community; whether it is volunteering at a school, the local food bank, community-oriented
social clubs, or in a multitude of other ways; regardless of whether your community is a small
town or a large city.
" Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful and
educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class,
and the related emergence of organized criminal networks."
None of which applies to the Imperium, of course. There's glue, all right, but it's the kind
that is used for flooring in Roach Motels (TM), and those horrific rat and mouse traps that stick
the rodent to a large rectangle of plastic, where they die eventually of exhaustion and dehydration
and starvation The rat can gnaw off a leg that's glued down, but then it tips over and gets glued
down by the chest or face or butt
I have to note that several people I know are fastidious about picking up trash other people
"throw away." I do it, when I'm up to bending over. I used to be rude about it - one young attractive
woman dumped a McDonald's bag and her ashtray out the window of her car at one of our very long
Florida traffic lights. I got out of my car, used the mouth of the McDonald's bag to scoop up
most of the lipsticked butts, and threw them back into her car. Speaking of mouths, that woman
with the artfully painted lips sure had one on her
The U.S. is engulfed in a "crisis of governance" that has been "intentionally misunderstood" by
the corporate media and the political elite, said Danny Haiphong , a contributing political analyst
at BAR.
Anti-Russian hysteria has been whipped up "to medicate political consciousness." "They don't want
to discuss how Russia has absolutely nothing to do with the millions of incarcerated people in the
U.S., or the fact that it is the U.S. monopoly capitalist economy, not the emerging capitalist economy
of Russia, which has automated many of the jobs and siphoned much of the wealth that once belonged
to a privileged sector of U.S. workers," said Haiphong. "This system has run its course. War is all
the system has left."
"... The U.S. is engulfed in a "crisis of governance" that has been "intentionally misunderstood" by the corporate media and the political elite, said Danny Haiphong , a contributing political analyst at BAR. Anti-Russian hysteria has been whipped up "to medicate political consciousness." "They don't want to discuss how Russia has absolutely nothing to do with the millions of incarcerated people in the U.S., or the fact that it is the U.S. monopoly capitalist economy, not the emerging capitalist economy of Russia, which has automated many of the jobs and siphoned much of the wealth that once belonged to a privileged sector of U.S. workers," said Haiphong. "This system has run its course. War is all the system has left." ..."
"... "If you are resisting Russian collusion with Trump, then what you are resisting is a fantasy," BAR executive editor Glen Ford told the opening plenary of the Left Forum. "And, if you are simply resisting Trump, the idiot in the White House, then you are simply a tool of a Democratic Party strategy." ..."
"Dumping the Democrats for good is the only way to resist Trump," said Black Agenda Report editor
and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley , addressing BAR's panel at the Left Forum, in New York City.
"What have they done since Election Day?" Kimberley asked. "They have refused to give even the appearance
that they are willing to push for even meager reforms. We have to talk about replacing them and having
a true workers party, a true peace party."
Political Elite Use Russia-Baiting to "Medicate" U.S. "Crisis of Governance"
The U.S. is engulfed in a "crisis of governance" that has been "intentionally misunderstood"
by the corporate media and the political elite, said Danny Haiphong , a contributing political analyst
at BAR. Anti-Russian hysteria has been whipped up "to medicate political consciousness." "They don't
want to discuss how Russia has absolutely nothing to do with the millions of incarcerated people
in the U.S., or the fact that it is the U.S. monopoly capitalist economy, not the emerging capitalist
economy of Russia, which has automated many of the jobs and siphoned much of the wealth that once
belonged to a privileged sector of U.S. workers," said Haiphong. "This system has run its course.
War is all the system has left."
A Real Left Would Demand Peace
"If you are resisting Russian collusion with Trump, then what you are resisting is a fantasy,"
BAR executive editor Glen Ford told the opening plenary of the Left Forum. "And, if you are simply
resisting Trump, the idiot in the White House, then you are simply a tool of a Democratic Party strategy."
Ford said the nation needs a rejuvenated anti-war movement, "or else we are defenseless against
this kind of strategy on the part of the Democrats, who pretend that they are an alternative to the
fascist-sounding and definitely virulently white nationalist forces in the Republican Party, but
are themselves intent upon a war policy that can mean the extinction of the human race."
Yes, I voted for Donald Trump. When people confront me
and ask me why, I sort of shuffle off, head down, while muttering something about how
"he wasn't the war candidate."
I even stuck with Trump until he launched
cruise missiles at an airbase in Syria and overnight became the establishment favorite,
with all the media and most politicians singing his praises for attacking a country with
which the United States was not at war over an alleged atrocity that did not involve
Americans-and could easily have been attributed to the terrorists that Damascus has been
fighting. And then he did it again, using fighter bomber aircraft to attack a column of
Syrian government-affiliated militiamen who were allegedly approaching and thereby
threatening a position inside Syria where U.S.-supported "good" insurgents, accompanied
by American advisers, were apparently hunkered down.
Someone should take out a map and show Trump where
Syria is and outline its borders while explaining what "sovereign territory" is supposed
to mean. If he could grasp the concept, possibly by relating it to Mexico, it just might
suggest to him that we Yanks could actually be foreign invaders who have crossed a
national border and are killing local people in gross violation of international law.
And then there is the foreign-policy finesse exhibited
on his recent World Tour. It began with his predictable slobbering all over the Saudis
and Israelis before stiffing the Palestinians. But then he elevated his game by
angering the Pope, whining to the Germans because there are no Chevys on the streets of
Berlin, pushing his way past the Montenegran Prime Minister and, finally, insisting on
riding in a golf cart and arriving late to the photo-op ending the G7 meeting in Sicily
while everyone else walked the 700 yards. His boorishness manifests itself as a nearly
complete unwillingness to make even the smallest gesture that would ease the relations
with other countries and leaders who are important U.S. partners. I guess he sees doing
so as a sign of weakness. Class act all the way, Donald!
But then again, when I am really down on Trump and
what he is doing or not doing, I think of Hillary Rodham Clinton. A good friend of mine
Joe Lauria, formerly a
Wall Street Journal
correspondent, has recently introduced, edited, and provided extensive commentary for a
book entitled
How I Lost By Hillary Clinton
.
It is an indictment of the Clinton campaign "in her own words" and includes a foreword
by Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, who discusses the leaks of Democratic National Committee
(DNC) and John Podesta emails that together provide much of the material included in the
text.
Lauria uses the source material to describe the
Clinton campaign using her own speeches as well as the leaked emails of her close
associates, and it really is refreshing to revisit what made the "inevitable" Hillary so
unappealing, particularly as she is now trying to rebrand herself
without assuming any serious blame
for her shortcomings as a candidate. Along the way, documents reveal the road to
Russiagate and Clinton's plans for more regime change, as well as expose corruption
within the nominally "neutral" DNC, the latter of which led to the deliberate sabotage
of the campaign of Bernie Sanders and the
de
facto
anointment of Clinton as
president-apparent.
The book is organized around two central themes,
Hillary as an elitist and Hillary as a hawk. In his introduction, Lauria describes
Clinton as "an economic and political elitist and a foreign-policy hawk divorced from
the serious concerns of ordinary Americans-the very people she needed to vote for her."
It is a fair assessment and in his introduction Joe also takes aim at Russiagate among
other targets, asking why, after more than a year of investigation and assessment, there
has been no National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the alleged interference by Moscow
in the U.S. election. NIEs are meticulously prepared to provide detailed analysis of an
issue, to include sourcing and reliability assessments. They are carefully crafted
products of the entire intelligence community and they include dissenting opinions. That
there has been no NIE on Russiagate is unfathomable, unless of course such a report
would reveal that Russiagate is itself a complete fabrication.
Lauria particularly assails Clinton foreign policy,
describing her as a neoliberal interventionist who was the principal driving force
behind a series of U.S.-led actions that turned Libya into a failed state while she was
also urging tough action against Russia and yet another regime change in Syria. Joe
notes that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were arming terrorists in Syria on her watch, which
she was aware of from DIA reporting, while also contributing generously to the Clinton
Foundation, which notoriously intermingled its ostensibly humanitarian programs together
with the political activities of Hillary and Bill. And the Foundation also rewarded the
Clintons directly through generous salaries and substantial perks for the whole family,
to include foundation-funded travel on executive jets, which totaled $12 million in 2011
alone.
The Clinton sense of entitlement knew no limits, with
Bill once accepting a $1 million birthday present from Qatar, the principal funder of
al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra. Citing email evidence, the book documents how major foreign
donors to the foundation were able to enjoy special access to Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton. Hillary's closest associate Huma Abedin was point person for much of the
activity and was paid a $105,000 salary by the State Department, plus an undisclosed
amount by a consulting firm linked to the foundation, a double dip arrangement of
questionable legality.
Between April 2013 and March 2015, Hillary Clinton
gave 91 speeches and earned over $21 million. The three speeches for Goldman-Sachs that
she made during that time, for which she was paid $675,000, are the best known, mostly
because soon-to-be candidate Clinton refused to release the transcripts. But she also
spoke to just about any group who would pay her upwards of a $200,000 fee plus expenses.
This included several public universities. In her speeches, she sometimes complained
about how awful it was that many Americans had begun to look down on those who have a
lot of money, including a comment to Goldman Sachs that "there is such a bias against
people who have led successful and/or complicated lives." She was referring to herself
and Bill.
It was rare that Hillary's mask would drop and she
would say what she really thought, though it did happen sometimes. A speech at an LGBT
fundraiser in New York included the now infamous line: "You could put half of Trump's
supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it they are irredeemable but thankfully
they are not America." Or at least not an America that she would recognize.
Hillary's speeches and the emails of Podesta and her
staff are quoted
in extenso
in the text and appendices. The most enduring impression is how boring most of what she
said really was. Her political experience enabled her to say what her audience wanted to
hear-no more, no less. She rarely spoke of actual policy in concrete terms and, for
example, when speaking to Goldman Sachs, she was instead full of platitudes and generic
praise for the "American way" of democracy promotion combined with good, solid, liberal,
and free-market values. She included how the financial-services industry is in the
forefront of all the positive changes taking place worldwide. There was nary a critical
word about the role of the largely unregulated and predatory big banks in the great
crash of 2008, and when she spoke of the suffering caused by that disaster, she was
referring to the disruptions experienced by those in financial services and government
who were made uncomfortable by being forced to respond to the crisis.
As Joe Lauria observes, Clinton's failure was clearly
her inability to comprehend what many mostly white working-class people in the United
States were experiencing. Her failure to see or understand inevitably became an
inability to empathize with such audiences verbally in a way that would appear to be
sincere. She came across as leaden and scripted. Her speeches increasingly became
sustained attacks on Trump the man and his admittedly flawed personality, combined with
appeals to women to vote for her purely because of her own gender. Her campaign was
singularly lacking in any formula for addressing the real problems experienced by many
in the country.
Speaking to bankers and other elitists from the
Washington-New York axis and Hollywood was a lot easier for Hillary because she was,
after all, one of them. She avoided campaign visits to working-class constituencies. And
she compounded that with a bellicose world view that considered Washington's ambition to
become some kind of benign but resolute global hegemon as both quite practical from a
resources point of view and also the right thing to do, something that most Americans
failed to relate to as a high priority.
So Hillary portrayed largely in her own words is well
worth a read. Unfortunately for our country, there are a lot of Hillary clones still out
there who have not learned the lesson of her defeat. Fortunately for conservatives,
quite a few of them are still in charge of the Democratic Party.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive
director of the Council for the National Interest.
I have little to argue with there; though the lack of a public NIE assessment
on a subject does not mean that none exist? The tragic thing is that, bad as
she is, Mrs. Clinton would have been better at performing the duties of the
office than Mr. Trump. It was always a choice between flogged by Clinton or
flayed by Trump. You can often survive a flogging, being flayed, not so much.
I share your view about the voting choices and what was surely our last, worst
hope for change.
But you know, causing disaffection among the "allies" who
bear increasing resemblance to high maintenance satrapies making entreaties to
the "benign hegemon" imperial court could be a good thing – the discontented
gongs of divorce, breaking up that old gang o' mine.
Hope this book made you feel better about your Dear Leader Donald! While I
continue to dislike Hillary, and voted for her without any relish, the
character, history, idiocy, and absurdity of DJT could make the most abject of
politicians seem like Honest Abe. Even if you really, actually think
'Russiagate' is a "vast left-wing conspiracy," does that make you feel any
better about this president? That's pretty cold comfort . . .
. because conservatives have been such beneficiaries of the loss of the
democratic opposition. Man, the conservative ideals are just going gangbusters!
Or is this new GOP under Trump Conservatism. That would be news to me.
The alternative would have been a sane non sociopath adult. Even many
conservatives recognize that fact. The white working class would be much better
off with good health insurance, and maybe higher wages.
Mr. Giraldi. NOTHING could be worse than putting Moe Howard in charge of U.S.
military power.
A fool is much more dangerous than a wicked man (or woman)
because a wicked man can be trusted to know when he is cutting his own throat.
A fool never.
There is no reason under God's blue earth that you should feel embarrassed
about voting for Mr. Trump. Not a single one.
Anyone listening to Sec. Clinton, speak she was unleashed over the last
couple of weeks would know, exactly what this latest text is saying. Frankly,
it's a bit frightening to hear that level of obtuse thinking. But then one
listens to her hosts and the audience and its down right chilling.
Whatever tentacles the liberal/republican/libertarian intelligentsia have
born is long and deep even in the psyche of the people who benefit the least
from such leadership.
There are three articles about what is essential the primacy press
concerning the global order and what all three indicate is that those running
the show seem to have a common ethic about us poor people, if they could just
get the rest of us to accept our lot in life as underlings of sorts all would
be well.
There are the clan of MustaphaMond. It is the nihilism of Buddhist, Hindi
and other far eastern thought. And while it has been around for quite some
time. It has never fully bonded with our politic openly in the US until now.
When they talk about international law, they don't mean law, they mean the
use of force to create order. And it should cause one pause as much as the
common but ill used phrase "law and order" which stands for my oeder by force
if necessary.
Philip, I share some of your frustrations with President Trump. However, you
should have mentioned that Trump (true to his word) has thus far kept us out of
any new Middle East war and has (against a braying pack of Democratic,
Republican, mainstream media, and deep state conspirator-jackals) continued to
push for detente with Russia, the one power on earth with the nuclear weaponry
to destroy us.
Given your foreign policy expertise and concentration, it is understandable
that you fail to mention that Trump has brought the burning issues of American
jobs, trade deals, illegal immigration, and rebuilding our crumbling
infrastructure front and center via his America First agenda.
About our voting for Trump, Philip: I don't think there's any need to "sort
of shuffle off, head down, while muttering something about how 'he wasn't the
war candidate'." On the contrary, we should stand tall for Trump, because
against all attempts to stop him, he is still fighting to fulfill his campaign
promises.
Just to add: Some of the most dedicated, loyal fighters for good causes that
it has been my good fortune to meet could also get a little "boorish" from time
to time.
You know who still cares about Hillary
Clinton, Trump supporters trying to deflect from the obvious incompetence,
continual stupidity, overt corruption, scandal genocide (plague is too kind a
word), and worthless policy that was supposed to be the new era for
conservatism.
So instead of trying to defend the indefensible, it is back to campaign 2016
to make it seem like you had no choice to go for the worst one possible despite
the glaring red warning lights everyone was saying. But that's ok. At least
Trump isn't a warhawk, even if he undermines the constitutional limitations of
power.
You know an administration is struggling when they are comparing themselves to
the election loser 8 months after the election. (In reality, I wish HRC would
go away for 1 year. She can come back with her husband next year and be popular
again.)
I voted for Mr. Trump, too. I'm not bit ashamed of it. I'd rather we'd had a
different GOP nominee, but it was what it was. And I really like VP Pence.
Hillary was a dreadful candidate but no matter who the Democrats nominated, I
wouldn't be able to vote for them in conscience because of the Democratic
platform.
And can you imagine what the Supreme Court might look like after 4-8 years of
Democratic administration?
Trump has carried through his promise re. the Supreme Ct. So that's something.
But then again, when I am really down on Trump and what he is doing or not
doing, I think of Hillary Rodham Clinton
That's nice, and we all deserve
some time in our happy places. But the 2016 election is over, and the guy you
voted for is setting new gold standards for both corruption and Saudi
boot-licking. How about using the public platform you have here to hold your
guy accountable, rather than indulging in a long, self-justifying digression
about how HRC would have been worse? Someone with your background probably has
a lot of interesting things to say about the blockade of Qatar and Trump's
support for it, the status of the Iranian nuclear deal, and why Trump and the
foreign policy establishment are so beholden to the Saudis. I'd like to read
those pieces.
Excellent précis of the cause of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential win: we voted
for the uncertainty of Trump delivering the goods to the American people over
the certainty of Hillary Clinton delivering us up to the high priests of
Mammonry.
The Establishment might consider that the narrative they sell us
that we erred in so voting, is undercut by their arriving at the same
conclusion by attempting a coup to remove him from office.
A more than interesting piece. I wish you had spelled out the acronym DIA, but
not having done so did force me to learn about an agency of whose existence I
was ignorant. Apparently, NIE's are ordered up by senior government officials.
Couldn't the White House order one and, following your logic, thereby exonerate
itself? This is a genuine question? I would be grateful for your opinion.
I know this is a difficult concept to understand, but it's possible to dislike
Hillary AND not want Trump to be president. I'm glad Trump is president, but
I'm glad he's so incompetent. I laugh at him every day.
I thought from the start of that torturous campaign Hillary either isn't all
that bright , or possibly she and Bill just live in their own corner of the
world, or lastly some influences told her she was a shoe in and just follow the
Obama prior agenda.
As a long-time subscrber to A.C. Giraldi is brightest ,straight shooter aboard.
I couldn't vote for the "know-it-all" and had to vote for Bill's spouse.
However, to pile- on I have to add that she was a "kiss-ass" Israel firster
which made me hold my nose even tighter.
Hillary was awful. That does not make Trump acceptable. Still it was a race to
the bottom, and she bottomed out worse.
We'd have had a much bigger Syria
War. We'd be back in her Libya disaster. We'd have gone into South Sudan. She'd
have armed Ukraine and sent Special Forces.
She'd have done that trade deal in the Pacific, her supporters are now clear
on that despite her lies during the campaign. That is a symptom of the overall
neo-liberal bullet we dodged.
She would not have a scandal about Russia, but she'd have one about Wall
Street and open bribery of the Clinton Foundation cash for access and selling
her office.
Really? This is rearview mirror stuff. What's next, attempts to indict HRC for
"obstruction of justice" because her establishment bona fides – arrogance,
incompetence, and greed made the 'alternative establishment' – equally
arrogant, incompetent and greedy – candidate more appealing?
The reasons why Hillary lost are like sands on the beach, numberless. The
reason HRC lost is because she is a woman and this is America. Oh I know too
simple, it is, but consider too that McCain lost. hm, ah you're crazy. Could
be, but twenty plus years of demonization must have some effect, you think. If
you really want to know why Hillary lost read, 'The Destruction of Hillary
Clinton' by Susan Bordo. That is if you seriously want to know. Challenge the
sands.
Really! "She would not have a scandal about Russia, but she'd have one about
Wall Street and open bribery of the Clinton Foundation cash for access and
selling her office."
Talk about weak tea. Most actual investigations found the Clinton Foundation
fairly clean and the access amounted to small ball compared to the displays of
patronage demanded daily by Trump. Did you read the recent investigation into
the purchases of Trump properties by anonymous corporations, have you looked at
the Wall Street tycoons in Trumps cabinet, or the number of lobbyists. Please
spare me the hand wringing over your hypothetical Clinton administration.
Elitist, hawk, sense of entitlement? Gee, who's that sound like?
Months after
the election (cf. sedition), press still tryna produce a dichotomy betw. Hi-C.
& Trump. I never bought it & never will. The two parties tortured us w/ a
female impersonator & a male one.
Apparently, it came down to how they got their enormous wealth. But Trump's
been "the king of greenmail" (the MCA fiasco, 1988) for lots longer than Frau
Clinton's been barking expensive speeches. So, Junior Nutz there more
experienced: right?
Trump is turning out to be pretty much what I expected. Far from perfect, but
what he's done is far more conservative than any other Republican would have
done. Still far better than Hillary.
"... It could be argued a polarized America has joined a polarized world in taking the course of least resistance and that is to do nothing. It appears most of the developed countries across the world are in exactly the same boat. With Trump's greatest accomplishment being the rolling-back of the Obama agenda the article below argues this may be as good as it gets. ..."
A lot of the debate by the MSM focuses on the careerist power struggle of elites at the top.
That is not what brought Trump to power, nor is ideological purity of any kind the reason, although
college students at elite universities may be motivated by ideology.
Many people who voted for Trump said they had not bothered to vote since Perot. That was the
last time serious economic issues were addressed head-on. There were many cross-over voters in
the Rust Belt and elsewhere, voting for Trump because their party, when not focused on one more
layer of welfare/taxfare for single moms, focuses on racism, sexism and xenophobia.....
....in a "racist" era with a twice-elected Black president, where many government agencies
have 80% Black staff and managers
.....in a "sexist"' era where more than half of the MDs are women, as are half of the managers,
in general, when wealth has never been more concentrated due to assortative mating
....in a "xenophobic" era, where even illegal immigrants are treated much better than millions
of citizens, leading to $113 billion per year in welfare/taxfare expenditures for the illegal
immigrants alone, not counting all of the freebies for 1 million legal immigrants admitted per
year, particularly for those who reproduce
As I said in response to another article I've been off on a kick of reading about the American
unCivil War. The heated rhetoric led up to violence far before either "side" was ready. It proved
to be a messy disaster. Very few thought ahead far enough to even have their own families survive
it. Be very careful of what you wish for. John Michael Greer's "Twilight's Last Gleaming" and
"Retrotopia" should give us serious pause for thought. Our just in time grocery supply system
would fail, fuel delivery from the few states with refineries would crawl and with all those nuclear
power plants needing constant baby sitting everybody needs to settle down and really think this
mess out. Inter US civil divisions would need careful and peaceful negotiations.
The messaging Henninger identifies was rampant for eight years of Obama ("Get in their faces!"
and the Chicago Way--"They bring a knife, you bring a gun.") Social media is/was no different.
Remember the Rodeo Clown wearing an Obama mask who was summarily fired. Any critique of Obama
was automatically racist. I could go on and on with examples. The Left never policed its own,
was constantly on-guard against the Right, with enforcement of political correctness job #1.
The ankle-biting mainstream media is part and parcel the opposition and the resistence--and
the Establishment Republicans at the WSJ are just now noticing?? Someone alert Captain Renault...
In reality no intelligent plans have been written or are moving through the halls of Congress.
It could be argued a polarized America has joined a polarized world in taking the course of least
resistance and that is to do nothing. It appears most of the developed countries across the world
are in exactly the same boat. With Trump's greatest accomplishment being the rolling-back of the
Obama agenda the article below argues this may be as good as it gets.
But, But, ... that sounds like RINOs, DINOs, NeoCons, Neoliberals, those that think Economics
is a Hard Science... Sounds like Propaganda by the Most Powerful Corporations and Family Dynasties...
"Political Disorder Syndrome - "Refusal To Reason Is The New Normal"
PDS - won't get traction since TPTB have to approve of this kind of thing!
- Borders Are Destroyed to Attack the US Labor Rate (Deserved or Undeserved) - Globalism, CAFTA,
NAFTA, Fast-Track by Bill Clinton, deployed to destroy US Labor Rate & US Jobs & US Middle Class
= PROOF that Democrats are Treasonous, are working against the Worker (Either Communist Worker
or Other worker) - US National Security is destroyed by the cost of MIC, $1 Trillion Annually
- US Constitutional Republic is Destroyed, replaced by Globalism Ideology & Propaganda Deep Program
to hide this Fact from Middle Class, from Workers, from Job Losers, from Voters, from Students,
from Youth who will not see the entry level jobs...
IT IS A REAL MESS, Propaganda is the name of the Problem! We all know the history of Propaganda.
We know that Hillary Clinton engaged in an INFO-War long, long ago. 1971 William Renquist Memo
pointed out to Republicans that they must gear up for Foundations to fight Democrats who were
much stronger in Political Organizations at this time.
I think main street has been extremely patient. I think after three decades of being slowly
and consistently shit on though, enough is enough, and they are starting to lose it.
"The event was a political fraud from beginning to end. The basic thread running through all of
the workshops and demagogic speeches was the fiction that the Democratic Party-a party of Wall
Street and the CIA-can be transformed into a "people's party."
LOL!!! Totally spot the F on!!!!!
"Sanders lent his support to the neo-McCarthyite campaign of the Democrats and the military-intelligence
apparatus, which sees Russia as the chief obstacle to US imperialism's drive for regime change
in Syria and Iran. "I find it strange we have a president who is more comfortable with autocrats
and authoritarians than leaders of democratic nations," Sanders said. "Why is he enamored with
Putin, a man who has suppressed democracy and destabilized democracies around the world, including
our own?"
Sanders?? No fool like an old fool and tool of TPTB
Oh, I doubt he's a fool; the creed of the western political class is recognition of its own and
their interests over the interests of the majority. It is technically true that Putin is destabilizing
governments around the world – 'democracies', if you will – but it would presuppose that western
leaders are his accomplices. Because it is through them and their crackdowns and restrictions
and surveillance, which they say they must introduce for our own protection (because, you know,
freedom isn't free) that discontent and destabilization are born.
Reply
There are several problems with Krugman both as an economist and as a political commentator.
First he does not understand that neoliberal system is inherency unstable and prone to periodic
bubbles and crashes.
FED plays destabilizing role by attempting to save large banks. It essentially provided insurance
for reckless behaviour. This is very "Minsky" -- "stability is destabilizing".
If we believe Jim Rogers, FED policies created a situation in which the next crash is a real
possibility and might happen within a year, or two:
Politically Krugman switched to neocon views and sometimes is undistinguishable from Wolfowitz
: " And consider his refusal to endorse the central principle of NATO, the obligation to come
to our allies' defense... What was that about? Nobody knows..."
NATO became obsolete with the dissolution of the USSR and now serves only as an instrument
of the US foreign policy -- a tool for expansion and maintenance of neoliberal empire and keeping
our European vassals in check.
He also got into Russiagate trap, which is a sign of weak intellect (dementia in cases of Hillary
and McCain), or of a neocon political hack. As Krugman does not have dementia, I suspect the latter.
The standards he tries to apply to Trump would put in jail all three previous presidents starting
from "change we can believe in" bait and switch artist.
In other words his column is highly partisan and as such represents interest only for Hillary
Bots and DemoRats (which are still plentiful and control MSM).
For people who try to find a real way out of the current difficult situation (a crisis of confidence
and, possibly, the start of revolt against neoliberal elite due to side effects of globalization)
the USA now have find itself, this is just a noise. Nothing constructive.
Trump position "get what you want with the brute force; f*ck diplomacy, UN and decency" is
actually an attempt to find a solution for the problems we face. Abhorrent as it is. Kind of highway
robbery policy.
The key problem is whether we should start dismantling neoliberalism before it is too late,
and what should be the alternative. Krugman is useless in attempts to answer those two key questions.
And it is unclear whether it is possible by peaceful means. Those neolib/neocon guys like Bolsheviks
in the past want to cling to power at all costs.
Another question is whether the maintenance of global neoliberal empire led by the USA is now
too costly for US taxpayers and need to be reconsidered. This is the same question British empire
faced in the past. Do we really need 500 or so foreign bases? Do we really need to spend half
a trillion dollars annually on military? Do we need all those never ending wars as in Orwellian
"war is the health of the state" quote (actually this quote is not from 1984, this is the subtitle
of the essay by Randolph Bourne (1918))
What is the real risk of WWIII with such policies? Because there is a chance that nor only
the modern civilization, but all higher forms of life of Earth in general seize to exists after
it.
Concentrating of Trump "deficiencies" Krugman does not understand that Trump is just a Republican
Obama -- another "clean plate" offering to the US electorate, another "bait and switch" artist.
With just different fake slogan "Make America great again" instead of "Change we can believe
in".
And as such any critique of Trump is an implicit critique of Obama presidency, which enabled
Trump election.
Teleprompter personally was a dangerous and unqualified political hack, not that different
from Trump (no foreign policy experience whatsoever; almost zero understanding of economics),
who outsourced foreign policy to the despicable neocon warmonger Clinton and got us into Libya,
Ukraine and Syria wars in addition to existing war in Afghanistan.
Continuing occupation of Afghanistan (which incorrectly called war) and illegal actions in
Syria (there was no UN resolution justifying the USA presence in Syria) are now becoming too costly.
Afghan people definitely want the USA out and will fight for their freedom. Taliban has supporters
in Pakistan and possibly in other Islamic countries.
In Syria the USA now clashed with Russian interests which make it a real power keg. And to
this sociopaths in CIA like Mike "Kill-Russians" Morell and the fact that CIA is not under complete
control of federal government and actually represent "state within the state" force in this conflict,
and the situation looks really dangerous.
And please note that Russia protects a secular government, and the USA supports Islamic fundamentalists
in Syria, to make Israel even greater. Instead of "Making America great again". Such a betrayal
of elections promises... The same policy that Hillary would adopt if she sits on the throne.
So to say that Trump is idiot in foreign policy without saying that Obama was the same dangerous
idiot, who pursued the same neocon policies is hypocritical, because they are manipulated by the
same people in dark suits and are just marionettes, or, at best, minor players. Other people decide
for them what is good for America.
The US army is pretty much demoralized and even with advanced weapons and absolute air superiority
can't achieve much because solders understand that they are just cannon fodder and it is unclear
what they fighting for in Afghanistan.
Because in Syria the USA support the same Islamic fundamentalists it is fighting in Afghanistan.
Or even worse then those -- head choppers like guys from Al Nusra.
So we fight secular government in Syria supporting Sunni fundamentalists (often of worst kind
as KSA supported Wahhabi fighters) and simultaneously are trying to protect secular government
in Afghanistan against exactly the same (or even slightly more moderate) Islamic fundamentalist
forces. Is not this a definition of split personality?
"In the case of Hillary Clinton, not only does that mean more wasted money, it means more wars,
wars we will lose.
Hillary is a wild-eyed interventionist. She gave us the Libyan fiasco, and had Obama been fool
enough to listen to her again, we would now be at war on the ground in Syria.
The establishment refuses to see the limits of American power, and it also refuses to compel
our military to focus on war against non-state opponents, or Fourth Generation war. The Pentagon
pretends its future is war against other states.
The political and foreign-policy establishments pretend the Pentagon knows how to win. They
waltz together happily, unaware theirs is a Totentanz."
"... I feel utterly betrayed and conned by Barack Obama. He looked, talked and exuded kind, "humanness". But he was a fraud that STILL evades the grok of huge parts of the World population. People generally find it difficult to accept that this beautiful man (Obama) with the beautiful family, is a tyrannical bastard.(Remember NYT's, Uncle Joe Stalin?). ..."
"... Hillary Clinton, refreshingly (IMO), and bravely, is obviously a crazed maniac. Many noticed her authentic self during the campaign. Now that she is increasingly free to express her inner life, I expect people on both sides of the political divide (The Ups, AND the Downs) to wake up and smell the coffee. We are being lied to about almost everything, and it is not inadvertent. ..."
I believe that Hillary Clinton IS being, and broadcasting her authentic self. I support her
100% in this . I am not being snide. The curtains are being pulled aside on The Incompetent, Wizards
of Oz (The Corrupt Over-class). Hillary C will be remembered as the Foolish Wizard who could not
keep her curtain drawn! We got a glimpse into the innards of the Heath Robinson, Control Booth,
Political Contraption. (George Soros playing with himself!)
I feel utterly betrayed and conned by Barack Obama. He looked, talked and exuded kind,
"humanness". But he was a fraud that STILL evades the grok of huge parts of the World population.
People generally find it difficult to accept that this beautiful man (Obama) with the beautiful
family, is a tyrannical bastard.(Remember NYT's, Uncle Joe Stalin?).
Hillary Clinton, refreshingly (IMO), and bravely, is obviously a crazed maniac. Many noticed
her authentic self during the campaign. Now that she is increasingly free to express her inner
life, I expect people on both sides of the political divide (The Ups, AND the Downs) to wake up
and smell the coffee. We are being lied to about almost everything, and it is not inadvertent.
Clarky90 said, " We are being lied to about almost everything, and it is not inadvertent."
Exactly!
And the only solace I have from the Trump show is that the curtains will be pulled back completely
to expose the puppeteers of this charade they call a democracy.
Which should make it much easier to generate authentic opposition, doncha think? Trump was
The Great Reveal, next up is The Great Reveal for Dems: that they too love War and Billionaire
Corporo-Fascism
"Everybody Needs to Stop Telling Hillary Clinton to Shut Up"
Throughout the campaign, culminating in the mindbogglingly stupid "deplorables" remark, Clinton's
contempt for anyone who questioned her was clear. Her post election tour brings more of the same.
So yeah, people are sick of hearing it, and have every right to say so.
What if "more public participation" can't save American
democracy?
It's time to make peace with reality and develop a new
plan.
Updated by Lee Drutman Jun 9, 2017, 12:00pm EDT
American democracy is in a downward spiral. Well, really
two downward spirals.
The first is the downward spiral of bipolar partisanship,
in which both sides increasingly demonize each other as the
enemy, and refuse to compromise and cooperate - an escalating
arms race that is now going beyond mere gridlock and
threatening basic democratic norms.
The second is the downward spiral of distrust between
citizens and elites, in which citizens treat "corrupt" and
"establishment" as interchangeable terms. The public
consensus is that politicians are self-serving, not to be
trusted. In this logic, only more public participation can
make politicians serve the people.
"... Sadly the Cheneyite rot is so deep at this point that we'll simply have to ride it out . . . Svechin wrote about the corrupting influence of a political elite overwhelmed by its own decadence and delusions that it confuses its own interests with those of the country that it rules ..."
The fault line in American politics is no longer
Republican vs. Democrat nor conservative vs. liberal but establishment vs.
anti-establishment. This is an inevitable result of serial failure in establishment
policies. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the establishment's repeated
military interventions abroad in wars against non-state opponents. When such
interventions fail in one place-first Somalia, then Iraq, then Afghanistan, then Libya,
now Syria-it does the same thing again somewhere else, with the same result.
Why has the establishment allowed itself to be trapped in
serial failure? Once we understand how it works, the answer is plain: it cannot do
otherwise. On Capitol Hill, the legalization of bribery-"campaign contributions"-means
money rules. That puts business as usual in the driver's seat because that is where the
money is. If a member of Congress backs, say, the F-35 fighter/bomber, he can count on
campaign contributions from its manufacturers and jobs for his state or district. (The
Pentagon calls that "strategic contracting.") If instead he calls for reforming our
military so it can perform better in Fourth Generation wars, where fighter/bombers are
useless, there's no money.
My long-time colleague Paul Weyrich and I both began our
Washington careers as Senate staff, Paul in the late 1960s and me in 1973. Shortly
before his death in 2008, I said to him, "When we arrived on the Hill, at least half the
members of the Senate thought their job had something to do with governing the country.
Now that figure is at most 10 percent. All the rest think about is having a successful
career as a professional politician and retiring very, very rich." Paul agreed.
Just as money locks in current policy, so does ideology.
To be a member of the establishment you must spout the ideology of "democratic
capitalism," the notion that America can and should remake the rest of the world in its
own image. Other peoples see this, rightly, as an attempt to ram the Brave New World
down their throats. Many are willing to fight to prevent it. But if a member of the
Washington establishment dares question the ideology and suggests a policy based on
realism, he immediately loses his establishment membership.
Over breakfast in Denver several years ago I said to my
old boss, Sen. Gary Hart, "If you are a member of the establishment and you suggest more
than five degrees rudder change in anything, you cease to be a member of the
establishment." He replied, "I'm exhibit A."
Below these factors lies the establishment's bedrock. It
is composed overwhelmingly of people who want to be something, not people who want to do
something. They have devoted their lives to becoming members of the establishment and
enjoying the many privileges thereof. They are not likely to endanger club membership by
breaking its rules. Beyond following money and adhering to its ideology, the rules are
three.
The first is, don't worry about serial failure. Within
the Beltway, the failure of national policies is not important. Career success depends
on serving interests and pleasing courtiers above you, not making things work in flyover
land. As in 17th-century Spain, the court is dominated by interests that prosper by
feeding off the country's decay.
Second, rely on the establishment's wealth and power to insulate its
members from the consequences of policy failure. The public schools are wretched, but
the establishment's children go to private schools. We lose wars, but the generals who
lose them get promoted. The F-35 is a horrible fighter, but no member of the
establishment will have to fly it. So long as the money keeps flowing, all is well.
Third and most important, the only thing that really
matters is remaining a member of the establishment. This completes the loop in what is a
classic closed system, where the outside world does not matter and is not allowed to
intrude. Col. John Boyd, America's greatest military theorist, said that all closed
systems collapse. The Washington establishment cannot adjust, it cannot adapt, it cannot
learn. It cannot escape serial failure.
The public is catching on to all this and, on both sides
of the political spectrum, turning to anti-establishment candidates. If we are
fortunate, some will win. If the establishment manipulates the rules to hold on to power
indefinitely, when it collapses it may take the state with it.
Paul Weyrich is still an inspiration, as Bill recounts here. He tried to make
that ninety percent do the right thing, appealing to their better natures but
threatening their heart's desires. It was, and is, a constant battle.
As for
the closed system – the only way to drain DC's Bipartisan Hot Tub is from the
outside. That's where the plug is – no one on the inside can reach it, and none
there really wants to.
"To be a member of the establishment you must spout the ideology of "democratic
capitalism," the notion that America can and should remake the rest of the
world in its own image."
They may spout it, but they don't believe it and
they don't act on it. They have learned the lesson of Iraq. Here's Donald
Rumsfeld in 2015, with the advantage of hindsight: "I'm not one who thinks that
our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at
every moment of their histories. The idea that we could fashion a democracy in
Iraq seemed to me unrealistic."
The establishment cheerfully tolerates and supports Saudi Arabia's regime.
No one in the establishment thinks it wise to press for democracy in any
serious way. Ditto for Egypt, where our aid violates US law under any fair
reading.
"If the establishment manipulates the rules to hold on to power indefinitely,
when it collapses it may take the state with it."
___________________________
I agree but, as Friar Laurence in Romeo and
Juliet says, "I spy a kind of hope". I believe a tipping point in our political
culture was reached in 2008 when the electorate chose a young and inexperienced
black man with a VERY scary name over a mainstream war hero and did so by a
wide margin. I expect Bernie to be nominated and then win by margins that make
BHO's victory look close.
Great article. It's long been apparent that the "establishment" seems oblivious
to the consequences of their wasteful and foolish policies, but when you point
out the foolishness has no (immediate) consequences for them, and even a
positive impact on their careers, it all makes sense. Long term, though, it's a
sure descent into the abyss for all of us. Of course, the "little people" are
falling first and faster, so the elites no doubt are calculating they'll land
on top of us so we'll cushion their landing.
As depressing the picture painted here may be, I actually think it's
optimistic.
To be a member of the establishment you must spout the
ideology of "democratic capitalism," the notion that America can and should
remake the rest of the world in its own image.
Now, could someone explain to me how Afghanistan, Libya, Kosovo, or Iraq are
now more conformant to some American ideal? I believe the truth is much worse
than giant corporations having interest in perpetual wars: The establishment
has become a vast network of private rackets that uses the American military &
economic might as the ultimate extortion tool. Just ask the two worst
secretaries of state in history posing (and seeking cover) as ultra-feminists.
It was under Mad Albright's tenure that the US started to support (and bomb
on behalf of) the shadiest of the terrorist figures in Kosovo, accused by
several UN personnel of butchering Serbian and (traitor) Albanian prisoners to
harvest organs for trade. You can't make this stuff up, it's beyond horrific.
And, surprise, madam secretary leaves her post to turn into a hedge fund
manager with investments and interests in the region. Payback for help, anyone?
Who wouldn't want to harness the US Air force for its private goals? And would
anybody be surprised if HRC took this model one step beyond to make payments to
the Clinton Foundation pretty concurrent with the "services" provided by the
State Department? And how is this different (other than organ trafficking) from
our senators and congressmen retiring vastly richer than when they went into
politics? Just where did that money come from?
In summary, it's NOT just evil corporations, it's the vastly concentrated
power of an out of control and overreaching government. Once you have that, you
are bound to have individuals and networks trying to harness that power for
their private purposes. So yes, let's clean up political financing, but let's
also go back to the idea of limited government. And stay vigilant to keep it
limited, because, you always end up in trouble otherwise.
Lame article, sorry. Bill Lind seems unable to understand what strategic theory
is. Still attempting to make his reified 4GW notions into reality. John Boyd
"America's greatest military theorist"? Ok, E-M theory of aerial combat is
significant, but that is mathematics-based and has to do with aircraft design
(quite limited really) which is not strategic theory at all, is it? But
confusion among US (a)strategic thinkers is the norm and has been for some time
. . . interests cloud their little heads . . . But then Dick Cheney is Boyd's
greatest follower . . . so . . . follow the leader . . .
After reading
Jeffrey Sach's blog post . . . I asked myself "why did I waste my time on this"
. . .
Given the realities of the 2-party system, with the neocons dominating GOP
foreign policy and liberal interventionists controlling the Democratic side,
it's not hard to see how this total lack of accountability has persisted for so
long. Hopefully, the pushback that the establishment candidates of both parties
are experiencing from the voters will have its effect on national policy – if
not in this election cycle, perhaps in the next one.
Well put, JohnG. The system is thoroughly corrupt and given the divisions
within American society may well be beyond repair. If so, we are doomed. Maybe
the HRC email controversy will expose not only her personal corruption but that
of the whole system, though I wouldn't bet on it. She may only be the tip of
the iceberg and as such only the worst of a bad lot whose numbers are legion.
The LAST thing the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex want is for ANY
War to end, as it cut off their justication for a bloated military budget that
continues to enriched them and their cronies for God know how long.
"Lame article, sorry. Bill Lind seems unable to understand what strategic
theory is. Still attempting to make his reified 4GW notions into reality."
From my perspective Bill Lind's 4th Generation War explanation for the long
string of US defeats by non-state opponents matches up well with the facts.
To be sure, our taking seriously Lind's "4GW notions" would necessarily lead
to (1) a different US foreign policy and (2) a radically scaled-back flow of
money to the shadow military-industrial state and their hired politicians.
So might it be, seydlitz89, that your discomfort is less with Lind's "4GW
notions" than it is with (1) or (2), or both?
Ironic, isn't it, that many of the late Col Boyd's air combat theories have
become establishment doctrine, almost half a century later. I can only assume
that Boyd was sharp enough to realize that they have little application to
today's fourth generation warfare. But I may be wrong.
Democratic government is supposed to be answerable to the people. But there are
2 big problems with that. One, the people have to stay informed and know what
the issues are as well as what potential representatives believe. Is there any
reason to move on to the second big problem? Okay, just for discussion, the
second problem is that the first problem allows for all the following problems
forever after amen. Holding our representatives accountable requires that we
hold ourselves accountable for electing the correct representative. Ain't gonna
happen, simply because the correct representative, the one telling us that we
are the ones responsible, is never going to be elected. The one that will get
elected is the one that says others, like immigrants, blacks, elites and those
who are not true christians, true patriots, or core americans, are the cause of
all our policy and economic problems. That's the guy we want to lead us. We may
get him. And he might do what we want, but it is unlikely he will do anything
we need to have done to bring back america. Bringing back america is our job
after all, and who wants that responsibility. The supposed anti-establishment
candidates are simply the ones that say they will take care of the problems we
allowed to happen. And we already know they won't or can't because we would
never demand so much from ourselves.
We are nearning the end of "the rule of political spoilsmen," but are we also
nearing the end of the American experiment or, perhaps, even the catastrophic
interruption of the progress of human civilization?
71:3.10 The ideals of
statehood must be attained by evolution, by the slow growth of civic
consciousness, the recognition of the obligation and privilege of social
service. At first men assume the burdens of government as a duty, following the
end of the administration of political spoilsmen, but later on they seek such
ministry as a privilege, as the greatest honor. The status of any level of
civilization is faithfully portrayed by the caliber of its citizens who
volunteer to accept the responsibilities of statehood.
for the US political and military establishments . "there's no success like
failure failure's no success at all". There are many, many causes, the one
highlighted this year is an electoral law system that only allows for "coke and
pepsi" and holds up, in effect bails out or life-supports, the two moribund
parties [one may actually die this year, and the other will follow shortly
thereafter, extinction of the dinosaurs] by not allowing replacements to grow.
cheers.
Regarding 4GW I think you putting the wheelless cart before the
dead horse. 4GW started as a list of speculations published in an article in
the Marine Corps Gazette in 1989, that is there wasn't originally any "theory"
at all. In 1991, Martin van Creveld published the "The Transformation of War" (TTW)
since he needed to divorce war from politics for political/propaganda reasons
(Israel's occupation of Palestinian land). Formerly MvC had promoted
Clausewitzian strategic theory, had in fact presented a paper in 1986 entitled
"The Eternal Clausewitz". TTW provided 4GW with some actual "theory", although
Lind claims that 4GW actually exists (reification) and is not theory at all.
Lind also talks about the "moral being the highest level of war" and claims
that's Boyd's view, but according to Chet Richards Boyd never said anything of
the kind. We had a long discussion on this back on the sonshi forum about a
decade ago.
Clausewitz became a problem for Dick Cheney and the Neocons since strategic
theory links political purpose (not limited to those of "the state") with
military aims achieved through military means. Too often states or other
political entities wish to hide their actual involvement (not to mention their
goals) in wars and thus 4GW comes in handy as a cover for that, but useless in
understanding strategy . . . read the Sachs article . . .
I would also add that 4GW became a useful excuse for US military
incompetence since the generals could claim, "How could we have won, it was
4GW!".
As to Boyd, OODA loops don't really provide anything other than a model for
friction above the tactical . . .
The Russians don't fall for any of this, following instead Svechin, the
great Russian Clausewitzian strategic theorist and understanding the uses and
limits of organised violence. They understand the nature of the conflict they
are involved in in Syria and are acting strategically, something the US hasn't
been able to achieve since the end of the Cold War/First Gulf War . . . that is
since the rise of 4GW confusion . . .
Thank you, seydlitz89, for taking the time to give so much background history
regarding this discussion of Fourth Generation War, etc.
For those of us who find William Lind's 4GW arguments convincing, it's very
useful to read counter-positions presented so well by someone as well-versed in
the subject as you obviously are. Sincerely. Thank you.
"Lame article, sorry. Bill Lind seems unable to understand what strategic
theory is. Still attempting to make his reified 4GW notions into reality."
The reality has been hitting us in the face for more than 60 years but as Lind
points out, reality means nothing to Washington insiders, or other devotees of
country wrecking military-industrial profiteering.
I will make this very simple for you, seydlitz89. If the people of a country
you are trying to occupy or control don't want you there, it will be ruinously
expensive for you to stay there, and eventually you will leave. Got it?
Thank you for the kind words.
Sadly the Cheneyite rot is so
deep at this point that we'll simply have to ride it out . . . Svechin wrote
about the corrupting influence of a political elite overwhelmed by its own
decadence and delusions that it confuses its own interests with those of the
country that it rules
. . . 4GW is part of/has become a pawn of that
larger phenomenon . . . the greater confusion . . .
The problem here is that our political leaders, by and large, do not understand
grand strategy or military strategy, and do not wish to do so and risk
opprobrium from other elites. Elite culture insists acceptance to the belief
that violence solves nothing, and never can. Unfortunately, our foes disagree,
with the backing of history. We lost in Iraq because Obama ceded victory by
abandoning the battlefield, as if saying a war was over could possibly end it
on favorable terms the same mistake we made in Vietnam. Rather, the problem in
the Middle East is that we haven't killed enough extremists the mistake we
didn't make in WWII and so the battle-hardened jihadis that remain believe
they can win if they only endure. So far, they seem to be right. The real
problem here is the creation of an elite that is isolated from ordinary
Americans, from the realities of the global economy, from their own failure as
leaders due to their dysfunctional worldview based on a life of privilege,
freedom from want, and a belief that all of that is deserved istead of the
result of winning the birth lottery. Their unconscious embrace of socialist
policies is more about their unease of their fortunate privilege, and it stops
when the pain starts they call for the elimination of private property but
insist their iPads are exempt as 'personal' property rather than private
property. They call for equality of opportunity but aren't willing to give up
their spot at an Ivy League university. They call for more taxes but
incorporate in Ireland, or dock their yacht in Rhode Island to avoid
Massachusetts taxes. They no longer support enlightened self-interest but
instead push for restrictions on freedom of speech, call for more gun control,
and seek to restrict political opposition all in the name of peace and freedom
and happiness. They are the modern Marie Antoinettes, and the mob is sharpening
the pitchforks.
seydlitz89 "The Russians don't fall for any of this, following instead Svechin,
the great Russian Clausewitzian strategic theorist and understanding the uses
and limits of organised violence"
Svechin? Really? Most of his work was borrowed from the pre 1914 Nikolai
General Staff Academy. The bigger Soviet thinker at the time was Verhovsky.
Someone got very excited about Svechin at Fort Leavenworth in the late
1970s/early 1980s (probably because someone decided to translate him) but in
the Russian context he's a relative minor figure – no one follows him.
There are several problems with Krugman both as an economist and as a political commentator.
First he does not understand that neoliberal system is inherency unstable and prone to periodic
bubbles and crashes. FED plays destabilizing role by attempting to save large banks. It essentially provided insurance
for reckless behaviour. This is very "Minsky" -- "stability is destabilizing". If we believe Jim Rogers, FED policies created a situation in which the next crash is a real possibility
and might happen within a year, or two:
Politically Krugman switched to neocon views and sometimes is undistinguishable from Wolfowitz
: " And consider his refusal to endorse the central principle of NATO, the obligation to come to
our allies' defense... What was that about? Nobody knows..."
NATO became obsolete with the dissolution of the USSR and now serves only as an instrument of
the US foreign policy -- a tool for expansion and maintenance of neoliberal empire and keeping our
European vassals in check.
He also got into Russiagate trap, which is a sign of weak intellect (dementia in cases of Hillary
and McCain), or of a neocon political hack. As Krugman does not have dementia, I suspect the latter.
The standards he tries to apply to Trump would put in jail all three previous presidents starting
from "change we can believe in" bait and switch artist.
In other words his column is highly partisan and as such represents interest only for Hillary
Bots and DemoRats (which are still plentiful and control MSM).
For people who try to find a real way out of the current difficult situation (a crisis of confidence
and, possibly, the start of revolt against neoliberal elite due to side effects of globalization)
the USA now have find itself, this is just a noise. Nothing constructive.
Trump position "get what you want with the brute force; f*ck diplomacy, UN and decency" is actually
an attempt to find a solution for the problems we face. Abhorrent as it is. Kind of highway robbery
policy.
The key problem is whether we should start dismantling neoliberalism before it is too late, and
what should be the alternative. Krugman is useless in attempts to answer those two key questions.
And it is unclear whether it is possible by peaceful means. Those neolib/neocon guys like Bolsheviks
in the past want to cling to power at all costs.
Another question is whether the maintenance of global neoliberal empire led by the USA is now
too costly for US taxpayers and need to be reconsidered. This is the same question British empire
faced in the past. Do we really need 500 or so foreign bases? Do we really need to spend half a trillion
dollars annually on military? Do we need all those never ending wars as in Orwellian "war is the
health of the state" quote (actually this quote is not from 1984, this is the subtitle of the essay
by Randolph Bourne (1918))
What is the real risk of WWIII with such policies? Because there is a chance that nor only the
modern civilization, but all higher forms of life of Earth in general seize to exists after it.
Concentrating of Trump "deficiencies" Krugman does not understand that Trump is just a Republican
Obama -- another "clean plate" offering to the US electorate, another "bait and switch" artist.
With just different fake slogan "Make America great again" instead of "Change we can believe in".
And as such any critique of Trump is an implicit critique of Obama presidency, which enabled Trump
election.
Teleprompter personally was a dangerous and unqualified political hack, not that different from
Trump (no foreign policy experience whatsoever; almost zero understanding of economics), who outsourced
foreign policy to the despicable neocon warmonger Clinton and got us into Libya, Ukraine and Syria
wars in addition to existing war in Afghanistan.
Continuing occupation of Afghanistan (which incorrectly called war) and illegal actions in Syria
(there was no UN resolution justifying the USA presence in Syria) are now becoming too costly.
Afghan people definitely want the USA out and will fight for their freedom. Taliban has supporters
in Pakistan and possibly in other Islamic countries.
In Syria the USA now clashed with Russian interests which make it a real power keg. Add to this
sociopaths in CIA like Mike "Kill-Russians" Morell and the fact that CIA is not under complete control
of federal government and actually represent "state within the state" force in this conflict, and
the situation looks really dangerous.
And please note that Russia protects a secular government, and the USA supports Islamic fundamentalists
in Syria, to make Israel even greater. Instead of "Making America great again". Such a betrayal of
elections promises... The same policy that Hillary would adopt if she sits on the throne.
So to say that Trump is idiot in foreign policy without saying that Obama was the same dangerous
idiot, who pursued the same neocon policies is hypocritical, because they are manipulated by the
same people in dark suits and are just marionettes, or, at best, minor players. Other people decide
for them what is good for America.
The US army is pretty much demoralized and even with advanced weapons and absolute air superiority
can't achieve much because solders understand that they are just cannon fodder and it is unclear
what they fighting for in Afghanistan.
Because in Syria the USA support the same Islamic fundamentalists it is fighting in Afghanistan.
Or even worse than those -- head choppers like guys from Al Nusra.
So we fight secular government in Syria supporting Sunni fundamentalists (often of worst kind
as KSA supported Wahhabi fighters) and simultaneously are trying to protect secular government in
Afghanistan against exactly the same (or even slightly more moderate) Islamic fundamentalist forces.
Is not this a definition of split personality?
New Labour (neoliberal democrats) especially what is called DemoRats in the USA (Clinton's wing
of the Democratic Party) sold themselves to financial oligarchy becoming a just a more moderate
branch of the Republican party.
They counted the working class has nowhere to go. They miscalculated. In the USA working class
moved right. In case of GB -- left. But in both cases they were shown three finger salute.
BTW why Putin was sleeping and did not interfere in elections like he did in France, leading
to Macron victory ;-). His dream of Brexit now is in danger :-)
Not so much? The usual librul suspects here are downright depressed by Corbyn's success...first,
we had their opposition to Bernie' now to Corbyn...they represent nothing less than the left
hand of the plutocracy, Republicans representing the right hand.
Jeremy Corbyn has caused a sensation – he would make a fine prime minister
by Owen Jones
Fri. June 9 107
This is one of the most sensational political upsets of our time. Theresa May – a wretched
dishonest excuse of a politician, don't pity her – launched a general election with the sole purpose
of crushing opposition in Britain. It was brazen opportunism, a naked power grab: privately, I'm
told, her team wanted the precious "bauble" of going down in history as the gravediggers of the
British Labour party. Instead, she has destroyed herself. She is toast.
She has just usurped David Cameron as the "worst ever prime minister on their own terms" (before
Cameron, it had been a title held by Lord North since the 18th century). Look at the political
capital she had: the phenomenal polling lead, almost the entire support of the British press,
the most effective electoral machine on Earth behind her. Her allies presented the Labour opposition
as an amusing, eccentric joke that could be squashed like a fly that had already had its wings
ripped off. They genuinely believed they could get a 180-seat majority. She will leave No 10 soon,
disgraced, entering the history books filed under "hubris".
But, before a false media narrative is set, let me put down a marker. Yes, the Tory campaign
was a shambolic, insulting mess, notable only for its U-turns, a manifesto that swiftly disintegrated,
robotically repeated mantras that achieved only ridicule. But don't let media commentators – hostile
to Labour's vision – pretend that the May calamity is all down to self-inflicted Tory wounds.
This was the highest turnout since 1997, perhaps the biggest Labour percentage since the same
year – far eclipsing Tony Blair's total in 2005. Young and previous non-voters came out in astonishing
numbers, and not because they thought, "Ooh, Theresa May doesn't stick to her promises, does she?"
Neither can we reduce this to a remainer revolt. The Lib Dems threw everything at the despondent
remainer demographic, with paltry returns. Many Ukip voters flocked to the Labour party.
No: this was about millions inspired by a radical manifesto that promised to transform Britain,
to attack injustices, and challenge the vested interests holding the country back. Don't let them
tell you otherwise. People believe the booming well-off should pay more, that we should invest
that money in schools, hospitals, houses, police and public services, that all in work should
have a genuine living wage, that young people should not be saddled with debt for aspiring to
an education, that our utilities should be under the control of the people of this country. For
years, many of us have argued that these policies – shunned, reviled even in the political and
media elite – had the genuine support of millions. And today that argument was decisively vindicated
and settled.
Don't let them get away with the claim that, "Ah, this election just shows a better Labour
leader could have won!" Risible rot. Do we really think that Corbyn's previous challengers to
the leadership – and this is nothing personal – would have inspired millions of otherwise politically
disengaged and alienated people to come out and vote, and drive Labour to its highest percentage
since the famous Blair landslide? If the same old stale, technocratic centrism had been offered,
Labour would have faced an absolute drubbing, just like its European sister parties did.
Labour is now permanently transformed. Its policy programme is unchallengeable. It is now the
party's consensus. It cannot and will not be taken away. Those who claimed it could not win the
support of millions were simply wrong. No, Labour didn't win, but from where it started, that
was never going to happen. That policy programme enabled the party to achieve one of the biggest
shifts in support in British history – yes, eclipsing Tony Blair's swing in 1997.
Social democracy is in crisis across the western world. British Labour is now one of the most
successful centre-left parties, many of which have been reduced to pitiful rumps under rightwing
leaderships. And indeed, other parties in Europe and the United States should learn lessons from
this experience.
....
JohnH -> Christopher H.... June 09, 2017 at 01:09 PM
Great catch!
You will be hard pressed to find any such piece ever printed in the opinion pages of any
newspaper in the American 'free' press.
By shunning candidates like Bernie and Corbyn, the American librul commentariat has been
exposed for what it is--corrupted by wealthy, powerful interests.
Populism and the Politics of Health
MARCH 14, 2017 1:43 PM
by Paul Krugman
...
This ties in with an important recent piece by Zack Beauchamp on the striking degree to which
left-wing economics fails, in practice, to counter right-wing populism; basically, Sandersism has
failed everywhere it has been tried. Why?
The answer, presumably, is that what we call populism is really in large degree white identity
politics, which can't be addressed by promising universal benefits. Among other things, these "populist"
voters now live in a media bubble, getting their news from sources that play to their identity-politics
desires, which means that even if you offer them a better deal, they won't hear about it or believe
it if told. For sure many if not most of those who gained health coverage thanks to Obamacare have
no idea that's what happened.
That said, taking the benefits away would probably get their attention, and maybe even open their
eyes to the extent to which they are suffering to provide tax cuts to the rich.
In Europe, right-wing parties probably don't face the same dilemma; they're preaching herrenvolk
social democracy, a welfare state but only for people who look like you. In America, however, Trump_vs_deep_state
is faux populism that appeals to white identity but actually serves plutocrats. That fundamental
contradiction is now out in the open."
Reply
Friday, Christopher H. - ,
June 09, 2017 at 11:12 AM
There has been a silence from the center left during the Corbyn campaign and now after it is over.
Luckily they have Comey to talk about. I will be curious to hear from Chris Dillow.
"In Europe, right-wing parties probably don't face the same dilemma; they're preaching herrenvolk
social democracy, a welfare state but only for people who look like you. In America, however,
Trump_vs_deep_state is faux populism that appeals to white identity but actually serves plutocrats. That
fundamental contradiction is now out in the open"
"... Everything about Comey is wrong. The fact that he felt the need to 'take notes' because the President asked for loyalty is fucking absurd. What sort of example did he make for fellow G men when he referred to his dealings with his commander in chief as being 'slightly cowardly'? The whole thing is rot, helping to fuel a bogus investigation spearheaded by a broken democratic party who have lost their fucking mind. ..."
"... He also touched upon the mercenary media's fake news about Trump, provided by bad sources, which was confirmed by Comey today. ..."
"... Don't forget it was McCain who took the 'pee' dossier that had been floating around DC which was so phoney even the media wouldn't touch - and told Comey to investigate. ..."
"... This is nothing less than a coordinated overthrow of the government by the deep state, media and uniparty ..."
"... So what do we need special counsel Mueller for in light of all this? Everyone knows the whole Russia collusion affair is politically motivated BS and deflection. ..."
"... Not to mention Comey handing out immunity deals like Christmas candy on Hillary's email investigation. Why would he do that? ..."
"... Comey took notes because he planned to blackmail Trump in the future just like J Edgar Hoover did when he ran the FBI. ..."
"... "Politicized" by the global central banks who own and operate virtually all world governments. I believe we need to keep the players very CLEAR in our minds. It's all of us; humanity, against the globalists who want us dead. Politicians, our institutions... all are aligned with the globalist psychopaths. It's that simple. ..."
"... Comey makes a memo, because that is the M.O. of the FBI. He fully expects gullible sheeple to believe any written statement by an FBI agent is truth, rather than a manipulating fake. ..."
"... Comey has admitted to a number of criminal acts ..."
"... Comey and his FBI partner should be legally charged by the Justice Department for releasing his FBI Memo to NY Times. His FBI partner should be fired and charged. They had no authority to release private government information and breach confidentiality with the president of the United States. The memo proved nothing and meant nothing but releasing it by a fired employee and FBI partner is a breach to FBI and the office of the president of the USA. ..."
"... Not one coward on that Senate committee had the balls to ask about the Seth Rich investigation........disappointing ..."
"... Comey also stated as 100% undisputed fact that Russia had "meddled" with the election. Again, no proof was cited, yet not a single Republican asked for such proof, nor has Trump managed to articulate a similar request. This is somewhat disturbing. ..."
"... The threat of being "Clintoned" is a powerful force. ..."
There will come a day when the city square will be packed with gibbets filled with swinging heads
of traitorous bastard commies -- most readily found in leftshit cities. The degeneracy must end.
Today's testimony by Comey was a farce, a transparent attempt by a spent and bitter bureaucrat trying
to hurt a sitting President.
Everything about Comey is wrong. The fact that he felt the need to 'take notes' because the President
asked for loyalty is fucking absurd. What sort of example did he make for fellow G men when he referred
to his dealings with his commander in chief as being 'slightly cowardly'? The whole thing is rot,
helping to fuel a bogus investigation spearheaded by a broken democratic party who have lost their
fucking mind.
Tucker chimes in and reviews the day's events, pointing out the hypocrisy of Comey and his dealings
with AG Lynch, who asked for Comey to word the investigation of Hillary Clinton's email scandal as
a 'matter.' If that's not collusion and political pressure on the FBI, nothing is.
He also touched upon the mercenary media's fake news about Trump, provided by bad sources, which
was confirmed by Comey today.
After watching this political circus it is very clear that no one should be re-elected from
either party, with the single exception of Paul.
Looks like what we really need is a new political party that actually serves the public tax
payers, unfortunately it may take a major financial depression and its accompanying turmoil to
bring that about.
IMHO, the Comey hearing was John McCain's chance to redeem himself, and he blew it. I think
his idea to go after Comey's interactions with the Obama regime was a great idea, but he came
unprepared and unrehearsed. McCain had an opportunity to display leadership, but he failed to
lead.
Don't forget it was McCain who took the 'pee' dossier that had been floating around DC
which was so phoney even the media wouldn't touch - and told Comey to investigate.
It's time 81 year old McCain - last in his Naval Academy class - shuffled off to an assisted
living center in Arizona.
Comey created a memo because it's hard to leak to multiple sources at one time in person.
We're living history folks. This is nothing less than a coordinated overthrow of the government
by the deep state, media and uniparty dominated by leftojihadis. The Gang of 8 is composed
of 4 dimocrites and 4 rinos. The rinos had a duty to come forward and not only refute the lies
in the media but to reveal it all as a hoax. Only Nunes told President Trump what was going on
and he was forced to recuse himself from the intelligence committee investigation.
Even an atheist has to admit there's divine intervention at work here. Flawed though he admits
to be, Trump is being guided and protected by a force more powerful than the swamp.
So what do we need special counsel Mueller for in light of all this? Everyone knows the
whole Russia collusion affair is politically motivated BS and deflection.
But Mueller won't. He & Comey are besties of 25 year standing. All Mueller will do it find
no direct links between the Russians and Trump or his administration but justify Comey's investigation
by saying the Russians are bad, evil people who were trying to co-opt naive and inexperienced
Trump colleagues.
If they wanted an honest and truthful investigation they would not have selected a retired
swamp general.
It scares me that people actually believe this shit. I guess we are doomed considering how
many morons like PitBullsRule are lapping up the koolaid with their heads in the sand
Not to mention Comey handing out immunity deals like Christmas candy on Hillary's email
investigation. Why would he do that?
Comey's (limited hangout) strategy: Say a few things to look honest, so he could sell "the
Russians did it (hack)" - despite showing no evidence. Otherwise, there would be no need for a
Special Counsel and he knows Mueller will forment more troubles for Trump, perhaps for years.
Trump needs to end this Russian hack nonsense ASAP.
I'd like Loretta Lynch to show me where in the FBI handbook it explains the proper procedure
for conducting "matters".
They just make shit up to suit their needs. The Comey incident is another sad example of how
every branch of government and every agency has become politicized by both sides, to the point
they can no longer perform their intended function.
"Politicized" by the global central banks who own and operate virtually all world governments.
I believe we need to keep the players very CLEAR in our minds. It's all of us; humanity, against
the globalists who want us dead. Politicians, our institutions... all are aligned with the globalist
psychopaths. It's that simple.
"how every branch of government and every agency has become politicized by both sides, to the
point they can no longer perform their intended function" and should therefore be disbanded. Fixed
it for you.
Comey makes a memo, because that is the M.O. of the FBI. He fully expects gullible sheeple
to believe any written statement by an FBI agent is truth, rather than a manipulating fake. Trump's
possible recording constrained Comey's M.O..
Nobody will do anything about any of this. Time to shitcan the lot of them. I hope not a single
doofus up for re-election goes back to D.C. in '18.
It's hard to know which to slap first, those that break the law out in the open--or those that
turn a blind eye to the flagrant lawlessness of the trangressors.
Comey has admitted to a number of criminal acts I think.
He admitted leaking FBI information to the media
He admitted leaking FBI information to the media in order to have an effect on the country
(ie a counsel)
He admitted he was concerned enough with his meeting with Trump to make a memo of it - instead
of going to the DOJ as required by law
He admitted he was concerned with Lynch telling him to not use the word investigation (which
was the truth) and agreeing to it, instead of resigning or reporting it.
He demonstrates that he leaked information to the media, but not the truth that Trump was not
under investigation - thus showing politcal bias in his job.
There are a few crimes there that I gather the DOJ has no option but to prosecute, how can
it not? Since they are also prosecuting Winner for the exact same thing?
Feral Bureau of Weasels Head Weasel James Comey said that he behaved 'slightly cowardly'. Well,
that is the sort of behavior one expects from a Weasel.
[No insults intended to the small mammals grouped together in the weasel family.]
Great review Tucker Carlson! Comey is a disgruntled loser like Killary. Comey never followed
up on Seth Rich murder, a more serious matter than playing stupid politics.
Comey and his FBI partner should be legally charged by the Justice Department for releasing
his FBI Memo to NY Times. His FBI partner should be fired and charged. They had no authority to
release private government information and breach confidentiality with the president of the United
States. The memo proved nothing and meant nothing but releasing it by a fired employee and FBI
partner is a breach to FBI and the office of the president of the USA.
Feral Bureau of Weasels Head Weasel James Comey was actively covering up for the murderers
who murdered Seth Rich and the people who hired them. He should be shitting whole goats knowing
that Attorney General Sessions seized everything in his office while he was in LACALIFUSA. Comey
will probably be joining Obama shortly wherever it is that he is hanging out overseas.
Comey also stated as 100% undisputed fact that Russia had "meddled" with the election.
Again, no proof was cited, yet not a single Republican asked for such proof, nor has Trump managed
to articulate a similar request. This is somewhat disturbing.
This sound like neofascism, not so much as populism...
Notable quotes:
"... One major component is offering simplistic solutions to complex problems: remove government regulations to create more jobs, restrict foreign imports to create more jobs, ban immigration from certain countries to curtail terrorism, build a wall to prevent illegal immigration, ban teaching contraception to prevent teenagers from having sex, allow guns to let armed citizen vigilantes defend us against mass murderers, privatize education, government services and infrastructure to make them more "economical", etc... ..."
"... And most of all: elect a strong leader who is not bound by laws to come in and kick ass and make the country great again. ..."
"Some people were raising the question, what is genuine populism?"
One major component
is offering simplistic solutions to complex problems: remove government regulations to
create more jobs, restrict foreign imports to create more jobs, ban immigration from
certain countries to curtail terrorism, build a wall to prevent illegal immigration, ban
teaching contraception to prevent teenagers from having sex, allow guns to let armed
citizen vigilantes defend us against mass murderers, privatize education, government
services and infrastructure to make them more "economical", etc...
And most of all: elect a strong leader who is not bound by laws to come in and kick
ass and make the country great again.
"... The Glass Stegal repeal was passed under Clinton not Reagan. ..."
"... Yep, the Dems would do well to drop the Russia/FBI swung the election thing and the all Red State inhabitants are poorly educated idiots mentality and concentrate on developing some policies that appeal to the majority of people. ..."
"... There's a bit of bait 'n switch here. All this Davos/Deregulation/NeoLiberal whatever is a product of Republican -- right wing -- thinking. It first gained serious traction during the Reagan administration. The Democrats merely drifted into the vacuum formed by the Republican party lurching from Right/Center to Hard Right. Since then any drifting back has been subject to extreme criticism as 'socialism', 'communism' and the like. Now we're in the rather weird situation that the party of neoliberal economics is pushing the line that the Democrats are the party of entrenched money and they are the Party of the People. It beggars belief, especially when journalists take it up and run with it instead of calling the the BS that it is. ..."
"... I am so glad that the Russians are responsible for electing Trump. It would be awful to think that it was because Democrats had a really, really bad candidate in Hillary Clinton. It just could not be -- she was, after all -- the MOST QUALIFIED PERSON EVER TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT, as we were instructed endlessly by Obama. Voters thought otherwise and their support for Trump was mainly to keep Hillary out, not to have a billionaire lunatic elected. But it would not matter since they all serve their master class bankers and war-makers. ..."
"... Republicans starting with Reagan made refusing to enforce financial laws they did not like a policy. It was continued under Bush43/Cheney on speed. Regulator of mortgage brokers refused to let state AGs (including Maine) move against fraudsters and refused to act himself. Chris Cox ignored the risky complex financial products that tanked our economy. ..."
"... Was Clinton an idiot to allow Rubin and Summers any where near financial market policy YES. Was Obama a bigger fool for bringing Summers into his admin- absolutely since he had already displayed financial incompetence at Harvard, YES. ..."
The Glass Stegal repeal was passed under Clinton not Reagan.
Reagan did the Savings
& Loan deregulation which led to the S&L bailout under G.W. Bush during which they prosecuted
over 1,000 bank executives and got convictions including five sitting senators with four forced
resignations.
After Clinton did the deregulation that led to the financial crisis and Obama prosecuted zero,
let me say that again, zero, bank executives and provided $9 trillion in bailout liquidity.
Take Amtrak between Chicago and Washington DC and witness wreckage of heartland industry along
a corridor 800 miles long. People still live there, forgotten. Bernie Sanders is not finished.
Listen to him; and put yourself up for election locally, on a Park District board; or a Township
position; as an Election Judge or for County or State office. And listen to your neighbors, who
are suffering. Then do something about it. When I ran for State Representative, the Democratic
Party sent me a highlighted map instead of a check for my campaign. The map showed "70% Republican"
voting registration in my State Representative district. No Party cash for my campaign was forthcoming.
The only way to change this Gerrymandering is to be on-hand in the State House following the next
decennial census in 2020. It will be "too late" to do anything -- again -- unless "we" change
the Party; and the Party changes the re-districting scam. Bernie Sanders is right about pitching
in to re-shape and re-form the Democratic Party. The Party, as constructed, is passé... and as
hollowed-out as the miles and miles of decrepit buildings with thousands of gaping, broken windows
that lie between Chicago and DC. Go see the devastation for yourself. Then get serious about answers.
Yep, the Dems would do well to drop the Russia/FBI swung the election thing and the all Red
State inhabitants are poorly educated idiots mentality and concentrate on developing some policies
that appeal to the majority of people.
I'm going to sound like a broken record, but Identity Politics has FAILED. The Dems are not
going to cobble together some sort of Ruling Coalition out of Transgendered people and urban people
of color. That's an insane strategy of hoping you will win national elections by appealing to
25% or less of the population of whom only half that number actually vote if you are lucky.
I'm not saying abandon those struggles. Under a just system those struggles will continue and
prevail - the Constitution guarantees that unless you get dishonest justices on the Supreme Court
- which seems more likely the more national elections you blow. Democrats need to stop worrying
about narrow single issues like that and focus on developing a BROAD national strategy to appeal
to the Majority of Americans.
So says the guy from Punjab who is NOT a poorly educated white person and who has voted Democrat
since 1980.
There's a bit of bait 'n switch here. All this Davos/Deregulation/NeoLiberal whatever is a
product of Republican -- right wing -- thinking. It first gained serious traction during the Reagan
administration. The Democrats merely drifted into the vacuum formed by the Republican party lurching
from Right/Center to Hard Right. Since then any drifting back has been subject to extreme criticism
as 'socialism', 'communism' and the like. Now we're in the rather weird situation that the party
of neoliberal economics is pushing the line that the Democrats are the party of entrenched money
and they are the Party of the People. It beggars belief, especially when journalists take it up
and run with it instead of calling the the BS that it is.
The problem with the Rust Belt states is that they keep on electing Republican state governments.
These fail to deliver on anything useful for working people -- they're more interested in entrenching
their power by tweaking the elections -- but then people turn to the Federal government as if
this is some kind of savior capable of turning around their fortunes overnight.
Anyway, don't take my word for it. Just keep electing those regressive state legislators (and
keep drinking that tainted water....).
Great comment on the article, but I think even you have been kind in your criticism of it. I can
only hope that the writer started out with the intention of saying that while the GOP and their
rich and big business political patrons are responsible for the impoverishment of those in the
article, the Democrats have missed out on messaging and on more specific policies that addresses
those wrongs committed against a voting block they can own. Instead the entire piece is written
as though the Democrats have earned the scorn and anger of these voters. One can argue the Democrats
have failed to focus more on the plight of these voters, but they are NOT the cause of these voters'
plight; and there is nothing in this piece to make that distinction or about the irony of why
these same voters flock to a political party primarily responsible for what has happened to them.
In fact consider this below from the article:
"Mention how the Democrats betrayed working people over the years, however, and the radio station's
board immediately lights up with enthusiastic callers. "
Yes, that is right! The political anomaly that Trump is can be be explained by the successful
exploitation of the improvised classes by media outlets that voice these voters' anger to acquire
a capture audience and then lay the blame for what has happened to them on immigrants & liberals.
You never hear anything on those outlets about the unholy triad of the GOP political class, big
business and media outlets in their orbit. I don't need to drive through these flyover states
to know they are hurting; and I don't need to sit down with them to know they are real human beings
with a great deal in common with me or to know that despite their general decency they are full
of misplaced anger and resentment.
I am so glad that the Russians are responsible for electing Trump. It would be awful to think
that it was because Democrats had a really, really bad candidate in Hillary Clinton. It just could
not be -- she was, after all -- the MOST QUALIFIED PERSON EVER TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT, as we were
instructed endlessly by Obama. Voters thought otherwise and their support for Trump was mainly
to keep Hillary out, not to have a billionaire lunatic elected. But it would not matter since
they all serve their master class bankers and war-makers.
Interesting he choices of examples for how liberals let the mid west down. Republican president
Reagan deregulated S&Ls with predictable awful results. Republicans under Clinton (they controlled
the Senate and house ) when Glass Steagsll was repealed. Republic Phil Gramm also rescinded the
AntiBucket Shop Law which loosed the disaster of the naked CDS,
Republicans starting with Reagan made refusing to enforce financial laws they did not like
a policy. It was continued under Bush43/Cheney on speed. Regulator of mortgage brokers refused
to let state AGs (including Maine) move against fraudsters and refused to act himself. Chris Cox
ignored the risky complex financial products that tanked our economy.
It was Republican Sen. Phil Gramm who said in hearings on CSPAN that these instruments of financial
mass destruction (Warren Buffet's words) were too complicated to understand and therefore should
not be regulated.
Republicans wanted to free up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy subprime even NINJA loans and
made it so.
Was Clinton an idiot to allow Rubin and Summers any where near financial market policy
YES. Was Obama a bigger fool for bringing Summers into his admin- absolutely since he had already
displayed financial incompetence at Harvard, YES.
But, it is republicans who either drove the bad financial ideas or controlled them. Republicans
who support IRS rules and their laws that promote off shoring jobs and stashing cash untaxed off
shore.
Eisenhower, Goldwater, Ford, Bush41 - even Nixon - would not know these people.
Oh, and as for the rest of the party and its defeats: A quick look at the numbers show that Democrats
keep losing not because voters are switching to the Republican brand, but because they no longer
bother to vote for Democrats who are just going to shiv them in the back with Republican economic
policies.
But now liberals and the Democratic Party are to get the lion's share of the blame for everything?
As I've said on numerous occasions in the past: The reason Trump beat Hillary is the same reason
Obama beat her in the 2008 primaries: Voters knew her and what she stood for -- and so were willing
to take a chance on the other candidate.
Thank you for the Abramson reminder -- as a retired journalist I know the importance of providing
clear and accurate information to the general public. While Abramson and Frank and others are
writing Opinion in the Guard and elsewhere, too many people do not understand positioning and
propaganda. Media must make money to stay in business and often it is opinion writers/tv hosts
etc that generate interest and coin to keep the words rolling and the money coming in.
It is especially ironic as wages are cut, jobs disappear, cost of living rises so fewer people
can afford to subscribe or pay for actual news and information. Not to mention the political idiocy
of reducing school funding so that the electorate knows nothing of history or how politics works.
Trump wants to take us back to Ronnie Reagan and Maggie Thatcher years that left us with trillion
dollar deficits and decimation of the middle class that is now on the downward slide to actual
poverty...
No, it is a crap comment. From the neo-liberal 'pseudo science' that economics supposedly is (almost
forgot to use the word neo-liberal, a must these days to make your point) , to the greed and the
rapacity of the "one percenters".
Such a simple problem isn't it? Let's just go back in time rather than find more creative and
up-to-date solution for the problems there are. Globalisation isn't going to go away, the world
is too small a place. Globalisation has created problems for people, but many more people have
benefitted from it.
"The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country is the utterly predictable
fruit of the Democratic party's neoliberal turn. Every time our liberal leaders signed off on
some lousy trade deal, figuring that working-class people had "nowhere else to go," they were
making what happened last November a little more likely. "
---
As someone who's middle aged, I am getting sick and tired of this historical revisionist nonsense
that all the country's woes and economic climate can be mostly pinned on the liberals and that
somehow, it's something that they did wrong that is the reason why they "lost" constituents in
the Midwest. Someone can peddle this nonsense over and over again with the smug belief that everyone
on on the internet is too young to know whether what he's saying is true. But there are some of
us "old folks" who are also on the internet and as an old folk, I have no issues calling out this
article out for the nonsense that it is.
Everything that is going on now in terms of jobs can be 100% attributable to Reaganomics--period,
end of. It's nothing to do with liberals. It's 100% to do with the devastating rippling effect
that his neoliberal policies has had on the country since the 1980s, only made 100x worse by Republican
pols who have been further carrying out his neoliberalist agenda to full effect for the past several
decades.
It was under Reagan that the country began experiencing mass layoffs (euphemistically called
"downsizing"). It was under Reagan that corporations began slashing benefits, cutting wages and
closing up shop to ship thousands of jobs overseas. It was under Reagan that the middle class
American dream died--aka, the expectation that if got a diploma, you could start working for a
company full time straight out of college, work for decades with decent benefits and perks, save
up enough money to buy a house and retire with a generous pension. Gone. All gone.
Remember the "Buy American" grassroots campaign? That started in the 1980s, precisely because
under Reagan, the country had relied increasingly on imported goods at the expense of domestic
manufacturing. Here's an actual article from 1989 that shows you that the roots of everything
going on now started decades ago. It's actually a defeatist article telling people to *stop* wasting
their time to get everyone to "Buy American" because it had become virtually impossible to buy
American-made goods.
As for the idea that there's always been a staunchly"Democratic" following in the Midwest that
has been "lost" because of something that the party is doing wrong and that this caused them to
turn to populism? False. It may have been true a very long time ago that this constituency has
been staunchly Democratic and not amenable to populism, but not recently. It has voted on populist
platforms before. Remember "welfare queens?" Remember "Willie Horton?" Willie Horton, the black
bogeyman, was the "bad hombres" of today.
In addition, this constituency has been increasingly voting against its best interests for
decades since Reagan was voted into office. Why? Because demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and the
large number of puppets at Rupert Murdoch's vast media empire have been selling them a bill of
goods since the 1990s that the reason why they're becoming poorer is that liberals are giving
all their "white" hard-earned money to shiftless, lazy blacks and immigrants and losing out to
them because of affirmative action. In the famous words of South Park, "THEY TOOK R JERBS" and
"IT'S ALL DUH LIBRUHL'S FAULTS!!"
This constituency has developed such a deep-seated hatred and loathing for liberals because
of the demagogues at FOX or news radio that even when Michael Moore directly spoke to their plight
in Roger and Me, they derided him as a typical Communist-loving, anti-Capitalist pinko. Because,
you see, according to FOX demagogues, calling out rich corporate fatcats who also happen to be
white is attacking white people, a form of class warfare and anti-Capitalist.
Given all that, for someone to try to paint a picture that this constituency would otherwise
be embracing liberalism if not for the Democratic Party adopting an "ideology" is laughable. They
were never going to win because anything short of ranting, "They took r jerbs" and "Damned brown
people on welfare and illegals stealing taking all our money" was going to cost them the election.
Bottom line, the Midwest was never the liberals' or Democratic Party's constituency to lose,
and Reagan is behind all of the economic devastation that the region is experiencing. Anyone else
trying to say otherwise is just using spin and historical revisionism.
That's exactly what America needs -- another neocon/neolib, just like Macron! As if Obama and
the Clintons hadn't been neocon/neolib enough!
Reply Share
Frank is right that the white working class in the Midwestern states have been the swing votes
for presidential elections since the Reagan election of 1984, when the white Democratic South
became more fully the white Republican South. But he is wrong in not recognizing that the Democratic
Party has three major constituents and it needs all of them to win elections and to do the progressive
things while in office that would help people like those in the Midwest. Democrats need the votes
of the white working class, but also of race/ethnic minorities, and the "new class" professionals
and others. The problem is that these groups have been fighting with each other since the 1960s,
continually undermining the chances for Democrats to win. In the period of the Civil Rights Movement
and the Vietnam War, students and professionals joined with race and ethnic minorities to challenge
the influence of the unionists, big city mayors, and white working class in the Democratic Party,
which is what gave us Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes. Through this period, predictably, more white
working class people either stopped voting or moved to the Republican Party. In the 2016 election,
with the Bernie Sanders influence, students and professionals began to attack the influence of
race and ethnic minorities (and women?) in the Democratic Party, ostensibly in support of the
white working class over "identity politics," with the result that we got Trump. Globalization
is a difficult and complex issue, but the reality is that since the 1970s the U.S. economy has
not been able to prosper, nor the working class jobs that it requires, by selling things only
in the U.S. We have to be in global markets and integrated with other economies around the world
and that requires trade deals that balance our interests against those of other countries. This
has generated winners and losers in the economy, and it will continue to do so. While it may not
be possible to bring back the same kinds of jobs that pay a middle class wage for those with not
much education, it should be possible to create new jobs that pay a middle class wage and to invest
in education and skill development, infrastructure, and a welfare state that sustains people through
periods of disruption and transformation. The Republican Party and the New Right that took it
over are fighting to the death to undermine what is left of the social safety net to force people
to take whatever jobs are available at exploitative wages, and they have been successful exploiting
anti-government sentiment by using racial animosity and more recently anti-immigrant hysteria.
The right has been successful because those on the left who should support the Democratic Party
and then fight for more progressive policies within it just keep fighting each other and in the
last election delivered Trump by voting third party (along with gutting of the Voting Rights Act,
voter suppression, Russian influences that helped Sanders and vilified Hillary Clinton, the rogue
FBI, Citizens United, and so on). The only option for the left in a two party system is to support
the Democratic Party. Staying home or voting third party is a vote for your worst enemy. France
is experiencing the same thing, with the left candidate refusing to support the more centrist
candidate against Le Pen. We all need to learn how to form coalitions and to keep our focus on
winning elections, not winning ideological battles.
Umm, the real goals of labor unions have been beach houses and new SUVs for labor leadership.
Unions have been adept at screwing over their memberships since at least the 1970s -- no wonder
they keep supporting anti-union Dims.
Maddow has to defend the Corporate Democratic Establishment any way she can. Maddow to my knowledge
has never mentioned:
Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, has confirmed that it hired the consultancy of Tony Podesta,
the elder brother of John Podesta who chaired Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, for lobbying
its interests in the United States.
The two Russian banks spent more than $700,000 in 2016 on Washington lobbyists as they sought
to end the U.S. sanctions, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms and documents filed with
the Department of Justice. The Podesta Group charged Sberbank $20,000 per month, plus expenses,
on a contract from March through September 2016.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless cankles of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear -
"My name is Ozywomandias, queen of queens:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
They became the party of neocons and defense establishment. The party of MIC lobbyists. nothing
to do with the democracy.
Notable quotes:
"... What, pray tell, is the Democratic Party's message otherwise? That they don't like Russia, except when they did? That they believe Russia is the biggest national security threat to America, except when it wasn't? ..."
"... Where the rubber meets the road for me is in the total abrogation of interest in controlling state legislatures and governorships. This is the level of governance where not only Congressional districting is decided, but also where influential policies and laws such as insurance regulation and such happens. ..."
"The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday there is no "smoking gun" so
far showing collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in an effort to influence the 2016 election,
adding that hearings this week will be crucial to congressional investigations into the matter" [
Wall Street Journal ]. "'Listen, there's a lot of smoke. We have no smoking gun at this point,'
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said on CNN on Sunday. 'But there is a lot of smoke.'" Named sources
with evidence the public can see would be nice, especially considering that some Democrats frame
Russian "meddling" as a casus belli . I mean, in both the Gulf of Tonkin and the Iraq WMDs,
the administration that wanted war had the common decency to fake some physical evidence; they didn't
rely on anonymous "officials," "17 intelligence agencies," and so forth. (Oh, the word now seems
to be "colluding." It used to be "meddling.")
"The Latest: France says no trace of Russian hacking Macron" [
AP ]. I'm so old I remember when that was a done deal. Everybody believed it!
"A Noun, a Verb and Vladimir Putin" [
Politico ]. "To those with a bit of distance from cable news-that is, every sane person in America-Democrats
seem to be replaying the exact strategy that lost them the last election. What, pray tell, is
the Democratic Party's message otherwise? That they don't like Russia, except when they did? That
they believe Russia is the biggest national security threat to America, except when it wasn't?
Democrats appear to have spent about two minutes trying to figure out why the voters of Wisconsin,
Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and, very nearly, Minnesota rejected them only a few months ago. And
why, despite an ostensibly popular Obama presidency, they now have less political power than at any
point in memory. But this is hard and painful spadework, and what's unearthed might prove unpleasant.
So why bother?"
Realignment and Legitimacy
"'We call for a #MarchForTruth on Saturday, June 3rd to raise our voices and let our elected leaders
know that Americans want answers,' the site reads
. 'The legitimacy of our democracy is more important than the interests of any party, or any
President" [ Time
].
"A Field of Lavender Nourished by Trump's Tweets" [
HyperAllergic ]. "Using a Raspberry Pi, [artist Martin] Roth has synced grow lights on the small
room's ceiling so the strength of their bulbs corresponds with the activities of nearly two dozen
Twitter accounts. Most belong to people in President Trump's closest circle: feeds included along
with @POTUS and @realDonaldTrump are those of Press Secretary Sean Spicer and White House counselor
Kellyanne Conway. Other accounts represent the mainstream media, from CNN to Fox News. When any of
these accounts retweets a tweet, the grow lights brighten, increasing in power if there's a flurry
of retweets With all of this curious wiring, Roth intends to create a sort of underground retreat
that transforms our media-born anxieties into something therapeutic.
Lavender has long been used to soothe the mind and encourage better sleep in addition to healing
physical wounds; the more these select politicians and pundits fire tweets, the stronger the scent
to the installation's visitors ." You can visit the exhibit until June 21 if you are in the New York
City area;
here are the details .
"RONALD REAGAN, THE FIRST REALITY TV STAR PRESIDENT" [
JSTOR ].
"'Politics in the United States has always been a performance art,' writes Tim Raphael in his
analysis of
the branding and image-crafting that now dominate our political system . Throughout his eight
years as president, Ronald Reagan had much more positive poll numbers (60-70%) as a person than
did his actual policies (40%). Raphael attributes Reagan's success to the potent combination of
advertising, public relations, and a television in every home. (There were 14,000 TVs in America
in 1947; by 1954, 32 million; by 1962, 90% of American homes plugged in.) Ronald, Nancy, and
four-year-old Patti were TV's 'first all-electric family' with 'electric servants' making magic
as the folks at home watched and dreamed of the good life as seen on television."
>>Article lists Biden, Warren, cites Mike Allen approvingly on Kirsten Gillibrand, Mark Cuban
(!), ..
The Democrats have no bench. That's what you get when one circle of cronies has controlled
the DNC apparatus since 1992. (even Obama is a partially Clinton creation as Obama's political
career was propelled by William Daley, a Bill Clinton Chief of Staff)
The DNC had some potential to build a bench when Howard Dean was running the show through his
50 state strategy with its grass roots level organizing in the states and its success in winning
majorities in both houses. Opportunity that had the potential to bring new younger blood into
the party and have them move up the food chain. Guess Barack and Rahm got too scared of the left
getting the upper hand and scaring the big donors away, so they brought in stiffs like Tim Kaine
and DWS to keep the donors happy, even at the expense of congressional majorities and bench building.
Where the rubber meets the road for me is in the total abrogation of interest in controlling
state legislatures and governorships. This is the level of governance where not only Congressional
districting is decided, but also where influential policies and laws such as insurance regulation
and such happens.
The Democrat party is all about centralized power in Washington. This enhances the effectiveness
of Congressional grifting; toll gates ahead, mofos. To them states should only be administrative
districts of the Federal government.
Whoops, it's a federal republic; more limited than in the past due to overreach through the
Interstate Commerce Clause expansion over time, and through the Feds' propensity to declare war
on everything which has the effect of giving them primacy on matters that could equally well,
or perhaps in a superior fashion, be addressed on a state (or even local) level.
When the centralizing strategy comes a cropper, they have so disempowered themselves on the
state level, that they got nothin'. Well, not them personally, 'cause they have generally seen
to that aspect; but the citizens who might be habitual Democrat voters, and who favor old-school
Democrat priorities are rude, screwed, and tattooed.
"... I posted 99% anti-Hillary material. It consisted mostly of newspaper articles about many issues, ranging from her support for a right wing coup in Honduras that resulted in an escalation of violence, to her massive pay to play at the State Dept, to her disastrous regime change attempts in Libya and Syria (not to mention her support for the coup in Ukraine and the installation of a Neo Nazi regime). There were also many articles about her numerous campaign promise betrayals, such as her support for bad trade deals with Colombia, South Korea, and Singapore, despite her promises to oppose these (her change of position re: Colombia was after getting a $10 million donation). These articles were all from mainstream sources, including The Nation, The Hill, even the NYT. ..."
"... The thing is, Hillary was so corrupt and her judgment and actions so bad, that there was a seemingly never-ending wealth of bad things to post about her. It wasn't fake news, it was the actual historical record of her dastardly deeds. It wasn't just I who did this. This is what folks on FB and other social media sites did throughout. She probably would refer to what we all posted as "fake news" because she psychopathically denies the truth on a continual basis. ..."
"... Keep in mind that I had not mentioned where I'd gotten my information; I simply said I had done broad research of St. Hillary's history and found it bore little to no resemblance to what the media said about her. ..."
"... When I patiently explained this (and added my journalist's credentials), the attack-cultist then switched to their second favorite: I support Trump, and am guilty of his election. I don't know how long she kept on posting her foam-mouthed mantras, because I departed using my standard response: I no longer engage in battles of facts with unarmed opponents. ..."
Lots of people, including myself, created FB accounts solely to post material related to the
2016 Democratic Primary and the election. I have just under 5,000 friends on FB, all of whom are
"friends in Bernie."
I posted 99% anti-Hillary material. It consisted mostly of newspaper articles about many issues,
ranging from her support for a right wing coup in Honduras that resulted in an escalation of violence,
to her massive pay to play at the State Dept, to her disastrous regime change attempts in Libya
and Syria (not to mention her support for the coup in Ukraine and the installation of a Neo Nazi
regime). There were also many articles about her numerous campaign promise betrayals, such as
her support for bad trade deals with Colombia, South Korea, and Singapore, despite her promises
to oppose these (her change of position re: Colombia was after getting a $10 million donation).
These articles were all from mainstream sources, including The Nation, The Hill, even the NYT.
The thing is, Hillary was so corrupt and her judgment and actions so bad, that there was
a seemingly never-ending wealth of bad things to post about her. It wasn't fake news, it was the
actual historical record of her dastardly deeds. It wasn't just I who did this. This is what folks
on FB and other social media sites did throughout. She probably would refer to what we all posted
as "fake news" because she psychopathically denies the truth on a continual basis.
It consisted mostly of newspaper articles about many issues, ranging from her support for
a right wing coup in Honduras that resulted in an escalation of violence, to her massive pay
to play at the State Dept, to her disastrous regime change attempts in Libya and Syria (not
to mention her support for the coup in Ukraine and the installation of a Neo Nazi regime).
Funny you should mention. I responded to yet another episode of Russian hysteria yesterday
and was immediately attacked by a Clinton cultist. Understand, this woman had no idea who I am
and clearly didn't bother to find out. I said something against St. Hillary, and was therefore
the enemy. Of course, the basis of her attack was that my sources of information were all "fake
news."
Keep in mind that I had not mentioned where I'd gotten my information; I simply said I
had done broad research of St. Hillary's history and found it bore little to no resemblance to
what the media said about her.
When I patiently explained this (and added my journalist's credentials), the attack-cultist
then switched to their second favorite: I support Trump, and am guilty of his election. I don't
know how long she kept on posting her foam-mouthed mantras, because I departed using my standard
response: I no longer engage in battles of facts with unarmed opponents.
TheCubanGentlemen
,
27 Apr 2017 10:42
Sorry Mr. Cuban but Barney has a point. Sympathy for criminals? How
about a system that extracts wealth by taking family members that have
made a mistake hostage. Private prisons are incredibly corrupt. They pay
their guards $7 an hour, barely train them and then throw them into a
hellhole of starved and abused prisoners, prisoners who's families are
charged $2-5 a MINUTE to talk to them! Prisoners who are charged for
laundry, for new underwear, for sanitary napkins, for extra food
anything they can, they charge them for, all to meet a higher quarterly
profit. If they work, prisoners get only .25 an hour! Menawhile, the
items they make get a proud MADE IN AMERICA sticker and sold at a
premium netting the company MORE money. This is a direct threat to
DEMOCRACY! Why not contract our work to prisons with no liability and
infinitesimal wages to lower costs. Gee, doesn't that sounds like a
threat to low skilled workers?! Everything matters because EVERYTHING IS
CONNECTED!!!
--
,
iamwhiskerbiscuit
Ramus
,
27 Apr 2017 09:35
Very little differences between neoncons and neoliberals these days.
They're both in Goldman Saacs corner, they both support war even when
they claim otherwise during their election... Both laugh at the idea of
emulating countries that offer free Healthcare, free college, higher
minimum wage and lower cost of living. Bush tax policy = Obama tax
policy. Bush stance on war = Obama stance on war. Whats the difference?
Abortion and gun rights. That's pretty much all thats different. Pro
militarist, world police, globalists who favor a regressive tax system.
Don't like it? Don't vote... You have no say in this debate.
Yes, the Democratic Party are essentially corporate shills who talk
pretty to the poor and oppressed and then serve their corporate masters.
But that isn't why people voted against them. That would be assuming
some sort of political sophistication among the masses. It is rather,
IMHO, the corporate owned media in the form of AM radio, cable and local
news outlets, and most local newspapers who either report on nothing
that might change the status quo or are actual propaganda outlets for
the ultra right. The fact that Fox news and right wing radio is the
background music of mid America, should not be discounted. And secondly,
the seizure of nearly all of the church pulpits by the 'religious'
right. People vote the way their pastor tells them to vote. This isn't
rocket science. When there is a coup, the first order of business has
always been to seize the radio and TV stations. Bernie who ?
In a close election, there is something of
everything. But this concept that the
election turned on these displaced workers is
hilarious. In truth, we've been talking about
things like this since the 70s or before. Why
now? Because now, a wave of xenophobia and
racism swept the world and that was the wave
Trump rode to office. Many of his so-called
displaced workers overlap with those groups.
Add the religious evangelicals. That's how
Trump won... take away the evangelicals, take
away the racists, take away the xenophobes,
take away the screaming about the Mexican
this, the Muslims that, the Syrians, the
pandering to far-right groups who in the past
were considered the underbelly of the
country..and Trump doesn't have a chance.
This is a man with Mike Pence as vice
president. This is a man who brings people
like Steve Bannon into the administration.
That's how he won and that's how he remains
popular with his base. The rest is an
illusion
What happens to those good old days when a job could support an entire
family? Reagan happened. Massive tax cuts for the wealthy, building up
our military 10 times as big as the next largest military, deregulating
banks and brokerage... Then Clinton continued to deregulate further.
Then Bush brought about more tax cuts for the rich and Obama kept his
tax policy on place. In 68, a minimum wage worker with 3 kids fell 500
dollars above the poverty line. (5,000 in today's money). Today, a
minimum wage worker with 3 kids falls 10,000 below the poverty line. And
the neocon/neoliberal answer to that is women must work, single people
need roommates and the wealthy need tax relief. What a load of crap.
The Democratic Party is still owned and operated by the Wall Street,
fossil fuel and war interests. The fact that the DNC installed Tom
Perez, who is not inspired by the idea of health care as a human right,
is telling. The DNC is the enemy of lower-middle class working (or
non-working) people. The DNC nominated the candidate least likely to win
over Trump. The Democrats need to send their bank/war/oil candidates to
the Republicans. We need a whole new truly progressive party..but since
our governement has been sold to the highest bidder, it make take some
unpleasantness in the streets to achieve power over the special
interests. And EVERYONE must vote EVERY TIME.
The problem is US elites, who are only exceptional in their stupidity.
"Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States,
but rent-seekers like the banking and the health-care sectors just
might"
Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton
The exceptionally stupid US elite are going for the easy money and
destroying their nation.
Its elites are always rigging stuff in their favour and forgetting
the reality they have hidden.
There is a huge difference between wealth creation and wealth
extraction, but today we have no idea of even the concept of wealth
extraction.
Well, one of our 21st Century Nobel prize winning economists, Angus
Deaton, has just remembered the problem.
The Classical Economists of the 19th Century were only too aware of
the two sides of capitalism, the productive side where wealth creation
takes place and the parasitic side where wealth extraction takes place.
The US was a key player in developing neoclassical economics and it's
what we use today.
It looks after the interests of the old money, idle rich rentiers.
The distinction between "earned" income (wealth creation) and
"unearned" income (wealth extraction) disappears and the once separate
areas of "capital" and "land" are conflated. The old money, idle rich
rentiers are now just productive members of society and not parasites
riding on the back of other people's hard work.
It happens at the end of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, but
doesn't blow up until the 21st century when the exceptionally stupid US
elite have forgotten what they have done.
Monetary theory has been regressing for the last one hundred years.
Credit creation theory -> fractional reserve theory -> financial
intermediation theory
" banks make their profits by taking in deposits and lending the
funds out at a higher rate of interest"
Paul Krugman, 2015.
One of today's Nobel Prize winning economists spouting today's
nonsense.
Progress in monetary theory has been in the reverse direction,
leading to many of today's problems.
There was massive debt and money creation in the US leading up to the
2008 bust:
Get back to the Classical Economists to learn how you tax "unearned"
income to provide subsidized housing, healthcare, education and other
services to provide a low cost economy whose workforce isn't priced out
of the global market place.
When you understand money you can see in the money supply when Wall
Street is getting really stupid and about to blow up the economy.
Throughout history, the "people" were ruled by the powerful even if the
powerful were idiots, thieves, rapists and murderers. Times have
changed. People don't accept that anymore. But if Democrats have made a
blanket error it was in assuming that everyone sees the world as they
do, and in assuming that everyone is a rational being committed to the
ideals of a republic. Clearly that is not the case. And the "people"
want leaders, not pals. They want security. Democrats need a person who
combines the guile of a Machiavelli with the smarts of an Obama and the
steel fist of a Cromwell. Thing is, under such conditions, it's doubtful
if the "people" are governable anymore, in the sense of making decisions
based on reality as opposed to a combination of superstition, myth, and
misinformation. Oh, and vanity is an important factor: ask Susan
Sarandon and her proxy vote for Trump--she voted for Stein.
It was the DLC ("Democrats Led by Clintons") that brought the DP to its
current condition of self-satisfied atrophy and irrelevance by embracing
Davos "meritocracy" and neo-liberal economics combined with
neo-conservative foreign policy for the past 30 years. They sealed their
fate by turning the Party (DNC, DSCC, DCCC, DGA, most state committees)
into stale and pale imitations of Reagan's GOP; and Party 'leaders' are
far too comfortable with their own sense of entitlement to power and
wealth to understand either the fallacies of their tunnel vision, or the
consequences (like electing Trump and keeping the GOP in control of
Congress and most states) of their blinkered myopia.
The only hope for the DP is to let the genuine 'progressives' (aka the
socialist/green 'left') take over management of the political apparatus
because what passes for 'liberalism' these days is no longer an
electoral/policy option, at least as far as the electorate is concerned.
And all the early indications are that the from the DNC down the Party
establishment is more concerned about stamping out the Bernie Bro and Ho
heresies than defeating Republicans.
Our politicians have been brainwashed by neoliberal economists.
These
economists produce models that factor-in all the upsides to
globalisation, but fail to model any of the crippling,
expensive-to-treat consequences of shutting down entire towns in places
like Michigan or Lancashire.
They assume people live frictionless lives; that when the European
ship-building industry moves to Poland, riveters in Portsmouth can just
up-sticks and move to Gdansk with no problem. They encourage a narrative
that implies such an English riveter are lazy if he fails to seize this
opportunity.
(Let's drop a few economists in Gdansk with £100 in their pockets,
and see how their families do.)
Economics is a corrupt pseudo-science that gives a pseudo-scientific
justification for the greed and rapacity of One Percenters. Its
methodological flaws are glaring. It's time economists went back to the
social science faculty, where they belong.
"... Tell people about how the Russians stole the election for Trump and everyone knows you're just reiterating a Beltway talking point. Mention how the Democrats betrayed working people over the years, however, and the radio station's board immediately lights up with enthusiastic callers. Remind people of the ways in which the Democrats have reoriented themselves around affluent, tasteful white-collar people and you hear a chorus of angry yesses; talk about how the Democrats live to serve the so-called "creative class" and a murmur of recognition sweeps the room. ..."
"... People in the labor movement that I met in my turn around the midwest expressed complicated feelings about Donald Trump. On the one hand, everyone understands that he is an obvious scoundrel and they fear that his administration will bring about (via a possible supreme court ruling against public-sector unions) an epic defeat for organized labor. ..."
"... Economics is a corrupt pseudo-science that gives a pseudo-scientific justification for the greed and rapacity of One Percenters. Its methodological flaws are glaring. It's time economists went back to the social science faculty, where they belong. ..."
Another thing that is inexcusable from Democrats: surprise at the economic disasters that have
befallen the midwestern cities and states that they used to represent.
The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country is the utterly predictable
fruit of the Democratic party's neoliberal turn. Every time our liberal leaders signed off on some
lousy trade deal, figuring that working-class people had "nowhere else to go," they were making what
happened last November a little more likely.
Every time our liberal leaders deregulated banks and then turned around and told working-class
people that their misfortunes were all attributable to their poor education, that the only answer
for them was a lot of student loans and the right sort of college degree ... every time they did
this they made the disaster a little more inevitable.
Pretending to rediscover the exotic, newly red states of the Midwest,
in the manner of the New York Times , is not the answer to this problem. Listening to the voices
of the good people of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan is not really the answer, either. Cursing those
bad people for the stupid way they voted is an even lousier idea.
What we need is for the Democratic party and its media enablers to alter course. It's not enough
to hear people's voices and feel their pain; the party actually needs to change. They need to understand
that the enlightened Davos ideology they have embraced over the years has done material harm to millions
of their own former constituents. The Democrats need to offer something different next time. And
then they need to deliver.
They are already failing on this front. Consider the idea, currently approaching revealed truth
among American liberals, that last November's electoral upset was in fact an act of political vandalism
attributable to some violation of fair play by the Russians or the FBI director; that it had no greater
historical significance than does an ordinary act of shoplifting.
I met few who are actually buying that line. Tell people about how the Russians stole the election
for Trump and everyone knows you're just reiterating a Beltway talking point. Mention how the Democrats
betrayed working people over the years, however, and the radio station's board immediately lights
up with enthusiastic callers. Remind people of the ways in which the Democrats have reoriented themselves
around affluent, tasteful white-collar people and you hear a chorus of angry yesses; talk about how
the Democrats live to serve the so-called "creative class" and a murmur of recognition sweeps the
room.
People in the labor movement that I met in my turn around the midwest expressed complicated feelings
about Donald Trump. On the one hand, everyone understands that he is an obvious scoundrel and they
fear that his administration will bring about (via a possible
supreme court ruling against public-sector unions) an epic defeat for organized labor.
In the union hall of the Steelworkers local that represents workers at the Indianapolis Carrier
plant – a union hall where you might expect Trump to be venerated – I spotted instead a flyer depicting
the billionaire president with his famous pompadour on fire. The headline: "Lying Con and Volatile
Gasbag is Enemy of the Working Class."
On the other hand, Trump at least pretended to be a friend of the working class, and it was working-class
people in this part of America who turned against the Democrats and helped delivered him into the
White House. By a certain school of thought, this should make working-class people the Number One
swing group for Democrats to court.
Of course it isn't working out that way. So far, liberal organs seem far less interested in courting
such voters than they do in scolding them, insulting them for their coarse taste and the hate for
humanity they supposedly cherish in their ignorant hearts.
Ignorance is not the issue, however. Many midwesterners I met share an outlook that is profoundly
bleak. They believe that the life has gone out of this region; indeed, they fear that a civilization
based on making things is no longer sustainable.
They tell me about seniors falling prey to Fox News syndrome and young people who are growing
up without hope. And just about everyone I talked to believes that the national Democratic party
has abandoned them. They are frustrated beyond words with the stupidity of the party's leadership.
One thing we must never forget about the midwest, however, is that radicalism lurks just beneath
the surface. The region has always swung back and forth between contentment and outrage; between
Chicago Tribune-style business-worship and Eugene Debs-style socialism. I was reminded of this one
night in Minneapolis, when a friend told me the story of a local Teamsters strike in 1934, a conflict
that briefly plunged the Twin Cities into something akin to civil war.
I have no doubt that people in this part of America would respond enthusiastically to a populist
message that addressed their unhappy situation – just look, for example, at the soaring
popularity of Bernie Sanders.
As things have unfolded thus far, however, our system seems designed to keep such an alternative
off the table. The choice we are offered instead is between Trumpian fake populism and a high-minded
politics of personal virtue. Between a nomenklatura of New Economy winners and a party of traditional
business types, willing to say anything to get elected and (once that is done) to use the state to
reward people like themselves. The public's frustration with this state of affairs, at least as I
heard it on my midwestern trip, is well-nigh overwhelming.
The way I see it, the critical test for our system will come late next year. The billionaire great-maker
in the Oval Office has already turned out to be an incompetent buffoon, and his greatest failures
are no doubt yet to come. By November 2018, the winds of change will be in full hurricane shriek,
and unless the Democratic Party's incompetence is even more profound than it appears to be, the D's
will sweep to some sort of mid-term triumph.
But when "the resistance" comes into power in Washington, it will face this question: this time
around, will Democrats serve the 80% of us that this modern economy has left behind? Will they stand
up to the money power? Or will we be invited once again to feast on inspiring speeches while the
tasteful gentlemen from JP Morgan foreclose on the world?
Writing that Trump is an 'incompetent buffoon' only highlights the foolishness of the Washington
establishment, and why millions see the media with disdain.
While you may dislike the man, you still have to contend with the fact that the guy has been successful,
and he is a byproduct of a system that rewards success. It is similar to the derision that Obama
experienced when he claimed that 'you didn't build that."
Historically hard work and self determination has been a shared American value, and during the
campaign we saw one who skated through process and the other who worked his butt off to win. To
dismiss this American value as incompetent and buffoonery is the height of elitism from a pointed
headed pencil pusher.
Reply Share
Share on Facebook Facebook
Share on Twitter Twitter | Pick - >
Report
-> mmercier0921
->
deborahmconner
,
29 Apr
2017 15:32 Americans of age are not bolshevik's. What is killing the rat party is reality
that the immigrants here tend to want freedom or anarchy, not old communists loading over them.
The stunted domestic children's have proven mostly... dysfunctional at the political levels so
far, and a burden on us all.
The only hope for the Democrat party at this point is economic colapse and war... their only
remaining tried and true methods.
Mr. Frank may be overestimating the Democrats' chances next year. My senator is one of the most
liberal but already this year she has voted for new sanctions on Iran and admitting Montenegro
into NATO.
I'm seriously considering staying home on election day next year -- for the first time in my
life.
The turmoil in financial markets was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards
for subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 through 2007. That's when Republicans controlled
all branches of government. The share of mortgages held by Fannie and Freddie during that time
went from 48% to 24%, being eclipsed by private mortgage banks.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/10/12/53802/private-sector-loans-not-fannie.html
Bush's Securities and Exchange Commission allowed the nation's largest financial institutions
to "self-regulate;" taking the cops off the beat. Unregulated mortgage brokers sold subprime loans
aided by the NINA (No Income No Assets) program. Major financial institutions packaged those bad
mortgages into securities and sold them as low-risk investments.
In 2007, FOX News taking heads, Art Laffer, Ben Stein and others laughed themselves silly over
an impending housing collapse they had championed. They said "It can't happen," claiming lasting
wealth had been created by subprime loans. Check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz_yw0kq3MM
First of all, the idea that the nationalist right is exclusively 'Nazi', or that Trump is a 'white
supremacist', is more than a bit silly, but regardless:
My argument has absolutely nothing to do with Trump's tax cuts (which, fwiw, I'm hugely opposed
to).
--
As an outside observer I am not well enough informed to dig deep into regional issues in America,
but on a national level many can see the some root causes.
The US has a political system that does not monitor and control election spending by parties or
candidates. You get the best people that money can buy, not the best people.
You have an electoral "commission" that is a privately run club of 2 parties whose stated aim
is to keep it like that, and do so by strangling any dissent at birth.
You also have a media circus with players like Rupert Murdoch involved and wherever he goes you
find mischief, spin, downright lies all mobilised to get you all to believe in whatever movement
is generating him the most cash.
You also have a large and powerful group of dark suits that "advise" the administration, whoever
it is, on foreign policy and how to control, manipulate or even overthrow, foreign governments
of countries that have resources America needs.
As a result, your idea of living in a Demoracy is just that, a nice idea.
You can argue with me all day long, but the fact remains, that I have watched all of the above
actually happen over a 70 year period, with my own eyes, while still of sound mind.
Much the same is happening in the UK too, creating diabolical levels of inequality that are destroying
large sections of society.
It will get much worse before it gets much better. Will it get better before the planet shrugs
humans off it though?
not like electing Hillary would have helped us. she's just as complacently sure that neoliberalism
works. well, yeah, for the billionaires it does. hasn't done us much good though.
I'm not supporting Trump's election. but as far as economic problems, neither of the two main
candidates offered us much of anything but more of the same.
not like electing Hillary would have helped us. she's just as complacently sure that neoliberalism
works. well, yeah, for the billionaires it does. hasn't done us much good though.
I'm not supporting Trump's election. but as far as economic problems, neither of the two main
candidates offered us much of anything but more of the same.
They won the popular vote ONLY because of Democrats overwhelming strength in Los Angeles, California
& New York City...if you remove the votes for BOTH Hillary & Donald from those two regions, Trump
would have won by 2 million votes. That alone is why the men who wrote the US Constitution instituted
the Electoral College. It was to keep a few large cities from choosing the president and essentially
ignoring the rest of the country. It was called the Virginia Compromise...
I'm an analytics professional that worked on Obama's primary & re-election where I saw first hand
a robust machine learning process. Electoral politics is so insanely tribal because you're seeing
voter outcomes reflect voter self image based on their general zip code/geographic living space.
Electorally we don't know how Bernie would have performed because it's unknown how the oppo
research would have impacted older voters outcomes. This is even harder to predict because of
the $$ spent required to run in a general. You can assume Bernie would have gotten 60% of Millennials
instead of Hillary's 55% (matching Obama's number in 2012). However; we don't know what happens
in the reverse manner.
Hillary had entrenched Democratic loyalty with urban blanks/latinos/Asians /Jews/White educated
women. Because Latino/Asian turnout rates increased from 46% to 56% Clinton basically outperformed
Obama in ever major metro area except ( Detroit / Milwaukee). That's because black turnout rates
dropped from 64% to 54%. And these two metros are heavily AA .
Hillary slightly outperformed Obama in Philly metro; but she was brutalized in literally all
these heavily white working class areas.
"The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country is the utterly predictable
fruit of the Democratic party's neoliberal turn."
Yup! And the means doing away with public sector unions in their present form, it means securing
the borders, it means getting big banks and wall street under control, it means dropping the left
wingnut social policies and getting the government out of peoples lives, not the other way 'round.
Ain't gonna happen.
The liberal/progressive leftist totalitarians are in charge of the party, and unless they change
their ways, as previously described, they are going to wander in the wilderness for a very long
time.
It's fine to blame the Democratic Party and let it go at that, but let's frame the problem somewhat
more clearly: the United States hasn't managed its transition from industrial capitalism to
post-industrial capitalism wisely, or really at all.
The Republican Party? Well, everyone pretty much expects them to act like worshipers of the
Great God Mammon; they wrongly think any kind of capitalism is perfect, so they offer no modifications
to a situation that has left millions of Americans behind.
The Democrats? You would expect them at least to show some appreciation of the problem and
to go beyond lip service when it comes to economic justice and opportunity for all. But you would
be mostly mistaken in that, since they have (if at times ambivalently) embraced the shifting lay
of the land -- an attitude that amounts to a species of fatalism. That leaves them little to offer
except support for some important but not fully curative improvements in American life: support
for equality for LGBTQI people, for example. That support, proper though it is, then gets slammed
by vicious, sneering Republicans as elitism or extremism. The truth is that if the Dems appear
to be all about such issues, it's only because right-wing morons oppose them with primitive ferocity
at every turn, making the Dems' steadfast belief in fairness look like a mere obsession with "boutique"
issues that only directly affect very small segments of the population. So the answer isn't for
Democrats to drop their support for civic and human rights for all people -- that isn't the problem.
This is a genuine dilemma because the pain the country's going through has fundamentally to
do with our economic system and the technological shifts to it, and we really aren't going to
jettison that system. But I suggest that the Democrats are better positioned to become the great
"rearticulators" of why we are in the fix we are in and of a more compassionate social system
that won't ignore the working class, won't embrace some kind of neoliberal fatalism that writes
people off as "collateral damage" of an inevitable shift.
The Democratic Party has gradually become the party of the status quo and business as usual instead
of the progressive-- working people's party-- it use to be under Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy.
Even Obamacare is a concept originally conceived by the Republicans to force all Americans into
the arms of the private health insurance companies.
Instead of more trickle down economics, Democrats should be trying to focus on creating a worker's
paradise in order to re-energize the American economy:
1. A 32 hour work week (overtime beyond 32 hours):
2. Up to six weeks of annual Federally mandated paid vacation
3. Reduction of individual income tax to just 1% for individuals that make less than $60,000
a year
4. Employer payment of all Federal payroll taxes for all employees that make less than $60,000
a year
5. A $1000 a year workers rebate from the Federal government if you work full time or part
time or employ full time or part time workers
6. Federal infrastructure program providing matching funds for cities that want to build affordable
urban-- rental housing-- for senior citizens and the working class families and individuals, who
don't own their own home who make less than $60,000 a year.
7. Federal and employer financed medical savings accounts for all American citizens
8. High tariffs (15% to 100%) on all imports coming in from nations that are not free and democratic
(China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.). Low tariffs (1% to 10%) on imports from nations that
are free and democratic. How Democrats could have ever gone along with allowing a fascist state
like China to have full and free trading access to the American economy is almost incomprehensible
(and it also cost Americans more than 3 million jobs)!
I'm at a loss as to why anyone would think voting for Trump conveys a desire for these things.
He has spent his entire career taking advantage of working class people who had the misfortune
to be employed by him, and he was literally fighting charges for running a fraudulent, for-profit
university during the campaign.
Lets review the key points of Democratic politics as they now pronounce it (through words and
action)
1 - Save the planet - translation - regulate any and all forms of energy to be too expensive
then subsidize renewable energy. This means a few major companies will win huge government contracts
to put up windmills while, power plant operators, miners, natural gas workers and countless supporting
industries go dark.
2 - Identity Politics - Translation - Vast swaths of America are understood only in context
of their race, gender (chosen or otherwise) or political perspective. They will be administered
according to an as yet unpublished preference chart favoring some over others. Meaning that individuals
don't matter and needs don't matter. Only that you fit into some defined category where political
messaging will tell you why your oppressed and that only democrats can free you.
3 - Free Trade Agreements - In short - how to off shore manufacturing to cheap labor countries.
That one is very simple.
4 - Sanctuary Cities - People who arrived into this country illegally will be protected from
deportation, even identifcation as illegal regardless of the law. This reduces the cost of labor
for less skilled workers and drives up costs - which drive up taxes to provide services. In point
of fact California is in the process of creating a single payer healthcare system that will provide
free (only if your don't earn and income) healthcare to anybody in California - no questions asked.
What is missing? Jobs. There are zero plans to bring back jobs. The coasties don't care about
manufacturing. They only buy the highest quality imports with the right labels on them anyway.
Their answer - why more government "programs" designed to robe Peter to pay Paul. Job training
for jobs that don't exist where people live, and often disappeared years ago.
I am entirely sympathetic to Frank's point of view. My question is what kind of economic policy
would help the working class people he is talking about. I'm reading Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of
Revolution (1789-1848) and here's what he has to say about the mechanization of the cotton industry
in Britain: "Everywhere weaving was a mechanized a generation after spinning, and everywhere,
incidentally, the handloom weavers died a lingering death, occasionally revolting against their
awful fate, when industry no longer had any need for them." You can't stop technological progress.
Nor (although I'm less sure of this) does it seem like a good idea for governments to intervene
in preventing production from migrating to the countries where it is cheapest. What public policy
can do is offer displaced persons a choice: government support to go back to school to learn a
skill that will make you employable; or government employment at a job that uses the skills you
already have on projects that the private sector would not undertake but which fulfills a social
need (from infrastructure to building affordable housing in low income areas to driving a bus
from poor neighborhoods to jobs). Financed, of course, by higher taxes on the wealthy.
Thomas Frank is at least a liberal who recognizes that the Democrats offer nothing to the working
class, but he fails to really see how Democratic policies have made states under Democratic governance
less attractive to those businesses that would actually hire the working class. He make make snide
remarks about lousy trade deals, yet many foreign car manufacturers have set up some of the most
sophisticated plants in the US, but in southern states. In fact, US manufacturing output is near
all time highs, but it is ever more automated. Even some rust belt states, under Republican governance,
are attracting industry back to these states.
The Dems really crises is going to come when blue collar Hispanics conclude that their economic
interests are not dissimilar to those of blue collar whites. They too might conclude that their
best course is to deal with those who might actually hire them as opposed to those that will never
hire them but who want to set the terms whereby others might. That will surely dash the idea (or
fantasy) that changing demographics portend a coming brown progressive paradise led by old white
hippies.
Meritocracy?
The best of the best of the best?
Not for the Smugatocratic World Rigging Nepotistic 'Davos' Elite!
(Busy "Late Night" Offices)
Seth Myer's Secretary
Seth! Call; "Line 1" You better take it
Seth Myers
Hello?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
Seth My Dear Boy I really need you to do me a solid
you remember my Granddaughter Brittany?
Seth Myers
Ummm .Not really .?
Who is this?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
No matter .You met her last year at Davos
Seth Myers
Ahhh .I didn't actually go to Davos last year?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
Well she just graduated from Emerson Gawd knows what they learn there?
AAAAAANYWAAAYS .
this whole "Clinton Kerfuffle" has kind of put us in a little bind
Seth Myers
Oh really?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
And Britt had her dear little heart set on interning with Hilly and Billy
Seth Myers
Oh....She did?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
Now, she'd really like to work on your show
Seth Myers
My show?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
Oh .She's a really good writer
Seth Myers
Writer .Wow .Why not just host?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
You think? Well, maybe?
K Thanks Gottah Run Love Yah' Bunches Britt will just be so thrilled!
See you at Davos .
Seth Myers
Wait I'm not go
Seth Myer's Secretary
Seth! Call; "Line 2" You better take it
Seth Myers
Hello?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
Seth .My Dear Boy I really, really need you to do me a solid you remember my Granddaughter...Gemma?
Special interests are intertwined with the Dems as much as they are with Repubs now, that's what's
changed. The article speaks of the neoliberal policies that are destroying the Democratic party
(deregulation, pro-corporate/anti-worker policies).
Yes, Republicans do those things and always have, but the point is that the Dems now do them
too. And they need to step away from neoliberal policies like that if they want to be relevant
again.
The 1970s were the beginning of the end because oil was no longer cheap, and our factories were
in northern cities and both ran on oil. Unions didn't help with strikes and corruption. Unions
were also divided on race. Manufacturing was more expensive in terms of energy and labor in the
North than in the South. Since then paper mills and auto plants have followed areas where unions
never caught on, the growing season for trees is short, and which have mild winters. This is logic,
not NAFTA.
Now we glorify unions of a hazy past, but then they seemed to have gotten too big for their
britches. Midwesterners voted for Reagan and neoliberal policies back then, which is ignored in
this discussion.
NAFTA, passed under George HW Bush, and signed when Clinton was new in office, recognized that
industry was changing. It also created new markets for agriculture, which is also a Midwest product,
let it not be forgotten. Oh, but agriculture was Republican territory. Which is why it was passed
under Bush.
NAFTA isn't the issue but is an excuse. The refusal of the auto industry to wake up until they
had to in the recent recession or refusal to face the cost of energy that fueled it is the issue.
It couldn't have been the companies where people could work for $25/hr with only a H.S. Diploma??
No, it must be those "others" from far away, right?
While it is true that Hillary and the Neoliberal wing of the Democrats has prevailed, until 2016
the Neoliberals were the only wing of the Republicans. Trump can talk a good game offer some hope
to the Rust Belt Hopeless, but does anyone really believe the commercial interests that have been
the backbone of the GOP since Lincoln are going to let Trump cancel NAFTA, reimpose tariffs and
cut of the flow of cheap labor?
No doubt about it, the industrial towns of the Midwest have been savaged by Globalization and
the wages of a lot on essentially unskilled worker have fallen behind but there are a lot of people
who have benefited from it as well, like everyone who shops at Walmart or drives a car.
How much more are you willing to pay for "stuff" so that somebody in Youngstown Ohio can get
the $25 an hour job he thought would be waiting for him when he graduated from H.S.?
Changes in the world economy create winners and losers and losers seek relief from the federal
government. They don't want help navigating the changed situation they find themselves in, they
want things back to the way they were before.
I equate neoliberalism with MBA NATION. The stupidity of book learning the economics of numbers
but not of their effects on human life.
I recall hearing an interview with an economist who was dismissing something Trump said about
how he'd handle certain things in the economy. "Sure," the economist huffed, "It would put more
money in average people's pockets but it wouldn't improve the GDP or the economy as a whole."
The interview didn't call the "expert" out on this nonsense. It stopped me in my tracks (I
was walking past the office lunch room). As a citizen, I would very much like to be living in
a world where we put more money in my neighbours' pockets (as well as my own, of course) than
watch it magnetize to the rich and ever-more-powerful, making the big numbers look impressive
while the average person abandons all hope of a decent future for themselves and their children.
I am not a Trump supporter, but I will say that I am an MBA NATION loather. Free trade that
lines the pockets of rich people and robs citizens of the right to intervene or shift or change
the deal is obscene.
"What we need is for the Democratic party and its media enablers to alter course. It's not
enough to hear people's voices and feel their pain; the party actually needs to change. They
need to understand that the enlightened Davos ideology they have embraced over the years has
done material harm to millions of their own former constituents."
Yes of course. But that's not gonna happen. Demanding such a thing is demanding that rational
self-interested individuals go against their entrenched self-interest, which goes against everything
held sacred in an enlightened market economy and against the sacred neoclassical tenet of the
rational homo economicus . You don't wish to be perceived as an apostate now Mr. Frank,
do you? It is in the interest of the operatives and functionaries of the party to maintain the
current status quo by acting in the interest of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and other top economic
players to the detriment of their base.
The Democratic party took a drubbing from the right with the dawn of the Reagan era. The emergence
of the so-called Third Way in the 1990s was an acknowledgement of this defeat. Clinton's major
political innovation was to secure a source of funding for the Democrats by prostrating before
the financial sector. This is a formula that has proven successful, and no Democratic candidate
will deviate from this script as long as it continues to be so. Essentially, the Democratic party
transformed itself from the "loser" representative of unions, teachers, and ordinary folk in general,
to a "kinder, gentler" version of the Republican party. The they-have-nowhere else-to-go strategy
was quite rational and has worked for more than two decades, and will conceivably work for at
least four more presidential election cycles. However, the initial givenness of the Democratic
base in 1992 was a finite source of electoral fuel, and as the election of Trump has shown this
resource is nearing depletion.
"One thing we must never forget about the midwest, however, is that radicalism lurks just
beneath the surface."
Please, that ship sailed a long time ago, at least a century to be more precise. This is red-state
Heartland territory now through-and-through, respect the empirical data.
"The choice we are offered instead is between Trumpian fake populism and a high-minded politics
of personal virtue. Between a nomenklatura of New Economy winners and a party of traditional
business types, willing to say anything to get elected and (once that is done) to use the state
to reward people like themselves."
To use a quantitative scale, the choice offered to the non-elite voters is between a zero-to-slightly-positive
socially liberal neoliberalism, and a negative socially conservative neoliberalism. Put another
way, economically the choice is between the nothing of the Democrats and the worse-than-nothing
of the Republicans. The calm and stability at the center of wealth and power masks the constant
rattling sound of the lives perturbed and dislocated by the dominant economic forces. At this
point, the relation of the non-elite voters to the D-R duopoly resembles sadomasochism. Or perhaps
the working people voting for Trump is a form of supplication before their god: "Shoot me now
Lord, please."
To be more generous and grant the Heartland left-behind a measure of agency and rationality,
they - and one group in particular, the Reagan Democrats - took a chance on his and his descendants'
rhetoric of the shining city upon a hill, and when they realized that the end result was the loss
of jobs and diminution of their standards of living and that of their offspring, they graciously
accepted the verdict and had the fortitude and decency to bear the burden of their own decision.
There is nothing the matter with Kansas, the only thing that needs attention is the inconsistency
between its pronunciation and that of Arkansas.
Thomas Frank offers an advice to democrats - break up with your neoliberal fallacies and embrace
Bernie Sanders. It clearly means a break up with their true (core) base - big money. Such choice
is too stark, hard to believes they are willing or capable of making it.
Rather than pleading with them, I could offer a better option - reject republico-cratic duopoly
(and its enterprising scoundrels) altogether, and embrace an American version of La France insoumise
"All this Davos/Deregulation/NeoLiberal whatever is a product of Republican -- right wing -- thinking."
Yes, originally, but the Clinton-third way wing of the Democratic Party went along with it and
adopted neoliberalism lite. That's the problem. Instead of offering an alternative vision to what
Republicans were doing, they offered "me, too."
The Glass Stegal repeal was passed under Clinton not Reagan. Reagan did the Savings & Loan
deregulation which led to the S&L bailout under G.W. Bush during which they prosecuted over 1,000
bank executives and got convictions including five sitting senators with four forced resignations.
After Clinton did the deregulation that led to the financial crisis and Obama prosecuted zero,
let me say that again, zero, bank executives and provided $9 trillion in bailout liquidity.
--
They can offer the illusion with the proper candidate but with the same congressmen and senators
that currently hold the seats none of the substance.
--
Take Amtrak between Chicago and Washington DC and witness wreckage of heartland industry along
a corridor 800 miles long. People still live there, forgotten. Bernie Sanders is not finished.
Listen to him; and put yourself up for election locally, on a Park District board; or a Township
position; as an Election Judge or for County or State office. And listen to your neighbors, who
are suffering. Then do something about it. When I ran for State Representative, the Democratic
Party sent me a highlighted map instead of a check for my campaign. The map showed "70% Republican"
voting registration in my State Representative district. No Party cash for my campaign was forthcoming.
The only way to change this Gerrymandering is to be on-hand in the State House following the next
decennial census in 2020. It will be "too late" to do anything -- again -- unless "we" change
the Party; and the Party changes the re-districting scam. Bernie Sanders is right about pitching
in to re-shape and re-form the Democratic Party. The Party, as constructed, is passé... and as
hollowed-out as the miles and miles of decrepit buildings with thousands of gaping, broken windows
that lie between Chicago and DC. Go see the devastation for yourself. Then get serious about answers.
Yep, the Dems would do well to drop the Russia/FBI swung the election thing and the all Red State
inhabitants are poorly educated idiots mentality and concentrate on developing some policies that
appeal to the majority of people.
I'm going to sound like a broken record, but Identity Politics has FAILED. The Dems are not
going to cobble together some sort of Ruling Coalition out of Transgendered people and urban people
of color. That's an insane strategy of hoping you will win national elections by appealing to
25% or less of the population of whom only half that number actually vote if you are lucky.
I'm not saying abandon those struggles. Under a just system those struggles will continue and
prevail - the Constitution guarantees that unless you get dishonest justices on the Supreme Court
- which seems more likely the more national elections you blow. Democrats need to stop worrying
about narrow single issues like that and focus on developing a BROAD national strategy to appeal
to the Majority of Americans.
So says the guy from Punjab who is NOT a poorly educated white person and who has voted Democrat
since 1980.
There's a bit of bait 'n switch here. All this Davos/Deregulation/NeoLiberal whatever is a product
of Republican -- right wing -- thinking. It first gained serious traction during the Reagan administration.
The Democrats merely drifted into the vacuum formed by the Republican party lurching from Right/Center
to Hard Right. Since then any drifting back has been subject to extreme criticism as 'socialism',
'communism' and the like. Now we're in the rather weird situation that the party of neoliberal
economics is pushing the line that the Democrats are the party of entrenched money and they are
the Party of the People. It beggars belief, especially when journalists take it up and run with
it instead of calling the the BS that it is.
The problem with the Rust Belt states is that they keep on electing Republican state governments.
These fail to deliver on anything useful for working people -- they're more interested in entrenching
their power by tweaking the elections -- but then people turn to the Federal government as if
this is some kind of savior capable of turning around their fortunes overnight.
Anyway, don't take my word for it. Just keep electing those regressive state legislators (and
keep drinking that tainted water....).
Great comment on the article, but I think even you have been kind in your criticism of it. I can
only hope that the writer started out with the intention of saying that while the GOP and their
rich and big business political patrons are responsible for the impoverishment of those in the
article, the Democrats have missed out on messaging and on more specific policies that addresses
those wrongs committed against a voting block they can own. Instead the entire piece is written
as though the Democrats have earned the scorn and anger of these voters. One can argue the Democrats
have failed to focus more on the plight of these voters, but they are NOT the cause of these voters'
plight; and there is nothing in this piece to make that distinction or about the irony of why
these same voters flock to a political party primarily responsible for what has happened to them.
In fact consider this below from the article:
"Mention how the Democrats betrayed working people over the years, however, and the radio station's
board immediately lights up with enthusiastic callers. "
Yes, that is right! The political anomaly that Trump is can be be explained by the successful
exploitation of the improvised classes by media outlets that voice these voters' anger to acquire
a capture audience and then lay the blame for what has happened to them on immigrants & liberals.
You never hear anything on those outlets about the unholy triad of the GOP political class, big
business and media outlets in their orbit. I don't need to drive through these flyover states
to know they are hurting; and I don't need to sit down with them to know they are real human beings
with a great deal in common with me or to know that despite their general decency they are full
of misplaced anger and resentment.
I am so glad that the Russians are responsible for electing Trump. It would be awful to think
that it was because Democrats had a really, really bad candidate in Hillary Clinton. It just could
not be -- she was, after all -- the MOST QUALIFIED PERSON EVER TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT, as we were
instructed endlessly by Obama. Voters thought otherwise and their support for Trump was mainly
to keep Hillary out, not to have a billionaire lunatic elected. But it would not matter since
they all serve their master class bankers and war-makers.
Interesting he choices of examples for how liberals let the mid west down. Republican president
Reagan deregulated S&Ls with predictable awful results. Republicans under Clinton (they controlled
the Senate and house ) when Glass Steagsll was repealed. Republic Phil Gramm also rescinded the
AntiBucket Shop Law which loosed the disaster of the naked CDS,
Republicans starting with Reagan made refusing to enforce financial laws they did not like
a policy. It was continued under Bush43/Cheney on speed. Regulator of mortgage brokers refused
to let state AGs (including Maine) move against fraudsters and refused to act himself. Chris Cox
ignored the risky complex financial products that tanked our economy.
It was Republican Sen. Phil Gramm who said in hearings on CSPAN that these instruments of financial
mass destruction (Warren Buffet's words) were too complicated to understand and therefore should
not be regulated.
Republicans wanted to free up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy subprime even NINJA loans and
made it so.
Was Clinton an idiot to allow Rubin and Summers any where near financial market policy YES.
Was Obama a bigger fool for bringing Summers into his admin- absolutely since he had already displayed
financial incompetence at Harvard, YES.
But, it is republicans who either drove the bad financial ideas or controlled them. Republicans
who support IRS rules and their laws that promote off shoring jobs and stashing cash untaxed off
shore.
Eisenhower, Goldwater, Ford, Bush41 - even Nixon - would not know these people.
Oh, and as for the rest of the party and its defeats: A quick look at the numbers show that Democrats
keep losing not because voters are switching to the Republican brand, but because they no longer
bother to vote for Democrats who are just going to shiv them in the back with Republican economic
policies.
Reply Share
But now liberals and the Democratic Party are to get the lion's share of the blame for everything?
As I've said on numerous occasions in the past: The reason Trump beat Hillary is the same reason
Obama beat her in the 2008 primaries: Voters knew her and what she stood for -- and so were willing
to take a chance on the other candidate.
Thank you for the Abramson reminder -- as a retired journalist I know the importance of providing
clear and accurate information to the general public. While Abramson and Frank and others are
writing Opinion in the Guard and elsewhere, too many people do not understand positioning and
propaganda. Media must make money to stay in business and often it is opinion writers/tv hosts
etc that generate interest and coin to keep the words rolling and the money coming in.
It is especially ironic as wages are cut, jobs disappear, cost of living rises so fewer people
can afford to subscribe or pay for actual news and information. Not to mention the political idiocy
of reducing school funding so that the electorate knows nothing of history or how politics works.
Trump wants to take us back to Ronnie Reagan and Maggie Thatcher years that left us with trillion
dollar deficits and decimation of the middle class that is now on the downward slide to actual
poverty...
No, it is a crap comment. From the neo-liberal 'pseudo science' that economics supposedly is (almost
forgot to use the word neo-liberal, a must these days to make your point) , to the greed and the
rapacity of the "one percenters".
Such a simple problem isn't it? Let's just go back in time rather than find more creative and
up-to-date solution for the problems there are. Globalisation isn't going to go away, the world
is too small a place. Globalisation has created problems for people, but many more people have
benefitted from it.
"The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country is the utterly predictable
fruit of the Democratic party's neoliberal turn. Every time our liberal leaders signed off on
some lousy trade deal, figuring that working-class people had "nowhere else to go," they were
making what happened last November a little more likely. "
---
As someone who's middle aged, I am getting sick and tired of this historical revisionist nonsense
that all the country's woes and economic climate can be mostly pinned on the liberals and that
somehow, it's something that they did wrong that is the reason why they "lost" constituents in
the Midwest. Someone can peddle this nonsense over and over again with the smug belief that everyone
on on the internet is too young to know whether what he's saying is true. But there are some of
us "old folks" who are also on the internet and as an old folk, I have no issues calling out this
article out for the nonsense that it is.
Everything that is going on now in terms of jobs can be 100% attributable to Reaganomics--period,
end of. It's nothing to do with liberals. It's 100% to do with the devastating rippling effect
that his neoliberal policies has had on the country since the 1980s, only made 100x worse by Republican
pols who have been further carrying out his neoliberalist agenda to full effect for the past several
decades.
It was under Reagan that the country began experiencing mass layoffs (euphemistically called
"downsizing"). It was under Reagan that corporations began slashing benefits, cutting wages and
closing up shop to ship thousands of jobs overseas. It was under Reagan that the middle class
American dream died--aka, the expectation that if got a diploma, you could start working for a
company full time straight out of college, work for decades with decent benefits and perks, save
up enough money to buy a house and retire with a generous pension. Gone. All gone.
Remember the "Buy American" grassroots campaign? That started in the 1980s, precisely because
under Reagan, the country had relied increasingly on imported goods at the expense of domestic
manufacturing. Here's an actual article from 1989 that shows you that the roots of everything
going on now started decades ago. It's actually a defeatist article telling people to *stop* wasting
their time to get everyone to "Buy American" because it had become virtually impossible to buy
American-made goods.
As for the idea that there's always been a staunchly"Democratic" following in the Midwest that
has been "lost" because of something that the party is doing wrong and that this caused them to
turn to populism? False. It may have been true a very long time ago that this constituency has
been staunchly Democratic and not amenable to populism, but not recently. It has voted on populist
platforms before. Remember "welfare queens?" Remember "Willie Horton?" Willie Horton, the black
bogeyman, was the "bad hombres" of today.
In addition, this constituency has been increasingly voting against its best interests for
decades since Reagan was voted into office. Why? Because demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and the
large number of puppets at Rupert Murdoch's vast media empire have been selling them a bill of
goods since the 1990s that the reason why they're becoming poorer is that liberals are giving
all their "white" hard-earned money to shiftless, lazy blacks and immigrants and losing out to
them because of affirmative action. In the famous words of South Park, "THEY TOOK R JERBS" and
"IT'S ALL DUH LIBRUHL'S FAULTS!!"
This constituency has developed such a deep-seated hatred and loathing for liberals because
of the demagogues at FOX or news radio that even when Michael Moore directly spoke to their plight
in Roger and Me, they derided him as a typical Communist-loving, anti-Capitalist pinko. Because,
you see, according to FOX demagogues, calling out rich corporate fatcats who also happen to be
white is attacking white people, a form of class warfare and anti-Capitalist.
Given all that, for someone to try to paint a picture that this constituency would otherwise
be embracing liberalism if not for the Democratic Party adopting an "ideology" is laughable. They
were never going to win because anything short of ranting, "They took r jerbs" and "Damned brown
people on welfare and illegals stealing taking all our money" was going to cost them the election.
Bottom line, the Midwest was never the liberals' or Democratic Party's constituency to lose,
and Reagan is behind all of the economic devastation that the region is experiencing. Anyone else
trying to say otherwise is just using spin and historical revisionism.
That's exactly what America needs -- another neocon/neolib, just like Macron! As if Obama and
the Clintons hadn't been neocon/neolib enough!
Reply Share
Frank is right that the white working class in the Midwestern states have been the swing votes
for presidential elections since the Reagan election of 1984, when the white Democratic South
became more fully the white Republican South. But he is wrong in not recognizing that the Democratic
Party has three major constituents and it needs all of them to win elections and to do the progressive
things while in office that would help people like those in the Midwest. Democrats need the votes
of the white working class, but also of race/ethnic minorities, and the "new class" professionals
and others. The problem is that these groups have been fighting with each other since the 1960s,
continually undermining the chances for Democrats to win. In the period of the Civil Rights Movement
and the Vietnam War, students and professionals joined with race and ethnic minorities to challenge
the influence of the unionists, big city mayors, and white working class in the Democratic Party,
which is what gave us Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes. Through this period, predictably, more white
working class people either stopped voting or moved to the Republican Party. In the 2016 election,
with the Bernie Sanders influence, students and professionals began to attack the influence of
race and ethnic minorities (and women?) in the Democratic Party, ostensibly in support of the
white working class over "identity politics," with the result that we got Trump. Globalization
is a difficult and complex issue, but the reality is that since the 1970s the U.S. economy has
not been able to prosper, nor the working class jobs that it requires, by selling things only
in the U.S. We have to be in global markets and integrated with other economies around the world
and that requires trade deals that balance our interests against those of other countries. This
has generated winners and losers in the economy, and it will continue to do so. While it may not
be possible to bring back the same kinds of jobs that pay a middle class wage for those with not
much education, it should be possible to create new jobs that pay a middle class wage and to invest
in education and skill development, infrastructure, and a welfare state that sustains people through
periods of disruption and transformation. The Republican Party and the New Right that took it
over are fighting to the death to undermine what is left of the social safety net to force people
to take whatever jobs are available at exploitative wages, and they have been successful exploiting
anti-government sentiment by using racial animosity and more recently anti-immigrant hysteria.
The right has been successful because those on the left who should support the Democratic Party
and then fight for more progressive policies within it just keep fighting each other and in the
last election delivered Trump by voting third party (along with gutting of the Voting Rights Act,
voter suppression, Russian influences that helped Sanders and vilified Hillary Clinton, the rogue
FBI, Citizens United, and so on). The only option for the left in a two party system is to support
the Democratic Party. Staying home or voting third party is a vote for your worst enemy. France
is experiencing the same thing, with the left candidate refusing to support the more centrist
candidate against Le Pen. We all need to learn how to form coalitions and to keep our focus on
winning elections, not winning ideological battles.
Umm, the real goals of labor unions have been beach houses and new SUVs for labor leadership.
Unions have been adept at screwing over their memberships since at least the 1970s -- no wonder
they keep supporting anti-union Dims.
Maddow has to defend the Corporate Democratic Establishment any way she can. Maddow to my knowledge
has never mentioned:
Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, has confirmed that it hired the consultancy of Tony Podesta,
the elder brother of John Podesta who chaired Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, for lobbying
its interests in the United States.
The two Russian banks spent more than $700,000 in 2016 on Washington lobbyists as they sought
to end the U.S. sanctions, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms and documents filed with
the Department of Justice. The Podesta Group charged Sberbank $20,000 per month, plus expenses,
on a contract from March through September 2016.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-09/russias-largest-bank-confirms-hiring-podesta-group-lobby-ending-sanctions
Sorry Mr. Cuban but Barney has a point. Sympathy for criminals? How about a system that extracts
wealth by taking family members that have made a mistake hostage. Private prisons are incredibly
corrupt. They pay their guards $7 an hour, barely train them and then throw them into a hellhole
of starved and abused prisoners, prisoners who's families are charged $2-5 a MINUTE to talk to
them! Prisoners who are charged for laundry, for new underwear, for sanitary napkins, for extra
food anything they can, they charge them for, all to meet a higher quarterly profit. If they work,
prisoners get only .25 an hour! Menawhile, the items they make get a proud MADE IN AMERICA sticker
and sold at a premium netting the company MORE money. This is a direct threat to DEMOCRACY! Why
not contract our work to prisons with no liability and infinitesimal wages to lower costs. Gee,
doesn't that sounds like a threat to low skilled workers?!
Everything matters because EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED!!!
-
Very little differences between neoncons and neoliberals these days. They're both in Goldman Saacs
corner, they both support war even when they claim otherwise during their election... Both laugh
at the idea of emulating countries that offer free Healthcare, free college, higher minimum wage
and lower cost of living. Bush tax policy = Obama tax policy. Bush stance on war = Obama stance
on war. Whats the difference? Abortion and gun rights. That's pretty much all thats different.
Pro militarist, world police, globalists who favor a regressive tax system. Don't like it? Don't
vote... You have no say in this debate.
Yes, the Democratic Party are essentially corporate shills who talk pretty to the poor and oppressed
and then serve their corporate masters. But that isn't why people voted against them. That would
be assuming some sort of political sophistication among the masses. It is rather, IMHO, the corporate
owned media in the form of AM radio, cable and local news outlets, and most local newspapers who
either report on nothing that might change the status quo or are actual propaganda outlets for
the ultra right. The fact that Fox news and right wing radio is the background music of mid America,
should not be discounted. And secondly, the seizure of nearly all of the church pulpits by the
'religious' right. People vote the way their pastor tells them to vote. This isn't rocket science.
When there is a coup, the first order of business has always been to seize the radio and TV stations.
Bernie who ?
In a close election, there is something of everything. But this concept that the election turned
on these displaced workers is hilarious. In truth, we've been talking about things like this since
the 70s or before. Why now? Because now, a wave of xenophobia and racism swept the world and that
was the wave Trump rode to office. Many of his so-called displaced workers overlap with those
groups. Add the religious evangelicals. That's how Trump won... take away the evangelicals, take
away the racists, take away the xenophobes, take away the screaming about the Mexican this, the
Muslims that, the Syrians, the pandering to far-right groups who in the past were considered the
underbelly of the country..and Trump doesn't have a chance. This is a man with Mike Pence as vice
president. This is a man who brings people like Steve Bannon into the administration. That's how
he won and that's how he remains popular with his base. The rest is an illusion
What happens to those good old days when a job could support an entire family? Reagan happened.
Massive tax cuts for the wealthy, building up our military 10 times as big as the next largest
military, deregulating banks and brokerage... Then Clinton continued to deregulate further. Then
Bush brought about more tax cuts for the rich and Obama kept his tax policy on place. In 68, a
minimum wage worker with 3 kids fell 500 dollars above the poverty line. (5,000 in today's money).
Today, a minimum wage worker with 3 kids falls 10,000 below the poverty line. And the neocon/neoliberal
answer to that is women must work, single people need roommates and the wealthy need tax relief.
What a load of crap.
The Democratic Party is still owned and operated by the Wall Street, fossil fuel and war interests.
The fact that the DNC installed Tom Perez, who is not inspired by the idea of health care as a
human right, is telling. The DNC is the enemy of lower-middle class working (or non-working) people.
The DNC nominated the candidate least likely to win over Trump. The Democrats need to send their
bank/war/oil candidates to the Republicans. We need a whole new truly progressive party..but since
our governement has been sold to the highest bidder, it make take some unpleasantness in the streets
to achieve power over the special interests. And EVERYONE must vote EVERY TIME.
The problem is US elites, who are only exceptional in their stupidity.
"Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like
the banking and the health-care sectors just might" Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton
The exceptionally stupid US elite are going for the easy money and destroying their nation.
Its elites are always rigging stuff in their favour and forgetting the reality they have hidden.
There is a huge difference between wealth creation and wealth extraction, but today we have
no idea of even the concept of wealth extraction.
Well, one of our 21st Century Nobel prize winning economists, Angus Deaton, has just remembered
the problem.
The Classical Economists of the 19th Century were only too aware of the two sides of capitalism,
the productive side where wealth creation takes place and the parasitic side where wealth extraction
takes place.
The US was a key player in developing neoclassical economics and it's what we use today.
It looks after the interests of the old money, idle rich rentiers.
The distinction between "earned" income (wealth creation) and "unearned" income (wealth extraction)
disappears and the once separate areas of "capital" and "land" are conflated. The old money, idle
rich rentiers are now just productive members of society and not parasites riding on the back
of other people's hard work.
It happens at the end of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, but doesn't blow up until
the 21st century when the exceptionally stupid US elite have forgotten what they have done.
Monetary theory has been regressing for the last one hundred years.
Credit creation theory -> fractional reserve theory -> financial intermediation theory
" banks make their profits by taking in deposits and lending the funds out at a higher rate
of interest" Paul Krugman, 2015.
One of today's Nobel Prize winning economists spouting today's nonsense.
Progress in monetary theory has been in the reverse direction, leading to many of today's problems.
There was massive debt and money creation in the US leading up to the 2008 bust:
Get back to the Classical Economists to learn how you tax "unearned" income to provide subsidized
housing, healthcare, education and other services to provide a low cost economy whose workforce
isn't priced out of the global market place.
When you understand money you can see in the money supply when Wall Street is getting really
stupid and about to blow up the economy.
Throughout history, the "people" were ruled by the powerful even if the powerful were idiots,
thieves, rapists and murderers. Times have changed. People don't accept that anymore. But if Democrats
have made a blanket error it was in assuming that everyone sees the world as they do, and in assuming
that everyone is a rational being committed to the ideals of a republic. Clearly that is not the
case. And the "people" want leaders, not pals. They want security. Democrats need a person who
combines the guile of a Machiavelli with the smarts of an Obama and the steel fist of a Cromwell.
Thing is, under such conditions, it's doubtful if the "people" are governable anymore, in the
sense of making decisions based on reality as opposed to a combination of superstition, myth,
and misinformation. Oh, and vanity is an important factor: ask Susan Sarandon and her proxy vote
for Trump--she voted for Stein.
It was the DLC ("Democrats Led by Clintons") that brought the DP to its current condition of self-satisfied
atrophy and irrelevance by embracing Davos "meritocracy" and neo-liberal economics combined with
neo-conservative foreign policy for the past 30 years. They sealed their fate by turning the Party
(DNC, DSCC, DCCC, DGA, most state committees) into stale and pale imitations of Reagan's GOP;
and Party 'leaders' are far too comfortable with their own sense of entitlement to power and wealth
to understand either the fallacies of their tunnel vision, or the consequences (like electing
Trump and keeping the GOP in control of Congress and most states) of their blinkered myopia.
The only hope for the DP is to let the genuine 'progressives' (aka the socialist/green 'left')
take over management of the political apparatus because what passes for 'liberalism' these days
is no longer an electoral/policy option, at least as far as the electorate is concerned. And all
the early indications are that the from the DNC down the Party establishment is more concerned
about stamping out the Bernie Bro and Ho heresies than defeating Republicans.
Our politicians have been brainwashed by neoliberal economists.
These economists produce models that factor-in all the upsides to globalisation, but fail to
model any of the crippling, expensive-to-treat consequences of shutting down entire towns in places
like Michigan or Lancashire.
They assume people live frictionless lives; that when the European ship-building industry moves
to Poland, riveters in Portsmouth can just up-sticks and move to Gdansk with no problem. They
encourage a narrative that implies such an English riveter are lazy if he fails to seize this
opportunity.
(Let's drop a few economists in Gdansk with £100 in their pockets, and see how their families
do.)
Economics is a corrupt pseudo-science that gives a pseudo-scientific justification for the
greed and rapacity of One Percenters. Its methodological flaws are glaring. It's time economists
went back to the social science faculty, where they belong.
Racism if fake reason because the same voters managed somehow to elect Obama.
Notable quotes:
"... "...despite significant evidence that Trump voters were largely driven by racism." This is one of two main Dems "Monday morning quarterbacking" storylines. I am not so sure. I think the most significant factor in the recent election was voters rejection of neoliberal establishment and, specifically, neoliberal globalization, that destroyed American jobs. In other words, people voted by-and-large not "for" but "against". That's why Trump have won. ..."
"...despite significant evidence that Trump voters were largely driven by racism." This is
one of two main Dems "Monday morning quarterbacking" storylines. I am not so sure. I think the
most significant factor in the recent election was voters rejection of neoliberal establishment
and, specifically, neoliberal globalization, that destroyed American jobs. In other words, people
voted by-and-large not "for" but "against". That's why Trump have won.
"... During his primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, lived up to the grand Democratic tradition of favoring the underdog at the expense of the rich. He proposed hammering the affluent by raising taxes in the amount of $15.3 trillion over ten years. New revenues would finance about half the cost of a $33.3 trillion boost in social spending ..."
"... Trouble brews when a deeply held commitment to the underdog comes into conflict with the self-interested pocketbook and lifestyle concerns of the upper middle class. ..."
"... In rhetoric reminiscent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Sanders declared: We must send a message to the billionaire class: "you can't have it all." You can't get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry.But Sanders spoke to the Democratic Party of 2016, not the Democratic Party of the Great Depression. ..."
"... In days past, a proposal to slam the rich to reward the working and middle classes meant hitting Republicans to benefit Democrats. ..."
"... Even as recently as 1976, according to data from American National Election Studies, the most affluent voters, the top 5 percent, were solidly in the Republican camp, 77-23. Those in the bottom third of the income distribution were solidly Democratic, 64-36. ..."
"... In the 2016 election, the economic elite was essentially half Democratic, according to exit polls: Those in the top 10 percent of the income distribution voted 47 percent for Clinton and 46 percent for Trump. Half the voters Sanders would hit hardest are members of the party from which he sought the nomination. ..."
Has the Democratic Party Gotten Too Rich for Its Own Good?
by Thomas B. Edsall
JUNE 1, 2017
During his primary campaign against Hillary
Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed
socialist, lived up to the grand Democratic tradition of
favoring the underdog at the expense of the rich. He
proposed hammering the affluent by raising taxes in the
amount of $15.3 trillion over ten years. New revenues
would finance about half the cost of a $33.3 trillion
boost in social spending
The Sanders tax-and-spending plan throws into sharp
relief the problem that the changing demographic makeup of
the Democratic coalition creates for party leaders.
Trouble brews when a deeply held commitment to the
underdog comes into conflict with the self-interested
pocketbook and lifestyle concerns of the upper middle
class.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that under the
Sanders plan, a married couple filing jointly with an
income below $10,650 would continue to pay no income tax;
everyone else would pay higher taxes. Those in the second
quintile would pay an additional $1,625 and those in the
middle quintile would see their income tax liability
increase by $4,692. Those in the top quintile would pay
$42,719 more.
Higher up the ladder, the tax increase would grow to
$130,275 for those in the top 5 percent, to $525,365 for
those in the top one percent and to $3.1 million for the
top 0.1 percent.
When the additional revenues from the Sanders tax hike
are subtracted from the additional spending his proposals
would demand, the net result is an $18.1 trillion increase
in the national debt over 10 years, according to the
center.
In rhetoric reminiscent of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Sanders declared: We must send
a message to the billionaire class: "you can't have it
all." You can't get huge tax breaks while children in this
country go hungry.But Sanders spoke to the Democratic
Party of 2016, not the Democratic Party of the Great
Depression.
In days past, a proposal to slam the rich to reward
the working and middle classes meant hitting Republicans
to benefit Democrats.
Even as recently as 1976, according to data from
American National Election Studies, the most affluent
voters, the top 5 percent, were solidly in the Republican
camp, 77-23. Those in the bottom third of the income
distribution were solidly Democratic, 64-36.
In other words, 41 years ago, the year Jimmy Carter won
the presidency, the Sanders proposal would have made
political sense.
But what about now?
In the 2016 election, the economic elite was
essentially half Democratic, according to exit polls:
Those in the top 10 percent of the income distribution
voted 47 percent for Clinton and 46 percent for Trump.
Half the voters Sanders would hit hardest are members of
the party from which he sought the nomination.
The problem for the Democratic Party is that "them" has
become "us."
...
As the Democratic elite and the Democratic electorate
as a whole become increasingly well educated and affluent,
the party faces a crucial question. Can it maintain its
crucial role as the representative of the least powerful,
the marginalized, the most oppressed, many of whom belong
to disadvantaged racial and ethnic minority groups - those
on the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder?
This will be no easy task. In 2016, for the first time
in the party's history, a majority of voters (54.2
percent) who cast Democratic ballots for president had
college degrees. Clinton won all 15 of the states with the
highest percentage of college graduates.
The steady loss of Democratic support in the white
working class, culminating in Trump's Electoral College
victory on the backs of these white voters, must
inevitably send a loud and clear signal to the Democratic
elite: The more the party abandons the moral imperative to
represent the interests of the less well off of all races
and ethnicities, the more it risks a repetition of the
electoral disaster of 2016 in 2018, 2020 and beyond.
A pretty accurate (for Vox ;-) description of Neo-McCarthyism hysteria that the USA currently experience...
Notable quotes:
"... Twitter is the Russiasphere's native habitat. Louise Mensch, a former right-wing British parliamentarian and romance novelist, spreads the newest, punchiest, and often most unfounded Russia gossip to her 283,000 followers on Twitter . Mensch is backed up by a handful of allies, including former NSA spook John Schindler ( 226,000 followers ) and DC-area photographer Claude Taylor ( 159,000 followers ). ..."
"... Experts on political misinformation see things differently. They worry that the unfounded speculation and paranoia that infect the Russiasphere risk pushing liberals into the same black hole of conspiracy-mongering and fact-free insinuation that conservatives fell into during the Obama years. ..."
"... Mensch is quite combative with the press. When I asked her to email me for this piece, she refused and called me a "dickhead." But she's backed up by an array of different figures, who spend a lot of time swapping ideas on Twitter. ..."
"... One of them is Schindler, the former NSA spook. A former Naval War College professor who resigned in 2014 after a scandal in which he sent a photograph of his penis to a Twitter follower , he thinks Mensch doesn't get it right all the time. But he does think she was onto the truth about Trump and Russia "long before the MSM cared" (the two have been amiably chatting on Twitter since 2013 ). ..."
"... "Louise has no counterintelligence background, nor does she speak Russian or understand the Russians at a professional level, and that makes her analysis hit or miss sometimes," he told me. "That said, very few people pontificating on Kremlingate have those qualifications, so if that's disqualifying, pretty much everyone but me is out." ..."
"... dezinformatsiya ..."
"... These three - Mensch, Schindler, and Taylor - form a kind of self-reinforcing information circle, retweeting and validating one another's work on a nearly daily basis. ..."
"... The Palmer Report, and its creator, little-known journalist Bill Palmer, is kind of a popularizer of the Russiasphere. It reports the same kind of extreme, thinly sourced stuff - for instance, a story titled "CIA now says there's more than one tape of Donald Trump with Russian prostitutes" - often, though not always, sourced to Mensch and company. This seems to personally irk Mensch, who has occasionally suggested the Palmer Report is ripping her off . ..."
"... Yet nonetheless, Palmer appears to have built up a real audience. According to Quantcast , a site that measures web traffic, the Palmer Report got around 400,000 visitors last month - more than GQ magazine's website. The Russian prostitute story was shared more than 41,000 times on Facebook, according to a counter on Palmer's site; another story alleging that Chaffetz was paid off by Trump and Russia got about 29,000. ..."
"... "Misinformation is much more likely to stick when it conforms with people's preexisting beliefs, especially those connected to social groups that they're a part of," says Arceneaux. "In politics, that plays out (usually) through partisanship: Republicans are much more likely to believe false information that confirms their worldview, and Democrats are likely to do the opposite." ..."
"... actual conspiracy. ..."
"... For instance, after the New York Times published the Mensch piece back in March, former DNC chair Donna Brazile tweeted out the story, with a follow-up thanking Mensch for "good journalism": ..."
"... What you've got are prominent media figures, political operatives, scholars, and even US senators being taken in by this stuff - in addition to the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of ordinary people consuming it on Twitter and Facebook. These people, too, are letting their biases trump interest in factual accuracy. ..."
"... Will the mainstreaming of the Russiasphere speed up - and birth something like a Breitbart of the left? If so, it'll create an environment where the people most willing to say the most absurd things succeed, pulling the entire Democratic Party closer to the edge - and leaving liberals trapped in the same hall of mirrors as conservatives. ..."
President Donald Trump is
about to resign as a result of the Russia scandal.
Bernie Sanders
and Sean
Hannity are Russian agents. The
Russians have paid off House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz to the tune of $10 million, using
Trump as a go-between. Paul Ryan is a
traitor for
refusing to investigate Trump's Russia ties. Libertarian heroine Ayn Rand was
a secret Russian
agent charged with discrediting the American conservative movement.
These are all claims you can find made on a new and growing sector of the internet that functions
as a fake news bubble for liberals, something I've dubbed the Russiasphere. The mirror image of Breitbart
and InfoWars on the right, it focuses nearly exclusively on real and imagined connections between
Trump and Russia. The tone is breathless: full of unnamed intelligence sources, certainty that Trump
will soon be imprisoned, and fever dream factual assertions that no reputable media outlet has managed
to confirm.
Twitter is the Russiasphere's native habitat. Louise Mensch, a former right-wing British parliamentarian
and romance novelist, spreads the newest, punchiest, and often most unfounded Russia gossip to her
283,000 followers on Twitter . Mensch
is backed up by a handful of allies, including former NSA spook John Schindler (
226,000 followers ) and DC-area photographer
Claude Taylor ( 159,000 followers
).
There's also a handful of websites, like
Palmer Report , that seem devoted nearly
exclusively to spreading bizarre assertions like the theory that Ryan and Sen. Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell
funneled Russian money to Trump - a story that spread widely among the site's
70,000 Facebook fans.
Beyond the numbers, the unfounded left-wing claims, like those on the right, are already seeping
into the mainstream discourse. In March,
the New York Times published an op-ed by Mensch instructing members of Congress as to how they
should proceed with the Russia investigation ("I have some relevant experience," she wrote). Two
months prior to that, Mensch had penned a
lengthy letter to Vladimir Putin titled "Dear Mr. Putin, Let's Play Chess" - in which she claims
to have discovered that Edward Snowden was part of a years-in-the-making Russian plot to discredit
Hillary Clinton.
Last Thursday,
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) was forced to apologize for spreading a false claim that a New York grand
jury was investigating Trump and Russia. His sources, according to the Guardian's Jon Swaine, were
Mensch and Palmer:
Members of the Russiasphere see themselves as an essential counter to a media that's been too
cautious to get to the bottom of Trump's Russian ties.
"There's good evidence that the Kremlin was planning a secret operation to put Trump in the White
House back in 2014," Schindler told me. "With a few exceptions, the MSM [mainstream media] hasn't
exactly covered itself in glory with Kremlingate. They were slow to ask obvious questions about Trump
in 2016, and they're playing catch-up now, not always accurately."
Experts on political misinformation see things differently. They worry that the unfounded
speculation and paranoia that infect the Russiasphere risk pushing liberals into the same black hole
of conspiracy-mongering and fact-free insinuation that conservatives fell into during the Obama years.
The fear is that this pollutes the party itself, derailing and discrediting the legitimate investigation
into Russia investigation. It also risks degrading the Democratic Party - helping elevate shameless
hucksters who know nothing about policy but are willing to spread misinformation in the service of
gaining power. We've already seen this story play out on the right, a story that ended in Trump's
election.
"One of the failures of the Republican Party is the way they let the birther movement metastasize
- and that ultimately helped Donald Trump make it to the White House," says Brendan Nyhan, a professor
at Dartmouth who studies the spread of false political beliefs. "We should worry about kind of pattern
being repeated."
Anatomy of a conspiracy theory
The Russiasphere doesn't have one unifying, worked-out theory - like "9/11 was an inside job"
or "Nazi gas chambers are a hoax." Instead, it's more like an attitude - a general sense that Russian
influence in the United States is pervasive and undercovered by the mainstream media. Everything
that happens in US politics is understood through this lens - especially actions taken by the Trump
administration, which is seen as Kremlin-occupied territory.
There are, of course, legitimate issues relating to Trump's ties to Russia - I've
written about them personally
over and
over again . There are even legitimate reasons to believe that Trump's campaign worked with Russian
hackers to undermine Hillary Clinton. That may or may not turn out to be true, but it is least plausible
and
somewhat supported by the available evidence .
The Russiasphere's assertions go way beyond that.
Take Mensch, who is probably the Russiasphere's most prominent voice. She actually did have one
legitimate scoop, reporting in November that the FBI had been granted a warrant to watch email traffic
between the Trump Organization and two Russian banks (
before anyone else had ). Since then, though, her ideas have taken a bit of a turn. In January,
she launched a blog - Patribotics - that's
exclusively dedicated to the Trump/Russia scandal. It's ... a lot.
Liberals fall for lies for the same reasons conservatives do: partisanship
"Sources with links to the intelligence community say it is believed that Carter Page went to
Moscow in early July carrying with him a pre-recorded tape of Donald Trump offering to change American
policy if he were to be elected, to make it more favorable to Putin," Mensch claimed in an
April post . "In exchange, Page was authorized directly by Trump to request the help of the Russian
government in hacking the election."
Another post , allegedly based on "sources with links to the intelligence community," claimed
that Trump, Mike Pence, and Paul Ryan were all going to be arrested on racketeering charges against
"the Republican party" owing to collaboration with Russia.
She's also suggested that
Anthony Weiner was brought down as part of a Russian plot to put the Clinton emails back in the
news:
I can exclusively report that there is ample evidence that suggests that Weiner was sexting
not with a 15 year old girl but with a hacker
, working for Russia, part of the North Carolina hacking group 'Crackas With Attitude', who
hacked the head of the CIA, and a great many FBI agents, police officers, and other law enforcement
officials.
And that the protests against police brutality in Ferguson were secretly a Russian plot:
Mensch is quite combative with the press. When I asked her to email me for this piece, she
refused and called me a
"dickhead."
But she's backed up by an array of different figures, who spend a lot of time swapping ideas
on Twitter.
One of them is Schindler, the former NSA spook. A former Naval War College professor who resigned
in 2014 after a scandal in which he sent
a photograph of his penis to a Twitter follower , he thinks Mensch doesn't get it right all the
time. But he does think she was onto the truth about Trump and Russia "long before the MSM cared"
(the two have been amiably chatting on Twitter
since 2013
).
"Louise has no counterintelligence background, nor does she speak Russian or understand the
Russians at a professional level, and that makes her analysis hit or miss sometimes," he told me.
"That said, very few people pontificating on Kremlingate have those qualifications, so if that's
disqualifying, pretty much everyone but me is out."
Schindler's role in the Russiasphere is essentially as a validator, using his time working on
Russia at the NSA to make the theories bandied about by Mensch seem credible. Schindler peppers his
speech with terms pulled from Russian spycraft - like deza , short for dezinformatsiya
(disinformation), or Chekist
, a term used to describe the former spies who hold significant political positions in Putin's
Russia.
This lingo has become common among the Russiasphere, a sort of status symbol to show that its
members understand the real nature of the threat. Schindler and Mensch will often refer to their
enemies in the media and the Trump administration using the hashtag #TeamDeza, or accuse enemies
of being Chekists.
Claude Taylor is the third core member of the Russia sphere. He's a DC-area photographer who claims
to have worked for three presidential administrations; his role is to provide inside information
into the alleged legal cases against the president. He also routinely claims to have advance knowledge
what's happening, even down to the precise number of grand juries impaneled and indictments that
are on the way.
These anonymous intelligence community tip-offs lead him to tweet, with certainty, that Trump
is finished. His tweets routinely get thousands of retweets.
These three - Mensch, Schindler, and Taylor - form a kind of self-reinforcing information
circle, retweeting and validating one another's work on a nearly daily basis. A quick Twitter
search reveals hundreds of interactions between the three on the platform in recent months, many
of which reach huge audiences on Twitter (judging by the retweet and favorite counts). They're also
reliably boosted by a few allies with large followings - conservative NeverTrumper
Rick Wilson , the anonymous Twitter account
Counterchekist
, and financial analyst
Eric Garland
(best known as the "time for some game theory" tweetstormer.)
Yet nonetheless, Palmer appears to have built up a real audience. According to
Quantcast ,
a site that measures web traffic, the Palmer Report got around 400,000 visitors last month - more
than GQ magazine's website. The Russian prostitute story was shared more than 41,000 times on Facebook,
according to a counter on Palmer's site; another story alleging that
Chaffetz was paid off by Trump and Russia got about 29,000.
This stuff is real, and there's a huge appetite for it.
These theories are spreading because the Russia situation is murky - and Democrats are out of
power
To understand how Democrats started falling for this stuff so quickly, I turned to three scholars:
Dartmouth's Nyhan, the University of Exeter's Jason Reifler, and Temple's Kevin Arceneaux. The three
of them all work in a burgeoning subfield of political science, one that focuses on how people form
political beliefs - false ones, in particular. All of them were disturbed by what they're seeing
from the Russiasphere.
"I'm worried? Alarmed? Disheartened is the right word - disheartened by the degree to which the
left is willing to accept conspiracy theory claims or very weakly sourced claims about Russia's influence
in the White House," Reifler says.
The basic thing you need to understand, these scholars say, is that political misinformation in
America comes principally from partisanship. People's political identities are formed around membership
in one of two tribes, Democratic or Republican. This filters the way they see the world.
"Misinformation is much more likely to stick when it conforms with people's preexisting beliefs,
especially those connected to social groups that they're a part of," says Arceneaux. "In politics,
that plays out (usually) through partisanship: Republicans are much more likely to believe false
information that confirms their worldview, and Democrats are likely to do the opposite."
In
one study , Yale's Dan Kahan gave subjects a particularly tricky math problem - phrased in terms
of whether a skin cream worked. Then he gave a random subset the same problem, only phrased in terms
of whether a particular piece of gun control legislation worked.
The results were fascinating. For the people who got the skin cream problem, there was no correlation
between partisanship and likelihood of getting the right answer. But when people got the same question,
just about gun control, everything changed: Republicans were more likely to conclude that gun control
didn't work, and Democrats the other way around. People's political biases overrode their basic mathematical
reasoning skills.
"[Some] people are willing to second-guess their gut reactions," Arceneaux says. "There just aren't
that many people who are willing to do that."
In real-life situations, where the truth is invariably much murkier than in a laboratory math
problem, these biases are even more powerful. People want to believe that their side is good and
the other evil - and are frighteningly willing to believe even the basest allegations against their
political enemies. When your tribe is out of power, this effect makes you open to conspiracy theories.
You tend to assume your political enemies have malign motives, which means you assume they're doing
something evil behind the scenes.
The specific nature of the conspiracy theories tends to be shaped by the actors in question. So
because Obama was a black man with a non-Anglo name, and the Republican Party is made up mostly of
white people, the popular conspiracy theories in the last administration became things like birtherism
and Obama being a secret Muslim. This was helped on by a conservative mediasphere, your Rush Limbaughs
and Fox Newses and Breitbarts, that had little interest in factual accuracy - alongside one Donald
J. Trump.
There have been random smatterings of this kind of thing catering to Democrats throughout the
Trump administration, like the now-infamous Medium piece alleging that Trump's Muslim ban was a
"trial balloon for a coup." But most conspiracy thinking has come to center on Russia, and for
good reason: There's suggestive evidence of an actual conspiracy.
We know that Trump's team has a series of shady connections to the Kremlin. Some of Trump's allies
may have coordinated with Russian hackers to undermine the Clinton campaign. But we still don't know
the details of what actually happened, so there's a huge audience of Democratic partisans who want
someone to fill in the blanks for them.
"Conspiracy entrepreneurs are filling the void for this kind of content," Nyhan says. "If you're
among the hardcore, you can follow Louise Mensch, and the Palmer Report, and John Schindler and folks
like that - and get an ongoing stream of conspiracy discourse that is making some quite outlandish
claims."
This kind of thing is poisonous. For Republicans, it made their party more vulnerable to actual
penetration by hacks - the "Michele Bachmanns" and "Sean Hannitys," as Nyhan puts it. It allows unprincipled
liars and the outright deluded to shape policy, which both makes your ideas much worse and discredits
the good ones that remain. In the specific case of the Russia investigation, the spread of these
ideas would make the president's accusations of "fake news" far more credible.
Luckily for the Democratic Party, there isn't really a pre-built media ecosystem for amplifying
this like there was for Republicans. In the absence of left-wing Limbaughs and Breitbarts, media
outlets totally unconcerned with factual rigor, it's much harder for this stuff to become mainstream.
But hard doesn't mean impossible. The most worrying sign, according to the scholars I spoke to,
is that some mainstream figures and publications are starting to validate Russiasphere claims.
For instance, after the New York Times published the Mensch piece back in March, former DNC
chair Donna
Brazile tweeted out the story, with a follow-up thanking Mensch for "good journalism":
A current DNC communications staffer - Adrienne Watson - favorably retweeted a Mensch claim that
the Russians had "kompromat," or blackmail, on Rep. Chaffetz:
Two former Obama staffers, Ned Price and Eric Schultz, favorably discussed a
Palmer Report
story aggregating Mensch's allegations about Chaffetz ("interesting, if single-source," Price
tweeted). Larry Tribe, an eminent and famous constitutional law professor at Harvard, shared the
same Palmer Report story on Twitter - and even defended his decision to do so in an email to
BuzzFeed 's Joseph Bernstein.
"Some people regard a number of its stories as unreliable," Tribe wrote of Palmer. Yet he defended
disseminating its work: "When I share any story on Twitter ... I do so because a particular story
seems to be potentially interesting, not with the implication that I've independently checked its
accuracy or that I vouch for everything it asserts."
What you've got are prominent media figures, political operatives, scholars, and even US senators
being taken in by this stuff - in addition to the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of ordinary
people consuming it on Twitter and Facebook. These people, too, are letting their biases trump interest
in factual accuracy.
This is the key danger: that this sort of thing becomes routine, repeated over and over again
in left-leaning media outlets, to the point where accepting the Russiasphere's fact-free claims becomes
a core and important part of what Democrats believe.
"Normal people aren't reading extensively about what Louise Mensch claims someone told her about
Russia," Nyhan says. "The question now is whether Democrats and their allies in the media - and other
affiliated elites - will promote these conspiracy theories more aggressively."
That's how the GOP fell for conspiracy thinking during the Obama years. There's nothing about
Democratic psychology that prevents them from doing the same - which means the burden is on Democratic
elites to correct it.
Democratic partisans and liberal media outlets are the ones best positioned to push back against
this kind of stuff. Rank-and-file Democrats trust them; if they're saying this stuff is ridiculous,
then ordinary liberals will start to think the same thing. Even if they just ignore it, then the
Russiasphere will be denied the oxygen necessary for it to move off of Twitter and into the center
of the political conversation.
"Scrutiny from trusted media sources and criticism from allied elites can help discourage this
kind of behavior," Nyhan says. "It won't suppress it - there are always places it can go - but on
the margin, allies can help limit the spread of conspiracy theorizing inside their party."
So that's the key question going forward: Will the mainstreaming of the Russiasphere speed
up - and birth something like a Breitbart of the left? If so, it'll create an environment where the
people most willing to say the most absurd things succeed, pulling the entire Democratic Party closer
to the edge - and leaving liberals trapped in the same hall of mirrors as conservatives.
The Russia-screwed-the-Dems meme is obviously fantastical bullshit and it's absolutely disgraceful
that the neoliberal MSM are running this garbage 24/7 like it's the gospel truth.
Notable quotes:
"... "Therefore, we should not build up tensions or invent fictional threats from Russia, some hybrid warfare etc.," the Russian leader told his French hosts. "What is the major security problem today? Terrorism. There are bombings in Europe, in Paris, in Russia, in Belgium. There is a war in the Middle East. This is the main concern. But no, let us keep speculating on the threat from Russia." ..."
"... Case in point, in the latest attempt to stir up an anti-Russian frenzy, America's biggest neocon, John McCain said that Russia is even more dangerous than ISIS . "You made these things up yourselves and now scare yourselves with them and even use them to plan your prospective policies. These policies have no prospects. The only possible future is in cooperation in all areas, including security issues." ..."
"... It is glaringly obvious that the (worthless) Rats painted themselves into a small corner. Blaming the Russians is both desperate and hilarious. ..."
With McCarthyism 2.0 continues to run amok in the US, spread like a virulent plague by unnamed, unknown,
even fabricated sources , over in France one day after his first meeting with French president Emanuel
Macron, the man who supposedly colluded with and was Trump's pre-election puppet master (but had
to wait until after the election to set up back-channels with Jared Kushner) Vladimir Putin sat down
for an interview with
French newspaper Le Figaro in which the Russian president expressed the belief that Moscow and
Western capitals "all want security, peace, safety and cooperation."
"Therefore, we should not build up tensions or invent fictional threats from Russia, some hybrid
warfare etc.," the Russian leader told his French hosts. "What is the major security problem today?
Terrorism. There are bombings in Europe, in Paris, in Russia, in Belgium. There is a war in the Middle
East. This is the main concern. But no, let us keep speculating on the threat from Russia."
Case in point, in the latest attempt to stir up an anti-Russian frenzy, America's biggest neocon,
John McCain said that
Russia is even more dangerous than ISIS . "You made these things up yourselves and now scare
yourselves with them and even use them to plan your prospective policies. These policies have no
prospects. The only possible future is in cooperation in all areas, including security issues."
"Hacking" Clinton And the DNC
Even with the FBI special investigation on "Russian collusion" with the Trump campaign and administration
taking place in the background, Putin
once again dismissed allegations of Russian meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election
as "fiction" invented by Democrats to divert the blame for their defeat. Putin repeated his strong
denial of Russia's involvement in the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails that yielded
disclosures that proved embarrassing for Hillary Clinton's campaign. Instead, he countered that claims
of Russian interference were driven by the " desire of those who lost the U.S. elections to improve
their standing ."
"They want to explain to themselves and prove to others that they had nothing to do with it, their
policy was right, they have done everything well, but someone from the outside cheated them," he
continued. "It's not so. They simply lost, and they must acknowledge it. " That has proven easier
said than done, because half a year after the election,
Hillary Clinton still blames Wikileaks and James Comey for her loss . Ironically, what Putin
said next, namely that the "people who lost the vote hate to acknowledge that they indeed lost because
the person who won was closer to the people and had a better understanding of what people wanted,"
is precisely what
even Joe Biden has admitted several weeks ago , and once
again yesterday . Maybe Uncle Joe is a Russian secret agent too...
In reflecting on the ongoing scandal, which has seen constant, daily accusations of collusion
and interference if no evidence (yet), Putin conceded that the damage has already been done and Russia's
hopes for a new detente under Trump have been shattered by congressional and FBI investigations of
the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. In the interview, Putin also said the accusations of meddling
leveled at Russia have destabilized international affairs
Going back to the hotly debated topic of "influencing" the election, Putin once again made a dangerous
dose of sense when he argued that trying to influence the U.S. vote would make no sense for Moscow
as a U.S. president can't unilaterally shape policies. " Russia has never engaged in that, we don't
need it and it makes no sense to do it ," he said. " Presidents come and go, but policies don't change.
You know why? Because the power of bureaucracy is very strong ." Especially when the bureaucracy
in question is the so-called "deep state."
Asked who could have been behind the hacking of the Democrats' emails, The Russian leader added
that he agreed with Trump that it could have been anyone. "Maybe someone lying in his bed invented
something or maybe someone deliberately inserted a USB with a Russian citizen's signature or anything
else," Putin said. "Anything can be done in this virtual world." This echoed a remark by Trump during
a September presidential debate in which he said of the DNC hacks: "It could be Russia, but it could
be China, could also be lots of other people. It could be someone sitting on their bed that weighs
400 pounds."
Assad, Red-Lines and Chemical Weapons
Putin was asked about French President Emmanuel Macron's warning that any use of chemical weapons
in Syria was a "red line" that would be met by reprisals, to which the Russian president said he
agreed with that position. But he also reiterated Russia's view that Syrian President Bashar Assad's
forces weren't responsible for a fatal chemical attack in Syria in April. Putin said Russia had offered
the U.S. and its allies the chance to inspect the Syrian base for traces of the chemical agent. He
added that their refusal reflected a desire to justify military action against Assad. "There is no
proof of Assad using chemical weapons," Putin insisted in the interview. "We firmly believe that
that this is a provocation. President Assad did not use chemical weapons."
"Moreover, I believe that this issue should be addressed on a broader scale. President Macron
shares this view. No matter who uses chemical weapons against people and organizations, the international
community must formulate a common policy and find a solution that would make the use of such weapons
impossible for anyone," the Russian leader said.
On NATO's Military Buildup across Russian borders
Weighing on the outcome of the recent NATO summit, at which Russia was branded a threat to security,
Putin pointed to the ambiguous signals Moscow is receiving from the alliance. "What attracted my
attention is that the NATO leaders spoke at their summit about a desire to improve relations with
Russia. Then why are they increasing their military spending? Whom are they planning to fight against?"
Putin said, adding that Russia nevertheless "feels confident" in its own defenses. Washington's appeal
to other NATO members to ramp up their military spending and alleviate the financial burden the US
is forced to shoulder is "understandable" and "pragmatic," Putin said.
But the strategy employed by the alliance against Russia is "shortsighted," the Russian president
added, referring to the NATO's expanding missile defense infrastructure on Russia's doorstep and
calling it "an extremely dangerous development for international security." Putin lamented that an
idea of a comprehensive security system envisioned in the 1990s that would span Europe, Russia and
US has never become a reality, arguing that it would have spared Russia many challenges to its security
stemming from NATO. "Perhaps all this would not have happened. But it did, and we cannot rewind history,
it is not a movie."
junction -> Boris Badenov •May 30, 2017 10:03 PM
Paging Seth Rich. Oh, he can't say anything about the reason why the Democrats lost. Maybe
Hillary could try to contact him using witchcraft and the Satanist arts she follows. Then again,
her old reliable is her hit team of FBI agents, not her sacrifices to Moloch.
GooseShtepping Moron •May 30, 2017 10:01 PM
Putin packs more truth into one newspaper interview than the entire Western media publishes
in a year.
Francis Marx •May 30, 2017 10:01 PM
Who would they blame if Russia was suddenly gone?
rejected -> Francis Marx •May 30, 2017 10:05 PM
Iran.
GooseShtepping Moron -> Francis Marx •May 30, 2017 10:06 PM
Me and you, the basket of deplorables.
Billy the Poet -> rwmctrofholz •May 30, 2017 10:25 PM
I find this little cut and paste job to be effective when addressing this issue:
Background to "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections": The
Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution
"DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not
involved in vote tallying."
"Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries."
The Russia-screwed-the-Dems thing is obviously fantastical bullshit and it's absolutely disgraceful
that the mainstream media are running this garbage 24/7 like it's the gospel truth.
ogretown •May 30, 2017 10:43 PM
It is glaringly obvious that the (worthless) Rats painted themselves into a small corner. Blaming
the Russians is both desperate and hilarious. But who else could they blame? If instead they had
started a campaign that focused on the Muslims trying to ruin America and (correctly)
identified
Saudi Arabia as America's greatest enemy, imagine the votes they would have received from the
soft-right, independents, (relatively) sane liberals. If the (worthless) liberals opted for a
moratorium on squandering any more money on the pseudo-science of global warming and insisted
on a balanced panel to investigate the issue once and for all - even more votes.
Ditto with exotic pro-globalist trade deals...instead if the (worthless) Rats would have opted
for town hall discussions on how a vast international trade deal would have may be helped America,
they would have been viewed as the party of balance, consideration and the thoughtful.
But all of that means having smart and dedicated people as either part of the party or willing
to trust the party - none of which exist. Instead the party of bankrupt ideals and impoverished
morality finger point the Russians and try to blame it all on them.
"... Why didn't the FBI do their own investigation? ..."
"... "They say that, but it's bogus," Cohen argued. "When Clapper, the director of national intelligence, signed that report in January, technically he represents all seventeen. I'll bet you a dime to a nickel you couldn't get a guest on, unprepared, who could name ten of them. This figure -- seventeen -- is bogus!" ..."
"... "The one agency that could conceivably have done a forensic examination on the Democratic computers is a national security agency ..."
Professor Stephen Cohen: Not One Piece of Factual Evidence That Russia 'Hacked the Election' March 31, 2017
chat 176 comments
Prof. Cohen: Not One Piece of Factual Evidence That Russia 'Hacked the Election'
Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton, spoke Thursday evening with
Fox News' Tucker Carlson about the
latest shoes to drop in the investigations into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia.
The Wall
Street Journal reported late Thursday that Michael Flynn, President Trump's former national security advisor, has told the FBI
and congressional investigators that he is willing to be interviewed in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution -- not
a particularly good sign for the Trump White House.
Cohen, one of the country's foremostexperts on Russia, has been arguing for months that the anti-Russia hysteria in Washington,
D.C., is becoming a
"grave national security threat."
Carlson began the discussion by bringing up what he sees as the core issue-- the allegations that the Russian government "hacked
our election" by breaking into email accounts at the DNC and the Clinton campaign office.
"Everyone assumes this is true," he said. "We're all operating under the assumption that it's true. Do we know it's true?"
"No," Cohen answered flatly. "And if you listen to the hearings at the Senate today, repeatedly it was said -- particularly by
Senator Warner, the Democratic co-chair of the proceedings -- that Russia had hijacked our democracy. What he means is that, the
Russians, at Putin's direction, had gone into the Democratic National Committee's emails, which were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton,
given them to Wikileaks, Wikileaks then released them to damage Mrs. Clinton and put Trump in the White House."
He noted, "This is a very dramatic narrative and they're saying in Washington that this was an act of war.... So whether or not
it's true is existential. Are we at war?"
After studying Russian leadership for 40 years, focusing on Putin in particular, Cohen said it was hard for him believe that the
Russian president would have done such a thing.
"I could find not one piece of factual evidence," he said. "The only evidence ever presented was a study hired by the Clintons
-- the DNC -- to do an examination of their computers.They
[Crowdstrike] concluded the Russians did it. Their report
has fallen apart." He
added, " Why didn't the FBI do their own investigation? "
Tucker pointed out that even Republicans say that seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies (including Coast Guard Intelligence!) have
concluded that Russian intelligence was behind this.
"They say that, but it's bogus," Cohen argued. "When Clapper, the director of national intelligence, signed that report in
January, technically he represents all seventeen. I'll bet you a dime to a nickel you couldn't get a guest on, unprepared, who could
name ten of them. This figure -- seventeen -- is bogus!"
The professor made one more critical point: "The one agency that could conceivably have done a forensic examination on the
Democratic computers is a national security agency ," he said.
He continued: "When they admit that they have no evidence, they fall back on something else which I think is very important. They
say Putin directed Russian propaganda at us and helped elect Trump. I don't know about you, Tucker, but I find that insulting --
because the premise they're putting out ... at this hearing is that the American people are zombies. ... It's the premise of democracy
that we're democratic citizens," he said. "That we have a B.S. detector in us and we know how to use it."
ValVeggie •
2 months ago Maybe not, but let's not forget that there IS evidence that the Obama administration apparently employed police-state
tactics to spy on their political rivals during the election, and to widely disseminate the information they collected in hope
that it would be illegally leaked in order to undermine the Trump administration.
Remember, the only felony we have clear proof of is the leak of Flynn's surveillance data to the press.
Time to get focused on where the crimes are, and stop falling for the progressive's shell game.
RedDog
ValVeggie •
2 months ago Now what do we have here....
WikiLeaks Reveals "Marble": Proof CIA Disguises Their Hacks As Russian, Chinese, Arabic...
"... On "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Dana Loesch said the agenda-driven media is focused on negatively portraying Trump, while they're largely giving Democrats a pass. ..."
"... Let's talk for a moment about the California Democrat convention ... where you had a number of Democrats on stage screaming 'expletive Trump' and 'expletive Republicans.'" She said Democrats and the mainstream media then want to turn around and accuse Trump and those on the right of fomenting violence. ..."
Following Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte's alleged assault of a reporter, some in the mainstream media
are trying to blame the incident on President Trump. CNN host Don Lemon argued that Trump has culpability because he's said "very
horrible things" about reporters and suggested that they are the enemy of the American people. MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell said that
Trump has helped whip up "hostility" toward the press, while Joe Scarborough said a "straight line" can be drawn between Trump's
anti-media rhetoric and the Gianforte incident.
On "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Dana Loesch said the agenda-driven media is focused on negatively portraying Trump, while they're
largely giving Democrats a pass.
"Let's discuss Tom Perez and his cussing crusade that he's been giving at so many different fundraisers.
Let's talk for a
moment about the California Democrat convention ... where you had a number of Democrats on stage screaming 'expletive Trump' and
'expletive Republicans.'" She said Democrats and the mainstream media then want to turn around and accuse Trump and those on the
right of fomenting violence.
"You are graduating at a time when there is a full-fledged assault
on truth and reason. Just log on to social media for ten seconds.
It will hit you right in the face. People denying science, concocting
elaborate, hurtful conspiracy theories about child-abuse rings
operating out of pizza parlors, drumming up rampant fear about
undocumented immigrants, Muslims, minorities, the poor, turning
neighbor against neighbor and sowing division at a time when
we desperately need unity. Some are even denying things we see
with our own eyes, like the size of crowds, and then defending
themselves by talking about quote-unquote 'alternative facts.'
"But this is serious business. Look at the budget that was just
proposed in Washington. It is an attack of unimaginable cruelty
on the most vulnerable among us, the youngest, the oldest, the
poorest, and hard-working people who need a little help to gain
or hang on to a decent middle class life. It grossly under-funds
public education, mental health, and efforts even to combat the
opioid epidemic. And in reversing our commitment to fight climate
change, it puts the future of our nation and our world at risk.
And to top it off, it is shrouded in a trillion-dollar mathematical
lie. Let's call it what it is. It's a con. They don't even try
to hide it.
"Why does all this matter? It matters because if our leaders
lie about the problems we face, we'll never solve them. It matters
because it undermines confidence in government as a whole, which
in turn breeds more cynicism and anger. But it also matters because
our country, like this College, was founded on the principles
of the Enlightenment – in particular, the belief that people,
you and I, possess the capacity for reason and critical thinking,
and that free and open debate is the lifeblood of a democracy.
Not only Wellesley, but the entire American university system
– the envy of the world – was founded on those fundamental ideals.
We should not abandon them; we should revere them. We should
aspire to them every single day, in everything we do.
"And there's something else. As the history majors among you
here today know all too well, when people in power invent their
own facts, and attack those who question them, it can mark the
beginning of the end of a free society. That is not hyperbole.
It is what authoritarian regimes throughout history have done.
They attempt to control reality – not just our laws and rights
and our budgets, but our thoughts and beliefs."
Hillary should be in a hut somewhere in the Canadian north
staring at election returns. Her shameless ambition her heedless self seeking industry
and undaunted entitled drive reminds me of the worst results of meritocracy
"... One thing we don't need are "progressives" who whine about irregularities (without proof) when they lose a close election. That will help the right wing more than anything they themselves can do. She is clearly not mature enough to take any leadership role anywhere. ..."
"... "neoliberal tears" about Hillary loss might create "dragon's teeth" effect... For example look at the Twit: "Fmr Kasich Supporter: Hostile Media Makes Me Support Trump " Chinese torture of Trump using well timed leaks also can have the same effect. ..."
"... sections of Trump voters and population in general now harbored "a uniform distrust of the national news media." ..."
"... There are still a lot of morons who voted for Trump and are sure he will do the part of his promises they listened to and believed. He is brilliant at the short con. That is how he made his money (or is it failed to loss his inheritance). He promises whatever he sense that the costumer want to hear and get a signature on the deal. Then as soon as the costumer have handed over their money (votes) he runs away from what he promised. ..."
"... That (short) con works in real estate where he really don't need to do another deal with people after he conned them. In politics he will be faced with the voters he conned in the first place, so either he chose to be a one-term president or he will realize why a one-trick pony shouldn't try to do a new trick. ..."
One thing we don't need are "progressives" who whine about irregularities (without proof) when
they lose a close election. That will help the right wing more than anything they themselves can
do. She is clearly not mature enough to take any leadership role anywhere.
"One thing we don't need are "progressives" who whine about irregularities (without proof) when
they lose a close election"
That's a very good point. I would say more: "neoliberal tears" about Hillary loss might create
"dragon's teeth" effect... For example look at the Twit: "Fmr Kasich Supporter: Hostile Media Makes Me Support Trump " Chinese torture of Trump using well timed leaks also can have the same effect.
that all means that it's not only just former #NeverHillary types who still stand by the president. Other
sections of Trump voters and population in general now harbored "a uniform distrust of
the national news media."
There are still a lot of morons who voted for Trump and are sure he will do the part of his promises
they listened to and believed. He is brilliant at the short con. That is how he made his money
(or is it failed to loss his inheritance). He promises whatever he sense that the costumer want
to hear and get a signature on the deal. Then as soon as the costumer have handed over their money
(votes) he runs away from what he promised.
That (short) con works in real estate where he really
don't need to do another deal with people after he conned them. In politics he will be faced with
the voters he conned in the first place, so either he chose to be a one-term president or he will
realize why a one-trick pony shouldn't try to do a new trick.
But it will almost certainly take at least a year before a large number of the Trump voters
realize that they have been conned. It is very difficult for people to admit that they made a
stupid mistake - especially difficult for stupid people.
"But it will almost certainly take at least a year before a large number of the Trump voters realize
that they have been conned."
Not true. I know many who already "get it " ;-)
"That (short) con works in real estate where he really don't need to do another deal with people
after he conned them. In politics he will be faced with the voters he conned in the first place,
so either he chose to be a one-term president or he will realize why a one-trick pony shouldn't
try to do a new trick."
But both Bush II an Barack Obama were reelected. So "bait and switch" game might not be that
fatal for politicians in the USA as it is in some other countries.
I agree that shortermism is the name of the game.
"It is very difficult for people to admit that they made a stupid mistake"
Large part of "alt-right" (anti war right) already abandoned Trump. Those did it first. Paleoconservatives
followed and now are one just step from open hostility mostly because of media attacks on Trump.
Libertarians, especially former Ron Paul supporters, now are openly hostile and their critique
is really biting.
Do not know about evangelicals and other fringe groups, but I doubt that any of them still
have illusions about Trump.
IMHO, the only factor that still allows Trump to maintain his base is unending attacks of neoliberal
media and this set of well coordinated leaks.
"... Democrats may have some difficulty winning elections, but they've become quite adept at explaining their losses. ..."
"... According to legend, Democrats lose because of media bias, because of racism, because of gerrymandering, because of James Comey and because of Russia (an amazing 59 percent of Democrats still believe Russians hacked vote totals). ..."
"... the "deplorables" comment didn't just further alienate already lost Republican votes. It spoke to an internal sickness within the Democratic Party ..."
"... About 2/3 in that election voted early -- before the slam down. ..."
"... I agree with you that Democrats should make unions a priority instead just regurgitating the usual pablum about how they support unions without doing anything. ..."
"... The dem pols alliance outside the south with organized " private sector " unions was the legacy of the new deal and the CIO uprising. That alliance broke down in the 70's with the rise of the cultural liberals after the civil rights and anti war struggles. Union often seen by Clintons as reactionary saw their economic interests pushed aside... ..."
The Democrats Need a New Message. After another demoralizing
loss to a monstrous candidate, Democrats need a reboot
by Matt Taibbi
19 hours ago
... ... ...
The electoral results last November have been repeated
enough that most people in politics know them by heart.
Republicans now control 68 state legislative chambers, while
Democrats only control 31. Republicans flipped three more
governors' seats last year and now control an incredible 33
of those offices. Since 2008, when Barack Obama first took
office, Republicans have gained somewhere around 900 to 1,000
seats overall.
There are a lot of reasons for this. But there's no way to
spin some of these numbers in a way that doesn't speak to the
awesome unpopularity of the blue party. A recent series of
Gallup polls is the most frightening example.
Unsurprisingly, the disintegrating Trump bears a
historically low approval rating. But polls also show that
the Democratic Party has lost five percentage points in its
own approval rating dating back to November, when it was at
45 percent.
The Democrats are now hovering around 40 percent, just a
hair over the Trump-tarnished Republicans, at 39 percent.
Similar surveys have shown that despite the near daily
barrage of news stories pegging the president as a bumbling
incompetent in the employ of a hostile foreign power, Trump,
incredibly, would still beat Hillary Clinton in a rematch
today, and perhaps even by a larger margin than before.
If you look in the press for explanations for news items
like this, you will find a lot of them.
Democrats may
have some difficulty winning elections, but they've become
quite adept at explaining their losses.
According to legend, Democrats lose because of media
bias, because of racism, because of gerrymandering, because
of James Comey and because of Russia (an amazing 59 percent
of Democrats still believe Russians hacked vote totals).
Third-party candidates are said to be another implacable
obstacle to Democratic success, as is unhelpful dissension
within the Democrats' own ranks. There have even been
whispers that last year's presidential loss was Obama's
fault, because he didn't campaign hard enough for Clinton.
The early spin on the Gianforte election is that the
Democrats never had a chance in Montana because of corporate
cash, as outside groups are said to have "drowned" opponent
Rob Quist in PAC money. There are corresponding complaints
that national Democrats didn't do enough to back Quist.
A lot of these things are true. America is obviously a
deeply racist and paranoid country. Gerrymandering is a
serious problem. Unscrupulous, truth-averse right-wing media
has indeed spent decades bending the brains of huge
pluralities of voters, particularly the elderly. And
Republicans have often, but not always, had fundraising
advantages in key races.
But the explanations themselves speak to a larger problem.
The unspoken subtext of a lot of the Democrats' excuse-making
is their growing belief that the situation is hopeless – and
not just because of fixable institutional factors like
gerrymandering, but because we simply have a bad/irredeemable
electorate that can never be reached.
This is why the "basket of deplorables" comment last
summer was so devastating. That the line would become a
sarcastic rallying cry for Trumpites was inevitable. (Of
course it birthed a political merchandising supernova.) To
many Democrats, the reaction proved the truth of Clinton's
statement. As in: we're not going to get the overwhelming
majority of these yeehaw-ing "deplorable" votes anyway, so
why not call them by their names?
But
the "deplorables" comment didn't just further
alienate already lost Republican votes. It spoke to an
internal sickness within the Democratic Party
,
which had surrendered to a negativistic vision of a
hopelessly divided country.
About 2/3 in that election voted
early -- before the slam down.
Re: exciting Democrat issue
Nobody would argue I think that when 1935 Congress passed
the NLRA(a) it consciously left criminal prosecution of union
busting blank because it desired states to individually take
that up in their localities. Conversely, I don't think
anybody thinks Congress deliberately left out criminal
sanctions because it objected to such.
Congress left criminal sanctions blank in US labor law
because it thought it had done enough. States disagree?
States are perfectly free to fill in the blanks protecting
not just union organizing but any kind of collective
bargaining more generally -- without worrying about federal
preemption. Don't see why even Trump USC judge would find
fault with that.
"About 2/3 in that election voted early -- before the slam
down."
Good point, I agree. But Taibbi - who wrote a great
obit of Roger Ailes - still makes a good argument.
I
agree with you that Democrats should make unions a priority
instead just regurgitating the usual pablum about how they
support unions without doing anything.
The dem pols alliance outside the south with organized "
private sector " unions was the legacy of the new deal and
the CIO uprising. That alliance broke down in the 70's with
the rise of the cultural liberals after the civil rights and
anti war struggles. Union often seen by Clintons as
reactionary saw their economic interests pushed aside...
Here is Justin Murphy describing his background,
research, and activism:
Why is there not more rebellion against status quo institutions? How have economic and political
processes pacified our capacity for radical collective action? As a political scientist, I
am interested in the roles played by information, communication, and ideology in the pacification
of political resistance and conflict. Before joining the faculty of Politics and IR at the University
of Southampton in the UK, I did my PhD at Temple University in the US. There I was active in
Occupy Wall Street ,
some civil disobedience
and shutting down of
things , some longer-term campaigns against
the big U.S. banks , and sundry other
works and deeds , including a
radical warehouse project where
I lived for nearly three years.
So Murphy is an academic on the left. He is therefore part of the establishment, a card-carrying
member of the institutional structure that dominates intellectual discourse in the West. But, unlike
the vast majority of his academic brethren, he is quite aware that the left is now the status quo
and that it is doing everything it can to preserve its elite status - and that its self-preserving
tactics are at base nothing more than irrational assertions of power and privilege. Murphy makes
these claims in a blogpost: "
The psychology of prohibiting outside thinkers . " Part of the subtitle says it all: "
The real motivation of respectable progressivism is managing guilty conscience and conserving bourgeois
privileges ."
What's so refreshing about this is that instead of "exclud[ing] independent right-wing intellectual
work on moral grounds," he would actually "enjoy thinking" with intellectuals on the right. Indeed,
moral indictments have become the stock in trade of establishment intellectuals - as noted in my
three-part "
Moralism and Moral Arguments in the War for Western Survival ." Moral condemnations are easy.
No intellectual heavy lifting required. All one need do is appeal to conventional moral intuitions
as shaped by the the same institutions that are now the status quo - the media and academic culture.
As I note, those who dissent from the status quo are "not only misguided, [they are] malevolent
consumed by hatred, anger and fear towards non-Whites, gays, women and the entire victim class pantheon,
or so goes the stereotype And that's the problem. Being cast as evil means you are outside the moral
community. There's no need to talk with you, no need to be fair, or even worry about your safety.
You are like an
outlaw
in Old Norse society - 'a person [who] lost all of his or her civil rights and could be killed on
sight without any legal repercussions.'"
Back to Murphy:
Very simply, ["institutional intellectuals"] are imposing a cordon sanitaire that
is instrumentally necessary to the continuation of their unjustified intellectual privileges in
the institutional order. I am increasingly convinced there is simply no other public function
to this political repetition compulsion. The reason this is important, from the left, is that
this cordon sanitaire is straightforwardly a mechanism to conserve the status quo, everything
progressives pretend to be interested in overthrowing. This is why neo-reactionary intellectuals
speak of the status quo political order as dominated by a left-progressive "Cathedral."
The religious analogy is quite apt. Like moral pronouncements, religious dogmas are not refutable
and need not be justified empirically. They are nothing more than intellectually shoddy ex Cathedra
pronouncements that take advantage of a pre-existing intellectual consensus.
First, it seems to be a fact that the genuinely intellectual wings of the alt-right or neo-reaction
(NRx) or whatever you want to call it, are probably too intelligent and sophisticated for bourgeois
intellectual workers to engage with, let alone compete with. So if those essays are actually
pretty smart and a legitimate challenge to your institutional authority as a credentialed intellectual-you
are functionally required to close ranks, if only with a silent agreement to not engage.
Now, as soon as anyone from this non-institutional world produces effects within the institutional
orbit, it is actually a really serious survival reflex for all institutionally privileged intellectuals
to play the morality card ("no platform!"). If all these strange, outside autodidacts are actually
smart and independently producing high-level intellectual content you don't have the time to even
understand, let alone defeat or otherwise control, this is an existential threat to your entire
livelihood. Because all of your personal identity, your status, and your salary, is based directly
on your credentialed, legitimated membership card giving your writings and pontifications an officially
sanctioned power and authority. If that door is opened even a crack by non-credentialed outsiders,
the whole jig is up for the respectable bourgeois monopoly on the official intellectual organs
of society.
This comment really strikes home with me. I wrote three books on Judaism from an evolutionary
perspective, the first of which was
reviewed positively
in academic journals; the second was
less widely reviewed
, and the third was basically
ignored apart from a favorable review by Frank Salter in the Human Ethology Bulletin
. Instead I was subjected to a vicious witch hunt spearheaded by the SPLC, joined by a great many
of the faculty in the College of Liberal Arts, especially the Jewish faculty. In all of the exchanges
on faculty email lists there was never any attempt to deal with the academic soundness of these books.
Labels like "anti-Semitic" sufficed. So now, nearly 20 years after publication, Culture of Critique
remains ignored by the academic establishment even as it gains traction on the Alt Right.
The same can be said about Murray's The Bell Curve . It is referenced at times but almost
always with the adjective 'discredited' even though the data are rock solid. I know a liberal academic
who commented, "I don't have to read Mein Kampf to know it is evil. Same with The Bell
Curve."
Murphy:
An interesting question is, because respectable intellectuals are often pretty smart and capable,
why are they so fearful of outside intellectual projects, even if they are as evil as some fear?
They are smart and capable intellectuals, so you'd think they would embrace some interesting challenge
as an opportunity for productive contestation. Why don't they? Well, here's where the reality
gets ugly. The reason respectable intellectuals so instinctively close ranks around the moral
exclusion of NRx intellectuals is that currently working, respectable intellectuals privately
know that the intellectual compromises they have made to secure their respectability and careers
has rendered most of their life's work sadly and vulnerably low-quality.
I suspect this is quite true. There is a replication crisis centering on psychology and particularly
in
social psychology , the most blatantly politicized field within psychology. This is my summary
of Prof. Jonathan Haidt's comments on the topic:
when scholarly articles that contravene the sacred values of the tribe are submitted to academic
journals, reviewers and editors suddenly become super rigorous. More controls are needed, and
more subjects. It's not a representative sample, and the statistical techniques are inadequate.
This use of scientific rigor against theories that are disliked for deeper reasons is a theme
of Chapter 2 of The Culture
of Critique where it was also noted that standards were quite lax when it came to data
that fit the leftist zeitgeist.
Whole areas of education and sociology doubtless have similar problems. For example, in education,
there have been decades of studies "discovering" panaceas for the Black-White academic achievement
gap - without any success. But, as Prof. Ray Wolters notes ("Why Education Reform Failed," The
Occidental Quarterly [Spring, 2016]) , hope springs eternal because there are always
new wrinkles to try. Fundamentally the field fails to deal with IQ or with genetic influences on
IQ and academic performance.
The same is likely true of huge swaths of the humanities where verbal brilliance, post-modern
lack of logic and rigor, and leftist politics have created wonderlands of inanity. All this would
be swept away if the outsiders triumphed. I strongly suggest following @RealPeerReview on Twitter
to get a feeling for what is now going on in academia. Remember, these people are getting jobs and
students are paying exorbitant tuition to hear them lecture.
Murphy:
To convince status-quo cultural money dispensers to give you a grant, fourr instance, any currently
"successful" academic or artist has to so extensively pepper their proposal with patently stupid
words and notions that knowingly make the final result a sad, contorted piece of work 80% of which
is bent to the flattery of our overlords. But we falsely rationalize this contortion as "mature
discipline" which we then rationalize to be the warrant for our privileged status as legitimate
intellectuals.
And then, twisting the knife:
Because we know deep down inside that our life's work is only half of what it could have been
had we the courage to not ask for permission, if there ever arise people who are doing high-level
intellectual work on the outside, exactly as they wish to without anyone's permission or money,
then not only are we naturally resentful, but we secretly know that at least some of these outsiders
are likely doing more interesting, more valuable, more radically incisive work than we are, because
we secretly know that we earn our salary by agreeing to only say half of what we could.
Can't think of a better way to end it. What its really incredibly pathetic is that really challenging
this regime from within the academic world is vanishingly rare. Or perhaps it's not so surprising
given the above. But what happened to all that idealism that young scholars have when they really
get interested in a field? Why don't professors in evolutionary science, who know well how natural
selection works when there is an invasive species or sub-species - why don't these White people become
vocal opponents of the current multicultural zeitgeist that is actively selecting against European
genes? How can they just watch or even applaud the demise of their own people?
This for me is the hardest to understand. Careerism over their obvious genetic/evolutionary interests.
"This for me is the hardest to understand. Careerism over their obvious genetic/evolutionary
interests."
Both are selfish materialistic interests. You will never be able to understand why Whites are
committing suicide if this is all you can see. You are doomed to eternal puzzlement and perplexity,
like Derbyshire, like Sailer. Eternally scratching your heads, yet unwilling to question your
premises, trapped in the sterile circle of materialism.
You yourself admit you cannot understand it – i.e it cannot be explained in terms of your premises.
One would think when one has reached the limits of one's premises explanatory power, its time
to think beyond them.
Yet how seldom that happens. People just circle endlessly their central premise, unable to
break free.
Yet to anyone who isn't a materialist, how obvious it is why Whites are committing suicide.
The left used to call the intellectual enablers of capitalism "bourgeois intellectuals." This
included various professions like economics, political science, etc.
Since Sociology was the Revolution Party led by Jews, it got a pass.
Today, with commies like the handsome negro Van Jones, at one of the major networks, and these
networks nothing more than Pravda Dem Party hackworks, we need a new term for the media-Left-Revolutionary
minority-racist-jewish-liberal-anti-fa, academic , etc. cultural revolution.
The fact that , per this article, it has become so trendy as to attract opportunists of many
colors, it arguably is in danger of strident internal divisions, like the LGBTxyz, loonies that
have self-destructed. Something that denotes the internal instability of the Dem coalition would
be useful.
The bizarre connection with international capital as a theoretical vehicle for inauguration
of the great Age of Globalism and One World of racial group-groping should be captured in any
such term of the cultural revolution II that we are experiencing.
Dunno, but the Brave New World needs a catchy term. Liberal Opportunism also must be compassed
in the term. Liberal World Equality Trashniks, etc.
Joe Webb
Excellent stuff. The hard truths that our society refuses to listen to and tries its best to
suppress.
This for me is the hardest to understand. Careerism over their obvious genetic/evolutionary
interests.
Not hard to understand – genetic interests are not individual interests unless the individual
chooses to make them so. Many of these people are childless, as a result of lifestyle choices
– choosing to engage in homosexual or recreational activity instead of reproductive for hedonist
reasons, postponing childbirth until too late for career materialist reasons. Such people have
turned away from the instinctive objective of reproduction in the most fundamental way, and have
no direct interest in the future beyond their own brief lives. No wonder they are free to engage
in the profound selfishness of destructive altruism.
Others think their children will be sheltered from the consequences by their own establishment
status, or genuinely believe the dogmas they have repeated for so long.
Being cast as evil means you are outside the moral community. There's no need to talk with
you, no need to be fair, or even worry about your safety. You are like an outlaw in Old Norse
society - 'a person [who] lost all of his or her civil rights and could be killed on sight
without any legal repercussions.'"
Projection of such an incredible amount of animus directed at one individual must be an indicator
of a huge lacking in our culture. Common decency aside, the simple repetition of such hostility
must be masking other ills. S.H.I.T. Happens! Self. Haters. Impugning. Trump. Happens! Examined
here:
One wonders if psychologists are ignorant of history.
Some 300 years BCE a Greek calculated the circumference of the earth at 39.000 km, the
right figure is 40.000. Yet Columbus' sailors were afraid to fall of the earth.
For some 1600 years the christian church prevented all independent thought, in 1600 the
pope had Giordano Bruno burned alive, for heretic thoughts, about the universe, about the holy
trinity.
At about the same time Calvin burned Servetius, the man who discovered blood circulation,
alive to death, also about the trinity. So Servetius was unable to tell the world about the
blood circulation.
Galileo got away with house arrest.
Even around 1860 the pope declared that philosophical thinking not controlled by the church
was illegal.
So there is nothing special in the christian culture about no independent thought. On top of
that, as Chomsky states: in any culture there is a standard truth, if this truth is not considered,
no debate is possible, but between those who know better.
We see this right now, much wailing about the indeed horrible carnage in Manchester, that the
USA, Predators with Hellfire, causes such carnage every week three or fout times, it cannot be
said. Terrorism is caused by the Islam, not by the west.
@AaronB "This for me is the hardest to understand. Careerism over their obvious genetic/evolutionary
interests."
Both are selfish materialistic interests. You will never be able to understand why Whites are
committing suicide if this is all you can see.
You are doomed to eternal puzzlement and perplexity, like Derbyshire, like Sailer. Eternally scratching
your heads, yet unwilling to question your premises, trapped in the sterile circle of materialism.
You yourself admit you cannot understand it - i.e it cannot be explained in terms of your premises.
One would think when one has reached the limits of one's premises explanatory power, its time
to think beyond them.
Yet how seldom that happens. People just circle endlessly their central premise, unable to break
free.
Yet to anyone who isn't a materialist, how obvious it is why Whites are committing suicide.
This is a fascinating take on the true Establishment, if not the 'counter-culture'; both of
which are politically correct and engineered to be self-perpetuating.
The progressive Trojan Horse has penetrated the kingdom's walls. Tolerance! (Do not resist.)
These progressive movements are also censorious, authoritarian and highly exclusive.
'We are all One'. Bigotry will not be tolerated!
At their core, these liberal movements and their rainbow collection of accompanying values
represent the subversive interests of an invasive species.
Like moral pronouncements, religious dogmas are not refutable and need not be justified
empirically. They are nothing more than intellectually shoddy ex Cathedra pronouncements that
take advantage of a pre-existing intellectual consensus.
This is a bit unfair to religious dogma. From Justin Martyr and Irenaeus to Augustine and Aquinas,
many theologians did their most notable work, precisely in arguing against people who did not
share their views.
@anonHUN Can you elaborate? You mean they aspire to be saints, and sacrifice themselves or
to repent for the sins of their fathers? (by going extinct?) Well true, Christianity introduced
this kind of nutjobs to the world who aimed to die without resisting "evil" and expecting to win
that way on the metaphysical plane. Progressives don't believe in such things though.
Dec 7, 2011 Council on Foreign Relations – The Power Behind Big News
One version says that the CFR is an organization sister to the Royal Institute of International
Affairs (Britain), both founded in 1921 right after World War I when the League of Nations idea
failed. The sole purpose of such organizations is to condition the public to accept a Global Governance
which today is the United Nations.
@Santoculto I agree absolutely, no doubt it's more and more ''spiritual'' than just ''evolutionary''.
Yes, existentialism is one of the ''plague'' that is destroying west BUT existentialism should
be a good thing, a emancipation from childish belief systems, less for people who hasn't been
selected to be mature, so instead a clear evolution of ''spirit'' be beneficial, it's become maladaptative.
'''They''' create a moral game that is impossible for those who can't think in ''multiple' perspectives
to win.
@utu I would never put Kevin MacDonald in the same bag with Derbyshire and Sailer. Unlike
them MacDonald had courage to tackle the ultimate subject of the Jews. And he did it very thoroughly
w/o holding any punches. He did it the way his training as a evolutionary sociologist permitted
him which was by putting more emphasis on genes then cultural memes. This is unfortunate because
cultural memes dominate. But writing about genes is a bit safer than about memes because one can
fall on and hide behind presumably objective scientific narrative. That's why also Derbyshire
and Sailer rather yap about genes than cultural memes.
Seems pretty unlikely to me, based upon simple observation. The evidence for an instinct to reproduce
seems to be obvious in the widespread desire for children/grandchildren of one's own. Any reason
to deny the obvious presumption?
Though of course it's not really relevant to the point I was making, since "instinct for reproduction"
could as easily have been written "genetic imperative for reproduction" without affecting the
point.
@utu I would never put Kevin MacDonald in the same bag with Derbyshire and Sailer. Unlike
them MacDonald had courage to tackle the ultimate subject of the Jews. And he did it very thoroughly
w/o holding any punches. He did it the way his training as a evolutionary sociologist permitted
him which was by putting more emphasis on genes then cultural memes. This is unfortunate because
cultural memes dominate. But writing about genes is a bit safer than about memes because one can
fall on and hide behind presumably objective scientific narrative. That's why also Derbyshire
and Sailer rather yap about genes than cultural memes.
What its really incredibly pathetic is that really challenging this regime from within the
academic world is vanishingly rare.
It's not incredibly pathetic, it's just disgustingly pathetic. As you've said, they're all
intellectual whores. That's what the public sector has always been comprised of. I know. I worked
for three governments (briefly) and I devoted an even shorter part of my one and only life to
appointments at three universities, including two of the World's top 30 (according to the Times
Higher Ed) research schools.
But what happened to all that idealism that young scholars have when they really get interested
in a field?
The idealism remains, but those young idealistic scholars, realizing what a degraded, sordid,
bureaucratic world the university has become, went out into the real world, whether to drop out,
make money, or pursue the intellectual life with real, personally paid for, freedom.
Why don't professors in evolutionary science, who know well how natural selection works
when there is an invasive species or sub-species - why don't these White people become vocal
opponents of the current multicultural zeitgeist that is actively selecting against European
genes?
They are far from the brightest of the bunch and they are, as we already said, intellectual
whores.
How can they just watch or even applaud the demise of their own people?
How many kids does Frau Merkel have? How many kids does Frau Theresa May have? Why would they
care about the future of their own people. Same problem with a lot of female quota academics.
There's no solution other than to tie the feminists in bags and dump them in the Bosphorus,
and the same with the academic eunochs, the scoundrel academic deans, and the slimebag university
presidents and vice presidents. Screw the whole dirty lot of them.
Trump could make a start by ending all Federal support for universities.
@AaronB As you probably realize, the West isn't engaged in altruistic self-sacrifice, but
in suicide. There is a big difference. One is good, the other bad.
One is based on love and compassion, the other on self-disgust. If we were capable of love
we would defend our way of life, not destroy it - if we could love, our life would have some meaning,
and some happiness. Love is a transcendent, non-materialist, value.
What the West is doing is motivated by hate, not compassion.
This isn't Christian, either. Suicide is forbidden in Christianity, nor can one force others
to sacrifice themselves, as in forcing entire unwilling nations to self-destruct.
Also, our policies are obviously increasing misery, hatred, and bloodshed, in the long run,
and the short run. If we were motivated by compassion, we could send money, aid, entire teams,
to other countries. But that would not serve our true purpose.
Meantime, if you want to take a kick at the crooks in academic administration, go over to the
blog of Professor John McAdams -
booted from the Marquette U, supposedly a Christian institution, for the terrible crime of standing
up for a student who wished to make a case against gay marriage in a philosophy class - and give
him your encouragement and support.
@CanSpeccy Meantime, if you want to take a kick at the crooks in academic administration,
go over to the blog of Professor John
McAdams - booted from the Marquette U, supposedly a Christian institution, for the terrible
crime of standing up for a student who wished to make a case against gay marriage in a philosophy
class - and give him your encouragement and support.
There is an interesting point in the life of any maturing intellect when one discovers the
gap between how the Academy insists on "explaining" how the world works and how the world really
works. It is very hard to resist the urge to talk about it. [Even harder to look at the raw scientific
data "no platformed" out of the dialogue.]
Unfortunately, Mr. Murphy's new enemies already know how the world works, and will only double
down on their "explanation" because it serves their group interests. Further, Murphy will likely
face professional backlash for discussing the Emperor's attire. This will be exciting for a young
scholar, but likely will sour with time. Cordelia was the youngest of Lear's daughters, and Socrates
probably got the fate he deserved.
What the West is doing is motivated by hate, not compassion.
Yeah, hate by the globalist elite for the mass of mankind (aka what Bill Clinton's history mentor,
Carroll Quigley called the Money Power), which is rather different from self-hatred, although
self-hatred or at least the lust for what is self-destructive is what a mass-hating elite seeks
to instill in the masses.
Societies don't live or die according to the minds of the mass, but according to the wisdom
and ambitions of the leadership. So let's forget the BS about a lack of spirituality, let's recognize
who are the bastards driving the West to destruction and how they and their agents are to be exposed
and destroyed.
I think liberals would disagree with a lot of this post. They see themselves as protecting
the individual to live as they choose within a principle of no harm, whereby a problem of groups
in competition does not arise, which is fair enough within a state, but falls apart if applied
across borders and separate polities.
The intellectual consensus against heterodox thinkers, especially those of Prof. MacDonald's
ilk, is due to the principle of no harm, taken as mandating an open society and global utility.
But, restricting immigration on the grounds he advocates is a terrible mistake from every point
of view.
What its really incredibly pathetic is that really challenging this regime from within the
academic world is vanishingly rare. Or perhaps it's not so surprising given the above. But
what happened to all that idealism that young scholars have when they really get interested
in a field? Why don't professors in evolutionary science, who know well how natural selection
works when there is an invasive species or sub-species - why don't these White people become
vocal opponents of the current multicultural zeitgeist that is actively selecting against European
genes? How can they just watch or even applaud the demise of their own people?
This for me is the hardest to understand. Careerism over their obvious genetic/evolutionary
interests.
Be that as it may, I think phrasing opposition in terms of anything pertaining to genes is
disastrous . And the proof of that is the virtually open borders advocates constantly try
to bring up genetic and related arguments as what lies behind all calls for immigration restriction.
They want us to make the hereditary/ genetic/white/ nordic argument. All these terms denote
supremacy and are identified with a philosophical error ( essentialism).
Border security is self-defence for the national state communities that aspire to protect their
polity (sovereign country), but liberals are assuming a global delimited polity (one world ) with
a principle of no harm; they have to save the immigrants. The case for immigration restriction
should be put as relating to a democratically ratified state's borders. A citizen's right to cross
the border has a corollary in relation to foreigners having no such right.
"I don't have to read Mein Kampf to know it is evil. Same with The Bell Curve."
Kampf has a bit where Hitler talks of the conquest and colonisation of space, but predicts
the globe will spin through space devoid of life if Jews are allowed to direct its development.
I wonder, liberalism and nation speaking peace toward nation is going to make the open and technologically
innovative Western counties a mulch cow for the world, one can imagine a much more internationally
cooperative spirit becoming de rigueur , and progress harnessed to the hypercapitalism
as foreseen by Nick Land. At which time pursuit of a technological singularity will be brought
well within striking distance for that generation.
The great silence from the Universe (we're all alone) and it seeming that, contrary to what
evolutionist say, evolution does seem to have an upward direction to it (nervous systems having
evolved
twice ) plus we now we know that bacteria
can survive meteorite crash landings all points toward life forms being self exterminiting
by getting a little too advanced.
@AaronB You are right - Sailer in particular seems to admire Jewish "success" - which shows
he does not understand what it is based on.
Kevin deserves admiration, but his analysis is vitiated by his materialism. He does not understand
White vulnerability - because as a materialist, he cannot.
His materialism also limits his ability to understand Jews.
Genetic determinism has severe limits in explaining history - the idea that Whites are uniquely
altruistic is historically ignorant, for instance. Also, it is a serious misunderstanding to describe
current White behavior as altruistic.
Further, there can be no evolutionary logic for a group to preserve itself under pressure -
survival on the genetic level would seem most assured by assimilating - a fact, by the way, which
seems easily grasped by our current-day White materialists.
Group-survival can only be a non-materialist transcendental value. But then, the identity of
the group - not its genetic material, which will survive anyhow - must bee felt as worth preserving.
These, and other defects, must be swept under the rug if one is to be an extreme materialist.
@AaronB You are right - Sailer in particular seems to admire Jewish "success" - which shows
he does not understand what it is based on.
Kevin deserves admiration, but his analysis is vitiated by his materialism. He does not understand
White vulnerability - because as a materialist, he cannot.
His materialism also limits his ability to understand Jews.
Genetic determinism has severe limits in explaining history - the idea that Whites are uniquely
altruistic is historically ignorant, for instance. Also, it is a serious misunderstanding to describe
current White behavior as altruistic.
Further, there can be no evolutionary logic for a group to preserve itself under pressure -
survival on the genetic level would seem most assured by assimilating - a fact, by the way, which
seems easily grasped by our current-day White materialists.
Group-survival can only be a non-materialist transcendental value. But then, the identity of
the group - not its genetic material, which will survive anyhow - must bee felt as worth preserving.
These, and other defects, must be swept under the rug if one is to be an extreme materialist.
@AaronB You are right - Sailer in particular seems to admire Jewish "success" - which shows
he does not understand what it is based on.
Kevin deserves admiration, but his analysis is vitiated by his materialism. He does not understand
White vulnerability - because as a materialist, he cannot.
His materialism also limits his ability to understand Jews.
Genetic determinism has severe limits in explaining history - the idea that Whites are uniquely
altruistic is historically ignorant, for instance. Also, it is a serious misunderstanding to describe
current White behavior as altruistic.
Further, there can be no evolutionary logic for a group to preserve itself under pressure -
survival on the genetic level would seem most assured by assimilating - a fact, by the way, which
seems easily grasped by our current-day White materialists.
Group-survival can only be a non-materialist transcendental value. But then, the identity of
the group - not its genetic material, which will survive anyhow - must bee felt as worth preserving.
These, and other defects, must be swept under the rug if one is to be an extreme materialist.
"... Muslim fundamentalism is such a strong growth that it needed no Western provocation to
set it in motion. We have not only removed or weakened the regimes that inhibited, more or less,
that growth. What we have done is to encourage Jihad to flourish on an immensely greater scale.
That increased scale increases its glamour and its pull for our English Muslims many times over.
... Western countries have been arming and training Muslim fighters knowing full well that
those fighters were Jihadis, and were more than likely to join even more extreme Jihadi units.
Knowing full well also that some of those Jihadis, but now trained in killing and invigorated
by contact with other true believers, would return to their countries of origin and do what harm
they could.
... We see ragged groups of thugs using, often inexpertly, the deadly equipment we give them
or the supply of which we facilitate. ... For there is now no doubt that the flood of foreign
Jihadis that have wreaked such havoc in Syria and neighbouring countries was released by us or
with our active complicity. It could not have happened but for Western assistance. We do not acknowledge
it."
survival on the genetic level would seem most assured by assimilating – a fact ...
Oh sure!
Just what a globalist shill for European genocide would say.
The truth, however, is quite the opposite.
Thus, if in a territory of fixed carrying capacity, indigenous females are impregnated by alien
settlers, then in the next generation, the proportion of indigenous genes in the gene pool will
be diminished.
Some survival strategy!
That that is a strategy for self-genocide is why Jews won't "marry out" and insist on having
a Jewish state.
And the genocidal effect is the same if you merely have mass immigration, especially when combined
with below replacement birth rates as have been engineered throughout the West by government policy
on abortion, divorce, toleration of immigrant polygamy, and the promotion of sexual perversion
under the guise of sex "education." Under those circumstances, it doesn't matter who the indigenous
people mate with, their genes in the gene pool will be diluted, eventually to extinction.
Even if the indigenous mate only with one another, the frequency of their genes in the gene
pool will be diminished both proportionally and in total, unless the population grows without
limit.
@Sean I think liberals would disagree with a lot of this post. They see themselves as protecting
the individual to live as they choose within a principle of no harm, whereby a problem of groups
in competition does not arise, which is fair enough within a state, but falls apart if applied
across borders and separate polities.
The intellectual consensus against heterodox thinkers, especially those of Prof. MacDonald's
ilk, is due to the principle of no harm, taken as mandating an open society and global utility.
But, restricting immigration on the grounds he advocates is a terrible mistake from every point
of view.
What its really incredibly pathetic is that really challenging this regime from within the
academic world is vanishingly rare. Or perhaps it's not so surprising given the above. But
what happened to all that idealism that young scholars have when they really get interested
in a field? Why don't professors in evolutionary science, who know well how natural selection
works when there is an invasive species or sub-species - why don't these White people become
vocal opponents of the current multicultural zeitgeist that is actively selecting against European
genes? How can they just watch or even applaud the demise of their own people?
This for me is the hardest to understand. Careerism over their obvious genetic/evolutionary
interests.
. And the proof of that is the virtually open borders advocates constantly try to bring
up genetic and related arguments as what lies behind all calls for immigration restriction.
They want us to make the hereditary/ genetic/white/ nordic argument. All these terms
denote supremacy and are identified with a philosophical error ( essentialism).
Border security is self-defence for the national state communities that aspire to protect
their polity (sovereign country), but liberals are assuming a global delimited polity (one
world ) with a principle of no harm; they have to save the immigrants. The case for immigration
restriction should be put as relating to a democratically ratified state's borders. A citizen's
right to cross the border has a corollary in relation to foreigners having no such right.
"I don't have to read Mein Kampf to know it is evil. Same with The Bell Curve."
Kampf has a bit where Hitler talks of the conquest and colonisation of space, but predicts
the globe will spin through space devoid of life if Jews are allowed to direct its development.
I wonder, liberalism and nation speaking peace toward nation is going to make the open and
technologically innovative Western counties a mulch cow for the world, one can imagine a much
more internationally cooperative spirit becoming de rigueur , and progress harnessed
to the hypercapitalism as foreseen by Nick Land. At which time pursuit of a technological singularity
will be brought well within striking distance for that generation.
The great silence from the Universe (we're all alone) and it seeming that, contrary to what
evolutionist say, evolution does seem to have an upward direction to it (nervous systems having
evolved
twice ) plus we now we know that bacteria
can survive meteorite crash landings all points toward life forms being self exterminiting
by getting a little too advanced.
@AaronB You are right, and it is the Western intellectual elite that had turned against
itself by the time of the late 19th century. Precisely the ones who engage most deeply with
Western ideas, and are most affected by them.
In the 19th century, a Baudelaire and a Rimbaud may have been horrified at the banality and
dreariness of life in a mechanized society, but the masses, though obscurely suffering, were
not so deeply affected.
But today, the masses have caught up - obesity, the opioid epidemic, etc.
The "bastards" who are responsible - unfortunately, you can't hunt down materialism.
If you don't see the significance of our lack of spirituality, you will never be able to break
free.
Santoculto - but you see, "beauty" is a metaphysical concept - it transcends mere matter. Materialism
has no use for beauty. We see this today - with the loss of metaphysics, our architecture,
our art, has become ugly. Beauty is "useless".
We have some "thing" driving us forward - selfish materialism. If you don't like it, and wish
to escape it, then what drives you forward cannot be a "thing".
@AaronB You are right, and it is the Western intellectual elite that had turned against
itself by the time of the late 19th century. Precisely the ones who engage most deeply with
Western ideas, and are most affected by them.
In the 19th century, a Baudelaire and a Rimbaud may have been horrified at the banality and
dreariness of life in a mechanized society, but the masses, though obscurely suffering, were
not so deeply affected.
But today, the masses have caught up - obesity, the opioid epidemic, etc.
The "bastards" who are responsible - unfortunately, you can't hunt down materialism.
If you don't see the significance of our lack of spirituality, you will never be able to break
free.
Santoculto - but you see, "beauty" is a metaphysical concept - it transcends mere matter. Materialism
has no use for beauty. We see this today - with the loss of metaphysics, our architecture,
our art, has become ugly. Beauty is "useless".
We have some "thing" driving us forward - selfish materialism. If you don't like it, and wish
to escape it, then what drives you forward cannot be a "thing".
@reiner Tor People love having grandkids, even feminist Hillary Clinton (who otherwise
didn't care much for reproduction) begged her only daughter to produce grandkids for her. Childless
spinsters are often quite bitter, and most folk psychologists give at least two reasons why,
with one of them being bitter about not having children. What makes you think it's not hardwired?
@ FKA Max – thanks, that sounds interesting. I don't know if Europeans are less altruistic
than others, but I do know that the Muslims whom the Crusaders came into contact with considered
Europeans to be especially ethnocentric.
In my view, genetic determinism is simply a limited view – nations change their character,
often dramatically, over time. Examples are numerous – dishonest Germans, lazy Chinese, etc,
etc.
To ignore this, truly one must do violence to one's mind.
@Nickels – yes, but that is the materialist trap. One cannot simply choose not to be a materialist
for prudential reasons – as prudence itself is a materialist value. Materialism certainly undermines
itself in many ways, though. It is, even, self-contradictory (if our minds are evolutionary,
we can't assume it produces truth – but then our minds produced the theory of evolution, which
we then have no basis to believe in, and so on. It's circular, and self-undermining.)
– but beauty is not a physical thing – it is a relation between things, a certain proportion,
an arrangement of things. Therefore, it is metaphysical – i.e above physics.
Agree with you about the Vatican – though beautiful, it represent power and wealth, values
utterly foreign to Christianity.
First, you have misunderstood me badly if you think I support European genocide. I am offering
my analysis out of a desire to avoid just that. I just think your analysis is badly superficial.
You are badly conflating "group identity" with "genetic group" - if the indigenous group agrees
to assimilate to the invaders identity - religion, etc - then the indigenous group need not
suffer any loss of genetic frequency.
Even today, if you convert to Islam - assimilate - you will be provided a wife in many places.
Your genes will most certainly not perish. Rather the opposite, for many young Western males.
There can be no genetic, materialist reason to resist Islam - many low-status Western males
will have improved chances of reproduction, and elite Western males will compose a valued intellectual
and technocratic class, as happened historically. Genetically, females will be in no way worse
off.
To retain our distinct group identity we need a metaphysical reason - our distinct identity
must be felt as worth preserving. This fact is implicitly admitted by our materialist Western
elites, by their behavior.
Historically, if you merged with your neighbor tribe, you became larger and stronger - the
optimum strategy was for tribes to merge into "hordes", which happened in many cases. A tribe
that wanted to retain its distinct identity had to have a reason - it did not make genetic
sense.
Consider, also, that females of conquered tribes frequently despise the conquerors and refuse
to mate with them, which makes no genetic sense. Take Israel - attractive Palestinian women
should be rushing into the arms of Israeli men in droves. They are a conquered nation. Israeli
men of Arab descent would love to pair with them. There is an interesting film on youtube called
"checkpoint", where you see Israeli soldiers of Arab descent hitting on (boderline sexually
harrassing), young Palestinian women crossing their military checkpoint, and talking about
how attractive they find them. Yet the women scorn them.
European colonialists in Asia also did not typically have to fend off high-quality local women
- both groups felt their own identity was worth preserving, for the most part.
Yes - Jews retain a distinct identity, but it is highly obvious that the genetic survival of
individual Jews is not served by this. This is why "assimilation" is so deplored by the Rabbis,
who strive to provide a metaphysical reason for avoiding it - they know no materialist explanation
can suffice. It is also why the Torah makes such strict and severe rules against Jews associating
with gentiles - it understands well that every genetic imperative promotes assimilation, and
only metaphysical considerations have a chance of providing a countervailing tendency. And
the 50% intermarriage rate of secular Jews strongly illustrates this point.
In Europe for most of history, Jewish genes would obviously have done far better by converting
to Christianity and assimilating.
And so on and so forth.
Once you liberate yourself from the straitjacket of materialism, it is amazing the vistas that
open up before you. So much that is puzzling to people like Kevin Mcdonald slip nicely into
place.
First, you have misunderstood me badly if you think I support European genocide. I am offering
my analysis out of a desire to avoid just that. I just think your analysis is badly superficial.
You are badly conflating "group identity" with "genetic group" - if the indigenous group agrees
to assimilate to the invaders identity - religion, etc - then the indigenous group need not
suffer any loss of genetic frequency.
Even today, if you convert to Islam - assimilate - you will be provided a wife in many places.
Your genes will most certainly not perish. Rather the opposite, for many young Western males.
There can be no genetic, materialist reason to resist Islam - many low-status Western males
will have improved chances of reproduction, and elite Western males will compose a valued intellectual
and technocratic class, as happened historically. Genetically, females will be in no way worse
off.
To retain our distinct group identity we need a metaphysical reason - our distinct identity
must be felt as worth preserving. This fact is implicitly admitted by our materialist Western
elites, by their behavior.
Historically, if you merged with your neighbor tribe, you became larger and stronger - the
optimum strategy was for tribes to merge into "hordes", which happened in many cases. A tribe
that wanted to retain its distinct identity had to have a reason - it did not make genetic
sense.
Consider, also, that females of conquered tribes frequently despise the conquerors and refuse
to mate with them, which makes no genetic sense. Take Israel - attractive Palestinian women
should be rushing into the arms of Israeli men in droves. They are a conquered nation. Israeli
men of Arab descent would love to pair with them. There is an interesting film on youtube called
"checkpoint", where you see Israeli soldiers of Arab descent hitting on (boderline sexually
harrassing), young Palestinian women crossing their military checkpoint, and talking about
how attractive they find them. Yet the women scorn them.
European colonialists in Asia also did not typically have to fend off high-quality local women
- both groups felt their own identity was worth preserving, for the most part.
Yes - Jews retain a distinct identity, but it is highly obvious that the genetic survival of
individual Jews is not served by this. This is why "assimilation" is so deplored by the Rabbis,
who strive to provide a metaphysical reason for avoiding it - they know no materialist explanation
can suffice. It is also why the Torah makes such strict and severe rules against Jews associating
with gentiles - it understands well that every genetic imperative promotes assimilation, and
only metaphysical considerations have a chance of providing a countervailing tendency. And
the 50% intermarriage rate of secular Jews strongly illustrates this point.
In Europe for most of history, Jewish genes would obviously have done far better by converting
to Christianity and assimilating.
And so on and so forth.
Once you liberate yourself from the straitjacket of materialism, it is amazing the vistas that
open up before you. So much that is puzzling to people like Kevin Mcdonald slip nicely into
place.
This is exactly why "neoreaction" should have been the face and force behind the Alt-Right,
not the Stormfront types. You can tell by just how afraid the academic left is when equality
is questioned on an ideological level - the immediate reaction to accuse their opponents of
moral sin indicates an insecurity in their ideas.
Barring all-out, society-wide nationalism, it's the Dark Enlightenment nerds who will produce
the cultural change necessary to bring down the left. Pepe and beating up Antifa will only
get you so far.
@utu And who are these Jews who... Got a source for that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ
I think there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism because at this point in time Europe has
not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think we are going to be part of the throes
of that transformation, which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic
societies they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the centre of that.
It's a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural
mode and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading
role and without that transformation, Europe will not survive .
@AaronB @ FKA Max - thanks, that sounds interesting. I don't know if Europeans are less
altruistic than others, but I do know that the Muslims whom the Crusaders came into contact
with considered Europeans to be especially ethnocentric.
In my view, genetic determinism is simply a limited view - nations change their character,
often dramatically, over time. Examples are numerous - dishonest Germans, lazy Chinese, etc,
etc.
To ignore this, truly one must do violence to one's mind.
@Nickels - yes, but that is the materialist trap. One cannot simply choose not to be a materialist
for prudential reasons - as prudence itself is a materialist value. Materialism certainly undermines
itself in many ways, though. It is, even, self-contradictory (if our minds are evolutionary,
we can't assume it produces truth - but then our minds produced the theory of evolution, which
we then have no basis to believe in, and so on. It's circular, and self-undermining.)
@Santoculto - but beauty is not a physical thing - it is a relation between things, a certain
proportion, an arrangement of things. Therefore, it is metaphysical - i.e above physics.
Agree with you about the Vatican - though beautiful, it represent power and wealth, values
utterly foreign to Christianity.
I do not like the BS about gene survival. But if you have 1 child only only 50% of your genes
survive if you mate with dog. But if you mate with random person from Africa more than 50%
of your genes will survive because probably you share some genes with Africans. But even more
of your genes will survive if you mate with somebody from your ethnic/racial group. But if
you want to really maximize your gene survival try incest.
First, you have misunderstood me badly if you think I support European genocide.
I didn't say what I thought you support. I said that what you were saying was consistent with
the objective of those who do seek European genocide.
if the indigenous group agrees to assimilate to the invaders identity – religion, etc –
then the indigenous group need not suffer any loss of genetic frequency.
That's a clever piece of bullshit. What your saying is, as long as the indigenous Europeans
agree to become part of some other group then the loss of their genes does not matter because,
hey, they agreed in advance to merge and be submerged and ultimately eliminated.
As for
You are badly conflating "group identity" with "genetic group"
More clever bullshit, since it is you who are doing the conflating.
Even today, if you convert to Islam – assimilate – you will be provided a wife in many places.
Your genes will most certainly not perish. Rather the opposite, for many young Western males.
So you are crassly advocating conversion of Europe to Islam on the preposterous falsehood that
it will increase European genes in the European gene pool, which is mathematical nonsense.
If a European turns Muslim in Europe, it's most likely that he will marry a European or several,
and if it is several, so much the worst for the genes of those European males who might otherwise
have married but who will have to make do without a wife at all.
Consider, also, that females of conquered tribes frequently despise the conquerors and refuse
to mate with them
Bollocks. Tell that to the 40 million living descendants of Ghengis Kahn.
Take Israel
Please do.
There can be no genetic, materialist reason to resist Islam – many low-status Western males
will have improved chances of reproduction, and elite Western males will compose a valued
intellectual and technocratic class, as happened historically.
I've already exploded that idiotic fallacy in an earlier comment (see #52, above). I'm not
engaging in a 'tis 'tisn't dispute.
To retain our distinct group identity we need a metaphysical reason
Any group thinking the way you want the Europeans to think will be wiped from the page of history
in very short order.
attractive Palestinian women should be rushing into the arms of Israeli men in droves. They
are a conquered nation. Israeli men of Arab descent would love to pair with them.
The Palis haven't surrendered yet. They want to kill everyone of you Jews or at least drive
you back wherever the Hell you came from.
Historically, if you merged with your neighbor tribe, you became larger and stronger
You certainly pack a lot of BS into one comment. The optimum strategy depends greatly on circumstances.
Genocide, as practiced by the Jews of old against the original inhabitants of Israel, involving
slaughter of the males and post menopausal females, and impregnation of the females is often
the optimum strategy, but circumstances alter cases in a vast number of different ways, so
your comment is, frankly, fatuous.
European colonialists in Asia also did not typically have to fend off high-quality local
women
There was no European colonization of Asia, so what are you talking about?
Yes – Jews retain a distinct identity, but it is highly obvious that the genetic survival
of individual Jews is not served by this.
There is no such thing as the genetic survival of individual Jews or anyone else. All that
counts, in the evolutionary sense, are genes, and the share of your gene in the gene pool,
and what is apparently "highly obvious" to you is not the case.
In Europe for most of history, Jewish genes would obviously have done far better by converting
to Christianity and assimilating.
"Obviously"? Usually a sign of bunk to be asserted. You have no arguments at all. Mere ridiculous
and uninformed comment that happens to conform exactly with the globalist project for the destruction
of the independent, sovereign, democratic, and by tradition Christian, European states.
And so on and so forth.
Yes, very good. That typifies the deficiency in fact and logic of your entire spiel.
Once you liberate yourself from the straitjacket of materialism, it is amazing the vistas
that open up before you.
And once you open yourself up to unadulterated bullshit, it's amazing how quickly you can inadvertently
destroy your own people and posterity.
May 22, 2017 The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party
Did you know that the Democratic Party defended slavery, started the Civil War, founded
the KKK, and fought against every major civil rights act in U.S. history? Watch as Carol Swain,
professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, shares the inconvenient history of
the Democratic Party.
@AaronB "This for me is the hardest to understand. Careerism over their obvious genetic/evolutionary
interests."
Both are selfish materialistic interests.
You will never be able to understand why Whites are committing suicide if this is all you can
see.
You are doomed to eternal puzzlement and perplexity, like Derbyshire, like Sailer. Eternally
scratching your heads, yet unwilling to question your premises, trapped in the sterile circle
of materialism.
You yourself admit you cannot understand it - i.e it cannot be explained in terms of your premises.
One would think when one has reached the limits of one's premises explanatory power, its time
to think beyond them.
Yet how seldom that happens. People just circle endlessly their central premise, unable to
break free.
Yet to anyone who isn't a materialist, how obvious it is why Whites are committing suicide.
@Jason Liu This is exactly why "neoreaction" should have been the face and force behind
the Alt-Right, not the Stormfront types. You can tell by just how afraid the academic left
is when equality is questioned on an ideological level -- the immediate reaction to accuse
their opponents of moral sin indicates an insecurity in their ideas.
Barring all-out, society-wide nationalism, it's the Dark Enlightenment nerds who will produce
the cultural change necessary to bring down the left. Pepe and beating up Antifa will only
get you so far.
I do not like the BS about gene survival. But if you have 1 child only only 50% of your genes
survive if you mate with dog. But if you mate with random person from Africa more than 50%
of your genes will survive because probably you share some genes with Africans. But even more
of your genes will survive if you mate with somebody from your ethnic/racial group. But if
you want to really maximize your gene survival try incest.
@Sean I think liberals would disagree with a lot of this post. They see themselves as protecting
the individual to live as they choose within a principle of no harm, whereby a problem of groups
in competition does not arise, which is fair enough within a state, but falls apart if applied
across borders and separate polities.
The intellectual consensus against heterodox thinkers, especially those of Prof. MacDonald's
ilk, is due to the principle of no harm, taken as mandating an open society and global utility.
But, restricting immigration on the grounds he advocates is a terrible mistake from every point
of view.
What its really incredibly pathetic is that really challenging this regime from within the
academic world is vanishingly rare. Or perhaps it's not so surprising given the above. But
what happened to all that idealism that young scholars have when they really get interested
in a field? Why don't professors in evolutionary science, who know well how natural selection
works when there is an invasive species or sub-species - why don't these White people become
vocal opponents of the current multicultural zeitgeist that is actively selecting against
European genes? How can they just watch or even applaud the demise of their own people?
This for me is the hardest to understand. Careerism over their obvious genetic/evolutionary
interests.
Be that as it may, I think phrasing opposition in terms of anything pertaining to genes is
disastrous . And the proof of that is the virtually open borders advocates constantly
try to bring up genetic and related arguments as what lies behind all calls for immigration
restriction. They want us to make the hereditary/ genetic/white/ nordic argument. All
these terms denote supremacy and are identified with a philosophical error ( essentialism).
Border security is self-defence for the national state communities that aspire to protect
their polity (sovereign country), but liberals are assuming a global delimited polity (one
world ) with a principle of no harm; they have to save the immigrants. The case for immigration
restriction should be put as relating to a democratically ratified state's borders. A citizen's
right to cross the border has a corollary in relation to foreigners having no such right.
"I don't have to read Mein Kampf to know it is evil. Same with The Bell Curve."
Kampf has a bit where Hitler talks of the conquest and colonisation of space, but predicts
the globe will spin through space devoid of life if Jews are allowed to direct its development.
I wonder, liberalism and nation speaking peace toward nation is going to make the open and
technologically innovative Western counties a mulch cow for the world, one can imagine a much
more internationally cooperative spirit becoming de rigueur , and progress harnessed
to the hypercapitalism as foreseen by Nick Land. At which time pursuit of a technological singularity
will be brought well within striking distance for that generation.
The great silence from the Universe (we're all alone) and it seeming that, contrary to what
evolutionist say, evolution does seem to have an upward direction to it (nervous systems having
evolved
twice ) plus we now we know that bacteria
can survive meteorite crash landings all points toward life forms being self exterminiting
by getting a little too advanced.
@jilles dykstra One wonders if psychologists are ignorant of history.
Some 300 years BCE a Greek calculated the circumference of the earth at 39.000 km, the right
figure is 40.000.
Yet Columbus' sailors were afraid to fall of the earth.
For some 1600 years the christian church prevented all independent thought, in 1600 the pope
had Giordano Bruno burned alive, for heretic thoughts, about the universe, about the holy trinity.
At about the same time Calvin burned Servetius, the man who discovered blood circulation, alive
to death, also about the trinity.
So Servetius was unable to tell the world about the blood circulation.
Galileo got away with house arrest.
Even around 1860 the pope declared that philosophical thinking not controlled by the church
was illegal.
So there is nothing special in the christian culture about no independent thought.
On top of that, as Chomsky states: in any culture there is a standard truth, if this truth
is not considered, no debate is possible, but between those who know better.
We see this right now, much wailing about the indeed horrible carnage in Manchester, that the
USA, Predators with Hellfire, causes such carnage every week three or fout times, it cannot
be said.
Terrorism is caused by the Islam, not by the west.
In 2-3 generations, people go from having 10-12 kids to having 0,1,2.
How would that work genetically?
If I paid you $10,000 and gave you a day, could you come up with a rough back-of-the-envelope
model where people would have a hardwired genetic predisposition to wanting to have many kids
yet end up having a different number of kids under different circumstances?
Actually, I could come up with such models for free.
But, restricting immigration on the grounds he advocates is a terrible mistake from every
point of view.
Except, as you forgot to mention, the survival of the European people. But liberals, of course,
are always ready to sacrifice European people for whatever depraved cause they may have in
mind.
@annamaria A case in point - Libya: http://theduran.com/hillary-clinton-bears-responsibility-for-the-manchester-atrocity/
"The illegal NATO war against Libya was Hillary Clinton's war above all others. It was her
who took a stable, prosperous, secular socialist country and turned it into a failed state
and a terrorist playground. Gaddafi warned that he was the rampart holding back al-Qaeda from
Europe, but Hillary Clinton did not care. She even laughed about Gaddafi's inhumane, barbaric
execution at the hands of terrorists.
Had Hillary Clinton not been able to convince Barack Obama and his useful war propagandists
David Cameron in Britain and Nicholas Sarkozy, the dead children in Manchester might be with
us today.
Hillary Clinton famously said of Gaddafi's illegal execution, "We came, we saw, he died". Indeed,
she came, she saw, he died and now thousands of more have died in Libya, many others have died
in Europe because of this, including those who recently perished in Manchester."
But, restricting immigration on the grounds he advocates is a terrible mistake from every
point of view.
Except, as you forgot to mention, the survival of the European people. But liberals, of course,
are always ready to sacrifice European people for whatever depraved cause they may have in
mind.
@Alden You're too intelligent to keep repeating Calvinist and enlightenment propaganda.
Columbus and his sailors knew that the earth was round and if they just keep sailing west they
would eventually run into Asia about 5,000 miles from The coast of Spain.
What Columbus didn't know was that the Americas are between Europe and Asia.
Why is the calendar used today called the Georgian calendar? Because the calendar needs
to be adjusted every 1, 500 years. It was adjusted around 40 BC when Juluus Cesear was Emperor.
By 1500AD it needed further adjustment. That adjustment was done in the best observatory in
the world at the time by the beat astronomers and mathmeticians in the world. The work was
done in the Vatican observatory. The astronomers and mathematicians were Vatican priests.
I very heard of the scientific method? It was created around 1100 AD by priests and monks
at the Roman Catholic University of Paris Sorbonne.
Your own country the Netherlands was under the North Sea in 500 AD. It was Roman Catholic
monks who settled on the beaches and began a thousand year process of land reclamation that
literally built the land now called the Netherlands.
Every university established in Europe before 1800 was established by the church. During
those 1600 years you cite the only libraries in Europe belonged to the church
@AaronB You know, if we adopt the genetic perspective, then none of this matters at all.
Behaviors get selected for in a vast impersonal process that doesn't care about the outcome.
I do not see why the conscious *I* should give one whit about my genes.
If someone has inherited a concern with his genetic transmission, or if someone has not,
is a neutral fact with no significance from this point of view. If that person's genes don't
make it to the next generation, that is a fact - it is without value. We have banished value,
and created a world of impersonal facts.
There can be no discussion, because there are no values, there are no reference points -
it is all a vast impersonal process that is utterly blind.
You cannot derive value from fact - and your attempt to do so is merely the metaphysical
instinct hard at work, trying to derive meaning from the concepts available to you, even if
those concepts cannot yield meaning.
Such is the strength of man's metaphysical instinct (the search for value and meaning) -
finally, after much toil and effort, we arrive at a world view which banishes all metaphysics,
yet we try immediately to sneak it in through the back door.
Tell me, why *should* I care about my genes? Ah, but with that word "should", we are back
into metaphysics, and out of the genetic world-view.
These double-binds and knots that Western thinking has finally tied itself into - if we
cannot untie these knots, we are doomed to death.
Because this talk of genetic transmission will not give us the motivation to save ourselves.
@Alden There is a theory that Hildabeast attacked Libya on orders from the bankers because
Ghaddafi took Libya out of the international monetary system.
America needs a leader like Ghaddafi, a leader who cares about his own people and nation.
@Jason Liu This is exactly why "neoreaction" should have been the face and force behind
the Alt-Right, not the Stormfront types. You can tell by just how afraid the academic left
is when equality is questioned on an ideological level -- the immediate reaction to accuse
their opponents of moral sin indicates an insecurity in their ideas.
Barring all-out, society-wide nationalism, it's the Dark Enlightenment nerds who will produce
the cultural change necessary to bring down the left. Pepe and beating up Antifa will only
get you so far.
@utu The anti Catholic propaganda was particularly strong in The Netherlands: "Liever Turks
dan Paaps"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liever_Turks_dan_Paaps
"Childless spinsters are often quite bitter, and most folk psychologists give at least two
reasons why, with one of them being bitter about not having children. "
You sure understand more about the person using certain vocabulary, than the subject they
are opining about. Chuckling at the images he's conjuring up. To judge from what I've seen,
those "spinsters" probably got more action than most properly married and childed women.
There are lots of other reasons to be bitter than not having kids. Like having kids you wish
you'd never had. Some of the bitterest people I've ever met have been parents. Both kinds.
It is common to overestimate the desire of women to reproduce. I was flabbergasted at the young
women I met years ago who declared with absoluteness, they wanted no children. That seemed
so final and I couldn't get why they didn't see the potential in raising super-kids. They said
it with absolute conviction and awareness that they would probably not die young and would
be old without kids. Today, most are just fine. Most do not seem bitter. Maybe they should for
the good of society you want high quality people to reproduce. But these are the very types
least concerned, and by and large they are just fine with the situation. What is convenient
for the individual is not always good for society; but it does make for a happy individual.
I do not see why the conscious *I* should give one whit about my genes.
Doesn't matter whether you see why or not. The genes of those who do care are more likely to
be represented in succeeding generations than the genes of those who do not. Caring about such
things is largely a cultural matter. Hence, as
Raphael Lemkin who coined the term genocide explained, genocide can be achieved by:
a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national
groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The
end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions,
of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion.
It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and
dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort.
That is exactly what the European peoples are exposed to now. In arguing for the Islamification
of Europe, through mass immigration you are promoting genocide of the Europeans, for whatever
reasons, maybe hatred of Europeans, or maybe it pays - for you to raise a family and thus increase
the representation of your genes in the gene pool.
@Alden Better Turks than Papists? That must be why the Netherlands revolt against the Spanish
Empire occurred just in time to distract the Spanish from the very important naval war against
the Turks which culminated in the Catholic victory of Lepanto which made the Mediterranean
and Atlantic safer for Europeans.
I don't know why Jilles Dykstra keeps injecting his trite 1700s diatribes against the Catholic
Church. None of his allegations are true, just 400 yr old enlightenment propaganda. Columbus
consulted the priests at the university of Salmonacca. The priests calculated the distance
between Spain and Asia. They got the distance right. That's quite an achievement for an anti
science religion.
Once Columbus realized that he could sail that distance he was able to raise funds from the
Spanish crown. Of course Dysktra will heap scorn on the scientists of Salmonacca for not realizing
the Americas were between Spain and Asia.
Even American fundamentalists and Jews have ratcheted down the anti Catholic Calvinist rhetoric
in the last 80 years.
@MarkinLA I just think Hillary was looking to her Presidential run in 2016 and saw an opportunity
to burnish her "foreign policy" bonafides. She thought it would be a cake walk and successful
and could then brag in 2016 how she was head and shoulders above everybody else in foreign
policy. Benghazi happened and everything was supposed to go down the memory hole.
@Alden Better Turks than Papists? That must be why the Netherlands revolt against the Spanish
Empire occurred just in time to distract the Spanish from the very important naval war against
the Turks which culminated in the Catholic victory of Lepanto which made the Mediterranean
and Atlantic safer for Europeans.
I don't know why Jilles Dykstra keeps injecting his trite 1700s diatribes against the Catholic
Church. None of his allegations are true, just 400 yr old enlightenment propaganda. Columbus
consulted the priests at the university of Salmonacca. The priests calculated the distance
between Spain and Asia. They got the distance right. That's quite an achievement for an anti
science religion.
Once Columbus realized that he could sail that distance he was able to raise funds from the
Spanish crown. Of course Dysktra will heap scorn on the scientists of Salmonacca for not realizing
the Americas were between Spain and Asia.
Even American fundamentalists and Jews have ratcheted down the anti Catholic Calvinist rhetoric
in the last 80 years.
@Alden I know but the English stopped the anti Catholic nonsense when they stopped attending
their Protestant churches. But Dykstra just keeps posting the same old same old.
restricting immigration on the grounds he advocates
I think it would be useful to go through all possible arguments in favor of controlling immigration.
Why does it seem so that so many arguments are stigmatized and have negative connotations?
Different argument will work with different people. Some arguments will fall on deaf ears in
the US but might be persuasive in some European countries.
Cultural arguments (destruction of cultures of both of the host and that of the immigrant,
irreconcilable religious and cultural differences)
Economic arguments (group and individual impact of immigration, who benefits and who does not)
Legal arguments (sovereignty, ownership of land and country, national home, who can live in
it and who can decide if every citizen is a part owner of the country, rule of reciprocity
and 1st categorical imperative: what if everybody did this)
Biological arguments (irreversibility of miscegenation, loss of natural biological diversity)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfxL_wuYtSg
@AaronB I am not at all arguing for the Islamization of Europe - quite the opposite!
I was merely pointing out that if we remain self-interested materialists, we will have no really
compelling reason to make the necessary self-sacrifice to resist.
"The genes of those who do care are more likely to be represented in succeeding generations
than the genes of those who do not. Caring about such things is largely a cultural matter.
"
So is it genetically determined, or a cultural attitude, subject to change? Since you distinguish
between the two, I assume you do not think culture is genetically determined - otherwise the
two sentences are identical.
If it is genetically determined, then the European population is clearly composed of people
who do not possess the gene that makes one care about the survival of one's group - and then,
what are you hoping for?
@Wizard of Oz You unfairly snipe at SS and JD for some reason. My tecollection is that
Steve was brought up Catholic but his genetic father is Jewish. But i can't see in any case
why he should be expected to write to your prescription.
Also you seem to have missed the Derbyshire piece about the Jews in America who still mrntally
live in 1880 Russia hiding from the Cossacks.
@utu Various prejudices and misconceptions function in popular culture. Nobody really question
them. You can find them in Monty Python.
Arriving in England, I went from a country where religion was everywhere, but of little interest
to me, to a country that had little interest in religion, but still defined me by my purported
beliefs. Modern Britain is a country founded in large part on anti-Catholicism.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/aug/22/pope-visit-catholic-prejudice
And then you have this:
Although there is a popular perception in Scotland that Anti-Catholicism is football related
(specifically directed against fans of Celtic F.C.), statistics released in 2004 by the Scottish
Executive showed that 85% of sectarian attacks were not football related. Sixty-three percent
of the victims of sectarian attacks are Catholics, but when adjusted for population size this
makes Catholics between five and eight times more likely to be a victim of a sectarian attack
than a Protestant. (wiki)
I am not at all arguing for the Islamization of Europe – quite the opposite!
I was merely pointing out that if we remain self-interested materialists, we will have
no really compelling reason to make the necessary self-sacrifice to resist.
What is this self-sacrifice?
What sacrifice is there in closing the door to rape-culture refugees?
What sacrifice is there in closing the door to H1b visa entrants to the US who take decent
jobs from Americans?
What sacrifice is there to closing the door to people from Asia, Africa and the Middle-East
- perfectly fine people for the most part, I am sure - who will take any job that a European
has and do the work for a lower wage?
The only sacrifice you are saying "we" have to make is actually the sacrifice that the greedy
globalist shysters such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and all the other billionaire globalist
bastards have to make. No more off-shoring of jobs to maximize profits, no more trade deals
that override national law, and no more mass immigration either as a source of cheap labor
or as a genocidal instrument of national destruction to make way for an undemocratic global
governance regime.
It is the greed and unconstrained ambition of the plutocracy and their paid agents, the
Clintons, the Blairs, and all the other bought "representatives of the people," not the materialism
of the people themselves that is driving mass immigration and the destruction of the European
peoples both racially and culturally. Indeed, it is only through the exploitation of the generosity
of a gullible population that the crime of national genocide by mass immigration has been taken
to the point of no return in many parts of the formerly European world.
@Alden Here is the real reason the Jews fled Russia in the 1880s. It was draft evasion.
I forget the exact date, but around 1880 Jews got their full civil rights. Unfortunately that
included civil obligations such as conscription. That's why the Jews left, not programs, not
affirmative action for the goyim, not crackdowns on usury.
In the foreign affairs/ state department archives of every country in Europe and the Americas
are reports from diplomats stationed in Russia that there was no persecution and that the stories
about programs were just stories intended to get sympathy so as to facilitate immigration to
other countries. That's why the Russian Jews swarmed England, the USA and Latin American countries
that did not have the draft. They didn't go to Germany, Austria, France, Italy or Spain because
all those countries had conscription.
Russia's draft was for 25 years which is horrible to contemplate unless one is down and out
and desperate for 3 hots and a cot. But the other European countries had just a few years draftee
enlistment and the Jews didn't go to those countries, they went to draft free England and America.
This is not a new trick, but still it was impressive. Macron played his hand well and brought
extreme neoliberals to power using threat of fascism, while his neoliberal views might be even closer to neo-fascism then LePen's.
"Divide and conquer" and "bait and
switch" proved again very effective tools. In other words Macron victory is another neoliberal coup after
Argentina and Brazil. Neoliberal zombies do not want to die. The power of neoliberal
propaganda
is still substantial -- the population can be brainwashed despite the fact that must now understand that
neoliberal promised are fake and the redistribution of wealth up destroys middle class and
impoverishes lower
60-80% of population
Notable quotes:
"... Les Républicains (LR), ..."
"... In reality, both have adopted neoliberal economic policies, or more precisely, they have followed European Union directives requiring member states to adopt neoliberal economic policies. Especially since the adoption of the common currency, the euro, a little over fifteen years ago, those economic policies have become tangibly harmful to France, hastening its deindustrialization, the ruin of its farmers and the growing indebtedness of the State to private banks. ..."
"... The most thoughtful reaction has been to start realizing that it is the European Union itself that imposes this unpopular economic conformism. ..."
"... To quell growing criticism of the European Union, the well-oiled Macron machine, labeled "En Marche!" ..."
"... The destruction of the Socialist Party was easy. Since the "Socialist" government was so unpopular that it could not hope to win, it was easy to lure prominent members of that party to jump the sinking ship and rally to Macron, who had been economics minister in that unpopular government, but who was advertised by all the media as "new" and "anti-system". ..."
"... Fillon still cared about preserving France, and favored an independent foreign policy including good Canard Enchainé ..."
"... These "civil society" newcomers tend to be successful individuals, winners in the game of globalized competition, who will have no trouble voting for anti-labor measures. Macron is thus confirming Marine Le Pen's longstanding assertion that the two main parties were really one big single party, whose rhetorical differences masked their political convergence. ..."
"... Macron won in part because older voters in particular were frightened by his opponents' hints at leaving the European Union, which they have been indoctrinated to consider necessary to prevent renewal of Europe's old wars. But only the hysterical anti-fascist scare can explain why self-styled leftist "revolutionaries" such as François Ruffin, known for his successful anti-capitalist movie "Merci Patron", could join the stampede to vote for Macron – promising to "oppose him later". But how? ..."
"... Later, after five years of Macron, opposition may be harder than ever. In recent decades, as manufacturing moves to low wage countries, including EU members such as Poland and Rumania, France has lost 40% of its industry. Loss of industry means loss of jobs and fewer workers. When industry is no longer essential, workers have lost their key power: striking to shut down industry. Currently the desperate workers in a failing auto-works factory in central France are threatening to blow it up unless the government takes measures to save their jobs. But violence is powerless when it has no price tag. ..."
"... The Macron program amounts to a profound ideological transformation of the French ideal of égalité ..."
"... Macron is sufficiently Americanized, or, to be more precise, globalized, to have declared that "there is no such thing as French culture". From this viewpoint, France is just a place open to diverse cultures, as well as to immigrants and of course foreign capital. He has clearly signaled his rejection of French independence in the foreign policy field. ..."
"... Macron echoes the Russophobic line of the neocons. He broke tradition on his inauguration by riding down the Champs-Elysées in a military vehicle. A change of tone is indicated by his cabinet nominations. The title of the new foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who served as defense minister in the Hollande government, is "Minister of Europe and of Foreign Affairs", clearly giving Europe preference in the matter. Sylvie Goulard, an ardent Europeist who has remarked that "she does not feel French", has been named Minister of Armies and Minister of Defense. Clearly national defense is an afterthought, when the main idea is to deploy the armed forces in various joint Western interventions. ..."
"... Mélenchon ran a spectacularly popular campaign, leaving the Socialist Party far behind (the party he personally left behind years ago). Initially, as he seemed to be taking votes away from Le Pen as well as from the Socialists, he got friendly media coverage, but as he came closer to making it to the decisive second round, the tone started to change. Just as Le Pen was finally knocked out as a "fascist", there is little doubt that had Mélenchon been Macron's challenger, he would have been increasingly denounced as "communist". ..."
"... La France Insoumise ..."
"... categories populaires ..."
"... Marine Le Pen would have tried to enact measures to save French industry and the jobs it provides, provide various benefits for low-income people, withdraw from NATO, and even promote a peaceful world, starting with friendly relations with Russia. She would even have begun to prepare her compatriots for escape from the euro. ..."
"... A "color revolution" was ready to be stirred up. The deep state is vigilant in NATOland. ..."
A ghost of the past was the real winner of the French presidential election. Emmanuel Macron won
only because a majority felt they had to vote against the ghost of "fascism" allegedly embodied by
his opponent, Marine Le Pen. Whether out of panic or out of the need to feel respectable, the French
voted two to one in favor of a man whose program most of them either ignored or disliked. Now they
are stuck with him for five years.
If people had voted on the issues, the majority would never have elected a man representing the
trans-Atlantic elite totally committed to "globalization", using whatever is left of the power of
national governments to weaken them still further, turning over decision-making to "the markets"
– that is, to international capital, managed by the major banks and financial institutions, notably
those located in the United States, such as Goldman-Sachs.
The significance of this election is so widely misrepresented that clarification requires a fairly
thorough explanation, not only of the Macron project, but also of what the (impossible) election
of Marine Le Pen would have meant.
From a Two Party to a Single Party System
Despite the multiparty nature of French elections, for the past generation France has been essentially
ruled by a two-party system, with government power alternating between the Socialist Party, roughly
the equivalent of the U.S. Democratic Party, and a party inherited from the Gaullist tradition which
has gone through various name changes before recently settling on calling itself Les Républicains
(LR), in obvious imitation of the United States . For decades, there has been nothing
"socialist" about the Socialist Party and nothing Gaullist about The Republicans.
In reality, both have adopted neoliberal economic policies, or more precisely, they have followed
European Union directives requiring member states to adopt neoliberal economic policies. Especially
since the adoption of the common currency, the euro, a little over fifteen years ago, those economic
policies have become tangibly harmful to France, hastening its deindustrialization, the ruin of its
farmers and the growing indebtedness of the State to private banks.
This has had inevitable political repercussions. The simplest reaction has been widespread
reaction against both parties for continuing to pursue the same unpopular policies. The most thoughtful
reaction has been to start realizing that it is the European Union itself that imposes this unpopular
economic conformism.
To quell growing criticism of the European Union, the well-oiled Macron machine, labeled "En
Marche!" has exploited the popular reaction against both governing parties. It has broken and
absorbed large parts of both, in an obvious move to turn En Marche! into a single catch-all
party loyal to Macron.
The destruction of the Socialist Party was easy. Since the "Socialist" government was so unpopular
that it could not hope to win, it was easy to lure prominent members of that party to jump the sinking
ship and rally to Macron, who had been economics minister in that unpopular government, but who was
advertised by all the media as "new" and "anti-system".
Weakening the Republicans was trickier. Thanks to the deep unpopularity of the outgoing Socialist
government, the Republican candidate, François Fillon, looked like a shoo-in. But despite his pro-business
economic policies, Fillon still cared about preserving France, and favored an independent foreign
policy including good Canard Enchainé to be revealed at a critical moment in the campaign.
The uproar drowned out the issues. To an electorate already wary of "establishment politicians",
these revelations were fatal. The impression that "politicians are all corrupt" played into the hands
of Emmanuel Macron, too young to have done anything worse than make a few quick millions during his
passage through the Rothschild Bank, and there's nothing illegal about that.
In France, the presidential election is followed by parliamentary elections, which normally give
a majority to the party of the newly elected president. But Macron had no party, so he is creating
one for the occasion, made up of defectors from the major defeated parties as well as his own innovation,
candidates from "civil society", with no political experience, but loyal to him personally. These
"civil society" newcomers tend to be successful individuals, winners in the game of globalized competition,
who will have no trouble voting for anti-labor measures. Macron is thus confirming Marine Le Pen's
longstanding assertion that the two main parties were really one big single party, whose rhetorical
differences masked their political convergence.
The Macron victory demoralized Republicans. Weakening them further, Macron named a Republican,
Edouard Philippe, as his Prime Minister, in a government with four Socialist and two Republican,
alongside his own selections from "civil society".
Transforming France
Macron won in part because older voters in particular were frightened by his opponents' hints
at leaving the European Union, which they have been indoctrinated to consider necessary to prevent
renewal of Europe's old wars. But only the hysterical anti-fascist scare can explain why self-styled
leftist "revolutionaries" such as François Ruffin, known for his successful anti-capitalist movie
"Merci Patron", could join the stampede to vote for Macron – promising to "oppose him later". But
how?
Later, after five years of Macron, opposition may be harder than ever. In recent decades,
as manufacturing moves to low wage countries, including EU members such as Poland and Rumania, France
has lost 40% of its industry. Loss of industry means loss of jobs and fewer workers. When industry
is no longer essential, workers have lost their key power: striking to shut down industry. Currently
the desperate workers in a failing auto-works factory in central France are threatening to blow it
up unless the government takes measures to save their jobs. But violence is powerless when it has
no price tag.
Emmanuel Macron has said that he wants to spend only a short time in political life, before getting
back to business. He has a mission, and he is in a hurry. If he gains an absolute majority in the
June parliamentary elections, he has a free hand to govern for five years. He means to use this period
not to "reform" the country, as his predecessors put it, but to "transform" France into a different
sort of country. If he has his way, in five years France will no longer be a sovereign nation, but
a reliable region in a federalized European Union, following a rigorous economic policy made in Germany
by bankers and a bellicose foreign policy made in Washington by neocons.
As usual, the newly elected French president's first move was to rush to Berlin to assert loyalty
to the increasingly lopsided "Franco-German partnership". He was most warmly welcomed by Chancellor
Angela Merkel, thanks to his clear determination to force through the austerity measures demanded
by the Frankfurt budget masters. Macron hopes that his fiscal obedience will be rewarded by German
consent to a European investment fund for stimulating economic growth, but this implies a degree
of federalism that the pfennig-pinching Germans show little sign of accepting.
First of all, he has promised to complete the dismantling of the French labor code, which offers
various protections to workers. This should save money for employers and the government. For Macron,
the ruin of French industry and French farming seem to be welcome steps toward an economy of individual
initiative, symbolized by startups.
The Macron program amounts to a profound ideological transformation of the French ideal of
égalité , equality, from a horizontal concept, meaning equal benefits for all, to the vertical
ideal of "equality of opportunity", meaning the theoretical chance of every individual to rise above
the others. This is an ideal easily accepted in the United States with its longstanding myth of the
self-made man. The French have traditionally been logical enough to understand that everyone can't
rise above the others.
Horizontal equality in France has primarily meant institutional redistribution of wealth via universal
access to benefits such as health care, pensions, communications and transportation facilities, allocations
for families raising children, unemployment insurance, free education at all levels. These are the
benefits that are under threat from the European Union in various ways. One way is the imposition
of "competition" rules that impose privatization and favor foreign takeovers that transform public
services into profit-seekers. Another is the imposition of public budget restrictions, along with
the obligation of the State to seek private loans, increasing its debt, and the loss of tax revenue
that all end up up making the State too poor to continue providing such services.
Very few French people would want to give up such horizontal equality for the privilege of hoping
to become a billionaire.
Macron is sufficiently Americanized, or, to be more precise, globalized, to have declared that
"there is no such thing as French culture". From this viewpoint, France is just a place open to diverse
cultures, as well as to immigrants and of course foreign capital. He has clearly signaled his rejection
of French independence in the foreign policy field. Unlike his leading rivals, who all called for
improved relations with Russia, Macron echoes the Russophobic line of the neocons. He broke tradition
on his inauguration by riding down the Champs-Elysées in a military vehicle. A change of tone is
indicated by his cabinet nominations. The title of the new foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian,
who served as defense minister in the Hollande government, is "Minister of Europe and of Foreign
Affairs", clearly giving Europe preference in the matter. Sylvie Goulard, an ardent Europeist who
has remarked that "she does not feel French", has been named Minister of Armies and Minister of Defense.
Clearly national defense is an afterthought, when the main idea is to deploy the armed forces in
various joint Western interventions.
The Divided Opposition
Unless the June parliamentary elections produce stunning surprises, the opposition to Macron's
catch-all governance party appears weak and fatally divided. The Socialist Party is almost wiped
out. The Republicans are profoundly destabilized. Genuine opposition to the Macron regime can only
be based on defense of French interests against EU economic dictates, starting with the euro, which
prevents the country from pursuing an independent economic and foreign policy. In short, the genuine
opposition must be " souverainiste ", concerned with preserving French sovereignty.
Two strong personalities emerged from the presidential election as potential leaders of that opposition:
Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen. But they are drastically divided.
Mélenchon ran a spectacularly popular campaign, leaving the Socialist Party far behind (the
party he personally left behind years ago). Initially, as he seemed to be taking votes away from
Le Pen as well as from the Socialists, he got friendly media coverage, but as he came closer to making
it to the decisive second round, the tone started to change. Just as Le Pen was finally knocked out
as a "fascist", there is little doubt that had Mélenchon been Macron's challenger, he would have
been increasingly denounced as "communist".
Mélenchon is intelligent enough to have realized that the social policies he advocates cannot
be achieved unless France recovers control of its currency. He therefore took a stand against both
NATO and the euro. So did Marine Le Pen. Mélenchon was embarrassed by the resemblance between their
two programs, and contrary to other eliminated candidates, refrained from endorsing Macron, instead
calling on his movement, La France Insoumise , to choose between Macron and abstention.
Finally, 25% of Mélenchon voters abstained in the second round, but 62% voted for Macron – almost
exclusively motivated by the alleged need to "stop fascism". That compares with the final total results
of 66% for Macron and 34 % for Le Pen.
That vote confirmed the impossibility of forming a unified souverainiste opposition and
allows Marine Le Pen to strengthen her claim to be the leader of a genuine opposition to Macron.
She has admitted her own mistakes in the campaign, particularly in her debate with Macron, who beat
her hands down with his arrogant performance as the economic expert. But despite her mere 34%, she
retains the most loyal base of supporters in a changing scene. The problem for Mélenchon is that
his electorate is more versatile.
Despite his loud appeal to "youth", Macron was elected by France's huge population of old people.
Among voters over 65, he won 80% against 20% for Le Pen. Marine Le Pen did best with the youngest
age group, 18 to 24, winning 44% against Macron's 56%.
[1] According
to poll of 7,752 representative voters by Le Figaro/LCI,
The differences were also significant between socio-professional categories. Macron won a whopping
83% of the votes coming from the "superior socio-professional categories" – categories where the
"winners" in competitive society are largely ensconced. But in what are described as " categories
populaires ", a French term for ordinary folk, with less education, the vote was 53% in favor
of Le Pen. And she confirmed her position as favorite candidate of the working class, winning 63%
of workers' votes.
Note that the "superior socio-professional categories" are where the significance of these results
will be defined. Individuals from that category – journalists, commentators and show business personalities
– are all in a position to spread the word that this vote indicates that the workers must be "racist",
and therefore that we have narrowly escaped being taken over by "fascism".
One of the many odd things about the latest French presidential election is the rejoicing among
foreign "leftists" over the fact that the candidate of the rich roundly defeated the candidate of
the poor. It used to be the other way around, but that was long ago. These days, the winners in the
competitive game comfort themselves that they morally deserve their success, because they are in
favor of diversity and against racism, whereas the less fortunate, the rural people and the working
class, don't deserve much of anything, because they must be "racist" to be wary of globalization.
The fact that Paris voted 90% for Macron is natural, considering that real estate prices have
pushed the working class out of the capital, whose population is now overwhelmingly what is called
"bobo" – the bohemian bourgeoisie, many of whom are employed in various branches of the dominant
human rights ideology fabrication business: journalists, professors, teachers, consultants, the entertainment
industry. In these milieux, hardly anyone would even dare speak a positive word about Marine Le Pen.
What if Marine Le Pen had won?
Since politics is largely fantasy, we may as well try to imagine the unimaginable: what if Marine
Le Pen had won the election? This was never a realistic possibility, but it is worth imagining.
It could have had one, perhaps only one, extremely positive result: it could have freed France
from its paralyzing obsession with the nonexistent "fascist threat". The ghost would be exorcised.
If the word has any meaning, "fascism" implies single party rule, whereas Marine Le Pen made clear
her desire to govern by coalition, and selected the leader of a small Gaullist party, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan,
as her prospective prime minister. Poof! No fascism. That would have been an immeasurable benefit
for political debate in France. At last genuine issues might matter. Real threats could be confronted.
Another advantage would have been the demise of the National Front. Since Marine Le Pen took over
the notorious party founded by her reactionary father, it has kept a precarious balance between two
opposing wings. There is the right wing in the southeast, along the Riviera, the bastion of the party's
founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a region represented in the outgoing parliament by his conservative granddaughter
Marion Maréchal Le Pen. In the old industrial northeast region, between Arras and Lille, Marine Le
Pen has built her own bastion, as champion of ordinary working people, where she won a majority of
votes in the presidential election.
This is not the only time in history when an heiress has gone away with the heritage to join someone
of whom her father disapproves. All those who want to cling to their comforting hatred of the left's
official Satan have trouble believing that Marine Le Pen broke with her reactionary father to go
her own way (just as U.S. hawks couldn't believe in Gorbachev). This change owes everything to her
encounter with Florian Philippot, an intellectual who gave up on the ability of the Socialists to
face the real issues. Marine has the personal qualities of a leader, and Philippot provided the intellectual
substance she needed. Marine has decisively chosen Philippot as her advisor and co-leader, despite
grumblings by Jean-Marie that she has been led astray by a gay Marxist. Had Marine won, her left
wing would have been strengthened enough to enable her and Philippot to scrap the National Front
and found a new "Patriot Party". However, by scoring below 40%, she has weakened her authority and
must try to hold the troublesome party together in order to win seats in the new parliament – which
will not be easy.
Marine Le Pen would have tried to enact measures to save French industry and the jobs it provides,
provide various benefits for low-income people, withdraw from NATO, and even promote a peaceful world,
starting with friendly relations with Russia. She would even have begun to prepare her compatriots
for escape from the euro.
But not to worry, none of this "fascist" program would ever have come to pass. If she had won,
bands of protesting "antifascists" would have invaded the streets, smashing windows and attacking
police. The outgoing Socialist government was preparing to use the resulting chaos as a pretext to
stay in power long enough to manage the parliamentary elections,
[2] "Si Le
Pen avait été élue le plan secret pour 'protéger la République'", Le Nouvel Observateur, May 17,
2017 , ensuring that President Marine Le Pen would be held in check. A "color revolution"
was ready to be stirred up. The deep state is vigilant in NATOland.
God help the Dems because this man certainly will not
Notable quotes:
"... three House Democrats involved in mapping out the party's strategy to win in 2018 are going to make a pilgrimage to Chicago to seek out the advice of none other than Mayor Rahm Emanuel" [ Fusion ]. Please kill me now. ..."
"... It seems to me that both the AEI comment and Rahm Emmanuel case are evidence of the same basic problem. In both cases the parties or party establishments have actually lost their ability to understand people outside of them. While there was some initial hope that the Trumpquake would shake things up it appears that in both cases the establishments have hardened their navel gaze. ..."
"DNC reports worst April of fundraising since 2009" [
Washington Examiner ]. True, these things fluctuate, but DNC fundraising should be through the
roof, right? Idea: Focus more on Putin.
"In a break from
recent tradition , the Democrats are planning to widely expand the number of districts they plan
to contest in the 2018 midterm elections. But, in a sign that not every tried-and-true Democratic
instinct is being thrown out, they're planning on dumpster diving for help doing it, with Politico
reporting that three House Democrats involved in mapping out the party's strategy to win in 2018
are going to make
a pilgrimage to Chicago to seek out the advice of none other than Mayor Rahm Emanuel" [
Fusion ]. Please kill me now.
(
Some fun Rahm anecdotes here , including the one where he calls "liberals" - that is, anybody
to his left - "f*#king retards." So, phase one would be to unify the party, phase two would be to
get the left out on the trail campaigning for the Democrat Establishment, and phase three would be
to kick the left, which is just what Rahm did after the last wave election (Pelosi, too).
"Florida Democratic Party Exec: Poor Voters Don't Care About 'Issues,' Vote Based on 'Emotions'"
[
Miami New Times ]. "Last night, the party's new second-in-command, Sally Boynton Brown, spoke
in front of the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Broward County. And throughout the exchange, she
steadfastly refused to commit to changing the party's economic or health-care messaging in any concrete
way .
Brown, the former executive director of the Idaho Democratic Party, was hired last month to take
over for the outgoing executive director, Scott Arceneaux. Last night was her first encounter with
local progressives, who are already disgruntled after Stephen Bittel - a billionaire real-estate
developer, gas station franchiser, environmental dredging company executive, and major political
donor - was elected to serve as party chair earlier this year.
Many progressives accused him of buying his way into the job via campaign donations." Read the
whole thing. It's vile.
It seems to me that both the AEI comment and Rahm Emmanuel case are evidence of the same
basic problem. In both cases the parties or party establishments have actually lost their ability
to understand people outside of them. While there was some initial hope that the Trumpquake would
shake things up it appears that in both cases the establishments have hardened their navel gaze.
Consider the AEI. While we have come to expect dismissal of sick people as just numbers or
the "perhaps 1-2 million" this misses the greater points. First is it not merely "1-2 million"
but likely much larger given the broad definition of "pre-existing condition" that is in the actual
bills. Second that is >1-2 million people who have families and friends and communities who up
until now have often been picking up the slack, or trying to. And third, we are stuck quibbling
about the cost of a few million "uninsured" and never ever considering whether or not insurance
is even the right mechanism.
As to the Democrats, they are still sending me emails from James Carville so compared to that
Rahm Emmanuel is practically young hip and in touch.
And as to Rahm Emmanuel, forget the hippie punching isn't Homan square enough? What will he
be in charge of minority outreach?
"Universalist Democrat"="Neoliberal Democrats" or Clinton wing of the party.
Notable quotes:
"... Rhetorically, universalist Democrats often end up appealing for a party that offers a space for everyone to voice their concerns. Hillary Clinton is a great example of this ..."
"... Populists, according to Gerring's categories, were the dominant force in national Democratic politics from 1896 to 1948. ..."
"... Their organizing political principle was a moral fight between the common man and a few moneyed elites who exploited the masses for personal gain. Populists often targeted trusts. They used moral language, explicitly calling policies "right" or "wrong" and believed that the government was the only force strong enough to restrain big business, ensure that the basic needs of citizens were met and bring people into a state of true equality." ..."
"Gerring writes that universalism started
to take hold in the Democratic Party in the postwar era as national Democrats shifted away from an
anti-elitist, populist message and toward rhetoric centered on unity, peace and prosperity.
Universalists tend to see abstract concepts rather than specific people or institutions as problems
- think of the efforts to stop poverty, end racism or reduce income inequality. Universalist Democrats
cast themselves as managers of the welfare state rather than crusaders against a powerful elite,
and they often championed the rights and causes of a wide array of individual groups.
Democrats' focus on LGBT rights, civil rights protections for African-Americans, comprehensive
immigration reform, women's rights and more can all be thought of as part of as a universalist commitment
to the particular needs of groups.
Rhetorically, universalist Democrats often end up appealing for a party that offers a space for
everyone to voice their concerns. Hillary Clinton is a great example of this" .
"Sanders, however, doesn't ultimately trace his policy positions to a fight with poverty or for
better health care, but to a fight against Wall Street bankers or pharmaceutical companies. His economic
narratives have clear and present antagonists . In these ways, Sanders is more of a populist than
many modern Democrats. Populists, according to Gerring's categories, were the dominant force in national
Democratic politics from 1896 to 1948.
Their organizing political principle was a moral fight between the common man and a few moneyed
elites who exploited the masses for personal gain. Populists often targeted trusts. They used moral
language, explicitly calling policies "right" or "wrong" and believed that the government was the
only force strong enough to restrain big business, ensure that the basic needs of citizens were met
and bring people into a state of true equality."
"... My thesis is this: both Obama and Trump are faux populists and are part and parcel of a 'faux populist model of governance'. Elements of this model are ..."
"... A craven narcisstic egotistic Leader (Obama, Trump) that is a willing tool because he/she intends to capture a future payoff for himself. ..."
"... Establishment-friendly VP as insurance. Both Biden and Pence are seen as 'reliable hands' by TPTB. ..."
"... crazy opposition that is intended to weaken a faux populist leader and energize apologists. I call them "enforcers". ..."
"... A compliant media ..."
"... This is a toxic mix because it sends the message that neither your vote nor your opinion matters so why waste your time seeking out truth? ..."
"... a sort of 5th column of folks working on behalf of 5th columnists, subverting government in favor of the lucrative process of policy misdirection itself. ..."
I think you misread or misunderstood what I wrote.
My thesis is this: both Obama and Trump are faux populists and are part and parcel of a
'faux populist model of governance'. Elements of this model are :
1. A craven narcisstic egotistic Leader (Obama, Trump) that is a willing tool because he/she
intends to capture a future payoff for himself. They signal their willingness via:
> forgiving past abuses ("no-drama Obama"; Trump's not prosecuting Hillary)
> constraining their own power: Obama's bi-partisanship (termed "11-dimensional chess" by
critics), Trump's brashness/recklessness that gives his opponents fodder ("tapes" on Comey,
etc.)
2. Establishment-friendly VP as insurance. Both Biden and Pence are seen as 'reliable
hands' by TPTB.
3. crazy opposition that is intended to weaken a faux populist leader and energize apologists.
I call them "enforcers". By crazy opposition, I mean
> Obama: 'birthers' and smears like "socialist muslim".
Trump: Russia probe; smears like "the new Hitler"
4. apologists that take as a given that the President wants to fulfill the promises, both
spoken and unspoken, that he has made to the people.
in what's termed the second of a series, someone named Jonathan Marshall makes the crucial point
about the various 'lobbies' in the usofa ...
How China Lobby Shaped America
In 1949, two members of Congress called for an investigation of the lobby's "brazen power."
Rep. Mike Mansfield, a Montana Democrat who would later become Senate majority leader, accused
Nationalist Chinese officials - who had fled the mainland for Taiwan that year in the wake
of the communist revolution - of diverting U.S. aid to fund political propaganda in the United
States.
Ironically, a timely dispensation of $800,000 from Nationalist Chinese officials in Taiwan
to their New York office financed a successful campaign to squelch that proposed investigation.
... they are self-funding operations. once the money starts to flow a portion is set aside
for kickbacks, bribes, and efforts to protect the mainstream funding itself. it is truly a parasitic
operation that feeds on the fruits of its effort on others' behalf, and thus strengthens itself,
becoming a stand-alone operation.
there are tens of thousands of people in ac/dc working in these operations, looking out for
taiwan's interests, israel's interests, making sure that russia stays demonized ... all the various
corporate issues ... but at base and before all else, looking out for number one.
a sort of 5th column of folks working on behalf of 5th columnists, subverting government
in favor of the lucrative process of policy misdirection itself.
with a gang like that at the core of our government what, as they say, could go wrong?
"... Neoliberal Democrats seek to create the same tribablist/identity voting block on the left that the republicans have on the right. The is why people like sanjait get totally spastic when progressives criticize the party. ..."
"... Problem I have with the corporatist democrats is they're trading away the working class gains of the new deal in order to appease the centrist Republicans. Meanwhile the Centrist Republicans are breaking towards the fascist right wing of the party. ..."
"... Corporatism and financialization are the cornerstones of wealth consolidation and political capture on the one hand and reduced competition, wages, and innovation on the other hand. ..."
The current Democratic Party was handed two golden opportunities and blew both of them. Obama blew
the 2008 financial crisis. And Hillary Clinton blew the 2016 election.
If you have a tool and the tool it broken you try to fix it. One doesn't pretend there is nothing
wrong. The difference between neoliberal democrats and progressives is they differ on what's wrong.
Neoliberal Democrats seek to create the same tribablist/identity voting block on the left that
the republicans have on the right. The is why people like sanjait get totally spastic when progressives
criticize the party.
Progressives seek to create an aggressive party that represents the interests of working class
and petite bourgeoisie. That is why you see progressives get spastic when the corporate democrats
push appeasement policies.
Problem I have with the corporatist democrats is they're trading away the working class gains
of the new deal in order to appease the centrist Republicans. Meanwhile the Centrist Republicans
are breaking towards the fascist right wing of the party.
So not only are working class people losing their gains, but those gains are being traded away
for nothing.
My problem is that and more. We should have been headed in the opposite direction these last fifty
years.
Public daycare and universal pre-K would have been a good idea in the sixties.
Now they
are so long overdue that it is pathetic.
Corporatism and financialization are the cornerstones
of wealth consolidation and political capture on the one hand and reduced competition, wages,
and innovation on the other hand.
"... Instead, the millions of young voters that are rejecting Hillary's campaign this year are making a carefully reasoned, even reluctant calculation about the limits of the insider politics both she and her husband have represented. ..."
"... And to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party, often including Hillary Clinton personally, has been on the wrong side of virtually all of these issues. ..."
"... Hillary not only voted for the Iraq War, but offered a succession of ridiculous excuses for her vote. Remember, this was one of the easiest calls ever. A child could see that the Bush administration's fairy tales about WMDs and Iraqi drones spraying poison over the capital (where were they going to launch from, Martha's Vineyard?) were just that, fairy tales. ..."
"... Yet Hillary voted for the invasion for the same reason many other mainstream Democrats did: They didn't want to be tagged as McGovernite peaceniks. The new Democratic Party refused to be seen as being too antiwar, even at the cost of supporting a wrong one. ..."
Why Young People Are Right About Hillary Clinton: Listening to the youth vote doesn't always
lead to disaster
By Matt Taibbi
March 25, 2016
... ... ...
Instead, the millions of young voters that are rejecting Hillary's campaign this year are
making a carefully reasoned, even reluctant calculation about the limits of the insider politics
both she and her husband have represented.
For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have been the Iraq invasion, the financial
crisis, free trade, mass incarceration, domestic surveillance, police brutality, debt and income
inequality, among others.
And to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party, often including Hillary Clinton
personally, has been on the wrong side of virtually all of these issues.
Hillary not only voted for the Iraq War, but offered a succession of ridiculous excuses
for her vote. Remember, this was one of the easiest calls ever. A child could see that the Bush
administration's fairy tales about WMDs and Iraqi drones spraying poison over the capital (where
were they going to launch from, Martha's Vineyard?) were just that, fairy tales.
Yet Hillary voted for the invasion for the same reason many other mainstream Democrats
did: They didn't want to be tagged as McGovernite peaceniks. The new Democratic Party refused
to be seen as being too antiwar, even at the cost of supporting a wrong one.
It was a classic "we can't be too pure" moment. Hillary gambled that Democrats would understand
that she'd outraged conscience and common sense for the sake of the Democrats' electoral viability
going forward. As a mock-Hillary in a 2007 Saturday Night Live episode put it, "Democrats know
me . They know my support for the Iraq War has always been insincere."
This pattern, of modern Democrats bending so far back to preserve what they believe is their
claim on the middle that they end up plainly in the wrong, has continually repeated itself.
Take the mass incarceration phenomenon. This was pioneered in Mario Cuomo's New York and furthered
under Bill Clinton's presidency, which authorized more than $16 billion for new prisons and more
police in a crime bill.
As The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander noted, America when Bill Clinton left office
had the world's highest incarceration rate, with a prison admission rate for black drug inmates
that was 23 times 1983 levels. Hillary stumped for that crime bill, adding the Reaganesque observation
that inner-city criminals were "super-predators" who needed to be "brought to heel."
You can go on down the line of all these issues. Trade? From NAFTA to the TPP, Hillary and
her party cohorts have consistently supported these anti-union free trade agreements, until it
became politically inexpedient. Debt? Hillary infamously voted for regressive bankruptcy reform
just a few years after privately meeting with Elizabeth Warren and agreeing that such industry-driven
efforts to choke off debt relief needed to be stopped.
Then of course there is the matter of the great gobs of money Hillary has taken to give speeches
to Goldman Sachs and God knows whom else. Her answer about that - "That's what they offered" -
gets right to the heart of what young people find so repugnant about this brand of politics.
One can talk about having the strength to get things done, given the political reality of the
times. But one also can become too easily convinced of certain political realities, particularly
when they're paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour.
Is Hillary really doing the most good that she can do, fighting for the best deal that's there
to get for ordinary people?
Or is she just doing something that satisfies her own definition of that, while taking tens
of millions of dollars from some of the world's biggest jerks?
I doubt even Hillary Clinton could answer that question. She has been playing the inside game
for so long, she seems to have become lost in it. She behaves like a person who often doesn't
know what the truth is, but instead merely reaches for what is the best answer in that moment,
not realizing the difference.
This is why her shifting explanations and flippant attitude about the email scandal are almost
more unnerving than the ostensible offense. She seems confident that just because her detractors
are politically motivated, as they always have been, that they must be wrong, as they often were.
But that's faulty thinking. My worry is that Democrats like Hillary have been saying, "The
Republicans are worse!" for so long that they've begun to believe it excuses everything. It makes
me nervous to see Hillary supporters like law professor Stephen Vladeck arguing in the New York
Times that the real problem wasn't anything Hillary did, but that the Espionage Act isn't "practical."
If you're willing to extend the "purity" argument to the Espionage Act, it's only a matter
of time before you get in real trouble. And even if it doesn't happen this summer, Democrats may
soon wish they'd picked the frumpy senator from Vermont who probably checks his restaurant bills
to make sure he hasn't been undercharged.
But in the age of Trump, winning is the only thing that matters, right? In that case, there's
plenty of evidence suggesting Sanders would perform better against a reality TV free-coverage
machine like Trump than would Hillary Clinton. This would largely be due to the passion and energy
of young voters.
Young people don't see the Sanders-Clinton race as a choice between idealism and incremental
progress. The choice they see is between an honest politician, and one who is so profoundly a
part of the problem that she can't even see it anymore.
They've seen in the last decades that politicians who promise they can deliver change while
also taking the money, mostly just end up taking the money.
And they're voting for Sanders because his idea of an entirely voter-funded electoral "revolution"
that bars corporate money is, no matter what its objective chances of success, the only practical
road left to break what they perceive to be an inexorable pattern of corruption. Young people aren't dreaming. They're thinking. And we should listen to them.
"new Democratic Party" is lined up with the neocons.
Bill put Strobe Talbot and Mrs Kagan in senior positions in 1993!
Hillary voted comfortably with Paul Wolfowitz ands her internal neocon.
While Obama used his peace prize speech to tell the world he would decide who should run sovereign
nations.
26000 bombs in 7 diverse countries in one year when the US is not in any declared war.
"new Democratic Party" is neocon foreign policy and $500B for the pentagon each year not counting
the bombing costs.
"new Democratic Party" also armed ISIS until they "went off the ranch" and broke the promise
they made to the US' spooks 'not to shoot at people US liked.'
"... Over the last thirty years the power of the Manufacturing and Infrastructure concerns has fallen
dramatically. So now we have a government dominated by Banking and Distribution, think Goldman Sacks
and Walmart. ..."
"... According to former CIA director Richard Helms, when Allen Dulles was tasked in 1946 to "draft
proposals for the shape and organization of what was to become the Central Intelligence Agency," he
recruited an advisory group of six men made up almost exclusively of Wall Street investment bankers
and lawyers. ..."
"... Dulles himself was an attorney at the prominent Wall Street law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell.
Two years later, Dulles became the chairman of a three-man committee which reviewed the young agency's
performance. ..."
"... So we see that from the beginning the CIA was an exclusive Wall Street club. Allen Dulles himself
became the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence in early 1953. ..."
"... The current Democratic Party was handed two golden opportunities and blew both of them. Obama
blew the 2008 financial crisis. And Hillary Clinton blew the 2016 election. ..."
"... Neoliberal Democrats seek to create the same tribablist/identity voting block on the left that
the republicans have on the right. The is why people like sanjait get totally spastic when progressives
criticize the party. ..."
Among the rich I think there were three groups based on where their wealth and interests laid.
Banking/Insurance industry.
Distribution/logistics.
Manufacturing and Infrastructure.
Over the last thirty years the power of the Manufacturing and Infrastructure concerns has
fallen dramatically. So now we have a government dominated by Banking and Distribution, think
Goldman Sacks and Walmart.
"Over the last thirty years the power of the Manufacturing and Infrastructure concerns has fallen
dramatically. So now we have a government dominated by Banking and Distribution, think Goldman
Sacks and Walmart."
This trend does not apply to Military-industrial complex (MIC). MIC probably should be listed
separately. Formally it is a part of manufacturing and infrastructure, but in reality it is closely
aligned with Banking and insurance.
CIA which is the cornerstone of the military industrial complex to a certain extent is an enforcement
arm for financial corporations.
According to former CIA director Richard Helms, when Allen Dulles was tasked in 1946
to "draft proposals for the shape and organization of what was to become the Central Intelligence
Agency," he recruited an advisory group of six men made up almost exclusively of Wall Street
investment bankers and lawyers.
Dulles himself was an attorney at the prominent Wall Street law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell.
Two years later, Dulles became the chairman of a three-man committee which reviewed the young
agency's performance.
The other two members of the committee were also New York lawyers. For nearly a year, the
committee met in the offices of J.H. Whitney, a Wall Street investment firm.
According to Peter Dale Scott, over the next twenty years, all seven deputy directors of
the agency were drawn from the Wall Street financial aristocracy; and six were listed in the
New York social register.
So we see that from the beginning the CIA was an exclusive Wall Street club. Allen Dulles
himself became the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence in early 1953.
The prevalent myth that the CIA exists to provide intelligence information to the president
was the promotional vehicle used to persuade President Harry Truman to sign the 1947 National
Security Act, the legislation which created the CIA.iv
But the rationale about serving the president was never more than a partial and very imperfect
truth...
The current Democratic Party was handed two golden opportunities and blew both of them. Obama
blew the 2008 financial crisis. And Hillary Clinton blew the 2016 election.
If you have a tool and the tool it broken you try to fix it. One doesn't pretend there is nothing
wrong.
The difference between neoliberal democrats and progressives is they differ on what's wrong.
Neoliberal Democrats seek to create the same tribablist/identity voting block on the left
that the republicans have on the right. The is why people like sanjait get totally spastic when
progressives criticize the party.
Progressives seek to create an aggressive party that represents the interests of working class
and petite bourgeoisie. That is why you see progressives get spastic when the corporate democrats
push appeasement policies.
"... Instead, the millions of young voters that are rejecting Hillary's campaign this year are making a carefully reasoned, even reluctant calculation about the limits of the insider politics both she and her husband have represented. ..."
"... And to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party, often including Hillary Clinton personally, has been on the wrong side of virtually all of these issues. ..."
"... Hillary not only voted for the Iraq War, but offered a succession of ridiculous excuses for her vote. Remember, this was one of the easiest calls ever. A child could see that the Bush administration's fairy tales about WMDs and Iraqi drones spraying poison over the capital (where were they going to launch from, Martha's Vineyard?) were just that, fairy tales. ..."
"... Yet Hillary voted for the invasion for the same reason many other mainstream Democrats did: They didn't want to be tagged as McGovernite peaceniks. The new Democratic Party refused to be seen as being too antiwar, even at the cost of supporting a wrong one. ..."
Why Young People Are Right About Hillary Clinton: Listening to the youth vote doesn't always
lead to disaster
By Matt Taibbi
March 25, 2016
... ... ...
Instead, the millions of young voters that are rejecting Hillary's campaign this year are
making a carefully reasoned, even reluctant calculation about the limits of the insider politics
both she and her husband have represented.
For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have been the Iraq invasion, the financial
crisis, free trade, mass incarceration, domestic surveillance, police brutality, debt and income
inequality, among others.
And to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party, often including Hillary Clinton
personally, has been on the wrong side of virtually all of these issues.
Hillary not only voted for the Iraq War, but offered a succession of ridiculous excuses
for her vote. Remember, this was one of the easiest calls ever. A child could see that the Bush
administration's fairy tales about WMDs and Iraqi drones spraying poison over the capital (where
were they going to launch from, Martha's Vineyard?) were just that, fairy tales.
Yet Hillary voted for the invasion for the same reason many other mainstream Democrats
did: They didn't want to be tagged as McGovernite peaceniks. The new Democratic Party refused
to be seen as being too antiwar, even at the cost of supporting a wrong one.
It was a classic "we can't be too pure" moment. Hillary gambled that Democrats would understand
that she'd outraged conscience and common sense for the sake of the Democrats' electoral viability
going forward. As a mock-Hillary in a 2007 Saturday Night Live episode put it, "Democrats know
me . They know my support for the Iraq War has always been insincere."
This pattern, of modern Democrats bending so far back to preserve what they believe is their
claim on the middle that they end up plainly in the wrong, has continually repeated itself.
Take the mass incarceration phenomenon. This was pioneered in Mario Cuomo's New York and furthered
under Bill Clinton's presidency, which authorized more than $16 billion for new prisons and more
police in a crime bill.
As The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander noted, America when Bill Clinton left office
had the world's highest incarceration rate, with a prison admission rate for black drug inmates
that was 23 times 1983 levels. Hillary stumped for that crime bill, adding the Reaganesque observation
that inner-city criminals were "super-predators" who needed to be "brought to heel."
You can go on down the line of all these issues. Trade? From NAFTA to the TPP, Hillary and
her party cohorts have consistently supported these anti-union free trade agreements, until it
became politically inexpedient. Debt? Hillary infamously voted for regressive bankruptcy reform
just a few years after privately meeting with Elizabeth Warren and agreeing that such industry-driven
efforts to choke off debt relief needed to be stopped.
Then of course there is the matter of the great gobs of money Hillary has taken to give speeches
to Goldman Sachs and God knows whom else. Her answer about that - "That's what they offered" -
gets right to the heart of what young people find so repugnant about this brand of politics.
One can talk about having the strength to get things done, given the political reality of the
times. But one also can become too easily convinced of certain political realities, particularly
when they're paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour.
Is Hillary really doing the most good that she can do, fighting for the best deal that's there
to get for ordinary people?
Or is she just doing something that satisfies her own definition of that, while taking tens
of millions of dollars from some of the world's biggest jerks?
I doubt even Hillary Clinton could answer that question. She has been playing the inside game
for so long, she seems to have become lost in it. She behaves like a person who often doesn't
know what the truth is, but instead merely reaches for what is the best answer in that moment,
not realizing the difference.
This is why her shifting explanations and flippant attitude about the email scandal are almost
more unnerving than the ostensible offense. She seems confident that just because her detractors
are politically motivated, as they always have been, that they must be wrong, as they often were.
But that's faulty thinking. My worry is that Democrats like Hillary have been saying, "The
Republicans are worse!" for so long that they've begun to believe it excuses everything. It makes
me nervous to see Hillary supporters like law professor Stephen Vladeck arguing in the New York
Times that the real problem wasn't anything Hillary did, but that the Espionage Act isn't "practical."
If you're willing to extend the "purity" argument to the Espionage Act, it's only a matter
of time before you get in real trouble. And even if it doesn't happen this summer, Democrats may
soon wish they'd picked the frumpy senator from Vermont who probably checks his restaurant bills
to make sure he hasn't been undercharged.
But in the age of Trump, winning is the only thing that matters, right? In that case, there's
plenty of evidence suggesting Sanders would perform better against a reality TV free-coverage
machine like Trump than would Hillary Clinton. This would largely be due to the passion and energy
of young voters.
Young people don't see the Sanders-Clinton race as a choice between idealism and incremental
progress. The choice they see is between an honest politician, and one who is so profoundly a
part of the problem that she can't even see it anymore.
They've seen in the last decades that politicians who promise they can deliver change while
also taking the money, mostly just end up taking the money.
And they're voting for Sanders because his idea of an entirely voter-funded electoral "revolution"
that bars corporate money is, no matter what its objective chances of success, the only practical
road left to break what they perceive to be an inexorable pattern of corruption. Young people aren't dreaming. They're thinking. And we should listen to them.
"new Democratic Party" is lined up with the neocons.
Bill put Strobe Talbot and Mrs Kagan in senior positions in 1993!
Hillary voted comfortably with Paul Wolfowitz ands her internal neocon.
While Obama used his peace prize speech to tell the world he would decide who should run sovereign
nations.
26000 bombs in 7 diverse countries in one year when the US is not in any declared war.
"new Democratic Party" is neocon foreign policy and $500B for the pentagon each year not counting
the bombing costs.
"new Democratic Party" also armed ISIS until they "went off the ranch" and broke the promise
they made to the US' spooks 'not to shoot at people US liked.'
"... Hillary not only voted for the Iraq War, but offered a succession of ridiculous excuses for her vote. Remember, this was one of the easiest calls ever. A child could see that the Bush administration's fairy tales about WMDs and Iraqi drones spraying poison over the capital (where were they going to launch from, Martha's Vineyard?) were just that, fairy tales. ..."
"... Yet Hillary voted for the invasion for the same reason many other mainstream Democrats did: They didn't want to be tagged as McGovernite peaceniks. The new Democratic Party refused to be seen as being too antiwar, even at the cost of supporting a wrong one. ..."
"... But that's faulty thinking. My worry is that Democrats like Hillary have been saying, "The Republicans are worse!" for so long that they've begun to believe it excuses everything. It makes me nervous to see Hillary supporters like law professor Stephen Vladeck arguing in the New York Times that the real problem wasn't anything Hillary did, but that the Espionage Act isn't "practical." ..."
"... Young people don't see the Sanders-Clinton race as a choice between idealism and incremental progress. The choice they see is between an honest politician, and one who is so profoundly a part of the problem that she can't even see it anymore. ..."
"... "new Democratic Party" is lined up with the neocons. ..."
"... Bill put Strobe Talbot and Mrs Kagan in senior positions in 1993! Hillary voted comfortably with Paul Wolfowitz ands her internal neocon. While Obama used his peace prize speech to tell the world he would decide who should run sovereign nations. 26000 bombs in 7 diverse countries in one year when the US is not in any declared war. ..."
"... "new Democratic Party" is neocon foreign policy and $500B for the pentagon each year not counting the bombing costs. "new Democratic Party" also armed ISIS until they "went off the ranch" and broke the promise they made to the US' spooks 'not to shoot at people US liked.' ..."
Why Young People Are Right About Hillary Clinton
Listening to the youth vote doesn't always lead to disaster
By Matt Taibbi
March 25, 2016
... ... ...
.. the millions of young voters that are rejecting
Hillary's campaign this year are making a carefully reasoned,
even reluctant calculation about the limits of the insider
politics both she and her husband have represented.
For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have
been the Iraq invasion, the financial crisis, free trade,
mass incarceration, domestic surveillance, police brutality,
debt and income inequality, among others.
And to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party,
often including Hillary Clinton personally, has been on the
wrong side of virtually all of these issues.
Hillary not only voted for the Iraq War, but offered a
succession of ridiculous excuses for her vote. Remember, this
was one of the easiest calls ever. A child could see that the
Bush administration's fairy tales about WMDs and Iraqi drones
spraying poison over the capital (where were they going to
launch from, Martha's Vineyard?) were just that, fairy tales.
Yet Hillary voted for the invasion for the same reason
many other mainstream Democrats did: They didn't want to be
tagged as McGovernite peaceniks. The new Democratic Party
refused to be seen as being too antiwar, even at the cost of
supporting a wrong one.
It was a classic "we can't be too pure" moment. Hillary
gambled that Democrats would understand that she'd outraged
conscience and common sense for the sake of the Democrats'
electoral viability going forward. As a mock-Hillary in a
2007 Saturday Night Live episode put it, "Democrats know me .
They know my support for the Iraq War has always been
insincere."
This pattern, of modern Democrats bending so far back to
preserve what they believe is their claim on the middle that
they end up plainly in the wrong, has continually repeated
itself.
Take the mass incarceration phenomenon. This was pioneered
in Mario Cuomo's New York and furthered under Bill Clinton's
presidency, which authorized more than $16 billion for new
prisons and more police in a crime bill.
As The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander noted,
America when Bill Clinton left office had the world's highest
incarceration rate, with a prison admission rate for black
drug inmates that was 23 times 1983 levels. Hillary stumped
for that crime bill, adding the Reaganesque observation that
inner-city criminals were "super-predators" who needed to be
"brought to heel."
You can go on down the line of all these issues. Trade?
From NAFTA to the TPP, Hillary and her party cohorts have
consistently supported these anti-union free trade
agreements, until it became politically inexpedient. Debt?
Hillary infamously voted for regressive bankruptcy reform
just a few years after privately meeting with Elizabeth
Warren and agreeing that such industry-driven efforts to
choke off debt relief needed to be stopped.
Then of course there is the matter of the great gobs of
money Hillary has taken to give speeches to Goldman Sachs and
God knows whom else. Her answer about that - "That's what
they offered" - gets right to the heart of what young people
find so repugnant about this brand of politics.
One can talk about having the strength to get things done,
given the political reality of the times. But one also can
become too easily convinced of certain political realities,
particularly when they're paying you hundreds of thousands of
dollars an hour.
Is Hillary really doing the most good that she can do,
fighting for the best deal that's there to get for ordinary
people?
Or is she just doing something that satisfies her own
definition of that, while taking tens of millions of dollars
from some of the world's biggest jerks?
I doubt even Hillary Clinton could answer that question.
She has been playing the inside game for so long, she seems
to have become lost in it. She behaves like a person who
often doesn't know what the truth is, but instead merely
reaches for what is the best answer in that moment, not
realizing the difference.
This is why her shifting explanations and flippant
attitude about the email scandal are almost more unnerving
than the ostensible offense. She seems confident that just
because her detractors are politically motivated, as they
always have been, that they must be wrong, as they often
were.
But that's faulty thinking. My worry is that Democrats
like Hillary have been saying, "The Republicans are worse!"
for so long that they've begun to believe it excuses
everything. It makes me nervous to see Hillary supporters
like law professor Stephen Vladeck arguing in the New York
Times that the real problem wasn't anything Hillary did, but
that the Espionage Act isn't "practical."
If you're willing to extend the "purity" argument to the
Espionage Act, it's only a matter of time before you get in
real trouble. And even if it doesn't happen this summer,
Democrats may soon wish they'd picked the frumpy senator from
Vermont who probably checks his restaurant bills to make sure
he hasn't been undercharged.
But in the age of Trump, winning is the only thing that
matters, right? In that case, there's plenty of evidence
suggesting Sanders would perform better against a reality TV
free-coverage machine like Trump than would Hillary Clinton.
This would largely be due to the passion and energy of young
voters.
Young people don't see the Sanders-Clinton race as a
choice between idealism and incremental progress. The choice
they see is between an honest politician, and one who is so
profoundly a part of the problem that she can't even see it
anymore.
They've seen in the last decades that politicians who
promise they can deliver change while also taking the money,
mostly just end up taking the money.
And they're voting for Sanders because his idea of an
entirely voter-funded electoral "revolution" that bars
corporate money is, no matter what its objective chances of
success, the only practical road left to break what they
perceive to be an inexorable pattern of corruption.
Young people aren't dreaming. They're thinking. And we
should listen to them.
"new Democratic Party" is lined up with the neocons.
Bill
put Strobe Talbot and Mrs Kagan in senior positions in 1993! Hillary voted comfortably with Paul Wolfowitz ands her
internal neocon. While Obama used his peace prize speech to tell the world
he would decide who should run sovereign nations.
26000 bombs in 7 diverse countries in one year when the US
is not in any declared war.
"new Democratic Party" is neocon foreign policy and $500B
for the pentagon each year not counting the bombing costs. "new Democratic Party" also armed ISIS until they "went
off the ranch" and broke the promise they made to the US'
spooks 'not to shoot at people US liked.'
"... The media says what??? Hillary Clinton complains about the media? Which media says that? Give us ONE single example Hillary! Just one where the media says you can't talk about that. Just pure hypocrisy ..."
"... Superficially, there is a semblance of variance from the political establishment. Macron formed his En Marche (Forward) movement only a year ago. He has never held elected political office. And until three years ago hardly anyone had ever heard of him. ..."
"... Paradoxically, Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, congratulated the French people for "choosing liberty, equality and fraternity, and saying no to fake news." Paradoxical because everything about Emmanuel Macron's "meteoric rise" through elite banking and his equally stellar crossover to politics smacks of fabrication and fakery. ..."
"... Former banking colleagues recall that he wasn't particularly capable in his four years at Rothschild's while on a multi-million-euro income. But he "mastered the art of networking." In a Financial Times profile published before the election, a senior banker is quoted as saying: "What Mr Macron lacked in technical knowledge and jargon at first, he made up for with contacts in government." Other sources recall that "it was never quite clear who Macron worked for." ..."
"... Macron's En Marche does not have any members in parliament. His government will thus likely be comprised of patronage and technocrats selected from years of networking in the financial and Élysée Palace establishment. ..."
Everything about France's new president Emmanuel Macron suggests a theatrical production of hype
and illusion. He is being "sold" to the masses as an "outsider" and "centrist", a benign liberal.
In reality, enter the economic hitman who will blow French society apart in the service of the
oligarchy.
At age 39, Macron has been described as a "political wonderboy" and France's "youngest leader
since Napoleon Bonaparte." The former Rothschild banker who reportedly once had the nickname "the
Mozart of Finance" is now promising to renew France and bring the nation together, where people will
no longer "vote for extremes."
Fittingly for the Mozart of Finance, the new president used the "grandest of backdrops for entrance
on the world stage," when he made his victory speech on Sunday night in the courtyard of the Louvre,
noted the Financial Times. His dramatic walk to the stage through the world-famous museum courtyard
took a full four minutes. The night lights and shadows played with Macron's unsmiling, stoney face
as he strode purposely forward amid the strains of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. The choice of the European
Union's national anthem, rather than France's, is a harbinger of Macron's political project and the
globalist interests he serves.
The media says what??? Hillary Clinton complains about the media? Which media says that? Give
us ONE single example Hillary! Just one where the media says you can't talk about that. Just pure
hypocrisy
Geographically, the Louvre is situated midway between the traditional political venues of the
Place de la Concorde for the right, and La Bastille for the left. Here was Macron intimating once
again, as he did during his campaign, that he represents neither right or left. He has vowed to overturn
the bipartisan structure of French politics, creating a new "centrist" movement. Just like his other
moniker of being an "outsider," however, this image of Macron is a deftly manicured illusion.
Superficially, there is a semblance of variance from the political establishment. Macron formed
his En Marche (Forward) movement only a year ago. He has never held elected political office. And
until three years ago hardly anyone had ever heard of him. Now he is to become the eighth president
of the French Fifth Republic.
Paradoxically, Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, congratulated the French
people for "choosing liberty, equality and fraternity, and saying no to fake news." Paradoxical
because everything about Emmanuel Macron's "meteoric rise" through elite banking and his equally
stellar crossover to politics smacks of fabrication and fakery. With his elite education at the Ecole National
Academie (ENA) where future French political leaders are groomed, to his precocious elevation in
investment banking, followed by his seamless entrance into top-flight government politics, Macron
is evidently a person with powerful guiding forces behind him.
Former banking colleagues recall that he wasn't particularly capable in his four years at Rothschild's
while on a multi-million-euro income. But he "mastered the art of networking." In a Financial Times
profile published before the election, a senior banker is quoted as saying: "What Mr Macron lacked
in technical knowledge and jargon at first, he made up for with contacts in government." Other sources
recall that "it was never quite clear who Macron worked for."
As the Financial Times noted: "At the bank, Mr Macron navigated around the numerous conflicts
of interest that arise in close-knit Parisian business circles, making good use of his connections
as an Inspecteur des Finances - an elite corps of the very highest-ranking graduates from ENA."
After quitting private finance, Macron joined the government of Socialist President Francois Hollande,
where he at first served as a "special advisor." In 2014, Hollande appointed him as economy minister
where he drew up a draconian program to undermine French employment rights in favor of corporate
profits. Macron resigned from his ministerial post only last year when he set up his own political
party in anticipation of contesting the presidential election.
Macron's En Marche does not have any members in parliament. His government will thus likely be
comprised of patronage and technocrats selected from years of networking in the financial and Élysée
Palace establishment. What little is known about Macron's policies is his stated commitment to more
stringent economic austerity, promises to slash €60 billion in public spending over the next five
years and axe up to 120,000 state sector jobs. He is also setting to drive through more "business
friendly" changes in labor laws that will allow bosses to more easily hire and fire employees. He
is giving companies license to negotiate increased working hours and lower salaries outside of statutory
law. So, the notion that Macron is some kind of benign "centrist" is an insult to common intelligence.
He is a "centrist" only in the sense of illusory corporate media branding; in objective terms, Macron
is a dedicated economic hitman for global capitalism.
Whatever one might think of his defeated rival Marine Le Pen of the Front National, she certainly
had Macron accurately summed up when she referred to him as the "candidate of finance." Independent
Socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who was narrowly knocked out in the first round of the election on
April 23, predicts that Macron will be a "disaster" for French society, blowing apart economic inequality
and social contracts to turn the country into the kind of poverty-wage slavery seen in the US and
Britain.
There is sound reason why the French and European political establishment exulted in Macron's
victory. He is no outsider, overturning the status quo for a more democratic outcome. He is in fact
a consummate insider who will pursue policies pandering to elite interests, at the expense of the
great majority.
Macron's "centrist [sic] victory brought joy to Europe's political establishment," reported the
New York Times, while the BBC informed of "palpable relief among European leaders." Outgoing President
Francois Hollande – the most unpopular French leader ever – warmly congratulated Macron, as did incumbent
prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve and other senior government figures. Macron had been endorsed by
Hollande's so-called Socialist Party and the center-right Republicans. So much for his vaunted "outsider"
image. Macron was also endorsed prior to the weekend vote by former US President Barack Obama and
European leaders, including Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker.
The irony of such brazen "electoral interference" is of course that this was what such Western
leaders have accused Russia of. Again, it also shows that Macron will be a "centrist" in more ways
than is meant. He will serve as a "dead-center" advocate of the transatlantic politics of Washington-led
neoliberal capitalism and NATO militarism. The French President-elect published a political autobiography
earlier this year entitled 'Revolution'. The only thing "revolutionary" about Macron's victory is
that the political establishment has invented an image for itself that upturns reality.
The intense media marketing of Macron as a "centrist outsider" is a coup against the meaning of
words and plain language. It is also worth noting that over 16 million French voters abstained or
spoiled their votes against the 20 million who opted for Macron. French society, as for other Western
nations, is riven by the ravages of global capitalism. And now here comes the "Mozart of Finance"
to allegedly bring harmony from the appalling discord he and others like him have sown.
"... When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties, it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as an "occupying force". ..."
"... That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual". Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections. ..."
"... The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes. ..."
"... Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs. ..."
"... ...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors." That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre." ..."
"... That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat. ..."
"... There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself. But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous. ..."
Trump is just a one acute symptom of the underling crisis of the neoliberal social system, that
we experience. So his removal will not solve the crisis.
And unless some kind of New Deal Capitalism is restored there is no alternative to the neoliberalism
on the horizon.
But the question is: Can the New Deal Capitalism with its "worker aristocracy" strata and the
role of organized labor as a weak but still countervailing force to corporate power be restored
? I think not.
With the level of financialization achieved, the water is under the bridge. The financial toothpaste
can't be squeezed back into the tube. That's what makes the current crisis more acute: none of
the parties has any viable solution to the crisis, not the will to attempt to implement some radical
changes.
When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties,
it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust
of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as
an "occupying force".
That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call
it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and
common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual".
Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections.
At least Republican elites resisted the emergence of Trump for as long as they could. Some
even attacked him vociferously. But, unlike in the Democratic Party, the Republican candidate
who most effectively captured the underlying sentiment of GOP voters ended up with the nomination.
The Republican elites had to give way. Why? Because Republican voters fundamentally favor vulgar,
ill-mannered, tawdry politicians? No, because the elite-generated society of America had become
so bad in their view that they turned to the man who most clamorously rebelled against it.
... ... ...
The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over
the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated
purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many
elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise
in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag
is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes.
... ... ...
Then there is the spectacle of the country's financial elites goosing liquidity massively
after the Great Recession to benefit themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting
decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates over many years, accompanied
by massive bond buying called "quantitative easing," proved a boon for Wall Street banks and
corporate America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings
accounts. The result, says economic consultant David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer
, was "the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests
in the history of mankind." Notice that these post-recession transactions were mostly financial
transactions, divorced from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating,
and taking risks-the kinds of activities that spur entrepreneurial zest, generate new enterprises,
and create jobs. Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of
the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and
fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs.
...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid
of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before
the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk
about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors."
That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday
Night Massacre."
That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even
minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat.
... ... ...
There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly
problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself.
But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the
Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous.
IMHO Trump betrayal of his voters under the pressure from DemoRats ("the dominant neoliberal
wing of Democratic Party", aka "Clinton's wing") makes the situation even worse. a real Gordian
knot. Or, in chess terminology, a Zugzwang.
He raised income taxes for the top 1.5% and dramatically lowered capital gain tax. As rich get
bulk of their income from capital gains and bonds he lowered taxes for rich. Is this so difficult
to understand ?
As for "Russian troll" label, that only demonstrates your level brainwashing and detachment
from reality. Clinical case of a politically correct neocon. People like you, as well as "Washington
swamp", underestimate how angry people outside, let's say, top 20% are -- angry enough to elect
Trump.
This boiling anger is now an important factor in the USA politics. That's why the US neocons
feels do insecure and resort to dirty tricks to depose Trump. They want the full, 100% political
power back.
Even the fact that Trump conceded the most important of his election promises is not enough
for them. Carthago delenda est -- Trump must go -- is the mentality. But if it comes to the impeachment,
"demorats" (aka neoliberal democrats) might see really interesting things, when it happens. It
might well be that this time neocons/neolibs might really feel people wrath. I might be wrong
as psychopaths are unable to experience emotions, only to fake them.
ZJ: So let's move to foreign policy. You were one of the few Democrats on the Hill who sort of
opposed the strikes on Syria, against the Syrian government by President Trump. You opposed them
on the substance, not just on the process arguments. But of course we know these conflicts, they
didn't start under President Trump, they are largely continuations of what happened under President
Obama. Do you feel for instance that Obama's drone program in Pakistan or the support, for instance,
the Saudi war in Yemen have also helped terrorists recruit and have also harmed U.S. interests?
RK: I'm opposed to the policy in Yemen where we're providing arms to Saudi Arabia, which is actually
aligned with Al Qaeda in a proxy war against Iran with the Houthis. Seventeenmillion Yemenis are
facing famines and many of the Yemenis equate the Saudi bombs with U.S. bombs. It's not helping create
more peace. It's creating more generations of hate. And the Saudis are aligned with Al Qaeda which
has taken responsibility for the underwear bomber and for attacks on synagogues in Chicago. So our
policy there is muddled and isn't actually helping contain terrorism. I think that I've articulated
a foreign policy that says the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, Libya was a mistake, the escalation
in Afghanistan was a mistake, that we really need to have more restrain in our foreign policy, not
do more harm and recognize John Quincy Adams. We shouldn't
go out to slay monsters
. We should give people who are seeking freedom our prayers, our voice, but we don't want tobe
engaged in interventions around the world which has actually led to the spread of terrorism and isn't
making us safer.
ZJ: With respect to what the Justice Democrats are talking about with building a new economy,
I'm curious, you've talked a lot about antitrust policy and competition policy. Some people would
say that would rub up against powerful industries. One of those in your own backyard is Silicon Valley.
Should we be applying this antitrust policy to an industry some people are now calling the
new Wall Street
?
RK: We should be applying the antitrust policy. I don't think Silicon Valley is Wall Street. But
I do think that there needs to be antitrust enforcement, especially on the Internet Service Providers.
Four Internet Service Providers - AT&T, Charter, Time Warner, Comcast - that are basically dividing
up the map is one of the reasons that consumers are paying more for internet access. And I think
there ought to be an antitrust division with the FCC and they ought to enforce the law regardless
of industry. Whether that's airlines, or technology, or banking I don't think anyone is exempt from
antitrust enforcement.
ZJ: How would you rate the past few presidents on antitrust policy and which president do you
think should be the model when it comes to antitrust enforcement?
RK: I think Harry Truman was very strong on antitrust, the Truman Commission looked after some
of the monopolistic behavior, before Truman became president, of monopolistic practices applying
to the Defense Department. Of course Theodore Roosevelt. I think antitrust enforcement needs to
be significantly strengthened.
Matt Stoller has
done excellent work on it, and it's an area of a concentration of economic wealth that has not been
addressed sufficiently inthe past few administrations.
ZJ: Speaking about howthe Justice Democratsseeks to transform the Democratic Party, we saw sort
of a debate when there was the DNC chair race about the role of big donors in the Democrats. Do you
believe, for instance, that the DNC should accept contributions from lobbyists? That was something
that was a rule under Barack Obama - that it would not accept them but that rule was lifted under
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
RK: I disagreed with the lifting of the rule. I believe that the DNC should not be accepting corporate
PAC money or lobbyist money. And I spoke out very strongly when the rule was lifted saying that was
a mistake.
ZJ: Another resolution that was debated at the DNC - and actually a
similar resolution was debated at the RNC, and both of them failed - was basically to say that
if you're a corporate lobbyist, you should not be allowed to be a voting member of the DNC. Do you
think that's an appropriate rule?
RK: I think that's a fair rule that we shouldn't be having corporate lobbyists as part ofDNC voting
members.
Fear and anger dominate the emotions of the French, and today's presidential election will not
only signify the predominance of one candidate over the other. It will also illustrate the predominance
of one emotion over the other.
Support for Macron is primarily motivated by fear of Marine Le Pen. Le Pen's support derives
from the anger against "the [neoliberal] system" personified by Macron.
According to the findings of an extensive study published in today's Monde newspaper, almost 70%
of French people are today in the grip of fear and 67% of anger at the political system!
Only 34% profess hope and only 26% enthusiasm when it comes to the French political system.
It is not fear, as is widely but falsely believed, according to researchers, but anger that impels
people towards "extremes", towards "populism", the fashionable term for antisystemic currents. This
is what experts have concluded.
Fear, they note, reinforces calculations of danger and makes people less adventurous in
their quest for solutions, and so more conservative.
"... This is why all the economic populists will inevitably be labelled right-wing. The 'left' is incapable of dealing with the crisis of neoliberalism, because the most effective tool of neoliberalism, mass immgration, is now held as utterly sacrosanct by them. ..."
"... The modern 'left' is totally anti-working class in every dimension. Only they do adore welfare as a form of charity to dull the effects of mass migration (Though it is likely now more an accelerant of it) and corporatists are fine with it because they pay less from tax increases than they make in outsourcing and insourcing. ..."
"... And the modern left is like this because it is so thoroughly middle class, there are so many reasons for this, but the reality is what it is. So they get confused and ponder why the working class is 'voting against it's own interests'. ..."
"... The part that irks me the most is their disdain for native working class for various, often exaggerated, PC defects and then praise newcomers who have even worse pathologies. Maybe they don't recognise it, but they hate the native working class because they are of their society and thus a threat whereas outsiders can be safely brought in like strike breakers. (They think) ..."
Introduction: Every day in unimaginable ways, prominent leaders from the left and the right,
from bankers to Parisian intellectuals, are fabricating stories and pushing slogans that denigrate
presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.
They obfuscate her program, substituting the label 'extremist' for her pro-working class and anti-imperialist
commitment. Fear and envy over the fact that a new leader heads a popular movement has seeped into
Emmanuel "Manny" Macron's champagne-soaked dinner parties. He has good reason to be afraid: Le Pen
addresses the fundamental interests of the vast- majority of French workers, farmers, public employees,
unemployed and underemployed youth and older workers approaching retirement.
The mass media, political class and judicial as well as street provocateurs savagely assault Le
Pen, distorting her domestic and foreign policies. They are incensed that Le Pen pledges to remove
France from NATO's integrated command – effectively ending its commitment to US directed global wars.
Le Pen rejects the oligarch-dominated European Union and its austerity programs, which have enriched
bankers and multi-national corporations. Le Pen promises to convoke a national referendum over the
EU – to decide French submission. Le Pen promises to end sanctions against Russia and, instead, increase
trade. She will end France's intervention in Syria and establish ties with Iran and Palestine.
Le Pen is committed to Keynesian demand-driven industrial revitalization as opposed to Emmanuel
Macron's ultra-neoliberal supply-side agenda.
Le Pen's program will raise taxes on banks and financial transactions while fining capital flight
in order to continue funding France's retirement age of 62 for women and 65 for men, keeping the
35 hour work-week, and providing tax free overtime pay. She promises direct state intervention to
prevent factories from relocating to low wage EU economies and firing French workers.
Le Pen is committed to increasing public spending for childcare and for the poor and disabled.
She has pledged to protect French farmers against subsidized, cheap imports.
Marine Le Pen supports abortion rights and gay rights. She opposes the death penalty. She promises
to cut taxes by 10% for low-wage workers. Marine is committed to fighting against sexism and for
equal pay for women.
Marine Le Pen will reduce migration to ten thousand people and crack down on immigrants with links
to terrorists.
Emmanuel Macron: Macro Billionaire and Micro Worker Programs
Macron has been an investment banker serving the Rothschild and Cie Banque oligarchy, which profited
from speculation and the pillage of the public treasury. Macron served in President Hollande's Economy
Ministry, in charge of 'Industry and Digital Affairs' from 2014 through 2016. This was when the 'Socialist'
Hollande imposed a pro-business agenda, which included a 40 billion-euro tax cut for the rich.
Macron is tied to the Republican Party and its allied banking and business Confederations, whose
demands include: raising the retirement age, reducing social spending, firing tens of thousands of
public employees and facilitating the outflow of capital and the inflow of cheap imports.
Macron is an unconditional supporter of NATO and the Pentagon. He fully supports the European
Union. For their part, the EU oligarchs are thrilled with Macron's embrace of greater austerity for
French workers, while the generals can expect total material support for the ongoing and future US-NATO
wars on three continents.
Propaganda, Labels and Lies
Macron's pro-war, anti-working class and 'supply-side' economic policies leave us with only one
conclusion: Marine Le Pen is the only candidate of the left. Her program and commitments are pro-labor,
not 'hard' or 'far' right – and certainly not 'fascist'.
Macron, on the other hand is a committed rightwing extremist, certainly no 'centrist', as the
media and the political elite claim! One has only to look at his background in banking, his current
supporters among the oligarchs and his ministerial policies when he served Francois Holland.
The 'Macronistas' have accused Marine Le Pen of extreme 'nationalism', 'fascism', 'anti-Semitism'
and 'anti-immigrant racism'. 'The French Left', or what remains of it, has blindly swallowed the
oligarchs' campaign against Le Pen despite the malodorous source of these libels.
Le Pen is above all a 'sovereigntist': 'France First'. Her fight is against the Brussels oligarchs
and for the restoration of sovereignty to the French people. There is an infinite irony in labeling
the fight against imperial political power as 'hard right'. It is insulting to debase popular demands
for domestic democratic power over basic economic policies, fiscal spending, incomes and prices policies,
budgets and deficits as 'extremist and far right'.
Marine Le Pen has systematically transformed the leadership, social, economic program and direction
of the National Front Party.
She expelled its anti-Semites, including her own father! She transformed its policy on women's
rights, abortion, gays and race. She won the support of young unemployed and employed factory workers,
public employees and farmers. Young workers are three times more likely to support her national industrial
revitalization program over Macron's 'free market dogma'. Le Pen has drawn support from French farmers
as well as the downwardly mobile provincial middle-class, shopkeepers, clerks and tourism-based workers
and business owners.
Despite the trends among the French masses against the oligarchs, academics, intellectuals and
political journalists have aped the elite's slander against Le Pen because they will not antagonize
the prestigious media and their administrators in the universities. They will not acknowledge the
profound changes that have occurred within the National Front under Marine Le Pen. They are masters
of the 'double discourse' – speaking from the left while working with the right. They confuse the
lesser evil with the greater evil.
If Macron wins this election (and nothing is guaranteed!), he will certainly implement his 'hard'
and 'extreme' neo-liberal agenda. When the French workers go on strike and demonstrators erect barricades
in the streets in response to Macron's austerity, the fake-left will bleat out their inconsequential
'critique' of 'impure reason'. They will claim that they were right all along.
If Le Pen loses this election, Macron will impose his program and ignite popular fury. Marine
will make an even stronger candidate in the next election if the French oligarchs' judiciary does
not imprison her for the crime of defending sovereignty and social justice.
This is why all the economic populists will inevitably be labelled right-wing. The 'left'
is incapable of dealing with the crisis of neoliberalism, because the most effective tool of neoliberalism,
mass immgration, is now held as utterly sacrosanct by them. Thus any salves by the 'left'
or 'far-left' (Hi Syriza and your blanket amnesty of illegal immigrants at a time of 40% unemployment
in Greece!) will be temporary at best. No amount of welfare will make up for increased unemployment,
lowered wages, a lack of housing, a lack of affordable family foundation and ethnic displacement.
It makes me sick when I see so-called socialists making energetic campaigns to stop failed asylum
seekers being deported.
The modern 'left' is totally anti-working class in every dimension. Only they do adore
welfare as a form of charity to dull the effects of mass migration (Though it is likely now more
an accelerant of it) and corporatists are fine with it because they pay less from tax increases
than they make in outsourcing and insourcing.
And the modern left is like this because it is so thoroughly middle class, there are so
many reasons for this, but the reality is what it is. So they get confused and ponder why the
working class is 'voting against it's own interests'. It's painful to watch. One's ethnic
group having a majority and centrality in it's homeland is the most valuable thing imaginable.
The wealthy whites who sneer pay an exorbitant tax to insulate their children and raise them among
their own kind, but don't ever seem to realise.
The part that irks me the most is their disdain for native working class for various, often
exaggerated, PC defects and then praise newcomers who have even worse pathologies. Maybe they
don't recognise it, but they hate the native working class because they are of their society and
thus a threat whereas outsiders can be safely brought in like strike breakers. (They think)
Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after seeing this short
video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting World War III with
Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and then asking for a comment:
The antisemitism of old Le Pen was just two statements:
the gas chambers are just a footnote in history
the German occupation was relatively benign.
Both statements are objectively true.
Le Pen's crime is denying the unique holocaust.
He's not the only one, a USA Indian has the same view
Ward Churchill, 'A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the
Present', San Francisco 1997
Ward Churchill, a professor of Boulder university, also fell into disgrace.
Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.
@Carlton Meyer Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after
seeing this short video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting
World War III with Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and
then asking for a comment:
@Carlton Meyer Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after
seeing this short video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting
World War III with Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and
then asking for a comment:
The big issue is why Le Pen's popularity seems to have tanked, even though opinion polls suggest
most French people support immigration restrictionism.
The usual explanation is MSM brainwashing, which no doubt plays a part, but if people are so
easily influenced by the media, why haven't they been brainwashed into supporting more immigration?
In my personal experience, people say they won't vote for nationalist candidates like Le Pen
for two reasons:
1. they're dejected working class people who distrust all politicians (including nationalists)
and can't be persuaded to turn up and vote
2. they're cautious middle-class people who want less immigration but are afraid politically
inexperienced outsiders will mess up the economy and social services.
"Le Pen rejects the oligarch-dominated European Union and its austerity programs, which have
enriched bankers and multi-national corporations. Le Pen promises to convoke a national referendum
over the EU – to decide French submission. Le Pen promises to end sanctions against Russia and,
instead, increase trade. She will end France's intervention in Syria and establish ties with Iran
and Palestine."
Do you remember anybody from recent history who also made similar lofty promises, but found
himself neutered by invisible rulers?
France (that hypocrite nation) is a proud part of the western civilisation, which thrives on
hegemony. So, LePen-the-cursed will not do anything to change that fundamental world order. Therein
lies the rub.
Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.
True but misleading. Most of those deaths were due to accidentally introduced diseases. North
America, in particular, was largely emptied out by waves of new diseases that struck down tribes
that had never seen or heard of the white man.
Yes, there was some fighting, though much of it was factional rather than racial - eg, the
abused slaves of the Aztecs sided with the Spaniards for good reason . the Spaniards, at least,
weren't cannibals (except in the transubstantiational sense.) Yes, there were a few cases where
- after the vast accidental wipeout - whites noticed the disease vulnerability of the natives
and intentionally exploited it (smallpox tainted blankets).
But even if none of the deliberate massacres had been done, the demographics wouldn't look
much different - a Europe teeming with starving peasants simply wasn't going to stay put while
the recently-emptied North America sat mostly idle. Nature abhors a vacuum and adverse-possession
laws exist for a reason.
Today, of course, whites in Europe and America contracept themselves to extinction and then
bitch and moan about Moslem and Mexican invasion . silly people. At least the American Indians
didn't do it to themselves.
@Z-man Amanpour isn't a Neocon, per say, as she isn't genetically a Jew. However since she
married and had an offspring with a Jew and from this interview's tone she now qualifies. lol
She is also a beast to look at or listen to. (Grin)
@jilles dykstra The antisemitism of old Le Pen was just two statements:
- the gas chambers are just a footnote in history
- the German occupation was relatively benign.
Both statements are objectively true.
Le Pen's crime is denying the unique holocaust.
He's not the only one, a USA Indian has the same view
Ward Churchill, 'A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the
Present', San Francisco 1997
Ward Churchill, a professor of Boulder university, also fell into disgrace.
Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.
@unpc downunder The big issue is why Le Pen's popularity seems to have tanked, even though
opinion polls suggest most French people support immigration restrictionism.
The usual explanation is MSM brainwashing, which no doubt plays a part, but if people are so
easily influenced by the media, why haven't they been brainwashed into supporting more immigration?
In my personal experience, people say they won't vote for nationalist candidates like Le Pen
for two reasons:
1. they're dejected working class people who distrust all politicians (including nationalists)
and can't be persuaded to turn up and vote
2. they're cautious middle-class people who want less immigration but are afraid politically
inexperienced outsiders will mess up the economy and social services.
"... In a system rigged for ever-increasing concentration of wealth, identifying whose ox to gore is precisely an important part of making things better. And the higher one goes on the wealth spectrum, the bigger the number of resentful underlings who are prepared to do the necessary ox-goring. ..."
"... Just Noah being disingenuous, as usual. ..."
"... That's given (part of his institutional role as a Bloomberg columnist). What is important is his amazingly sophisticated level of dishonesty. In this sense he is simply great: he creatively apply identity politics to the problem that in all times was defined as "class straggle", in which Warren Buffet class is winning ;-) "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." ..."
"... Note that he never mentioned the term "neoliberalism" and "neoliberal globalization". Still a very creative astroturfing ..."
"... FDR taxed virtually everyone, by getting Congress to tax almost everyone. Exempt from taxes as a compromise were most blacks and browns and white people trash, but every white workers was taxed. Those taxes mostly paid workers, with some taxes paid to workers without jobs so they could keep paying workers to work as iffy they still had a job paying them money they used to pay workers. ..."
"... FDR was much plainer speaking compared to today, but that's driven by progressives buying into the majority of free lunch economics sold by the Kochs of the 50s and 60s and turned into mainline by Milton Friedman ..."
"... "A large proportion of these unemployed and their dependents have been forced on the relief rolls. The burden on the Federal Government has grown with great rapidity. We have here a human as well as an economic problem. When humane considerations are concerned, Americans give them precedence. The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers. ..."
"... "I am not willing [to accept] that the vitality of our people be further sapped by the giving of cash, of market baskets, of a few hours of weekly work cutting grass, raking leaves or picking up .papers in the public parks. We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance and courage and determination. This decision brings me to the problem of what the Government should do with approximately five million unemployed now on the relief rolls." ..."
"... And it was FDR who was the capitalist: "All work undertaken should be useful -- not just for a day, or a year, but useful in the sense that it affords permanent improvement in living conditions or that it creates future new wealth for the Nation. ... Preference should be given to those projects which will be self-liquidating in the sense that there is a reasonable expectation that the Government will get its money back at some future time." ..."
"... I doubt that Jeff Bezos subscribes to the idea that "All work undertaken should be useful..." His business model is to subvert all brick and mortar stores into acing as his exhibition halls so that customer can investigate item and buy it from Amazon slightly cheaper. that's a kind of sophisticated, Internet age, parasitism. ..."
"... One also can argue that Elon Musk is a new type of Ponzi entrepreneur, using Minsky classification. His ability to repay those loans that he is taking is very questionable. ..."
"The problem with populism isn't that its anger is unjustified -- lots of people are really
hurting, and the economic and political systems really are deeply unfair in many ways. It's
that the anger is aimed in all directions in a confused jumble of blame and resentment.
That kind of confused war of all against all is unlikely to yield good results. Instead of
an anger-based populism that focuses its energy on attacking some group of elites, what the
country needs is a reformist populist movement that focuses on changing the system itself.
Instead of thinking about who to blame, Americans should be thinking about how to make things
better."
First response: "yeah, that whole 'French Revolution' thing was useless." / snark
Second response: "What pablum! In a system rigged for ever-increasing concentration of wealth,
identifying whose ox to gore is precisely an important part of making things better. And the higher
one goes on the wealth spectrum, the bigger the number of resentful underlings who are prepared
to do the necessary ox-goring."
That's given (part of his institutional role as a Bloomberg columnist). What is important is his amazingly sophisticated level of dishonesty. In this sense he is simply
great: he creatively apply identity politics to the problem that in all times was defined as "class
straggle", in which Warren Buffet class is winning ;-) "There's class warfare, all right, but
it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
That's typical for neoliberals in general.
Note that he never mentioned the term "neoliberalism" and "neoliberal globalization". Still
a very creative astroturfing
"You kind of need to get your analysis right. Also you can try many different things like FDR
did. Why isn't Noah Smith complaining about Yellen killing jobs?"
You obviously have no clue what FDR, and his Yellen, Mariner Eccles, actually did, nor the
role of the Congress voters elected back then.
FDR taxed virtually everyone, by getting Congress to tax almost everyone. Exempt from taxes
as a compromise were most blacks and browns and white people trash, but every white workers was
taxed. Those taxes mostly paid workers, with some taxes paid to workers without jobs so they could
keep paying workers to work as iffy they still had a job paying them money they used to pay workers.
FDR was much plainer speaking compared to today, but that's driven by progressives buying into
the majority of free lunch economics sold by the Kochs of the 50s and 60s and turned into mainline
by Milton Friedman.
I never see you saying anything like FDR:
"A large proportion of these unemployed and their dependents have been forced on the relief
rolls. The burden on the Federal Government has grown with great rapidity. We have here a human
as well as an economic problem. When humane considerations are concerned, Americans give them
precedence. The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively
that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally
destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic,
a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is
in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.
"The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.
"I am not willing [to accept] that the vitality of our people be further sapped by the giving of cash,
of market baskets, of a few hours of weekly work cutting grass, raking leaves or picking up .papers
in the public parks. We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but
also their self-respect, their self-reliance and courage and determination. This decision brings
me to the problem of what the Government should do with approximately five million unemployed
now on the relief rolls."
It was FDR who described welfare as the opiate of the masses. It was FDR who called unemployment
a moral decay. It was FDR who called government paid work something that sapped individual vitality.
And it was FDR who was the capitalist: "All work undertaken should be useful -- not just for
a day, or a year, but useful in the sense that it affords permanent improvement in living conditions
or that it creates future new wealth for the Nation. ... Preference should be given to those projects
which will be self-liquidating in the sense that there is a reasonable expectation that the Government
will get its money back at some future time."
FDR and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos would all be in total agreement. None believe in or promise
free lunches.
Paying for things has gotten a bad name, but Obama got thing paid for, which is the reason
the left and right hate him. The left and right want only free lunches.
FDR and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos would all be in total agreement. None believe in or promise
free lunches.
I doubt that Jeff Bezos subscribes to the idea that "All work undertaken should be useful..." His business model is to subvert all brick and mortar stores into acing as his exhibition halls
so that customer can investigate item and buy it from Amazon slightly cheaper. that's a kind of
sophisticated, Internet age, parasitism.
One also can argue that Elon Musk is a new type of Ponzi entrepreneur, using Minsky classification.
His ability to repay those loans that he is taking is very questionable.
"It Is What It Isn't: Fake News Comes of Age as Ideology Trumps Evidence"
Love it!
"All of his complaining is backed up, it goes nearly without saying, with
photographs. Yet he didn't get a picture of the stealth-invading Russian
battalions even though he knew the subject was hotly debated, and proof
would have made his name a household word. Well, he is a household word,
although it's not "Shaun Walker". But you know what I mean."
*Rimshot*
" the author persists with the simpleminded meme that Putin rigged the
American presidential election to prevent Hillary Clinton from winning So
what sabotaged the win Hillary Clinton thought she had in the bag was the
release of damaging information about her which was true and accurate. "
What won the election for Trump was the Democratic Treatment of the poor
white class, whose votes the Democrats took for granted. Clinton consultant,
James Carville, admitted that people vote based on the economy when Bill
Clinton won. But when Hillary lost, for Carville it suddenly became about
Russia, Russia, Russia, akin to Jan yelling Marcia, Marcia, Marcia on the
Brady Bunch. How does an analyst sink to the level of a school girl?
Because the Democrats ignored nearly all of the warning sings, struggled
internally, and needed someone to blame. Russia is an easy target for blame
in US politics. Accepting responsibility for the defeat would have meant a
purge of the Democratic elite from their party's leadership. When Scott
Walker won Wisconsin, the Democrats ignored it. Look at the map of Wisconsin
in Walker's Gubernatorial Victory in 2014, and compare that with Trump's
Presidential Victory in 2016. They're almost identical. The poorer whites
became, the more they voted for Trump.
The DNC has been ignoring the Rust Belt for decades. That's how Clintons
missed Obama's meteoric rise. And in this election, the poor whites have had
enough of voting for a party that mocks them, and fucks them economically.
They simply needed a leader that could get revenge for them on the DNC.
Enter Trump. Did he bullshit? Most certainly, but they did not care. The DNC
was focused on getting Virginia, Nevada, making inroads into a few other
states; holding their base was simply too plebeian.
And it was this shift that happened, rather than the leaks, rather than
Russia, rather than Comey, rather than anything else, that cost the
Democrats the Presidency. This simple shift of a voting block. That's why it
wasn't just Pennsylvania; it was Wisconsin and Michigan:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
"The theme expresses itself in several ways - primitive vs. advanced,
tough vs. delicate, masculine vs. feminine, poor vs. rich, pure vs.
decadent, traditional vs. weird. All of it is code for rural vs. urban."
What held the rust belt states was cities like Chicago, and poor whites
turning out. That didn't happen in this election, because"
"Nothing that happens outside the city matters!" they say at their
cocktail parties, blissfully unaware of where their food is grown. Hey,
remember when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Kind of weird that a big
hurricane hundreds of miles across managed to snipe one specific city and
avoid everything else. To watch the news (or the multiple movies and TV
shows about it), you'd barely hear about how the storm utterly steamrolled
rural Mississippi, killing 238 people and doing an astounding $125 billion
in damage. But who cares about those people, right? What's newsworthy about
a bunch of toothless hillbillies crying over a flattened trailer? New
Orleans is culturally important. It matters. To those ignored, suffering
people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elites.
"Are you assholes listening now?"
On Cultural Integration:
"the racism of my youth was always one step removed. I never saw a family
member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black people we had in
town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when
they passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you
ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant
you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive. Looking back, I
think the idea was that the local minorities were fine as long as they
acted exactly like us."
An Issue with Priorities:
"Blacks riot, Muslims set bombs, gays spread AIDS, Mexican cartels behead
children, atheists tear down Christmas trees. Meanwhile, those liberal Lena
Dunhams in their $5,000-a-month apartments sip wine and say, "But those
white Christians are the real problem!" Terror victims scream in the street
next to their own severed limbs, and the response from the elites is to cry
about how men should be allowed to use women's restrooms and how it's cruel
to keep chickens in cages The foundation upon which America was undeniably
built - family, faith, and hard work - had been deemed unfashionable and
small-minded. Those snooty elites up in their ivory tower laughed as they
kicked away that foundation, and then wrote 10,000-word thinkpieces blaming
the builders for the ensuing collapse."
Most importantly, on the economy:
"They're getting the shit kicked out of them. I know, I was there. Step
outside of the city, and the suicide rate among young people fucking
doubles. The recession pounded rural communities, but all the recovery went
to the cities. The rate of new businesses opening in rural areas has utterly
collapsed. See, rural jobs used to be based around one big local business -
a factory, a coal mine, etc. When it dies, the town dies. Where I grew up,
it was an oil refinery closing that did us in. I was raised in the
hollowed-out shell of what the town had once been. The roof of our high
school leaked when it rained. Cities can make up for the loss of
manufacturing jobs with service jobs - small towns cannot. That model
doesn't work below a certain population density."
On hopelessness:
"In a city, you can plausibly aspire to start a band, or become an actor,
or get a medical degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town,
there may be no venues for performing arts aside from country music bars and
churches. There may only be two doctors in town - aspiring to that job means
waiting for one of them to retire or die. You open the classifieds and all
of the job listings will be for fast food or convenience stores. The
"downtown" is just the corpses of mom and pop stores left shattered in
Walmart's blast crater, the "suburbs" are trailer parks. There are parts of
these towns that look post-apocalyptic. I'm telling you, the hopelessness
eats you alive.
And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and
type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has
replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as
a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities
is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate
of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit, at least politicians
act like they care about the inner cities."
This frustration was built up over decades. Not overnight. Not because of
an October Surprise. Not because of leaked emails, and certainly, not
because of Russia. And unless the DNC is able to grasp the basics, or the
RNC fucks up the economy, Republicans will keep on winning the presidency.
It's just that simple.
Take a look at the early footage on election night. The Democrats thought
they were going to win, even after the email release. Even after the
scandals, they thought they had the election in the bag. And that's because
you don't miss an entire electoral class overnight either. On a final note,
there's no such thing as White Privilege; it's a lie made up to take away
our Rights, just like certain cities took away the Rights of minorities. The
Rights against search and seizure is a Right, not a Privilege.
Thanks for the link to the David Wong article. I'd read it before
(possibly linked to at John Michael Greer's Archdruid Report blog) but
thoroughly enjoyed reading it again.
As we might expect from the speech's location on Roosevelt Island, Clinton explicitly claims FDR's
mantle. From the introductory portion of her remarks:
[CLINTON: It is wonderful[1]]To be here in this beautiful park dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt's[2]
enduring vision of America, the nation we want to be.
Moreover, she not only claims FDR's mantle, she claims Roosevelt's Four Freedoms (history;
text):
You know, President Roosevelt's Four Freedoms are a testament to our nation's unmatched aspirations
and a reminder of our unfinished work at home and abroad. His legacy lifted up a nation and inspired
presidents who followed.
And quoting directly from FDR's Four Freedom's speech:
CLINTON: President Roosevelt called on every American to do his or her part, and every American
answered. He said there's no mystery about what it takes to build a strong and prosperous America:
"Equality of opportunity Jobs for those who can work Security for those who need it The ending
of special privilege for the few (cheers, applause.) The preservation of civil liberties for all
(cheers, applause) a wider and constantly rising standard of living."
(Interestingly, Clinton's quotes are not the actual Freedoms; we'll get to that in a
moment.) After some buildup, she then goes on to structure her speech around four policy areas (which
I've to say is refreshing, although not refreshing enough, as we shall see). Here they are, organized
into a single list instead of being scattered through the speech:
CLINTON: If you'll give me the chance, I'll wage and win Four Fights for you.
The first is to make the economy work for everyday Americans, not just those at the top.
Now, the second fight[3] is to strengthen America's families, because when our families
are strong, America is strong.
So we have a third fight: to harness all of America's power, smarts, and values to maintain
our leadership for peace, security, and prosperity.
That's why we have to win the fourth fight – reforming our government and revitalizing
our democracy so that it works for everyday Americans.
Before l take a look at the talking points that Clinton places under these four heads, let me
quote Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, so we can compare and contrast them to Clinton's. The context is
different; Clinton's is a campaign speech, and Roosevelt is addressing Congress, as a re-elected
President, in his State of the Union speech, in 1941, before our entrance into World War II (hence
the references to "everywhere in the world," and "translated into world terms").
Here's FDR:
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four
essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of[4] speech and expression–everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings
which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the
world.
The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction
of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position
to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.
Notice the extreme specificity and material basis of FDR's language: Freedom from want;
freedom from fear. You know, today, in your very own life, whether you are in want or in
fear. You don't have to ask anybody else, and it doesn't take some sort of credential plus a processing
fee to figure it out. Now contrast Clinton: "[M]ake the economy work for everyday Americans." What
the heck does that even mean? Certainly
nobody knows what "everyday Americans" means. This is focus-grouped bafflegab emitted by Democratic
consultants who are
slumming it on the Chinese bus instead of the Acela because optics. Could we be in fear or in
want after the economy "works"? Who knows? And if Clinton believes we won't be, why not say that?
With that, let me poke holes in some of the policies under Clinton's Four Four Well, Four Whatever-the-Heck-They-Are,
since FDR's "Freedom of" and "Freedom from" construct seems to have been disappeared from Clinton's
reversioning of FDR's material. I understand that the Clinton campaign, in a White House-style policy
shop operation,
will be rolling out more concrete material
in
the next 513 days, so I'll focus only on major gaps and contradictions. (The talking points won't
necessarily be in speech order, though the headines will be.)
"Make the economy work for everyday Americans, not just those at the top"
CLINTON: "I will rewrite the tax code so it rewards hard work and investments here at home, not
quick trades or stashing profits overseas. (Cheers, applause.)"
CLINTON: "We will unleash a new generation of entrepreneurs and small business owners by providing
tax relief, cutting red tape, and making it easier to get a small business loan."
First, I suppose it's OK to appropriate Republican rhetoric, Third Way fashion - "tax
relief," "red tape" - but it sure seems odd to do so after claiming Roosevelt's mantle. Second, we've
got entire industries (Uber; AirBnB) whose business model is to gain market share by breaking the
law, and I'd like to know what Clinton thinks about ignoring "red tape" entirely. And that's not
just a theoretical concern for small business, since the so-called "sharing economy" - Yves calls
it
the "shafting economy" - threatens them as well. (What does it mean for local restaurants and
Farmer's Markets that food plus a recipe can now be delivered
via an app?)
CLINTON: "To make the middle class mean something again, with rising incomes and broader horizons.
And to give the poor a chance to work their way into it."
First, note the shift from "everyday Americans" (whatever that means) to "middle class" (whatever
that means) and "the poor" (I think we know what that means). Because Clinton cannot
really define who her programs target, it's not possible to determine who will actually benefit from
them; hence, "mean something" is vacuous. People can project, of course, but 2008 should have taught
us the danger of doing that. Second, there are well-known policies that provide concrete material
benefits to wage workers, and which it would be easy for Clinton to support, if she in fact does
so. The first is raising the minimum wage, not to Obama's pissant $10.10, but to the $15 that so
many on the ground are pushing for. Silence. More radically, we have programs like the Basic Income
Guarantee or the Jobs Guarantee (or both). Programs like this would be of great benefit especially
to those who have been cast out from our permanently shrunken workforce, and will in all likelihood
never work again. These programs target millions, and so who benefits is easy to see. Silence.
CLINTON: "There are leaders of finance who want less short-term trading and more long-term investing."
There are leaders in finance who are walking the street but who should be in jail. It's hard
to see how "confidence" can be restored for "everyday Americans" until elite criminals no longer
have impunity. Of course, taking a stand like that would make life hard for Clinton with the Rubinite
faction of the Democratic Party, along with many Wall Street donors, and many contributors to the
Clinton Foundation, but corruption isn't my problem. It's Clinton's. So, again, silence.
"Strengthen America's families"
CLINTON: "I believe you should look forward to retirement with confidence, not anxiety."
First, note again how abstract Clinton's words are. Where FDR says "freedom from fear," Clinton
says "not anxiety." Where FDR says "freedom from want," Clinton (with Wall Street) says "confidence."
Second, and as usual, what do Clinton's words even mean? Let me revise them: "I believe
Social Security benefits should be raised, not lowered, and that benefits should be age-neutral.
It's unconscionable that the younger you are, the worse off you will be when you're old. I also believe
that Social Security benefits should begin at age 60, so more can retire from the workforce, and
more young people enter." This is not hard. It doesn't take a think tank to work out.
CLINTON: "[I believe] that you should have the peace of mind that your health care will be there
when you need it, without breaking the bank."
What does that mean? Well, we know what it means. It means tinkering round the edges
of ObamaCare, keeping the sucking mandibles of the health insurance companies firmly embedded in
the body politic, and
not bringing our health care system up to world standards.
CLINTON: "I believe you should have the right to earn paid sick days. (Cheers, applause.)"
"Reforming our government and revitalizing our democracy"
CLINTON: "We have to stop the endless flow of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our
elections, corrupting our political process, and drowning out the voices of our people. (Cheers,
applause.)"
CLINTON: "If necessary, I will support a constitutional amendment to undo the Supreme Court's
decision in Citizens United. (Cheers, applause.)"
However, the shout-out to a specific policy advocated by Move to Amend might make one reflect
on the curious lack of specificity so prevalent elsewhere in the speech.
CLINTON: "I want to make it easier for every citizen to vote. That's why I've proposed universal,
automatic registration and expanded early voting. (Cheers, applause.)"
There's plenty to like in Clinton's speech at the talking point level. (For example, on immigration,
she does support "a path to citizenship," though curiously not an end to mass incarceration, or reforms
to policing.) But over-all, I think any grand vision disappears in a welter of bullet points, vague
language, and a resolute unwillingness to present policies that would visibly benefit all
Americans, instead being tailored to the narrow constituencies of the sliced up version of America
so beloved by the political class.
Here's a random factoid you can use to frame whatever policy options a candidate presents. I keep
track of #BlackLivesMatter shootings on my Twitter feed, and most of them come with pictures of the
scene. The pictures come from all across the country, as we might expect, and I have started looked
at the backgrounds: Invariably, there are signs of a second- or third-world level of infrastructural
decay and destruction: Cracked sidewalks, potholed roads, sagging powerlines, weed-choked lots, empty
storefronts, dreary utilitarian architecture just as soul-sucking as anything the Soviets could have
produced.
... ... ...
ekstase, June 14, 2015 at 3:57 pm
"To make the middle class mean something again, with rising incomes and broader horizons. And
to give the poor a chance to work their way into it."
Why are the middle class and the poor always invited to "have a chance"? Or to "work their
way into it"? It is supposed to be a fair system, not one in which some people have been crippled
by cheaters, and therefore need to work their way out of the unfair position they have been put
in. The logic seems off.
tongorad, June 14, 2015 at 4:06 pm
Why are the middle class and the poor always invited to "have a chance"? Or to "work their way
into it"?
"Have a chance:" The old "skin in the game" routine. Everyone deserves the chance to risk their
skin. Nice, eh? "Work their way into it:" Divide and conquer. The deserving poor and middle class
vs undeserving.
jrs, June 14, 2015 at 11:53 pm
one also has a chance to win the lottery if one plays it. Well one does not a good chance but
a chance.
Lexington, June 15, 2015 at 1:26 am
Why are the middle class and the poor always invited to "have a chance"? Or to "work their way
into it"? Because in America some win and some lose, but the losers deserved it because they lack
ability, persistence, a strong work ethic, or otherwise have some serious character flaw that
prevents them from succeeding. In American everyone who deserves success gets it. Or in the shorthand
of American political discourse, it's about equalizing "opportunity", not "outcome".
Hillary isn't promising that under her presidency everyone in America will have economic security
and some basic allotment of human dignity – that would have after all be defiling the altar of
"meritocracy" at which America's elite worships – but those who deserve it will.
As for the others, well America will always need fast food workers, convenience store clerks
and Walmart greeters. In any case those sorts of people have no right to aspire to a station in
life higher than the one for which one providence suited them.
craazyboy, June 14, 2015 at 4:49 pm
Might be interesting to compare it to Senator Obama speeches. Many parts seem hauntingly familiar,
but 8 years and 500 plus days does overly tax my memory. Then maybe compare it to a Reagan speech.
Maybe it's my long term memory kicking in.
But that may be more work than it's worth.
Oh geez. Today is gym day. The Fox News TV is there. I can smell the fumes bubbling up from
the swamp pit already. Hillary Clinton has embraced FDR and gone bungee cord jumping completely
off the far, far, left cliff. Gawd help us.
Bernie, don't let Hillary sit in your lap. Let's try and keep this believable.
OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL, June 14, 2015 at 6:45 pm
We have 1400 billionaires in this country (up from 700 when the "Crisis" began) and we can't
find one, NOT ONE, with a functioning moral compass who is willing to do the least little thing
for the actual *people* in this country by supporting a real alternative candidate to Fascist
War Monger 1 (Hilary) or Fascist War Monger 2 (Jeb).
Forget Grandpa Buffet and his homely homilies while he steals off with insider deals on Goldman
preferred, or BillG, who does some good things but then goes and leads the Better Than Cash Alliance
(an attempt to get everyone in the developing world to run up debts on a MasterCard). Mark, Elon,
Peter don't you have even one remaining moral bone left that will make you save us from these
charlatans?
David, June 14, 2015 at 6:49 pm
" hatchet-faced austerity enforcer.."
In the links this morning, you castigated someone for making sexist comments about Hillary.
You said,
"..it's dumb, because emphasizes the personal characteristics of candidates as opposed to their
political ones."
Other than that, I enjoyed the article.
Blue Guy Red State, June 15, 2015 at 4:24 pm
Bernie Sanders resonating with some very Tea Party friendly members of my extended family,
along with various traditional lefties like me (aging Boomer and former Independent who move right
to join Democratic Party in 1980s) and Millenial offspring. Summer family camping trip might get
interesting!
Sen. Sanders is making more sense to more people because we've tried trickle-down, tax-cutting
Reaganomics for 35 years, and it's been a disaster across the board unless you're filthy rich.
(And the filthy rich live on the same planet as the rest of us, breathe the same air and drink
the same water too.)
People are ready for REAL hope and REAL change; this will give Sen. Sanders a lot more traction
than the MSM and both GOP and Democratic bigwigs expect. Good.
Synoia, June 14, 2015 at 8:25 pm
S.S. Clinton, the beginning of a Titanic voyage.
I cannot perceive of anything concrete coming form a second Clinton presidency, except more
and more constituents thrown under the bus, the space already crowded with groups so discarded
by President Obama.
I'm for Bernie.
craazyman. June 14, 2015 at 8:48 pm
Now that Hillary is officially running for President, it's time to ask the tough questions.
The tough questions separate a vanity candidate who just want media attention from the hardened
policy field marshall who has to make the tough decisions in the face of strenuous opposition.
If Hillary is for real, she might get elected, so its not too early to think of the Top 10 Questions
for President H.R. Clinton at her first press conference.
... ... ...
Question #6: This is a multiple choice question!
How many hedge funds does it take to destroy society?
a) less than 100
b) just one
c) they can't take you anyway, you don't already know how to go
d) what kind of question is that?
Question #5: Are Republlcans completely crazy or do they just seem like it?
... ... ..
drum roll please . . . .
Is Bruce Jenner still a roll model for America's athletic youth and if not, why not?
^ ^ ^
Holy smokes those are tough questions for any body, much less a US president. but they need to
be clever if they're the President don't they!
Ed Walker, June 14, 2015 at 10:10 pm
Fun factoid. Sunday Paper has different headline than current article up on web. Here's the
headline from the paper:
Sounding Populist Themes, Clinton Pledges to Close Gap in Wealth.
And here's the headline from the web right now:
Hillary Clinton, in Roosevelt Island Speech, Pledges to Close Income Gap
"Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said drug companies that would benefit
from a Pacific trade pact should sell their products to the U.S. government at a discount in her
strongest comments yet on an issue that has divided her party."
"Clinton's comments amount to an implicit rebuke of President Barack Obama's efforts to secure
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and a nod toward liberal critics of the deal as she campaigns
to win the Democratic nomination for the November 2016 presidential election."
"I have held my peace because I thought it was important for the Congress to have a full debate
without thrusting presidential politics and candidates into it," she said at a campaign stop in
Burlington, Iowa. "But now I think the president and his team could have the chance to drive a
harder bargain."
"Clinton did not say whether she would support or reject the deal. But she criticized several
aspects of the agreement "
"Our drug companies, if they are going to get what they want, they should give more to America,"
Sanctuary, June 15, 2015 at 1:51 am
I was in Cuyahoga County in 2004 and I can tell you unequivocally, they (the Republicans) played
every dirty trick in the book and stole that election. They were calling people up and telling
them that Democrats vote the next day, Republicans vote on that day and/or calling people up and
"informing" them of the incorrect polling location to go to, closing down polling locations or
not starting them for several hours past the mandated time.
The 2000 morass I blame on Gore, since by no stretch of the imagination should that election
have even been close enough that a few million votes undercounted or prevented would have swung
the election. That he chose to buy into the Republican memes about Clinton, act guilty, and run
away from him, was his own bad judgment.
When you act guilty in the US, you ARE guilty. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. Say what
you want about the Clinton's, that is one lesson they always understood.
Jerry Denim, June 15, 2015 at 2:55 am
"There's plenty to like in Clinton's speech at the talking point level."
Seriously?
"We need more from Clinton - more from all candidates. Much, much more. "
Really?
I know Hillary once again is the front runner, the presumed nominee and the only Democratic
candidate for "serious" respectable grown-ups and as such must receive her share of the horse
race coverage. I also know the tone of this post was basically critical and skeptic.
That said, I find such an earnest micro-parsing of Clinton's utterly meaningless, consequence-free
campaign rhetoric by a respected, important and principled site such as this does Clinton an undeserved
service by lending her legitimacy at a time when she should be shouted down and shamed for being
the lying, compromised, money-grubbing, scruple-less corporate sock puppet that she is.
If the political elites learned anything from Obama (a.k.a. Bush 3.0) it's that you can lie
through your teeth on a daily basis and along with some help from our red vs. blue propaganda
machine media still convince gullible voters who identify with team blue's brand to continue to
support a team blue Prez, and vote for him/her even if he/she betrays regular Americans and kicks
them on a daily basis as long as he/she smiles and says he/she is committed to popular and happy
things on camera. Hillary can say whatever the hell she wants right now and it doesn't mean a
thing. She doesn't hold elected or appointed office.
She can make socialist, FDR type promises till the cows come home while still raking in billions
in corporate money, foreign money, and libertarian billionaire asshole money because they know
just like Obama she will break every populist campaign promise before she's even sworn in as President.
A President Hillary and her entourage would continue business as usual because they has a proven
track record of being pro-establishment, pro-Wall Street, Washington-consensus, Neo-con hawks.
Believing anything else is utter madness.
Save your analysis and commentary for a Socialist with a better track record like Bernie Sanders
or some other long-shot, third party candidate. Carefully parsing the words of a lying pol like
Clinton is about as sane and as useful as trying to divine meaning in a pile of dogshit and then
claiming you have a legal and binding contract with your bank. We don't need more from Clinton
we need less. Way less. We need her to shut up and go away, we know who and what she really is.
Since Clinton doesn't look like she plans on shutting up or going away anytime soon I think she
should either be – a.) Ignored, or (b.) Shouted down and shamed. Just like Obama I can't take
a single word she speaks seriously with her track record.
TedWa, June 15, 2015 at 7:45 pm
I just wish posters here would stop thinking about and posting about Bernie Sanders as if he's
a 3rd party candidate. I'm old enough to remember when progressive democrats like Bernie ran things.
He's more of a traditional democrat than Hillary can even dream about being. There is no throwing
the race to the Republicans by voting for and supporting Bernie – he's running as a democrat and
running as a challenger to neo-liberal Hillary and neo-liberal politics and only 1 of them can
make it to the final democratic nomination. Get it? Only one of them. This is not going to be
a 3rd party race! I know wrapping your head around Bernie as a democrat is hard for some of the
younger among us that don't remember a time when neo-liberalism didn't rule the roost, but that
is what he is and that is how he's running. There is no 3rd party candidate
Thank you for your time.
How does Hillary's level playing field rhetoric work in her own life? Let's look at how her
daughter has fared in her own struggles to live a middle class life.
Lord Butler of Brockwell, the Master of University College, said: "Her (Chelsea's) record at
Stanford shows that she is a very well-qualified and able student. The college is also pleased
to extend its link with the Clinton family."
In 2003, Clinton joined the consulting firm McKinsey & Company in New York City.
In the fall of 2006, she went to work for Avenue Capital Group, a global investment firm focusing
on distressed securities and private equity.
In 2010, she became Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation.
In November 2011, NBC announced that they hired Clinton as a special correspondent, paying
her $600,000 per year. Clinton memorably interviewed the Geico Gecko in April 2013.
Since 2011, she has also taken a dominant role at the family's Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton
Foundation, and has had a seat on its board.
Just thought I'd add a link to Professor Harvey Kaye talking to Bill Moyers about FDR's Four
Freedoms.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/fighting-for-the-four-freedoms/
So inspiring. The opposite of HRC. I appreciated this article very much I don't see how anyone
who watched or read the HRC text and has a passing familiarity to the Four Freedoms speech can
see any relationship between the two whatsoever except at the most superficial level, meaning
HRC used the word "Four".
Hilary Clinton said on Tuesday she takes "personal responsibility" for her loss to
Donald Trump in the
2016 presidential race.
But the former Democratic nominee also blamed Russian interference in the US election and the
release just before the election of a
letter by the FBI director, James Comey , pertaining to the investigation into her emails, saying
such factors deprived her of an otherwise expected victory.
Run against Trump? Elizabeth Warren will certainly stand and fight Read more
"I take absolute personal responsibility," Clinton said of her November defeat during a sit-down
with CNN's Christiane Amanpour at an event titled Women for Women in New York. "I was the candidate,
I was the person who was on the ballot. I am very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls
that we had."
The former secretary of state nonetheless maintained she was on track to become the first female
president of the United States when a series of obstacles altered the trajectory of the race.
"It wasn't a perfect campaign. There is no such thing," she said. "But I was on the way to winning,
until a combination of Jim Comey's letter on 28 October and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the
minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off."
Clinton was referring to the decision by Comey to disclose – 11 days before election day – that
the FBI was reviewing newly
discovered emails in relation to the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while
at the helm of the Department of State. Just days later, Comey concluded the emails were mostly personal
or duplicates of what the government had already examined prior to clearing Clinton of any criminal
charges.
A more comprehensive attempt at an answer to the question, why is populism on the
rise?, is suggested in the concluding chapter of the volume in an interview with Jurgen Habermas.
Habermas calls out several factors in the past twenty-five years that have led to a rising appeal
of right-wing populism among large segments of the populations of democratic countries in Europe
and the United States. First among these factors is the steep and continuing increase in
inequalities that neoliberal economies brought about since 1989. He believes that this trend
could only be offset by an active state policy of social welfare -- the policies of social
democracy -- and that advanced capitalist democracies have retreated from such policies.
Second, he highlights the deliberate politics and rhetoric of the right in both Europe and the
United States in pursuing a politics of division and resentment. People suffer; and politicians
aim their resentment at vulnerable others.
Third, Habermas emphasizes the fact that neoliberal globalization has not delivered on the
promises made on its behalf in the 1970s, that globalization will improve everyone's standard of
living. In fact, he argues that globalization has led to stagnation of living standards in many
countries and has led to an overall decline of the importance of the western capitalist economies
within the global system overall. This trend in turn has given new energy to the nationalistic
forces underlying right-wing populism.
So what advice does Habermas offer to the progressive parties in western democracies? He argues
that the progressive left needs to confront the root of the problem -- the increasing
inequalities that exist both nationally and internationally. Moreover, he argues that this will
require substantial international cooperation:
The question is why left-wing parties do not go on the offensive against social inequality by
embarking upon a co-ordinated and cross-border taming of unregulated markets. As a sensible
alternative – as much to the status quo of feral financial capitalism as to the agenda for a
völkisch
or left-nationalist retreat into the supposed sovereignty of long-since
hollowed-out nation states – I would suggest there is only a supranational form of
co-operation that pursues the goal of shaping a socially acceptable political reconfiguration
of economic globalisation. (Kindle Locations 566-569)
In Habermas's judgment, the fundamental impetus to right-wing populism was the cooptation of
"social-democrat" parties like the Democratic Party in the United States and the Labour Party in
Britain by the siren song of neoliberalism:
Since Clinton, Blair and Schröder social democrats have swung over to the prevailing
neoliberal line in economic policies because that was or seemed to be promising in the
political sense: in the "battle for the middle ground" these political parties thought they
could win majorities only by adopting the neoliberal course of action. This meant taking on
board toleration of long-standing and growing social inequalities. Meantime, this price – the
economic and socio-cultural "hanging out to dry" of ever-greater parts of the populace – has
clearly risen so high that the reaction to it has gone over to the right. (Kindle Locations
573-578)
So what is the path to broad support for the progressive left? It is to be
progressive
-- to confront the root cause of the economic stagnation of the working class people whose lives
are increasingly precarious and whose standard of living has not advanced materially in
twenty-five years.
But this requires being willing to open up a completely different front in domestic politics
and doing so by making the above-mentioned problem the key point at issue: How do we regain
the political initiative vis-à-vis the destructive forces of unbridled capitalist
globalisation? Instead, the political scene is predominantly grey on grey, where, for example,
the left-wing pro-globalisation agenda of giving a political shape to a global society growing
together economically and digitally can no longer be distinguished from the neoliberal agenda
of political abdication to the blackmailing power of the banks and of the unregulated markets.
(Kindle Locations 590-595)
"... It should not be a surprise. This unseemly and unnecessary cash-in fits a pattern of bad behavior involving the financial sector, one that spans Obama's entire presidency. ..."
"... Obama's Wall Street payday will confirm for many what they have long suspected: that the Democratic Party is managed by out-of-touch elites who do not understand or care about the concerns of ordinary Americans. It's hard to fault those who come to this conclusion.. ..."
"... I began this essay by saying that Obama's $400,000 oligarchic shill job was a bookend ..."
"... Before he was even elected, an executive from Citigroup (the corporate owner of Citibank) gave Obama a list of acceptable choices for who may serve on his cabinet. The list ended up matching Obama's actual cabinet picks once elected almost to a 't' ..."
"The rumors are true: Former President Barack Obama will receive $400,000 to speak at a health
care conference organized by the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
It should not be a surprise. This unseemly and unnecessary cash-in fits a pattern of bad
behavior involving the financial sector, one that spans Obama's entire presidency.
That governing failure convinced millions of his onetime supporters that the president and
his party were not, in fact, playing for their team, and helped pave the way for President Donald
Trump. Obama's Wall Street payday will confirm for many what they have long suspected: that
the Democratic Party is managed by out-of-touch elites who do not understand or care about the
concerns of ordinary Americans. It's hard to fault those who come to this conclusion..."
If Progressives Don't Wake Up To How Awful Obama Was, Their Movement Will Fail
...............
" I began this essay by saying that Obama's $400,000 oligarchic shill job was a bookend
.
I did that because, in what was easily the single most important and egregious WikiLeaks email
of 2016, we learned that Wall Street was calling the shots in the Obama administration before
the Obama administration even existed.
"... Meanwhile the center left spent their time and energy attacking the messengers - calling Sanders "unserious" - while mansplaining that their minimal reforms and tinkering was improving lives and people should be eternally grateful. ..."
"... No wonder so many voters don't trust the Democratic party. ..."
"Working-class Americans didn't necessarily understand the details of global trade deals, but
they saw elite Americans and people in China and other developing countries becoming rapidly wealthier
while their own incomes stagnated or declined. It should not be surprising that many of them agreed
with Trump and with the Democratic presidential primary contender Bernie Sanders that the game
was rigged."
Meanwhile the center left spent their time and energy attacking the messengers - calling Sanders
"unserious" - while mansplaining that their minimal reforms and tinkering was improving lives
and people should be eternally grateful.
No wonder so many voters don't trust the Democratic party.
No, their pro-business attitude is part of the problem. They've bought into conservative propaganda:
see Bill Clinton's welfare deform for instance.
Thomas Frank -
................
Another thing that is inexcusable from Democrats: surprise at
the economic disasters that have befallen the Midwestern
cities and states that they used to represent.
The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part
of the country is the utterly predictable fruit of the
Democratic party's neoliberal turn. Every time our liberal
leaders signed off on some lousy trade deal, figuring that
working-class people had "nowhere else to go," they were
making what happened last November a little more likely.
Every time our liberal leaders deregulated banks and then
turned around and told working-class people that their
misfortunes were all attributable to their poor education,
that the only answer for them was a lot of student loans and
the right sort of college degree ... every time they did this
they made the disaster a little more inevitable.
Pretending to rediscover the exotic, newly red states of
the Midwest, in the manner of the New York Times, is not the
answer to this problem. Listening to the voices of the good
people of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan is not really the
answer, either. Cursing those bad people for the stupid way
they voted is an even lousier idea.
What we need is for the Democratic party and its media
enablers to alter course. It's not enough to hear people's
voices and feel their pain; the party actually needs to
change. They need to understand that the enlightened Davos
ideology they have embraced over the years has done material
harm to millions of their own former constituents. The
Democrats need to offer something different next time. And
then they need to deliver.
Another thing that is inexcusable from Democrats: surprise at the economic
disasters that have befallen the midwestern cities and states that they used
to represent.
The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country
is the utterly predictable fruit of the Democratic party's neoliberal turn.
Every time our liberal leaders signed off on some lousy trade deal, figuring
that working-class people had "nowhere else to go," they were making what happened
last November a little more likely.
Would Trump supporters elect him again now? For some Trump voters
in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, their new president has already done more
than Obama – but others have had enough Every time our liberal leaders deregulated
banks and then turned around and told working-class people that their misfortunes
were all attributable to their poor education, that the only answer for them
was a lot of student loans and the right sort of college degree ... every time
they did this they made the disaster a little more inevitable.
Pretending to rediscover the exotic, newly red states of the Midwest,
in the manner of the New York Times , is not the answer to this problem.
Listening to the voices of the good people of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan
is not really the answer, either. Cursing those bad people for the stupid way
they voted is an even lousier idea.
More obscene tax cuts for the rich, windfall deals for cronies, unparalleled
corruption, and utter and complete betrayal of the 99% (NO affordable healthcare,
war on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid), and a LOSS of decent jobs engineered
by perhaps the most demagogic liar and despot wannabe' in recent times,
and YOU have the stones to talk about a 'Davos mindset'?
Double-speak and distortion worthy of those you apparently serve.
Good luck. The Dems just don't want to get it and unless individual Dems
start acting on their own for the good of all of us, who in the past were
strictly loyal to the party, then they'll lose again. What BC did with NAFTA
and his total disregard for decimating entire regions of the country by
doing so, with nothing to replace those jobs with but a snotty attitude,
will haunt them until they wake up. Sadly, for us, this isn't likely as
they will think once again that people will vote for whoever they toss up
just because Trump is so "deplorable". No one wants 4 more years of Trump,
not even those who voted for him.
Frank is still trying to turn American blue collar workers into European
style class warfare socialists.
Many (if not most) of the traditional jobs are not comng back, and only
a few are in China.
AUTOMATION.
Neither party can do anything about that.
We'd better start thinking about a much bigger labor force than available
jobs
A Tax on every Robot sufficient to fund a modern Welfare State and a Universal
Basic Income is what some propose to address this development. A 20 hour
work week doing community service work helping ones fellow citizens in some
constructive way?
Remember that a lot of people voted for Trump or abstained from voting altogether
(thereby basically giving the vote to Trump, as it turns out) because we
refused to vote for Hillary. Wisconsin voted for Bernie in the primaries.
I firmly believe that it was an intense distrust of Mrs. Clinton, and not
overwhelming faith in the promises and abilities of Donald Trump, that made
our state show red on Election Day. If Bernie hadn't been cheated out of
the race by her bottle blondiness, I'm relatively certain that he probably
might have won in a race against Uncle Don.
"The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country
is the utterly predictable fruit of the Democratic party's neoliberal turn."
Yup! And the means doing away with public sector unions in their present
form, it means securing the borders, it means getting big banks and wall
street under control, it means dropping the left wingnut social policies
and getting the government out of peoples lives, not the other way 'round.
Ain't gonna happen.
The liberal/progressive leftist totalitarians are in charge of the party,
and unless they change their ways, as previously described, they are going
to wander in the wilderness for a very long time.
The Democratic Party has gradually become the party of the status quo and
business as usual instead of the progressive-- working people's party--
it use to be under Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. Even Obamacare is a concept
originally conceived by the Republicans to force all Americans into the
arms of the private health insurance companies.
Instead of more trickle down economics, Democrats should be trying to
focus on creating a worker's paradise in order to re-energize the American
economy:
1. A 32 hour work week (overtime beyond 32 hours):
2. Up to six weeks of annual Federally mandated paid vacation
3. Reduction of individual income tax to just 1% for individuals that
make less than $60,000 a year
4. Employer payment of all Federal payroll taxes for all employees that
make less than $60,000 a year
5. A $1000 a year workers rebate from the Federal government if you work
full time or part time or employ full time or part time workers
6. Federal infrastructure program providing matching funds for cities
that want to build affordable urban-- rental housing-- for senior citizens
and the working class families and individuals, who don't own their own
home who make less than $60,000 a year.
7. Federal and employer financed medical savings accounts for all American
citizens
8. High tariffs (15% to 100%) on all imports coming in from nations that
are not free and democratic (China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.). Low
tariffs (1% to 10%) on imports from nations that are free and democratic.
How Democrats could have ever gone along with allowing a fascist state like
China to have full and free trading access to the American economy is almost
incomprehensible (and it also cost Americans more than 3 million jobs)!
Lets review the key points of Democratic politics as they now pronounce
it (through words and action)
1 - Save the planet - translation - regulate any and all forms of energy
to be too expensive then subsidize renewable energy. This means a few major
companies will win huge government contracts to put up windmills while,
power plant operators, miners, natural gas workers and countless supporting
industries go dark.
2 - Identity Politics - Translation - Vast swaths of America are understood
only in context of their race, gender (chosen or otherwise) or political
perspective. They will be administered according to an as yet unpublished
preference chart favoring some over others. Meaning that individuals don't
matter and needs don't matter. Only that you fit into some defined category
where political messaging will tell you why your oppressed and that only
democrats can free you.
3 - Free Trade Agreements - In short - how to off shore manufacturing
to cheap labor countries. That one is very simple.
4 - Sanctuary Cities - People who arrived into this country illegally
will be protected from deportation, even identifcation as illegal regardless
of the law. This reduces the cost of labor for less skilled workers and
drives up costs - which drive up taxes to provide services. In point of
fact California is in the process of creating a single payer healthcare
system that will provide free (only if your don't earn and income) healthcare
to anybody in California - no questions asked.
What is missing? Jobs. There are zero plans to bring back jobs. The coasties
don't care about manufacturing. They only buy the highest quality imports
with the right labels on them anyway. Their answer - why more government
"programs" designed to robe Peter to pay Paul. Job training for jobs that
don't exist where people live, and often disappeared years ago.
Meritocracy?
The best of the best of the best?
Not for the Smugatocratic World Rigging Nepotistic 'Davos' Elite!
(Busy "Late Night" Offices)
Seth Myer's Secretary
Seth! Call; "Line 1" You better take it
Seth Myers
Hello?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
Seth My Dear Boy I really need you to do me a solid
you remember my Granddaughter Brittany?
Seth Myers
Ummm .Not really .?
Who is this?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
No matter .You met her last year at Davos
Seth Myers
Ahhh .I didn't actually go to Davos last year?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
Well she just graduated from Emerson Gawd knows what they learn there?
AAAAAANYWAAAYS .
this whole "Clinton Kerfuffle" has kind of put us in a little bind
Seth Myers
Oh really?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
And Britt had her dear little heart set on interning with Hilly and Billy
Seth Myers
Oh....She did?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
Now, she'd really like to work on your show
Seth Myers
My show?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
Oh .She's a really good writer
Seth Myers
Writer .Wow .Why not just host?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
You think? Well, maybe?
K Thanks Gottah Run Love Yah' Bunches Britt will just be so thrilled!
See you at Davos .
Seth Myers
Wait I'm not go
Seth Myer's Secretary
Seth! Call; "Line 2" You better take it
Seth Myers
Hello?
Member of "Smugatocratic" Elite
Seth .My Dear Boy I really, really need you to do me a solid you remember
my Granddaughter...Gemma?
Speaking of "Davos Ideology", it would help if people like Al Gore and Leo
Dicaprio didn't fly there on private jets to lecture people back home about
their carbon footprint. Midwesterners notice stuff like that. "Incongruities",
I believe, would be Mr. Frank's chatterati term for it.
Blue collar workers understand the laws of supply and demand just as well
as Harvard trained economists. The Democratic party's embrace of open borders
and amnesty is the exact same position as the Chamber of Commerce. Nearly
15% of America is foreign born and many of those people are competing with
citizens for jobs. Business loves it for holding down wages and the DNC
loves it for the future reliable Democratic voters.. Tech, medicine, and
higher education noticed how this policy has squeezed blue collar wages
and are manipulating H1B and other visa programs to do the same thing to
their 100k+ professional workers. The DNC loves the visa programs as well
mostly because of their addiction to big tech and other Silicon Valley donors.
I think the DNC is trying to come up with a policy to do the least possible
to attract these blue collar voters and still keep their billionaire new
economy donors happy.
Example, "Every time our liberal leaders deregulated banks and then turned
around and told working-class people that their misfortunes were all attributable
to their poor education, that the only answer for them was a lot of student
loans and the right sort of college degree ... every time they did this
they made the disaster a little more inevitable." Aside from Bill, democrats
are the party that believes in regulation and have many times fought republicans
from destroying them. What's happening now is just a return of republican
priorities. Lower regulation on nearly all business to include the financial
industry and the same old trickle down theory that has only increase income
and wealth inequality. Additionally, it was the Reagan administration that
began making higher education more a business that required student loans
to attend.
Special interests are intertwined with the Dems as much as they are with
Repubs now, that's what's changed. The article speaks of the neoliberal
policies that are destroying the Democratic party (deregulation, pro-corporate/anti-worker
policies).
Yes, Republicans do those things and always have, but the point is that
the Dems now do them too. And they need to step away from neoliberal policies
like that if they want to be relevant again.
A major cause of the deindustrialization of the US Midwest is offshoring
jobs. That isn't the fault of the Democrats.
In fact, while Trump jabbers about "bringing the jobs back to the US,"
he and his daughter Ivanka continue to manufacture their clothing lines
in such as Bangladesh, China, and Mexico. "Made in the America" is yet another
of his slogans fed to the stupid.
But I guess that Trump is a hypocrite and liar is the fault of the Democrats
too.
The problem with the rhetoric of this article is that it slings the usual
labels -- "neoliberal" -- without a clue as to their meaning. But that's
the nature of right-wing propaganda.
Well, like it or not, the main point that the democrats have been hollywoodized
and cannot bring themselves to go somewhere that arugula is not sold, is
true. As for making clothing in China, who knows what clothing manufacturers
there are left in the USA and whether they can do what is needed. You don't
know that.
The deindustrialization of the US is the result of corporate policies.
And while Trump jabbers about bringing jobs back to America, he and his
daughter continue to manufacture their clothing lines in countries where
they can pay the least in wages for the most in production. Chinese manufacturing
of Ivanka's now-relabeled clothing line pays $60.00 for a 57-hour week.
Obviously the author of this article either doesn't know those facts,
therefore doesn't know what he's talking about, or he makes no mention of
it in order to dishonestly bash the Democrats, who are NOT doing manufacturing
in Bangladesh, China, and other third-world countries.
Thomas Frank reveals the rage middle-class Midwesterners feel towards Democrats
and entrenched politicians. Over the past decade, he voiced this warning,
but it fell on deaf ears. Only one major television commentator dared to
express similar warnings, Ed Schultz, formerly of MSNBC. Schultz was removed
from MSNBC and forced off MSM. Frank was a frequent guest and commentator
on his and other main television news shows. Since the election, the major
broadcast news no longer invites Frank. Democracy, journalism and political
expression are diminished.
"I have spent the last three weeks driving
around the deindustrialized midwest And what I
am here to say is that the midwest is not an
exotic place. It isn't a benighted region of
unknowable people and mysterious urges. It isn't
backward or hopelessly superstitious or hostile
to learning. It is solid, familiar, ordinary
America, and Democrats can have no excuse for
not seeing the wave of heartland rage that
swamped them last November" [Thomas Frank,
The Guardian
]. "The wreckage that you see
every day as you tour this part of the country
is the utterly predictable fruit of the
Democratic party's neoliberal turn. Every time
our liberal leaders signed off on some lousy
trade deal, figuring that working-class people
had "nowhere else to go," they were making what
happened last November a little more likely."
Moreover:
The way I see it, the critical test for
our system will come late next year. The
billionaire great-maker in the Oval Office
has already turned out to be an incompetent
buffoon, and his greatest failures are no
doubt yet to come. By November 2018, the
winds of change will be in full hurricane
shriek, and unless the Democratic Party's
incompetence is even more profound than it
appears to be, the D's will sweep to some
sort of mid-term triumph.
But when "the resistance" comes into
power in Washington, it will face this
question: this time around, will Democrats
serve the 80% of us that this modern economy
has left behind? Will they stand up to the
money power? Or will we be invited once
again to feast on inspiring speeches while
the tasteful gentlemen from JP Morgan
foreclose on the world?
The Democrat establishment has already given
its answer: That's why Clinton supporter and #MedicareForAll
hater Ossoff has $8 million dollars to appeal to
suburban Repubicans in Geogia 6, and Sanders
supporters in Kansas (Thompson) and Montana
(Quist) get zilch. Of course, the Democrat
establishment is profoundly incompetent, as
Shattered
proves, so they may well blow
2018, as well as 2016.
"The First 117 Days of Chuck Schumer" [
RealClearPolitics
].
A bill of particulars drawn up by a Republican,
but still very funny.
Realignment and Legitimacy
"'Fallen! Fallen Is Babylon The Great!'" [Rod
Dreher,
The American Conservative
]. Shout-outs to
Chris Arnade, Anne Coulter, and Ian Welsh. We
live in strange times.
Given the overall
low opinion of the electorate with regards to politicians in general and specifically
to each of our two major political parties, then there is little that any political
candidate can do to win elections, but there are limitless things that any establishment
political candidate can do to lose them. Donald Trump found the sweet spot in
that racket.
Democrats
are probably in a frantic search for some glib, authentic-sounding huckster
to play the role of a populist agent for change in the 2024 election...and
then immediately reverse course upon taking office to serve the interest
of the bankers, defense contractors, globalists, etc...in the mold of
Macron, Pena-Nieto, Obama and Trump.
One of the keys to success in
presidential politics these days is to be an outsider without much of
a track record in politics, so that the fraud is hard to detect.
The future lies with outsiders, who are authentic-sounding frauds.
"Democrats
are probably in a frantic search for some glib, authentic-sounding huckster
to play the role of a populist agent for change in the 2024 election..."
[Whatever happened to 2020? Look, I am all set for a liberal sounding
huckster in 2020. So, don't write me off just yet.]
"...The future lies with outsiders, who are authentic-sounding frauds."
[That would seem to be the natural course of evolution from where
we are today. I do believe in the more distant future, too distant for
me but not for my grandchildren, then populism may congeal at a point
from which it evolves towards greater democracy. However, there is a
lot for the wisdom of crowds to learn and unlearn before the train arrives
at that station.]
Democrats'
cupboard is bare. Time Kaine is the default, and the Obama/Clinton faction
will defend its control at all cost...and will have the same success
as Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry.
I understand that a key indicator is
an invitation to Bilderberg, which now publishes much of its list of
attendees. Clinton got invited in 1991, Blair in 1993, and Macron in
2014.
Maybe,
we will see. The Republican Party has done well enough working with
a bare cupboard for decades. Events drive the news cycle and the national
dialogue. Political parties just try to see how deep into the bottom
of the barrel that they can scrape and still get by with their triangulated
pandering and defamatory memes.
"Democrats
are probably in a frantic search for some glib, authentic-sounding huckster
to play the role of a populist agent for change in the 2024 election..."
Michelle Obama for 2020! Or Oprah Winfrey. I'll be astonished if Dem
"strategists" don't seriously push for one of these two "solutions".
Actually,
I would be for either one, but prefer Denzel Washington if given a choice.
Of course Morgan Freeman has more presidential experience. He has not
only play the role of POTUS, Morgan Freeman has played the role of God.
That's hard to beat. I'm easy enough. That still gives me no reason
to call anyone that sees it different a racist xenophobe without having
said one word to them first.
"... If the corrupt neoliberal centrist globalization loving job killing status quo democrats do not reform, Bernie supporters might jump ship and form their own party. We will see where you guys are then ..."
"Lies, damn lies and the deep state: Plenty of Americans see them all:
Poll"
By GARY LANGER...Apr 27, 2017...7:00 AM ET
"Nearly half of Americans think there's a "deep state" in this country,
just more than half think the mainstream media regularly report false stories
and six in 10 say the Trump administration regularly makes false claims.
Just another day in the world of alleged sneaky stuff.
Each of these claims has gained attention since the 2016 campaign and
the start of the Trump presidency, and this ABC News/Washington Post poll
finds that each has lots of takers.
Start with the "deep state," described here as "military, intelligence
and government officials who try to secretly manipulate government policy."
A plurality, 48 percent, think there is such a thing. Fewer, 35 percent,
call it a conspiracy theory, with the rest unsure."...
I am heartbroken too, but if you think the right wing has some sort of monopoly
on this, you're part of the problem, and not part of the solution. Hell,
the Dems rigged their own primary, lied about it, got caught, and then simply
shrugged it off as what everyone does. Elections are now meaningless, and
the Democrats couldn't care less. OK, but if that's their attitude, I'd
suggest they try rigging all those down-ballot races they've made a habit
of losing of late.
Anyone who dares to question the status quo neoliberal corporatist corrupt
policies should just shut up?
Clear evidence that the status quo has become so corrupt and beholden
to special interest money that they will try to silence dissent from even
their own ranks.
If the corrupt neoliberal centrist globalization loving job killing
status quo democrats do not reform, Bernie supporters might jump ship and
form their own party. We will see where you guys are then .
The internet is the only reason these people are relevant, in the real
world none of them has ever done anything to try and make the changes they
support. I doubt whether any of them has even voted.
the democrat party just got decimated - presidential, both houses of
congress, state, local everywhere. And you think this is an academic debate?
You must be a clueless academic OR IYI (intelligent yet idiot) as Taleb
calls you guys.
Shattered depicts a calamity of a campaign. While on the surface, Hillary
Clinton's team were far more unified and capable than their counterparts
in 2008 had been, behind the scenes there was utter discord. The senior
staff engaged in constant backstabbing and intrigue, jockeying for access
to the candidate and selectively keeping information from one another. Clinton
herself never made it exactly clear who had responsibility for what, meaning
that staff were in a constant competition to take control. Worse, Clinton
was so sealed off from her own campaign that many senior team members had
only met her briefly, and interacted with her only when she held conference
calls to berate them for their failures. Allen and Parnes call the situation
"an unholy mess, fraught with tangled lines of authority, petty jealousies,
distorted priorities, and no sense of general purpose," in which "no one
was in charge."
'For example, late in the Obama administration the board that is supposed to oversee the US
Postal Service had zero members out of the nine possible appointments. The reported reason is
that Senator Bernie Sanders put a hold on all possible appointees, as a show of solidarity with
postal workers. If it isn't obvious to you how Sanders preventing President Obama from appointing
new board members would influence the US Postal Service in the directions that Sanders would prefer,
given that President Trump could presumably appoint all nine members of the board, you are not
alone.'
'Shattered' Charts Hillary Clinton's Course Into the Iceberg
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Donald J. Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in November came as a shock to the world. Polls,
news reports and everything the Clinton campaign was hearing in the final days pointed to her
becoming the first female president in American history.
In their compelling new book, "Shattered," the journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes write
that Clinton's loss suddenly made sense of all the reporting they had been doing for a year and
a half - reporting that had turned up all sorts of "foreboding signs" that often seemed at odds,
in real time, with indications that Clinton was the favorite to win. Although the Clinton campaign
was widely covered, and many autopsies have been conducted in the last several months, the blow-by-blow
details in "Shattered" - and the observations made here by campaign and Democratic Party insiders
- are nothing less than devastating, sure to dismay not just her supporters but also everyone
who cares about the outcome and momentous consequences of the election.
In fact, the portrait of the Clinton campaign that emerges from these pages is that of a Titanic-like
disaster: an epic fail made up of a series of perverse and often avoidable missteps by an out-of-touch
candidate and her strife-ridden staff that turned "a winnable race" into "another iceberg-seeking
campaign ship."
It's the story of a wildly dysfunctional and "spirit-crushing" campaign that embraced a flawed
strategy (based on flawed data) and that failed, repeatedly, to correct course. A passive-aggressive
campaign that neglected to act on warning flares sent up by Democratic operatives on the ground
in crucial swing states, and that ignored the advice of the candidate's husband, former President
Bill Clinton, and other Democratic Party elders, who argued that the campaign needed to work harder
to persuade undecided and ambivalent voters (like working-class whites and millennials), instead
of focusing so insistently on turning out core supporters.
"Our failure to reach out to white voters, like literally from the New Hampshire primary on,
it never changed," one campaign official is quoted as saying.
There was a perfect storm of other factors, of course, that contributed to Clinton's loss,
including Russian meddling in the election to help elect Trump; the controversial decision by
the F.B.I. director, James Comey, to send a letter to Congress about Clinton's emails less than
two weeks before Election Day; and the global wave of populist discontent with the status quo
(signaled earlier in the year by the British "Brexit" vote) that helped fuel the rise of both
Trump and Bernie Sanders. In a recent interview, Clinton added that she believed "misogyny played
a role" in her loss.
The authors of "Shattered," however, write that even some of her close friends and advisers
think that Clinton "bears the blame for her defeat," arguing that her actions before the campaign
(setting up a private email server, becoming entangled in the Clinton Foundation, giving speeches
to Wall Street banks) "hamstrung her own chances so badly that she couldn't recover," ensuring
that she could not "cast herself as anything but a lifelong insider when so much of the country
had lost faith in its institutions."
Allen and Parnes are the authors of a 2014 book, "H R C," a largely sympathetic portrait of
Clinton's years as secretary of state, and this book reflects their access to longtime residents
of Clinton's circle. They interviewed more than a hundred sources on background - with the promise
that none of the material they gathered would appear before the election - and while it's clear
that some of these people are spinning blame retroactively, many are surprisingly candid about
the frustrations they experienced during the campaign.
"Shattered" underscores Clinton's difficulty in articulating a rationale for her campaign (other
than that she was not Donald Trump). And it suggests that a tendency to value loyalty over competence
resulted in a lumbering, bureaucratic operation in which staff members were reluctant to speak
truth to power, and competing tribes sowed "confusion, angst and infighting."
Despite years of post-mortems, the authors observe, Clinton's management style hadn't really
changed since her 2008 loss of the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama: Her team's convoluted
power structure "encouraged the denizens of Hillaryland to care more about their standing with
her, or their future job opportunities, than getting her elected." ...
you would rather rely on some "free lunch" fairy tale tools
like NGDP targeting because the simpler version, QE, has
worked so well that we have Trump in the white house.
"QE, has worked so well that we have Trump in the white
house."
That's good !. Sounds like a plausible explanation
what has happened to me. Obama was the key to Trump election.
Looks like Trump was just another Obama: a tabula rasa on
which a frustrated American public could project their
desires, but who in reality was just another sell-out.
Is this from some alternate reality where Obama was elected
to a third term? Can I go there too?
And the issue is not
being able to create reserves on the monetary side, but being
able to actually stimulate the economy by increased federal
spending on the fiscal side. At the ZLB, there's no demand,
so more money supply...ho, hum!
Tax cuts don't cut it because they send money to people
who will speculate with it instead of spending it to
stimulate production and get a financial multiplier going.
And this business of "run out" of money is some conflation
of GOP fantasy with the federal borrrowing 'limit' which may
have no force in law anyway. Obama didn't force the issue,
though I think he should have. In any case, it'll be
interesting to watch the GOP self-immolation over the
so-called 'debt limit'. The big question-to bring popcorn or
marshmallows?
Since losing the presidency to a Cheeto-hued reality TV
host, the Democratic party's leadership has made it clear
that it would rather keep losing than entertain even the
slightest whiff of New Deal style social democracy.
The Bernie Sanders wing might bring grassroots energy and
– if the polls are to be believed – popular ideas, but their
redistributive policies pose too much of a threat to the
party's big donors to ever be allowed on the agenda.
Official Dems Abandon Sanders Ally in Key Kansas Race, and
Dems Lose
By Bob Dreyfuss | April 11, 2017
UPDATE II: Politico notes, in reporting on the race that
the GOP won by single digits: "The DCCC did not spend a dime
in this race. Again: Trump won this district by 27 points."
Outside progressive groups did mobilize for Thompson, but the
official Democratic Party did squat. So, Mr. Tom "50 State
Strategy" Perez,
"It is a class party, and they act on that class's behalf
and they act in that class's interests and they serve that
class. And they have adopted all the tastes and manners and
ideology...
It's just that class is not the working class. It's not
the middle class. It's the professional class - affluent,
white-collar elites.
They can't see what they're doing. This is invisible to
them, because it's who they are."
............
Writer Thomas Frank shifts through the wreckage of the
Democratic Party in the Trump Era, and finds a group of
failed politicians unable to see the deep unpopularity of
their own policies, or a path beyond serving the narrow
interests of the elite professional class they've served
since the Clinton years - with a generation of disastrous
results.
They want to be the party of business, not the job class.
That's why Hillary spends her time giving speeches to Goldman
Sachs and Larry Summers gives talks to Mexican bankers and
investors not Mexican union workers or activists.
Trump campaigned on non-interventionism platform. Almost paleo--conservative platform.
And on April 6 he lost "anti-war right". And even some part of anti-war left ( Sanders supporters who really hated Hillary
for her jingoism and corruption ) who supported him holding the nose. Probably forever.
That might have consequences for him because he lost support from politically active and important segment of his electorate.
Which to certain extent protected him from impeachment as the last thing DemoRats want are fierce protests up to armed clashes
with alt-right afterward.
If his calculation was that DemoRats (neoliberal Democrats) are now also a War party, so it does not matter, he probably
badly miscalculated.
He now needs to worry what Russians might have on him because Wikileaks or other similar sites might get some interesting
materials. Of course Pence would be even more horrible POTUS, and revenge is a dish that better serve cold, but still he probably
did not sleep well after this "Monica" show of strength.
He also probably can forget about any compromises of the style "something for nothing" (as previous presidents enjoyed in
a hope of improving relations between two countries) from Russians for a while.
Only things prepaid with yuans from now on ;-).
The whole move smell with "Monica" stiles and Iraq WDM: Shoot first ask questions later".
Now he really can be impeached by DemoRats with impunity and there will be little on no protests. But now, when he surrendered
to neocons, why DemoRats take trouble to impeach him?
In other words from April 6 "Agent Orange" is walking in his new clothing like naked king from Andersen tale.
Actually, if one knew that Trump betray them in such a blatant way, why would one vote for Trump.
You can get Hillary who definitely would be better for domestic economic policy then "Agent Orange", yet another puppet
of military industrial complex.
"The new ANES data only confirms what a plethora of studies
have told us since the start of the presidential campaign:
the race was about race. Klinkner himself grabbed headlines
last summer when he revealed that the best way to identify a
Trump supporter in the U.S. was to ask "just one simple
question: is Barack Obama a Muslim?" Because, he said, "if
they are white and the answer is yes, 89 percent of the time
that person will have a higher opinion of Trump than
Clinton." This is economic anxiety? Really?"
But wouldn't you guess that those same 89% of Trump voters
that say Obama is a Muslim would have also voted for almost
any Republican candidate (for any and every office, not just
POTUS) and would certainly never vote for any Democratic
candidate under any circumstances for any office whatsoever?
The margin of voters between Democratic and Republican
candidates in most (but not nearly all thanks to gerrymanders
and deep red states) elections is smaller than the remaining
11%. What percentage of Fox News regular viewers think that
Obama is a Muslim? Are there any deep blue states remaining?
why was democratic turnout so low with a randian troll as the
GOP nominee? Could it be that neglecting the marginalized by
kissing up to butthurt white people is not a winning
strategy...
Bernie Sanders's economic policies were not "kissing up to
butthurt white people."
Leftwing economic policies help
white and black and brown working people. Everyone. It's
weird for you to troll this way when you say that Sanders and
Warren are centrist sellouts.
You, JohnH and BINY are the most confused people here.
From the 1940s through the 1980s as the middle class grew,
we saw successful popular movements like the civil rights
movements, feminism, gay rights, peace movements,
environmental movements etc.
The legacies of those movements continue to this day as we
saw a black man elected President and re-elected despite the
racism of voters. We see gay marriage legalized and marijuana
legalized.
you can "loony left" me all you want sanjait, but my
guess is that the democratic party will have to choose
between working with the left or being undermined by it.
The Klinkner anecdote is meaningless.
This does not say that 89% of Trump voters believe Obama is a
Muslim; it says that 89% of (white) people who believe this
are Trump voters.
The article as a whole supports a point
that EMichael has been making here for months.
Had we run this operation
with no tip off to the Russians, all of those planes would
have been destroyed. That would be a smart military move.
Trump cannot pull off even the obvious.
As Krugman points out, taking out 65 "deadly" planes is
nothing. It would change nothing.
Doesn't change anything.
Trump has no long-term strategy. All of Obama's ex-advisers
cheered the bombing. Obama pushed back against the "deep
state" foreign policy establishment. Hillary would have
embraced it, probably leading to more war.
In my view - we should not have done this at all. But if one
is going to do a hawkish act, one should not be so incredibly
incompetent. That is what I said from the first moment. But
do misrepresent what I said. It is what you do 24/7.
What did this missile attack really accomplish? Krugman's
point is simple. Nothing in terms of the situation in Syria.
A reckless and incompetent reaction to an awful Sarin gas
attack. But Trump looked tough and his poll numbers will get
a boost. So it was all for political purposes at the end of
the day.
Not a smart way to run foreign policy. Unless one
is a jingoist.
But PGL is mad that the U.S. military gave the Russians a
heads up. Allowed the Syrian janitor to avoid being bombed.
His wife and children probably are grateful.
Would it
matter if the airport had been completely destroyed including
the janitor? Not at all.
That's what PGL doesn't get.
Bill Clinton did this sort of thing during the Lewinsky
scandal, bombing Iraq off an on again, accomplishing nothing
but distracting attention.
His sanctions however killed hundreds of thousands of
Iraqi children and wrecked Iraq. Albright said it was worth
it.
Now Iraq is an awesome country of sweetness and light,
kind of like Germany and Japan after World War II.
I don't trust that Lindsey Graham any more than Obama
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Graham is a fucking asshole. The man is despicable FILTH.
Yanin Rodriguez
Disappointing questions Tucker with all due respect. Fact - Syrians support Assad up to 82%. Fact #2 - Rebels in Syria are
by most accounts not even Syrian. Follow up on "liberating the Syrians" - with that mentality what about the Saudis?????
War is profits and comprises of the highest % of employment in the US - so until we transfer that sector of the economy to
more peaceful endeavors - we will be permanently be in illegal wars. Lastly - where are any of these wars constitutional?
Why has congress relinquished this responsibility???
We know the answers but never hear the questions asked...
Josh Hempfleng
The strike in Syria really made the Military industrial complex show themselves. The media, Democrats and Rhino's all cheering
on the attack now that they see a chance to make some money off war.
Rumi900
+Josh Hemplfeng - You say '... Democrats and Rhino's all cheering ...' Why Democrats and Rhino's?
I'd be okay with you saying Democrats and Republicans, but you seem to be letting the bulk of Republicans off the hook. Or,
are you saying all the Republican elite are Rhinos? If so, I agree. The point is, surely, that much of Washington (on both sides)
is bought and paid for by the wealthiest elites, through their lobbyists.
This isn't a partisan issue. I wish people would stop making it one! Republicans and Democrats are all equally culpable.
There are Democrats and Republicans who are not just shills for the elite. And those are the politicians we should be championing.
Trump talked about it during the election - 'draining the swamp'. The 'swamp' is not some secret power, some nefarious underground
that is controlling things.
The 'swamp' is bought and paid for politicians - politicians bought and paid for by massive donations that can now hide behind
the opaque screens of the SuperPACs. It's not just politicians on the 'other' side. Both sides are equally involved.
I don't believe Trump is serious about 'draining the swamp'. If he is, he should be going after things like the Citizen's United
decision. The Supreme Court bounced that back to the House, because it's the House that makes the law. The Supreme Court is there
to say whether the law is Constitutional. They don't make law. it's up to Congress to do that.
But politicians in the house, Republicans and Democrats alike, are happy with Citizen's United and SuperPACs and the opportunities
for massive secret donations it has allowed. It's how they all get rich.
If Trump was serious about draining the swamp, he'd be tackling those issues. But he's not. Just look at his appointees! I
didn't vote for Trump. Because I didn't believe his rhetoric. I still don't.
It's you guys, his ardent supporters, who should be holding his feet to the fire! And unfortunately, I see way too much adulation,
mindless hero worship, and not enough demanding accountability.
Joanne K
They don't want us to know that ISIS is in Syria (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and that is what Assad is fighting, along
with other Islamic groups. The L in ISIL stands for Levant. Leave Syria out so that overthrowing Assad will only leave the amorphous
oppressed rebels (really ISIS or Al Nusra or Al Qaeda).
They are deceivers.
Zack Edwards
So basically the Neoconservatives haven't learned a goddamn thing!
"... He didn't win the money race, but Donald Trump will be the next president of the U.S. In the primaries and general election, he defied conventional wisdom, besting better financed candidates by dominating the air waves for free. Trump also put to use his own cash, as well as the assets and infrastructure of his businesses, in unprecedented fashion. He donated $66 million of his own money, flew across the country in his private jet, and used his resorts to stage campaign events. ..."
"... At the same time, the billionaire was able to draw about $280 million from small donors giving $200 or less. ..."
"... Trump won the presidency despite having raised less than any major party presidential nominee since John McCain in 2008, the last to accept federal funds to pay for his general election contest. ..."
"... Clinton and her super-PACs raised a total of $1.2 billion, less than President Barack Obama raised in 2012. ..."
"... There still is a difference between the two parties, which was on philosophical rather than ideological grounds never a very stark contrast to begin with. ..."
"... The Constitution itself needs a bit more work. Campaign finance, reasonable Congressional term limits, gerrymandering, ranked (a.k.a., preferential or instant runoff) voting, and popular petition/referendum powers for the electorate to overturn SCOTUS decisions would in combination make our republic far more democratic than it is now. That would require a national solidarity movement to impose its will on the two party system, perhaps by not re=electing anyone until the work is done. ..."
[Your initial premise is well taken. Trump spent a lot of his own money and used a lot of his
own resources, but relied more on small donors than Hillary did.]
He didn't win the money race, but Donald Trump will be the next president of the U.S. In the
primaries and general election, he defied conventional wisdom, besting better financed candidates
by dominating the air waves for free. Trump also put to use his own cash, as well as the assets
and infrastructure of his businesses, in unprecedented fashion. He donated $66 million of his
own money, flew across the country in his private jet, and used his resorts to stage campaign
events.
At the same time, the billionaire was able to draw about $280 million from small donors
giving $200 or less.
Super-PACs, which can take contributions unlimited in size, were similarly
skewed toward his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Ultimately, Trump won the presidency despite having
raised less than any major party presidential nominee since John McCain in 2008, the last to accept
federal funds to pay for his general election contest.
Clinton and her super-PACs raised a total of $1.2 billion, less than President Barack Obama
raised in 2012. Her sophisticated fundraising operation included a small army of wealthy donors
who wrote seven-figure checks, hundreds of bundlers who raised $100,000 or more from their own
networks, and a small-dollar donor operation modeled on the one used by Obama in 2012. She spent
heavily on television advertising and her get-out-the-vote operation, but in the end, her fundraising
edge wasn't enough to overcome Trump's ability to dominate headlines and the airwaves...
[OTOH, elections do still matter. There still is a difference between the two parties, which was
on philosophical rather than ideological grounds never a very stark contrast to begin with.
Bankers and proto-industrialist to the North and slave-owners to the South was the original
demarcation of the split in triangulating the electorate. When slave-owners became an extinct
species then Republicans mostly ran the whole show for a while, but Democrats eventually acquired
enough business from immigrants and unions while reinventing the plantation economy in Jim Crow
to remain in the game. When the Republican Party gave those pesky progressives the boot then the
Democratic Party had a progressive moment itself during its pick up game generally known as the
New Deal, but then that passed on to identity politics, which was a lot cheaper product to sell
than better wages for labor.
Politics under the US Constitution has always been an uphill struggle. So, let's not quit while
we are losing. Primary elections need to get more attention and participation. The Tea Party has
really changed primaries for the Republican Party albeit a change of questionable merit. In VA
(my state) the Tea Party seems to have benefited the Democratic Party far more than Republicans,
but local results may vary.
The Constitution itself needs a bit more work. Campaign finance, reasonable Congressional term
limits, gerrymandering, ranked (a.k.a., preferential or instant runoff) voting, and popular petition/referendum
powers for the electorate to overturn SCOTUS decisions would in combination make our republic
far more democratic than it is now. That would require a national solidarity movement to impose
its will on the two party system, perhaps by not re=electing anyone until the work is done.]
"... Trump voters that I know well said the following: "The system is broken, and at least Trump is saying something about it. Whether he actually does anything about it is anyone's guess given his unpredictability, but at least he acknowledges what is so plainly obvious to so many. " ..."
"... Anyone but Hillary is something I can at least accept, since anyone with a brain in America realizes that the Clintons (and that's the entire family, for the ignoramuses out there) gave EVERYTHING to the banksters, period! ..."
"... And while I greatly appreciate this article, it is really so bloody obvious by 2016, that only the dumbest, most ignorant and mentally lazy among us cannot grasp the simple arithmetic of waaay over 100,000 factories and production facilities offshored, of all the imported foreign visa replacement workers (i.e., scabs), etc., etc., etc. Plus add to that the offshore creation of jobs by American companies and corporations, instead of inshore job creation! ..."
"... We only have ourselves to blame for the mess we are in because we continue to vote for people that support corporate interests over those of the people. Then again, that is how American was founded. Only land owners (read: rich white men) were able to participate in American democracy at is founding. Not much has changed now that money is speech. ..."
"... The Democratic candidate was the candidate selected by and for the 1%. So was the LAST Democratic candidate. The Democratic party is how the 1% makes sure the citizens cannot get their needs met peacefully. They are therefore the ones to blame. Not "us." Definitely not me. I voted for Bernie. Twice. ..."
"... Sure there's a few racists in the group (there almost always are) but by and large I think Trump voters pulled the lever in spite of his hysterical rantings on the topic, not because of them. ..."
"... You're missing the point of this article. Counties that had twice voted for Obama voted for Trump. If these counties are "single-issue" voters dedicated to abortion & gun rights, then why did they twice vote for Obama? ..."
"... I know a bunch of people who were Bernie supporters who voted for Trump. And they voted for Trump because at least he was change and he wasn't insulting them. Some of them have now gone all in on Trumpian conservatism because they are recoiling from the murderous hypocrisy of the corporate Democrats, so they're giving "the other side" a chance. It saddens me, but there's nothing I can do about it. I understand that standing the wilderness of the real left pushing for change is daunting. ..."
"... The Middle Eastern small business owner who went all-in for Trump and hugged me sympathetically for being a Bernie supporter had a point of view yet to be disproved. "Your guy is the better man. He would have given us better policies. But they were never going to let him win. Trump can win, and perhaps clear out the viper's nest so that someone decent can win in the future." ..."
"... Like it or not, the Democratic Party betrayed the left, betrayed the New Deal, and became a second pro-war, pro-Wall Street Party. ..."
"... I think that this is what identity politics is about. Had Clinton won, she would not have done much for the minorities. Maybe she would have called them superpredators again. Same with the constant Bernie Bashing. They desperately wanted to shut down Bernie Sanders because he called out, if only briefly, what a terrible candidate Clinton was. She would have suppressed the left aggressively. ..."
"... Even the phony baloney "Russians Are Coming" meme should be challenged by voters on the right and left. Putin is a more valuable ally than Merkel. He's a Russian nationalist. A populist. Globalists like Pelosi, Graham, Obama and McCain use dog whistles on their respective demographics to thwart Trump's efforts to make Americans first in fevered, corrupt swamps of DC and NY. ..."
"... I decided to judge Trump by his enemies left and right. Hollywood hates him, not because of his human rights record but because he killed TPP. Without international copyright protections hidden deep in that well, the studios are bankrupt. ..."
"... Meryl Streep is a huckster, a fraud, and a tool of the same people we all hate. ..."
"... This reminds me of the arguments Zionists use to deflect criticism about Israel's actions towards its neighbors – as in "That's just the sort of thing people who hate Jews would say. Why do you hate Jews? Oh, wait, you're Jewish? Well, obviously, then, you're a self-hating Jew". ..."
"... I'm neither Muslim nor Jewish (self-hating or otherwise), but back in the '60s and early '70s I was generally supportive of Israel. The idea that only Jews could criticize Israel without being accused of hating Jews bugged me, and then the meme of the "self-hating Jew" really made it obvious what the game was. Just another ad hom argument, dressed up in the respectable clothing of religious tolerance. ..."
"... And this idea that Trump voters need to justify their votes, while HRC voters (or Stein or Johnson voters?) don't, is pretty much the same. Don't mind those people, they're just hateful bigots until proven otherwise. Nothing to see here, move along. ..."
"... Admittedly, Not a Trump fan, I don't have television or listen to radio in the car. But every time I heard cries of racism and I could find/read actual transcripts rather than just believe 'reports' I was not alarmed, at least no more and probably less than Demo/Clinton policy for decades running. But then, just being against more immigration with 320 million people already here doesn't make one automatically a racist. ..."
"... Many people are simply sick & tired of the smug self righteousness of "Identity" politicians. Sick of their belief that the mere suggestion that one is sexist/racist will cause a knee jerk retreat from any debate. The Identity crowd has been playing this nasty little game for decades now & it has WORN THIN . ..."
"... Why did Hillary voters ignore her explicitly racist, corporatist, corrupt, war-mongering ways? Why did all the blood on her hands (from Libya, Honduras, Iraq etc) cause little or no offense to them? ..."
"... Perhaps because she was what many of them aspired to be: a member of the 1%, a shining success, a winner whose failures, lies, betrayals and foul deeds were easy to ignore if you had swallowed the vile, anti-human propaganda of neoliberalism. ..."
"... a similar argument could be made for those who voted democrat ignoring their racist actions all around the world murdering, dropping bombs, and economically exploiting black and brown people. ..."
"... This Bernie Bro voted for Trump out of sheer hatred for the "Listen Liberal" crowd of sanctimonious meritocrats and desire to see their playhouse pulled down. Not real nuanced, but glad I did it. ..."
"... replace corrupt tax farming / private medical insurance (with equitable tax based medicare?) ..."
In an earlier post, "Political Misfortune: Anatomy of Democratic Party Failure in Clinton's Campaign
2016" (parts
one and
two ) I looked why Clinton lost (summarized by two political cliches: "It's the economy, stupid"
and "change vs. more of the same", with Clinton representing "more of the same," as in "America is
already great"). I should write a post on how Trump won, but I'm not yet ready to tackle that yet
( exit polls here ).
My goal in this short post is far more modest: I want to introduce the idea that Trump voters took
their votes seriously, and that their motivations were - dare I say it - more nuanced and complex
than typical liberal narratives suggest (Jamelle Bouie's
"There's No Such Thing as a Good Trump Voter" is a classic of the genre[1]). To do this, I'll
look at things Trump voters actually said, using some material from Democracy Corps (
"Macomb County in the Age of Trump" )[2] on Obama voters who flipped to Trump, and more material
from Chris Arnade. Both sources can be said to be reasonably representative, given that Democracy
Corps used a focus group methodology[3], and Chris Arnade was been traveling through the flyover
states for two years, talking to people and taking photographs. I'm going to throw what Trump voters
said into three buckets: Concrete material benefits, inequity aversion, and volatility voting.[4]
Concrete Material Benefits
One concrete material benefit is no more war and a peace dividend.
Arnade :
I found a similar viewpoint in communities such as West Cleveland: Donna Weaver, 52, is a waitress,
and has spent her entire life in her community. "I was born and raised here. I am not happy. Middle
class is getting killed; we work for everything and get nothing. I hate both of the candidates,
but I would vote for Trump because the Iraq war was a disaster . Why we got to keep
invading countries. Time to take care of ourselves first ."
"Bring the jobs back, bring the jobs back to the States." "He's trying
to create jobs , trying to keep jobs in the United States." "I just like
the talk about bringing the jobs back." "To me, it's going to get us our jobs
back, he's going to boost our economy, boost their economic growth for families, to bring
our future generations up."
A third - and the most important - concrete material benefit is
Democracy Corps :
10. [Trump will fix health care. The cost of health care dominated the discussion in these
focus groups . They say Trump "promised within the first hundred days to get rid of Obamacare"
and fixing the health care system is one of their great hopes for his presidency. They speak of
the impossibly high costs and hope Trump will bring "affordable healthcare" which will "help [us]
raise our families and make us be prosperous."
The experience of Trump voters is our health care system is similar to the experiences of many
commenters here.
Democracy Corps :
"My insurance for the last three years went up, went up, went up. Started out for a family
of four, I was paying $117 a week out of my paycheck. Three years later I'm paying $152 a week
out of my paycheck. I don't even go to the doctor for one. I don't take medicine."
Such a deal. And here's a lovely Catch-22:
"They cut my insurance at work My doctor, because my back is bad, said, 'Well, cut your hours.
You can only work so many hours.' Now I have to work more hours, take more pain pills, to get
my insurance back, and now they're telling me I can't get it back for another year."
Inequity Aversion
Here's a description of "inequity aversion" from
the New Yorker , as shown in the famous experiment from Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal with
female capuchin monkeys:
[T]hey found that monkeys hate being disadvantaged. A monkey in isolation is happy to eat either
a grape or a slice of cucumber. But a monkey who sees that she's received a cucumber while her
partner has gotten a grape reacts with anger: she might hurl her cucumber from her cage. Some
primates, Brosnan and de Waal concluded, "dislike inequity." They hate getting the short end of
the stick. Psychologists have a technical term for this reaction: they call it "disadvantageous-inequity
aversion." This instinctual aversion to getting less than others has been found in chimpanzees
and dogs, and it occurs, of course, in people, in whom it seems to develop from a young age.
So who's getting the short end of the stick? One perceived inequity is immigration in the context
of scarcity[5].
Democracy Corps :
"Well I mean we're all talking about illegals, I made a straight up post that in America we
have hungry, we have veterans, we have mental illness, we have so many problems in our own
country that we at this point in time just can't be concerned with, I feel bad but our country's
in dire straits financially." "I mean we need to take care of home first . We need
to take care of the veterans, we need to take care of the elderly, we need to take care of the
mentally ill, we need to take care everyone instead of us worrying about other people in other
countries, we need to take care of our house first. Get our house in order then you
know what, you need this and this and then we'll help you."
A second perceived inequity is bailouts for bankers and not for the rest of us.
Democracy Corps :
[Obama] brought the country to a macro recovery by the end of his term, but not a single person
in these groups mentioned any economic improvements under his presidency, even after the president
closed the 2016 campaign in Detroit making the case for building on his economic progress. They
have strong feelings about him, but in the written comments only one mentioned anything about
the economy in positive impressions – specifically that he saved GM and Chrysler from bankruptcy
– and just five mentioned anything economic when elaborating their doubts. Some described him
as a steward for the status quo: "I think he just maintained. He didn't really do much for the
country. And he let a lot of jobs go." Some did recall the bailout of the banks even though the
crisis "affected millions or people," leading them to think he favored the elites – "the wealthy,"
"the richer people," "the big wigs," and "the lobbyists." They know he "didn't help the lower
class, he didn't help the middle class" people like them, they insisted over and over.
And:
Taking on the reckless banks told them who you are really for. Some said they were "really
irritated about the reckless banks" and "protecting consumers from Wall Street and reckless banks
was very important." They recalled that "we lost our home because of that" and "with the bailout
all the money went to the banks and it affected millions of people. And, then, a short time later,
the banks were back to these huge bonuses" and "there's never really punishment for them."
Trump voters may not vote the way I want them to, but after having spent the last five years
working in (and having grown up in) parts of the US few visit, they are not dumb. They are doing
whatever any other voter does: Trying to use their vote to better their particular situation (however
they define that) .. Frustrated with broken promises, they gave up on the knowable and went with
the unknowable. They chose Trump, because he comes with a very high distribution. A high volatility.
As any trader will tell you, if you are stuck lower, you want volatility, uncertainty. No matter
how it comes. Put another way. Your downside is flat, your upside isn't. Break the system.
The elites loathe volatility. Because, the upside is limited, but the downside isn't. In option
language, they are in the money.
People don't make reckless decisions because things are going well. They make them because
they have reached a breaking point. They are desperate enough to trying anything new. Especially
if it offers escape, or a glimmer of hope. Even false hope.
That might mean drugs. Politically that might mean breaking the system. Especially if you think
the system is not working for you. And viewed from much of the America the system doesn't work.
The factories are gone. Families are falling apart. Social networks are frayed.
Lori Ayers, 47, works in the gas station. She was blunt when I asked her about her life. "Clarington
is a shithole. Jobs all left. There is nothing here anymore. When Ormet Aluminum factory closed,
jobs all disappeared." She is also blunt about the pain in her life. "I have five kids and two
have addictions. There is nothing else for kids to do here but drugs. No jobs. No place to play."
She stopped and added: "I voted for Obama the first time, not the second. Now I am voting for
Trump. We just got to change things ."
"I felt like it was – it's time for a change, not just a suit to change, it's time for
everything to change . Status quo's not good enough anymore." "Just a lot of change, no
more politics as usual. Maybe something can be changed." "I was tired of politics as usual, and
I thought if we had somebody in there that wasn't a Clinton or wasn't a Bush that would shake
things up , which he obviously has, and maybe get rid of the people who are just milking
the office and not doing their job. I'm hoping that he's going to hold people more accountable
for the job that they're doing for us."
Conclusion
The
Democracy Corps pollsters conclude - and I should say I'm quite open to the idea that they were
trying to sell the Democrat Party on a strategy the party was ultimately not willing to adopt, as
shown (for example) by the Ellison defenestration - as follows:
Democrats don't have a white working class problem, as so many have suggested. They have a
working class problem that includes working people in their own base. We can learn an immense
amount from listening and talking to the white working class independent and Democratic Trump
voters, particularly those who previously supported Obama or failed to turnout in past presidential
contests.
Clearly, I agree with this conclusion. It's also clear that a Democratic Party that had come out
for #MedicareForAll, wasn't openly thirsting for war, and was willing to bring the finance sector
to heel would win a respectful hearing from these voters. (At this point, it's worth noting that
the Democrats, as a party, are even less popular than Trump and Pence . So I guess focusing like
a laser beam on gaslighting a war with Russia is working great.) Whether today's Democrat party is
capable of seizing this opportunity is at the very best an open question; the dominant liberal framing
of Trump voters as Others who are motivated solely by immutable and essentially personal failings
and frailties - racism; stupidity - would argue that the answer is no.
NOTES
[1] This is not so say that no Trump voter was motivated by racism (or sexism). However, that
is a second post I'm not ready to tackle, in part because I find the presumption that liberal Democrats
pushing that line are not racist (
"İ cried when they shot Medgar Evers"
) at the very least open to question, in part because the assumption seems to be that racism is an
immutably fixed personal essence (in essence, sinful), which ignores the role of liberal Democrats
in constructing the profoundly racist carceral state ("super-predators"). However,
this passage from a Democracy Corps focus group gives one hope:
But despite all that, Macomb has changed. Immigrants and religion were central to the deep
feelings about how America was changing, but black-white relations were just barely part of the
discussion. Detroit was once a flash point for the discussion of racial conflict, black political
leaders and government spending. Today, Detroit did not come up in conversation until we introduced
it and Macomb residents see a city "turning around for the good" and "on an upswing" and many
say they like to visit downtown. Even the majority African American city of Flint provokes only
sympathetic responses. They describe the area as "downscale" and "poor" and lament the water crisis
and the suffering it caused.
[3] "Democracy Corps conducted focus groups with white non-college educated (anything less than
a four-year college degree) men and women from Macomb County, Michigan on February 15 and 16, 2017
in partnership with the Roosevelt Institute. All of the participants were Trump voters who identified
as independents, Democratic-leaning independents, or Democrats and who voted for Obama in 2008, 2012
or both. Two groups were among women, one 40-65 and one 30-60 years old. Two groups were among men,
one 35-45 and one 40-60 years old."
Stephen King has an interview with a panel of fictional Trump voters . They sound quite
different from the voters of Macomb county, and I don't think the difference is entirely accounted
for by geography, much as I respect Stephen King, who has done great things for the state.
[4] A fourth possibility is that Trump voters were engaging in altruistic punishment, where people
"punish non-cooperators
even at cost to themselves ." (Personally shushing a cellphone user in the Quiet Car instead
of calling in the conductor is a trivial example.) Altruistic punishment would provide an account
for why Trump voters (supposedly) don't vote "in their own interests," but I couldn't find examples
in the sources I looked at.
[5] Democracy Corps puts legal immigration, illegal immigration, and refugees in the same bucket
as, to be fair, some voters seem to. I think they are three different use cases. In my personal view,
we need to accept refugees, particularly those from wars we ourselves started. For legal and illegal
immigration, the United States should put United States citizens first. I would love to emigrate
to Canada to work there and take advantage of its single payer system, or to any of a number of countries
where the cost of living is half our own. However, if I travel and overstay my visa, even as an "economic
refugee," I would expect to pay a fine and be forced to leave. I don't see why my case is any different
from any other illegal immigrant in this country. Canada does not have an open border. Nor need we
(except to the extent our goal is
beating down wages ,
especially in the working class, of course ).
Trump voters that I know well said the following: "The system is broken, and at least Trump
is saying something about it. Whether he actually does anything about it is anyone's guess given
his unpredictability, but at least he acknowledges what is so plainly obvious to so many. "
I am neither racist nor sexist, and do not appreciate being called that. My staff was 30% black,
over half female and everyone got along. Don't penalize or demonize me for trying to do the right
thing, and then expect me to vote for your platform.
Anyone but Hillary as she is the anti-Christ with corruption, debt, war and entrenched bureaucracies
bent on their own sick agendas. I know Trump is crazy, but less than alternatives.
Anyone but Hillary is something I can at least accept, since anyone with a brain in America
realizes that the Clintons (and that's the entire family, for the ignoramuses out there) gave
EVERYTHING to the banksters, period!
And while I greatly appreciate this article, it is really so bloody obvious by 2016, that
only the dumbest, most ignorant and mentally lazy among us cannot grasp the simple arithmetic
of waaay over 100,000 factories and production facilities offshored, of all the imported foreign
visa replacement workers (i.e., scabs), etc., etc., etc. Plus add to that the offshore creation
of jobs by American companies and corporations, instead of inshore job creation!
I hear your frustration, but why take that out on the democratic candidate? All of your gripes
should be directed at the 1%. The moneyed oligarchs, like the Koch brothers, that have used their
money to buy politicians and shape policy to suite their needs. They are ones that hire immigrants
with H1Bs, they are ones that dictate wages. They took away healthcare coverage and pensions.
They choose to close factories and open up in China and Mexico. Why did we vote for elected officials
for the last 40 years that passed legislation to allow this?
Again, why do people reward Republicans with the presidency, both houses of congress, and state
legislatures when the republicans, starting with Regan, busted unions and fought for deregulation,
free trade, and globalization. These things happen under Republicans and Democrats.
America is a capitalist society. Private business exists to make profits. Why an American $40
an hour for a job that can be done in China for $4? What can government do to stop that? Would
the people really vote for the policies needed to achieve that? Show me one politician office
that is willing to return to a Reagan era tax structure.
We only have ourselves to blame for the mess we are in because we continue to vote for
people that support corporate interests over those of the people. Then again, that is how American
was founded. Only land owners (read: rich white men) were able to participate in American democracy
at is founding. Not much has changed now that money is speech.
Squanto and twenty other Indians were kidnapped by Thomas Hunt and sold as slaves in Spain
in 1614. He somehow escaped and made his way to England and then back to New England. This is
how he learned English well enough to translate for the Pilgrims in 1620. The first documented
delivery of African slaves to the Massachusetts Bay Colony was in 1638, eight years after the
Colony's formation. [All my info above comes from 'New England Bound'.]
There had been slavery directed by Europeans in the Caribbean for a hundred years prior to
the European settlement of New England. Columbus's first words upon seeing the natives of Hispaniola
were: 'They will make fine slaves'.
The Democratic candidate was the candidate selected by and for the 1%. So was the LAST
Democratic candidate. The Democratic party is how the 1% makes sure the citizens cannot get their
needs met peacefully. They are therefore the ones to blame. Not "us." Definitely not me. I voted
for Bernie. Twice.
forwarded far and wide with prefix "For those interested in why actual people actually do things,
who aren't placated with comforting thoughts that all those who disagree with them are irredeemable
racist know-nothings."
"Democrats don't have a white working class problem, as so many have suggested. They have a
working class problem that includes working people in their own base."
Well put. Still haven't received anything other than a flummoxed look from any Clinton apologists
when I asked if *all* the 2012 Obama voters that went Trump are racists.
I see the U.S. political duopoly as a Juggernaut. The tea party, a grass-roots movement toward
the common man, was subsumed by the Kochs into an battering ram to destroy moderate Republicans
and those not hopelessly bought-off.
The Occupy Movement, which I credit with paving the way for Bernie, simply ran into the Democratic
Establishment Wall.
No to single-payer, yes to ACA. No to federal tuition assistance, yes to student loans. No
to deficit spending to improve the economy, yes to austerity. And, heaven forbid we tax the wealthy,
or run a socialist (gasp) for president. We came close to defeating that wall in 2016. We can't
stop now.
so much of flyover country is comprised of single-issue voters. Not all, of course, but I would
rank the prevalence of those issues as 1) abortion 2) gun rights. I believe #1 here dominated
the thinking of Trump voters. There was no chance in hell they were going to let Hillary Clinton
have a shot at nominating SC justices over the next 4 years.
Sure there's a few racists in the group (there almost always are) but by and large I think
Trump voters pulled the lever in spite of his hysterical rantings on the topic, not because of
them.
You're missing the point of this article. Counties that had twice voted for Obama voted
for Trump. If these counties are "single-issue" voters dedicated to abortion & gun rights, then
why did they twice vote for Obama?
without knowing the nuances of the counties in question, my hypothesis would be that turnout
was lower for Clinton-voting democrats as compared to Obama-voters in those counties while Republican
voters was the same or perhaps a bit higher. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that single-issue
voters aren't voting for the Democratic candidate in any national election and I interpret your
point as to suggest that they switched their votes ( voted Obama in 2008 and 2012 but Trump in
2016).
I'm not saying this is the only reason, just that IMO it's a vastly under-appreciated one.
It's expressly about why Trump voters say they voted for Trump: your "single-issue" hobby horse
isn't in evidence.
You do, however, raise an interesting question: in these swing counties I'll try to find the
time to look at how much of the swing came from collapsing turn out rather than actual Obama to
Trump votes.
I personally know at least three people who voted Obama and then Trump and none are "single-issue",
all I would put in Lambert's/Arnade's "volatility voters" class.
But I'll grant that's not a meaningful polling set.
I know a bunch of people who were Bernie supporters who voted for Trump. And they voted
for Trump because at least he was change and he wasn't insulting them. Some of them have now gone
all in on Trumpian conservatism because they are recoiling from the murderous hypocrisy of the
corporate Democrats, so they're giving "the other side" a chance. It saddens me, but there's nothing
I can do about it. I understand that standing the wilderness of the real left pushing for change
is daunting.
The Middle Eastern small business owner who went all-in for Trump and hugged me sympathetically
for being a Bernie supporter had a point of view yet to be disproved. "Your guy is the better
man. He would have given us better policies. But they were never going to let him win. Trump can
win, and perhaps clear out the viper's nest so that someone decent can win in the future."
Lots of the people who sat out 2016 rather than vote for Clinton will probably continue to
sit out for Booker/Harris/Clinton (shudder) - whatever neoliberal gets coughed up. They aren't
going to become activists. They're too exhausted, disgusted or drugged.
It has nothing to do with complacency. Activists have been pushing for decades for better choices.
If we had had our way, Bernie Sanders would now be president, busily browbeating Chuck Schumer
into passing his free college bill, having already shoved Improved Medicare for All through the
Congress.
Lambert was very clear, and you don't seem to be disputing his evidence. The Democrats lost
their voters because they killed, jailed, starved and immiserated their voters. Democrats stole
their homes, pensions and jobs. Democrats said they were deplorable and showed they thought they
were disposable. Enough of their voters understood their self-interest well enough not to vote
for their oppressors, whether they came out for Trump or just stayed home. That is how Clinton
lost and Trump won.
Like it or not, the Democratic Party betrayed the left, betrayed the New Deal, and became
a second pro-war, pro-Wall Street Party.
Trump, despite being widely disliked at least was offering the economically devastated an opportunity
potentially to improve their lives. That was assuming that he kept his promises. Most people voted
for him out of despair knowing that even if he did not keep his promises, they would have lost
nothing since Clinton would not have either.
As for the wealthy Democrats? They wanted the bottom 90% to preserve their "upper class" and
"upper middle class privilege". That's what this is about. They want the people making less than
30,000 a year to vote the same way as big city Liberals making more than 130,000 a year.
I think that this is what identity politics is about. Had Clinton won, she would not have done
much for the minorities. Maybe she would have called them superpredators again. Same with the
constant Bernie Bashing. They desperately wanted to shut down Bernie Sanders because he called
out, if only briefly, what a terrible candidate Clinton was. She would have suppressed the left
aggressively.
Bernie Sanders's style of class politics - and his program of mild social-democratic redistribution
- did not gain much favor in New Canaan, Connecticut (where he won 27 percent of the vote)
or Northfield, Illinois (39 percent). For some suburban Democrats, Sanders's throttling in
these plush districts virtually disqualified him from office: "A guy who got 36 percent of
the Democrats in Fairfax County," an ebullient Michael Tomasky wrote after the Virginia primary,
"isn't going to be president."
Clinton was their candidate. By holding off Sanders's populist challenge - and declining
to concede fundamental ground on economic issues - the former secretary of state proved she
could be trusted to protect the vital interests of voters in Newton, Eden Prairie, and Falls
Church. They, more than any other group in America, were enthusiastically #WithHer.
To some extent, Clinton's appeal even carried over to wealthy red-state suburbs. In Forysth
County outside Atlanta, and Williamson County outside Nashville - the richest counties in Georgia
and Tennessee - Clinton lost big but improved significantly on Obama's performance in 2012.
But wealthy, educated suburbanites were never going to push the Democrats over the top all
by themselves. Despite Clinton's incremental gains, in the end, most rich white Republicans
remained rich white Republicans: hardly the sturdiest foundation for an anti-Trump majority.
The numbers show it.
As for the Liberals freaking out, they can be split into a few categories:
1. The ones who profited economically from the status quo, like the professional 10%ers. They
don't want someone who is going to rock the boat. The Fairfax County Jacobin article captures
them brilliantly. They hated Bernie Sanders.
2. The SJWs, intersectionalists, second generation feminists, and other identity politics groups.
They are not all wealthy, but unifying them is their identity politics ideology.
3. The hardcore Democratic partisans who "vote blue no matter who".
The Liberals want to pretend like it was racism or sexism or Russia that prevented their "chosen
one" from winning. In reality it was economics and the fact that people could see what Clinton
really was. For all the talk of the most progressive platform ever, Clinton was really the anti-thesis
of Bernie Sanders.
Did they really think their identity politics was going to fool anyone? We saw upper middle
class well off people lecturing less well off Bernie Sanders supporters this election to check
their "white privilege", even though the Sanders supporters were often poor and had their future
destroyed by the economic policies that neoliberal politicians like Hillary Clinton advocated
for.
I think it is because they don't want to appeal to working class people, because if they did,
they would have to serve them.
This election has been a real eye-opener as to who our allies and opponents are in this class
struggle. I think that in the coming years we will see a Liberal Left split of sorts. The best
possible outcome is a third party or even better the Democrats going the way of the Whigs.
The question is, how to build such a party? There is clearly the votes. Bernie showed that
and the left might even find some common ground with Trump voters. Keep in mind they are paleoconservatives
who are anti-war, want manufacturing and good benefits. By contrast the Clintons are pro war and
economically have more in common with the GOP Establishment than the Trump "economic despair base".
Excellent comment thank you, I agree the opportunity is there.. the question of how to mobilize
seems to be the problem. Trump is a total unknown, and who knows what the midterms will bring.
The fact the bernie got as many votes as he did as an old, socialist, by no means charismatic
jew gives a lot of hope for the future, as well as the demographic that voted for him (mostly
young).
These paradigm shifts are generational and take a lot of time, and for some reason that remains
unclear it still seems like Trump is necessary right now. Perhaps some internal political destruction
is needed before we can get a clear handle on the path forward.
This Trump voter liked and listened to Sanders early on. But as his profile and possibilities
rocketed, he abandoned his anti immigration platform.
Immigrants from anywhere - yes anywhere – in a zero sum economy don't benefit the working middle
class. It's not racist, but realistic. Someone had "the talk" with Bernie and his speeches became
more and more party line.
And his voters should have jumped to Trump, but for the hysteria from institutional DC insiders
in both parties. Trump is no knuckle dragging Cheney Goper.
He's fighting the bad guys on both fronts. With no help from natural allies too afraid to bolt
the herd and call out the enemies of the middle class.
Even the phony baloney "Russians Are Coming" meme should be challenged by voters on the right
and left. Putin is a more valuable ally than Merkel. He's a Russian nationalist. A populist. Globalists
like Pelosi, Graham, Obama and McCain use dog whistles on their respective demographics to thwart
Trump's efforts to make Americans first in fevered, corrupt swamps of DC and NY.
All Americans should be rallying around the first president to shake up the party identity.
Bernie had his chance and caved to party insiders. He is no hero.
I decided to judge Trump by his enemies left and right. Hollywood hates him, not because of
his human rights record but because he killed TPP. Without international copyright protections
hidden deep in that well, the studios are bankrupt.
Meryl Streep is a huckster, a fraud, and a tool of the same people we all hate.
This reminds me of the arguments Zionists use to deflect criticism about Israel's actions towards
its neighbors – as in "That's just the sort of thing people who hate Jews would say. Why do you
hate Jews? Oh, wait, you're Jewish? Well, obviously, then, you're a self-hating Jew".
The answer always is that the other side is all about the hate, even if they clearly don't
hate the people they're accused of hating, because what they're saying is "discursive", and, you
know, sooner or later it will be hate, because people just can't help themselves
I actually got called a self hating Jew when I identified myself of Jewish descent and backed
MintPress News in an argument that she was having with a Pro Israel person. It utterly killed
and undermined his position me doing that and he just turned on and attacked me.
I'm neither Muslim nor Jewish (self-hating or otherwise), but back in the '60s and early '70s
I was generally supportive of Israel. The idea that only Jews could criticize Israel without being
accused of hating Jews bugged me, and then the meme of the "self-hating Jew" really made it obvious
what the game was. Just another ad hom argument, dressed up in the respectable clothing
of religious tolerance.
And this idea that Trump voters need to justify their votes, while HRC voters (or Stein or
Johnson voters?) don't, is pretty much the same. Don't mind those people, they're just hateful
bigots until proven otherwise. Nothing to see here, move along.
Racism, racism, racism, sexism, sexism, sexism, transgenderism, transgenderism, transgenderism
- this commenter is the perfect example of the purely ignorant American today (assuming she/he/it
is an American) - everything robotically repeating the Identity Political meme, no thinking or
independent thought allowed.
Nope, you just don't want to ever address the plight of the American worker, now do ya????
Admittedly, Not a Trump fan, I don't have television or listen to radio in the car. But every
time I heard cries of racism and I could find/read actual transcripts rather than just believe
'reports' I was not alarmed, at least no more and probably less than Demo/Clinton policy for decades
running. But then, just being against more immigration with 320 million people already here doesn't
make one automatically a racist.
Trump's going to have to work real hard to out deport Obama who has by far the record in that
department.
Many people are simply sick & tired of the smug self righteousness of "Identity" politicians.
Sick of their belief that the mere suggestion that one is sexist/racist will cause a knee jerk
retreat from any debate.
The Identity crowd has been playing this nasty little game for decades now & it has WORN THIN .
One does not "call these ways of thinking" anything, especially not words that are so overused
as to have lost all meaning except as a kind of profane slur. Rather, one characterizes ways of
thinking in all their complexity and examines their origins and likely political outcomes and
affiliations, as Lambert has done. One describes them and tries to see if they are justified in
the context of the lives as lived by their thinkers; how they are adaptive, and how they are maladaptive-not
judging ex cathedra , based on utterly inadequate information, not to mention an almost
complete moral imbecility, whether they are "orthodox" or "heretical" according to the schema
of rainbow righteousness, and then categorizing them with what has now deteriorated into a grade-school
epithet, rather than the damned ideology it once connoted.
Yea I think many of them may not be justified though, but may be based on the world view of
the voters. In other words it may be what they believe is true even it isn't.
For example they might think they are all losing their job to immigrants and in a few cases
this might be true, but I don't think statistics bear this out as a major source of job loss compared
to say outsourcing. So if they think the reason the job market is so bad is because of immigrants
that's not necessarily racist per se but it may be inaccurate.
"So what should does call these ways of thinking if not racist and/or sexist?"
You should call them: "Nobody cares about racism and sexism, because banksters, insurance companies,
defense companies and other crony capitalists use tools like you to distract from their robbing
the public blind."
You are part of the problem, so I don't care about you. FU.
Whom should they have voted for to strike against bigotry? Hillary "bring black criminals to
heel"/against gay marriage until 2013/"the future is female" Clinton?
"Besides, shouldn't one ask these voters why Trump's racist dogwhistle pronouncements and explicitly
sexist actions caused little or no offense to them? Did I miss that somewhere?"
Why did Hillary voters ignore her explicitly racist, corporatist, corrupt, war-mongering ways?
Why did all the blood on her hands (from Libya, Honduras, Iraq etc) cause little or no offense
to them?
Perhaps because she was what many of them aspired to be: a member of the 1%, a shining success,
a winner whose failures, lies, betrayals and foul deeds were easy to ignore if you had swallowed
the vile, anti-human propaganda of neoliberalism.
I am not satisfied with this whole "white innocence" subtext
The subtext is there for you to impute. It seems like the only way you can be convinced that
it is not there is for the interviewees to be explicitly condemned as racist because they voted
for a racist. You and others who hold your stance overlook the fact that there were only two candidates,
not several, including Trump's non-racist twin, to vote for, and so you have to deal with truly
awful tradeoffs. Should I assume you are an imperialist because you voted for someone who helped
install a military regime in Honduras??
Would you consider yourself a "social justice warrior"? Your comment certainly reads as if
a "social justice warrior" could have written it.
Are you a Race Card Identyan? The Race Card has been played so often it is wearing out. In
fact, it has worn all the way out for many people. The intended targets of this guilt-inducement
gambit may no longer feel the guilt you seek to induce. And where there is no more guilt, there
will be no more obedience. And where does that leave you?
You sound like a typical Clinton-Brock Democrat. Today's Mainstream Democratic Party would
be a good fit for you. If you aren't already in it, you might consider joining it.
Politics has been fractal for the past 30-35 years. Same old input-output on an ever expanding
iterative footprint. It's old. It's tired. It'd not serving most voters. It's economically hurting
most voters. Bernie and Trump showed promise of breaking the fractal iteration and replacing it
with something new. Maybe better. That's what people voted for, imo.
Oh no no no no.. you do not get away with crap like "shouldn't one ask these
voters why Trump's racist dogwhistle pronouncements and explicitly sexist actions caused
little or no offense to them".
Show me one that said Trump's stuff wasn't offensive. And your phrasing is either
deliberately or just stupidly messed up. "[C]aused little or no offense to them". I'm a white
male, saying bad things about black females will get me near about ready throttle you but it
"caused little or no offense to" me because that would be insanely presumptuous on my
part. I have a heartache about how people are put upon due to race and or sex but that
oppression sure isn't something I can claim as mine.
>ignores the discursive nature of racist attitudes and beliefs and how easily they can
transmute into a self-justifying politics
Do these people have money? No. Do their kids have job prospects? No. I think that is
enough to legitimatize what they are saying, I don't care if their very next breath is "them
n-words get all the stuff". They are far from perfect, but it is just *so* funny how the most,
tell you to your face racist will then say "oh but Jim down at work is OK". They are just
people, plenty of warts. Get off your high horse, bet you have a number of warts of your own.
a similar argument could be made for those who voted democrat ignoring their racist actions
all around the world murdering, dropping bombs, and economically exploiting black and brown people.
This Bernie Bro voted for Trump out of sheer hatred for the "Listen Liberal" crowd of sanctimonious
meritocrats and desire to see their playhouse pulled down. Not real nuanced, but glad I did it.
Odd that you would attack the "Listen Liberal crowd," given that Thomus Frank was mostly critical
of the Democrats. I am not attacking, just want to learn more about your perspective.
I'm just guessing, but I think that casino implosion is referring to his distaste for the people
that Frank discusses in that book, not his distaste for people like Frank.
I don't know who/what casino implosion meant to address herm's comment to, but I will just
guess that by "Listen Liberal" crowd, heeshee meant the crowd about/against/to whom "Listen Liberal"
was written.
Turns out Trump Voters are Human.
Here, looking into the myths behind "Trump voters" might be constructive. The biggest myth is
that they are tust political troles. In the course of deconverting from Catholism to Atheism,
abserveed that many of our political beleifes are formed under the same structures as one's religous
beleifes. Thoughts about the "free market" are heald just as strongly as stronly as devotion to
Jesus.
Even those who deconvert from their religion, often bring their political belifes with them
into the Athiest community. Often without having them challanged.
And this is the point. One deconverts from a religion because it is challanged by science.
But political beleifes are rarly chalanged.
One exception was in 2007, when the economey colapsed. Many peoples convictions in the "free
market" were directly challanged by reality. And on the political stage they saw McCain talking
about freee markets as if nothing had happend. Conservatives were confused and looking for answers.
They thoght Obama had them.
But Obama also dubbled down on the free market narative. This was a huge mistake because part
of that narative is that all Liberals are socialists. And socialism is evil. So yay, Trump is
Obama's legacy.
Trump voters are human. This means they are far smarter than people give them credit, even
without a GED. They vote acording to the information and evidence they hae been presented with.
But we live in a world where that narative has been carfuly mananged and tended too. Democrats,
rather than chalanging that system, felt they could simply build their own and construct their
own naraive. Hence we get "Russia Russia Russia!" And this is not convicing to conservative votes
who already know the one "true" narrative,
I live in Macomb County. My precinct, my neighbors, voted for Trump. They hate NAFTA. They
hate free trade with China. They hate H1B visas. These are people to whom $100,000 plus a year
union factory job was nothing. We all knew people who had them. Those jobs built this county.
Period. So Clinton never stood a chance here.
They were willing to give Trump a chance. And what's one of the very first things he did? Appointed
a fast food CEO to head up the labor department. A real indicator that the plight of the working
class in America keeps him up at night.
The other option available to us was the fast coffee CEO as Labor Secretary. McJobs were more
or less baked into the Establishment lineup on "both" sides. It's almost as if the real decisions
were made long before the election and concealed from us, and elections are held to manufacture
the image of just consent to the proto-feudal system.
To Teleportnow:
And from this distance, even I could see that nothing, other than PR, was going to be done about
any of them by either R or D candidate. There I go again, flogging the same dead horse.
And what's one of the very first things he did? Appointed a fast food CEO to head up the
labor department. A real indicator that the plight of the working class in America keeps him
up at night.
We're fortunate that Puzder's nomination was withdrawn. It's a pity that the same didn't happen
to Pruitt's nomination (Trump supporters are just as vulnerable to pesticides, lead, mercury,
and other poisons as other people), or Mnuchin's nomination (many Trump supporters have been abused
by corrupt bankers or mortgage processors like Mnuchin and his recently divested OneWest Bank).
You are absolutely correct about Trump's lack of concern for the plight of the American working
class. Not that Obama or Clinton care much about them, either.
Obama's betrayals of his core voters were disguised in the smoke of financial collapse where
systemic effects were years in expressing themselves, brutal though they proved to be. They were
as smooth and subtle as the man who envisioned them.
Trump's betrayals are, like him, blunt, flagrant and outrageous.
That the Democrats have achieved even lower approval ratings(CBS) than the Donald (Gallup)
is the strongest legitimizing force in his thus far execrable presidency.
Unlke Reagan he might actually be a good actor :). Or he can give a speech like he feels working
class pain and hit all the right notes, but policy so far is horrible.
"And what's one of the very first things he did? Appointed a fast food CEO to head up the labor
department. A real indicator that the plight of the working class in America keeps him up at night."
Trump's appointments have been unfortunate, but remember every establishment bigwig had been
lining up to announce she would never serve in this administration, all of them too good and pure
for Trump. So what is he supposed to do if he couldn't even convince a couple of second rate rock
and roll bands to gyrate at his inauguration. Of course he appointed friends and friends-of-friends
and relatives. The establishment brought this on themselves. I couldn't care less as long as he
keeps torpedoing the dearest plans of the slave owners. And by the way the first thing he did
was he castrated TPP and that cannot be said enough times.
In other good news, Today the SIlicon Valley H1B exploiters got raided by ICE and about time.
You know what? Maybe the plight of his base really does keep him up at night
This is part of the collateral damage I knew I was risking when I voted for Trump in order
to make my vote against Clinton as effective as possible. And we have kept Clinton out of the
office for at least this time around.
If/when we are able to crush, smash and destroy the rolling Slow Coup against the 2016 Presidential
Election Outcome by the IC, the Wall Street Elite, and the Mainstream Democratic Party . . . .
then we will be free to try preventing Trump's damage, mitigating the Trump damage already achieved,
and begin growing culture-and-politics-based Economic Combat movements devoted to targeting the
purchasing and consumption choices of a hundred million people against certain Black Hat Industries
which support Trump to advance their own sinister agendas.
We could start doing that now, if we didn't have to spend energy on countering the Remove Trump
conspiracy first.
1. The Dem Party is in a tough position. Where do they go from here?
On the one hand, it'll be tough to wean from the big givers on Wall St and Silicon valley.
Cultivating the small givers and unions will take a lot of time and work.
Also the Dems seem to have little use for Bernie. They seem to wish that he would just go just
go away and leave the Party alone. Bernie, however, could be the Dem's savior.
I don't see the Dem Party choosing a feasible direction. Maybe it will take a few more years
for the Party to sort it out and find a point man.
2. I'm not surprised there is racism, misogyny, and chauvinism among many voters, including
Trumpeters. I suspect that in times of economic "stress" pointing fingers feels natural, even
desirable. Judging from the press, there's a lot of economic "stress" around.
The Bernies could begin by invading and conquering those regional and local Democratic Party
areas which seem least pro-Clinton. Those could be First Landing Beachheads. Once those were secured,
the Berniecrats could work on building strength within them, eliminating every Clintonite " Left-Behind"
type person remaining to try destroying the Berniecrats from within, and then working to break
out of their Secured Beachheads to conquer and decontaminate more Democratic Party territory.
I'm a life-long Democrat and I despise my party. But I'm not stupid. That Trump was a con man
was evident from the beginning but, like most voters, both candidates made me want to vomit. (James
Howard Kunstler called them "human hairballs." )
Unfortunately, all those Trump voters who are worried about jobs, the economy, health care,
etc., will soon discover that Trump doesn't give a fuck about them. He likes their adulation,
since it feeds his ego, but he and every one of his execrable appointments will just make their
lives worse.
Yes, you can't blame people who cast their vote in "hope" of something better.
In the case of Trump, their inevitable disappointment will be that much sadder & acute.
I want to know the extent to which the Faux Noise network is responsible for shaping the views
of Trump voters. It is by far the favored mainstream TV station for news in red-state America.
A steady diet of a certain skewed viewpoint for years upon years has to have a significant effect
on one's thought processes. I can't believe that millions of people spontaneously rose up and
decided to throw off the shackles of business as usual without some major groundwork being done
to get them all riled up. Years of being told that Hillary was corrupt, the devil incarnate etc
etc by right-wing talking heads has to be a factor.
Obama was demonized by Fox News too, yet the reason for the Trump win was that the Trump vote
(in numbers) was essentially the same as the Romney vote, but the Dem vote was down v. 2012, and
that was due to lower turnout, notably of people of color.
Lambert has also repeatedly pointed out that the swing state wins were due to Rust Belt counties
that went for Obama going for Trump. And it has been documented repeatedly that propensity to
vote for Trump correlated strongly with opioid related deaths in the area, regardless of the voter's
income level.
Economic insecurity is the driving factor. The more insecure people become the more tribal
their behavior. People want economic change more than anything else and if they see that the government
is doing something to provide them a better life then other social changes are possible..
A paralyzed Congress is great for the elite as the status quo is beneficial to them as they
have successfully rigged the system. People want to see legislative action.
Ryan stated " "Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with some growing
pains," The problem is that Republicans were never an opposition party, they were an obstructionist
party that only knew how to say "NO".
The establishment Democrats are setting themselves up to become the exact same obstructionists..
This will not help them in 2018. Now is the time to try to force votes on measures that are obviously
what the people want.even if they are sure to fail. Let the Republicans stay the obstructionists.
I am a bit disappointed to not see a reference to Jeremy Grantham's quarterly letter at GMO
regarding the narrarives that motivated people to vote for Trump. I have posted about this several
times before. His letter runs on pages 9-15 of this link:
The Road to Trumpsville: The Long, Long Mistreatment of the American Working Class
JG presents a lot of compelling information regarding the decline of labor vs. capital in compensation,
the exploding income of the top 0.1% vs. everyone else, income inequality and the breakdown of
social cohesion – both in words and charts. His Post Script summary is classic in my humble opinion,
especially this line about what the voters across Red state are desperately seeking from Washington:
"Save me, oh leaders, from the rich and powerful!" Personally I would edit that to "the rich
and powerfully corrupt".
Of course there are issues, and of course Hillary was a horrible candidate, but voting for
trump was an insane way to make a point. He will clearly do more to damage the lower and middle
classes than any president in the last 100 years. He will be able to fix NOTHING. More war (jobs?).
More tax breaks for the rich. Less money for anyone without money. A simple tried and true capitalist
asshole approach. He will not survive term 1, and then pence comes in lovely, not.
Please. He stopped Clinton, which at least slowed down TPP and the Russian War. Trump doesn't
even seem interested in killing Social Security. He yanked Ryan's health care "plan"; Hillary
said she was looking forward to working with Ryan. Trump's going to do horrible things, but so
far, his election is far better for American workers than if Clinton had been installed. If nothing
else, it slows down Washington's neoliberal horror show, and the pain of people in the midwest
was at least briefly covered in the corporate press, as opposed to being completely hidden under
Obama, which would have continued under Clinton. Voting for Trump was saner than voting for Clinton.
(I voted for neither. I also live in California.)
The only way we get Pence is if the Democrats and the CIA succeed in their coup. So let's all
try to get them to cut it out.
This post is absolutely correct and important. The financialization of the economy which has
led to inequality, skyrocketing debt, and early death in Mid-America must be addressed. Corporate
Media and the Democrats ignore it and are scapegoating Russia to continue getting their paybacks
from Wall Street. This post highlights the coming tragedy. Clearly Disruptive Capitalism destroys
governments and society. Under stress people revert to their tribal roots. By ignoring the base
causes; war, infinite growth on a finite planet and exploitation by the Elite, the West is being
ripped apart.
It's not just the West. The Global South, largely unseen and unreported on and very much at
the sharp end of extractive neo-colonialism, isn't in great shape either. Voters in Western Europe
express "legitimate concerns" about economic and climate migrants from Africa and the ME, but
often don't stop to think about the dire conditions and political strife that are driving that
migration flow.
Thousands of people are drowning every year in the Mediterranean and that's the visible tip
of the iceberg. It's just unimaginable what's currently happening.
So, Dems ran a terrible status quo candidate that had been a long time target of Faux News
in a "change" election. Most Trump voters in rural Kentucky told me they were voting against H
rather than for T. Oh, and abortion, guns, bathrooms.
Dems have ignored rural communities they didn't already hold for several election cycles. No
prominent national Democratic politician has ventured outside of the cities of Louisville and
Lexington if they visit Kentucky at all. Spend a little time in rural communities and you begin
to see how bleak the picture is for them – I asked everyone I could what they would do if they
were King of Kentucky with an unlimited budget. There were very few soloutions offered.
(IMO Kentucky is Ground Zero. A border state since the Civil War that used to be Democratic
– what better place for Dems to start to rebuild and appeal to Rural America?)
Dems also could have chosen to include and even woo independent voters. Instead, they took
a "who else are you gonna vote for" attitude and pivoted right. Yes, Vice President Sanders would
have been a pita but that would have been a significantly better result.
Still no house cleaning in the Democratic Party, Clintons and Wassermans and Brazilles still
circling. Grrr.
oof, sorry about the wonky link formatting. I tried to use the "link" button in the editor,
and got this weird result. I tried to edit twice, now can't edit.
A third - and the most important - concrete material benefit is Democracy Corps:
The object after "is" probably isn't suppose to be the polling source. It probably should read
something like
A third - and the most important - concrete material benefit is replace corrupt tax
farming / private medical insurance (with equitable tax based medicare?) Democracy Corps:
So what is going to happen when Trump voters realize at the end of four years that their choice
has not delivered for them? Unfortunately they will not be able to realize that he never intended
to deliver anything for them. However, the same problems or worse will remain. Lets project the
current situation out into the future with the understanding that there is no credible agent or
desire for real meaningful change and improvement from those presently in power. What I see does
not look good, and perhaps I will have the good fortune not to be around to see it.
"... Trump at least was offering the economically devastated Americans a slight chance to improve their standard of living and get better jobs. That assuming that he keep his promises, which, of course, is not given. But why one should not give him a benefit of doubt, if Hillary was all about the kicking the neoliberalism can down the road? ..."
"... Most people voted for Trump not because they liked him, but out of despair knowing that the Hillary will betray all her promises the next day after the elections like Obama did and will behave like a female clone of John McCain in foreign policy. ..."
"... In other words, by electing Trump most Americans lost nothing since Clinton would pursue the same pro top 1% policies, just with a larger doze of hypocrisy. ..."
"Terry McAuliffe Has A Very Clintonian Plan For Democrats
To Win Back Power"
'It's still the economy, stupid'
By Sam Stein...04/03/2017...07:05 pm ET
"Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has a two-pronged strategy
for his fellow Democrats to regain power in the age of Trump:
Don't get distracted by the chaos and prioritize the states.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, McAuliffe called
on Democrats to simplify their message down to its most
fundamental, Clintonian core. For all the talk of Russian
connections, disorganization and dubious ethics, McAuliffe
argued, voters care most about the economy. Democrats would
be wise to explain how President Donald Trump is failing them
on that front.
"Don't chase the shiny objects," McAuliffe said, advising
those running for office. "The public is sick of people
picking partisan fights for the sake of fights. I don't pick
fights with Trump for the sake of picking arguments. I am one
of his most vocal critics because, as I've said, this man is
a one-man wrecking crew to my economy."..."
Economics, like PPACA idolaters, is a red [no change DNC]
herring.
In 2018, it will be reconstituting the US' Bill of
Rights and who pulled the redaction off the names the NKDV/NSA
picked up in the politically directed wire tapping (euphemism
for violating citizens privacy rights) to be used for
politics and attempting a coup.
Your Monday morning quarterbacking missed the key three
points about the Democratic Party. DemoRats:
1. Betrayed
the left
2. Betrayed the New Deal
3. Became a second pro-war, pro-Wall Street Party.
Trump at least was offering the economically
devastated Americans a slight chance to improve their
standard of living and get better jobs. That assuming that he
keep his promises, which, of course, is not given. But why
one should not give him a benefit of doubt, if Hillary was
all about the kicking the neoliberalism can down the road?
The only segment of population that would be better under
Hillary are retirees as they are out of job market anyway,
but this is not what the majority of population wants. They
want jobs.
Most people voted for Trump not because they liked
him, but out of despair knowing that the Hillary will betray
all her promises the next day after the elections like Obama
did and will behave like a female clone of John McCain in
foreign policy.
John McCain was rejected by voters, if I remember
correctly.
In other words, by electing Trump most Americans lost
nothing since Clinton would pursue the same pro top 1%
policies, just with a larger doze of hypocrisy.
Neoliberal, dominated by Clinton wing Democratic Party is
done, as they have nothing to offer to the voters. They are
history.
My impression is that cutting off Democratic
Party from the teat of the Wall Street is currently virtually impossible. You need a serious crisis
to shake off Clinton's neoliberal wing from Democratic Party. May be even another economic crisis
like 2008.
Also Democratic Party, Republican Party, the US Congress and the Federal Government are all just
different faces of the same entity -- the National Security State.
With the level of jingoism demonstrated recently by Democratic Party (which was the forte of Republicans
in the past), Clinton's Democrats and Republicans now are like Siamese twins, and to separate them
from each other is like trying to separate two sides of a dollar bill.
"... My impression is that cutting off Democratic Party from the teat of the Wall Street is currently virtually impossible. You need a serious crisis to shake off Clinton's neoliberal wing from Democratic Party. May be even another economic crisis like 2008. ..."
"... Also Democratic Party, Republican Party, the US Congress and the Federal Government are all just different faces of the same entity -- the National Security State. ..."
My impression is that cutting off Democratic Party from the
teat of the Wall Street is currently virtually impossible.
You need a serious crisis to shake off Clinton's neoliberal
wing from Democratic Party. May be even another economic
crisis like 2008.
Also Democratic Party, Republican Party, the US Congress
and the Federal Government are all just different faces of
the same entity -- the National Security State.
With the level of jingoism demonstrated recently by
Democratic Party (which was the forte of Republicans in the
past), Clinton's Democrats and Republicans now are like
Siamese twins, and to separate them from each other is like
trying to separate two sides of a dollar bill.
It is an easy thing to criticize neoliberalism now, when it
was already unmasked (especially the USA variant of it, aka
"casino capitalism")
A more difficult thing is to point to a viable
alternative.
anne said...
April, 2017
Do election outcomes matter?
So what have we discovered? While these patterns need to be investigated more thoroughly, the
data suggest no clear difference between Democratic and Republican presidents on 20 of the 30
outcomes:
Income inequality: top 1%'s share
Economic growth
Median wealth
Homeownership
Stock market
Unionization
Black-white income ratio
Female-male pay ratio
College graduates
Life expectancy
Homicides
Incarceration
Marriage
Out-of-wedlock births
Abortions
Religiosity
Immigration
Imports
Trust
Earth's average temperature
We do observe a partisan difference for 10 of the outcomes (the party achieving better
performance is listed in parentheses):
Question:
Today we see a growing split of the world political
elites. There are globalists who express the interests of transnational corporations
and world financial organisations and there is a new political concept, the so-called
populists who express the interests of the people in their countries. A vivid example
is the election of US President Donald Trump, and there are a number of other
political leaders who are seen as fringe politicians in the West, for example Marine
Le Pen. Given this, it is not by chance that Russia is seen as a leader in half of
the world. Is this view justified? Can we talk about a future victory for one of
these ideologies? How would this influence today's world order?
Sergey
Lavrov:
I wouldn't call Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen "fringe politicians"
if only because they absolutely fit into the principles that underlie the functioning
of the American and French states. Marine Le Pen is a European member of parliament
and her party is active in the national parliament. Donald Trump has been elected in
full accordance with the American constitution, with its two-level indirect system of
electing the president. I would not even call them populists. The word "populist" has
a negative connotation. You said interestingly that populists are those who represent
the people. There are nuances in the interpretation of the word "populist." In modern
Russian it tends to be applied to people who go into politics, but do not bear the
responsibility for their words and just seek to lure voters. A populist is someone
who might promise to triple wages while the budget absolutely cannot support it, etc.
So I would rather call them realists or anti-globalists, if you like. Having said
that, anti-globalists are also associated with hooligans who try to disrupt the G20
and G7 summits, and so on. Come to think of it, even now that the new president of
the world's largest power has declared that it is necessary to think not of global
expansion, but of how America lives, the role of globalists will be changing.
American corporations have already demanded a reduction in manufacturing in
developing countries to move it to the US in order to create jobs there. Granted,
this may not be very good news for the consumer because labour is more expensive in
the US, so the prices for goods, cars and so on will increase. But this is the trend.
In general, President Trump's conceptual slogans during his election campaign to the
effect that America should interfere less in the affairs of other countries and
address its own issues send a very serious signal to the globalists themselves.
Again, up until now the US has been perceived as a symbol of globalism and the
expansion of transnational corporations. Those who represent their interests are the
huge team that has taken up arms against President Trump and his administration and
in general against everything he does, and which tries, in any way possible, to throw
a spanner in the works. Something similar things are happening in France where
mountains of compromising materials of ten or fifteen years ago have been unearthed
which invariably are presented through an "anti-Russia prism." It's been a long time
since I've seen such a dirty campaign when at stake are the concepts and ideas of how
to develop the state and their country, and a smear war is being waged. We had this
not so long ago, and I don't see anything good about it.
In parallel the global market and the global trade system are being reappraised
through the actions and statements of the new US administration. As you know, they
have walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, from the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership and said they would work through regional and bilateral
agreements. We believe, though, that the World Trade Organisation which it took us
such a long time to join did provide a common umbrella for world trade. Some regional
structures could be built into these universal systems so as not to break the ties
with the non-members of these regional organisations to maintain some common contact
and exchanges through the WTO. That too is now under threat. So, we are in a period
of rethinking our approaches, and I don't think it has everything to do with Trump.
These changes have been brewing; otherwise the American position on so many issues
could not have changed so abruptly. They were long in coming, and the WTO was in a
major crisis when the Western countries categorically refused to listen to the
leading developing countries on a range of issues connected with investment,
financial services, etc.
I wouldn't say that there are globalists and populists. There are simply people
who want to get elected and follow a well-trodden path and preserve the neoliberal
structures that are all over the place in the West, and then there are people who see
the neoliberalism and permissiveness which are part of the neoliberal approach as a
threat to their societies, traditions and cultures. This is accompanied by
philosophical reflections and practical discussions of what to do about the problem
of illegal migrants, their own roots and religions, whether it is politically correct
to remind people that you are an Orthodox or Catholic or whether you should forget
about religion altogether. I have said more than once that the European Union wanted
to adopt a constitution many years ago and was drafting it. The commission was headed
by Giscard d'Estaing and he proposed a very simple sentence about Europe having
Christian roots. He was prevented from doing so on the grounds that it would not be
politically correct and would insult the Muslims. In reality it turns out that if you
are cautious about making your religious roots known you end up not caring about the
religious roots of others and the consequences are not usually good. Therefore, at
the UN and UNESCO, we actively support all the initiatives that are particularly
relevant today: the Dialogue of Civilisations, the Dialogue of Cultures and the
Dialogue of Religions. It is not by chance that they have become topical issues on
the agenda because they reflect the fermentation within societies and the need to
somehow search for a national consensus.
Is the USA entered a "revolutionary situation" which usually
is referred as "crisis of legitimacy" in English-language
literature.
Looks like it did judging from what MSM write about Trump
and his entourage. And anti-Russian hysteria is a reaction of
this crisis of legitimacy, attempt to suppress it at least
temporary by uniting the nation against the external threat (
and this efforts fall into fertile ground of dreams about
Trump impeachment in democratic circles; Russians of Chinese,
does not matter -- but the orange menace should be
eliminated):
The key question is: Who has the stronger claim to speak
on behalf of the people: the president or the majority that
opposes his policies?" No automatic mechanism exists within
the system to resolve this, and so each side has an incentive
to escalate its claim and attempt to seize more power.
Questions of legitimacy certainly do arise if voters would
rather not have outsourcing and offshoring, cuts in public
spending including healthcare, and cuts in taxes for rich --
but are getting those policies anyway. Global financial
oligarchy still pressure for privatization of utilities,
healthcare, education, you name it, despite crisis of 2008.
In other words, neoliberalism in zombie stage is probably
more dangerous that pre-2008 neoliberalism.
The regulatory race to the bottom (aka deregulation) did
not stopped. Several types of regulation-for example, of
health and safety in the workplace, terms of employment,
product and environmental standards -- have both ideological
and political content.
If voters say: this is not the agenda we elected Trump to
implement, democratic dreams about Trump impeachment might
become more realistic then inflating anti-Russian hysteria
path, the path that the corrupt Democratic Party leadership
selected and finance.
But at the same time Democrats does not really represent
the opposition. They are also corrupt to the core (Schumer,
Raid, Pelosi are nice examples here) and adopted
neoliberalism in essentially the same form as Republicans.
They fully adopted such policies as "moderation" in taxes
(cutting taxes for the rich and making tax scheme more flat))
and "moderation" of public spending, "fiscal responsibility"
and the rest of neoliberal "pro financial oligarchy" program.
People feel disempowered by global neoliberalism. And that
might start to affect the stability of the society soon. In
2015 New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow made this point
recently in a commentary on the relations between minority
communities and our system of justice. He said that we need a
"restoration - or a formation - of faith for all of America's
citizens in the American justice system itself."
Stunningly, losing the white house to a carnival act has not yet seemed
to convince Democrats that the neoliberal restructuring of economy and
society (runaway financialization of everything is fine; transnational
capital flows do god's work; job retraining heals all wounds) will no longer
fly.
For highly qualified professionals in cities benefitting from
transnational capital flows and working in financial services, it flies very
well, and this group (broadly construed) 1) is not negligible in size 2)
votes 3) has become the core of the Democratic constituency and 4) staffs
Democratic administrations (local and national). So pushing the neoliberal
restructuring of society is a feature, not a bug.
If the American electorate is increasingly structured around three groups
(neoliberal/left/reactionaries; or in mock form Suits/Hippies/Rednecks),
then the neoliberal and left/ecologist group have to join rank to defeat
reactionary nationalists, but that is
equally true
for both groups.
As the neoliberal group is socially and electorally stronger (if not
necessarily numerically), it does not feel it is the one which has to make
the concessions (in practice, this translated into "Vote for Clinton or else
Trump" and I fear that 2018 and 2020 will be "Vote for this pro-corporate
Dem or else More Trump"; again a feature, not a bug).
T
03.28.17 at
4:27 pm
Corey-
Hiding in plain sight. Welcome back. And hat tip for the admission.
Being a man of ideas I think you particularly underestimated the effect
of personality on the election. The visceral disgust with HRC among many
working class people in the Midwest was just palpable. If Biden ran he would
have walked and we wouldn't be having this discussion. You should get out
more.
btw-is it a coincidence that the daughters of Trump and Clinton are
married to sons of incredibly wealthy convicted felons? I think the answer
is no and I think the question isn't trivial.
T
03.28.17 at
4:59 pm
As to the success of the Trump agenda, a lot of policy is going to be made
through regulation, not legislation. We're already seeing this with
environmental regulation. Antitrust will likely become even more permissive.
The private Obamacare insurance markets will get a push over the cliff. And
on and on. My guess is that inequality measures have already surpassed the
1928 peak having just fallen short in 2007 and will just get worse. The top
0.01% and above are making out like bandits with the stock market increase.
He was in over his head on day one. If you're not aware, real estate
development shops are tiny(and he's pretty much a branding operation now).
Many have less that 100 people. The architects, contractors, etc are all
outside. He's never run anything big. Hell, many government departments and
agencies have offices and divisions that are larger than his firm. That
doesn't mean he can't do a vast amount of damage which he will. We've only
seen hints of the mess he'll make of foreign affairs. And when the domestic
agenda isn't going well? There's always time for a war.
Finally, if his goal is to do well by himself, his family and his
friends, he might consider his presidency very successful indeed. You keep
measuring success by you're standards, not his.
bruce wilder
03.28.17 at 5:52 pm
phenomenal cat @ 12
Yep. It is a legitimacy crisis. It was always going to be a legitimacy
crisis. (I thought Clinton would win - I was wrong; but I think her
prospective election and the narratives attached to it also had the markings
of a legitimacy crisis.) Trump is in the hot seat and his clownishness maybe
flavors it a bit, but a legitimacy crisis was close to inevitable, even if
the outcome of the election in terms of who was elected, was chancier.
Trump's defects of character are not causing the legitimacy crisis - this
can be hard to see given how clownish he is and how relentlessly he is
attacked, but this recognition may turn out to be important to understand
what comes next, as events unfold.
politicalfootball @ 20
"A liberalism that fails to confront monsters enables them, as every
left-oriented critic of Barack Obama will tell you. That is, they'll tell
you that unless they are talking about Donald Trump, whose supporters, they
say, need to be understood and empathized with."
I have to say I have read that paragraph several times and I do not
understand what you are trying to say. Maybe it does seem plain to you, but
I cannot make sense of it. The first sentence seems plain enough a
declaration - no problem there. But, then, I have to connect the first
sentence to the second and I am at a loss. Left-wing critics of Obama will
not
tell you "a liberalism that fails to confront monsters enables
them" with regard to Trump? Huh? And, then that second sentence switches to
what left-wing critics of Obama would say about Trump's supporters (not
otherwise identified) and I am lost without navigational aids. Is Trump the
monster? The people who voted for Trump? The people who voted for Clinton?
(I voted for neither.)
Your explanation, offered @ 20:
What some of [left critics of Obama]
can't get a grip on is that this does nothing to justify Trump. Less than
nothing, because it's clear that on every axis where Obama was bad, Trump
will be worse, and Trump made it clear in advance that he would be worse.
How does anything justify Trump? would be my question (as a left critic
of Obama). Trump is not "just" in any common sense of the term. And, how are
differences between Obama and Trump relevant, here? (There is a leftish meme
that points to the fact that some key counties and states that voted for
Obama voted for Trump - are you trying to confront some particular analysis
associated with that meme? Just guessing here.)
P.S. Sanders was not a choice in the general election and was arguably
disabled, along with the Democratic Party as a whole, by Obama and Clinton.
That's a whole 'nother line of argument engaged in by "left critics of
Obama" but I cannot tell whether you are taking a particular view on that
line or not.
John Quiggin
03.29.17 at 12:49 am
"Both things are true: That Trump exists on a continuum with other
Republicans, and that he constitutes a break with the past in some key
respects"
I take it practically, not theoretically. Seven years ago I wrote here,
there and everywhere, that Obamacare should be passed, even without a public
option, because it will automatically drive the path to a single payer.
It will do this by first hobbling the GOP, by forcing them to choose
between tax cuts and universal care, a divide they cannot bridge. (I wrote
that we all demand that any tax-cut legislation the Republicans propose, be
linked to the spending cuts to cover it, in the SAME piece of legislation:
so the public can see their choice. Then, as now, the Republicans always try
the "dynamic scoring" excuse - the falsehood that tax cuts "pay for
themselves" by causing economic growth in in the future.)
Also, years ago I thought Trump could be the opportunist to insert
himself into the Republican crack-up. But I thought would lose this election
because the polls put Hillary ahead by 2-3%, and because the voters would
see through Trump's braggadocio, and be repelled by his dishonesty &
immorality.
Maybe Hillary did actually win, because the Russians hacked into the
voting booths too - who knows? Certainly, every Congressperson who goes into
a closed-door session with the intelligence community, comes back out,
looking like they've been hit by a bomb.
It may be better this way. If Hillary had won, the GOP would still be in
full blockade, still causing frustration in the voters, and still coming
back to take control in a future election. So let's have the poisons all
come out, now
The Wall Street Democrats have been dealt a substantial setback with
the ejection of Hillary
- and Sanders, an Independent, is now the voice
of the opposition party. Sanders is the most popular politician in the U.S.,
he gets 6 TV cameras on an hour's notice. This is fun! Meanwhile the GOP has
to deal with Trump, whose lack of ideology is allowing their internal divide
to grow wider. The Democrats, having almost no power, can sit back and enjoy
the spectacle (although not for much longer).
There are two problems for the Republicans, in Congress and in the White
House:
1. The aforementioned Congressional crack-up between the "moderates" and
the Freedom Caucus. Next, they have to get together to deal with the
automatic gov't shutdown in less than a month, unless they push up the debt
ceiling. And,
2. the Administration's split into the Wall Street crooks in the cabinet,
and the "economic nationalist" fantasies of Bannon and the bananans.
I think that the President whom Trump is most like, is Reagan: Trump has
a few crackpot ideas, otherwise no attention span, he just wants to be loved
in the spotlights. He needs caretakers to run the White House. But there is
no one of the expertise of a James Baker, to do it.
Much of the DC establishment back in 2016 complained that Obama hadn't been
tough enough on Assad and the Russians. That's where the "propaganda" about
Clinton wanting a war with Russia comes from. It was widespread. There was
much talk about the brutality of Aleppo (far more than about the brutality
we were supporting in Yemen). It will be interesting to see if Trump's
increase in civilian deaths in Mosul will lead to the same cries of war
crimes. This is an actual case where Trump really is doing something as bad
as Putin, but it's not qualitatively distinct from what Obama was doing,
just an increase.
Getting back to Russia, talk of no fly zones meant war in Syria, which
risked confrontation with Russia. And Michael Morell had just endorsed
Clinton a few days before he advocated killing Russians in Syria on the
Charlie Rose show–
http://www.youtube.com/embed/-Ivt2NmbyGg
JimV
03.29.17
at 5:40 pm
(
37
)
Anarassie: thanks for the reply. To clear up a possible misunderstanding, in
my first paragraph I gave my understanding of what I thought
politicalfootball was saying, not my personal opinion. I don't know for
sure, but probably some of my relatives and best friends voted for Trump.
That HRC wants to start a war with Russia is phony propaganda is my opinion:
a) I have seen no evidence of it that can't be more plausibly explained in
another way; and b) I don't think she is crazy.
For example, some have said that her proposal to negotiate a no-fly-zone
among the air-powers involved in the Syria conflict, to provide a corridor
for refugees and humanitarian aide, was aimed at starting a war with Russia.
I will of course accept that your own view is neither phony nor
propaganda to you, since you apparently believe in it. I believe it is
propaganda on the part of some (probably no one here), and phony because it
is not the truth. (How I wish there were reliable lie-detectors which all
candidates and pundits had to pass.)
Oh, and kudos to Lee Arnold for his analysis of the ACA issue. I hope he
is also prescient about getting all the poison out of our system in the next
four years.
I do not particularly want to (re-)litigate the election or the
politics of lesser evils in the comments of Crooked Timber.
Once we are emotionally committed to some narrative, it can be hard to
hear some of what other people are saying, on the terms of the people saying
it. I, personally, can say I do not understand what the disputes are that
are splitting the Republicans. I have no feel for them at all, but in my
ignorance, I pay attention to what CR has to say, to learn if I can. I do
have more confidence in my understanding of the major splits among
Democrats. I am not saying I have much sympathy for "any Democrat" politics
of the kind you espouse. I was a "more and better Democrats" kind of guy for
a long time, but you "any Democrat" types prevailed with predictable results
and you do not want to own any responsibility for the horrifying result.
Imho, of course. I do not propose to hash that out. "More and better" lost
and as far as I can tell Sanders is still coming up short; the Obama-Clinton
establishment holds fast, able to play a louder media Wurlitzer than I
thought they had, and the "any Dems" left in Congress do not look any more
effective now than they ever were. As for heaping tribal abuse on Trump
voters, I say, have at it, for whatever personal satisfaction it gives. I
cannot imagine why you think "left Obama critics" (like me) are somehow
inhibiting you or our lack of sufficient enthusiasm for pre-adolescent name
calling is a moral deficiency.
@26: "Trump's defects of character are not causing the legitimacy crisis -
this can be hard to see given how clownish he is and how relentlessly he is
attacked,"
People are certainly being really mean to Orange Julius Caesar
by criticizing things he does and says. But they can turn on a dime.
Remember how "presidential" Trump was after he managed to get through an
address to Congress without making fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger or biting
the head off a chicken?
"Clownish" makes him sound rather harmless. A pol can be "clownish" and
still be a decent man who is good at his job. Trump is an ignorant and
irresponsible grifter who is shamelessly profiteering off the presidency
while catering to the most vicious and destructive right-wing elements in
American culture. That may be "clownish" to you, but nobody else is
laughing.
In 2008, the whole world was convulsed by a financial crisis, leading
to mass unemployment in the United States and Europe. The initial
response was fairly similar in both places, featuring immense public
bailouts of ailing banks. But after that, there was a sharp
divergence: America generally tried large fiscal and monetary
stimulus, while Europe did the opposite with spending cuts and tax
increases - that is, austerity - and tight money.
Though the U.S.
stimulus was inadequate, the worst was avoided, and economic
conditions improved slowly, surpassing its
pre-crisis GDP
by 2011. In Europe - and especially within the eurozone, where the
common currency became a
gold standard-esque
economic straitjacket - the result was
disaster. So much austerity was forced on debtor nations that they
fell into full-blown depression. Greece's economy is
worse than that of America in the 1930s
- and the eurozone as a
whole only matched its pre-crisis GDP in
April of last year
.
Mass unemployment is electoral poison, and about every party that
happened to be holding power during the worst of it - generally either
center-right (Fianna Fáil in Ireland, People of Freedom in Italy) or
center-left (the Socialist Party in France, the Democrats in America)
- suffered serious setbacks in subsequent elections. Radical parties
on both the left and right gained as establishment parties were badly
discredited. New fascist parties (Golden Dawn in Greece) sprung to
prominence, and older fascist-lite ones (National Front in France)
gained strength.
But Beauchamp barely even references this history, restricting his
argument almost entirely to welfare policy. He assembles reasonably
convincing evidence and expert testimony to the effect that welfare
states increase racist resentment in both the United States and
Europe. But he does not mention mass unemployment, austerity, or the
eurozone. These are yawning absences in an article purporting to deal
with the social effects of economic policy.
Welfare is one chapter of leftist economic policy, but the first
and most important one is full employment.
That
is the major
route by which leftist economic policy can deflate right-wing
nativism. Center-left parties often claim to support full employment,
but they have manifestly failed to do so over the last eight years,
and
arguably long before that
. (President Obama was
plumping for austerity
in February of 2010, with
unemployment at
9.8 percent
.) Fascists organize best in the chaos and misery of
depression, as people lose faith in traditional solutions and root
around for scapegoats. Is it really a coincidence that the Nazi
electoral high tide
came at a time of
nearly 30 percent
unemployment?
Now, politics is a chaotic process. It takes a lot of ideological
spadework to convince people that austerity is the problem, and a lot
of time and effort to build a political coalition dedicated to an
anti-austerity platform. And sometimes it doesn't work well, as
Beauchamp's detailed discussion of the U.K. Labour Party's
difficulties since losing the elections of 2015 (on a pro-austerity
platform, mind you). But
savage infighting
within the party is likely just as much to blame
for Labour's collapse as leader Jeremy Corbyn's left-wing views.
Sometimes political coalitions fracture over personality and internal
struggles for dominance.
Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.
"... As head of Barack Obama's National Economic Council during 2009 and 2010 at the height of the foreclosure crisis, Larry Summers broke many promises to help homeowners while simultaneously dismissing Wall Street's criminality. ..."
"... Now, after the Obama administration has left power and Summers has no ability to influence anything, he finds himself "disturbed" that settlements for mortgage misconduct are full of lies. ..."
"... Of course, the Wall Street Democrats, AKA Democratic partisan hacks that infest this blog, spent years defending Obama for his lax treatment of criminal bankers. (And these same folks were also among the most avid advocates of 'trickle down monetary policy,' which involved the Fed's showering cheap money on its owners, the Wall Street banking cartel and their wealthy clientele, while raising the margin over prime rates to their credit card victims/customers.) ..."
Larry Summers is going rogue? (But only long after the horse has left the barn!)
"As head of Barack Obama's National Economic Council during 2009 and 2010 at the height of
the foreclosure crisis, Larry Summers broke many promises to help homeowners while simultaneously
dismissing Wall Street's criminality.
Now, after the Obama administration has left power and Summers
has no ability to influence anything, he finds himself "disturbed" that settlements for mortgage
misconduct are full of lies.
Those of us who screamed exactly this for years, when Summers might
have been able to do something about it, are less than amused."
Of course, the Wall Street Democrats, AKA Democratic partisan hacks that infest this blog,
spent years defending Obama for his lax treatment of criminal bankers. (And these same folks were
also among the most avid advocates of 'trickle down monetary policy,' which involved the Fed's
showering cheap money on its owners, the Wall Street banking cartel and their wealthy clientele,
while raising the margin over prime rates to their credit card victims/customers.)
"... Centralized bargaining (sector wide labor agreements) practiced by the Teamster's National Master Freight Agreement -- also by French Canada, continental Europe and I think Argentina and Indonesia -- blocks the Walmart-killing-supermarket-contracts race to the bottom. Airline employees would kill for centralized too. ..."
"... Truly populist up politics in the long run reduce financialization, for-profit scams, phara gouging, etc. etc., etc. Dean of Washington press corps said when he came to Washington (1950s?) all the lobbyists were union. ..."
"... The center-left are technocrats and don't really believe in unions or economic democracy. ..."
"... They're all about the meritocracy and so instead of arguing for workers to get organized and political and instead of arguing for a hot economy so labor markets are tight, they scold workers for not "skilling up" and acquiring the skills business want for their jobs. ..."
STARTS OUT A LITTLE OFF TOPIC BUT THEN GOES PRECISELY WHERE THE AUTHOR WANTS US TO GO I THINK
Re: Keynes' flaws - Stumbling and Mumbling
[cut-and-paste]
Neither rust-belt Americans nor Chicago gang-bangers are interested in up-to-date kitchens or
two vans in the driveway. Both are most especially not interested in $10 an hour jobs.
Both would be very, very especially interested in $20 an hour jobs.
80 years ago Congress forgot to put criminal enforcement in the NLRA(a). Had union busting
been a felony all along we would be like Germany today. Maybe at some point our progressives might
note that collective bargaining is the T-Rex in the room -- or the missing T-Rex.
The money is there for $20 jobs. 49 years -- and half the per capita income ago -- the fed
min wage was $11. Since then the bottom 45% went from 20% overall income share to 10% -- while
the top 1% went from 10% to 20%.
How to get it -- how to get collective bargaining set up? States can make union busting a felony
without worrying about so-called federal preemption:
+ a state law sanctioning wholesalers, for instance, using market power to block small retail
establishments from combining their bargaining power could be the same one that makes union busting
a felony -- overlap like min wage laws -- especially since on crim penalties the fed has left
nothing to overlap since 1935
+ First Amendment right to collectively bargain cannot be forced by the fed down (the current)
impassable road. Double ditto for FedEx employees who have to hurdle the whole-nation-at-once
certification election barrier
+ for contrast, examples of state infringement on federal preemption might be a state finding
of union busting leading to a mandate for an election under the fed setup -- or any state certification
setup for labor already covered by NLRA(a) or RLA(a). (Okay for excluded farm workers.)
Collective bargaining would ameliorate much competition for jobs from immigrants because labor's
price would be set by how much the consumer can be squeezed before (s)he goes somewhere else --
not by how little the most desperate worker will hire on for. Your kid will be grabbed before
somebody still mastering English.
Centralized bargaining (sector wide labor agreements) practiced by the Teamster's National
Master Freight Agreement -- also by French Canada, continental Europe and I think Argentina and
Indonesia -- blocks the Walmart-killing-supermarket-contracts race to the bottom. Airline employees
would kill for centralized too.
Republicans would have no place to hide -- rehabs US labor market -- all (truly) free market.
Truly populist up politics in the long run reduce financialization, for-profit scams, phara
gouging, etc. etc., etc. Dean of Washington press corps said when he came to Washington (1950s?)
all the lobbyists were union.
PS. After I explained the American spinning wheels labor market to my late brother John (we
were not even talking about race), he came back with: "Martin Luther King got his people on the
up escalator just in time for it to start going down for everybody."
I agree. All of the center-left are like Keynes in a bad way. Chris Dillow nails it.
The center-left are technocrats and don't really believe in unions or economic democracy.
They're all about the meritocracy and so instead of arguing for workers to get organized
and political and instead of arguing for a hot economy so labor markets are tight, they scold
workers for not "skilling up" and acquiring the skills business want for their jobs.
They enjoy scolding the backward rural and dying manufacturing towns where the large employers
have closed.
The technocrats are running the economy the best they can, it's up to the workers to educate
themselves so they can be "competitive" on international markets.
Meanwhile for the past 40 years the technocrats have been doing a poor job.
(or maybe a good job from their sponsors' perspective as Chris Dillow points out.)
DeLong is right about mainstream economics. SWL is wrong. "Mainstream" economics is complicit
as the technocrats are complicit.
Perhaps even DeLong is too much like Keynes and too much the "neoliberal" technocrat to understand
why businessmen keep voting Republican even though the economy does better on Democrats.
"... By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is KILLING THE HOST: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy ..."
"... Naked Capitalism ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... U.S. presidential elections no longer are much about policy. Like Obama before him, Trump campaigned as a rasa tabla ..."
"... There is a covert economic program, to be sure, and it is bipartisan. It is to make elections about just which celebrities will introduce neoliberal economic policies with the most convincing patter talk. That is the essence of rasa tabla ..."
Nobody yet can tell whether Donald Trump is an
agent of change with a specific policy in mind, or merely a catalyst heralding
an as yet undetermined turning point. His first month in the White House saw
him melting into the Republican mélange of corporate lobbyists. Having promised
to create jobs, his "America First" policy looks more like "Wall Street First."
His cabinet of billionaires promoting corporate tax cuts, deregulation and
dismantling Dodd-Frank bank reform repeats the Junk Economics promise that
giving more tax breaks to the richest One Percent may lead them to use their
windfall to invest in creating more jobs. What they usually do, of course, is
simply buy more property and assets already in place.
One of the first reactions to Trump's election victory was for stocks of the
most crooked financial institutions to soar, hoping for a deregulatory scythe
taken to the public sector. Navient, the Department of Education's knee-breaker
on student loan collections accused by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB) of massive fraud and overcharging, rose from $13 to $18 now that it
seemed likely that the incoming Republicans would disable the CFPB and shine a
green light for financial fraud.
Foreclosure king Stephen Mnuchin of IndyMac/OneWest (and formerly of Goldman
Sachs for 17 years; later a George Soros partner) is now Treasury Secretary –
and Trump is pledged to abolish the CFPB, on the specious logic that letting
fraudsters manage pension savings and other investments will give consumers and
savers "broader choice," e.g., for the financial equivalent of junk food.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos hopes to privatize public education into
for-profit (and de-unionized) charter schools, breaking the teachers' unions.
This may position Trump to become the Transformational President that
neoliberals have been waiting for.
But not the neocons. His election rhetoric promised to reverse traditional
U.S. interventionist policy abroad. Making an anti-war left run around the
Democrats, he promised to stop backing ISIS/Al Nusra (President Obama's
"moderate" terrorists supplied with the arms and money that Hillary looted from
Libya), and to reverse the Obama-Clinton administration's New Cold War with
Russia. But the neocon coterie at the CIA and State Department are undercutting
his proposed rapprochement with Russia by forcing out General Flynn for
starters. It seems doubtful that Trump will clean them out.
Trump has called NATO obsolete, but insists that its members up their
spending to the stipulated 2% of GDP - producing a windfall worth tens of
billions of dollars for U.S. arms exporters. That is to be the price Europe
must pay if it wants to endorse Germany's and the Baltics' confrontation with
Russia.
Trump is sufficiently intuitive to proclaim the euro a disaster, and he
recommends that Greece leave it. He supports the rising nationalist parties in
Britain, France, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands, all of which urge
withdrawal from the eurozone – and reconciliation with Russia instead of
sanctions. In place of the ill-fated TPP and TTIP, Trump advocates
country-by-country trade deals favoring the United States. Toward this end, his
designated ambassador to the European Union, Ted Malloch, urges the EU's
breakup. The EU is refusing to accept him as ambassador.
Will Trump's Victory Break Up the Democratic Party?
At the time this volume is going to press, there is no way of knowing how
successful these international reversals will be. What is more clear is what
Trump's political impact will have at home. His victory – or more accurately,
Hillary's resounding loss and the
way
she lost – has encouraged
enormous pressure for a realignment of both parties. Regardless of what
President Trump may achieve vis-à-vis Europe, his actions as celebrity chaos
agent may break up U.S. politics across the political spectrum.
The Democratic Party has lost its ability to pose as the party of labor and
the middle class. Firmly controlled by Wall Street and California billionaires,
the Democratic National Committee (DNC) strategy of identity politics
encourages any identity
except
that of wage earners. The candidates
backed by the Donor Class have been Blue Dogs pledged to promote Wall Street
and neocons urging a New Cold War with Russia.
They preferred to lose with Hillary than to win behind Bernie Sanders. So
Trump's electoral victory is their legacy as well as Obama's. Instead of
Trump's victory dispelling that strategy, the Democrats are doubling down. It
is as if identity politics is all they have.
Trying to ride on Barack Obama's coattails didn't work. Promising "hope and
change," he won by posing as a transformational president, leading the
Democrats to control of the White House, Senate and Congress in 2008. Swept
into office by a national reaction against the George Bush's Oil War in Iraq
and the junk-mortgage crisis that left the economy debt-ridden, they had free
rein to pass whatever new laws they chose – even a Public Option in health care
if they had wanted, or make Wall Street banks absorb the losses from their bad
and often fraudulent loans.
But it turned out that Obama's role was to
prevent
the changes that
voters hoped to see, and indeed that the economy needed to recover: financial
reform, debt writedowns to bring junk mortgages in line with fair market
prices, and throwing crooked bankers in jail. Obama rescued the banks, not the
economy, and turned over the Justice Department and regulatory agencies to his
Wall Street campaign contributors. He did not even pull back from war in the
Near East, but extended it to Libya and Syria, blundering into the Ukrainian
coup as well.
Having dashed the hopes of his followers, Obama then praised his chosen
successor Hillary Clinton as his "Third Term." Enjoying this kiss of death,
Hillary promised to keep up Obama's policies.
The straw that pushed voters over the edge was when she asked voters,
"Aren't you better off today than you were eight years ago?" Who were they
going to believe: their eyes, or Hillary? National income statistics showed
that only the top 5 percent of the population were better off. All the growth
in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during Obama's tenure went to them – the Donor
Class that had gained control of the Democratic Party leadership. Real incomes
have fallen for the remaining 95 percent, whose household budgets have been
further eroded by soaring charges for health insurance. (The Democratic
leadership in Congress fought tooth and nail to block Dennis Kucinich from
introducing his Single Payer proposal.)
No wonder most of the geographic United States voted for change – except for
where the top 5 percent, is concentrated: in New York (Wall Street) and
California (Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex). Making fun of
the Obama Administration's slogan of "hope and change," Trump characterized
Hillary's policy of continuing the economy's shrinkage for the 95% as "no hope
and no change."
Identity Politics as Anti-Labor Politics
A new term was introduced to the English language: Identity Politics. Its
aim is for voters to think of themselves as separatist minorities – women,
LGBTQ, Blacks and Hispanics. The Democrats thought they could beat Trump by
organizing Women for Wall Street (and a New Cold War), LGBTQ for Wall Street
(and a New Cold War), and Blacks and Hispanics for Wall Street (and a New Cold
War). Each identity cohort was headed by a billionaire or hedge fund donor.
The identity that is conspicuously excluded is the working class. Identity
politics strips away thinking of one's interest in terms of having to work for
a living. It excludes voter protests against having their monthly paycheck
stripped to pay more for health insurance, housing and mortgage charges or
education, or better working conditions or consumer protection – not to speak
of protecting debtors.
Identity politics used to be about three major categories: workers and
unionization, anti-war protests and civil rights marches against racist Jim
Crow laws. These were the three objectives of the many nationwide
demonstrations. That ended when these movements got co-opted into the
Democratic Party. Their reappearance in Bernie Sanders' campaign in fact
threatens to tear the Democratic coalition apart. As soon as the primaries were
over (duly stacked against Sanders), his followers were made to feel unwelcome.
Hillary sought Republican support by denouncing Sanders as being as radical as
Putin's Republican leadership.
In contrast to Sanders' attempt to convince diverse groups that they had a
common denominator in needing jobs with decent pay – and, to achieve that, in
opposing Wall Street's replacing the government as central planner – the
Democrats depict every identity constituency as being victimized by every
other, setting themselves at each other's heels. Clinton strategist John
Podesta, for instance, encouraged Blacks to accuse Sanders supporters of
distracting attention from racism. Pushing a common economic interest between
whites, Blacks, Hispanics and LGBTQ always has been the neoliberals' nightmare.
No wonder they tried so hard to stop Bernie Sanders, and are maneuvering to
keep his supporters from gaining influence in their party.
When Trump was inaugurated on Friday, January 20, there was no pro-jobs or
anti-war demonstration. That presumably would have attracted pro-Trump
supporters in an ecumenical show of force. Instead, the Women's March on
Saturday led even the pro-Democrat
New York Times
to write a
front-page article reporting that white women were complaining that they did
not feel welcome in the demonstration. The message to anti-war advocates,
students and Bernie supporters was that their economic cause was a distraction.
The march was typically Democratic in that its ideology did not threaten the
Donor Class. As Yves Smith wrote on
Naked Capitalism
: "the track
record of non-issue-oriented marches, no matter how large scale, is poor, and
the status of this march as officially sanctioned (blanket media coverage when
other marches of hundreds of thousands of people have been minimized, police
not tricked out in their usual riot gear) also indicates that the officialdom
does not see it as a threat to the status quo."
[1]
Hillary's loss was not blamed on her neoliberal support for TPP or her
pro-war neocon stance, but on the revelations of the e-mails by her operative
Podesta discussing his dirty tricks against Bernie Sanders (claimed to be given
to Wikileaks by Russian hackers, not a domestic DNC leaker as Wikileaks
claimed) and the FBI investigation of her e-mail abuses at the State
Department. Backing her supporters' attempt to brazen it out, the Democratic
Party has doubled down on its identity politics, despite the fact that an
estimated 52 percent of white women voted for Trump. After all, women do work
for wages. And that also is what Blacks and Hispanics want – in addition to
banking that serves
their
needs, not those of Wall Street, and health
care that serves
their
needs, not those of the health-insurance and
pharmaceuticals monopolies.
Bernie did not choose to run on a third-party ticket. Evidently he feared
being accused of throwing the election to Trump. The question is now whether he
can remake the Democratic Party as a democratic socialist party, or create a
new party if the Donor Class retains its neoliberal control. It seems that he
will not make a break until he concludes that a Socialist Party can leave the
Democrats as far back in the dust as the Republicans left the Whigs after 1854.
He may have underestimated his chance in 2016.
Trump's Effect on U.S. Political Party Realignment
During Trump's rise to the 2016 Republican nomination it seemed that he was
more likely to break up the Republican Party. Its leading candidates and gurus
warned that his populist victory in the primaries would tear the party apart.
The polls in May and June showed him defeating Hillary Clinton easily (but
losing to Bernie Sanders). But Republican leaders worried that he would not
support what they believed in: namely, whatever corporate lobbyists put in
their hands to enact and privatize.
The May/June polls showed Trump and Clinton were the country's two most
unpopular presidential candidates. But whereas the Democrats maneuvered Bernie
out of the way, the Republican Clown Car was unable to do the same to Trump. In
the end they chose to win behind him, expecting to control him. As for the DNC,
its Wall Street donors preferred to lose with Hillary than to win with Bernie.
They wanted to keep control of their party and continue the bargain they had
made with the Republicans: The latter would move further and further to the
right, leaving room for Democratic neoliberals and neocons to follow them
closely, yet still pose as the "lesser evil." That "centrism" is the essence of
the Clintons' "triangulation" strategy. It actually has been going on for a
half-century. "As Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere quipped in the 1960s, when
he was accused by the US of running a one-party state, 'The United States is
also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two
of them'."
[2]
By 2017, voters had caught on to this two-step game. But Hillary's team paid
pollsters over $1 billion to tell her ("Mirror, mirror on the wall ") that she
was the most popular of all. It was hubris to imagine that she could convince
the 95 Percent of the people who were worse off under Obama to love her as much
as her East-West Coast donors did. It was politically unrealistic – and a
reflection of her cynicism – to imagine that raising enough money to buy
television ads would convince working-class Republicans to vote for her,
succumbing to a Stockholm Syndrome by thinking of themselves as part of the 5
Percent who had benefited from Obama's pro-Wall Street policies.
Hillary's election strategy was to make a right-wing run around Trump. While
characterizing the working class as white racist "deplorables," allegedly
intolerant of LBGTQ or assertive women, she resurrected the ghost of Joe
McCarthy and accused Trump of being "Putin's poodle" for proposing peace with
Russia. Among the most liberal Democrats, Paul Krugman still leads a biweekly
charge at
The New York Times
that President Trump is following
Moscow's orders. Saturday Night Live, Bill Maher and MSNBC produce weekly skits
that Trump and General Flynn are Russian puppets. A large proportion of
Democrats have bought into the fairy tale that Trump didn't really win the
election, but that Russian hackers manipulated the voting machines. No wonder
George Orwell's
1984
soared to the top of America's best-seller lists
in February 2017 as Donald Trump was taking his oath of office.
This propaganda paid off on February 13, when neocon public relations
succeeded in forcing the resignation of General Flynn, whom Trump had appointed
to clean out the neocons at the NSA and CIA His foreign policy initiative
based on rapprochement with Russia and hopes to create a common front against
ISIS/Al Nusra seemed to be collapsing.
Tabula Rasa Celebrity Politics
U.S. presidential elections no longer are much about policy. Like Obama
before him, Trump campaigned as a
rasa tabla
, a vehicle for everyone
to project their hopes and fancies. What has all but disappeared is the past
century's idea of politics as a struggle between labor and capital, democracy
vs. oligarchy.
Who would have expected even half a century ago that American politics would
become so post-modern that the idea of class conflict has all but disappeared.
Classical economic discourse has been drowned out by their junk economics.
There is a covert economic program, to be sure, and it is bipartisan. It
is to make elections about just which celebrities will introduce neoliberal
economic policies with the most convincing patter talk. That is the essence of
rasa tabla
politics.
Can the Democrats Lose Again in 2020?
Trump's November victory showed that voters found
him
to be the
Lesser Evil, but all that voters really could express was "throw out the bums"
and get a new set of lobbyists for the FIRE sector and corporate monopolists.
Both candidates represented Goldman Sachs and Wall Street. No wonder voter
turnout has continued to plunge.
Although the Democrats' Lesser Evil argument lost to the Republicans in
2016, the neoliberals in control of the DNC found the absence of a progressive
economic program to less threatening to their interests than the critique of
Wall Street and neocon interventionism coming from the Sanders camp. So the
Democrat will continue to pose as the Lesser Evil party not really in terms of
policy, but simply
ad hominum
. They will merely repeat Hillary's
campaign stance: They are
not
Trump. Their parades and street
demonstrations since his inauguration have not come out for any economic
policy.
On Friday, February 10, the party's Democratic Policy group held a retreat
for its members in Baltimore. Third Way "centrists" (Republicans running as
Democrats) dominated, with Hillary operatives in charge. The conclusion was
that no party policy was needed at all. "President Trump is a better
recruitment tool for us than a central campaign issue,' said Washington Rep.
Denny Heck, who is leading recruitment for the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee (DCCC)."
[3]
But what does their party leadership have to offer women, Blacks and
Hispanics in the way of employment, more affordable health care, housing or
education and better pay? Where are the New Deal pro-labor, pro-regulatory
roots of bygone days? The party leadership is unwilling to admit that Trump's
message about protecting jobs and opposing the TPP played a role in his
election. Hillary was suspected of supporting it as "the gold standard" of
trade deals, and Obama had made the Trans-Pacific Partnership the centerpiece
of his presidency – the free-trade TPP and TTIP that would have taken economic
regulatory policy out of the hands of government and given it to corporations.
Instead of accepting even Sanders' centrist-left stance, the Democrats'
strategy was to tar Trump as pro-Russian, insist that his aides had committed
impeachable offenses, and mount one parade after another. "Rep. Marcia Fudge of
Ohio told reporters she was wary of focusing solely on an "economic message"
aimed at voters whom Trump won over in 2016, because, in her view, Trump did
not win on an economic message. "What Donald Trump did was address them at a
very different level - an emotional level, a racial level, a fear level," she
said. "If all we talk about is the economic message, we're not going to win."
[4]
This stance led Sanders supporters to walk out of a meeting organized by the
"centrist" Third Way think tank on Wednesday, February 8.
By now this is an old story. Fifty years ago, socialists such as Michael
Harrington asked why union members and progressives still imagined that they
had to work through the Democratic Party. It has taken the rest of the country
half a century to see that Democrats are not the party of the working class,
unions, middle class, farmers or debtors. They are the party of Wall Street
privatizers, bank deregulators, neocons and the military-industrial complex.
Obama showed his hand – and that of his party – in his passionate attempt to
ram through the corporatist TPP treaty that would have enabled corporations to
sue governments for any costs imposed by public consumer protection,
environmental protection or other protection of the population against
financialized corporate monopolies.
Against this backdrop, Trump's promises and indeed his worldview seem
quixotic. The picture of America's future he has painted seems unattainable
within the foreseeable future. It is too late to bring manufacturing back to
the United States, because corporations already have shifted their supply nodes
abroad, and too much U.S. infrastructure has been dismantled.
There can't be a high-speed railroad, because it would take more than four
years to get the right-of-way and create a route without crossing gates or
sharp curves. In any case, the role of railroads and other transportation has
been to increase real estate prices along the routes. But in this case, real
estate would be torn down – and having a high-speed rail does not increase land
values.
The stock market has soared to new heights, anticipating lower taxes on
corporate profits and a deregulation of consumer, labor and environmental
protection. Trump may end up as America's Boris Yeltsin, protecting U.S.
oligarchs (not that Hillary would have been different, merely cloaked in a more
colorful identity rainbow). The U.S. economy is in for Shock Therapy. Voters
should look to Greece to get a taste of the future in this scenario.
Without a coherent response to neoliberalism, Trump's billionaire cabinet
may do to the United States what neoliberals in the Clinton administration did
to Russia after 1991: tear out all the checks and balances, and turn public
wealth over to insiders and oligarchs. So Trump's his best chance to be
transformative is simply to be America's Yeltsin for his party's oligarchic
backers, putting the class war back in business.
What a Truly Transformative President Would Do/Would Have Done
No administration can create a sound U.S. recovery without dealing with the
problem that caused the 2008 crisis in the first place: over-indebtedness. The
only one way to restore growth, raise living standards and make the economy
competitive again is a debt writedown. But that is not yet on the political
horizon. Obama's doublecross of his voters in 2009 prevented the needed policy
from occurring. Having missed this chance in the last financial crisis, a
progressive policy must await yet another crisis. But so far, no political
party is preparing a program to juxtapose to Republican-Democratic austerity
and scale-back of Social Security, Medicare and social spending programs in
general.
Also no longer on the horizon is a more progressive income tax, or a public
option for health care – or for banking, or consumer protection against
financial fraud, or for a $15-an-hour minimum wage, or for a revived protection
of labor's right to unionize, or environmental regulations.
It seems that only a new party can achieve these aims. At the time these
essays are going to press, Sanders has committed himself to working within the
Democratic Party. But that stance is based on his assumption that somehow he
can recruit enough activists to take over the party from Its Donor Class.
I suspect he will fail. In any case, it is easier to begin afresh than to
try to re-design a party (or any institution) dominated by resistance to
change, and whose idea of economic growth is a pastiche of tax cuts and
deregulation. Both U.S. parties are committed to this neoliberal program – and
seek to blame foreign enemies for the fact that its effect is to continue
squeezing living standards and bloating the financial sector.
If this slow but inexorable crash does lead to a political crisis, it looks
like the Republicans may succeed in convening a new Constitutional Convention
(many states already have approved this) to lock the United States into a
corporatist neoliberal world. Its slogan will be that of Margaret Thatcher:
TINA – There Is No Alternative.
And who is to disagree? As Trotsky said, fascism is the result of the
failure of the left to provide an alternative.
"... The GOP and this administration are overwhelmingly self-avowed Christians yet they try to deny the poor to benefit the rich. This is not Christian but evil pure and simple. ..."
"... They are an American Taliban, just going about their subversion in a less overtly violent way. ..."
"... Much like Russian people viewed the country under Bolshevism, outside of brief WWII period. That's probably why we have Anti-Russian witch hunt now. To stem this trend. But it is the US neoliberal elite, not Russians, who drive the country to this state of affairs. By spending God knows how many trillions of dollar of wars of neoliberal empire expansion and by drastic redistribution of wealth up. And now the majority of citizens is facing substandard medical care, sliding standard of living and uncertain job prospects. ..."
"... US elections have been influenced by anyone with huge money or oil since the Cold War made an excuse for the US' trade empire enforced by half the world's war spending. ..."
"... The fake 'incidental' surveillance of other political opponents is a gross violation of human rights and the US' Bill of Rights. ..."
"... The disloyal opposition and its propagandists are running Stalin like show trails in their media... ..."
The GOP and this administration are overwhelmingly self-avowed Christians yet they
try to deny the poor to benefit the rich. This is not Christian but evil pure and simple.
I would love to see this lying, cheating, selfish, crazy devil (yeah, I know I sound
a bit OTT but the description is fact based) of a president and his enablers challenged
on their Christian values.
They are an American Taliban, just going about their subversion in a less overtly
violent way.
Are the people who consider our current rulers to be "American Taliban" inclined to become
"leakers" of government activities against the citizens, because they definitely stop to consider
the country as their own and view it as occupied by dangerous and violent religious cult?
Much like Russian people viewed the country under Bolshevism, outside of brief WWII period.
That's probably why we have Anti-Russian witch hunt now. To stem this trend. But it is the US
neoliberal elite, not Russians, who drive the country to this state of affairs. By spending God
knows how many trillions of dollar of wars of neoliberal empire expansion and by drastic redistribution
of wealth up. And now the majority of citizens is facing substandard medical care, sliding standard
of living and uncertain job prospects.
ilsm -> libezkova... March 26, 2017 at 05:42 AM
I see the angst over Sessions talking to a Russia diplomat twice as a red herring.
US elections have been influenced by anyone with huge money or oil since the Cold War made
an excuse for the US' trade empire enforced by half the world's war spending.
The fake 'incidental' surveillance of other political opponents is a gross violation of human
rights and the US' Bill of Rights.
The disloyal opposition and its propagandists are running Stalin like show trails in their
media.....
Trump victory was almost 30 years in the making, and I think all presidents starting from Carter
contributed to it.
Even if Hillary became president this time, that would be just one term postponement on
the inevitable outcome of neoliberal domination for the last 30 years.
I think anybody with dictatorial inclinations and promise to "drain the swamp" in Washington,
DC now has serious changes on victory in the US Presidential elections. So after Trump I, we
might see Trump II.
So it people find that Trump betrays his election promised they will turn to democratic
Party. They will turn father right, to some Trump II.
Due to economic instability and loss of jobs, people are ready to trade (fake) two party
"democracy" (which ensures the rule of financial oligarchy by forcing to select between two
equally unpalatable candidates) that we have for economic security, even if the latter means
the slide to the dictatorship.
That's very sad, but I think this is a valid observation. What we experience is a new variation
of the theme first played in 1930th, after the crash of 1928.
The story of working class and lower middle class turning to the far right for help after
financial oligarchy provoke a nationwide crisis and destroy their "way of life" and standards
of living is not new. In 1930th the US ruling class proved to be ready to accept the New Deal
as the alternative. In Germany it was not.
The Dems and The Repubs are
BOTH
austerity mongers. They both want to
starve the 99% and wage trillion dollar wars. The spoiler effect induced two
party system is what sustains the Deep State.
Of the now literally
hundreds of "fancy" voting methods all over the Internet, strategic hedge
simple score voting is the only one that specifically enables the common
voters to win elections against the two-party empowered Deep State. (All of
the many others treat elite interest involved elections as if they were
casual "hobby club" elections.)
Too bad we don't have simple score voting. Then we could give between 1
and 10 votes to many candidates. But no votes at all for Hillary the war
monger. We might place 8 votes for Bernie (since he is less bad than Hillary
(or more accurately, was previously though to be)), 10 write-in votes for
Jesse Ventura, and 10 write-in votes for Dennis Kucinich.
Strategic hedge simple score voting can be described in one simple
sentence: Strategically bid no vote at all for undesired candidates (ignore
them as though they did not exist), or strategically cast from one to ten
votes (or five to ten votes, for easier counting) for any number of
candidates you prefer (up to some reasonable limit of, say, twelve
candidates, so people don't hog voting booths), and then simply add all the
votes up.
We must also abolish Deep State subvertible election machines ("computer
voting"), and get back to had counted paper ballots, with results announced
at each polling station just prior to being sent up to larger tabulation
centers.
b. Excellent post. The same phenomenon is occurring throughout the Atlantic
Alliance. This indicates that all share something in common. It is the
neo-liberal economic philosophy of the Oligarchy who have purchased western
politicians, media, think tanks and education and are superseding democracy
with corporate supranational rule. Inequality and chaos are hardwired into
the current system.
It's interesting that the Salon piece (essentially the Sanders viewpoint)
was written in response to a Vanity Fair piece (the Clintonite viewpoint)
that ends with the claim that non-Party members share
. . . the belief that the real enemy, the true Evil Empire, isn't Putin's
Russia but the Deep State, the CIA/F.B.I./N.S.A. alphabet-soup
national-security matrix. But if the Deep State can rid us of the
blighted presidency of Donald Trump, all I can say is "Go, State, go."
So that's your Clinton Democrat / McCain Republican viewpoint - aka
"neoliberal-neoconservative fascism." Rather tellingly, the Salon piece does
not include the world "neoliberal" but just rehashes the stale PR-speak of
"liberals vs. conservatives" that dominates mass corporate media in the
United States. In reality, policy in Washington is made by politicians and
bureaucrats who adhere to neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies and who
are really servants of consolidated wealth - the American oligarch class -
and their conflicts merely reflect disagreements among the oligarchs; for
example do Warren Buffett and George Soros and the Koch Brothers see
eye-to-eye on all issues? No, they don't, so their sock puppets like Bush
and Clinton have their differences. However, the neocons and neolibs are
so close to one another as to be indistinguishable
to the average
American citizen:
The main similarity between the two is that they have both become known
as "technofacists", meaning melders of corporate, state and military
power into a few political elites that allow comprehensive control. The
left and the right have marched full circle and met one another.
As blues@5 notes above, fixing the electoral system (paper ballots,
ranked-choice voting, voting districts that are coherent regional sectors,
not octopus-like, maybe drawn along watershed boundaries, etc.) is a key
step in breaking their grip on power.
Another critical issue is using anti-trust to break up the media
conglomerates and destroy the centralized propaganda system that controls
U.S. corporate mass media, in which a handful of Wall Street-owned corporate
monsters dictate what kind of news stories are fed to the American public
via television, radio and print journalism.
These reforms seem highly unlikely, however, in the current political
environment.
What we probably have to look forward to is more likely continued
economic downturn and rising poverty. The deep state and establishment
politicians are not likely to give Trump anything, and will probably try to
push an economic collapse just to make Trump look bad - not that Trump's
policies have much to offer; infrastructure looks dead in the water and at
best will look like Iraqi Reconstruction 2.0 under GW Bush and Cheney. We'd
need an FDR-scale New Deal to turn that around and neither neocons nor
neolibs will ever go for that. Instead we'll likely get infighting and
factionalism, maybe a war between Trump and the Federal Reserve, etc.
Honestly given the rot in the federal government it seems the only hope
is for states to take matters into their own hands as much as possible and
set their own policies on rebuilding infrastructure and creating jobs but
the federal government and their oligarchic corporate overlords are pressing
down on that as well. One hell of a nasty situation for the American people
is what it is, and maybe massive Soviet-scale collapse, and a fundamental
change in government (as happened with Putin in Russia post-Boris Yeltsin)
followed by rebuilding from the ground up is the only way out of this mess.
For too long, I've pointed out that the detailed list of
grievances stated in the
Declaration of Independence
were currently
alive and being carried out by the executive of the US federal government;
and that if the Patriots of 1776 were correct to revolt from British
tyranny, then the US citizenry was just as right and proper to revolt
against Outlaw US Empire tyranny. I expounded that position through the
comments at CommonDreams.org until I was banned because they went against
that website's support for Obama then the Killer Queen HRC.
At the end of the previous thread, I wrote that society has only one tool
to control human behavior--culture--and I've long argued that human culture
in the great majority of its societies is dysfunctional and has been for
quite some time--in what's now the USA, from the founding of Jamestown
onward. My view is the culture has reached a level of dystopia well beyond
the ability of anyone to return it to a functional state and find myself
agreeing with Reg Morrison--
The Spirit in the Gene
--that humanity is
what's known as a plague species, a conclusion shared by some very powerful
minds,
https://regmorrison.edublogs.org/1999/07/20/plague-species-the-spirit-in-the-gene/
I don't particularly enjoy reaching such a conclusion given its meaning
for my progeny and the remainder of humanity. But unless we--humanity as a
whole--can regain control over ourselves through the imposition of a new,
stronger--perhaps seen as more ridged--culture capable of suborning vice and
desire to a satisfactory fitness for all, then we will reap the results of
having grossly overshot our ecological support systems and like other
species die-off as Morrison describes. How to accomplish such a radical
change in a very short time period given the levels of resistance to such
change is really the question of the moment. We know where the root of the
problem lies. But uprooting that weed that threatens the garden of humanity
presents the greatest challenge to humanity it will ever have to face.
The demodogs will not change any time soon if ever. They the party leaders
are only interest taking all the money the can from supporters small and
large giving to friends foundations and consultants.
It's funny that pseudo-Leftists like Dems, PS, Labour, SD and others don't
realize that what Kennedy once said still stands:
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable.
Which is why it's no wonder many of those on the shitty end of the current
neo-liberal take-over are flocking to the few really leftist groups and to
the numerous and vast ultra-right parties/movements.
Which is also why trying to keep them out of power at all costs - as happens
in Europe, most notably in France - or trying to impeach/oust/coup/kill the
elected right-wing populist - as happens in the US right now - is a suicidal
move. If that sizable fraction of the population never gets anything, never
any part of power, not even a bone to gnaw, sooner or later, they'll just
get fed up, and when they'll have barely anything of value to lose, they
will go nuts. This, of course, would be even worse in the US than in EU,
considering that it's the part of society with the guns, the training to use
them, and more or less the will to use them if forced to.
But then, as another US president once said, the tree of liberty must be
refreshed in blood from time to time - his one famous quote who's
conspicuously absent from the Jefferson Memorial. And when I look closely, I
can't see any Western country where this "refreshment" isn't long overdue.
You're right, b. Dems will continue to bleed out. A good place to see this
will be the special election to replace in Georgia's 6th CD Rep. Tom Price,
who took the job to be Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary. Daily
Kos and ActBlue are shaking the can raising money for a young Dem staffer
named Jon Ossoff. Here's the Daily Kos
pitch
for Ossof:
But while Price might love him some Trump, his district doesn't feel the
same way. In fact, the 6th saw a remarkable shift on election night. Four
years ago, voters in this conservative but well-educated area supported
Mitt Romney by a wide 61-37 margin. In 2016, however, hostility toward
Trump gave the president just a 48-47 win-a stunning 23-point collapse.
That dramatic change in attitudes means this seat might just be in play.
The "Women's Strike" on International Women's Day was a dud. The Dems are
labeling what they're doing a "Resistance," as if they are fighting a
guerrilla war against Vichy. But what they're "fighting" for is really a
restoration of Vichy (Trump is more a caudillo) with young
corporate-friendly Dems like Ossoff.
Unfortunately, the Greens seem to be hobbled. They can't get
past the Democratic FEAR machine. And Jill Stein's recounts reeked of
collusion with Democrats.
That's why I switched from Greens to Pirate Party. Direct democracy has
appeal to anyone that doesn't want rule by a permanent monied class of
neolib cronys.
Actually I don't agree that the Left has lost. There's simply a lack of
ideas.
The extreme nationalist right goes in the US because geographically
isolated. In Europe it is time limited. In UK Brexit has won for the moment,
but it is falling apart, because it can't deliver economic success. (more to
see). In continental Europe, the extreme right are not gaining in the polls
(Wilders, Le Pen), rather stagnating.
Macron, in france, could have the right attitude, oriented to the young.
But it could turn bad.
The managed resistance serves corporate interests, just as the ruling party
does. Whichever party is in power. Billions of dollars in 1% money and
nearly all the media are behind keeping the 'resistance' and the party in
power the only two 'acceptable' vehicles for expressing yourself
politically.
But it's worse ... The universities are almost entirely populated by
identity politics and/or neoliberal 'left' professors, which of course
generates brain-fried future leaders and cadres of the two mainstream
parties. Such university environments also mean that alternative, real left
research and ideas are severely underfunded and legitimized.
But it's worse ... Even the left opposition to the two party system can't
bring itself to (or is too scared to) oppose open borders for economic
immigrants. Minimizing immigration had always been standard pro-worker
position prior to the rise of identity politics in the 1970s.
"Real wages sink but they continue to import cheep labor (real policy) under
the disguise of helping "refugees" (marketing policy) which are simply
economic migrants."
Sorry B, but this is outright bullshit. No country in EU-Europe needs to
import cheep labor from not-EU-countries. There are more then enough
EU-Europeans in search of better wages. The EU was extended exactly in order
to achieve this 'abundance' (o.k. not the only reason). The people you
denounce as "simply economic migrants" are not an imported good - they enter
the EU against all odds. And many, many are refguees coming from countries
ruined by western military interventions.
Well, if Zero Hedge is anything to go by, in a few years automation will
abolish the working class anyway. Then Bill Gates' depopulation scheme will
mop up the remnants.
"The ship was sinking---and
sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, "We've got to get
the lifeboats in the water right away."
But the crew said, "First we have to end capitalist oppression of the
working class. Then we'll take care of the lifeboats."
Then the women said, "First we want equal pay for equal work. The
lifeboats can wait."
The racial minorities said, "First we need to end racial discrimination.
Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly."
The captain said, "These are all important issues, but they won't matter
a damn if we don't survive. We've got to lower the lifeboats right away!"
But the religionists said, "First we need to bring prayer back into the
classroom. This is more important than lifeboats."
Then the pro-life contingent said, "First we must outlaw abortion.
Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else."
The right-to-choose contingent said, "First acknowledge our right to
abortion, then we'll help with the lifeboats."
The socialists said, "First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that's
done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats."
The animal-rights activists said, "First we must end the use of animals
in medical experiments. We can't let this be subordinated to lowering the
lifeboats."
Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been
lowered, everyone drowned.
The last thought of more than one of them was, "I never dreamed that
solving humanity's problems would take so long---or that the ship would sink
so SUDDENLY."
― Daniel Quinn
On the question of the far right, only if
substantial sections of the political spectrum are shut out is there scope
for the extremists to come in and fill the gap. That is the danger to a
minor degree in England and to a greater degree in Continental Europe, as we
are told it was the danger in the Weimar republic. Some precedent, that.
I am not sure about the "populist" movements in Continental Europe but
the Brexit vote in England and the Trump movement in America do not, in
spite of the almost universal assertion to the contrary, represent a swing
to the right, let alone the far right. They represent a return to the
centre, a centre that has long been shut out in Western politics generally
and that is now tentatively re-asserting itself. It is only if that return
to the centre fails that we need fear the Neo-Nazis and the like coming in
to fill the gap.
Great post, b. Short and sweet and right on the money.
There's certainly a
looming trend. Western Australia's 8 year-old (Turnbull affiliated) Liberal
Govt was annihilated at the weekend.
On Saturday night the interim result was:
Labor 39, Liberal 11, Nats 4, unresolved 5.
(39 seats in a 59-seat parliament)
Malcolm Turnbull is pretending to be 'philosophical' about it...
the 'left' is a gang of 'middle-class' would-be jacobins, directing 'the
masses' while eating cake. there is no left, there is no right, there is a
top - the few - and a bottom - the many. as b points out the desperately
vocal few are left and/or right, they are on their own side of the top,
definitely not on the side of us many on the bottom. their policies create
more and more of us every day. they
are
our fathers and mothers in
that sense. we will dance on their graves.
b, please don't say 'pseudo
democrats' it sounds too jacobin, like the trots at wsws.org and their
constant 'pseudo left'. 'fake' will do for pseudo. and it's two fewer key
strokes - three in the same row. stick with the bottom against the top.
write what you want of course ... that's just a rant roiling my gut
gaining vent.
B in case you do not know (I doubt that) "true left" has been murdered long
time ago also in Europe where betrayal of working class interests by the
so-called mainstream workers parties/socialists, so-called communists and
trade unions in the West was fought on the streets in 1968 Paris and all
over the Europe and surprisingly it spilled out to eastern Europe in a form
of Prague revolt, Warsaw riots and mass strikes that swept across the
eastern block in anger of betrayal of workers interests by the ruling
socialist workers parties who turned into a calcified cliques and turned
against socialist workers movements and ideals of egalitarianism and
equality and started selling out to the Western oligarchs.
It was at that
time that under the guise of fake political detente first time massive
policies of outsourcing jobs from the western Europe to the Eastern Europe
commenced (starting with Hungary and Poland and later in Romania where the
Ceausescu's mafia turn away openly from Russian sphere of influence in
ideological, economic and political realm) in a ploy to provoke strikes in
the West and subsequently shutting down the factories (in fact transferring
the production to the eastern block in Europe and/or south America ruled
under dictatorships) if demanded by the oligarchs concessions of lowering
wages and decrease of benefits was not agreed upon by the Trade Unions.
In other words if Trade Unions did not completely capitulate they close
striking factories. Similar tactics have been use in the US under
environmental or productivity requirements pretension in 1960-tois and
1970-ties and later openly outsourcing for profits down south Mason-Dickson
line parallel and later to Mexico and Asia.
This unified betrayal of working class simultaneously by the West and the
East prompted proud vanguard of working class (leftists students of European
Universities and some of the trade unions) to respond to the exigent
circumstances, to respond to mortal threat to workers movements all over the
Europe in 1960-ties and 1970-ties.
These were unsung heroes of last true revolutionary leftist organizations
such as ETA, BR, RAF, AD, FLQ (in Canada) who took upon themselves a heroic,
revolutionary responsibility for defending vital interests of working
people, betrayed by mainstream leftists political parties, via a measured,
targeted and restrained self-defense campaign that aimed at threatening and
destruction of vital economic and financial interest of European oligarchy
including direct assaults on their personal safety and welfare, as a way to,
through a personal pain, humanize for them their abhorrent inhumane ways and
to make them suffer as working class comrades suffered under their inhuman
policies and acts including of violence, intimidation and murder.
This was the last stand of the true left against evil of spawning global
neoliberalism that in following decades swept the world with no opposition
to speak of left to fight it may be except for neo-Maoist guerrillas in
South America and Indian subcontinent. Even anti-imperial Palestinian FATAH
has been tamed while Islamic/religious movements have been supported to
control leftist tendencies within populations, a consequences of such a cold
decision of globalists we live with today.
This was the last stand of the true left in the Eastern and Western
Europe against betrayal of the Soviet Union elites, betrayal of the programs
and ideals of the international working class struggle they proliferated all
over the world.
It was utter betrayal by the descendants of soviet revolutionaries who
later transformed the hope for just, socialist egalitarian project into a
shallow propaganda façade of a mafia state conspiring with the West to rob
their own working people of the national treasure soviet/Eastern Block
working class worked hard to produce and preserve for future generations.
The betrayal culminated with a western orchestrated political collapse of
Soviet Union while the country was still on sound economic footing despite
of cold war military baggage, western embargoes and massive theft of the
corrupted party apparatchiks and cronies of Soviet ruling elite in last
decade before 1991, in way resembling massive US national treasure theft by
US banking mafia especially after 2008.
It is true that true left in US (decades before) and in Europe had to be
murdered since it was the last bastion of defenders of working class
interests against neoliberal globalist visions of a dystopia under umbrella
of US imperial neoconservative rule.
Now voters throughout the world have only two "no choice" choices between
full throttle globalist neoliberalism or globalist neoliberalism with
national flavor of corrupted Identity Politics of race or nationality, a
politics of division to prevent reinsurgency of the true leftist ideology of
simple self-defense or working class under assault that naturally brews
underneath the political reality of mass extermination and neoliberal
slavery.
The call to International Working Class: Proletariat or more
appropriately today "Precariat of the World Unite" has not been more
appropriate and needed since at least 1848 after collapse of another
globalization freed trade sham under umbrella of British empire.
We must unite, and not succumb to a mass manipulation and stay united in
solidarity among all ordinary working people who see through provocation and
manipulation of identity politics of phony left or phony right and see that
they do not have any interest in this fight set up in a way that ordinary
people can only lose while cruel inhumane neoliberalism will always win.
I contributed to a progressive blog for years until I was finally kicked off
for suggesting Bernie was herding progressives into Hillary's tent. I often
criticized Obama's foreign policy and the local partisan blogs--when they
weren't ignoring the perspective I represented--ridiculed me for being a
"conspiracy theorist" when I pushed back against the anti-Russian consensus.
I spent many years working with chronic homeless people in Montana in the
"progressive" utopia known as Missoula and when the Democrats that run this
town aren't actively making housing more unaffordable with their bonds for
parks and endless schemes to gentrify this town into being Boulder,
Colorado, they are making symbolic stands against guns and enabling Uber.
now I work with aging individuals and I am learning a lot about the cruel
complexity of Medicare and Medicaid. it's already really bad and, sadly, it
will only get worse--just in time for the American Boomer generation's
silver tsunami to hit entitlement programs.
I noticed a lot of British Proletariat have moved to the Costa del Sol
leaving plenty of job openings for the Polish and Roumanian Proletariat. Not
sure if this is a typical European trend.
It reminds me of the attitudes espoused by Ishmael:
"The ship was sinking---and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers
and crew, "We've got to get the lifeboats in the water right away."
But the crew said, "First we have to end capitalist oppression of the
working class. Then we'll take care of the lifeboats."
Then the women said, "First we want equal pay for equal work. The
lifeboats can wait."
The racial minorities said, "First we need to end racial discrimination.
Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly."
The captain said, "These are all important issues, but they won't matter
a damn if we don't survive. We've got to lower the lifeboats right away!"
But the religionists said, "First we need to bring prayer back into the
classroom. This is more important than lifeboats."
Then the pro-life contingent said, "First we must outlaw abortion.
Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else."
The right-to-choose contingent said, "First acknowledge our right to
abortion, then we'll help with the lifeboats."
The socialists said, "First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that's
done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats."
The animal-rights activists said, "First we must end the use of animals
in medical experiments. We can't let this be subordinated to lowering the
lifeboats."
Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been
lowered, everyone drowned.
The last thought of more than one of them was, "I never dreamed that
solving humanity's problems would take so long---or that the ship would sink
so SUDDENLY."
― Daniel Quinn
Life isn't gonna get better for those who are not born into a solidly upper
middle class family until nation states are downsized. amerika needs to be
carved up into 40 or 50 - units maybe even more particularly for the large
population seaboard 'states'. The one good thing about the brexit the
englander tory government is gonna deliver is that it is likely to cause
scots and maybe even ulster-people to leave the union.
I've lived in quite
a few nation states over the years and have found that a small population
state is far more responsive to the needs of its citizens than large ones -
even when a mob of carpet-bagging greedheads has jerry-mandered their way
into political power in a small state and an allegedly humanist political
entity is running the large state this holds true.
As far as I can discern there are two reasons for this or maybe 2 facets
of one reason. Firstly even the rightist greedheads cannot shit on any group
be it divided by race gender or sexual preference long term in a small
population state. The reason is that in smaller population units people tend
to know others better and obvious injustices always reach the ears and
consciences of rightist voters - even supporters of racist or sexist asshole
governments and it results in a backlash. Humanist pols in large entities
fall back on 'pragmatic' excuses about 'perception' at the drop of a hat -
no different in action than their 'enemy'.
The second reason is the other end of the first. Because of that degrees of
separation thing, when you live in a small population political unit, you
find you will always know someone who knows any political aspirant. Those
with a rep for being greedy, malicious or deceitful cannot hide behind press
spokespeople and bullshit for long - they cop the flick quickly.
I have long believed that this is the real motive for the corporatists to
support politicians' incessant centralising & empire building.
Claims about large population groups somehow being more efficient are
quickly shown to be false when put to the test of reality. In nature
biological systems, even those within large entities are localised and full
of seemingly inefficient redundancies because one thing evolution has taught
is that a system that has inbuilt alternative modes of survivability will
keep the entity alive much longer than some 'simple & straightforward'
system whose failure means the death or massive disability of the entity.
Corporations themselves tend to be labyrinthine full of small similarly
named but legally discrete modules because that is what works best, yet
corporations keep underwriting politicians who strive to make their 'entity'
bigger, more centralised and 'simpler' - why?
Well because political failure is a capitalist's best ally and of course
when a political entity is really large as amerika is, it is possible to
deceive all the people all the time. The average citizen is a stranger to
any/all of the members of the political elite and as such are entirely
dependent upon third party information vectors - the so-called mainstream
media who push out whatever deceit their masters instruct them to.
I make the point in this thread because too many people appear to believe
that it would be possible to reform the amerikan political system despite
the fact that helluva lot have already tried and failed long before they got
anywhere near the centre of power.
It just isn't possible because of the simple principle that anyone who is
capable of convincing large numbers of people who he/she has never had any
personal contact with, to support their 'character', ideas and political
objectives is by virtue of their success, unworthy of anyone's vote.
No person can convince that many strangers without resorting to some form
of gamesmanship and that makes them a bad choice. There is no way around
that reality yet most citizens adopt the usual cognitive dissonace every
election cycle and pay no heed to what should be blindingly self-evident.
Finally!...this is where all mericans eyes and ears has to be, i.e if they
still have them...non is so blind as those who refuse to see.Clean your own
backyards before commenting on or trying to clean others.
b's premise is that disenfranchised voters will go the polls for far right
interests under the promise of nationalistic interests and the policy that
springs from this. However, I do not believe that they will rue the day for
this choice from being squeezed out. The Nazi party ascension was a huge
success for bread and butter interests of the common kraut. Autobahn,
infrastructure, industry: this nationalism scared the allies enough to go to
war with Germany for asserting it's independence and own interests. Are we
Weimar Germany? No, no, no. Our military is already to the hilt and yet is
being halted in its advance by Russia, Iran, etc. You can't keep squeezing
the same lemon and expect more lemonade. The only option for Trump is to
invest in America again, period. Anything less or a further downward
trajectory will only incite the deplorables more and Trump would be gone
after four years, and maybe sooner to the clicking of boots marching on the
White House. Something truly unpredictable and unexpected might transpire at
that juncture.
You said:
/~~~~~~~~~~
As blues@5 notes above, fixing the electoral system (paper ballots,
ranked-choice voting, voting districts that are coherent regional sectors,
not octopus-like, maybe drawn along watershed boundaries, etc.) is a key
step in breaking their grip on power.
\~~~~~~~~~~
Actually, what the "election methods cognoscenti" call "ranked-choice
voting" always fails spectacularly. It is quite different than what they
call "score voting", which can actually work, if kept simple enough.
Like other people never heard of Preet Bharara. Appears he was called the
"Sheriff of Wall Street". Looked up his record and yes, he did not put any
banksters in jail. Lots of fines which were tax deductible I believe.
Strange Sheriff who has no jail. I would bet he joins a Wall Street legal
firm and gets paid six-to-seven figures to defend the banksters.
This is where Wall Street feared Sanders--Bernie appeared to insist the
Sheriff's he appointed actually have jails.
A safe bet: next wednesday ultra right-wing Geert Wilders will win the dutch
elections, after the diplomatic row with sultan-wanna-be Erdogan. And then
Marine Le Pen...
In the US, the Democrats and Republicans are two wings on the same bird.
Left wing, Right Wing
The US is a democratic theme park, where the levers and handles are not
attached to anything,
whose only purpose is to deceive the masses into thinking that
they make a "difference"
blues | Mar 13, 2017 12:31:00 AM |
Yep they can be relied upon to be corporate slaves for sure I cannot think
of a single example over the past 50 years of any amerikan pol who succeeded
at a national level, who wasn't a forked toungued corporate shill.
There are plenty of examples of pols whose history at a low level 'seemed
OK' - where their occasional examples of perfidy could be dismissed as just
having to toe the party line; "Once he's his own man/woman he will really
strut his/her stuff for the people" a certain Oblamblamblam comes to mind as
the most egregious recent example - when they get in power everyone gets to
see what whores they always were. Whores concealing their inner asshole to
get into real power. That type of duplicity is much more difficult to pull
off in smaller populations - it gets found out and the pol really struggles
to get past the bad reputation chiefly because a lot of voters can put a
face to the 'victim' which makes the evil palpable.
What I find really odd
is the way that even self described lefties who acknowledge the massive evil
committed by amerika still seek to evade and/or justify the evil.
It goes to show how brainwashed all amerikans are. I guess they think
everyone feels that way - when people who haven't been subjected to that
level of conditioning about their homeland actually don't hold that blind
'right or wrong determination. I like where I live now and everything else
being equal probably would go in to bat for my friends or family if this
country somehow got into a tussle. But I would back off and advocate for the
other side in a heartbeat if I felt the nation I lived in was doing wrong.
I was living in Australia when Gulf War 1 kicked off and up until that point
I doubt there was a more dedicatedly loyal Australian but the cynical
decision to suppoft GH Bush made by the Australian Labor Party just wouldn't
wash and without wanting to be accused of the current heinous crime de jour
ie virtue signalling, I like many others took a stance against my adopted
nation that cost me professionally & personally. This was no great
achievement by me, it was easy because I hadn't been indoctrinated into any
sort of exceptionalism.
Yet I see the effects of the cradle to the grave conditioning amerikans are
subjected to in the posts on virtually any subject made by amerikans.
That of itself makes the destruction of amerika essential, a prerequisite
that must be met if there is to be any real change in the amerikan political
structure.
@ Debsisdead who wrote about ".....how brainwashed amerikans are." and
"
What I find really odd is the way that even self described lefties who
acknowledge the massive evil committed by amerika still seek to evade and/or
justify the evil.
"
I live in the belly of the beast you want to destroy. What exactly is it
that I should do to effect your goal? I continue to struggle with knowing
that. I also disagree that it is amerika that must be destroyed but the
tools of those that control our world.......private finance.
I also want
to state to commenter karlof1 that her call for focus on "culture" is
exactly what I think I am attacking by wanting to end private finance. And I
had the pleasure of studying under an anthropologist for a year and very
much appreciate that perspective on our current social maladies. I think
that anthropological characterizations of our species are harder to
misrepresent than history....hence my reference to tenets of social
organization, etc.
We need some adults in the world to stand up to the bastardization of
language and communication.
Any form of social organization not based on any type of compulsion is
inherently socialistic. If we can agree to socialize the provision of water,
electricity, etc. why can't we do the same for finance?
Probably for the same reason we continue to prattle on about right/left
mythologies and ignore the top/bottom reality.
b, excellent analysis. Amerika is rotten to its core. There are no
cures..... just sit and watch on the sideline for these tugs NeoCon,
NeoLiberal, progressive etc.. Kill themselves and blames it on Putin.
I
hold two valid passports, neither better than the other. Hot frying pans,
hot boiling oil?
b said.."When LGBT claptrap, gluten free food, political correctness and
other such niceties beat out programs to serve the basic needs of the common
people nothing "left" is left. The priority on the left must always be the
well-being of the working people. All the other nice-to-have issues follow
from and after that."
Private finance... most countries have a reserve bank. Yours has the
fed.
Your country has made private money an ideology and tries to export this
ideology around the globe. The opposite extreme to collective communism.
Most countries have foreign policy and foreign ministers. When I looked up
the websites of Your presidential candidates, none had a foreign policy. In
place, all had war policy. Sanders had his titled war and peace.
Most countries have foreign ministers. Your country has a secretary of
state. I guess when you are a country that feels it has the god given right
to rule the world, no country is foreign, all are vassal states.
Your country needs to collapse, or be destroyed, to knock this ideology
out of the inhabitants, and then rebuilt as a normal country.
What the US is now, is just a natural progression of its foundations.
I think there's no left
left for the simple reason that it's role in the system, at least since the
end of ww2, became void after 91. No competing system, no need for niceties,
back to the 30's, plenty of unfinished business, 80 years of taxes to get
back. New Deal and European Social Model are obsolete. The armies of workers
offshored, what is left is a kind of lumpen, busy fingering their
smartphones. A highly educated lumpen, probably the highest educated
generation ever, but lumpen nonetheless, Indoctrinated by all media to
individualism, their atomization seems assured. I wonder if anyone under 30
reads MoA. Might be wrong but looks like most of us are over 60 considering
the muppet like kind of grumpyness that erupts so often.
There are drops in the ocean, in places were solidarity still has strong
roots.
Marinaleda
(sorry, the english wiki sucks, a machine translation from
the spanish wiki is certainly more informative) 0% unemployment, equal pay
to all residents, housing provided through self-building, the city council
provides plot, technical supervision, building materials, charges 15 euros
monthly rent. Collective economy based on farming, husbandry and industrial
transformation of it's products. I repeat, equal pay to all residents 1,128
euros for 35 hours a week. Just a drop in the ocean, but a worthy one.
Elsewhere true social-democracy can be found in Latin America. Nicaragua,
Venezuela, Equador, Bolivia, Uruguay pop up as examples that neoliberalism,
racism and neocolonialism can be defeated, on their terms, even if there are
setbacks like Brazil and Argentina. There one can find rivers of solidarity.
Telesur
english
keeps you up to date, with better coverage on Syria than CNN.
All those USAG's and IG's and NO one wants or has investigated where all
those Pentagon missing trillions went to?
Ditto for the MSM, who use all that print space pushing to let men dressed
as women use the little girl's bathroom. The USA project has failed, it's
Kaput, time to turn out the lights.
The 'Left' has been bought by the oligarchs, just like the media, the NGOs,
the 'human rights' organizations, etc. Tony Blair was perhaps the most
blatant example, especially with his 'third way', undefined by him to this
day. I guess it tried to merge bits from the right such as Nationalism and
bits from the left such as Socialism, but who knows!
I am German but not living in Germany. I am disgusted with my compatriots.
They seem to have bought the line that in order to atone for their parents
or grandparents' crimes they have to open the doors to the dregs of the
Earth and let themselves get plundered and their daughters raped without a
protest. Meanwhile, the German police continue to prosecute Germans for any
transgression, including speaking out about it.
So the left is good at pointing to its own flaws & decay but your simplistic
view of a "static" right that doesn't evolve and alway represent the "evil"
is laughable. Both the left and right have merged on most issue, it's a
system of croony capitalism with a big government and where "financial
capitalism" has destroyed industrial capitalism and innovations. Who would
invest to hire employees or innovate if it's more lucrative to sell private
bonds to a central bank or "buy back" the shares of the cies (to boost their
price with a loan in order to get a "productivity" bonus?
A long, long time ago both left/right were pretending to offer a solution
and improve the living standards, one faction with individual liberties, low
taxes and a sound money policy (gold & silver) while the left was fighting
against inequalities and proposing wealth redistribution with a big
government & taxes. Both the left & right started to be coopted in the
1960's
"Real wages sink but they continue to import cheep [sic: that should be
"cheap"] labor (real policy) under the disguise of helping "refugees"
(marketing policy) which are simply economic migrants. (Even parts of the
German "Die Linke" party are infected with such nonsense.)"
Kudos. It's
rare to see someone intelligent admit that an open borders immigration
policy is all about cheap labor, period. Bernie Sanders started to say that,
but after a couple of days of being screamed at for his 'racism' he of
course folded.
I note that by refusing to acknowledge that importing massive numbers of
workers we are pushing wages down, we are also responsible for the misery in
places like Yemen and Somalia etc. How can we expect people in these places
to stop having more children than they can afford, when our
Nobel-prizewinning whores keep screaming that more people are always better?
I mean, if we propagandize that eating arsenic is wonderful (or at lest not
an issue), and people somewhere else keep eating arsenic, we are to blame.
The characteristics which define Right-wingers are...
1. They are are obliged to believe their own bullshit in order to sell it to
the masses.
2. Bribery is an indispensable component of Modern Democracy.
3. Whenever one of their inane schemes backfires, it's ALWAYS somebody
else's fault, NEVER their own.
Malcolm & the Liberals will spend the next
6 months looking for scapegoats (with their fingers in their ears - another
R-W trait).
Democrats become neoliberal Republicans, letting actual Republicans get
elected. Rinse and repeat while blaming Russia for failure. That is the
center-right mantra of the elite Democrats and their NGO supporters (who are
well paid to represent the party line without deviation, if they deviate
they get cut off). Yet my Democrat friends howl that I'm a Trump supporter
because I wouldn't vote for Hillary.
The unfortunate truth is that outside
of protest votes there is no political force in America for dissenters to
turn to outside of what they can do on their own. The two-headed hydra of
the Demopublicans appears to be fighting against itself now but in reality
they still agree on most issues, to the detriment of all working people.
@35 Your version of "score voting" is clearly the best approach to "ranked
choice voting" as currently used. Also, using paper ballots that are counted
by optical scanning machines? That's just as subject to hacking as
electronic voting machines are, since nobody is going to back and hand-count
those paper ballots.
But really, under current finance rules, the
oligarchs tightly control the electoral process via their control of
corporate media and their ability to run puppet candidates against any
honest politicians who defy their agenda. Ultimately this is why politicians
gravitate towards the BS issues describe by b, i.e.
"When LGBT claptrap, gluten free food, political correctness and other
such niceties beat out programs to serve the basic needs of the common
people nothing "left" is left. The priority on the left must always be
the well-being of the working people. All the other nice-to-have issues
follow from and after that."
But addressing the well-being of the working people - wages, homes,
affordable healthcare for their parents and education for their children -
that impacts multinational corporate profits. This is why politicians steer
clear of such issues - they don't want to incur the anger of the oligarchs,
who can spend millions to get them removed from office. Journalists do the
exact same thing, wanting to keep their jobs in corporate media outfits
controlled by Wall Street oligarchs. This is highly similar to how the
oligarchs ran Russia during the Boris Yeltsin era.
There are clearly many similarites between the Russian billionaires of
that era and their various American counterparts today, from the Silicon
Valley billionaires to the oil & gas billionaires to the finance
billionaires; they could never have made all that money without the active
cooperation of politicians and bureaucrats who serve their interests in
Washington as well as in many state governments. This vast extraction of
wealth from the middle class, coupled with a desire to control the whole
world and move money freely across borders without restrictions, and to use
the military to invade and crush any countries who don't go with the
program, that's what the neocon-neolib agenda is all about.
When people like b start to make tremendous confusion between the Neoliberal
Democratic party and the Left, I fear things will go from bad to worse ...
Confusing Neolib and Left after all these years, b? There's no light at the
end of the tunnel, huh?
We've heard stupid people say that Hitler was Socialist ... after all the
NSDAP had the "S", hadn't it? But they are stupid people, right?
Now this?
Well-meaning populist politicians throughout history are either bought off
or assassinated.
Populist rhetoric is tolerated (and necessary for R vs. D political
theater to function).
The rhetoric is one thing. BUT if anyone actually DOES anything of value
for the common people, he will be maligned, castigated, shunned and soon
become enmeshed in a manufactured scandal.
@ nonsense factory | Mar 13, 2017 10:36:25 AM | 58
What the "election
methods cognoscenti" call "ranked-choice voting" is quite distinct from
"score voting" With the score voting method I described you could give from
(1) to (10) votes to up to (12) candidates. So you could give, for example,
(10) votes to Candidates (A), (B), and (C), and (8) votes to (D), (E), and
(F). But with ranked choice voting, you cannot do that, since you must
"rank" the candidates in an "ordinal" fashion. This could look like: (A) >
(B) > (C) >(D) > (E) > (F). And this forced "ranking" leads to astonishingly
complex dilemmas. So, score voting is definitely not a version of ranked
voting.
I did insist on "hand counted paper ballots" because ballot scanning
machines are absurdly complex, and can easily be hacked. Remember that the
Deep State will always completely control anything that becomes sufficiently
complex. The fine print on insurance policies is an example.
Take a look at the Italian Cooking Show ladies. They aren't fat. Their
immune system see gluten as an invader causing physical inflammation.
Personally if I eat gluten my lower gut blows up like an inflated bicycle
tire. Gluten intolerance is not a trend. Check out online videos titled
'wheat belly.'
The wheat we eat today has been genetically modified mainly to increase
crop yields.
Yep. There's a reason the Democratic Socialists of America has seen a huge
explosion in growth over the past year. The Democratic Party has no soul,
and the DSA, by far the most major democratic socialist group in the
country, is benefiting from Bernie Sanders constantly calling himself a
"democratic socialist." If Democrats don't take their cue from this and
other leftist groups, they're going to lose elections for decades to come.
We need policies that work for the people, not neoliberal giveaways to
corporations or conservative policies outright hostile to people who aren't
rich.
What do you call a Social-Democracy without social-democrats?
Although
many have called the "crisis of social-democracy" in previous years
(especially after the "crash" of 2007-8), so far it is James Corbett that
has given us the most extensive non-scholar research on
How The Left Stopped Worrying and Learned to Embrace War
This is disturbingly close to what a co-worker said to me, before knowing
my views about the matter, when US-backed forces were overthrowing Gaddafi
in Libya: "Go, rebels, go!" He said he "normally" wasn't pro-war. A lot of
ditzy liberals out there.
b states that the disenfranchised will rue the day they threw in their card
for the far-right. I am not sure that this reality will pan out here in the
states, though I am unsure what will ultimately transpire. My reasonING for
this goes back to the nazification of Germany and the great benefits to that
nationalist movement in general. Autobahn, infrastructure, industry: their
new deal was very beneficial for the common kraut in addressing their
concerns, though this nationalism scared the shit out of the global finance
cabal and hence war. I am not entirely versed as to the legitimacy of their
claim to Poland or the moral implications of that seizure, though the ethnic
cleanses in the Russian steppes were evil.
My point is that nationalism
could be one of the only forces that could bring down the global finance
elite. This propelled me to vote for Trump and to hold out hope for a while.
My thought is that we already have military spending covered and I don't see
how the trickle down of more military spending would impress the deplorables
too much. If Trump wants a 2.0, he will have to invest in another new deal.
And what choice does he have? Continually being blocked my Russia and Iran?
I am not convinced yet of his total idiocy, but if he continues along a
neoconservative route, there will be little doubt. I guess tyrannies are
stupid after all. Are Americans that stupid, too? We'll see.
Clueless Joe 16
I've started to like that JFK quote more and more these days, too. At the
time he did not mean it for the US but it truly applies here.
1945 - 2000 +. In Europe the 'Left' was overcome in principally 2 ways.
1)
Was the 'red scare of communism', i.e. against the USSR - old memes now home
again. Even though there were some quite strong Communist parties,
particularly in France. (Today, the ex-leader of the dead communist party,
R. Hue, has come out supporting Macron.) The 'liberals' (economic
liberalism) of course used any tool and propaganda to hand.
2) The expansion of W economies, 1950-1980 (about), that so to speak
'lifted all boats', and afforded for ex. cars, fridges, TVs, and at the
start, just the basics like a small flat and some electricity, and water
plus a flush toilet (or better services for small houses) plus universal
free education (to age 14-15) and some basic health / social care. Transport
flowered (fossil fuel use and railways) As opposed to living in a hut in a
filthy slum though rurals were always better off. The economy basically
boomed and jobs, even if ugly and badly paid, were available. This was all a
tremendous advance and it was credited to a 'liberal' economic model.
NOT-communist. (Though it had nothing to do with any political arrangement
per se. See Hobsbawm on the USSR.)
Later, Third-wayers (Bill Clinton, Tony Blair..) tried to 'snow' ppl who
would become 'poorer' with fakey Socialist-Dem party platforms, actually
favoring the 'rich' (Corps, Finance, MIC, Big Gov..), in an attempt to keep
ppl quiet. This 'third way' has now failed, ppl turn where they can, for now
it is voting for the 'alt-right' (Trump, Wilders, Le Pen..) along a sort of
nationalist line, which seems to contain germs of proto-fascim (as some
would say), but which is actually principally directed against the PTB.
I haven't yet read comments, but actually I don't agree with the title of
this piece, though the point about no left is certainly valid. I really
can't see folk just swinging far right because there is nowhere else to go,
since at least in this country, the US, we were burned so badly by the right
- the right took us into Iraq and we have not escaped the horrors there even
now. No way we're going back to that group of crazies just because another
group of crazies, and now apparently Trump as well, are marching to the same
bloody tune. We are being smothered by all of them.
I'm no prognosticator
- I can't see the future. All I can do is say this ongoing spilling of blood
is not what I voted for, and thank heavens I did not vote for Trump. I don't
blame those who did, thinking he might break the mold. In doing that, they
were not 'voting far right.' They were voting for what Trump said he would
do, act peacefully towards each country, take care of citizens' grievances.
He hasn't, and now we know. What happens next is anyone's guess but it won't
be more of the same, not in this country. Experience does matter, and when
we sort ourselves out and finish licking our wounds, us deplorables will
build on what has come before. And perhaps in other countries citizens
facing such non-choices and aware of what has happened here will trim their
sails accordingly.
The great tragedy of the collapse of the left is that there will be nobody
around to protect the minorities who live in the nations of the West. As a
nonwhite American, I see the polarization of politics around racial lines is
a catastrophe waiting to happen. The Democrats want to play the good cop,
using fear of to control their minority vote bank while doing sweet F A for
their communities that they profess to love so much. The Trumpian right has
now dropped all pretense and is openly embracing white supremacy, race
baiting for votes and stirring up all kinds of anti-foreigner sentiment on
top of the folksy old fashioned racism done by "good" GOPers. As disgusting
as the smug, patronizing prejudice of liberals is, the wild vitriolic hatred
found in parts of the white community is backed up with state force. Even
when faced with this reality, the Democratic party views discussions of
economic issues as pandering to the "deplorables"! Never mind the rampant
poverty and unemployment in black and latin ghettoes, talking about jobs is
racism! They will continue this political death spiral and we will pay the
price. There have been two shootings I know of where Indians (mistaken for
Muslims by rednecks hopped up on hate) and I'm sure we'll see plenty more.
God help Europe when their right wingers crack down on the Muslims. You
think the young are being radicalized now? You ain't seen nothing yet.
I don't blame those who did, thinking he might break the mold. In
doing that, they were not 'voting far right.' They were voting for what
Trump said he would do, act peacefully towards each country, take care of
citizens' grievances.
Yes, right on. And that extends to all the 'nationalist' voters. What
they - perhaps confusedly for some - are trying to effect is a timid step in
the present horrific political landscape, towards having a say, >> having
the space, and scope, of decision-making circumsribed, and made not only
smaller, but more rigidly, clearly defined - in this case down to nation
size where the ppl may hopefully garner some more power.
The labels 'right' and 'left' of course are nonsense, but we all use them
as 'tags' for e.g. Dems vs. Reps, and that's ok, as long as everyone
undertands the short-hand. Being 'nationalist', 'anti-globalist',
'localist', 'community oriented' (footnotes skipped) is not left or right,
it doesn't project to any point on the left-right polarity. Nor does it
relate to an authoritarian, controlling axis. vs. a libertarian one. But of
course these challengers are painted as Hitler 'nationalist' stooges and
putative vicious invaders, war mongers, conquerers, as is for ex. Putin.
And if anyone is interested, I chose the name "Perimetr" because that is the
way my friend Colonel Yarynich spelled it . . .
Also known as the "Deadhand" system, Perimetr is a semi-automated system
through which a retaliatory nuclear strike can be ordered by a decapitated
Russian National Command Authority. Perimetr came into being in the 1980s
and appears to still be functional. You can read a detailed analysis of it
in the book by Colonel Valery Yarynich, "C3: Nuclear Command, Control,
Cooperation" (if you can get your hands on a copy).
https://www.amazon.com/C3-Nuclear-Command-Control-Cooperation/dp/1932019081
Perimetr uses emergency communication rockets to issue launch orders to
any (surviving) Russian nuclear forces; such orders would automatically
trigger a launch of these forces without further human intervention. The
crew that mans the Perimetr launch control center requires several things to
happen before they launch: (1) an initial preliminary authorization from the
National Command Authority following the detection of an incoming attack,
(2) a complete loss of communication on all channels (various radio
frequencies, land lines, etc) with the National Command Authority, and (3) a
simultaneously set of positive signals from seismic, optical, and
radiological nuclear detonation detectors indicating that a nuclear attack
has occurred.
At that point, the crew is ordered to launch the ECRs. This "Deadhand"
launches the missiles even after those who gave the preliminary launch order
have been incinerated in a nuclear strike. Valery thought that Perimetr
added a measure of safety having the system, in that it would make it less
likely that the NCA would launch a "retaliatory" strike (Launch on Warning,
LOW) before nuclear detonations confirmed the strike was real (if the
warning was false, then the "retaliatory strike" would actually be a first
strike . . . hence Perimetr offers some certainty of retaliation for
choosing to "ride out" a perceived attack). I took less comfort that did
Valery, as I found it disconcerting that there was a non-human mechanism or
means to order a Russian nuclear attack.
@21
The aim of importing cheap labour is to allow continued expansion of capital
without depressing the rate of profit. Unless the labour force constantly
expands, any accumulation of capital tends to drive down the rate of profit
in two ways: 1) it raises the ratio of capital stock to national income, so
if the wage share remains the same, the rate of profit falls; 2)
Accumulation of capital faster than the growth of the labour force creates a
sellers market for labour and allows real wages to rise. For these two
reasons big business favours rapid immigration.
Are you illiterate?
"Perimeter" is graphically different of "Perimetr". In addition and mainly,
interested people can differentiate one from the other ideologically. So do
not worry, kid.
The thing is black people in USA are fed up. White people (including some
jews) are fed up. Black people have been marginalized and are no longer the
primary darlings of the Bleeding Heart Party. You must add as well that many
of them like Carson are quite conservative and wealthy, so they go
Republican. One cannot discount the very high sense of patriotism that many
Afro-Americans feel for the USA. They can smell the BS.
"White's", can be racially disparaged, mocked, used and abused and it O.K.
You can call a certain segment of the population; "White Trash", white
bitch, fucking cracker, honky, racist, etc, etc and they just have to take
it.
You can openly say that it's no longer their country, that they will no
longer be the majority, if you are an immigrant and have a short time in
USA, you are toasted and cheered while saying it. So soft genocide against
"whites" is ok.
This is wrong and it's true what B say's, there is nothing LEFT. I gave
Obama 8 and I'm still waiting for my change.
- Someone in a townhall meeting asked a Democratic representitive: "What do
the Democrats stand for". And the representitive replied with platitudes.
and the whole thing was captured on video.
the left in America is small and estranged, like an illegitimate child. the
blacks fucked up long ago when they aligned with the Democratic Party,
which, as we know, is just a gaggle of pro-war liberals. their reckoning is
on its way...like a bad asteroid.
i'd check out the relationship between the exponential growth
in the use of glyphosate, decimated microbial populations in the human gut
as a result of its use, and the sudden eruption of gluten intolerance.
that'd get any biochemist / epidemiologist fired in short order, or
demonized on publication. i'm sure that's why we haven't seen it.
@ Posted by: Willy2 | Mar 14, 2017 3:55:52 AM | 85
Thank you for the link.
Succint & concise. Tragicomedy(sic) ... :(
What was highlighted with cutting clarity is what the average Joe & Betty
six-pack, and not just Stateside, throughout the 'West' are primarily up in
arms about, IMV. And the Owned & Controlled, Corporate 'Mainstream'
Mega-Media will not touch it nor even acknowledge 'it' ... hopefully
the scales will fall
from enough peoples eyes to awaken from the
somnolance induced by all-encompassing '
digital valium
' ...
If locales can ever reach a critical mass re numbers ... maybe the
Tumbrels
will yet again roll to swing humanities 'pendulum' back the other way. If
they don't ...
There never has been a political party of the Left in America that held any
political power or even a balance of power at important state or federal
levels. Leaders of the emerging Left in America have been either jailed or
assassinated. Any other leaders of the people, not necessarily of the left,
have also met a similar fate. The American establishment has always been a
repressive clique of any populous movements. Other western nations, being
further from the central authority, developed at minimum Leftist political
opposition that at least held a balance of power enough to effect national
policies that were of benefit to the working classes as defined. In America
Leftist appeal of grievances was applied through the existing two party
system, mainly the Democrats with their unionized labour wing. This has all
fallen by the wayside. Enough said....
RE: Perimeter | Mar 13, 2017 10:14:10 PM | 83 "Perimeter" is graphically
different of "Perimetr". In addition and mainly, interested people can
differentiate one from the other ideologically. So do not worry, kid.
Well
let's see, would Circe be upset if someone started posting under "Circes"?
Would Outraged mind if someone started posting here as "Outrages"? How about
"Alberto" instead of "ALberto"??
Sorry, there are lots of other names available, so what is the point in
posting under one that is essentially identical to mine, except to confuse
those who might not be paying much attention?
@84, the racial-ethnic divides among populations pale in comparison to the
divisions between classes. The Reptilian Order must rake up the former
through media exploits lest the proles wise up to the latter.
Outraged @ 89
Thanks for the compliment on the other thread.
I also value what you write.
In certain conditions it is possible to attain meaningfull goals without
setting the tumbrells in motion. I linked to
Marinaleda
in a comment above. They din't decapitate the Duque del Infantado, they cut
a substantial part of his estate. It was possible for 3 reasons, a
charismatic leader, a strong sense of solidarity and a strong cultural
identity. It's a tiny scale but if one looks at current examples in a
multinational scale Chávez, Evo, Correa, Kirchner, Lula, were/are all
outstanding leaders in nations that have strong cultural identities and a
solidarity forged by resistance.
BRF @ 90
Exactly, jailed or assassinated. And when this was no longer feasible, when
human rights became a tool in the cold war, the discourse was deflected to
identitary policies and sex drugs and r&r
My views tend towards
pacifism these last many years and am totally opposed to capital punishment
for common criminal acts ... the death of even one innocent due to failures
of the system, injustice, or mere errors, is one life too many, IMV.
Have personally seen the dire consequences of psychopaths & sociopaths,
in Military, Intelligence, Government & Corporate environments, in positions
of leadership/authority. They select alike as near peers and congregate
fellow-travellers, arch-opportunists & sellswords as underlings,
enablers/facilitators.
Yet, long reflection on ... bitter ... experiences, have brought me to a
perceived unpalatable truth, that there likely must be, long overdue, a cull
of the 'Impune', via the tender mercies of such as madame guillotine, to
reset the balance, for their number and reach in primarily western first
world countries has become a vast cancer upon humanity.
If one can be reviled by the community and dealt with at Law for a simple
common murder, why can one who abuses the authority of the State, or
delegated thereof, order policies or acts that result in dozens, 100's or
thousands or more deaths of innocents, yet be impune, wholly and forever,
unassailable, unaccountable ?
When exactly was it that Presidents & Prime Ministers once again quietly
assumed the pseudo-Regnum like Majesty & Dictatorial Imperium of Caesars,
Emperors, Kings/Monarchs of history past ?
Had thought the last 'Sun King' was in France ~160 years ago ...
Technology has opened a Pandora's Box of expanding destructive forces &
potentialities at the behest of these psychopaths that, as Karlof1 somewhat
similarly fears, will have a singular end result, if left unchecked.
Do not believe a little pruning of wealth/capital will any longer suffice
... Iceland alone, started tentatively upon the right path, after the GFC.
My views tend towards
pacifism these last many years and am totally opposed to capital punishment
for common criminal acts ... the death of even one innocent due to failures
of the system, injustice, or mere errors, is one life too many, IMV.
Have personally seen the dire consequences of psychopaths & sociopaths,
in Military, Intelligence, Government & Corporate environments, in positions
of leadership/authority. They select alike as near peers and congregate
fellow-travellers, arch-opportunists & sellswords as underlings,
enablers/facilitators.
Yet, long reflection on ... bitter ... experiences, have brought me to a
perceived unpalatable truth, that there likely must be, long overdue, a cull
of the 'Impune', via the tender mercies of such as madame guillotine, to
reset the balance, for their number and reach in primarily western first
world countries has become a vast cancer upon humanity.
If one can be reviled by the community and dealt with at Law for a simple
common murder, why can one who abuses the authority of the State, or
delegated thereof, order policies or acts that result in dozens, 100's or
thousands or more deaths of innocents, yet be impune, wholly and forever,
unassailable, unaccountable ?
When exactly was it that Presidents & Prime Ministers once again quietly
assumed the pseudo-Regnum like Majesty & Dictatorial Imperium of Caesars,
Emperors, Kings/Monarchs of history past ?
Had thought the last 'Sun King' was in France ~160 years ago ...
Technology has opened a Pandora's Box of expanding destructive forces &
potentialities at the behest of these psychopaths that, as Karlof1 somewhat
similarly fears, will have a singular end result, if left unchecked.
Do not believe a little pruning of wealth/capital will any longer suffice
... Iceland alone, started tentatively upon the right path, after the GFC.
"When exactly was it that Presidents & Prime Ministers once
again quietly assumed the pseudo-Regnum like Majesty & Dictatorial Imperium
of Caesars, Emperors, Kings/Monarchs of history past?"
I don't believe the Divine Right of Monarchs was ever completely expunged
as it continued to operate in the shadows until it retuned to the surface at
WW2's end with Truman.
Don't know how much you agree with my assessment above @12, but one of
the smartest people I've ever known--the late Lynn Margulis, Carl Sagan's
first wife, the superior microbiologist who proved symbiosis within species
and agent of evolution to be fact--wrote the forward to the paperback
edition of Morrison's work I cited, agreeing with him.
It's easy to observe and analyze the situation then prescribe the remedy.
But said remedy must be applied by millions of currently very disparate
individuals having almost no solidarity or in agreement about said remedy,
or even knowing a remedy exists. I'd do more, but my responsibilities limit
me to my current activities--writing and exhorting those able to act.
The great irony of our dilemma is humans have overcome Nature in almost
every sphere, yet that triumph is precisely what threatens humanity and the
biota--a triumph driven by Nature itself. So, to overcome our overcoming of
Nature, we must again triumph at overcoming our Human Nature by limiting the
impact of Nature on our actions through the use of a very ancient
technology--culture, by making certain actions by humans taboo and their
violation punishable by death as the Polynesians practiced.
Yes, radical, controversial, requiring a great deal of prior knowledge to
comprehend the logic driving the remedy. Yet, as Spock would say, there it
is: Long life and prosperity lies down remedy's path; massive destruction,
pain and eventual oblivion if the status quo continues.
... it returned to the surface at WW2's end with Truman.
... we must again triumph at overcoming our Human Nature by limiting
the impact of Nature on our actions through the use of a very ancient
technology--culture,
by making certain actions by humans
(Leaders/Leadership) taboo and their violation punishable by death
as the Polynesians practiced.
... massive destruction, pain and eventual oblivion if the status quo
continues.
Concur.
Yet, would take that slightly further re amending formal application of
Law & Sentencing & Punishment.
A number of Navies apply Mandatory MAXIMUM punishments for any offense,
where found guilty, committed outside the parent nations 12 Mile limit, for
good reason re discipline under a Captain's authority ... the ship becomes
the nation and the crew the 'people' thereof and the ultimate survival of
all dependent upon such.
The
greater
the status, rank, education, authority, experience,
length of service of the '
Taboo Breaker,
' (
Leaders/Leadership
),
the less any mitigating circumstances can be considered, and the
proportionally higher the punishment, towards the maximum. Such should be
able to plead no excuse, ignorance or misunderstanding, or lack of
comprehension whatsoever, compared to a 'Constable/Trooper/Sailor/Airman'.
The pyramid of actual accountability & consequent punishment, must be
inverted
, by society.
If one looks carefully throughout humanities recorded history, across
cultures, down thru millennia, sooner or later the stone (
society
)
could be squeezed no further, and there was inevitably blowback and a,
culling.
Yet, since the inter-continent telegraph and the widespread ubiquitous
distribution of the mass 'Press', concurrent with the machinations of the
Bankers & War Profiteers behind the scenes since the late 1800's, IMV, the
ability to manipulate, divide & rule, society has become an artform, ever
accelerating in scope, scale & effectiveness, preventing the necessary
'cull' in the 'International Community' of the 'west'.
IMV, the old grey men may have misunderstood/underestimated the accident
of the 'net, hence desperation of such as ProPornOT etc, which provides
alternate independent voices re communication & re perceived reality ... it
may be enough, a small window of opportunity given the obvious accident of
'Trumps' ascension, to possibly enable a reckoning, there are a few
discordant shrill cries and desperate pleas arising amongst the 'narrative'
from the Globalists/Atlanticists (US/EU/UK/AUS/CAN), to believe & trust TPTB
... but only if there is a true, not faux,
accounting
.
Otherwise, yes, almost inevitably, your last. Faint hope ...
... it returned to the surface at WW2's end with Truman.
... we must again triumph at overcoming our Human Nature by limiting
the impact of Nature on our actions through the use of a very ancient
technology--culture,
by making certain actions by humans
(Leaders/Leadership) taboo and their violation punishable by death
as the Polynesians practiced.
... massive destruction, pain and eventual oblivion if the status quo
continues.
Concur.
Yet, would take that slightly further re amending formal application of
Law & Sentencing & Punishment.
A number of Navies apply Mandatory MAXIMUM punishments for any offense,
where found guilty, committed outside the parent nations 12 Mile limit, for
good reason re discipline under a Captain's authority ... the ship becomes
the nation and the crew the 'people' thereof and the ultimate survival of
all dependent upon such.
The
greater
the status, rank, education, authority, experience,
length of service of the '
Taboo Breaker,
' (
Leaders/Leadership
),
the less any mitigating circumstances can be considered, and the
proportionally higher the punishment, towards the maximum. Such should be
able to plead no excuse, ignorance or misunderstanding, or lack of
comprehension whatsoever, compared to a 'Constable/Trooper/Sailor/Airman'.
The pyramid of actual accountability & consequent punishment, must be
inverted
, by society.
If one looks carefully throughout humanities recorded history, across
cultures, down thru millennia, sooner or later the stone (
society
)
could be squeezed no further, and there was inevitably blowback and a,
culling.
Yet, since the inter-continent telegraph and the widespread ubiquitous
distribution of the mass 'Press', concurrent with the machinations of the
Bankers & War Profiteers behind the scenes since the late 1800's, IMV, the
ability to manipulate, divide & rule, society has become an artform, ever
accelerating in scope, scale & effectiveness, preventing the necessary
'cull' in the 'International Community' of the 'west'.
IMV, the old grey men may have misunderstood/underestimated the accident
of the 'net, hence desperation of such as ProPornOT etc, which provides
alternate independent voices re communication & re perceived reality ... it
may be enough, a small window of opportunity given the obvious accident of
'Trumps' ascension, to possibly enable a reckoning, there are a few
discordant shrill cries and desperate pleas arising amongst the 'narrative'
from the Globalists/Atlanticists (US/EU/UK/AUS/CAN), to believe & trust TPTB
... but only if there is a true, not faux,
accounting
.
Otherwise, yes, almost inevitably, your last. Faint hope ...
"... it may be enough, a small window of opportunity given
the obvious accident of 'Trumps' ascension, to possibly enable a
reckoning..."
Like using The Force to guide a missile into the exhaust shaft of the
Death Star. But that was just one victory amidst many losses prior to the
decapitation of the sole Evil Leader. I believe our task just as daunting
with our enemy best depicted as The Hydra. In both myths, Good triumphed. In
both tales, the multitude of innocents had no idea what was taking place or
why. I don't think we can prevail unless the multitudes know what's
happening and why. All too often they seem to differ little from my
Alzheimer's afflicted mom. But her fate is determined; it's just a matter of
time. Our fate's in the balance, with time being of the essence.
When "the left" endlessly debates which core issues or constituencies must be sacrificed for political
gain, as if economic justice for the poor and the working class could be separated from social
justice for women and people of color and the LGBT community and immigrants and people with disabilities,
it is no longer functioning as the left.
When LGBT claptrap, gluten free food, political correctness and other such niceties beat out programs
to serve the basic needs of the common people nothing "left" is left. The priority on the left must
always be the well-being of the working people. All the other nice-to-have issues follow from and
after that.
Many nominally social-democratic parties in Europe are on the same downward trajectory as the
Democrats in the U.S. for the very same reason. Their real policies are center right. Their marketing
policies hiding the real ones are to care for this or that minority interest or problem the majority
of the people has no reason to care about. Real wages sink but they continue to import cheep labor
(real policy) under the disguise of helping "refugees" (marketing policy) which are simply economic
migrants. (Even parts of the German "Die Linke" party are infected with such nonsense.)
The people with real economic problems, those who have reason to fear the future, have no one
in the traditional political spectrum that even pretends to care about them. Those are the voters
now streaming to the far right. (They will again get screwed. The far right has an economic agenda
that is totally hostile to them. But it at least promises to do something about their fears.) Where
else should they go?
The U.S. Democrats are currently applauding the former United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet
Bharara. The position is a political appointed one. Whoever is appointed serves "at the pleasure
of the President". It is completely normal that people in such positions get replaced when the presidency
changes from one party to the other. The justice department asked Bharara to "voluntary resign".
He rejected that, he was fired.
Oh what a brave man! Applause!
The dude served as United States attorney during the mortgage scams and financial crash. Wall
Street was part of his beat. How many of the involved banksters did he prosecute? Well, exactly zero.
What a hero! How many votes did the Democrats lose because they did not go after the criminals ruling
Wall Street?
Bharara is one reason the Democrats lost the election. Oh yes, he is part of a minority and that
makes him a favorite with the pseudo left Democrats. But he did nothing while millions got robbed.
How can one expect to get votes when one compliments such persons?
But the top reader comments to the New York Times
report on the issue
are full of voices who laud Bharara for his meaning- and useless "resistance"
to Trump.
Those are the "voices of the people" the political functionaries of the Democratic Party want
to read and hear. Likely the only ones. But those are the voices of people (if real at all and not
marketing sock-puppets) who are themselves a tiny, well pampered minority. Not the people one needs
to win elections.
Unless they change their political program (not just its marketing) and unless they go back to
consistently argue for the people in the lower third of the economic scale the Democrats in the U.S.
and the Social-Democrats in Europe will continue to lose voters. The far right will, for lack of
political alternative, be the party that picks up their votes.
I will take your word for it. We don't watch either CNN nor
Fox News at my house. Mostly we watch local (same news and
weather crew here appears on each the WWBT/WRLH local NBC/Fox
affiliates) news with some sampling of MSNBC and Sunday
morning ABC and CBS shows along with the daily half hour of
NBC network following the evening local. Cable news is sort
of an oxymoron given the prevailing editorial slants. The now
retired local TV news anchor Gene Cox laid the groundwork for
the best news team in central VA by setting a high bar at his
station. Gene laid it all out southern fried with satirical
humor and honesty unusual in TV news.
Maybe a post mortem would simply reveal that Democrats should
have had a coherent economic message and pursued a strategy
of standing up for working America for the past 8 years. For
example, having Pelosi demand votes on increasing the minimum
wage as often as Ryan demanded votes on killing Obamacare...
Any honest post mortem would have revealed that standing with
billionaires and the Wall Street banking cartel--and not
prosecuting a single Wall Street banker--is not a winning
strategy...
That Pelosi did not resign immediately following the 2016
election or, not having offered her resignation, that
Congressional Democrats did not demand it is an indication
that the party still has deep-rooted problems. (Pelosi may
not be the cause of those problems but given how badly
they've fared since 2010 she's clearly not the solution. She
has no business remaining as minority leader.) I'm fine with
Perez as DNC chair but Ellison should be minority leader.
David Frum, the excommunicated conservative wrote in 2010:
""The real leaders are on TV and radio"
Bernie Sanders is
the Dems TV leader.
Simple ideas repeated endlessly, easy to memorize slogans
Knows how to manipulate emotions
In the Twitter Age, this is how all successful politicians
must message
Simple
slogans repeated often isn't a new approach to politics. It
goes back well over a century. "Keep it simple and take
credit." Liberals haven't been very good at that in recent
decades. (In contrast, FDR was.) Most people aren't wonks nor
do they desire to become one. Messaging which presumes that
they are or do is not a recipe for success.
Sanders has not "destroyed" the old Democratic Party.
He is a better TV messenger and ambassador to the public
He plays the Paternalistic Grandfather who does not trigger
culture shock among white voters on TV
More like the cranky uncle, whom you had better listen to.
Bernie Sanders is currently the most popular politician in
the United States, by a long shot:
Sanders won New Hampshire, Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma,
Vermont, Kansas, Nebraska, Maine, Michigan, Idaho, Utah,
Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Rhode Island,
Indiana, West Virginia, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota.
*and
he was close in many states like losing Massachusetts 606k to
589k. And the entire second half of the primary the DNC was
repeating how Hillary had won mathematically over and over
even though people hadn't voted.
"Sanders has not "destroyed" the old Democratic Party"
No
he is not stupid. What he has done is moving the Overton
window - something that was long overdue. There is definitely
an opening to make ObamaCare the first step towards MediCare
for all (as it always was intended by by all but the
bluedogs). But as good as Sanders is at message and getting
the crowds going, he is going to need help with the
politicking to actually get it done.
I will take your word for it. We don't watch either CNN nor
Fox News at my house. Mostly we watch local (same news and
weather crew here appears on each the WWBT/WRLH local NBC/Fox
affiliates) news with some sampling of MSNBC and Sunday
morning ABC and CBS shows along with the daily half hour of
NBC network following the evening local. Cable news is sort
of an oxymoron given the prevailing editorial slants. The now
retired local TV news anchor Gene Cox laid the groundwork for
the best news team in central VA by setting a high bar at his
station. Gene laid it all out southern fried with satirical
humor and honesty unusual in TV news.
Apparently we have two jokes alternating to lead America: the
Republican jokes vs. the Democratic jokes.
Democrats are a
joke for rallying their elite around a candidate who had huge
negatives and for trying to block more popular candidates
from running.
Democrats are a joke for having to rig the primaries in
favor of a candidate who had already lost in 2008.
Democrats are a joke for refusing to sack a sclerotic,
corrupt, and inept congressional leadership that had lost
three straight elections.
Democrats are a joke for refusing to seize the issue that
had propelled two Democrats into office--it's the economy,
stupid!
Democrats are a joke for pigheadedly refusing to do a post
mortem of their failure and insisting on blaming Putin
instead!
But Democrats are right to expect that, when two jokes vie
for power, their turn as joke in power will eventually come.
JohnH -> mulp...
, -1
Maybe a post mortem would simply reveal that Democrats should
have had a coherent economic message and pursued a strategy
of standing up for working America for the past 8 years. For
example, having Pelosi demand votes on increasing the minimum
wage as often as Ryan demanded votes on killing Obamacare...
Any honest post mortem would have revealed that standing with
billionaires and the Wall Street banking cartel--and not
prosecuting a single Wall Street banker--is not a winning
strategy...
"... Why should anyone in the working or middle class believe that voting for a Democrat is in their interest given the way in which the Democratic Party has been co-opted by the neoliberal ideology that brought us the draconian social welfare and irresponsible financial deregulatory legislation of the 1990s that led to the Crash of 2008? ..."
"... Why would they rally around a candidate who had lost the 2008 primary and who could barely win in 2016 without the party's rigging the primaries in her favor? ..."
"... Why would their candidate refuse to offer any kind of coherent message around the issue that propelled her two Democratic predecessors into office--it's the economy, stupid? ..."
"... As Blackford says, "the main story is the incompetence of the Democrats." The only question is whether their incompetence is willful or not. ..."
"... Wall Street supplied the money. ..."
"... LOL! A centrist party that has been triangulating -- chasing oligarch tail -- for decades. The 2018 election is going to provide me some excellent schadenfreude. ..."
False symmetry may be a part
of the story, but the main story is the incompetence of the Democrats. There was a 20
percentage point shift away from Democrats in Michigan from 2008 to 2016, a14 pp shift in
Pennsylvania, a 24 pp shift in Iowa, a 15 pp shift in Ohio, and a 24 pp shift in Indiana.
Does anyone really believe these kinds of shifts from Obama to Trump and third party
candidates can be explained in terms of racism and bigotry or voters failing to understand
that they were voting against their own interests because of Republican flimflam?
The real question is: Why should those who shifted from Obama to Trump and third parties
have believed it would have been in their interest to vote for Hillary given her ties to
Wall Street and the way in which the Democrats abandoned home owners and bailed out Wall
Street during the crisis?
Why should anyone in the working or middle class believe that voting for a Democrat is
in their interest given the way in which the Democratic Party has been co-opted by the
neoliberal ideology that brought us the draconian social welfare and irresponsible
financial deregulatory legislation of the 1990s that led to the Crash of 2008?
Re: "Do you think Clinton is more Wall Street than Trump?"
It's not about what I think. It's about what the voters
think. For what it's worth, I think it is quite clear that
those voters who voted for Obama in 2008 and switched to
Trump in 2016 are grasping at straws, and they did that
because they saw no hope in voting for the Democratic Party.
As for: "Clinton staved off a crash in the 90s by high
taxes." I think you are a bit confused on this. Not only was
the deregulation signed into law by Clinton responsible for
the Crash in 2008, his appointment of Greenspan facilitated
the dotcom and telecom bubbles of the 1990s, the bursting of
which led to the 2001 recession:
http://www.rweconomics.com/htm/Ch_1.htm
The real question is why do "voters want the free lunch of
tax cuts"? The reason is that Democratic Party, starting with
the Clintons, bought into the neoliberal ideology championed
by the Democratic Leadership Council and have refused to
challenge the Republican's free lunch arguments and tell the
voters that government programs are essential to our
economic, social, and political wellbeing and that they have
to be payid for. I believe that I have explained this quit
well in:
http://www.rweconomics.com/Deficit.htm
You really have to wonder if Democrats are trying to lose.
Why else would the party's elite rally around a candidate
who had huge negatives and try to block anyone else from
running?
Why would they rally around a candidate who had lost the
2008 primary and who could barely win in 2016 without the
party's rigging the primaries in her favor?
Why would they refuse to sack an inept congressional
leadership that had lost three straight elections?
Why would their candidate refuse to offer any kind of
coherent message around the issue that propelled her two
Democratic predecessors into office--it's the economy,
stupid?
Why would the pigheadedly refuse to do a post mortem of
their failure and insist on blaming Putin instead?
As Blackford says, "the main story is the incompetence of
the Democrats." The only question is whether their
incompetence is willful or not.
"Other than a insignificant number of insane people, no one
voted fro Obama and then voted for Trump"
LOL!!! According
to EMichael, lots of Rust Belt voters must be
insane...exactly the kind of disdain and disparagement that
made them switch their vote in the first place.
EMichael, ever the partisan hack, still can't come to
terms with the fact that Obama and Hillary ignored the
concerns working class voters...the real reason they voted
for Trump.
Could EMichael's delusional denial be characterized as
insanity? Or just a partisan hack ineptly doing his job?
The reason I post all this BS is that as far as I can see,
the only hope for the country is for the DAs in the
Democratic Party to wake up and face reality.
I fear that if Democrats' do not wake up and they continue
down the same neoliberal path they have been traveling since
Carter--a path that led directly to Trump--even if we survive
Trump and Democrats do regain power again, the demigod that
follows the disaster that results is going to be even worse
than Trump:
http://www.rweconomics.com/LTLGAD.htm
"There is no fun in being in the middle, yet that is where
the ability to wield power and effectively governing resides:
in the middle. It's not pretty. it's not graceful. America
exists as it does today only because we have been able to
compromise for a long time. It's that ability to comprise
that has been lost in great volume."
You seem to be missing
my point: TRUMP IS PRESIDENT!
The things we are taking from the right DON'T WORK!
LOL!
A centrist party that has been triangulating -- chasing
oligarch tail -- for decades.
The 2018 election is going to
provide me some excellent schadenfreude.
Not exactly: "even if we survive Trump and Democrats do
regain power again, the demigod that follows the disaster
that results is going to be even worse than Trump."
If a
Democrat follows Trump, his/her job will be to normalize and
put a bipartisan imprimatur on what Trump did. That was
Obama's role on many issues, including torture, Guantanamo,
and NSA spying.
Getting along is exactly what Bill Clinton did and it led
to 2008. It's also what Pelosi and Obama did and it led to
the loss of congress. It's also what more-of-the-same Hillary
promised to do, and it led to Trump.(
http://www.rweconomics.com/blame.htm
)
Fat chance! "the only hope to avoid another disaster in the
future is for the Democrats to move the center back to a
point where it is possible avoid an even worse disaster."
The DNC is adamant about NOT learning any lessons from their
election debacle. But they are counting on Republicans to
screw up so that they can have their turn in power.
"... "There's been a real evolution," Philippe Renault-Guillemet, the retired head of a small manufacturing company, said as he handed out National Front leaflets in the market on a recent day. "A few years ago, they would insult us. It's changed ..."
"... With a month to go, the signs are mixed. Many voters, particularly affluent ones, at markets here and farther up the coast betray a traditional distaste for the far-right party. Yet others once repelled by a party with a heritage rooted in France's darkest political traditions - anti-Semitism, xenophobia and a penchant for the fist - are considering it. ..."
"... French politics are particularly volatile this election season. Traditional power centers - the governing Socialists and the center-right Republicans - are in turmoil. Ms. Le Pen's chief rival, Emmanuel Macron, is a youthful and untested politician running at the head of a new party. ..."
"... Those uncertainties - and a nagging sense that mainstream parties have failed to offer solutions to France's economic anemia - have left the National Front better positioned than at any time in its 45-year history. ..."
"... Frédéric Boccaletti, the party's leader in the Var, knows exactly what needs to be done. Last week, he and his fellow National Front activists gathered for an evening planning session in La Seyne-Sur-Mer, a working-class port town devastated by the closing of centuries-old naval shipyards nearly 20 years ago. Mr. Boccaletti, who is running for Parliament, keeps his headquarters here. ..."
"... It is not unlike the strategy that President Trump applied in the United States by campaigning in blue-collar, Democratic strongholds in rust-belt Ohio. No one thought he stood a chance there. Yet he won. ..."
"... "Now, we've got doctors, lawyers, the liberal professions with us," Mr. Boccaletti said. "Since the election of Marine" to the party's presidency in 2011, "it's all changed. ..."
"... The backlash against neoliberal globalization creates very strange alliances indeed. That was already visible during the last Presidential elections. When a considerable part of lower middle class professionals (including women) voted against Hillary. ..."
"... As Fred noted today (Why did so many white women vote for Donald Trump http://for.tn/2f51y7s ) there were many Trump supporters among white women with the college degree, for which Democrats identity politics prescribed voting for Hillary. ..."
"... I think this tendency might only became stronger in the next elections: neoliberal globalization is now viewed as something detrimental to the country future and current economic prosperity by many, usually not allied, segments of population. ..."
As French Election Nears, Le Pen Targets Voters Her Party Once Repelled
By ADAM NOSSITER
MARCH 19, 2017
SANARY-SUR-MER, France - The National Front's leafleteers are no longer spat upon. Its local
candidate's headquarters sit defiantly in a fraying Muslim neighborhood. And last week, Marine
Le Pen, the party's leader, packed thousands into a steamy meeting hall nearby for a pugnacious
speech mocking "the system" and vowing victory in this spring's French presidential election.
"There's been a real evolution," Philippe Renault-Guillemet, the retired head of a small
manufacturing company, said as he handed out National Front leaflets in the market on a recent
day. "A few years ago, they would insult us. It's changed."
It has long been accepted wisdom that Ms. Le Pen and her far-right party can make it through
the first round of the presidential voting on April 23, when she and four other candidates will
be on the ballot, but that she will never capture the majority needed to win in a runoff in May.
But a visit to this southeastern National Front stronghold suggests that Ms. Le Pen may be
succeeding in broadening her appeal to the point where a victory is more plausible, even if the
odds are still stacked against her.
With a month to go, the signs are mixed. Many voters, particularly affluent ones, at markets
here and farther up the coast betray a traditional distaste for the far-right party. Yet others
once repelled by a party with a heritage rooted in France's darkest political traditions - anti-Semitism,
xenophobia and a penchant for the fist - are considering it.
"I've said several times I would do it, but I've never had the courage," Christian Pignol,
a vendor of plants and vegetables at the Bandol market, said about voting for the National Front.
"This time may be the good one."
"It's the fear of the unknown," he continued, as several fellow vendors nodded. "People would
like to try it, but they are afraid. But maybe it's the solution. We've tried everything for 30,
40 years. We'd like to try it, but we're also afraid."
French politics are particularly volatile this election season. Traditional power centers
- the governing Socialists and the center-right Republicans - are in turmoil. Ms. Le Pen's chief
rival, Emmanuel Macron, is a youthful and untested politician running at the head of a new party.
Those uncertainties - and a nagging sense that mainstream parties have failed to offer
solutions to France's economic anemia - have left the National Front better positioned than at
any time in its 45-year history.
But if it is to win nationally, the party must do much better than even the 49 percent support
it won in this conservative Var department, home to three National Front mayors, in elections
in 2015. More critically, it must turn once-hostile areas of the country in Ms. Le Pen's favor
and attract new kinds of voters - professionals and the upper and middle classes. Political analysts
are skeptical.
Frédéric Boccaletti, the party's leader in the Var, knows exactly what needs to be done.
Last week, he and his fellow National Front activists gathered for an evening planning session
in La Seyne-Sur-Mer, a working-class port town devastated by the closing of centuries-old naval
shipyards nearly 20 years ago. Mr. Boccaletti, who is running for Parliament, keeps his headquarters
here.
"I'm telling you, you've got to go to the difficult neighborhoods - it's not what you think,"
Mr. Boccaletti told them, laughing slyly. "Our work has got to be in the areas that have resisted
us most" - meaning the coast's more affluent areas.
It is not unlike the strategy that President Trump applied in the United States by campaigning
in blue-collar, Democratic strongholds in rust-belt Ohio. No one thought he stood a chance there.
Yet he won.
"Now, we've got doctors, lawyers, the liberal professions with us," Mr. Boccaletti said.
"Since the election of Marine" to the party's presidency in 2011, "it's all changed."
The backlash against neoliberal globalization creates very strange alliances indeed. That
was already visible during the last Presidential elections. When a considerable part of lower
middle class professionals (including women) voted against Hillary.
As Fred noted today (Why did so many white women vote for Donald Trump
http://for.tn/2f51y7s ) there were many Trump
supporters among white women with the college degree, for which Democrats identity politics prescribed
voting for Hillary.
I think this tendency might only became stronger in the next elections: neoliberal globalization
is now viewed as something detrimental to the country future and current economic prosperity by
many, usually not allied, segments of population.
"... [Arzheimer] found that the stronger the welfare state, the bigger the gains for far-right parties among the working class. The top third of countries - that is, the ones with the largest welfare states - saw roughly four times the rate of far-right support among the working class as the countries in the bottom third did. ..."
"... Welfare state policies are the link between economic crisis, unemployment and far right party support. Welfare cuts have increased the insecurity of the European middle classes that are being hit by the economic crisis. This matters because of the implications it has for policy. By reversing austerity, which results in welfare cuts and increases insecurity, we can limit the appeal of right-wing extremism. ..."
"... The typical model for how social democratic politics would defeat far-right reactionaries rests on the belief that "universal benefits enable a solidarity mindset" while "means-tested [benefits] enable resentment," as Ryan Cooper of The Week has argued. So one would expect that citizens living under social democratic welfare regimes would be more sympathetic to immigrants than those living under Christian democratic or liberal welfare regimes would. ..."
"... This suggests that less diverging lifestyles between the rich and the poor lead to more understanding towards (potential) immigrant welfare recipients among majority populations. Put differently, in more unequal societies the rich are more likely to consider minority groups deviant, and therefore less entitled to welfare. [Emphasis added] ..."
"... A 2014 study by Antonio Martín-Artiles, a professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Guglielmo Meardi, a professor at the University of Warwick, meanwhile, found that "social protection expenditure and unemployment benefits are correlated with a reduction in social inequality and the risk of poverty, ultimately contributing to the formation of attitudes favourable to immigration." ..."
Why Zack Beauchamp's piece arguing otherwise is wrong
Zack Beauchamp of Vox has written an article entitled "No
easy answers: why left-wing economics is not the answer to
right-wing populism." In this piece, he argues that "tacking
to the left on economics won't give Democrats a silver bullet
to use against the racial resentment powering Trump's success
[and] could actually wind up [making] Trump [stronger.]" Matt
Bruenig has written about the piece's odd moral implications;
I want to discuss some of the evidence Beauchamp provides,
and why I don't find it all that convincing.
There's plenty of evidence suggesting strong welfare
states can blunt the far-right
"A legion of commentators and politicians," Beauchamp
writes, "have argued that center-left parties must shift
further to the left in order to fight off right-wing
populists such as [Donald] Trump and France's Marine Le Pen."
Supporters of these leaders[, these commentators and
politicians] argue, are motivated by a sense of economic
insecurity in an increasingly unequal world; promise them a
stronger welfare state, one better equipped to address their
fundamental needs, and they will flock to the left.
Against these claims, Beauchamp contends that:
[A] lot of data suggests that countries with more robust
welfare states tend to have stronger far-right movements.
Providing white voters with higher levels of economic
security does not tamp down their anxieties about race and
immigration - or, more precisely, it doesn't do it powerfully
enough. For some, it frees them to worry less about what it's
in their wallet and more about who may be moving into their
neighborhoods or competing with them for jobs.
His main evidence for this claim consists of a study from
Kai Arzheimer, a professor at the University of Mainz,
looking at "data on working-class voters, the traditional
base of social democratic parties, between 1980 and 2002."
[Arzheimer] found that the stronger the welfare state, the
bigger the gains for far-right parties among the working
class. The top third of countries - that is, the ones with
the largest welfare states - saw roughly four times the rate
of far-right support among the working class as the countries
in the bottom third did.
There are plenty that conclude just the opposite. A 2003
study by Duane Swank of Marquette University and Hans-Georg
Betz of the University of Zurich, for example, based on an
"empirical analysis of national elections in 16 European
[countries] from 1981 to 1998" found that "the universal
welfare state directly depresse[d] the vote for radical
right-wing populist parties." Furthermore, a 2015 study by
Daphne Halikiopoulou and Tim Vlandas of the University of
Reading looking at the link between unemployment benefit
levels and far-right party success in the 2014 European
parliament elections found that across countries
"[u]nemployment benefits have a strongly negative and
statistically significant association with far-right
support." Based off of this, they write in The Huffington
Post that:
Welfare state policies are the link between economic
crisis, unemployment and far right party support. Welfare
cuts have increased the insecurity of the European middle
classes that are being hit by the economic crisis. This
matters because of the implications it has for policy. By
reversing austerity, which results in welfare cuts and
increases insecurity, we can limit the appeal of right-wing
extremism.
Anti-immigrant sentiment and the welfare state
Anti-immigrant sentiment (which Beauchamp argues is the
true driver of far-right support), has also been shown to be
ameliorated by stronger welfare states.
In his 1990 book The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism,
Gøsta Esping-Andersen, a professor at Pompeu Fabra University
in Spain, divided the welfare states of developed countries
into three types: liberal, Christian democratic, and social
democratic. The liberal category ("liberal" being used in the
classical, European sense) includes the US, as well as
Britain and Australia (among others)- countries that have
relatively small and highly targeted welfare states. The
Christian democratic category, on the other hand, is typified
by the welfare regimes that exist in Germany and Austria.
Falling in the middle between liberal type welfare states and
social democratic type welfare states in generosity, the
Christian democratic welfare state tends to make less use of
means-tested benefits than the liberal welfare state does,
but places more emphasis on preserving traditional family
structures through benefit design than the social democratic
welfare state tends to. Lastly, there is the social
democratic category, typified by the welfare regimes that
exist in the Nordic countries, which is the most generous and
universalistic of the three welfare regimes.
The typical model for how social democratic politics would
defeat far-right reactionaries rests on the belief that
"universal benefits enable a solidarity mindset" while
"means-tested [benefits] enable resentment," as Ryan Cooper
of The Week has argued. So one would expect that citizens
living under social democratic welfare regimes would be more
sympathetic to immigrants than those living under Christian
democratic or liberal welfare regimes would.
And indeed, a study by Jeroen Van Der Waal and Willem De
Koster of Erasmus University Rotterdam and Wim Van Oorschot
of KU Leuven finds that the "native[-born] populations of
liberal and [Christian democratic] welfare regimes are more
reluctant to entitle immigrants to welfare than those living
under social-democratic regimes." They conclude that the
reason why "the native populations in social-democratic
welfare regimes consider immigrants most entitled to welfare
[is] because of the low levels of income inequality" as
"higher levels of income inequality go hand in hand with
higher levels of welfare chauvinism." They then continue:
This suggests that less diverging lifestyles between the
rich and the poor lead to more understanding towards
(potential) immigrant welfare recipients among majority
populations. Put differently, in more unequal societies the
rich are more likely to consider minority groups deviant, and
therefore less entitled to welfare. [Emphasis added]
This point is especially significant given Beauchamp's
accurate observation that "[r]ight-wing populists typically
have gotten their best results in wealthier areas of
countries - that is, with voters who experience the least
amounts of economic insecurity."
"Our results" Van Der Waal, De Koster, and Van Oorschot
write, "indicate that strengthening policies and institutions
aimed at reducing income inequality can be utilized" to "help
in fighting" against "exclusionary sentiments".
A 2014 study by Antonio Martín-Artiles, a professor at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Guglielmo Meardi, a
professor at the University of Warwick, meanwhile, found that
"social protection expenditure and unemployment benefits are
correlated with a reduction in social inequality and the risk
of poverty, ultimately contributing to the formation of
attitudes favourable to immigration."
Additionally, Markus Crepaz and Regan Damron of the
University of Georgia found in 2012 that "the more
comprehensive the welfare state is, the more tolerant
native[-born citizens] are of immigrants," while a 2009 study
by Xavier Escandell of the University of Iowa and Alin
Ceobanu of the University of Florida, looking at
"Anti-immigrant Sentiment and Welfare State Regimes in
Europe" found "mean levels of anti-immigrant sentiment" to be
"lower in those countries with high levels of public spending
in social protection programs." They therefore conclude that
"investments in social protection systems seem to have a
strong payoff when it comes to reducing prejudice towards
immigrants."
"... Clinton's time is passed. Her view of "common ground" is still based in the 20th century and the Third Way neoliberal politics she and her husband helped create. That era is over. ..."
"... Why won't she just go off and become a professor somewhere, like Dukakis did? ..."
"... Hillary like bill never feels guilt. Only ambition. They are monsters ..."
Hillary Clinton Says She's
'Ready to Come Out of the Woods' https://nyti.ms/2nCIzGS
NYT - AP - March 17
SCRANTON, Pa. - Hillary Clinton said Friday she's "ready to come out of the woods" and help
Americans find common ground.
Clinton's gradual return to the public spotlight following her presidential election loss continued
with a St. Patrick's Day speech in her late father's Pennsylvania hometown of Scranton.
"I'm like a lot of my friends right now, I have a hard time watching the news," Clinton told
an Irish women's group.
But she urged a divided country to work together to solve problems, recalling how, as first
lady, she met with female leaders working to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
"I do not believe that we can let political divides harden into personal divides. And we can't
just ignore, or turn a cold shoulder to someone because they disagree with us politically," she
said.
Friday night's speech was one of several she is to deliver in the coming months, including
a May 26 commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The Democrat
also is working on a book of personal essays that will include some reflections on her loss to
Donald Trump.
Clinton, who was spotted taking a walk in the woods around her hometown of Chappaqua, New York,
two days after losing the election to Donald Trump, quipped she had wanted to stay in the woods,
"but you can only do so much of that."
She told the Society of Irish Women that it'll be up to citizens, not a deeply polarized Washington,
to bridge the political divide.
"I am ready to come out of the woods and to help shine a light on what is already happening
around kitchen tables, at dinners like this, to help draw strength that will enable everybody
to keep going," said Clinton. ...
(As you may recall HRC won the popular vote,
and also 472 counties which generate
64% of the US GDP.)
... Our observation: The less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed
a massive 64 percent of America's economic activity as measured by total output in 2015. By contrast,
the more-than-2,600 counties that Donald Trump won generated just 36 percent of the country's
output-just a little more than one-third of the nation's economic activity. ...
Clinton's time is passed. Her view of "common ground" is still based in the 20th century and
the Third Way neoliberal politics she and her husband helped create. That era is over.
Why won't she just go off and become a professor somewhere, like Dukakis did?
The Great Recession clearly gave rise to right-wing
populism
by Ryan Cooper
at's to blame for the resurgence of racist right-wing
populism? Since the election of President Trump, the American
left has been consumed with this question, with leftists
blaming the failures of neoliberal economic policy and
liberals leaning more on cultural explanations.
Over at Vox, Zack Beauchamp has an entry in this debate on
the latter side. He argues that left-wing economic policy
actually causes people to be more racist, largely because
welfare states tend to disproportionately benefit poor
minorities and immigrants, and hence raise resentment among
whites. But his account of economics is jarringly incomplete
- in particular, skipping almost entirely over the financial
collapse of 2008, the ensuing plague of austerity, and the
ongoing eurozone currency crisis. And this provides by far
the strongest evidence for the leftist case.
Let's review. In 2008, the whole world was convulsed by a
financial crisis, leading to mass unemployment in the United
States and Europe. The initial response was fairly similar in
both places, featuring immense public bailouts of ailing
banks. But after that, there was a sharp divergence: America
generally tried large fiscal and monetary stimulus, while
Europe did the opposite with spending cuts and tax increases
- that is, austerity - and tight money.
Though the U.S. stimulus was inadequate, the worst was
avoided, and economic conditions improved slowly, surpassing
its pre-crisis GDP by 2011. In Europe - and especially within
the eurozone, where the common currency became a gold
standard-esque economic straitjacket - the result was
disaster. So much austerity was forced on debtor nations that
they fell into full-blown depression. Greece's economy is
worse than that of America in the 1930s - and the eurozone as
a whole only matched its pre-crisis GDP in April of last
year.
Mass unemployment is electoral poison, and about every
party that happened to be holding power during the worst of
it - generally either center-right (Fianna Fáil in Ireland,
People of Freedom in Italy) or center-left (the Socialist
Party in France, the Democrats in America) - suffered serious
setbacks in subsequent elections. Radical parties on both the
left and right gained as establishment parties were badly
discredited. New fascist parties (Golden Dawn in Greece)
sprung to prominence, and older fascist-lite ones (National
Front in France) gained strength.
But Beauchamp barely even references this history,
restricting his argument almost entirely to welfare policy.
He assembles reasonably convincing evidence and expert
testimony to the effect that welfare states increase racist
resentment in both the United States and Europe. But he does
not mention mass unemployment, austerity, or the eurozone.
These are yawning absences in an article purporting to deal
with the social effects of economic policy.
Welfare is one chapter of leftist economic policy, but the
first and most important one is full employment. That is the
major route by which leftist economic policy can deflate
right-wing nativism. Center-left parties often claim to
support full employment, but they have manifestly failed to
do so over the last eight years, and arguably long before
that. (President Obama was plumping for austerity in February
of 2010, with unemployment at 9.8 percent.) Fascists organize
best in the chaos and misery of depression, as people lose
faith in traditional solutions and root around for
scapegoats. Is it really a coincidence that the Nazi
electoral high tide came at a time of nearly 30 percent
unemployment?
Now, politics is a chaotic process. It takes a lot of
ideological spadework to convince people that austerity is
the problem, and a lot of time and effort to build a
political coalition dedicated to an anti-austerity platform.
And sometimes it doesn't work well, as Beauchamp's detailed
discussion of the U.K. Labour Party's difficulties since
losing the elections of 2015 (on a pro-austerity platform,
mind you). But savage infighting within the party is likely
just as much to blame for Labour's collapse as leader Jeremy
Corbyn's left-wing views. Sometimes political coalitions
fracture over personality and internal struggles for
dominance.
What's more, Beauchamp doesn't mention other cases where
organizing has been more successful, such as Greece or Spain,
where parties that didn't even exist before the crisis have
leaped to the front rank of politics. In Greece, the
center-left PASOK has all but ceased to exist, while the
left-wing Syriza actually won in 2015 very obviously because
of their anti-austerity platform (the fact that they later
were prevented from implementing it at economic knifepoint by
eurozone elites notwithstanding). Now, the fascists are the
only credible anti-austerity party left in that beleaguered
country.
It's perfectly plausible - obvious even - to say that
immigration or more welfare can lead to a racist backlash,
especially if you means-test benefit policy to restrict it to
disproportionately minority poor people only, as American
liberals tend to do. But it simply beggars belief to argue
that running on full employment and an end to austerity in a
time of depression is a guaranteed loser.
"... British and Dutch intelligence were apparently discreetly queried regarding possible derogatory intelligence on the Trump campaign's links to Russia and they responded by providing information detailing meetings in Europe. ..."
The campaign to link Trump to Russia also increased in
intensity, including statements by multiple former and
current intelligence agency heads regarding the reality of
the Russian threat and the danger of electing a president who
would ignore that reality. It culminated in ex-CIA Acting
Director Michael Morell's claim that Trump was "an unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation."
British and Dutch intelligence were apparently discreetly
queried regarding possible derogatory intelligence on the
Trump campaign's links to Russia and they responded by
providing information detailing meetings in Europe.
Hundreds of self-described GOP foreign policy "experts"
signed letters stating that they opposed Trump's candidacy
and the mainstream media was unrelentingly hostile.
Leading Republicans refused to endorse Trump and some,
like Senators John McCain, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham,
cited his connections to Russia.
"Certainly there are some people in the Democratic Party
who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go
down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class
seats." Bernie Sanders to NY Times Magazine's Charlie Homans
The New Party of No
How a president and a protest movement transformed the
Democrats.
By CHARLES HOMANS
I asked [Bernie Sanders] if he thought the Democratic
Party knew what it stood for. "You're asking a good question,
and I can't give you a definitive answer," he said.
"Certainly there are some people in the Democratic Party who
want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down
with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats." ...
Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the
Democratic party
A new poll found he is the most popular politician in
America. But instead of embracing his message, establishment
Democrats continue to resist him
By Trevor Timm - Guardian
If you look at the numbers, Bernie Sanders is the most
popular politician in America – and it's not even close. Yet
bizarrely, the Democratic party – out of power across the
country and increasingly irrelevant – still refuses to
embrace him and his message. It's increasingly clear they do
so at their own peril.
A new Fox News poll out this week shows Sanders has a +28
net favorability rating among the US population, dwarfing all
other elected politicians on both ends of the political
spectrum. And he's even more popular among the vaunted
"independents", where he is at a mind boggling +41.
This poll is not just an aberration. Look at this
Huffington Post chart that has tracked Sanders' favorability
rating over time, ever since he gained national prominence in
2015 when he started running for the Democratic nomination.
The more people got to know him, they more they liked him –
the exact opposite of what his critics said would happen when
he was running against Clinton.
One would think with numbers like that, Democratic
politicians would be falling all over themselves to be
associated with Sanders, especially considering the party as
a whole is more unpopular than the Republicans and even
Donald Trump right now. Yet instead of embracing his message,
the establishment wing of the party continues to resist him
at almost every turn, and they seem insistent that they don't
have to change their ways to gain back the support of huge
swaths of the country.
Politico ran a story just this week featuring Democratic
officials fretting over the fact that Sanders supporters may
upend their efforts to retake governorships in southern
states by insisting those candidates adopt Sanders' populist
policies – seemingly oblivious to the fact that Sanders plays
well in some of those states too.
Sanders' effect on Trump voters can be seen in a gripping
town hall this week that MSNBC's Chris Hayes hosted with him
in West Virginia – often referred to as "Trump country" –
where the crowd ended up giving him a rousing ovation after
he talked about healthcare being a right of all people and
that we are the only industrialized nation in the world who
doesn't provide healthcare as a right to all its people.
But hand wringing by Democratic officials over 2018
candidates is really just the latest example: the
establishment wing of the party aggressively ran another
opponent against Keith Ellison, Sanders' choice to run the
Democratic National Committee, seemingly with the primary
motivation to keep the party away from Sanders' influence.
They've steadfastly refused to take giant corporations
head on in the public sphere and wouldn't even return to an
Obama-era rule that banned lobbyist money from funding the
DNC that was rescinded last year. And despite the broad
popularity of the government guaranteeing health care for
everyone, they still have not made any push for a
Medicare-for-all plan that Sanders has long called for as a
rebuttal to Republicans' attempt to dismantle Obamacare.
Democrats seem more than happy to put all the blame of the
2016 election on a combination of Russia and James Comey and
have engaged in almost zero introspection on the root causes
of the larger reality: they are also out of power in not the
presidency, but both also houses of Congress, governorships
and state houses across the country as well.
As Politico reported on the Democrats' post-Trump strategy
in February, "Democratic aides say they will eventually shift
to a positive economic message that Rust Belt Democrats can
run on". However: "For now, aides say, the focus is on
slaying the giant and proving to the voters who sent Trump
into the White House why his policies will fail."
In other words, they're doubling down on the exact same
failing strategy that Clinton used in the final months of the
campaign. Sanders himself put it this wayin his usual blunt
style in an interview with New York magazine this week – when
asked about whether the Democrats can adapt to the political
reality, he said: "There are some people in the Democratic
Party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather
go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class
seats." ...
Krugman and Vox have been attacking Sanders regularly on
behalf of the establishment Democrats.
I thought it was
interesting that PGL and Sanjait said they don't agree with
Krugman's latest blog post, but they refuse to discuss
exactly why Krugman is wrong.
"This ties in with an important recent piece by Zack
Beauchamp on the striking degree to which left-wing economics
fails, in practice, to counter right-wing populism;
basically, Sandersism has failed everywhere it has been
tried. Why?
The answer, presumably, is that what we call populism is
really in large degree white identity politics, which can't
be addressed by promising universal benefits. Among other
things, these "populist" voters now live in a media bubble,
getting their news from sources that play to their
identity-politics desires, which means that even if you offer
them a better deal, they won't hear about it or believe it if
told. For sure many if not most of those who gained health
coverage thanks to Obamacare have no idea that's what
happened.
That said, taking the benefits away would probably get
their attention, and maybe even open their eyes to the extent
to which they are suffering to provide tax cuts to the rich.
In Europe, right-wing parties probably don't face the same
dilemma; they're preaching herrenvolk social democracy, a
welfare state but only for people who look like you. In
America, however, Trump_vs_deep_state is faux populism that appeals to
white identity but actually serves plutocrats. That
fundamental contradiction is now out in the open."
"Certainly there are some people in the Democratic Party who
want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down
with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats."
CIA and militarism loving Democrats are what is called Vichy left...
Notable quotes:
"... "Apparently, most Democrats are now defending the CIA [and bashing the US constitution] and trashing WikiLeaks (who have never had to retract a single story in all their years). The brainwashing is complete. Take a valium and watch your Rachel Maddow [read your poor pk]. I can no longer help you. You have become The Borg." ..."
"... There is a large amount of ground between being a Victoria Nuland neocon hawk going around picking unnecessary fights with Russia and engaging in aggression overt or covert against her or her allies ..."
"... I happen to support reasonable engagement with Russia on matters of mutual interest, and I think there are many of those. I do not support cheerleading when Russia commits aggression against neighbors, which it has, and then lies about it. There is a middle ground, but you and ilsm both seem to have let your brains fall out of your heads onto the sidewalk and then stepped on them hard regarding all this. ..."
"... US Deep state analogy to Stalin's machinations against his rivals seems reasonable. ..."
"Apparently, most Democrats are now defending the CIA [and bashing the US constitution] and
trashing WikiLeaks (who have never had to retract a single story in all their years). The brainwashing
is complete. Take a valium and watch your Rachel Maddow [read your poor pk]. I can no longer help
you. You have become The Borg."
I am going to make one more point, a substantive one. There is a large amount of ground between
being a Victoria Nuland neocon hawk going around picking unnecessary fights with Russia and engaging
in aggression overt or covert against her or her allies and simply rolling over to be a patsy
for the worst fort of RT propaganda and saying that there is no problem whatsoever with having
a president who is in deep financial hock to a murderous lying Russian president and who has made
inane and incomprehensible remarks about this, along with having staff and aides who lie to the
public about their dealings with people from Russia.
I happen to support reasonable engagement with Russia on matters of mutual interest, and I
think there are many of those. I do not support cheerleading when Russia commits aggression against
neighbors, which it has, and then lies about it. There is a middle ground, but you and ilsm both
seem to have let your brains fall out of your heads onto the sidewalk and then stepped on them
hard regarding all this.
If you find this offensive or intimidating, anne, sorry, but I am not going to apologize. Frankly,
I think you should apologize for the stupid and offensive things you have said on this subject,
about which I do not think you have the intimately personal knowledge that I have.
Reply Wednesday, March 08, 2017 at 12:36 AM
My dear interlocutor
As a once overt and future sleeper cell Stalinist
I'm perplexed by your artful use of Stalinist
In my experience that label was restricted to pinko circles notably
Trotskyists pinning the dirty tag on various shades of commie types
On the other side of the great divide of the early thirties
Buy you --
To you it seems synonymous with Orwellian demons of all stripes
a) In the 70s, a Dem congress began deregulating the financial system with the help of a Dem
president.
b) In the 80s, a Dem congress continued deregulation and cut taxes on the rich, increased taxes
on the not so rich, cut SS benefits and essential government programs, and abandoned the unions.
c) In the 90s, a Dem president reappointed Greenspan to the Fed, further deregulated and cut
essential programs, and signed draconian crime, welfare, and student loan bills into law.
d) In 07, the Dems took back the congress and did nothing to hold accountable those who had
led us into a war under false pretenses, turned us into a nation of torturers, and politicized
the Justice Department as the concentration of income rose until the economy blew up in the fall
of 08.
e) In 09 the Dems took complete control of the federal government and ignored students and
homeowners as they bailed out the banks, passed a Heritage Foundation healthcare plan championed
by the insurance and drug companies as incomes and wages plummeted.
The working and middle classes were decimated throughout this process, and, somehow, it's the
voters' fault we ended up with a throw the bums out Trump instead of a more of the same Hillary?
I don't think so!
"The obvious solution for rising healthcare costs is either a public option or extending
Medicare to younger and younger people, but Democrats, other than Sanders, refuse to offer
or defend these solutions."
Medicare for all was not offered because politically it was a non-starter. The public option
was offered and once the Republicans (and Democrats who might as well be Republicans) realized
what it meant (out-competing insurance companies) they opposed it.
people who try to equate these class traitors to all democrats are carrying their water.
[[House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) pledged at the time that the House bill would include a
public option.15 Indeed, a public option offered through a private insurance exchange was included
in all three versions of the bill passed by House committees in the summer of 2009 (House Ways
and Means and House Education and Labor on 17 July 2009; House Energy and Commerce on 31 July
2009), as well as in the bill passed by the full House of Representatives on 7 November 2009 (the
Affordable Health Care for America Act, HR 3962). A public option was also included in the bill
passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on 15 July 2009 (the Affordable
Health Choices Act, S 1679).
Senate Democrats were engaged in a highly contentious debate throughout the fall of 2009, and
the political life of the public option changed almost daily. The debate reached a critical impasse
in November 2009, when Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), who usually caucuses with the Democrats,
threatened to filibuster the Senate bill if it included a public option.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) made last-minute attempts to introduce
amendments to include a public option as the bill was about to be voted on by the Senate Finance
Committee. Those failed, and there was no public option in either the bill that emerged from that
committee or the bill that passed the full Senate on 24 December 2009]]
I agree. Medicare For All! Should have been the rallying cry from the start. The Democrats should
have challenged the Republicans to argue against the logic of it and laid them bare but they didn't.
If that was the starting point of any negotiations we might have a much better health insurance
system now. I guess I have to blame Obama for the lack of leadership on that one.
"The obvious solution for rising healthcare costs is either a public option or extending Medicare
to younger and younger people, but Democrats, other than Sanders, refuse to offer or defend these
solutions."
In either case, Congress has not allowed Medicare to negotiate costs completely and you believe
they my allow a Public Option to do so???
The point is that the public has never been given a choice. No one except Sanders has made this
sort of thing a campaign issue, and the Democrats rejected Sanders. As a result, we ended up with
a Republican congress and Trump.
This is just another example of how Big Data can fail. All polling is is
the use of Big Data – weighting factors are just another name for
algorithms. Unlike Cambridge Analytica which was going outside its data to
make projections, the pollsters insisted on using the wrong model to
determine human behavior – and that is just as bad. Instead of watching who
the polls said was in the lead, I was watching the error analyses. The model
of how people vote had changed, but polling companies just didn't notice (or
perhaps didn't want to notice). Certainly the elections of 2010, 2012, and
2014 should have alerted them to changing trends and model instability and
their error analyses should have been much higher than they were. But
putting data into a garbage compactor just gives you more garbage .
People assume that "Big Data" is science. It is not. They are
"models", like kid's Lego models, that reflect the consciousness of the
"Model's Creator" (This kid seriously likes battleships, or cosy little
houses!) Sort of like the way IQ tests reflect the culture, class and
race of its creator. (You usually do not get points for identifying a
bird by it's bird-song or differentiating edible plants from the
inedible, by taste/smell).
This proves that most Big Polling companies are run by Clintonistas,
just as Big Media is run by Clintonistas. Their polling numbers still
show that Trump is losing, to this day. They are truly exceptional
people. (In a weird and creepy way)
This also implies that Lambert possesses that very rare quality-
The Open Mind
, that can see through
powerful/dense/stinky bullshit, with x-ray vision.
It's amazing how much more complex a humanities approach is compared
to a stone cold set of unemotional variables. To wit: Trump won because
the "rural" component of the LA Times was exaggerated – so then what does
that say for the urban component who where almost as down-and-out. This
is logic karma. The humanities guy, using a tree of almost-psychic
analysis gets it right. Love it a lot. And there is some connection to
our favorite Mr. Professor, Mark Blyth when he describes these fed-up
electorates (those betrayed by neoliberalism) as "no-shows." Well, we
could go on and on. Truth becomes the fractal analysis of politics.
"The humanities guy, using a tree of almost-psychic analysis gets
it right".
I've got some bad news for you. Decision trees are part and parcel
of Machine Learning techniques.
And polling has nothing to do with Big Data per se – sample of a
few thousand is not Big Data in any way form or shape, it's just
statistics. And while statistics doesn't have any bias, statisticians
(and polsters) do (as do, for the matter, any and all humans).
Your comment reminds me of some data science jokes going around:
1. Data science is statistics done on a Mac.
2. A data scientist is a statistician living in San Francisco.
3. A data scientist is a person who knows more about statistics
than a computer scientist and knows more about computer science
than a statistitian.
(I'd give credit to whoever started these jokes if I could only
figure out who they were ..)
Statistics is a big part of Big Data – it cannot be done without
it. You'd probably be surprised to know that polling is a part of
data science. And you'd probably don't know that the first
documented use of Big Data was by Tycho Brache/Kepler ..
It is important to understand what Big Data/Data Science is since
it is here and it isn't going away. Curiosity Stream has an
excellent video, "The Human Faces of Big Data" that is well worth
the watch.
And as always, the worst thing a person can do is give up their
ability to think critically when presented with Big Data results,
which are not truths, but only patterns based on the data given.
GIGO still applies .
I need to correct my next to last sentence to read: .which
are not truths, but only patterns based on the data given AND
the algorithm used ..
Sometimes the data is good, but the algorithm is bad and vice
versa
I have to remind myself every time I see data modelling political and
cultural phenomenon that these particular models can or will work well
until they don't. They always operate within a political and cultural
paradigm and when that paradigm is broken or even just faltering the
methods (which are heavily biased by that paradigm) fall apart. I can't
say it is apophenia as the data/patterns
are
relevant within an
existing paradigm. Maybe it is apophenia in reverse. The culture
establishes an agreed upon framework thus informing the modeller and
skewing their modelling. So the culture creates the patterns on a largely
nonscientific basis and the modeller simply interprets them to predict
the culture's future behavior. It seems like an exercise in futility.
While the "horse race" data is interesting & kinda fun to dissect in
retrospect, I don't think it really captures the essence of what happened.
Boiled down to 2 factors:
1) Trump was the "bomb thrower" candidate. First he blew up the R's
establishment candidates in the primaries & then blew up the D's
hyper-establishment candidate in the general.
2) HRC was a terrible and, ultimately, incompetent candidate. Her
palpable sense of entitlement & arrogance was quite off-putting to a
significant portion of the electorate. That she won the popular vote but
still managed to lose the election says it all about her campaign strategy.
Trump's election was a giant middle finger to the "politics-as-usual"
crowd.
(Unfortunately Trump is really very "establishment" – he just ran a
non-traditional campaign. I'll be rather surprised if he makes beyond 2020)
I suspect there was a lot more neo-liberal working behind the sceine
that we might suspect. Polling companies are a lot like the acounting
firms for the banks – they are paid to overlook acounting issues. Those
that don't, do not get to keep their contracts. The polling firms were
paied not to measure the mood of the electorate, but to produce polls
that conformed to the narative. And the narative was that Clintion was
going to win by a landslide.
The polls were just another tool for manufacturing consent.
"... The constraint on punditry is that they are all a bunch of high school mean girls. They spend just as much time gossiping and trashing each other as teenagers. Anyone who doesn't parrot faux objectivity, which is little more than the D party line, can expect to be ostracized and not given opportunities for advancement. ..."
"... They all pretend they can divine absolutely everything from polls, enabling them to forego any real reporting in favor of some number crunching or referencing fivethirtyeight. Polls have so many problems in the first place, that to try and extrapolate to what the electorate is really saying is a fool's errand. Polls don't let people say that they would rather be boiled in oil than elect the wife of the guy that laid the groundwork for the GFC, or that they really hate both of them and as long as it looks like Clinton is going to win I might not bother to show up. They certainly don't have an option for: I see how this country works, I see how corrupt 95% of the elites are, I see how they have had success in their lives and pulled up the ladders of opportunity behind them, I see how they think they are peers with the titans of industry and are willing to forgive them of just about any misbehavior no matter how consequential and despite all that the titans think of them as the paid help. I see how willing they are to make life harder for the majority just to fellatiate their donors; leaving rhetoric and shame as the only tools to get compliance and votes. ..."
"... I think it has to do with the knowledge that she holds grudges and the level of inevitability she was able to command. Anyone who dared to go even an inch beyond the mean girl hive mind could be assured zero access in her Whitehouse and to have future opportunities for advancement disappear. ..."
"... It's just not that hard: the Democrats bent the rules and thwarted what people wanted in order to run Hillary because it was her turn, ignoring the negatives that were present before the inept campaign increased them. ..."
I went on two email rants tangential to this if anyone is interested, I enjoyed them.
On journalism:
The constraint on punditry is that they are all a bunch of high school mean girls. They
spend just as much time gossiping and trashing each other as teenagers. Anyone who doesn't parrot
faux objectivity, which is little more than the D party line, can expect to be ostracized and
not given opportunities for advancement.
They all pretend they can divine absolutely everything from polls, enabling them to forego
any real reporting in favor of some number crunching or referencing fivethirtyeight. Polls have
so many problems in the first place, that to try and extrapolate to what the electorate is really
saying is a fool's errand. Polls don't let people say that they would rather be boiled in oil
than elect the wife of the guy that laid the groundwork for the GFC, or that they really hate
both of them and as long as it looks like Clinton is going to win I might not bother to show up.
They certainly don't have an option for: I see how this country works, I see how corrupt 95% of
the elites are, I see how they have had success in their lives and pulled up the ladders of opportunity
behind them, I see how they think they are peers with the titans of industry and are willing to
forgive them of just about any misbehavior no matter how consequential and despite all that the
titans think of them as the paid help. I see how willing they are to make life harder for the
majority just to fellatiate their donors; leaving rhetoric and shame as the only tools to get
compliance and votes.
At the end of the day, polls are like horoscopes, a kernel of truth but you can see what you
want to see. Which is why we were subjected to copious think pieces about Bernie Bros and Racist
Trump voters that are little more than polling cross tabs woven into whatever narrative would
best help Clinton.
But why Clinton? It certainly isn't because there was a cozy relationship before this campaign.
Note this quote from
Politico :
But to this day she's surrounded herself with media conspiracy theorists who remain some
of her favorite confidants, urged wealthy allies to bankroll independent organizations tasked
with knee-capping reporters perceived as unfriendly, withdrawn into a gilded shell when attacked
and rolled her eyes at several generations of aides who suggested she reach out to journalists
rather than just disdaining them. Not even being nice to her in print has been a guarantor
of access; reporters likely to write positive stories have been screened as ruthlessly as perceived
enemies, dismissed as time-sucking sycophants or pretend-friends.
I think it has to do with the knowledge that she holds grudges and the level of inevitability
she was able to command. Anyone who dared to go even an inch beyond the mean girl hive mind could
be assured zero access in her Whitehouse and to have future opportunities for advancement disappear.
But it certainly isn't above her to play favorites and reword good coverage with access,
even to the point of
dictating adjectives to reporters .
The second email was to 538 because they put up a job listing, which I used as an opportunity
to get an email read by them.
Well, I don't have any experience editing or writing (except as a hobby) but I do have a very
extensive knowledge of current events, political trends, polling, voting methods, and heterodox
economics. Since it's doubtful you would consider me for a policy editor position I just thought
I would offer some constructive criticism.
1. Instead of using your models to display the odds of a candidate winning if the election
were held today, incorporate the polling error and historical trends to make a graph that starts
with lines for the past and ends with probability cones into the future. You may know that
polls are only for a snapshot in time, but the vast majority of the TV pundits who use this site
as a bible don't. Then they go and decide who gets coverage based on it. This is especially important
when you have a well known candidate vs lesser known ones. This is a key reason Sanders didn't
do as well and why we have a president Trump. They also couldn't emphasize enough how unelectable
he was despite the polls constantly saying otherwise which really was the one thing
that sank him . For some reason about
40% of
the country says they will vote even if they don't care about the outcome. I'm sure in reality
it is much less, even more so for a primary. However, one of the reason politics is so dysfunctional
right now is that no one in their right mind would run for congress or anything else when only
63/435 house districts had a margin under 15%. Any damage you do to the incumbency effect is a
huge plus.
2. Alternative voting. Since your site is all about data I can't for the life of me
understand why you haven't done a dive into alternative voting methods. It there is one thing
this election should have taught us it's that first past the post (FPTP) is a creation from hell
that needs to die. Then the only other option widely expressed is Instant Run Off (IRV), which
is just ever so slightly better than FPTP. Would it really be too much to ask to dive into
Score Voting ,
3-2-1 voting , Condorcet,
and Schultz? And maybe look at some of the
work being done to model
voter satisfaction with those systems.
3. Improving Polling. Clearly you have contacts at all the major polling firms I have
absolutely no clue why you haven't pressured them to gather better data. Since the elites in this
country absolutely refuse to be within a 5 mile radius of real people, they rely on polls to take
the temperature of the public. I'd say that hasn't been working so well. I have seen polls where
they find out your stance on ACA, give both side some of the opposing arguments, and then ask
again and manage to flip like 20% from each side. Any poll that is going to ask our suboptimally
informed electorate something about a hot button issue should give a reason or two for and against
before getting a response. Polls that are meant to determine a participant's preference on a range
of hot button issues really should be done with
quadratic voting .
Which brings me to horse race polls. Just to get a baseline about how dysfunctional FPTP is I
would have loved to see a poll in the middle of the Dem primary ask "regardless of who you plan
on voting for, who do you want to be the next president?" Primary season would also be a great
time to test out some of the alternative voting methods mentioned above, most of which would eliminate
the need for primaries entirely. But if we are stuck with FPTP I would love for the follow up
question to be "In one sentence why do you plan to vote for that person?" That would really be
invaluable data.
I could probably go on for another hour with things that I think you could do to personally
improve the miserable state this country is in and will continue to be in for the foreseeable
future, but I'll spare you. Thanks for reading this far if you did.
I'm glad you posted this! I wasn't familiar with quadratic voting and the link is quite interesting.
It seems to have some similarities with ranked preference voting. That said, I agree with Peter
Emerson that in any choice there should be at least 3 options to choose from, and those options
should come from the voting base.
Choosing from how much I agree or disagree with a single proposal is still a poor option–it
depends what the alternatives are if one disagrees, or at least some basics about the implementation
if one agrees.
Using the questions from the QV video as an example, in some questions the nature of the potential
alternatives might affect results more than others. (For example, "Do you want to repeal the ACA?"
How a person answers might vary considerably depending on the alternatives.)
It's just not that hard: the Democrats bent the rules and thwarted what people wanted in
order to run Hillary because it was her turn, ignoring the negatives that were present before
the inept campaign increased them.
I read that book a long time ago. What I remember (perhaps incorrectly) is that there are simple,
compound and complex failures. One error causes a simple failure, two a compound and three a complex.
Complex failures are usually catastrophic. The errors were 1) failure to learn 2) failure to anticipate
3) failure to adapt. Perhaps a bit overly structural, but it did stick in my mind for years.
> 1) failure to learn 2) failure to anticipate 3) failure to adapt.
Those are the types of failure, and those are reasonable enough buckets. But their analysis
of how multiple pathways to failure is to my mind far more supple - and you have to treat case
case separately.
While I generally agree with your analysis I think that your timeline is missing one key inflection
point, the ACA. During September and October some states began announcing pricing changes for
the coming year. That fed into the rolling narrative that the ACA was collapsing, or in a death
spiral, or otherwise in trouble right around the same time that radical opportunist
True Patriot(tm) Jim Comey was bringing up Weiners.
Others have argued (can't find the links right now sorry) that this was more meaningful than
the emails and my own informal poll of Trump voters is consistent with that. None of them mention
Bhengazi or the emails except as general background to her unsavoriness, meaning that the damage
was done long before October. But they do bring up the "collapsing state exchanges" and "unreasonable
price surges" as current problems.
I agree that the email furor could be masking the effect of an ObamaCare rate hike, but I have
never seen polling to this effect; if somebody has, please add! There are a lot of events happening
simultaneously, and then the press will pick one and make that the cause.
Bottom line, people in rural western Virginia (with which I am more familiar) might not have
even heard the term "neoliberal" [by the way, why do we use his portmanteau of two very positive
words to describe a loathsome philosophy? Why don't we just call it what it is, "neofeudalism"
or possibly more accurately, "archeofeudalism"], but these "deplorables" do know that their lives
suck more than they ever have due to their lives and livelihood being drained out of them by the
1% and the Accela Corridor Class, of which HRC was the examplar par excellence.
Just ignore all the polls, all the verbiage, all the analysis. Bottom line: Trump is the proverbial
"Ham Sandwich."
The original liberal revolution (circa 1776 and later) mobilized the power of the bourgeoisie,
money, and markets to correct the inadequacies of the remains of the feudal society based on agriculture
and land. The neoliberal revolution aims to mobilize the power of money and markets to correct
the inadequacies of the liberal society based on money and markets. Strategically, to put a price
on anything that's left without one, and eliminate the chances for Polanyi's "double movement".
You write: "all but the Daybreak poll got the popular vote outcome wrong. "
Ummh, your sentence exactly disagrees with your data. Almost all polls got the sign of the
popular vote total correct, with Clinton leading Trump by several points. The average (Huffington
Post does this) of a lot of polls was very close indeed to Trump's performance, with Trump having
fewer popular vote than Clinton by close to 3%.
I'm surprised in your narrative inflection points, you don't note Oct. 24 as a key date, the
day the administration announced that Obamacare premiums would increase by an average of 22%.
Though it didn't receive as much coverage from the horse-race media, it seems to me that if there
was one single event that tipped the race to Trump, it was that announcement.
I didn't follow the polling much in real-time, but my recollection from post-mortems is that
Trump received a number of bounces up at inflection events, but then his poll numbers subsided
back. But in the aftermath of Oct. 24 his numbers began to rise without subsiding later. The graphs
you posted are consistent with that, except that it's attributed to the Comey letter,, which received
a lot of media play, but probably was of lesser importance to voters, as opposed to its importance
as a Dembot excuse.
In Florida, Trump got 113,000 more votes than Hillary. However, election officials report that
130,000 voters refused to vote for either candidate and wrote in the names of various people and
cartoon characters. The usual "vote for the lesser of two evils" just isn't working any more.
Why not look at how Bill Clinton diverted the Democratic Party towards Wall Street and Oligarchs
and left behind huge swathes of traditional voters ? The story of the string-puller from Arkansas
and his connections, whether to get him a Rhodes Scholarship and multiple draft deferments, or
his visit to Russia in Dec 1969, or his governorship and its strange association with Rich Mountain
Aviation in Mena, AK.
This was where the Democratic Party turned away from its voter base and Blair copied this in
UK with New Labour, a Neo-Marxist front facilitating Financial Excess
You're asking why I didn't write another post. Basically, because I wanted to write about penguins,
and not peacocks. The focus is on the campaign, not on everything that's been wrong with the Democrat
Party since forever (though there'll be a bit more of that in the forthcoming post).
One of these days pundits are going to stop treating the election like some damn sporting event,
focusing on momentum and god knows what instead of where the candidates stand on the issues of
importance. When that happens, maybe we'll start electing candidates that are interested and capable
of solving problems instead of candidates merely striving to stroke their egos.
I commend you for your optimism, However, the two party (actually one party) duopoly will insist
on nominating neo-liberal candidates paid for by yuuge corporate bribes. May I suggest that you
look elsewhere if you want candidates capable of solving the people's problems rather than the
corporate ones.
The trouble with social science is that the subjects read about themselves and change behavior
based on what they read. This is the property that George Soros calls reflexive. Even physical
science at the quantum mechanical level has as a basic principle that the act of measuring something
changes it.
Yes, even George Soros can be right about a thing or two.
Interesting analysis. What would add considerably is if we had some way of also charting other
events, in particular election fraud events (including voter suppression, computer tabulator rigging,
etc.) and other election interference mechanisms such as media coverage / non-coverage / miscoverage.
Not to mention the primary problems. Or the issues having to do with "candidate selection"
in the first place.
Analysis of the election without examining the information made available to voters, and with
no hope of knowing how voters actually did vote (hint–we don't know this from official
election results), is dodgy to say the least.
At the minimum the glaring gaps in information (e.g. about actual vote tallies) should be acknowledged.
Did you read the title of the post? That often gives a good indiction of the subject matter
to be found therein. You want me to write another post. Perhaps one day.
The presence of actual election malfeasance for decades (and more–when have we ever had clean
elections under public scrutiny?) means that elegant analysis such as yours perversely perpetuates
the acceptance of phony election data. That's why some form of acknowledgement is needed somewhere
in the post. Not a different post or a different topic, just a mention that there are . . . issues.
I would love your approach if only it didn't contain the unspoken presumption of official election
results bearing any resemblance to actual votes cast! Maybe yes, maybe no, depending on the precinct
and specific election. We should not advocate people continuing to blindly accept official election
results regardless of whether the results were expected, unexpected, close, non-close, matching
polls, not matching polls. Analysis that does not acknowledge the absence of meaningful election
scrutiny inadvertently perpetuates the problem.
It's like doing financial analysis on an economy where all data is submitted by companies with
zero requirement for backup financial data. (Not to mention then carrying out "polls" of what
"financial analyses" we believe or prefer!) We would never accept that kind of "data" and subsequent
"analysis" in a financial context.
I see it as a contest for power between two jet setters. Both had Boeings. One was owned by
the candidate, bigger & black & red.
The other was some smaller, and nondescript blue.
I'd like to see the number of flights and where they went compared.
Concerning your inflection points, Lambert: I remember from a while back that Empty Wheel had
a chart that showed a major shift in sentiment toward Trump when new higher Obamacare costs were
announced for 2017. Sorry, but I don't know how to run down that link.
It's bad now, but it could be worse. Project Fear. OK, Trump is a lunatic but how does that
compare with the status quo? Let's give the lunatic a go. How bad can it get?
"... Until the Democrats reform their leadership and recommit to working people again, they will have no future as a party. ..."
"... Brad and Larry and Paul are a big part of the status quo for the liberal establishment, and the incredible failure of leadership they have achieved. ..."
"... Continuing to argue about it here, with the quick resort to personal attacks and name-calling, is irrelevant, because the Democratic party is dead. Seriously, how big of a loss can they take before the leadership gets tossed? It was not just the presidency. They have lost almost everything. ..."
"... Don't count the Democratic Party out yet. Politicians need to make a living. After the Civil War the Democratic Party had to scrape together what it could find that Republicans had tossed out with the garbage. ..."
"... So, the Democratic Party took to supporting immigrants and unions. Times have changed and the Democratic Party lost the unions to corporatism, but tried to make it up with racial politics. ..."
"... The Democratic Party made a big mistake abandoning the interests of ordinary working people, but that is what their corporate donors demanded. So, it is time for a makeover and if the next one does not take then they will be back at it again because politicians have to make a living. ..."
"... The Democratic party, much less so than the Republican party, is not homogenous. All the things you ascribe to them past or present don't apply to most of their current members or operatives. ..."
Until the Democrats reform their leadership and recommit to working people again, they will
have no future as a party.
Brad and Larry and Paul are a big part of the status quo for the liberal establishment,
and the incredible failure of leadership they have achieved.
Continuing to argue about it here, with the quick resort to personal attacks and name-calling,
is irrelevant, because the Democratic party is dead. Seriously, how big of a loss can they take
before the leadership gets tossed? It was not just the presidency. They have lost almost everything.
Don't count the Democratic Party out yet. Politicians need to make a living. After the Civil War
the Democratic Party had to scrape together what it could find that Republicans had tossed out
with the garbage.
So, the Democratic Party took to supporting immigrants and unions. Times have
changed and the Democratic Party lost the unions to corporatism, but tried to make it up with
racial politics.
That worked some, but the problem with identity politics is that eventually people
get their rights and freedoms and next thing you know they want jobs and college educations for
their children.
The Democratic Party made a big mistake abandoning the interests of ordinary working
people, but that is what their corporate donors demanded. So, it is time for a makeover and if
the next one does not take then they will be back at it again because politicians have to make
a living.
The Democratic party, much less so than the Republican party, is not homogenous. All the things
you ascribe to them past or present don't apply to most of their current members or operatives.
It is one of the pernicious aspects of an effectively two-party system that all progressives
have a strong motivation or even necessity to associate themselves with the "least bad" party.
By way of official narrative the Democrats definitely fit the bill, even though they contain a
lot of "co-opted" (if not corrupted) establishment baggage. That just happens with any major party
- elites and interest groups that nominally stay out of politics but factually participate and
not just a little are never resting.
In Germany, the 80's (perhaps late 70s?) saw an ascendancy of the Green party which was strongly
associated with environmentalism, and by implication resistance to then prevalent politics, social
mores, etc. They were successful as environmentalism and (I would say secondarily but that can
be debated) civil/individual liberties and gender/ethnic equality which they also featured big
time were themes that found wide appeal, and the time was ripe for them (e.g. environmental degradation
had become undeniable, and gender/ethnic discrimination had become recognized as a factor hindering
progress, aside from just fairness concerns).
A few decades later (and starting even a few years after the success) there was a noticeable
bifurcation in the Greens - it turned out they were not all on the same page regarding all social
issues. A number of Greens "defected" from the party and associated themselves with Red (Social
Democrats, equivalent of US Democrats) or Black (Christian Democrats, equivalent of US Republicans)
- showing that environmental or general (dimensions of) equal opportunity concerns are perhaps
orthogonal to stands on other more or less specific social issues (or if one wants to be more
cynical, that some people are careerist and not so much about principles - that exists but I would
prefer (with little proof) to think it doesn't explain the larger pattern).
This shows Trump and his highest campaign officials at the time complicit in pro-Russian spin
and from those in contact with Russia in the Trump campaign
"Trump Ally Drastically Changes Story About Altering GOP Platform On Ukraine"
By Allegra Kirkland....March 3, 2017....2:16 PM EDT
"In a significant reversal, a Trump campaign official on Thursday told CNN that he personally
advocated for softening the language on Ukraine in the GOP platform at the Republican National
Convention, and that he did so on behalf of the President.nnb877
CNN's Jim Acosta reported on air that J.D. Gordon, the Trump campaign's national security policy
representative at the RNC, told him that he made the change to include language that he claimed
"Donald Trump himself wanted and advocated for" at a March 2016 meeting at then-unfinished Trump
International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Gordon claimed that Trump said he did not "want to go to World War III over Ukraine" during
that meeting, Acosta said.
Yet Gordon had told Business Insider in January that he "never left" the side table where he
sat monitoring the national security subcommittee meeting, where a GOP delegate's amendment calling
for the provision of "lethal defense weapons" to the Ukrainian army was tabled. At the time, Gordon
said "neither Mr. Trump nor [former campaign manager] Mr. [Paul] Manafort were involved in those
sort of details, as they've made clear."
Discussion of changes to the platform, which drew attention to the ties to a pro-Russia political
party in Ukraine that fueled Manafort's resignation as Trump's campaign chairman, resurfaced Thursday
in a USA Today story. The newspaper revealed that Gordon and Carter Page, another former Trump
adviser, met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the GOP convention.
Trump and his team have long insisted that his campaign had no contact with Russian officials
during the 2016 race, and that they were not behind softening the language on Ukraine in the Republican
Party platform."...
This is not an update re: "Trump's Pro-Russiaism".
This is an update of your complete lack of understanding of political situation.
There was a pretty cold and nasty calculation on Trump's part to split Russia-China alliance
which does threaten the USA global hegemony. Now those efforts are discredited and derailed. Looks
like the US neoliberal elite is slightly suicidal. But that's good: the sooner we get rid of neoliberalism,
the better.
Sill Dems hysteria (in association with some Repugs like war hawks John McCain and Lindsey
Graham) does strongly smells with neo-McCarthyism. McCain and Graham are probably playing this
dirty game out of pure enthusiasm: Trump does not threatens MIC from which both were elected.
He just gave them all the money they wanted. But for Dems this is en essential smoke screen to
hide their fiasco and blame evil Russians.
In other words citing Marx: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. "
This farce of making Russians a scapegoat for all troubles does make some short-term political
sense as it distracts from the fact the Dems were abandoned by its base. And it unites the nation
providing some political support for chickenhawks in US Congress for the next elections.
But in a long run the price might be a little bit too high. If Russian and China formalize
their alliance this is the official end for the US neoliberal empire. Britain will jump the sinking
ship first, because they do not have completely stupid elite.
BTW preventing Cino-Russian alliance is what British elite always tried to do (and was successful)
in the past -- but in their time the main danger for them was the alliance of Germany and Russia
-- two major continental powers.
Still short-termism is a feature of US politics, and we can do nothing against those forces
that fuel the current anti-Russian hysteria.
The evil rumors at the time of original McCarthyism hysteria were that this was at least partially
a smoke screen designed to hide smuggling of Nazi scientists and intelligence operatives into
the USA (McCarthy was from Wisconsin, the state in German immigrant majority from which famous
anti-WWI voice Robert M. La Follette was elected (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._La_Follette_Sr.))
So here there might well be also some hidden motives, because everybody, including even you
understands that "Trump is in the pocket of Russians" hypothesis is pure propaganda (BTW Hillary
did take bribes from Russian oligarchs, that's proven, but Caesar's wife must be above suspicion).
What we are witnessing is the truth coming out, too slowly for some of us, but it surely will
come out eventually despite the best efforts of Trump's WH, Gang, and his Republican lackies to
cover it up.
You probably would be better off sticking to posting music from YouTube then trying to understand
complex political events and posting political junk from US MSM in pretty prominent economic blog
(overtaking Fred)
Especially taking into account the fact that English is the only language you know and judging
from your posts you do not have degrees in either economics or political science (although some
people here with computer science background proved to be shrewd analysts of both economic and
political events; cm is one example).
Although trying to read British press will not hurt you, they do provide a better coverage
of US political events then the USA MSM. Even neoliberal Guardian. So if you can't fight your
urge to repost political junk please try to do it from British press.
As for your question: in 20 years we might know something about who played what hand in this
dirty poker, but even this is not given (JFK assassination is a classic example here; Gulf of
Tonkin incident is another)
"... and Haim Saban's opinion matters more than millions of BernieCrats because money. ..."
"... The Dems are set up pretty well for 2018. ..."
"... "We lost this election eight years ago," concludes Michael Slaby, the campaign's chief technology officer. "Our party became a national movement focused on general elections, and we lost touch with nonurban, noncoastal communities. There is a straight line between our failure to address the culture and systemic failures of Washington and this election result." ..."
"... The question of why-why the president and his team failed to activate the most powerful political weapon in their arsenal. ..."
"... Obama's army was eager to be put to work. Of the 550,000 people who responded to the survey, 86 percent said they wanted to help Obama pass legislation through grassroots support; 68 percent wanted to help elect state and local candidates who shared his vision. Most impressive of all, more than 50,000 said they personally wanted to run for elected office. ..."
"... But they never got that chance. In late December, Plouffe and a small group of senior staffers finally made the call, which was endorsed by Obama. The entire campaign machine, renamed Organizing for America, would be folded into the DNC, where it would operate as a fully controlled subsidiary of the Democratic Party. ..."
"... Republicans, on the other hand, wasted no time in building a grassroots machine of their own-one that proved capable of blocking Obama at almost every turn. Within weeks of his inauguration, conservative activists began calling for local "tea parties" to oppose the president's plan to help foreclosed homeowners. ..."
"... Your friend should share her script for success w/ the DNC leadership. ..."
Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez was elected chairman of the Democratic
National Committee Saturday, giving the party an establishment leader at a
moment when its grass roots wing is insurgent.
Mr. Perez defeated Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison and four other candidates
in a race that had few ideological divisions yet illuminated the same rifts
in the party that drove the acrimonious 2016 presidential primary between
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Perez fell one vote short of a majority on the first vote for
chairman, with Mr. Ellison 13 votes behind him. The four second-tier
candidates then dropped out of the race before the second ballot. On the
second ballot, Mr. Perez won 235 of 435 votes cast.
Somehow, I think most people knew that this was going to happen.
There's a good chance that Trump will end up being a 2 term president and
that 2018 will be a disaster for the Democratic Party on the scale of 2010,
2014, and 1994. Meanwhile, they will surely blame the voters and especially the
left, which is what they always do when they don't win.
I think that we should keep in mind that the US is a plutocracy and that at
this point, the Democrats aren't even pretending to be a "New Deal" party for
the people anymore. Perhaps its existence always was an outlet to contain and
co-opt the left. At least now, the message is naked: the left is expected to
blindly obey, but will never be given leadership positions.
In other words, the left is not welcome. I think that it is time for people
to leave.
The only question at this point is, how hard is it going to be to form a
third party? I don't see the Left as being able to reform the Democrats very
easily. It may be so corrupt as to be beyond reform.
At least 1993, although the ideal time would have been after the
Coup of 1963, but unfortunately too many were still clueless than.
(Had more than five people and Mort Sahl ever bothered to read the
Warren Commission Report - where Lee Oswald was "positively ID'd by a
waitress for the murder of Officer Tippit:
W.C.: So you went into the room and looked at the lineup, did you
recognize anyone.
Helen Louise Markham: No, sir.
And there you have it, gentlement, a positive ID! And the rest of
the so-called report was even worse . . . .)
(Patting self on back) That's when I left it. God, was it really
that long ago?
And responding to the earlier part of the string: no, it isn't easy
to form a "3rd" party; and yes, there already is one. Just might be
time to stop nit-picking about it and help. (In Oregon, there are
about 6, two of them right-wing.)
Kshama Sawant, who is a socialist not a Green, is hoping (I think
that's the exact word) to put together a Left coalition. I think the
Green Party could be sold on that – for one thing, we would be much
the largest portion. Certainly I could, as I'm pretty tired of
spinning my wheels.
Remember, according to Gallup, the Dems are now down to 25%
affiliation (Reps at 28 – the first time they've been higher, I think
because they won the election.) Independents are the plurality by a
wide margin. Something's going to give, and we should try to get ahead
of the parade. It could easily get really nasty.
The problem with third parties is the same with the math of this
ballot. If Perez was one vote shy the first time, that means he
only picked up 18 votes the second time. So all the other
candidates mostly split the opposition. I'm sure if the democratic
establishment felt the need, they would form a few front parties.
People, you are just going to have to wait for it to blow up and
after that, coalesce around one cause; Public banking and money as
a publicly supported utility.
It took a few hundred years to recognize government is a public
function and drop monarchy.
Beats me how anyone thinks "public banking" will change
anything. In a capitalist system, banks are banks. They chase
the highest return. That's not where the public interest (qua
people) lies and never will be. And "government is a public
function" so long as it serves its mandate: to make return on
capital investment function smoothly.
For those of use who never were in the Democratic Party, this choice
ensures that many of us will be looking for another party. The DNC just
gave us the same choice as the last election – Corrupt establishment or
Fascism. The distinction these days is not worth pondering.
What people are doing right now with Donald Trump's
GOP - forcing town halls, making a ruckus, holding everyone
accountable - has to be the model for progressive change in
American politics. Doing this stuff inside the system
isn't
going to wor
k. Forming a party around ideology or ideas
isn't going to wor
k. Wearing the system down
is all that
works.
Before this gets turned into another thing where the establishment
Democrats posture as the reasonable adults victimized by the assaults
of those left-wing baddies, let's just be very clear about what
happened here. It was the establishment wing that decided to recruit
and then stand up a candidate in order to fight an internal battle
against the left faction of the party. It was the establishment wing
that then dumped massive piles of opposition research on one of their
own party members. And it was the establishment wing that did all of
this in the shadow of Trump, sowing disunity in order to contest a
position whose leadership they insist does not really matter.
The establishment wing has made it very clear that they will do
anything and everything to hold down the left faction, even as they
rather hilariously ask the left faction to look above their
differences and unify in these trying times. They do not have any
intent of ceding anything - even small things they claim are mostly
irrelevant - to the left wing.
Reform may become possible only when the money spigot dries up.
At some point, the oligarchs may simply decide its not cost effective
to finance such losers. With no money, there are no rice bowls and so the
professional pols and their minions will either wither away or seek a new
funding
model which may make possible a different politics.
I think it will take well under a decade to see how this plays out.
What is the cheapest way for oligarchs to maintain power in a
pseudo-democracy?
If there is enough conflict among them, I suppose they'll continue
to put money into both parties. Otherwise, why not just let one of the
two slowly die? Electoral theatre is expensive.
The scary thing is that it's NOT expensive, compared to the size
of the economy. As long as there's enough at stake for large
companies and ultra-rich individuals, they can very easily buy two
or even several parties.
(This is not to disagree with your main point, which is that
they may let the Democrats die.)
But why bother with that extra bit, if it can instead be
spent on a second or third bolt-hole?
But I suspect you are correct because the citizenry will
revolt fairly quickly after the illusion completely dissolves.
It's worth something to put that off for as long as possible.
Yes it is when a very competitive Senate race is now $50M as
a starting price tag and to run a viable Presidential campaign
will likely be $1B as a floor in 2020.
There'd still be 'choice' since we plebs would continue
quixotically financing this/that with our cashless dollars
(while they filter, oh say .30 of each, for the privilege).
At least, perhaps, until we finally get our sh*t together and
genuinely revolt. How long will that take?
The farce willl go on. After all, while the actual popular
sovereignty expressed in voting might be minimal, and the
information environment itself largely a corporate
construction, its gives a concrete, personal, representation
of popular sovereignty, and in so doing – and whatever the
despondency of its voters and the emptiness of their choice –
legitimates or "mandates" whatever it is the government does,
and however corporate friendly it might be. And it may be –
with its Private Public Partnerships, and revolving door from
the corporate to public office (and back) – very corporate
friendly indeed.
If this is the case, then the "China Model" is not, as
some think, the ideal neoliberal political model. Explicitly
authoritarian rule is, from the start, problematic in terms
of popular sovereignty. If a corporate-friendly authoritarian
regime is to avoid this, it has but one option. It must
deliver economic growth that is both noticeable and
widespread, and so do what neoliberal theory claims, but
neoliberal practice isn't much, if at all, interested in
providing.
We may well be in the midst of making a choice here
At least the China model provided growth unreal living
standards from the desperate poverty that most Chinese
were living in a generation ago.
It is certainly not without flaws. Corruption,
inequality, and pollution are big problems.
That said,the US is following the corruption and
inequality pretty well. With the Republicans and other
corporations in control, they will surely make sure that
pollution follows.
Actually it will be worse. The Chinese model ensured
that China built up a manufacturing sector. It followed
the economic growth trajectory of Japan after WW2 and
later South Korea. The neoliberals won't do that.
By "revolt" what do you actually mean? Armed overthrow of
the existing power structure? Or political revolt, forming a
new party? Breaking the US up into smaller countries?
I'm having hard time imagining a radical restructuring of
power in the US. Nor does it strikes me as particularly
desirable, as my observation is that the new power structure
is often just as bad as the existing one. But now has to deal
with governing a fractured society.
Whatever would be required to create necessary change.
A series of actions emerging from a plan,
ever-intensifying until the system-as-it-is has no more
power.
Do you think hundreds of millions of people should
continue to let themselves be trashed? That sort of thing
never lets up but only increases over time.
This situation is not unlike spousal abuse. The most
dangerous time for the abused is when the she/he decides
to leave. And the after-effects usually land her/him in
poverty but also peace and self-respect.
Yep, in a duopoly it is necessary to own and control both
halves–even a perpetually losing one. That is cheap insurance against
nasty surprises. American political parties and politicians are cheap
as hell to buy in any event. Gazillionaire couch change can control
entire parties.
Oh, c'mon. The money spent to provide an illusion of democracy is
chump change compared to the billions they are reaping from having
bought the government. The plutocrats are not trying to effect change
really, they like it pretty much as it is now. The purpose of the two
parties is to distract us from what is really going on. The only
plutocratic interest in what they do is fueled by perverse curiosity
of what their new toy can do.
Anon, I hope you are right. Somewhat lost in the news was the vote NOT
to ban corporate donations to the DNC. To me, that is at least as telling
as Ellison's loss. The Clintons may be gone, but their stench remains.
I think we need to accept the strong likelihood that there will be a
corporatist-dominated Constitutional Convention by 2025. First on the
agenda: a constitutional amendment that requires a balanced federal budget.
The globalist elites will slam on that lever to destroy what remains of the
economic safety net. "Balanced budgets" are very popular with the deceived
public but such an amendment will end general prosperity in this nation
forever. Imagine what else they'll outlaw and ban and 1860 doesn't feel so
far away.
What surprises me is that Establishment Ds make no effort to defend
themselves from attacks from the Left. It's like they don't care: no
leftward movement on policy. They just call Bernie and the Brodudes
names. What Sanders did to Hillary is a proof of concept. The most
powerful Establishment D is mortally wounded by an attack from a no name
senator from Vermont. This can be used against any Establishment D. The
Brodudes initially may not have wanted to burn it down, but they now know
they can. So what are the Establishment Ds doing to defend themselves?
Closer and closer it comes as the Democrats have let state after state
come under one-party Republican rule while unjustifiably preening
themselves for their "moral rectitude" (while yet continuing to assist in
looting the joint for a small percentage of the take ). That party has
come to play their part in cementing the injustices and inequalities into
place. Witness Obama, not only sitting on his hands when action against
palpable injustice was needed, but actively collaborating in rigidifying
the rotten structure. The quintessential globalist, authoritarian,
war-loving Democrat, the only kind permissable,
vide
Perez.
There's a good chance that Trump will end up being a 2 term president
and that 2018 will be a disaster for the Democratic Party on the scale of
2010, 2014, and 1994. Meanwhile, they will surely blame the voters and
especially the left, which is what they always do when they don't win.
If Trump doesn't deliver the manufacturing jobs to the "undesirables"
like he promised, if he dismantles ACA and leaves poor and working class
"undesirables" to the wolf of some sort of privatization scheme health care
w/ vouchers or tax breaks, if backtracking on financial sector reform leads
to another economic meltdown, and if he and Bannon get another war, which
metastasizes into asymmetrical warfare all over Western Europe and the US,
then Trump's ability to get reelected is in serious jeopardy to say the
least, no matter how lame the democratic challenger is. Bush's meltdown gave
us a Black President for christs sake.
On the other hand, the down ticket races could continue to be the usual
disaster for the dems unless they do a major reshift in their campaign
strategies outside the blue states that includes strong populist economic
messaging and pushing a strong safety net w/ a public option for health care
(assuming the GOP wipes out ACA.)
There are a lot of "ifs" there that are looking like "wills" at the
moment. He is playing true to type and delegating policy to whomsoever
flatters him best whilst jetting off to Mar-a-Lago for a game of golf
with his business buddies. With the exception of killing TPP (maybe?) and
no immediate European conflicts with Russia, this is what I would have
expected from him and, more importantly, Pence. The true believers seem
to be getting their way, thus far.
That said, I wouldn't discount the power of his ability to deflect
blame for the consequences of his actions. For the most part, those who
voted for him truly believe that everything is someone else's fault, and
I don't see that changing any time soon.
This is true, but don't you think the standards are different?
At the moment nothing is either Parties fault, according to their
leadership, but the reactions of both Party's base has been far
different to date. Dems have been comparatively unsuccessful
blaming Muslims, leftists and Russians for their problems whereas
that is, and always has been, red meat for Republicans. Any stick
to beat someone with just doesn't work as well for the Democratic
Party. Claire McCaskill calls Bernie a communist and is vilified
for it at the time, so now she is whining because her seat is at
risk in '18? What did she expect when she knew, at the time, that
she was alienating half the Party by so doing?
Dems are losing because they have the misfortune of not having
more Republicans in their electoral base, however hard they have
tried to include them in their "Big Tent" leadership. Republicans
actively fear their base, and would never make such an egregious
political mistake.
I thought all of the candidates for the DNC Chair were really
bad. Even the ever so popular Keith Ellison. This guy once
advocated for an entire separate country to be formed comprising
of only African Americans. Just curious, how "tolerant" and
"inclusive" would the immigration policy be for that country if
it were ever created? What would the trade policies be in that
country? Would they let a white owned business like Wal-Mart
move into a black neighborhood and put the local black owned
businesses out of business? Keith Ellison is nothing more than a
hypocrite every time he criticizes Donald Trump's policies and
advocates for his impeachment.
The entire Democratic party is falling apart. They are trying
to get elected because of their race, sex, and/or religion.
Instead of trying to get elected based on the content of their
character and their message. I truly believe the main reason
Keith Ellison was even considered for the DNC Chair is because
he is black and a Muslim.
The party rigged the primary against Bernie because they felt
it was time that a woman became president instead of a man. Some
democrats even called Bernie a white supremacist.
"@realDonaldTrump: The race for DNC Chairman was, of
course, totally "rigged." Bernie's guy, like Bernie
himself, never had a chance. Clinton demanded Perez!" –
Twitter
LMFAO
How about that new Clinton video, sure looks like she
is going to run again in 2020 – please, Hilary, you go,
girl!
The corporatist "third way" democrats are hoping for Trump to implode
so that they can get back into the White House. They really don't think
that they need progressives since it is undoubted in their opinion that
Trump will certainly be fail on his promises and be unelectable in 2020
and they will be back in power. And they may be right but the dems still
will have lost most of the states and many localities. It will be more of
the Obama/Clinton wing at the top with all the "professional" hangers on
facing down a Republican congress until the system collapses.
That's clearly what the Perez/Nate Coln Dems are banking on.
Metro-suburban class alliance of multicultural service workers and their
secular Republican employers nonplussed by Bush-style Trump clusterfark.
Heard no "strong populist message" out of Perez's mouth in the DNC
debates. Anything the Dems do there will be to elect more Blue Dogs to
strengthen the conservative wing of the party and push the Sanders people
back to the margins. That's all they care about right now.
But it's a completely passive strategy that is at the mercy of the
Republicans. For "what if" President Bannon lays off the coke and, like
Obama, doesn't do stupid?
The only real hazard the Trumpistas face is the timing of the next
recession. And that will depend on part on the Fed. The rest is: don't
start a war, just leave ACA sit there.
The Fed, the Fed, it all comes down to the Fed in the next 4 years.
Has Bannon studied up on Jackson's Bank War?
I was just at a "Community Meeting" with Rep. Peter DeFazio – one of
the more progressive Dems. Huge turnout, again. Questions were more
challenging than the ones to Wyden. Amazingly old audience – where are
all the Bernie millennials?
Toward the end, I asked him (1) what he thought had happened to the
Democrats over the last 8 disastrous years; and (2) whether he saw motion
to fix the problem.
He responded with a passionate statement of progressive ideas, so I
guess that answers #1; but he didn't answer Pt. 2 at all, really, which
is a negative answer. He had actually been pretty critical of the party
in earlier answers, and we had just learned that Perez would be chairing
the DNC.
I was wearing a Green Party T-shirt, which I'm sure he recognizes.
Oddly, both the first and last questions were from local Greens: the
first, from the former city councillor who runs against him on a regular
basis; and the last from my wife, about the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions
movement. Time was limited, and we lined up for the microphones.
The wars won't matter to people as long as the propaganda is good
enough (perhaps a helpful false flag incident as well) and as long as
there is no draft. It's all about whipping up the patriotism we'll see
if that still works.
The Democratic Party has always about "left containment." Their entire
existence isn't about winning at all. It's about allowing establishment
rule, which is why even when Democrats are elected the forward march into
corporate rule continues unabated.
Neither party is worth a bucket of warm spit – and both parties pay no
attention what so ever to the vast majority their members, or the vast
majority of the citizens. And neither party can be reformed. IMHO, the only
question is if any new party constituted would be infiltrated and undermined
from within before it could do anything.
This seems very much like a kneejerk reaction. Your assuming the economy
doesn't go into recession by then which increasingly seems less and less
likely as well as the GOP Congressional leadership or Trump showing much
skill in executing their legislative agenda. A lot easier being the guy who
chants out about how the guy in charge sucks and another entirely when they
suddenly become the person in charge.
Unless Trump starts to deliver on jobs and meaningful wage growth, there
will be inevitable backlash in 2018 at him and the GOP. It is going to be
increasing when the rank and file American realizes that the GOP House tax
plan goes for essentially a 20% VAT to be implemented on imported goods
while they get a whopping income tax cut of 1-2%. Average American is a rube
but eventually this will start to sink in as to just how short changed
they'll be if it largely passes wholesale.
What if they do tax cuts for the rich without Social Security /
Medicare cuts? What if they don't do much about Obamacare and don't lose
votes that way either? And if the recovery continues, the labour market
will tighten.
Yes, and what if they *do* continue to put on a big show against
"illegals" and allegedly unfriendly Muslim immigrants? And tinker just
enough with NAFTA to claim a symbolic "win" against Mexico? This could
be potent stuff.
If the Democrats haven't managed to come up with a candidate people
can really get behind, it will be even easier for incumbency to pull
Trump over the finish line again. Many Republicans who wouldn't vote
for Trump this time "because Hitler" will have observed by then that
the country survived Term I, and they'll get back in line, because
Republicans always come home. The Democrats seem to think that since
the election was close, all they need to do is run Obama V2 (Booker),
thereby re-juicing the lagged African American turnout and putting a D
back in the Oval Office. I think that ship has sailed now. If Trump
truly bombs, then sure anyone will beat him. But as of now I'm not
confident that he will simply fail and the numbers may only be more
difficult for the Ds in 2020.
I seriously doubt Trump will be a one term president. DNC elections
notwithstanding. If there's no "there" there in the, according to Trump,
utterly nonexistent Russia scandal, why hide from the press? Take the
questions. Call for an investigation himself. Nothing to hide? Quit hiding.
Given very recent history, this is no surprise. Unfortunate, and I expect to
see "resistance" activities nudged even more toward the same weary mainstream
DNC tropes.
This is just another big fuck you to the progressive wing of the party. It's
time to board the ship and start a mutiny. And if that doesn't work, sink the
ship and build a new one.
"This is just another big fuck you to the progressive wing of the party."
The message is undeniable: You're not welcome here. Thank you for your
votes, thank you for your money, shut up, no you do not get to pick the
candidate, Debbie and Donna did nothing wrong, no we are not getting rid of
superdelegates, no we are not refusing corporate money, no you cannot have
even a Clinton-endorsing kinda-progressive as Chair, no to free college,
'never ever' to universal health care, 'we're capitalists here', and Haim
Saban's opinion matters more than millions of BernieCrats because money.
In March 2008, Saban was among a group of major Jewish donors to
sign a letter to Democratic Party house leader Nancy Pelosi warning
her to "keep out of the Democratic presidential primaries."The donors,
who "were strong supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
presidential campaign", "were incensed by a March 16 interview in
which Pelosi said that party 'superdelegates' should heed the will of
the majority in selecting a candidate."The letter to Pelosi stated the
donors "have been strong supporters of the DCCC" and implied,
according to The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that Pelosi could lose
their financial support in important upcoming congressional elections.
Poor ol' Haim must be soooo pissed that Clinton lost again. Hahaha.
I wasn't planning on commenting for a while but ended up leaving a
comment here a few minutes ago and it disappeared into the ether.
Probably something to do with the one of the links I included. No big
deal.
I stopped being a Democrat a few years ago. And I have not donated for some
time. Yet I still receive constant requests for money to keep the consultants
in airline miles. Every so often I think that perhaps it might be time to "come
home" or at least that they aren't so bad anymore.
Then they go and do this.
At this point I see no reason to keep the ossified corpse of the
Clinton Machine
Democratic party going. It is clear that the last
thing they want to do is listen to actual voters to decide their direction. All
they have is the faint hope that Trump will be so godawful that everyone will
love them again.
But then that was Hillary Clinton's campaign strategy
If your state requires you to register as a Democrat in order to vote in
the Democratic primary, I recommend doing so. Then you can vote for
outsiders in the 2018 and 2020 primaries. If your state has an open primary
system, you don't have to taint yourself with official membership - just
request the appropriate primary ballot and vote.
This is my dilemma. In CT, you have to be R or D to vote in primary. I
left the D's after the CA primary b/c I was so disgusted. I'll see what
candidates are looking like when the time comes and make my decision
then.
I deregistered as a Democrat in CA today after 17 years (though I
was already pretty much out over the past few years, I let this be the
final straw opposite inertia). The CA "top two" system for general
elections only puts the top two vote-getters from any party during the
primary on the ballot, ostensibly switching the election to one
largely determined during the primary, by primary voters.
The California Democratic party allows those voters registered as
not specifying a political preference to vote in the Democratic
primary, so I might still end up voting among the various options,
especially if someone like Brand New Congress puts up a real candidate
here or there. During the 2016 primary, the D-party anti-Sanders
shenanigans were evident even in CA. In some areas, unaffiliated
voters who wanted a D-party ballot were misled or required to very
strictly repeat a specific phrase, or they were given ballots with no
effect on the D-party primary. I expect to have to be very careful to
request and obtain the correct ballot in advance. (Let's hope that the
slow takeover at lower levels within the state makes this less
necessary).
It's going to be a long, hard slog on the left, whether
occasionally peeking inside the tent or building something cohesive,
not co-opted and effective outside the tent (where it seems the
D-party has necessarily pushed many).
But whatever you do, make sure you know your state's election law in
advance, especially deadlines for registration changes, which may be
earlier than you expect.
"All they have is the faint hope that Trump will be so godawful that
everyone will love them again."
Well, that and Nancy "we know how to win elections" Pelosi promising the
Earth for votes to regain their majorities,
again,
only to then
take all of that off of the table and start the cycle over again.
I really don't know how many times one can go to that well; we have seen
this play before. Seems like an awful lot of people have caught on to the
tactic at this point. Were that not the case, HIllary would probably be
happily bombing Russia by now.
The Dems are set up pretty well for 2018. Both Trump and Hillary are
deeply unpopular and Hillary won't be a vote driver for the GOP in 2018
and Trump will be for the Dems. There are a bunch of important States
with Gov races and whatever happens the next 20 months Trump and the GOP
will own completely, they wont even have a recalcitrant legislative
branch to point the finger at.
I always figured whoever won in 2016 was set up to be a one term POTUS.
Best case scenario for Trump is that we tread water for the next 2-4
years and I don't think that will be enough get him a 2nd term although
it might be enough to staunch GOP losses in 2020. If he gets gets into a
messy hot war, fumbles a major natural disaster or sees an economic
downturn in 4 years we'll be talking about the impending death of GOP.
Those scenarios sound a little rosy considering the types of people
we are talking about. They can take a lot of pain as long as someone
else is feeling it more .and there is always someone else. If they
cannot find a demographic to blame they will invent one; see the
historic hatred for ObamaCare and the raucous town halls now defending
the ACA; they don't have to make sense.
Also, too, Dems are defending more incumbencies in '18 than are the
Reps., and the Republican Party has the machinery already in place to
reduce the voting public down to just those that are more likely to
vote for them. Just create a riot at a voting precinct, for example,
jail whomsoever you want and take their stuff as is now foreshadowed
in Arizona. They would love that stuff; "Beat those hippies!" And,
after the Democratic Primaries, the Democratic Party will be in no
position to take the high ground.
No, even if all that happens, I think the predicting the death of
the GOP is way premature.
His fans will vote for him, a lot of the the people who voted
for him as the lesser of two evils will be demotivated to vote or
will vote Dem as a check on him and this who voted for HRC as the
lesser of two evils will be motivated. At best his popularity right
now is about where GWB's was after he tried to privatize SS and
just before Katrina and the public's view on Iraq flipped for good.
I think 2018 will look a lot like 2006. Hate and spite will be on
the Dems side in 2018 and those are great motivators.
Trump may have deep support, but it isn't very broad. He didn't win
an 84 or even an 08 sized victory.
There is a reason the party in power does poorly in off year
elections and Trump is the least popular newly elected POTUS in
modern history.
It would be helpful to know, also, how many who normally vote
Republican abstained or went 3rd party rather than vote for
Trump. Maybe it wasn't that many (since Trump did get more votes
than Romney after all), but many of these people will be voting
for Trump in 2020 unless he completely tanks. It's never a good
idea to underestimate the party loyalty of GOP voters. Beating
Democrats is the Prime Directive.
I think the problem is that Republicans are much better at actually
winning elections. How many seats can the Democrats actually regain?
Keeping in mind that midterm voters skew older/Republican in any case.
"We lost this election eight years ago," concludes Michael Slaby, the
campaign's chief technology officer. "Our party became a national movement
focused on general elections, and we lost touch with nonurban, noncoastal
communities. There is a straight line between our failure to address the
culture and systemic failures of Washington and this election result."
The question of why-why the president and his team failed to activate
the most powerful political weapon in their arsenal.
Obama's army was eager to be put to work. Of the 550,000 people who
responded to the survey, 86 percent said they wanted to help Obama pass
legislation through grassroots support; 68 percent wanted to help elect state
and local candidates who shared his vision. Most impressive of all, more than
50,000 said they personally wanted to run for elected office.
But they never got that chance. In late December, Plouffe and a small
group of senior staffers finally made the call, which was endorsed by Obama.
The entire campaign machine, renamed Organizing for America, would be folded
into the DNC, where it would operate as a fully controlled subsidiary of the
Democratic Party.
Instead of calling on supporters to launch a voter registration drive or
build a network of small donors or back state and local candidates, OFA
deployed the campaign's vast email list to hawk coffee mugs and generate
thank-you notes to Democratic members of Congress who backed Obama's
initiatives.
Republicans, on the other hand, wasted no time in building a grassroots
machine of their own-one that proved capable of blocking Obama at almost every
turn. Within weeks of his inauguration, conservative activists began calling
for local "tea parties" to oppose the president's plan to help foreclosed
homeowners.
https://newrepublic.com/article/140245/obamas-lost-army-inside-fall-grassroots-machine
Thomas Frank: "The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic
complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that
tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing
really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people
at Goldman. The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and
no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these
Democrats are the "last thing standing" between us and the end of the world. It
is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has
failed on its own terms of electability."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/donald-trump-white-house-hillary-clinton-liberals
And so it goes, unless. The ruling class, the professional class D&R, the
upper 10%, those who make more than $150 thousand, win no matter who sits in
the Oval Office or controls all 3 branches, both look down on their respective
bases, the deplorables. Taking a page from the TParty to fight harder, tougher,
longer, louder and make Perez move left.
"The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no
role to play "
And so far, they're right. At least, very few are going there. A lot are
staying home, but that doesn't accomplish much.
Take heart. One of my friends is a long-time progressive Democrat. She ran
as a Clean Elections candidate and was elected to the Arizona legislature last
November. She has never held office before.
Agree, Big River Bandido. She should share with progressive
Democratic primary challengers to those sorry Democrats only. Not that
anyone at the DNC would ever listen anyway.
Kudos to your friend! I think progressives fighting for places in the
state legislatures has to be our first step, especially with the
census/redistricting looming
Where do you live? 2/3'rds of the states have Republican governors and
66-70 percent Republican state legislatures. They have already been
gerrymandered and are very likely to remain this way for AT LEAST a
generation.
I live in Ohio. Democrat state legislators can do absolutely nothing.
Not that this particularly bothers them. They collect their $60,000
salaries - not bad for a VERY part-time position– regardless.
I'm guessing that you failed to mention - in addition to salary -
per diem, plus payments into the state retirement system? I'm guessing
that $60,000 is only the top part of the iceberg; best to look under
the waterline to get the whole picture?
They had Howard Dean, and a script for 50 state success and tossed it.
Yeah, I guess they at least should hold Perez's feet to the fire to make
him go lefty populist on the ground, if he doesn't, toss him and fight
them.
Brand New Congress just got out their fundraising email in response to the
election:
The DNC just elected a chair who is pro-TPP, against single-payer,
against tuition-free state universities and has no desire to transform our
economy in meaningful ways. A chair who thinks the status quo is ok. It's a
clear indicator that they're confident in their agenda, a confidence
exemplified in the words of Nancy Pelosi who believes that Democrats "don't
want a new direction".
Elect a Brand New Congress that works for all Americans.
We're running 400+ candidates in a single campaign to rebuild our
country.
Add Your Name
Join us if you believe it's time to reset our democracy.
Email
Please enter a valid email.
Zip
Please enter a valid zip code.
80% of Americans agree: Congress is broken. Both major parties have
proven time and time again that they are either unwilling or unable to
deliver results for the American people. But we have an alternative. We are
recruiting and running more than 400 outstanding candidates in a single,
unified, national campaign for Congress in 2018. Together, they will pass an
aggressive and practical plan to significantly increase wages, remove the
influence of big money from our government, and protect the rights of all
Americans. Let's elect a Brand New Congress that will get the job done.
This list of sponsors DOESN'T:
Washington Post
Wall Street Journal
Wired
The Huffington Post
The Daily Beast
Slate
The Nation
The Frisky
Salon
Bustle
Boing Boing
Roll Call
Well I for one am relieved he's the new chair. I won't have to think there
might be hope and change in the corp. owned demodog party. I'll celebrate with
a glass of whine later.
Arizona Slim, Thanks for the good news in AZ. It was tried in my part of
Calli but dnc did everything they good to elect repug instead of a real
progressive.
In order for real representative government to appear on the American scene,
two things have to happen:
1. Corporations have to be declared non-persons.
2. Money is declared not equal to speech.
Why do we have the situation we have now?
Two decisions by the Supreme Court. Santa Clara vs Southern Pacific RR and
Buckley vs. Valeo. So, who is the real power in our Government? The Judicial.
Thank you so much for this post!! I saw a video on the 1886 case in high
school and was disgusted. In passing time I forgot the specifics and have
been trying to locate that decision since. I kept thinking it was in the
1920s/30s
I'd add No. 3: Ranked preference voting. (Majority wins or run-offs do
not cut it.)
In this case, if choosing among 4 candidates, and I rank all 4 of them, my
first choice gets 4 points, my second choice gets 3 points, etc. If I only
rank 2 of them, my first choice gets 2 points, my second choice gets 1
point. If I only rank 1 person, they get 1 point.
Try this out on anything where you've got 3 or more options, in a group
of any size. It's amazing how much better the group consensus will be
reflected in the results.
You can vote your genuine preference without concern for "spoilers" or
dividing the opposition.
Seriously though, I kind of like this little game we play here, where we
act surprised or shocked or something at the Democratic Party's complete
lack of integrity. Like there was ever any question that 'they' might do the
right thing. I honestly don't know about you guys, but I decided a
long
time ago that the Democrats and Republicans were just two tentacles of the
same vampire squid or whatever, so.. why the outrage and/or disdain? cause
it's diverting I suppose.
The Democratic Party will never let the Republican Party go down. Haven't
we figured that out yet?
The only way to get rid of the Republican Party is to get rid of the
Democratic Party.
"He is clearly an anti-Semite and anti-Israel individual," pronounced Saban
about the African-American Muslim congressman, adding: "Keith Ellison would be
a disaster for the relationship between the Jewish community and the Democratic
Party."
"I'm a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel," he told the New York Times
in 2004 about himself
he attacked the ACLU for opposing Bush/Cheney civil liberties assaults and
said: "On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk."
We're not welcome anywhere it seems – and that has to be flippin'
ridiculous in a country of this size and diversity! Could there be a better
time for the Democratic Socialists to expand and come forth ? Cornel West at
the helm, to begin – perhaps persuading Bernie to join him.
From what I see already around the interwebs and comment sections, it
will be blamed on the lefty radicals who are fracturing the party by
resisting the borg. And Sanders. And Cornel West. Etc Etc
You know – it almost doesn't even matter. The Dems will get corporation
donations just in "case" they win. They really aren't terribly motivated.
It's like being a salesperson with no sales goals.
On another note – The Turks guy (Cent? can't remember his name) said that
it was time for a third party on his twitter account. Nina Turner "liked"
it. I found that a little hopeful.
The Democrats obviously can't wait for that constitutional convention by the
sadist wing of the Republican Party. The sooner it can no longer have any
loopholes that cause any interpretation outside of corporations rule, the
easier it will be for Democrats. No more worrying about doing good things for
those pesky people.
The United States already has third parties. There is no real need to start
another one. The Libertarian party is the radical antiauthoritarian center. The
Green Party ought to be adequate for progressive Democrats. There is also a
far-right christian theocrat Constitution Party.
I've voted forJill twice now (and contributed moderately). She seems
intelligent, well-spoken, progressive, passionate, everything we would
want a candidate to be and nothing. If there was EVER a year to have
broken through 5% sigh. So what's the problem?
The problem is that there's widespread election fraud. You could
see it in the Wisconsin and Michigan GE recounts and the Illinois
Democratic Party Recount. The reality is that we don't have any
trustworthy vote totals. Maybe Jill did a lot better (or maybe she
didn't), maybe Hillary actually beat Donald (or maybe she didn't),
maybe Bernie won the primary (okay, that one really isn't a maybe to
me since it's very clear that Hillary used tricks to move IA and NV
into her corner- which would have been fatal if she didn't, the CA,
NY, AZ, PR, and RI primary debacles, DNC collusion etc).
Here are two videos that really helped me understand that this
fraud is likely widespread:
Long video on the Illinois recount:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSNTauWPkTc&sns=em
–>The "good" part starts at minute 24. The underlying point becomes
clear really quickly if you want to just watch a small portion, but
the speaker who comes on around the hour mark is excellent.
Election Justice USA also had a great summary. There's a reason
many places in Europe still do manual, verifiable counting. Voting
security, even more than money in politics, is the biggest barrier to
having a legitimate Democracy. Unfortunately, that may be even more
difficult than money in politics, which at least could theoretically
be altered by Congress to cover the whole country at once.
What Carla said about the greens. Also, the Libertarians are basically
into neoliberalism. Theyre ok on social issues, but they aren't a real
answer either.
My hope is that the #Notmypresident millennials take the next steps from
Trump needs to be resisted and work for longer term gains and political
power by getting active in local politics/down ticket races and local
democratic party organizations to in effect bum rush the dems and make it
the party that it wants the country to be.
Love doesn't conquer all, Corporate lobbyists do. Organize for power, win
elections, work for change.
I think most people here are seeing what happened, but wrong about the
impact.
Head of DNC is not a good place to organize primary challenges, and that is
what is needed. DNC head is mostly just bag man for corporate money. Not that
much power but some visibility. Bernie guy gets in, and there are constant
questions about loyalty to the party and big tent and being fair to blue dogs.
And then questions of competence if not enough money is raised or not enough
elections won. No winning likely.
Losing suits us better. Establishment is against Progressives. Fine. The war
is on. Find primary challengers, and get them elected.
In my view, that has always been the only way forward.
Find primary challengers, even if they have no chance of winning. Even in
districts stacked against them turn money in politics into the wealthy's
biggest weakness. Make the ROI in elections too expensive to achieve.
I agree with you that losing this worthless race serves our long-term
interests better. This is war and clarity is always an advantage. Easier to
fight them from a clear outside position.
However, we have not the resources or the power base (within the Democrat
Party) to mount effective primary challenges. If that party is to be a
vehicle for change, we will have to take it away from them starting at the
lowest levels - local party offices - and gradually work our way up.
As we move up the chain, we purge all the deadwood.
At this point, perhaps progressives would have more luck joining the
Republican Party in hopes of "reform" or "changing the platform". They would
probably have more luck than with the Democrats. As for 2018 and 2020, the
congressional Republicans will have no incentive to defend congress or the
Presidency. They would rather have Democrats to blame things for than have to
deal with President Trump (whom they detest).
Einstein's definition of #Insanity immediately comes to mind.
We'll see what #BernieCrats, #DSA and others can do at the grassroots level.
Their (continued) #Resistance to the #corporatistDem structure is even more
important now.
That's just what Rep. DeFazio just said – even though he himself wins
by ridiculous margins in a "swing" district (the closest win for Hillary
inthe country, he said) by being a progressive's progressive.
I was a card-carrying member of DSA when it was DSOC! Long time ago. Time
to start paying dues again, even from the political wilderness in which I
find myself. Way past time, actually. The problem with waiting for the
Democrat Party to hit bottom is this: There is no bottom to this abyss.
As someone doing DSA organizing I'll say that we will be thrilled to
have you on board again. Interest is quite high among the Bernie youth,
so the seats are full but experience, generational diversity, and gas
money are in relatively short supply!
Perhaps from lack of organization on their part? After the election
my husband registered to join the DSA, and sent them money. Three
months later, no acknowledgement of any kind, not even a dumb
membership card. Not that the Democrats ever sent anything but
requests for cash, but we expected better.
It's OK. They let Ellison be play chairman. The Identities are pleased.
BTW: Perez was born in Buffalo, NY, and Wikipedia lists his nationality
as American. The WaPo headline is bullcrap, intended to distract readers
from the real issues, and promote the Clinton wing to Latin Americans, an
identity group that certainly would benefit more from the Sanders wing.
Bush's meltdown did give us a Black President - but after 8 years, not 4
years. During the election I too thought whichever candidate won was poised to
be a one-term President, but there's a big condition: there absolutely
must
be a compelling competing narrative, and a defined counter-platform. It doesn't
matter what calamity results from a Trump-led-monopoly-republican federal
government if they still dominate the narrative and the opposition is still
just "resisting" (or has an incoherent laundry list). It's overly-optimistic to
think the Rs will own bad outcomes, or that those in power ever necessarily do
(if that were so, neither Bush nor Obama would have been re-elected).
I'll hand it to the dems, I thought they'd string things out. I didn't think
they'd let it be this obvious, this quickly, that the counter force won't come
from the democrat party. None of us thought it would, but maybe we thought
they'd at least throw some dust in the air to try keep us guessing for a while.
The challenge for the Left remains organization and focus. The clarity
delivered by the democrat party is helpful. No need to debate reform, that's
been answered (at least for now). The democrat establishment has nothing to do
with the Left. It is not the opposition per say but might as well be (think of
it this way: an opponent would refute your work, try to tank or sabotage it;
the democrats invite you over to steal it, mess it up, fail, blame you, and
invite you over again, huffing that their own work is "essentially the same
anyway" but insisting that they be in charge).
It's time to own the Realignment. One part of that is making a clear break
from the democratic establishment in terms of agenda, priorities, solidarity,
identity. Not just a quibble among the like-minded; a divorce. We are only
serving its interests if we don't. Case in point, the linked article echoes the
common refrain that between Perez and Ellison "ideological differences are
few ". No, no, a thousand effing times no. That is wrong, and attempts to fit
in or make common cause with the dem establishment only validate the
self-serving Unity/Look Forward narrative whose purpose is obscure what's
really at issue and at stake.
And the corollary to cutting losses on the dem establishment is the second
part - building the realignment, which means finding and creating common cause
where it's been latent or non-existent. A compelling, competing narrative must
be a counterweight not just to Trump's blame-deflections, but to the drivel
spewing (at least as subtext) from the establishments of both parties. The key
is not to try make the Rs own the outcomes on their watch; it's to make the
Establishment own them, and to make Trump own that he
is
the
Establishment (or that he caters to it).
Everything else is secondary. Elections up and down the ballot (local, state
and federal) may force decisions on voting for a party, but which party
prevails is not important - it is incidental, relevant only if it serves the
cause, not vice versa. The Left needs to be clear on the realignment, stop
talking to and about parties, and take up common cause and concern where we can
find it. I have a feeling that the Left is less defined and determined than we
imagine, because we aren't really testing it yet. Illusions about the
democratic party are gone. And that's a good thing.
It doesn't matter what calamity results from a
Trump-led-monopoly-republican federal government if they still dominate
the narrative and the opposition is still just "resisting" (or has an
incoherent laundry list). It's overly-optimistic to think the Rs will own
bad outcomes, or that those in power ever necessarily do (if that were
so, neither Bush nor Obama would have been re-elected).
If Trump owns a narrative on a brick and mortar foundation of higher
unemployment in the battleground states, devastation of lives from another
financial meltdown (Bush had already stolen the second term prior to it),
devastation and death from a potential free market solution to health
care–"here's a voucher, go chose the best deal cause it's all about giving
you your freedom", and war that may end up being brought to the shores of
Western Europe and the United States killing a whole bunch more than 9/11,
it would be pretty difficult to come back and sell the medicine show elixir
a second time. Promising a whole lot and delivering less than zero, I don't
know if the "deplorables" will get fooled again by his fake populism when he
comes back for their votes in four years when they're still unemployed,
underemployed and in greater debt and or bankruptcy from increased medical
care costs. I'm not saying this as a affirmation of neoliberal democratic
people running for the presidency, but that a whole lot of nothing incumbent
running on a world of shit that he's created is vulnerable to a candidate
who may be a whole lot of nothing with less baggage.
And Trump would potentially be running on a bigger pile of poop that he's
added to the domestic and foreign fronts of Obama and Bush. O and B brought
us to the precipice of the cliff, but Trump incompetence GOP ideologue
arrogance can drive us off the cliff.
We may be pointing at different parts of a continuum - how bad things
are in four years relative to Trump promises, and why people believe
things are so bad. We are likely closest on how bad things could be - I
agree, the stuff Trump ran and won on is likely to be much, much worse -
but I think I'm less inclined to see that as handing him electoral defeat
in 2020. Of course it's always easier/better to be able to run on
something delivered. And less-than-zero can and by logic
should
tank a President. But the
why
is important - especially when the
electorate basically doesn't trust any of these clowns. No one really
expects anything from Washington, and is used to things getting worse. If
Trump can deflect and maintain his message - cast blame on various faces
of the establishment, the democrats, media, eventually even the
republicans - I don't think he's inevitably or even likely undone. I'm
not saying nothing will ever catch up with . just saying it's not
guaranteed. There are a lot of factors, but I think here's actually my
main thing: it depends less on "holding him to account" or pointing at
failures or making him own things, and more on advancing a coalition with
a compelling voice, coherent platform - and not about party. In the end,
pinning failures on Trump only succeeds if there's a concrete and
appealing answer to "compared to what." Trump just won against The
Establishment, and the classic establishment move is to point giddily at
failures and mis-steps, and say here's where you can donate, and thanks
for your vote. A successful opposition has to do better.
Is it too late to change my mind and support a Syrian no fly zone? I want
this country to fail. I want it to stop existing. I absolutely hate everything
about america. I want Both Clinton's and Obama's heads on a plate. If Bernie
doesn't announce he's creating a new party then I'll just be sitting around
thinking about the best way to undermine this shit hole of a country.
The Democratic Party no longer stands for anything at all (witness its
recent conversion to McCarthyism). Its actions are motivated by no purpose save
its leaders' self-enrichment.
A political party without a raison d'ˆtre is little more than a walking
corpse and there is nothing to be lost by leaving it.
Though sad about the outcome of the DNC chair race, I think PH is right, DNC
chair is probably just about raising the corporate $$. I'm sticking with the
Tip O'Neil strategy, "all politics is local."
I joined the D party in 2014, mostly because I thought I had to get involved
and help remove Scott W from the governor's mansion. What I saw was lethargic
and not very welcoming. Couldn't get anyone to train me on how to canvas. I
offered over and over to do data entry, web, social media.
In the summer of 2015, I got involved with a local issue and we WON. 8
people (no other Dems) and we stopped a bad deal the city was about to make. We
did petitions and spoke at council meetings. Wrote op eds, did radio
interviews, put up yard signs.
Through that I met an organizer from a progressive group and I told him that
I was thinking of running for local office. He introduced me to the bare facts
of how to run a campaign and put me in touch with another progressive group
that runs candidate training seminars. I went to one of those seminars. I was
listening to Bernie too:) His positive voice was a great inspiration. By the
end of 2015, I knew I would run for the county board. All our local races are
non-partisan and often uncontested. The incumbent would be running for her
third term.
The local election is held during the spring Presidential primary. I live in
Wisconsin. My area is completely red. The election I could best model from was
the 2012 and Rich Santoruim won my district. I had access to the VAN as well
and could see that Republicans dominated my district in this election. (It
voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012) I planned my campaign based completely on
meeting the voter at the door and listening. Turnout is usually pretty low,
30%. I figured 50 hrs at the doors would do it. Interestingly, almost every
person I talked with didn't even know who represented them on the county board.
It was surprisingly easy, the only stress was the heat of the Presidential
primary and how that would bring unpredictability to my race.
Happy news, I won. More Happy news, I got involved with recruiting and
helping people run for local office. We're at it right now. School board, city
council. This is where it begins and this is where the ball has been dropped in
Wisconsin. The Republican party has used the local offices very effectively to
build their bench. What the Dems didn't do was build the bench.
In Wisconsin, this is so easy because the vast majority of the local offices
are non-partisan. When someone asked me what party I was with, I would just
say, "this is a non-partisan race." That was the end of that part of the
conversation and we were on to something else. The other thing about the local
elections is that very few people actually run a campaign, so if you do, you
will win. Your name is the only name they will know.
I now have connected with other people in the state who are working on this
strategy. It is going to take a while, but we will build the bench and take
back the state. It isn't going to happen overnight.
I went to the first local Our Revolution meeting today. I was impressed. The
organizer had exactly the same thought – we are going to fill the county board
with progressives. Stuff is going to happen. We've got the people, that is what
we need locally, not $$.
If only the Democratic party could see, they need to train up and use their
people. Forget the big $$$.
This is an inspiring story. The "silver lining" in these times is that
people are taking their anger and disappointment and doing something about
it at an actionable, local level. I went to a local assemblyman's town hall
meeting yestesrday that had hundreds more attendees than were planned. The
natives are restless.
I, too, am in WI and running for city council. The only reason I'm
willing to do so is *because* the local offices are nonpartisan – I am quite
disillusioned with national politics and both parties. At least locally some
good can be done. DC is irredeemable.
I will likely be using the WI open primary to vote for whichever
candidate the DNC opposes, not that it will matter. If nothing else, I will
feel better.
Taking over the dem party, starting with local races, will be a very long
struggle. Generations. Particularly considering candidates trying for dem nom
will be attacked by corp dems tooth and nail.
The greens are very disorganized. So What? Take them over and organize them.
This is doable, and with somebody like Bernie leading the charge you could pull
in half the dem party plus indies and win elections in 2018 doesn't take that
much support to win elections in three way races, look at GB.
and then be viable for pres in 2018.
Bernie has to give up on dems if he wants to move the needle. Perez win
might just be that extra middle finger that gets him off the dime.
The forces of capital own both parties in a two party system. They will
never give up either of them. Socialists, Social Democrats, Democratic
Socialists, even progressive liberals and .must look elsewhere. Anything else
is fruitless.
St. Bernard had his chance. He blew it. Time to move on from him and MoveOn
and the like.
And so the DNC has learned nothing from the past election cycle and the
repudiation of neoliberalism here and abroad. Confirms my decision to leave the
party.
Observations from the western border of the Granite State:
I decided to attend a local democrat meeting because the candidate I
supported in the D primary for governor (Steve Marchand – he lost) was the
keynote speaker. When I received my copy of Indivisible, and saw that one of
the working groups for the night was focusing on "Fake News," I almost decided
to stay home.
But I didn't. Steve was great. He, counter to the message of "we must play
defense; we cannot offer positive alternatives," in Indivisible, repeatedly
told us that "we cannot beat something with nothing." He spoke extensively
about local organizing, and about appealing to all voters on the issues. He got
a very enthusiastic response from the 100 or so people who turned out for the
meeting. Our governor has a two year term, and while Steve said that he was not
running for anything at the moment, he's clearly laying the ground for a 2018
run. He's getting out in front of every local Dem group, and doing meet and
greets all over the state. Good for him.
We have a Berniecrat, Josh Adjutant, running for state party chair. He may
not win, but he too, is out meeting with groups all over the state and getting
his name out there. He narrowly lost a bid for state rep in a deeply republican
district to a Free Stater, who hasn't shown up for a single vote since being
elected. Last week the Free Stater resigned, and now there will be a special
election. Josh is running again. He's likely to win this time.
After hearing that Perez won the DNC chair, my knee jerk reaction was to say
the hell with it. However there are no viable third party options here, and the
people who voted for Perez all come from the state party.
What I noticed among our Dem group, was a real desire to work on issues and
develop a positive counter message.
So I'm going to get more involved and fight from within. I joined the "fake
news" group, pushed to focus on policy, and volunteered to chair the group
going forward.
Great report, Jen. That's encouraging. Thanks for what you are doing.
We can support good individual Democrats and office holders and good
primary candidates, but with absolutely illusions about sorry sorry party
and its resolute determination to continue hippie punching.
Makes me sick when they go on about Russians and conflict of interest and
ignore things that affect everyone's lives, and that's what they plan to do.
As I have been saying for years now, the
ONLY
purpose of the
Democratic Party today is to crush its own left wing. Denying this at this
point is a fool's errand.
Given this, how can any member of this same left ever justify another vote
for any candidate this Democratic Party sponsors? You do not overcome such
hostility by electing its representatives.
Does that mean you has to vote for people like Donald Trump? Unfortunately,
it does. If you don't, you are not playing at the same level they are, and they
will beat you until the cows come home. These are the people who do not cede
power. These are the people it must be taken from.
"What all people have to realize," said Stuart Appelbaum, a labor leader
from New York and Perez supporter who brought the chair process to its end
Saturday afternoon by calling for the results to be accepted by acclamation,
"is the real form of resistance is voting."
Apparently it was a 3-minute video but the transcript only took about 15 seconds to read. The
actual text is a void, there's nothing said of substance. Probably this is more about the timing
and venue of the release, which would indicate it's just a routine warning to her faction at the
DNC meeting tomorrow. No matter who wins tomorrow, the Clintons will still control all
institutional fundraising. Having one of their own installed (yet again) as chair would simply
make that job easier for them.
Nice to see Clinton hijacking #TheResistance branding, the vile Neera
Tanden having paved the way.
I may seem overly foily on Democrat co-opting, but let's remember that
the Democrats decapitated #BlackLivesMatter effortlessly. A couple of TFA
celebrity leaders - DeRay is now openly hawking product on his Twitter feed
- and boom, done. And that was a movement driven by cops whacking black
people with impunity; a good ceal of grassroots power, there. Which was not,
of course, addressed.
The Democrat establishment is perhaps too overly adapted - rather like
the the panda, which can digest the shoots of certain bamboos - to its
ecological niche of retain power within the Party. But at that, they are
superb. Two lines of defense against Ellison with Perez and (sp) Buttegeig.
That's cute, though perhaps not so cute as a panda.
"... In much the same way Blair's catastrophic prime ministerial terms as leader of the UK's mainstream 'Left' will be justifiably viewed unkindly through the lens of history, so too will corporate place man Obama's two abject 'Democratic' presidencies (although to be fair it was Billy boy who saw $ signs in his eyes and who really first started the rot proper for the Democrats.) ..."
"... Listen, Liberals ..."
"... Strangers in Their Own Land ..."
"... I live in a district shaped like a banana ..."
"... "If half of the Super Delegates had voted for the Sanders wing at the convention, wouldn't Sanders have been the Dem candidate?" ..."
Do we need any further proof that the Democratic Party is more interested in
reconciling with the corporate elite than with its populist base? Its core
party leadership is against populist ideas. Liberalism of the rich having
failed the middle and working classes, fails on its own terms of electability.
It helped create today's shockingly disillusioned and sullen public.
Did the Charlie Brown left really believe that this time that Lucy wouldn't
pull the football away and they wouldn't land on their kiesters? But the
Democratic Party always pulls the ball away. It's their nature.
"The crucial tasks for a committed left in the United States now are to
admit that no politically effective force exists and to begin trying to create
one. This is a long-term effort, and one that requires grounding in a vibrant
labor movement. Labor may be weak or in decline, but that means aiding in its
rebuilding is the most serious task for the American left. Pretending some
other option exists is worse than useless. There are no magical interventions,
shortcuts, or technical fixes. We need to reject the fantasy that some spark
will ignite the People to move as a mass. We must create a constituency for a
left program - and that cannot occur via MSNBC or blog posts or the New York
Times. It requires painstaking organization and building relationships with
people outside the Beltway and comfortable leftist groves. Finally, admitting
our absolute impotence can be politically liberating; acknowledging that as a
left we have no influence on who gets nominated or elected, or what they do in
office, should reduce the frenzied self-delusion that rivets attention to the
quadrennial, biennial, and now seemingly permanent horse races. It is long past
time for us to begin again to approach leftist critique and strategy by
determining what our social and governmental priorities should be and focusing
our attention on building the kind of popular movement capable of realizing
that vision." – Adolph Reed Jr., "Nothing Left, The long, slow surrender of
American liberals," Harper's Magazine, March 2014 issue
Don't waste any time pissing and moaning - organize!
It is time to revisit "Fighting Bob" LaFollette's Wisconsin tactics of the
early 1900s.
If the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that we must become its
soul.
"There never was a higher call to greater service than in this protracted
fight for social justice." – Robert M. La Follette Sr.
There is a liberal propaganda state of the 10%. It is dogmatic and thus
unfalsifiable.
Arguing with them is like arguing atheism to a fundamentalist. They cannot
hear arguments that violate the structure of their religion. They simply do not
parse.
I must say I really appreciated your analogy of neoliberalism and
religion.
To extend it, if I may, religions cannot exist and persist without faith
ie a conviction without the need for proof, or worse sometimes despite
overwhelming personal or widespread evidence to the contrary.
Most established religions, unsurprisingly are rigidly hierarchical,
controlling and equally require a self-serving, venal priesthood to act as
conduits to interpret and explain (away?) the finer points, gross injustices
and glaring contradictions thrown up by the current 'natural order' and
structures it demands and imposes on its potentially questioning or
waivering followers.
The 'religion's' arcane nature is maintained at all costs, and this is
facilitated by a deliberately impenetrable jargon (to a credulous, often
fearful laity whom mostly endure its harshest edicts), and all tied together
by an over arching fallacious narrative predicated on fear that demands
unconditional obedience and compliance or facing severe, lasting
consequences for apostacy.
In much the same way Blair's catastrophic prime ministerial terms as leader
of the UK's mainstream 'Left' will be justifiably viewed unkindly through the
lens of history, so too will corporate place man Obama's two abject
'Democratic' presidencies (although to be fair it was Billy boy who saw $ signs
in his eyes and who really first started the rot proper for the Democrats.)
Let's be realistic, really successful politicians are rarely shrinking
violets, and are mostly to a man or woman sociopathic narcissists, but it is
only in the modern age that these apparently credible, flag of convenience,
self-serving, ideologically bereft personalities not only have the power to
lead and dominate these long-established political parties during their
relatively brief tenure, it appears they now also have the power to profoundly
undermine or even possibly destroy them in the longer term.
Is it just a shame or coincidence that these once proud and powerful parties
of waning influence happen to traditionally represent the interests of working
people I wonder?
What a frustrating situation. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the
corporate Democrats really do have a death wish. I agree with many comments
that it is incredibly destructive and stupid to double down on their losing
strategies instead of embracing the Sanders wing of the party. I partly agree
w/ Glenn Greenwald that electing Ellison would have been an easy way to welcome
in the Sanders wing, but unlike him, I'm not sure the Dem chair really is just
a symbolic position. It certainly is symbolic–and the corporate Dems have
chosen potent (and loathesome) symbols in Debbie W-S and Donna B. But I
disagree w/ Greenwald that it is only symbolic. I think the position does
matter in many ways. In any case, in this election which came to be seen by
Dems as a battle for control over the direction of the party, it is clear now
who runs the show and is determined to continue running the show: the corporate
shills of the Clinton/Obama Dems.
But I also see this as a failure of Ellison and the progressives. We have to
play hardball if we're going to win. Ellison had the endorsement of many Dem
stalwarts; he has a relatively strong record for a Democrat; emboldened with
party authority, I believe he could have done a lot; and yes, he would have had
great symbolic value. But he did not make a strong case for his leadership, as
far as I can tell. He didn't declare loudly and clearly why the Dems have been
losing and make a powerful case for why, now, the Dems need desperately to
change. Instead he was having dinner with Perez, cutting side deals, and making
a great effort to smile and please everyone. Haim Saban and the corporate Dems
came after him with hateful islamophobic slanders; Ellison stepped back, spoke
softly, praised Israel, and vowed to work closely with corporate Dems. And he
still lost. These conciliatory positions will not cut it. Unless and until
there's a vigorous position articulated within the party on the desperate need
for drastic changes, we'll lose.
One reason why this is so frustrating is that across the country, I believe
the landscape looks very promising for a progressive agenda–at least as
progressive, or more so, than what Sanders articulated. The energy is there,
and growing. But we still lack the organization. Where will it come from? Not
from the Greens, I'm afraid. As much as I agree with Stein and the Greens
positions on many issues, the Greens have over the decades proven that this is
not a party interested in building grassroots power. For that you need broad
and sustained efforts over time at the level of school boards and city
councils, building toward winning candidates to positions at the county level,
and mayors, and state representatives, and so on. You have to build a name for
yourself and prove through smaller campaigns what you stand for and that you
can win victories for your voters. And voters need to feel that it is their
party, our party. The Greens have not done any of this. It's not enough to just
have good ideas or be able to win a policy debate.
There's the Working Families Party, which has done some of this organizing
and has some victories. But it's still woefully short of what is necessary. But
I believe there's a lot of talent and potential on the left–and a growing and
restless energy now under Trump. We have to be strong and clear that this
corporate Dem program is unacceptable. We need to field local candidates on
issues people care about, from city banking and municipally owned power and IT,
to police violence, more community control in schools, and so on. Whether the
people carrying out these potentially popular programs are Dems, Greens,
Working FP or Socialists, matters less, it seems to me. But if people are
convinced that only a reinvigorated Dem Party will be able to do it, then there
needs to be a hostile takeover. The Clintonites & the Obama people, Haim Saban
and their ilk: they're not our friends and must be denounced and opposed. These
people are at best wishy-washy and mealy-mouthed when it comes to advocating
for us; they continue to compromise rightward and adopt unpopular conservative
agendas and to kick us in the teeth. Fuck them. We must articulate a positive,
winnable agenda around issues we care about.
See the comment above about local clubs. A good place to start.
Change is not going to come top down, even if that sounds like the
easiest way. Too much ego and money invested in the old ways.
Blue Dogs are confident Progressives cannot win in rural states. We must
prove them wrong.
Blue Dogs do not believe we can find credible primary challengers. They
think we are just a bunch of whining idealists. We must prove them wrong -
not on blogs - at the polls.
It is not only clubs. It's the party structure itself at the municipal
and county level, which is generally occupied by a combination of
well-meaning 10% liberals, eager corporate acolytes who see politics as a
path of personal advancement but find the Republican social positions
icky and whoever just shows up.
In many places it's mostly the latter. So, form your own club, yes,
and go to local party meetings, yes, but more than anything else, work.
Organize. Knock on your neighbor's door, listen to them and talk with
them. Then do that again, and again, and again. Recruit your friends and
colleagues to do the same. When the moment is right, get someone whose
values you really trust to run for office, and if there's resistance from
the existing party apparatus, well, run a contested primary. The people
who do that work - registering, persuading and turning out voters, can
take over the local structure of a party and win from the left.
And btw, if you're struggling to persuade others, don't give up. Get
your egalitarian club together, and instead of complaining about how
others don't get it, role play conversations with different types of
voters, put your beer down, and go back out on the doors.
"Blue Dogs are confident Progressives cannot win in rural states. We
must prove them wrong."
That's just been done, in Texas, of all places. Local organizing,
person to person contact, and no TV money led to success. The exact
opposite of HRC's campaign, of course.
American citizens are at the bottom of the bucket; shut up, stay poor, and
forget the "myth" of a middle class.
These are some very simple truths, which Usian's seem loathe to accept or
understand.
The evidence is clear with almost every comment offering nonsense solutions;
year after precious year; ad infinitum
If there is a solution; I have no idea what that would be. But knowing and
understanding the reality on the ground, gives a firm place to stand.
It's a place to start
There is no better sign of the contempt that the Democratic leadership has
for its constituents t
han the way Donna Edwards was treated in the primary for the open Senate seat
from Maryland.
Maryland being Maryland, whoever won the Democrat primary was going to win the
general.
The two leading candidates were Chris van Hollen, a slick fundraiser
high in Pelosi's train wreck House leadership,
and Donna Edwards, an African-American who was one of the most progressive
House members.
Almost the entire Dem power structure (and, of course, the WaPo) went after
Edwards guns blazing.
Oddly, Edwards critics were never accused of sexism or racism by Clinton
supporters. Weird.
The DNC is important, but only part of the story. The DSCC and DCCC have
been horror shows for years,
led by incompetent clowns, corporate fronts, or (in the case of Jon Tester, who
ran the DSCC this past cycle),
sock puppets for people like Schumer.
And yet it seems to be impossible to discuss this stuff rationally with many
Democrats.
Far easier for them to blame the party's woes on BernieBros.
Jeepers, you don't think some YOOJ, classy K Street "social networking
advocacy solutions" firm will now be tasked to slap together a grassroots,
Cumbaya warbling Democratic Socialist lemming forking oh, that's right been
there, dun did that? We can't mock Trump's craven churls, spoon-fed C & K
Street's große Lüge without turning the selfie-cam around on our geriatric
children's crusade, awaiting some canny carny barker messiah?
Ha! I lost a good friend because I told him in November 2015 that if it
comes down to Hillary Clinton v. Donald Trump, she will lose the state-by-state
contest while winning the popular vote, notwithstanding polls to the contrary.
I didn't let up on that obviously correct assessment through all of 2016, and
he finally told me my intellectual arguments rank down there with some of his
fundamentalist relatives. Another was still predicting a Hillary landslide
until 10:00 pm EST on Election Night. She is big on the "Stupid Trump Voters"
meme, while blaming "me" for the outcome. Everyone needs to face the truth. The
national Democrats only care about their membership in the Establishment, even
if they are relegated to "inconsequential" as they are overtaken by events due
to their abject fecklessness.
So be it. From 1974-2008 I voted for the Democrat as the "Left Wing of the
Possible," in Michael Harrington's phrase, and for at least 20 years too long.
Never again. As my brief colloquy here with a reader last night concluded, it's
time to rejoin DSA as an elder and raise even more hell with the "kids"!
I will continue to evaluate candidates on their merits, not their party
affiliation. I can't stop donating to the party organization, since I did
that years ago, but I can certainly tell it where to get off, whether in
phone calls or using its reply-paid envelopes. I realize what travels in
those may never be read by anyone but a data-entry clerk, if indeed they
bother to enter the data, which I've always doubted.
Well, I have to say that the volume of DNC et al. mail I receive has
fallen to a trickle since I spent the past year returning their pre-paid
donation envelopes with nasty comments. The pleading e-mails are gone as
well. So
someone
is entering data.
If a Hillary or Obama supporter has an open mind (yes, a few of them do
have open minds - a Hillary supporter in my family admitted to me that
Bernie would have been a better choice), these two articles can help them to
understand what's been happening.
Vatch: Let me try this again; first reply disappeared Beginning in
early 2016 I tried to convince my liberal friends with facts such as
those in your links, with no success whatsoever. Most of them stick to
the "Stupid Trump Voter" meme, even when confronted with the work of
Thomas Frank in
Listen, Liberals
and Ellie Russell Hochschild in
Strangers in Their Own Land
, which perfectly describes my many
cousins in Louisiana, not one of whom is stupid to my knowledge.
Different, yes, and for damn good reasons. Stupid, no. You can't be
stupid and survive on an offshore oil rig. My particular liberals go no
deeper than Rachel Maddow, whose Stanford-Oxford/Rhodes Scholar pedigree
is all the authority they need. It goes without saying that
Wellesley-Yale was/is just as authoritative, now and forevermore. Their
epistemic closure/confirmation bias is simply the opposite side of the
same coin the Tea Party or Alt-Right uses to explain markets or climate
change or liberal fascism. As the president would say, "Sad!"
Well, you tried. As Yves pointed out in her introduction, there are
aspects of cultish thought processes here.
Of course the Obots and Hillaristas aren't the only cult members.
Limbaugh's ditto-heads. some of the tea-partiers, and some of Trump's
more enthusiastic supporters also fit that mold. I don't like to say
this, but some of Bernie's supporters probably also qualify. Open
mindedness can require a lot of effort.
I became a more active commenter on PoliticalWire during the primary season
and was subject to considerable vitriol due to my lack of enthusiasm for HRC,
which only increased in amount after the election when I refused to vote for
her (going 3rd party instead). I hung on for a little while, trying to make my
points re where I thought the country needed to go, but have simply stopped
participating in the discussions as I realized that the system has to run its
course and I am not going to be able to change that. And slamming one's head
against a brick wall repeatedly does begin to hurt after a while. I think I'll
just use my vote to support those I policies I think are good, or at the very
least to block any candidates supported by the establishment. It isn't much,
but it is something.
I used was a regular reader of Kevin Drum for probably 10 years or so,
back to the CalPundit days. The commentariat there became really hostile to
any outside ideas as the primary wore on. The Closure is now complete,
although some of the the really hostile commenters have disappeared (their
David Brock paychecks stopped, I suppose) but still reality can't come into
play. Even Drum himself was changing weekly about the loss (It's BernieBros!
It's Comey! NO, it's the Russians! NO Wait, it's Comey)
Sad, he's done great work on lead and violent crime. I check in there
once in a while just to take the temperature of the Delusion of the
TenPercenters.
Self reflection still hasn't penetrated for any of the real reasons for
Trump
A Paul Street quote from his excellent piece in CounterPunch entitled,
'Liberal Hypocrisy, "Late-Shaming," and Russia-Blaming in the Age of Trump,'
should serve as an adequate riposte to the introspection and self-criticism
averse Mr Doe,
'Arrogant liberals' partisan hypocrisy, overlaid with heavy doses of
bourgeois identity politics and professional-class contempt for working class
whites, is no tiny part of how and why the Democrats have handed all three
branches of the federal government along with most state governments and the
white working class vote to the ever more radically reactionary,
white-nationalist Republican Party. Ordinary people can smell the rank
two-facedness of it all, believe it or not. They want nothing to do with snotty
know-it-all liberals who give dismal dollar Dems a pass on policies liberals
only seem capable of denouncing when they are enacted by nasty Republicans.
Contrary to my online rant, much of the liberal Democratic campus-town crowd
seems to feel if anything validated – yes, validated. of all things – by the
awfulness of Herr Trump. It exhibits no capacity for shame or self-criticism,
even in the wake of their politics having collapsed at the presidential,
Congressional, and state levels.'
"much of the liberal Democratic campus-town crowd seems to feel if
anything validated – yes, validated. of all things – by the awfulness of
Herr Trump."
I've noticed the same. My guess is that, imo, the Dem estab has spent
years teaching it's more left-ish base to accept losing – veal pen, 'f*cking
hippies', Dem estab suggest marching for a cause then fail to support cause,
march to show numbers and get nothing, elect Dem full control in 2008 and
lose single-payer, end of Iraq war, roll back Bush tax cuts, renegotiate
Nafta, etc. Lucy and the football. The left-ish part of the party has been
groomed over 30 years to accept losing its fights. When Trump wins it just
confirms "the way things are." No introspection required since it confirms
the trained outlook. imo.
This opinion masquerading as news appeared in The Sun:
Both Perez and his leading opponent, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, had
rejected the left-versus-centrist narrative that developed around the race,
and close observers agreed it was overblown.
People often have an emotional commitment to their candidate. Upon losing,
all Hillary supporters will not go "oh well." Many will be upset.
Better to focus on issues going forward.
Also, if you want to build a majority party, probably best not to devote ALL
your energy to screaming what clueless assholes most ordinary Americans are.
Most ordinary Americans do not agree with commenters here. One reason Blue Dogs
are so willing to ignore you.
You can come up with lots of reasons. There are lots of reasons. But bottom
line is that you not only have to be right; you have to convince.
And no, collapse of the world will not convince. It may make you feel like
there is proof you were right, but that is a hollow victory.
We have to win elections. To do that, we need a generous and positive
message. And we need the votes of many Democrats that will not agree with you
on some things - perhaps many things.
It can be done. It will be difficult. But it can be done.
Most people with ridiculous political ideas are nice people. There are
positive appeals that will work over time.
It is amazing how many people are still incapable of acknowledging how bad a
candidate HRC was and how far they reach to come up with other reasons for her
loss. I grew up in Midwest and have many friends and family who voted for Trump
not because they liked him but because they found Clinton even more unappealing
and even less trustworthy.
They looked at how the Clintons made tens of millions of dollars, Bill
Clinton's decades of predatory behavior towards women, the hubris, lack of
responsibility and poor decision making related to the Email issues and HRC's
unwillingness to even minimally tend to her health and physically prepare for
the months of campaigning. Her candidacy was based on years of amassing money
and power and entitlement. Other than the potential to elect the first female
president, there was absolutely nothing about HRC that was inherently
appealing.
It was an extraordinary challenge to field a candidate even more unappealing
than Trump to millions of swing voters, but the Democrats managed to do it. The
Clintons are finished, over and have tarnished themselves for history. Anyone
who could even imagine a 2020 HRC candidacy is delusional.
Pretty much everything you claim drives people away from Clinton applies
just as well to Trump. Look at how Trump made millions of dollars: sticking
investors with losses, tax law arbitrage, and above all inheriting then
failing to keep up with major equity indexes. Look at his hubris, and
decades of predatory behavior towards women, e.g. behaviors related to the
pageant he finances. Look at his history of poor decision making in business
resulting in numerous bankruptcies. One thing is true, he did make deals
that were good for himself: even as business ventures collapsed and other
investors lost money, Trump personally usually had very limited losses. To
my mind that's exactly the wrong kind of behavior we want for a president
though.
I readily agree that HRC ran a flawed campaign with little to draw
undecided voters, but even so there's a deep Clinton hatred in this country
I've never understood. A large fraction of the population appears to view
both Bill and Hillary as the coming of the anti-christ, for no good reason.
That is, the Clintons seem to be pretty much garden-variety politicians with
all the usual skeletons in the closet, but nothing that seems to stand out
from the rest of the Washington ilk. If the hatred came from leftists
betrayal could explain it, but most Clinton-haters seem to be deeply
conservative. Maybe I was too young during the WJC years to understand the
source.
Gonna beat a belabored dead horse: "Superpredators" + "bring them to heel" +
a campaign devoted to the identity politics of undocumented migration and not
the plight of lower-class whites and African-Americans.
African-Americans have Facebook accounts and access to Youtube.
The 30,000-feet pundits glossed it and declared everything A-OK over but
that 1996 archive footage left a viscerally bitter taste at street level.
"it's remarkable to see how childish and self-destructive the posture of
the orthodox Dem backers is. It isn't just the vitriol, self-righteousness, and
authoritarianism, as if they have the authority to dictate rules and those who
fail to comply can and must be beaten into line.
Sounds kinda like a cult.
I've run into this. My response is a blank stare followed by a vocally flat
"oh" to whatever nonsense I'm hearing. I have the same response to very young
children who are trying to tell me something. Although, with little children I
try to smile and stay engaged.
adding:
per Jeff – "It seems that my friends, my friends' friends, and I are
exclusively to blame for the Trump Presidency and the Republican takeover of
government."
Hillary was wooing the suburban GOP voters, not the working class
industrial belt voters. Really, it's the suburban GOP voters' fault Trump
won. /s
I appreciate two posts on this subject, which given the presumed
insignificance and technocratic nature of the position (!), aroused a lot of
ire on both sides of the Demo divide. (Anyone interested in real ire can just
head over to LGM, where iirc four threads and about 2,000 comments have now
been devoted to this topic of "nothing to see here, let's move on").
What is left to say, I wonder? What's the way forward for progressives who
are genuinely interested in supporting possibly-radical new approaches to
addressing economic inequality?
It occurred to me while reading the comments on this and the previous post
that perhaps after all, it's not that ways forward are unknown to the legacy
party members, but that they're unacceptable, because they would genuinely
lessen the gap between rich-poor.
If so (and I'm starting to feel that this is the case), then working within
the party could be quite difficult, although the arguments against 3rd party
start-ups are compelling. There was a great quote from Bill Domhoff on this
subject upthread with a powerful argument for continuing to work within the
existing structures.
Apropos of Domhoff, I was thinking that one way might be to continue to work
within the party, but to distinguish the progressive wing clearly, perhaps with
a new name – I like Domhoff's Egalitarian Democratic Party, it sort of reminded
me of Minnesota's DFL (Democratic Farmer Labor) party. As others have noted on
both threads, this would need to be purely grass-roots, local-to-state level
work, and as Domhoff wisely notes, candidates need to be identified and
encouraged to run for, well, everything. They would need to caucus with the
Dems at the state level, but eventually could force Dems, if they gain
sufficient numbers, to shift their positions on economic issues, thereby
creating momentum.
These past few days, I've most enjoyed reading comments from people who are
getting involved at the local level – that's so heartening. And also, I've
watched a good number of Town Hall meetings – the crowds are also heartening,
even if I wouldn't always have chosen the issues individual constituents
addressed. This massive awakening and interest in political life across the
country – I want to believe something positive will come of it.
I kind of wonder if a "Working Democrats" title would have a shot at
catching on, coupled with a heavy focus on strong, universal economic
policies: Medicare for All, $15 minimum wage, some kind of student loan debt
forgiveness, Glass-Steagall reinstatement, a constitutional amendment
removing corporate personhood.
Hell, couldn't that seriously catch on in today's environment?
Not to be that guy, but the problem is the perception the Democratic
Party cares about those things and nostalgia.
The black guy with the Muslim sounding name became President while
promising higher taxes, fair trade, and universal healthcare (perception
matters) while running against a war crazy veteran and a war crazy
lunatic who claim so to have dodged bullets.
I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that the problem with such a
move is it would be too easily co-opted due in part to too many people
thinking the Democrats actually stand for these policies, despite the
fact that the majority of them and the party apparatus actively works
to undermine any movement in these directions?
Fair point if so. I think any such work via a faction within the
party, so to speak, would have to make itself clear to those who have
lost faith in the Democratic Party by taking active stances against
the establishment and exhibiting some level of hostility toward a good
faction of Democrats.
I would be all for a third party coalescence, but I'm sympathetic
toward the idea that third parties simply don't get traction in our
political system. So I lean a bit more toward an attempted hostile
takeover of the Democratic Party. On the other hand, party's die; it
may be that a third party route could work as a replacement for the
Democrats once they die from actively abusing and thus hemorrhaging
their base.
Alternatively, both approaches could work. A wing of the party
actively hostile toward the establishment could jump ship to a third
party if the Democrats were dying, joining forces to establish the
replacement party. Or the vice versa could happen; if a progressive
wing appeared to truly be winning and taking control of the Democrats,
a sympathetic third party movement could jump in for the final push to
clean house and reinvent the party from scratch.
I think it still comes back to the need for active movements and
organizing around clear policies and principles, then taking the
opportunity to gain nationwide traction whenever and however it
presents itself. Personally, I just wish I had a clearer idea of where
such efforts on my part would be best focused. (It's somewhat
complicated by being in Portland, Oregon and having some decent Dems
here, though there's still a lot of terrible ones and even the good
ones I'm still wary of.)
The Wall Street/establishment wing of the party has clearly learned nothing
from the debacle of the last election and is clearly unwilling to learn. Sadly
the same seems to be true for the "progressive" wing of the party – i.e.
WheresOurTeddy has it exactly right IMHO but the "left" still won't abandon the
dead hulk of FDR's party – which has rejected everything it formerly stood for
– if the calls for "unity" from Ellison and others are any indication.
I honestly don't see how things will truly get better, except with a lot
of people suffering or dying. It seems that we're in this desperate
last-gasp phase of trying to work a system that's supposed to be just, but
hasn't been for decades. My entire life.
On Friday I witnessed the NJ Pinelands Commission vote for a 15 mile
pipeline that should never have been approved. It's substantilaly for profit
and export. They voted while 800 people were screaming their opposition,
after five years of fierce opposition. Literally tallied the votes during
the screaming. This is the commission whose mission is to "preserve,
protect, and enhance the natural and cultural resources of the Pinelands
National Reserve." It was approved by a 9-5 vote. That's how far Governor
Christie and big money has gamed the system.
Billionaires get to throw hired hands in between us and them (like
politicians and police and receptionists and PR staff everyone's just "doing
their job!" we are "rude" if we fight them because they have nothing to do
with it!), we have to risk our bodies and time directly. We have to organize
masses of people with hardly any resources and a diminishing internet, they
write a check and get hired professionals with access to do their bidding as
they sit in their comfy third homes. They write the procedures and laws, we
get to yell and scream for ten minutes, then our voices tire and their
decisions get rammed through anyway.
Oh, and they had a public comment AFTER the vote, which was in the agenda
not as "vote" but "approve with conditions."
What about us in Michigan? We have been manipulated and mentally changed
from a strong union democratic state to a redneck, "wannabe backwards early
1900s southern state" that maintains a governor who knowingly fed thousands of
people lead tainted water. And he continues to do nothing about it. If we do
anything about it, the republican legislature will just gerrymander our
districts again to maintain their power. I live in a district shaped like a
banana, running east to west in the middle of the lower peninsula. 80% of the
district (US house seat) has always been strong democratic. But the district
was re shaped in the early nineties so that it was extended forty miles east to
encompass a county that was once known as the capital of the KKK in Michigan.
This swung the majority to republican. They are a minority, but with all the
money.
As I was saying to someone yesterday, when I say something like "I don't like
obamacare either", it is automatically assumed that I want trump & Paul Ryan to
hand out vouchers. Yet when I follow up by stating I want Medicare for all, I
am called a crazy Hillary loving liberal.
Well, you can always say scornfully that she never wanted anything as
good for people as Medicare for all. But it's tough being in a spot like
that. There is a relative of an inlaw whom I admire enormously because,
living in a conservative rural area she nevertheless firmly states her
progressive opinions, if necessary finishing up, "Anyway, that's what I
think," in a way that let's people know she has formed her opinion and will
not be changing it merely for fact-free hostile criticism. It takes amazing
steadfastness to go on doing that.
Here in upstate NY my (state assembly) district's shape was once
described as "Abe Lincoln riding on a vacuum cleaner." Like the one you
describe, it was carefully constructed to include a wealthy minority so as
to ensure that the "right" candidate always wins.
"Do what I want. That's unity." Wasn't that one of W's wise injunctions? Now
we hear it in motherly tones in HRC's video released on Friday. Is this
anything like her debate response to Bernie, "I get things done. That's
progress. (Therefore) I'm a progressive!"? Always need to look for what this
kind of word-salad leaves out.
A note as to the Establishment Dems: In the Dem primary race there were 800
or so "Super Delegates" and almost all of them were locked into HRC before the
primary race began. At the convention all but about 25 of them cast their votes
for HRC. (Sorry, I don't have exact numbers.)
Now, who are these 435 Dem Party luminaries who are tasked with electing the
DNC Chair? Am I right to assume that they are a carved-out chunk of the Super
Delegates of yore? If I am, then the Establishment Dems are in big trouble, and
they know it just from the numbers.
In other words, 200 of the 435 just voted for Sanders by proxy of Ellison.
That's half. If half of the Super Delegates had voted for the Sanders wing at
the convention, wouldn't Sanders have been the Dem candidate?
What we are seeing in the dulcet tones of HRC's "unity" video, together with
the power punch of the monied interests in the DNC, is the public face of a
party in panic, digging in with all of its claws. From this it seems that
Bernie is a bigger threat than many folks may realize.
I don't mean to be Pollyanna-ish here. It's anybody's guess as to what to do
with this state of affairs. But perhaps Bernie is on the right track with his
efforts to take over the Dem Party?
With that in mind, the real dividing-line is wealth vs. poverty, income
inequality, etc.,
"If half of the Super Delegates had voted for the Sanders wing at the
convention, wouldn't Sanders have been the Dem candidate?"
Uh, no because HRC got a clear majority of the
elected
delegates
and 3.5m more
votes
in the primary. But hey, don't let me disturb
your alternate reality, and enjoy the next four years --
True, if caucus states did vote (i.e. were democratic) HRC would
have won by even more. See e.g
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wash-primary1/
.
I'm sure if the roles were reversed here you'd be screaming that
the corrupt DNC was ignoring the democratic vote in favor of an
undemocratic caucus.
But, as I said, enjoy the next four year. Maybe you really will
– Trump is the alternate reality candidate after all.
A democratic process within. Establish polling and voting by all members,
not some final 400 or super delegates.
The party writes, debates and endorses legislation, not lobbyists.
A serious cap on contributions. Complete immediate transparency on all money
matters.
Issue based platform long before leadership or candidates.
A way which leadership or candidates and office holders must adhere to the
party platform. Example if the party platform says expanded Single Payer (HR
676) for all then a vote for ACA would have been grounds for immediate removal
from the party for sitting Reps. Note that would have meant basically every
sitting prog would have received the boot. We would have all been better served
had we primaried all of our so-called own long ago (including Sanders and
Kucinich).
At the very least this should be established by a prog like wing within a
party. For we have no way in which to hold usurpers to account.. or keep the
eye sharply focused on issues. That's the lesson from '06 '08 '10. So many act
blue/blue America candidates lied and to this day they continue to be among the
least scrutinized.
I didn't see Sanders, Ellison etc. heading this way had they won. I don't
see it in any existing third party.
Testing. I tried posting a long comment and it didn't make it.
Short version–Sanders did everything people said Nader should have done and
Sanders was still treated like a pariah, so the self described pragmatists are
really the intolerant fanatics. There was more, but I don't feel like retyping
it, especially if I am having technical difficulties posting.
I agree that Sanders ran A primary campaign instead of third party, and
so answered a big establishment talking point.
Beyond that, I see the campaigns as vastly different. Nader campaigned at
the end of a long bubble. Bernie campaigned after the financial collapse and
after years of doing nothing to help ordinary people.
I think Bernie's campaign was more powerful, and gives more of a
springboard for future campaigns.
The part before the byline is reasonable and interesting. The DNC is acting
to preserve their own power, not to win elections. Classic "iron law of
oligarchy" stuff.
The part after the byline is less interesting. Why do we care what some
anonymous guy on facebook says? Of what interest is there in a facebook
argument between an activist and some rando? Is this more notable than a
thousand other political arguments on facebook that occur every day?
Dan Brooks has written about the practice of "eggmanning", as a sort of
counterpart to strawmanning– you can find people making basically any argument
on social media, no matter how specious.
http://combatblog.net/tom-hitchner-on-refuting-the-argument-no-one-is-making/
Elevating the voice of such a person just so you can dismantle their poorly
chosen words does not make for compelling reading.
Elitist Left – Whigs / Liberals / Neo-liberals / Democrats
Real Left – Labour (the US is not allowed this option)
You need a real left, liberals are not the real left.
Liberals have over-run the Labour party in the UK but progress is under-way
to get things back to the way they should be.
Universal suffrage came along and the workers wanted a party of the left
that represented them and wasn't full of elitist, left liberals.
The US has never allowed the common man and woman to have a party of
their own, they need one, a real left not a liberal, elitist left descended
from the Whigs.
This all makes me think the Democratic establishment are not honest actors.
They would rather meekly accept corporate money and play the part of the always
losing Washington Generals rather than come out swinging for progressive
values.
The DNC head is the chief fundraiser for the party.
DNC raises and distributes money
The DNC needs to be able to collect money from donors across
the spectrum
DNC does not control policy or issues.
Sanders supporters
who think this is about policy never bothered to learn about
how the party they tried to take over works.
"DNC does not control policy or issues. Sanders supporters
who think this is about policy never bothered to learn about
how the party they tried to take over works."
But who
controls the money controls a lot more. We are on the 2nd
round and it will be close. I'm for Ellison for reasons Max
Sawicky's excellent new blog articulated. If Perez pulls this
off - he has a lot of fence mending to do.
Oh Please.
The Local Sanders supporters are already engaged locally.
The whiners will complain about Ellison if he should win
The first time Ellison takes money from big donors they will
disown him.
They have no idea what it takes to fund a party operation.
Breitbart and the GOP are cheering the whiners on
The policy debates are won at groups that will form the
ultimate coalition for candidate support. Say your interest
is public schools. The group supporting your local school is
horrified that vouchers are taking away the money. The group
builds support for the anti voucher position. A union group
wants more job training opportunities. An energy group wants
solar metering. These groups have their own agenda separate
from the DNC and RNC and they bring together groups of like
minded individuals who socialize in addition to their
advocacy. When the election comes, they are positioned to
work for candidates that agree with their position. The
candidate can get some of them to volunteer for the campaign,
but their is a need for voter lists, support for
registration, etc.
The issue for Sanders supporters is they
rallied around a messianic leader without much local group
persistence. If those supporters want to help in the next
election, the would be advised to build advocacy support
within their social groups.
Max is not correct
In my phone banking last election, the most numerous
complaint I received was:
"Everything is going to the black and the gays".
The Catholics and Christian Right voted for antiabortion
SCOTUS justices
Our state, IN is trying to make it impossible for minors to
get abortions and doing their best to create conditions for a
black market
The people we need to persuade don't care about the DNC
For the most part, local activists don't care either as long
as whoever wins will successfully raise a lot of money and
provide the training and tools we need
You articulate your case indeed. And your list for the policy
agenda is well noted. I would love to see you and Max Sawicky
engage in a debate of these things. Like you - he is never
shy of stating his views.
In the olden says, his blog Max Speaks You Listen was
often cited by many left of center economists. He had to go
silent as he worked within the government but now he is free
of that restriction. I don't always agree with him but I do
admire his style.
If this boosterism seems out of character for a primetime populist like Carlson, he doesn't seem to mind
the dissonance. He speaks glowingly of his Northwest Washington neighborhood, a tony enclave of liberal affluence where,
he tells me, he is surrounded by diplomats, lawyers, world bankers, and well-paid media types. They are reliably
"wonderful"; unfailingly "nice"; "some of my favorite people in the world." If you've watched Carlson on TV lately, you
know they are also wrong about virtually everything.
Indeed, throughout the 2016 election cycle Carlson routinely deployed his anonymous neighbors as a device
in his political punditry -- pointing to them as emblems of the educated elite's insular thinking. He scoffed at their
affection for Marco Rubio in the primaries, and he ridiculed their self-righteous reactions to the Republican nominee in
the general. "On my street," he
wrote
in
Politico Magazine
, "there's never been anyone as unpopular as Trump."
This shtick worked brilliantly for Carlson, catapulting him from a weekend hosting gig to the coveted 9
p.m. slot in Fox's primetime lineup. He now regularly pulls in more than 3 million viewers a night -- a marked improvement
on the program he replaced -- and he counts the commander in chief among his loyal fans. Just this past weekend, President
Trump set off a minor international firestorm when he suggested Sweden was experiencing an immigrant-fueled spike in
crime -- a (
dubious
)
claim he picked up by watching
Tucker Carlson Tonight
.
In an era when TV talking heads are more influential than ever, Carlson has suddenly -- and rather
improbably -- emerged as one of the most powerful people in media. The question now is what he wants to do with that perch.
To the extent that Carlson's on-air commentary these days is guided by any kind of animating idea, it is
perhaps best summarized as a staunch aversion to whatever his right-minded neighbors believe. The country has reached a
point, he tells me, where the elite consensus on any given issue should be "reflexively distrusted."
"Look, it's really simple," Carlson says. "The SAT 50 years ago pulled a lot of smart people out of every
little town in America and funneled them into a small number of elite institutions, where they married each other, had
kids, and moved to an even smaller number of elite neighborhoods. We created the most effective meritocracy ever."
"But the problem with the meritocracy," he continues, is that it "leeches all the empathy out of your
society The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental,
lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid -- I mean all the stuff that our ruling class is."
Carlson recounts, with some amusement, how he saw these attitudes surface in his neighbors' response to
Trump's victory. He recalls receiving a text message on election night from a stunned Democratic friend declaring his
intention to flee the country with his family. Carlson replied by asking if he could use their pool while they were
gone.
"I mean people were, like, traumatized," he says. And yet, in the months since then, "no one I know has
learned anything. There's been no moment of reflection It's just, 'This is what happens when you let dumb people
vote.'" Carlson finds this brand of snobbery particularly offensive: "Intelligence is not a moral category. That's what
I find a lot of people in my life assume. It's not. God doesn't care how smart you are, actually."
McKay Coppins
is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Wilderness, a book about the battle over the future of the Republican Party.
Well, even without the FT telling us, it seems obvious that
Trump, a real estate developer who loves debt, is going to
want an easy money policy. So he will presumably stock the
Fed with cronies who want interest rates reduced back to zero
or even lower if possible, with no restrictions (like
reserves) on borrowing.
He probably won't be able to gain
actual control of the Fed until Yellen's term is over, and it
is certainly possible that by that time he will have been
removed from office (as we have discussed, this latter
possibility depends on Trump having alienated enough GOP
voters that the GOP establishment feels it can removed him
and install Pence without losing primary challenges).
I suspect that a combination of easy money and stagnant
wages is not something that can last long. But so far I have
been unable to find a historical example. Certainly in the
US, the 1970s do not fit (wages grew as well as inflation),
nor 1948 (inflation was 20% or more, but at the pinnacle of
union power wages also grew by at least as much. 1948 was an
inventory correction, like 2001 but if anything actually
milder). Maybe 1920 comes close, but I haven't examined wages
from that time.
Does anybody else know of an easy money/high
inflation/stagnant wage historical example?
There is an alternative view that aligns Trump with high
interest rent seeking gold bugs. I don't know which is true.
It may even be true that behind all of the bravado that Trump
actually knows how deep in over his head that he is with
regards to monetary policy. In that case he would protest a
lot to the contrary while unceremoniously seeking to preserve
the status quo at the Fed. Certainly your guess is as good as
mine and probably even better. OTOH, nothing is certain with
Trump.
At risk of being flamed by everybody else with an opinion on
this matter, I can see both sides of the issue:
You are
correct if Trump is not selling out to Russia.
You are also correct if (1) Trump *is* selling out to
Russia, *AND* (2) his voters were aware that he is selling
out to Russia, but voted for him with eyes wide open on that
issue.
In either of those two cases the Intelligence Community
leakers are trying to subvert the democratic will of the
people in elected Trump president.
You are wrong if: (1) Trump is selling out to Russia,
*AND* (2) his voters did not believe it when they voted for
him. In this case the Intelligence Community leakers, in my
opinion, are patriotic heroes.
Just because the Intellligence Community is not laying the
sources of its intelligence out in the open on the table does
not mean that the leakers are wrong. My suspicion is that
they are correct (see, e.g., Josh Marshall today. Google is
your friend.) The deeper problem is that I suspect Trump's
voters simply don't care, even if the Intelligence Community
is correct.
I did a mini max regret: More regret with Clinton sold out to
neoliberal profiteering war mongers who care only for
perpetual war, the max regret I see is unneeded nuclear war
over a few hundred thousand Estonians who hate Russia since
the Hanseatic league was suppressed by Ivan the Terrible.
Lesser regret with Trump sold out to Russia* that would only
bring China I against both US and Russia in about 50 years.
*Trump sold to Russia is Clintonista/Stalinist fantasia
sold by the yellow press.
I disagree. It is not enough that Trump voters were aware of
Trump selling out to Russia and didn't care; if there had
been conclusive proof of that before the election, other
people might have come out to vote against him.
Besides,
some of his voters might not care and some might.
In any case, whether the leakers are patriots or traitors
does not have to do with subverting "the will of the people".
At the most extreme, leaks could lead to, say, impeachment,
which is another way to express the will of the people. (Or
actually, the will of the plutocrats and their Republican and
Democratic running dogs, but that's another discussion).
It has always been time to stand for the Constitution and
against the deep state.
And you really think this was built
by democrats and Clinton? Since you are about my age, I'll
keep it brief and just say one word: COINTELPRO.
And it's not either or. There are plenty of bad actors,
some as dangerous as the spooks. E.g. a President that
believes we're in an existential war against Islam, and who
is likely pull every trigger available to him if some Muslim
stages an attack in the US. Frankly, if such a time comes
I'll feel safer thinking that Trump and the spooks at not
working too closely together.
New Deal democrat and couple of other Hillary enthusiasts
here used to sing quite a different song as for Hillary
bathroom email server ;-).
Russia bogeyman (or "ruse" as Trump aptly defined it) is
now used to swipe under the carpet the crisis of neoliberal
ideology and the collapse of Democratic Party which is still
dominated by Clinton wing of soft neoliberals). Chickhawks
like a couple of people here (for example, im1dc), are always
want to fight another war, but using some other ("less
valuable") peoples bodies as the target of enemy fire.
Democratic Party now is playing an old and very dirty
trick called "Catch the thief", when they are the thief.
Why we are not discussing the key issue: how the
redistribution of wealth up during the last two decades
destabilized the country both economically and politically?
Also it is unclear whether a simple, non-painful way out
exists, or this is just something like a pre-collapse stage
as happened with Brezhnev socialism in the USSR. The Damocles
sword of "peak/plato oil" hangs over neoliberal
globalization. That's an undeniable and a very important
factor. Another ten (or twenty) years of the "secular
stagnation", and then what? Can the current globalized
economy function with oil prices above $100 without severe
downsizing.
The economic plunder of other countries like the plunder
of xUSSR economic space (which helped to save and return to
growth the USA economics in 90th, providing half a billion
new customers and huge space for "dollarization") is no
longer possible as there are no any new USSR that can
disintegrate.
And "artificial disintegration" of the countries to open
them to neoliberal globalization (aka "controlled chaos")
like practiced in Libya and Syria proved to be quite costly
and have unforeseen side effects.
The forces that ensured Trump victory are forces that
understood at least on intuitive level that huge problems
with neoliberalism need something different that kicking the
can down the road, and that Hillary might well means the
subsequent economic collapse, or WWIII, or both.
Trump might not have a solution, but he was at least
courageous enough to ask uncomfortable questions.
Blackmailing Russia can probably be viewed as just an
attempt to avoid asking uncomfortable questions (Like who is
guilty and who should go to jail ;-) , and to distract the
attention from the real problems. As if the return us to the
good old Obama days of universal deceit (aka "change we can
believe in") , can solve the problems the country faces.
And when neoliberal presstitutes in MSM now blackmail
Trump and try to stage "purple" color revolution, this might
well be a sign of desperation, not strength.
They have no solution for the country problem, they just
want to kick the can down the road and enjoy their privileges
while the country burns.
As Galbright put it: "People of privilege will always risk
their complete destruction rather than surrender any material
part of their advantage." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
The fake liberals directed the intelligence
services to target the political opposition. Now the
opposition is in power the intelligence services could be
held to respond to their destruction of the US Bill of
Rights.
It is not just the fake liberal economics the democrats
will answer to in 2018.
In 15 months people like me will spend a lot of time
reminding the democrats of their ignoble treatment of the US
constitution because their neoliberal scam artist was
defeated.
Well, now I see very
clearly why I disagree with you so much.
This government is the apotheosis of neoliberalism. I'm
only sorry we didn't get the pure version with Mitt, instead
of this one stained with a cabal of White Christian jihadis.
"This government is the apotheosis of neoliberalism."
I respectfully disagree. Trump neoliberalism is a "bastard
neoliberalism" (or neoliberalism in a single county, in you
wish) as he rejects globalization and wars for the expansion
of the US led neoliberal empire.
wanglee
Pinto Currency
Feb 19, 2017 2:59 PM
Not only democrats rigged Primary to elect Clinton as presidential candidate last year even though
she has poor judgement (violating government cyber security policy) and is incompetent (her email
server was not secured) when she was the Secretary of State, and was revealed to be corrupt by
Bernie Sanders during the Primary, but also democrats encourage illegal immigration, discourage
work, and "conned" young voters with free college/food/housing/health care/Obama phone. Democratic
government employees/politicians also committed crimes to leak classified information which caused
former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn losing his job and undermined Trump's presendency.
However middle/working class used their common senses voting against Clinton last November.
Although I am not a republican and didn't vote in primary but I voted for Trump and those Republicans
who supported Trump in last November since I am not impressed with the "integrity" and "judgement"
of democrats, Anti-Trump protesters, Anti-Trump republicans, and those media who donated/endorsed
Clinton during presidential election and they'll work for globalists, the super rich, who moved
jobs/investment overseas for cheap labor/tax and demanded middle/working class to pay tax to support
welfare of illegal aliens and refugees who will become globalist's illegal voters and anti-Trump
protesters.
To prevent/detect voter fraud, "voter ID" and "no mailing ballots" must be enforced to reduce
possible voter frauds on a massive scale committed by democratic/republic/independent operatives.
All the sanctuary counties need to be recounted and voided respective county votes if needed since
the only county which was found to count one vote many times is the only "Sanctuary" county, Wayne
county, in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin during the recount last year. The integrity of
voting equipment and voting system need to be protected, tested and audited. There were no voting
equipment stuck to Trump. Yet, many voting equipment were found to switch votes to Clinton last
November.
'Obama and others have handed him (Trump) a pretty well
functioning economy'...not the only way that Obama set the
table for Trump. We also have a terrifying NSA to thank Obama
for. With SCOTUS in hand, all the pieces are in place for a
police state.
I am not that worried yet. The 2016 election was part Mad
Magazine "What, me Worry?" And the other part was "What
Hillary? You got to be kidding me!"
It was also a backlash
reaction to globalization and persistently low wages, both
accumulating over a long time now. There are a lot of kinds
of backlash and we have the potential for all of them in our
American diversity. Which one will be next?
The faux librul side is all Joe McCarthy phony red scaring
and surveillance of the opposition activists sort of like
what Army Intell did to hippies protesting the liberals'
debacle in Southeast Asia.
Deep state surveillance and
trashing the Bill of Rights is a legacy of the past 8 years.
There is no question that at least some policies Trump is
proposing will boost corporate profits at least in the short
run. Not irrational at all for stock market to be up,
especially backed up for now by steadily growing
non-inflationary economy that Trump has inherited.
And you
thought you were being ironic, didn't you, Peter K.? :-)
"... This point has been made before on Obamacare, but the tendency behind it, the tendency to muddle
and mask benefits, has become endemic to center-left politics. Either Democrats complicate their initiatives
enough to be inscrutable to anyone who doesn't love reading hours of explainers on public policy, or
else they don't take credit for the few simple policies they do enact. Let's run through a few examples.
..."
"... missed the point the big winner is FIRE. ACA should have been everyone in medicare, and have
medicare run Part B not FIRE. Obamcare is welfare for FIRE, who sabotage it with huge deductibles and
raging rises in premium.. ..."
As Democrats stare down eight years of policies being wiped out within months, it's worth looking
at why those policies did virtually nothing for their electoral success at any level. And, in
the interest of supporting a united front between liberals and socialists, let me start this off
with a rather long quote from Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House, on why Obamacare failed to gain
more popularity:
There are parts to it that are unambiguously good - like, Medicaid expansion is good, and why?
Because there's no f!@#ing strings attached. You don't have to go to a goddamned website and become
a f@!#ing hacker to try to figure out how to pick the right plan, they just tell you "you're covered
now." And that's it! That's all it ever should have been and that is why - [Jonathan Chait] is
bemoaning why it's a political failure? Because modern neoliberal, left-neoliberal policy is all
about making this shit invisible to people so that they don't know what they're getting out of
it.
And as Rick Perlstein has talked about a lot, that's one of the reasons that Democrats end
up f!@#$ing themselves over. The reason they held Congress for 40 years after enacting Social
Security is because Social Security was right in your f!@ing face. They could say to you, "you
didn't used to have money when you were old, now you do. Thank Democrats." And they f!@#ing did.
Now it's, "you didn't used to be able to log on to a website and negotiate between 15 different
providers to pick a platinum or gold or zinc plan and apply a f!@#$ing formula for a subsidy that's
gonna change depending on your income so you might end up having to retroactively owe money or
have a higher premium." Holy shit, thank you so much.
This point has been made before on Obamacare, but the tendency behind it, the tendency
to muddle and mask benefits, has become endemic to center-left politics. Either Democrats complicate
their initiatives enough to be inscrutable to anyone who doesn't love reading hours of explainers
on public policy, or else they don't take credit for the few simple policies they do enact. Let's
run through a few examples.
missed the point the big winner is FIRE. ACA should have been everyone in medicare, and have
medicare run Part B not FIRE. Obamcare is welfare for FIRE, who sabotage it with huge deductibles
and raging rises in premium..
"... Statistics can be made to slant any way you intend. ..."
"... Stupid survey leads to dumber article and fucking ridiculous headline. Standard Guardian opinion I guess. ..."
"... Seriously can you perhaps stop being so clickbaity? I've already lost the Independent because it went full on lefty Buzzfeed listical "you won't believe what they did to Trump when the lights went out". Don't follow them downwards. ..."
"... On both side of the Atlantic, we don't have a 'democracy', we have an elected monarchy. The trouble is, this monarchy gets itself elected on the basis of lies, money and suppression. For a few brief years after WWII, there was an attempt to hold executives to account, but neoliberals put paid to all that. Nowadays, it's just as if nothing had changed since Henry VIII's time. ..."
"... What we gave the ordinary Russian was neo-liberalism and they got screwed by it. Capitalisms greatest trick was to convince the many that it & democracy are the same thing. When actually, on many levels, they are totally at odds with each other. ..."
Statistics can be made to slant any way you intend. Essentially can be be used as another form of
lie and propganada
Lawrence Douglas
But, the result changed when the data were narrowed to those who identified themselves as Trump
supporters: 51% agreed that Trump should be able to overturn court decisions. 33% disagreed. 16%
were not sure.
It is tempting to attribute this difference between Trump supporters and others simply to the fact
that the president's supporters prefer a more authoritarian style of government, prioritize social
order, like strong rulers, and worry about maintaining control in a world they perceive to be filled
with threats and on the verge of chaos.
As the PPP's survey reveals, Trump is appealing to a remarkably receptive audience in his attempts
to rule by decree – and many are no longer attached to the rule of law and/or democracy. Other studies
confirm these findings. One such study found a dramatic decline in the percentage of people who say
it is "essential" to live in a democracy.
When asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how "essential" it is for them "to live in a democracy,"
72% of Americans born before World War II check "10," the highest value. But, the millennial generation
(those born since 1980) "has grown much more indifferent." Less than 1 in 3 hold a similar belief
about the importance of democracy.
And, the New York Times reports that while 43% of older Americans thought it would be illegitimate
for the military to take power if civilian government was incompetent, only 19% of millennials agreed.
While millennials may be politically liberal in their policy preferences, they have come of age
in a time of political paralysis in democratic institutions, declining civility in democratic dialogue,
and dramatically increased anxiety about economic security.
These findings suggest that we can no longer take for granted that our fellow citizens will stand
up for the rule of law and democracy. That's why, while President Trump's behavior has riveted the
media and the public, our eyes should not only be focused on him but on this larger – and troubling
- trend.
If the rule of law and democracy are to survive in America we will need to address the decline in
the public's understanding of, and support for both. While we celebrate the Ninth Circuit's decision
on Trump's ban, we also must initiate a national conversation about democracy and the rule of law.
Civics education, long derided, needs to be revived.
Schools, civic groups, and the media must to go back to fundamentals and explain what basic American
political values entail and why they are desirable. Defenders of democracy and the rule of law must
take their case to the American people and remind them of the Founders' admonition that: "If men
were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor
internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered
by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control
the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
We need to remember that our freedom from an arbitrary or intrusive government depends on the rule
of law and a functioning democracy. We need to rehabilitate both – before this crisis of faith worsens.
Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College
"There is much to celebrate in the court decision against President Trump's immigration
ban. It was a stirring victory for the rule of law and reaffirmation of the independence
of the judiciary."
A stirring victory of the rule of law? Hardly. More like an extraordinary act of politicised
justice. And an orchestrated one at that. In my opinion that is, and as I see it at this point
in time and from what I am able to discern.
No. I do not see not see any stirring victories for the rule of law here here. Certainly
no courage of truth or justice. Nor, as it happens, do I like this travel ban. Nevertheless,
the court's ruling seems to me to be wrong since the constitution gives the president the power
to enforce blanket bans against countries believed to pose a threat.
I cannot see how the ban could justifiably be said to be aimed specifically at Muslims since
it does not concern some 90 percent of the world's Muslim population. So it looks very much
like a political decision from the 9th Circuit Court – and now San Francisco - in a tug of
war between Democrats and Republicans.
I am somehow reminded of the final "Yes we can" in Obama's farewell speech and of a sore
loser – the vindictive Mrs Clinton. Some smooth transfer of power.
The very fact that expert analysts are already sizing up what will be the Supreme Court's
decision in terms of breaking the stalemate between 4 Republicans and 4 Democrats provides
a perfect illustration of the politicisation of the judiciary at the highest level. Compatibly
with this, Democrats are continuing to block Gorsuch's nomination.
And compatibly with this the illusion of salutary Rawlsian** apolitical amnesiacs on the
part of the judiciary disperses like Scotch mist.
Somehow I have a clear mental picture of a newspaper editor, no one in particular, sitting
back in his chair with a smug smile 'Look how we managed to swing that one', I hear him say.
The principal protagonists here, overshadowing the US lawcourts, are the mainstream media.
A power never to be underestimated, especially when the choir is singing in full maledictory
and mephitic unison.
**The reference is to A Theory of Justice, the monumental work on philosophy of law by John
Rawls. It casts damning light on judicial impartiality by focusing on distorting criteria affecting
juries. Worth reading in the context of attacks on the impartiality of the judiciary in US
lawcourts taking place right now. And also in the wake of recent attacks on the judiciary in
Britain over Brexit.
Interesting that Clinton's 52% is regarded as a God-given mandate where as the 52%
for Leave is unfair as the voters were "too old/uneducated/outside London"
In both campaigns if more people my age (26) had actually bothered to vote then the results
would probably be very different.
Only 53% of those surveyed said that they "trust judges more than President Trump
to make the right decisions for the United States."
But that is an utterly assinine question to ask anyone!
"Making decisions for the United States" suggests setting policy. The judges Trump
is so angry with aren't making policy decisions, they are
interpreting
the laws
that already exist.
Laws without and independent judiciary are not laws at all, they are just whims of
whoever or whatever is in power. Might as well ask people do you prefer to live in a
country that follows its laws or do you want to live at the whim of an irrational despot
with irresponsible power who can do whatever the hell he pleases.
This survey is clearly a case of garbage in garbage out. Which is a pity, because
the subject is an important one.
In a common law system, like those of Britain and the US, judges do make law. If there is no
relevant legislation and no precedent, the judge is
required
to make new law in order
to rule on the case, which will then be cited as precedent by future courts. In a civil law
system, like those of continental Europe, judges merely interpret (and generalise, where necessary)
the rules set out in statutes and codes, and have less scope to innovate.
Of course, the
recent case over Trump's immigration plans has been based on interpretations of the constitution
though, but even interpretations are political (hence why the balance of power between liberals
and conservatives on the Supreme Court is considered such a big issue).
After nearly 40 years of corporate, lobbyist controlled politics, it's little surprise the
younger generation have no faith in democracy. What on earth is the point in voting for two
shades of the same shit?
You could argue that the US has never been a democracy. It is a strange democracy that allowed
slavery, or the later segregation in the south, or that has systematically overlooked the rust
belt taking all the gold for the liberal coasts.
It seems democracy is simply a way of deciding who the dictator should be. Not unlike the U.K.
Either.
If you were black in Alabama in the early 60s I don't think you would have enjoyed any more freedom,
respect or control than your Russian counterpart at that time
democracy is, of course, the best form of governance but in practice we see it benefit the wealthy
who unhindered can rob
the poor, only a socialist government can
usher in a true government to do so it may
be needed to have an authoritarian regime
True socialism is a form of government which sounds wonderful in theory. In practice it has never
successfully worked anywhere in the world. It does not take account of human nature.
Sorry but in the authoritarian nominatively socialist governments of the past the poor were as
robbed off the fruit of their labour and their dignity as they are today.
It's effectively a FPTP system that means you have a choice from only two parties. Even if someone
could challenge they'd need to be a billionaire to do so. America is no democracy.
Germany under Adolf Hitler before he started WWII was not a zillion times worse than any of the
contemporary powers in Western Europe. Neither was Franco's Spain. Looking in other areas of the
globe and further away from the West, what about South Korea under Park Chung Hee? Would you call
his dictatorship bad when he brought South Korea up to become one of the Asian 5 Tigers?
Germany under Adolf Hitler before he started WWII was not a zillion times worse than any
of the contemporary powers in Western Europe
Is that supposed to be a joke? If so, it's in very poor taste.
My parents grew up in Nazi Germany. Yes, it was a zillion times worse. Political opponents
were routinely murdered. There was no rule of law. Minorities, gay people etc were imprisoned,
tortured, murdered, expelled.
Germany was broke, following their defeat in WWI; people were poor, humiliated,insecure
and frightened for the future. In other words, the classic breeding ground for demagogues and
extremists.
After WWII, the Allies had learned their lesson and made sure that Germany should, for everyone's
security, be helped to prosper.
what about South Korea under Park Chung Hee? Would you call his dictatorship bad when he brought
South Korea up to become one of the Asian 5 Tigers?
The Friemanite right adored him and
many of his equally repressive and dictatorial successors (just as they did Pinochet, Suharto
(deemed by Transparency International to be the most corrupt leader in modern history to boot)
and endless South American juntas etc).
Every one else saw him for what he was - an authoritarian who had political opponents tortured
and killed and who banned any form of protest.
And is it particularly surprising that Trump voters tend towards anti democratic authoritarianism?
My dad and two of my brothers voted for Trump. Like most Americans, they detest authoritarian
governments. I sincerely doubt you know any Trump voters - let alone ones who favor authoritarianism.
In a cross-section of Americans, only
53%
of those surveyed said that they "trust judges more than President Trump to make the right
decisions for the United States."
38%
said they trusted Donald Trump more than our country's
judges, and
9%
were undecided.
But
, the result changed when the data were narrowed to those who identified themselves
as Trump supporters:
51%
agreed that Trump should be able to overturn court decisions.
33%
disagreed.
16%
were not sure.
The results are significantly the same, the
But
implies something different.
besides, the results are *not* significantly the same. Fauteuil's first sentence suggests that
53% (more than a Brexit majority, hence Will of the People) of Americans support the judiciary
over the presidency. In contrast, a majority of Trump supporters, not unnaturally, take the opposite
view.
Statistics can be made to slant any way you intend.
So let's break this down: 51% of Trump supporters think he can do what he pleases. 51% means
one quarter of those who voted in the US general election.
If we estimate that only two-thirds of the electorate voted, that means in reality, probably
less than 16% of total potential voters think this way.
Stupid survey leads to dumber article and fucking ridiculous headline. Standard Guardian opinion
I guess.
Seriously can you perhaps stop being so clickbaity? I've already lost the Independent because
it went full on lefty Buzzfeed listical "you won't believe what they did to Trump when the lights
went out". Don't follow them downwards.
On both side of the Atlantic, we don't have a 'democracy', we have an elected monarchy. The
trouble is, this monarchy gets itself elected on the basis of lies, money and suppression. For
a few brief years after WWII, there was an attempt to hold executives to account, but neoliberals
put paid to all that. Nowadays, it's just as if nothing had changed since Henry VIII's time.
Sad that a new, stupid generation have to learn the truth of Churchill's dictum that 'Democracy
is the worst form of government, except for all the others'.
Sincerely hope for all of us that
they don't have to learn this the hard way.
I say this speaking as someone whose parents fled Nazi Germany, and who also spent time with
relatives in the former East Germany prior to the wall coming down. Life under a dictatorship,
whether of the right or left, is no picnic.
'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others'.
But is it democracy's
fault when the option as to which kind of government we can choose is so narrow? Scary as it may
sound, I think that the majority of young people would swap democracy just for some stability
& safety. But what they fail to realize is that it's not democracy that's at the fault - but our
form of capitalism. Look what happened in Russian when the wall came down & the free market rushed
in & totally screwed over the ordinary Russian. Putin was, to some extent, a reaction to this.
His strong man image was something they thought would help them.
What we gave the ordinary
Russian was neo-liberalism and they got screwed by it. Capitalisms greatest trick was to convince
the many that it & democracy are the same thing. When actually, on many levels, they are totally
at odds with each other.
Laws aren't final, they evolve with the needs of society. While I support this decidion I find
all of this a bit silly and typical of that strange world.. "this is the law, therefor blabla.."
I don't get why people even decide to study it in university. Most law students are like : "Yeah
I don't know what to pick. Lets do Law, it'll give me a good job". Empty stuff really..
Can someone please explain how the court has over ruled the executive order? From what I understand
it's because it would harm some Americans - but does that mean using the same logic courts can
undo tax increases, spending cuts, changes in abortion law? Or if the travel ban was instead passed
by congress it would then be beyond the remit of judges?
One example given was schools. Banning students from state universities, or professors, by preventing
them from entering the country, was damaging to the schools capacity to earn money ( in tuition
fees) and provide state education. Then there was the example of forcibly separating families.
But this part of the ruling does not exist on it's own, it goes together with another part
of the ruling, which was that there was no good reason for this action, since the Government had
failed to provide that any person from any of these countries was a threat - which was the reason
given in the executive order. For this and other reasons the Executive order was deemed to be
not legally enforceable.
Another problem is that this was an executive order, just a piece of paper signed by Trump,
and the President does not have sole authority to make laws, there is also the judiciary and legislative
branches - the courts and congress. If the travel ban had been passed by congress then the courts
would probably have not been able to overturn it. In this game of stone scissors paper, the executive
doesn't beat the other two - it needs one of them to rubber-stamp the decision if challenged.
The argument that a presidential order should be all powerful and must be obeyed regardless of
whether it was legal or not, was deemed by the judges to be anti constutional and thrown out of
court.
The other examples you give of tax increases or spending cuts or abortion might indeed cause
harm, but providing they are not anti-constitutional, and they get through congress, and are not
illegal, the harm wouldn't be taken into account.
I would not have voted for Trump. I would not have voted for quite a few American Presidents before
him either.
But the hyperbole about Trump is being overdone.
The USA is one of the oldest democracies on earth, and, one of only ten nations that have lasted
as democracies for more than a century.
By overstating Trump's impact, you are not helping.
It is actually a kind of hysteria. I remember Senator McCarthy's communist hysteria, and also
the marijuana hysteria which swept through schools when I was a child in the 1950s.
I'm a little surprised that there seems to be less debate in the USA about the electoral college
for the presidency than I thought likely. Of course, the electoral college is a completely redundant
if it never leads to a different result from a straightforward popular vote. As I understand it,
the electoral college is designed to ensure that smaller states have a voice greater than their
population size alone would deliver.
But in a nationwide poll, on a binary issue, such as the election of the president or Brexit,
I would have thought that each vote should count equally. SNP supporters might differ in this
view, as would presumably US Democratic Party supporters.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be
led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.- H.
L. Mencken.
Only 53% of those surveyed said that they "trust judges more than President Trump to make
the right decisions for the United States." In this cross-section of Americans, 38% said they
trusted Donald Trump more than our country's judges. 9% were undecided.
This means absolutely nothing regarding whether people support democracy and the rule of law.
Were the results about Obama, the very same result would probably be interpreted as racism
by the liberal media.
Another poll from Public Polling Policy says that by a margin of 51/23 Trump supporters agree
that the Bowling Green massacre shows that Trump's travel ban is a good idea.
That's shows what
you're up against and also why both Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer 'misspeak' so often.
A new national survey suggests that we can no longer take for granted that our fellow citizens
will stand up for the rule of law and democracy
Dear Austin, let me educate you a bit about the basics. The rule of law and democracy cannot
both exist simultaneously in one society. The former has never been an American tradition. Read
Tocqueville.
The rule of law is characteristic of a totalitarian state where it is enforced by civil servant.
The basic principle of such a state were described by Shang Yang 2400 years ago: a civil servant
obeys the law, regardless of the will of his superior. Everyone obeys the law from top to bottom.
In democracy people are judged by courts of jury. Which rule as they like, representing the
public opinion, not the written law. Constitution doesn't exist either. Teddy Roosevelt explained
when asked if his orders are constitutional: "The constitution was created for the people, not
the people for the constitution".
One nice example: the famous "Affirmative Action". It is obviously inconsistent with the most
basic constitutional principle, that people are born equal. But it existed because the public
didn't mind.
It makes me really wonder if americans (and other nations) are feeling something like a 'weimar'
moment, when the germans in 1933 lost trust in their very young democracy after living for years
under economic hardship and political pariah.
There is so much that resembles the nazi-era, this xenophobia, that started with a slow decay
of civil rights, the erosion of check and balances without the need to change the constitution.
When we are heading for the similar kind of fascism like germany eighty years ago, at what point
people should be held responsible for making a stand ?
Schools, civic groups, and the media must to go back to fundamentals and explain what basic
American political values entail and why they are desirable.
Agreed. Special emphasis should be placed on accepting the results of elections, there appears
to have been a recent surge in undemocratic sentiment on that front.
I suspect that it's a change in what the word democracy means to people. Even the older generation
are starting to understand that the 'democracies' that we live under in the western world are
horribly distorted. Big corporations, even foreign ones, have far more access to the elected executive
than the actual voters. Governments dance to the tune of powerful media. Votes don't often count
for much at all.
With this background it's no wonder that the Brexit voters feel drunk with power. For once
they voted on something and believe that they will get exactly what they voted for. The final
irony is that for most of them they don't realise that they were turkeys voting for Christmas.
Brexit could have possibly bought them some benefits, but the Tories seem determined to deny them
even that. Once the realise they have been swindled, what then for democracy?
People have lost faith in democracy, politics, the judicial system and, yes, economics.
Voting
to remain in the EU, is a vote for the status quo...if you're lucky. They want more government,
not less. It is not a 20-50 year project. It is forever, and they will not stay still. It will
evolve, and not regress politically.
The UK government will have to change, and they have the chance. They may not succeed, but
I believe they will try, and the pressure from the people will be more direct.
The EU don't want to change. If it was an economic union and not a political one, then it would
be a great organisation.
Forget the garbage about wars and instability. That comes from economic success, with NATO
providing any security until that comes to fruition to the developing countries.
No surveys needed to arrive at these conclusions I am afraid, apathy and mistrust of govt has
been eroding for decades. US government is a cesspool of corruption and in no small way is aided
by the fact that its citizens have given tacit approval for the erosion of their own civil liberties
and rights while celebrating the war machine that has increasingly rolled on for more than 3 decades
The abyss looming for the US, and by extension the world, can be traced back to a populace that
abandoned democracy and freely gifted the cronies the mandate to accelerate the erosion.
Solution? Kill apathy and not only get back involved but remain vigilant to preserve checks
& balances
Forty years ago, democracy was more or less synonymous with prosperity. Given it's now wider spread
to many poorer states across the world, as well as the incredible increase in the standard of
living in non-democratic countries, principally China, this is no longer the case. I suspect we
have not made the case for democracy as an end in itself, nor as a route to distributing prosperity
more widely, or as a corollary of 'The Free Market'.
This (democracy relates to prosperity) is insightful. Will we all be able to operate democratically
when climate issues and exhaustion of resources vs. population force us to manage the decline?
A thought provoking article. Like many things it comes down to terminology .what, for example
is democracy? Are the US or UK systems really democracies when it is clear that laws are enacted
in the interests of a narrow group of citizens and corporations who have the power to lobby, especially
in the US where bribery has been legalized with respect to lobbying.
Beyond this, look at US
attempts to come up with some sort of climate change plan. All of these flounder on the twin rocks
of democracy with its lobbying (we'll never get voted in again) or economic cost to the tax payer
(we'll get voted out next time).
Democracy is always presented in our schools, TVs, books and newspapers as a universal good,
when in reality there are good democracies and bad democracies with the US and UK versions actually
being on the bad side what with an unelected second chamber of grandees in the UK and the US in
a state of perpetual wars of choice.
Countries are what they do. The US starts wars. The UK follows the US into wars. Most countries
whether democratic or not, don't start many wars (Germany hasn't started too many wars since 1939).
Many countries that don't start wars are actually controlled by non democratic governments or
military juntas .and personally I would prefer non democracies that don't start wars. It's not
a difficult concept to grasp.
The main problems with all forms of government is abuse of power and it goes on in democracies
as much as any other type of government. Look at Tony Blair astride the globe hoover-ing up millions
instead of being sitting next the Bush in a 6X8 feet cell. When Britain and America fell asleep
and accepted total state surveillance as the price they had to pay to stop a handful of terrorist
deaths each year, they set themselves up for this power to be abused in the future and badly abused.
What's the answer? Really it begins at home with lessons in honesty, modesty, selflessness and
the like. The reality and the kids are plonked down in front of the TV watching the avarice of
the Kardashians there is little hope.
After the horrors of WWII most people in the developed world understood both, the dangers and
merits of democracy. In fact there is a conventional wisdom that it is totalitarian regimes which
start wars, never democracies. By and large that may be true, but I don't think it is true in
every instance.
But the major motivation for people is to press their own advantage, even it
is to the detriment of somebody else. Even if it is quite evident that it is to the fatal detriment
of somebody else. I guess religion describes this as our original sin. If that goal of personal
advantage is better secured by a dictatorship then people (e.g. in 1930s Germany) will support
that. Democracy is not a value in itself for the majority, but just a means to an end. After all,
I suspect many would prefer to be rich in a totalitarian state, rather than poor in a democracy
(especially those people who have never lived under a totalitarian regime).
What people like Trump do is to legitimise this drive/desire/greed as something positive (greed
is good, greed works), when all of our upbringing has told us otherwise. Otherwise we could just
take to killing our siblings to acquire their larger bedrooms.
I suspect the horrors of WWII have to be repeated to re-learn that lesson.
oh well who cares. let the US rip itself apart from the inside, we all knew it was gonna happen
sooner or later.
there will be no need for a terrorist attack to destroy the US ,they manage that fine on their
own. a 50/50 split in the population over values and believes? Regardless of who's right and who's
wrong. Its so damaging that by the end of Trump Pax America will be history.
US cant even keep control in their own backyard atm, thousands are killed within their own
boarders every year by their own people, most average people will never get enough paid to sustain
a adequate living condition, they struggle heavily with race and race related problems. They struggle
heavily with females and female right.
But most importantly they are not united, americans hate americans now. Many americans hate their
fellow americans more than they hate outside enemies. And thats a fact. How can a society like
that survive?
The US will eat itself and Trump will probably earn a billion on it, he is after all a business
man. He does what suits him best. But did anyone actually expect something els?
Take it a step further and apparently the word of Jesus is that you pull the ladder up after
you and you look to the demagogue giving false praise to fantastical notions and mocking democracy.
There is much confusion between "Christian" America and America's Judeo-Christian Heritage. Books
have been written.
The heritage is what gave America, and Europe, Liberal Democracy and freedoms
understood as "self-evident." That is, embedded and safe from lawyers and politicians. You do
not need to be a "Christian" to enjoy the freedomos the heritage gives to all.
"self-evident" is a strong clue that the constitution was informed more by man-centred Enlightenment
than by residual Judeo-Christian Heritage.
The majority of the framers were Atheists or Deists; any reference to God was part of the necessary
legitimizing and marketing process. Since then it has been a process of Christianity (read: Protestantism)
being merged with the civic religion, to the point where they are indistinguishable. Both have
been mightily degraded in the process.
More recently, corporate America's propaganda campaign to merge Christianity with Capitalism,
fronted by Rev. J Fifield, was hugely successful, and has brought us to the present pass.
"While millennials may be politically liberal in their policy preferences... "
They are not
politically liberal. They might be vaguely called "socially liberal", supporting the causes prescribed
to them by a new "progressivism" in the name of ill-defined tolerance, diversity etc.
None of the above implies an understanding of liberal democracy.
There have been many strains of the "left" in the past that would be classified as "liberal"
under current American terminology but were totally undemocratic. That was why the term "democratic
left" was invented to separate left-wing people that really believe in democracy.
The modern "progressive identarian" is not a liberal.
If you are a Green Card holder and leave the US you can incure tax liability for up to 10 years.
Taxation without representation.
But........the most flagrant departure from Democracy is giving
the lawyers the final say on what is, or is not, the law. The legislature can pass whatever bills
they may like but if the lawyers say it is offensive or phobic it will be struck down. The "Supreme"
Court is the ultimate power in the USA and none are elected by the people and none can be removed
by the people. The only way they go is in a box.
Sad to say, Tony Blair (surprise surprise!) created the same undemocratic monster in our country
and even labelled it the same way: "Supreme." Unelected, unaccountable and as politically motivated
as its US counterpart.
No the SC in the US can decide a law is contrary to the constitution.
Can you give a single example where the UK SC has 'struck down' any legislation? They have declared
govt decisions contrary to existing law including common law. You do seem to have a habit of coming
on here making stuff up.
In the context of first past the post, democracy is a total con. If you examine those democracies
with FPTP you wintness the most right wing governments on the planet that use this system. PR
as is used across Europe prevents these extremes and all votes count. Do you think the Tories
OR Labour will rush to change to this? No chance. Lastly, here and in the US, you have a choice
of two broadly similar parties who serve the rich and powerful who have engineered democracy largely
by contolling the press, to suit their own ends. By definition therefore, democracy here and in
the US is a caricature of what was originally intended for the people and not fit for purpose.
I support the introduction of PR, but it is a mistake to assume that any kind of voting system
or institution will stop the collapse of democracy/ democratic institutions Economic and social
strife will tend to overcome all safeguards when the public starts to feel desperate. A good example
and warning from history is the rise of the Nazi party in pre WW2 Germany. Trump and the republicans
have yet to destroy democracy and I see no suggestion that T will refuse to stand fro reelection.
I agree that the reason democracy has lost its lustre is because both her and in the US we are
offered no real choice. In terms of economic policy, the "There is No Alternative" party always
wins. Unsurprisingly, people start to believe that there IS no alternative, and therefore the
choice on offer is not genuine. They then either lose interest in voting altogether, or look for
more extreme offerings which seem to be truly different.
Bringing up the 'law and order' issues combined with blaming it on immigrants is typical of far
right regimes that want to undermine democratic values and move towards dictatorship.
By casting aspersions on the judiciary, Trump is echoing past dictators. First, he questions
their independence and then, when another terrorist incident occurs (whether white or non-white)
he can say 'I told you so, this atrocity is all the judge's fault'. America has truly entered
a new dark age. Let's pray that good men and women will continue to uphold and defend the
Constitution and the rule of law...
Share
Democracy has been in decline in the west for some time now, and it isn't just the right or the
left which has abandoned it. Nearly every western country has a bill of rights (either a strong
version eg the US which can strike down legislation or a weaker one eg the U.K. where the courts
award damages for breaches and make declarations of incompatibility). The EU has pros and cons
but no one could pretend it is democratic. The UK still has the House of Lords. The Canadian academic
James Allen has written a good book on it - how elites have now decided they know best.
We need
to be wary of this endless erosion of majority rule. Tin pot dictators the world over have always
had an excuse for ignoring the majority. Latin American military Juntas always explained that
they had to have power to ensure security. Human rights lawyers say they are needdd to uphold
the ever evolving concept of human rights. The Church used to insist it should have power to enforce
God's rule. The Fijian army in 1987 made an openly racist coup (attracting minimal opprobrium
and next to no action from the international community). Even those who think there are sound
reasons to ignore the majority have to admit they're not in great historical company
The EU has pros and cons but no one could pretend it is democratic.
The EU is not a state; it is 28 member states acting collaboratively in a number of specified
policy areas. As such, the appropriate comparison is not between the EU and a state but between
the EU and other collective bodies through which states cooperate with one-another such as the
UN or NATO. In terms of giving representation to ordinary citizens of its member states, I would
say the EU compares extremely favourably.
Moreover, the only two bodies in the EU that are able to enact legislation (and can only do
so through the agreement of both bodies) are the EU Parliament, which is directly elected by the
citizens of the member states and the Council, which consists of members of the Governments of
the member states, which, in turn, have been put in place by the citizens of the member states
through whichever electoral system is employed in each member state. We don't need to 'pretend'
that the EU is democratic; it's system of governance IS democratic in the same way that the governance
structures of western democracies are democratic.
Fewer people believe in the importance of democracy because we're several generations on from
almost having lost it. In the same vein we're more likely to have a major war than we were 40/50
years ago because none of the major world leaders have experience of one. It's cyclic. We become
complacent and smug until it happens again.
Fewer people believe in the importance of democracy because we're several generations on from
almost having lost it. In the same vein we're more likely to have a major war than we were 40/50
years ago because none of the major world leaders have experience of one. It's cyclic. We become
complacent and smug until it happens again.
"It was a stirring victory for the rule of law and reaffirmation of the independence of the
judiciary."
It most certainly was NOT anything of the kind. It was an act of judicial arrogance and a deliberate
attempt to undermine the long upheld power of the President to take actions that HE considers
required for the safety of the nation. What the ruling basically did was substitute judicial preferences
for Presidential preferences no matter that the Constitution was clearly not supportive of this
usurpation of power. you can review LOTS of legal opinions that state precisely this. An horrendously
POLITICAL decision that will come back to haunt the courts.
A defense of 'democracy' that begins with a defense of an arbitrary and demonstrably BAD court
ruling is pretty much fatally flawed from the jump.
Democracy works for as long as the fracture points in society are papered over with a commonality
of basic interests. When that is not the case, democracy cannot endure. The US (and others will
follow) is fracturing into pieces that simply don't like each other for VERY fundamental reasons,
including the definition of a Nation State and what it means.
Democracy works when things go well. It cannot work when it all falls apart. Oh and it also of
course fails when the majority have a vested interest in getting stuff 'free', and can vote to
have their demands enacted no matter the consequences.
LOTS of places are not democracies. It really isn't the future. Too many fault lines coming up.
Only 53% of those surveyed said that they "trust judges more than President Trump to make the
right decisions for the United States."
One of the reasons why I am very sceptical of opinion polls or surveys is that they often ask
the wrong questions. It is not for judges to make decisions about what is best for the country
which this question clearly implies. Their job is to judge what complies with the law.
Judges do not make political decisions about what is right for the United States any more than
they do about what is right for the UK. It is this lack of understanding which leads to them being
called enemies of the people.
It all boils down to education. Democracy can't work when you have so many people prepared to
believe and base their vote on 'fake news' (a nicer way to say lie).
Governments in a democracy
need to make having a well educated public a priority. Provide a high standard education for all
the population up to secondary school level for free (or at a rate affordable to everyone) and
you greatly diminish the chances of another Trump/Brexit.
And hopefully diminish the chances of more "moderate" alternatives bringing the Population to
its knees? Was Thatcher more "moderate" than Trump or did the Me Generation that she created usher
in May and Trump.
One person's victory is another's defeat. Politicians and voters are divided on judicial appointments
to the Supreme Court, and the 4-4 split in the current court illustrates that the rule of law
is simply another reflection of politics.
I think the Ninth Court made a big mistake. Why? Because
playing politics with the law can have serious unintended consequences. American Presidents have
been resorting to shock and awe against Muslims because they can't use tough domestic security
measures to protect Americans at home for fear of US judges taking an uncompromising view of constitutional
rights. Trump's predecessors have not only resorted to foreign military action, but they have
taken risks with extra-legal measures like Rendition, Secret Prisons, Torture and Drone attacks.
The Ninth Court may uphold the constitutional rights of people coming from war zones to attend
universities in Washington State, but the real world consequence of their hostility to domestic
security measures will be to corner existing and future presidents in to bombing suspected terrorists
abroad, making the world infinitely less safe with regime-changing wars.
Congress gave the President the power to exclude people from the US on national security grounds.
The University of Maryland maintains the Global Terrorism Database which lists more than 150,000
attacks since it began.
96% of current terrorism killing more than 7000 people each year is
claimed by jihadis. President Trump first mentioned his proposed temporary ban after the murders
in San Bernardino.
I don't think its unreasonable to restrict people coming from these war zones when they've
been murdering people elsewhere, including Paris, Brussels, Berlin etc. It seems that US judges
can't be persuaded that the right to life is more important than the temporary inconvenience of
not being able to attend universities in Washington State unless and until such people murder
Americans on American soil. I wouldn't call that 'constitutional'. It's offensive stupidity and
irresponsible.
If Americans were so concerned about the right to life they would do something about their almost
non-existent gun laws. Terrorists don't have to kill Americans since Americans are doing such
a good job of it on their own.
Americans are waking up to the fact that the elite and establishment don't care about the them.
The media lies, the courts are trying to let in terrorists. TRump is the only one who is fighting
for the people. Trump is fighting for truth, Trump is fighting for our safety, even though the
establishment is desperate to make us less safe (my guesss do the 1% can profit somehow). Fake
news by the media is only continue to push this
Trump is fighting for Americans, we need to unite behind him. He will never let us down, and
never lie to us.
It's funny how Americans use Christianity as a weapon and are always quoting an eye for an eye
etc instead of love your neighbour. If you are a Christian then surely you should realise that
the old testament which is The Torah is all about revenge and anger whereas the New Testament
is all about forgiveness and love and if the two come from the same God then that God has a spilt
personality!
Also looking at history if you remember that Islam is 600 years younger than Christianity ask
yourself what were Christians doing 600 years ago and you will see a lot of it was the same as
what Jihardis are doing today - torture, beheadings and killing of those seen as apostates in
the name of religion.
And remember American was founded by those seeking religious freedom despite the fact they
oppressed the religions of the Native Americans and then went on to break more than 400 treaties
with the Native Americans over the years.
Even the declaration of independence was signed mainly by slave owners ( which is surely anti-christian)
and apartheid reigned in the US until Martin Luther King.
Land of the free and home of the brave is some king of joke played on the people but only noted
by historians.
To an important degree extensive, well-understood and articulately defended democracy only
"matters" if you ascribe a large role to the [nation/federal] state - if you think it should
spend very large amounts of money, address all manner of social problems, and regulate everything
people do to reduce risk and enforce equality/diversity. If you believe in a minimal state
(as most of the US founders did) then a much clearer and less pressing kind of democracy
for national affairs is fully adequate. It is at the local level - in the states and counties,
the towns and cities - that regular and engaged democracy is essential. And this report
does not look at that at all. It is only bothered about who gets to drive forward the all-powerful
state. If Pres Trump - and it is a very big if - wants to reduce the role of the state,
then the significance of his actions through that state become clearer and more capable
of control.
surely the problem is that so much of what happens in a modern democracy cannot be carried out
at a local level. You cannot have a local level internet. You cannot decide where your highways
and trains are going to go purely at the local level. You cannot, in most cases, feed and clothe
and support your population at the local level and any form of trade requires agreements that
take place at a much higher level.
It's a very interesting phenomenon. The 'attraction' of Trump is that he's a loose cannon and
doesn't seem to have that much control over a lot of what he says. The remarks about Putin and
America's own predilection for killing people - which caused him to be called anti-American for
actually speaking the truth - is a case in point. He is the precise opposite of your usual buttoned
up on-message politician and that, quite frankly, is refreshing. He is precisely where our democracy
itself has led to. Because of its reliance on professional politicians who say one thing and mean
another, his tendency to blabber and say just what's on his mind, must be perceived as a virtue.
Where this will lead, I have no idea, but he is definitely opening up new unexplored territory
and what we might find in it is anyone's guess. As the old Chinese curse goes, "May you live in
interesting times."
"... We're hoping for judges' consciences, and loyalty to country over party, and common sense, to save us. ..."
"... "administration that is unconstrained by conscience and logic", we have had that continuously since 1980. ..."
"... You get worked up over a travel ban but not Obama's US bombing wedding parties. Or taking out 14 non combatants and losing n MV 22 to get a few smart phones. ..."
"... Do you have stock in both refugee referral companies and Lockheed? ..."
"... poor pk has grabbed the alt right's the concession over cognitive bias, false analogy and cherry picked faux facts. ..."
"... Does anyone take this guy seriously anymore? This is Chicken Little, Sky-Is-Falling nonsense from a PhD Nobelist? Certainly the guy has lost his marbles, and someone needs to put him in a padded room. At least be kind, and retire him. ..."
"... Electoral college exists until "they" gut/get rid of states rule on amendments in the US constitution. ..."
"... Why republicans should be focused on voter suppression, if Democrats are working relentlessly to move blue collar workers and lower middle class voters to far right ? ..."
"... 'dollar democracy' is deeper than that. ..."
"... Wrong. Progressive neoliberals helped give us Trump. Nobody forced Hillary to give speeches to Goldman Sachs or to give Bush a blank check for war. ..."
"... Blaming the few who didn't vote Hillary. What about the many who stayed home? You're an example of learned helplessness. Like the wife who won't leave her abusive husband. ..."
"... If Trump got 37% of votes of people with postgraduate degree that's tell you something about Democratic Party. That only can means that Democratic Party smells so badly that most people can not stand it, not matter what is the alternative. As in "you should burn in hell". ..."
"... It's kind of reversal of voting for "lesser evil" on which Bill Clinton counted when he betrayed the working class and lower middle class. Worked OK for a while but then it stopped working as he essentially pushed people into embraces of far right. ..."
"... I doubt that Trump is a political cycle outlier. He is a sign of the crisis of neoliberal political system, which pushes authoritarian figures as "Hail Mary Pass", when Hillarius politicans are proved to be un-electable. ..."
"... And despite his "bastard liberalism" he is the symbol of rejection of liberalism, especially outsourcing/offshoring and neoliberal globalization. Or more correctly his voters are. ..."
"... "America as we know it will soon be gone." Don't you think that much of it is already gone? We did not see ourselves as a nation of cowards years ago, but that's what we now appear to be. ..."
"... "We did not see ourselves as a nation of cowards years ago, but that's what we now appear to be." USAnians have been cowards for generations. The transition from corporatist dyarchy to one-party authoritarianism is and was inevitable. ..."
"... It seems we live in a system where two parties fight to a draw and then volatility in the system acts as a coin toss and we get new leadership. The people line up approximately half and half for the two. ..."
"... Where do you see a draw? The republicans control the house, the senate, the executive branch, the majority of state legislatures, the majority of state governorships, and will soon control the supreme court. ..."
"... The Republicans have embraced the idea that this is a battle, and that their 50% need to win and keep their heels on the neck of the other 50%. The Democrats seem more conflicted about this fight, partly because some of them have bought the neoliberal ideology of their opposition. ..."
"... "some of them have bought the neoliberal ideology of their opposition." i like the understatement. ..."
"The real question is how much support he has a year from now when most of his voters realize
that the majority of what he directly or implicitly promised them, turns out to be a lie."
I'm sure that people in Kansas were telling themselves this 7 years ago.
Yep - and they were right. The democrats lost the next midterm election. The midterm blowback
is that of both an energized opposition and of a lot of disappointed followers.
If the libruls think Obama's multinational collateral damage from senseless bombing by drone and
expensive aircraft is not worth protesting, then rallies and faux moral indignation against a
travel ban are incongruous to reason.
But we have an administration that is unconstrained by conscience and logic and a GOP majority
in both houses of Congress that shows scant willingness to stand against the administration on
anything.
The only remaining check between now and 2018 is the fear Congresspersons might have of losing
their seats, and the judiciary.
The former is very weak though, because rapid Trump supporters make up the majority of the
GOP voting base, so GOP congressmen are going to stay in line to avoid primary challenges. Their
party is almost completely captured by the wingnut wing.
Also, few at-risk GOP Senators are even up for re-election in 2018.
The latter is our only real hope, and even that is tenuous. Judges can be fickle and peculiar,
but most GOP judges were selected for their partisan loyalty. Most will go along with almost anything
the GOP wants, and as time passes, Trump is going to add more judges, and he will be damn sure
to pick ones that go along with anything he wants.
We're hoping for judges' consciences, and loyalty to country over party, and common sense,
to save us. But when the GOP picks judges they select against those traits.
"administration that is unconstrained by conscience and logic", we have had that continuously
since 1980.
You get worked up over a travel ban but not Obama's US bombing wedding parties. Or taking
out 14 non combatants and losing n MV 22 to get a few smart phones.
Do you have stock in both refugee referral companies and Lockheed?
Does anyone take this guy seriously anymore? This is Chicken Little, Sky-Is-Falling nonsense
from a PhD Nobelist? Certainly the guy has lost his marbles, and someone needs to put him in a
padded room. At least be kind, and retire him.
You certainly cannot expect Krugman to criticize the constitutional political system of dollar
democracy that gave us a choice between Trump and Hillary through first past the post elections
and party caucuses any more than you can expect him to criticize lifetime congressional seats
and a SCOTUS unanswerable to the people.
I believe even Krugman will criticize gerrymandering, which is a safe target since it is implemented
at the state rather than federal level.
The electoral college although problematic is not the best place to start. Campaign finance, gerrymandering,
legislative term limits, and an alternative to first past the post voting are all state to state
neutral, allowing a large and powerful electoral consensus to form without undue obstacles except
for elite authority itself.
These are all assessable solidarity issues. The fear of reversal for Roe V. Wade makes petition
and referendum to overturn SCOTUS decisions more difficult first time around, but not impossible
since Citizens United. Liberals on the fence only need consider the polling numbers comparing
those two SCOTUS decisions to see that petition and referendum to overturn SCOTUS would not threaten
Roe V. Wade, but rather end the threat to Roe V. Wade. OTOH, the electoral college is a state
by state issue and small states are not going to give it up. New York and California will need
to subdivide into a bunch of small states to ever change that.
The constitutional ratification procedure can be hijacked by a solidarity electoral movement
only so long as the solidarity is large and cohesive.
And, IMO, you are not seeing the forest for the trees. The republican party is laser focused on
voter suppression. And they will not waste a crisis or supreme court judge slot.
"A review of these documents shows that North Carolina GOP leaders launched a meticulous and
coordinated effort to deter black voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats."
When the Supreme court becomes un-deadlocked Jim Crow will destroy opposition to Trump_vs_deep_state.
You are certainly correct in their intent and if the South less Virginia, which was purple enough
to go for Hillary in 2016, were the entire country then you would be correct in the impending
reality.
The reality is uncertain though because many of the Trump voters were racists and misogynists,
but then many of the Trump voters were just reacting to an opportunity to strike back at the corporatist
hegemony in control of the political establishment. The corporatist controlled dollar democracy
has dominated the conversation about the advantages of trade regardless of trade deficits for
over thirty years now. A rebellion is long overdue. The US Constitution provides sufficient political
tools to the electorate to stage a revolution using electoral means, but not by just choosing
between establishment political parties without providing an electoral agenda of its own along
with solidarity in imposing bipartisan anti-incumbency sanctions for failure to perform.
Great. While Trump tries to tear down democracy, the supposed representatives of "the people"
will keep talking about shit like how much they hate NAFTA.
"And, IMO, you are not seeing the forest for the trees. The republican party is laser focused
on voter suppression."
With all due respect, I do not believe that.
Why republicans should be focused on voter suppression, if Democrats are working relentlessly
to move blue collar workers and lower middle class voters to far right ?
Paul Krugman didn't give us Trump, the progressives who can't stand dems, demonized Hillary, either
didn't vote or voted for Trump gave us Trump. Idee fixe and big picture are not the same.
Blaming the few who didn't vote Hillary. What about the many who stayed home? You're an
example of learned helplessness. Like the wife who won't leave her abusive husband.
"Wrong. Progressive neoliberals helped give us Trump. Nobody forced Hillary to give speeches
to Goldman Sachs or to give Bush a blank check for war."
How many Goldman Sachs banksters does Trump have in his administration? I lost count.
The best predictor of a Trump vote was a tendency towards sexism and racism. And Trump voters
were generally well-off middle class whites, not the underclass who either stayed home or predominantly
voted for Clinton.
"The best predictor of a Trump vote was a tendency towards sexism and racism. And Trump
voters were generally well-off middle class whites, not the underclass who either stayed home
or predominantly voted for Clinton."
Trump won the uneducated vote. Many of those people ain't middle class.
"How many Goldman Sachs banksters does Trump have in his administration? I lost count."
Yeah they own both parties. Democrats need to be for the people, not corporations. You are
pretty naive for being leftwing. Probably you just get off on being argumentative.
"Trump won the uneducated vote. Many of those people ain't middle class." I see you are
pimping Trump's faux-populist mythology again. Clinton won the majority of votes of those earning
less the $50,000 and Trump won the majority of votes for those who earn more than $50,000.
has it ever occurred to you that older white voters can be middle/upper class without having a
college degree?
it's ironic that many of these same people oppose unions, social insurance (e.g. pensions),
and free education (GI bill) despite having benefited from these socialist programs.
FYIGM
If Trump got 37% of votes of people with postgraduate degree that's tell you something about
Democratic Party. That only can means that Democratic Party smells so badly that most people can
not stand it, not matter what is the alternative. As in "you should burn in hell".
It's kind of reversal of voting for "lesser evil" on which Bill Clinton counted
when he betrayed the working class and lower middle class. Worked OK for a while but then it stopped
working as he essentially pushed people into embraces of far right.
My wife says Liz Warren will run in 2020 and win. I am hoping that it will be someone off radar
now that gets elected as the youngest POTUS in history. We need a sea change with full millennial
backing.
You're wife's prediction for next president will keep DeVos.
"A taxpayer-funded voucher that paid the entire cost of educating a child (not just a partial
subsidy) would open a range of opportunities to all children. . . . Fully funded vouchers would
relieve parents from the terrible choice of leaving their kids in lousy schools or bankrupting
themselves to escape those schools.
the public-versus-private competition misses the central point. The problem is not vouchers;
the problem is parental choice. Under current voucher schemes, children who do not use the vouchers
are still assigned to public schools based on their zip codes. This means that in the overwhelming
majority of cases, a bureaucrat picks the child's school, not a parent. The only way for parents
to exercise any choice is to buy a different home-which is exactly how the bidding wars started.
Under a public school voucher program, parents, not bureaucrats, would have the power to pick
schools for their children-and to choose which schools would get their children's vouchers."
Remember which side of the debate is pro-choice and which side of the debate is pro teacher's
union.
I am not for either side. My wife's mother was a teacher as was her older sister. I am not sure
what she thinks of the teacher's union.
The pedagogical system is so oriented to a system of establishment indoctrination that the
average private school is just as bad as the average public school and even the worst public schools
are no worse than the worst private schools. Only the best private schools stand out along with
a few of the charter schools as better than their public school counterparts and even then not
by a great margin. The problem is the pedagogical approach itself. It is also a matter of who
taught the teachers? We have developed a system that aspires to mold us all into obedient followers
and it works very well. It is also self-replicating.
"Remember which side of the debate is pro-choice and which side of the debate is pro teacher's
union."
Who needs labor and civil rights when we have capitalist billionaires who will give us "school
choice vouchers", "right to work laws", and "deregulation"!
I doubt that Trump is a political cycle outlier. He is a sign of the crisis of neoliberal
political system, which pushes authoritarian figures as "Hail Mary Pass", when Hillarius politicans
are proved to be un-electable.
And despite his "bastard liberalism" he is the symbol of rejection of liberalism, especially
outsourcing/offshoring and neoliberal globalization. Or more correctly his voters are.
Trump said the Iraq war was a disaster. He bragged about being against the war before it started.
He used the Iraq war against Jeb Bush and Hillary as an example of the corrupt elite's incompetence.
This infuriates thoughtless partisans like Krugman to no end.
The appellate court ruled against Trump's Muslim band even more strongly than the lower court
judge.
"America as we know it will soon be gone." Don't you think that much of it is already gone?
We did not see ourselves as a nation of cowards years ago, but that's what we now appear to be.
"We did not see ourselves as a nation of cowards years ago, but that's what we now appear
to be." USAnians have been cowards for generations. The transition from corporatist dyarchy to
one-party authoritarianism is and was inevitable.
It seems we live in a system where two parties fight to a draw and then volatility in the
system acts as a coin toss and we get new leadership. The people line up approximately half and
half for the two.
I'm having a hard time understanding why if half support the new leadership established by
the operations of the system, that we should worry this a threat to the system itself.
For if that's what we think, it seems we have far bigger problems than simple disagreement
to worry about. It seems those among us who think that way should be planning as revolutionaries
to change this doomed system that except for luck has not yet careened over the edge into whatever.
Where do you see a draw? The republicans control the house, the senate, the executive branch,
the majority of state legislatures, the majority of state governorships, and will soon control
the supreme court.
The Republicans have embraced the idea that this is a battle, and that their 50% need to win
and keep their heels on the neck of the other 50%. The Democrats seem more conflicted about this
fight, partly because some of them have bought the neoliberal ideology of their opposition.
"... Obama: "[O]ne of the issues that Democrats have to be clear on is that given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have to show up everywhere." Throwing Clinton under the bus ..."
"... I yelled at the radio after hearing this, because he means just showing up, telling people what they want to hear, then doing whatever the hell you want after getting elected. Not one word about actually meeting peoples needs. EFF OBAMA and the DEMOCRATIC PARTY!! ..."
"... If you didn't read this (linked yesterday), you should consider both reading and sharing far and wide. The entire system is designed to be anti-representative. Don't just get/stay mad, quit expecting a bunch of gangsters to function democratically. Get out of their box. ..."
Obama: "[O]ne of the issues that Democrats have to be clear
on is that given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have
to show up everywhere." Throwing Clinton under the bus
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I yelled at the radio after hearing this, because he means just showing up, telling people what they
want to hear, then doing whatever the hell you want after getting elected. Not one word about actually
meeting peoples needs. EFF OBAMA and the DEMOCRATIC PARTY!!
If you didn't
read this
(linked yesterday), you should consider both reading and sharing
far and wide. The entire system is designed to be anti-representative. Don't
just get/stay mad, quit expecting a bunch of gangsters to function democratically.
Get out of their box.
These are giddy times for the forces of reason and light.
A surge of resistance to a bumbling and unstable president
has sent millions of people into the streets, into the faces
of politicians, and into bookstores to make best sellers
again of authoritarian nightmare stories.
And all of that hasn't changed the fact that Democrats,
the opposition party, are more removed from power than at
almost any point in history. Republicans control everything
in Washington, two-thirds of state legislative chambers and
33 governor's mansions.
Every day brings some fresh affront to decency, some
assault on progress, some blow to the truth. The people who
run the White House can't spell, can't govern, can't get
through a news cycle without insulting an ally or defaming a
cherished institution. Republicans just shrug and move on, in
lock step with a leader who wants to set the country back a
century. From their view, things are going swimmingly.
Outraged about the ban on people from Muslim-majority
nations? So what. About half of the nation, and a majority of
Republicans, are in favor of it. Upset over the return of
Wall Street pirates to power? President Trump's supporters
aren't.
Democrats haven't been able to stop a single one of
Trump's gallery of ill-qualified, ethically challenged and
backward-thinking cabinet appointees. His pick for labor
secretary, Andrew Puzder, doesn't believe people should be
paid a living wage to stir a milkshake, and he hired an
undocumented immigrant to clean his house. He'll fit right
in.
Millions of reasonable people are appalled that a madman
is in charge of the country. But tell that to Mitch McConnell
when he cuts off the right of a fellow senator to speak. Or
tell it to Paul Ryan when he can't find his copy of the
Constitution he has sworn to uphold. These invertebrate
leaders don't care if Trump's residence is a house of lies.
They don't care that their president is a sexual predator, or
that his family is using the office to enrich themselves. All
they care about is the R stitched to his jersey.
When Adlai Stevenson was told that all thinking people
were with him in his race for president, he famously
responded: "That's not enough. I need a majority."
And so, too, do the Democrats. This week, the powerless
party went into their winter cave for an annual retreat -
three days of soul-searching and strategizing.
"This is our moment in history," the House minority
leader, Nancy Pelosi, told her fellow Ds. "This man in the
White House is incoherent, incompetent and dangerous. And we
have to protect children and other living things from him."
Feels good, right? Sorry. The Democrats shouldn't mistake
a sugar high for nutrition. They're still getting their butts
kicked. Being Not Trump gained them only a net of six seats
in the House in November's election, and will not be enough
to win a majority in 2018.
Reliance on identity politics and media-cushioned
affirmation, and a blind spot to the genuine pain of the
white working class, is precisely what produced a President
Trump. For the next year, Democrats should filter their
policy initiatives through the eyes of the person Trump
claims to speak for - the forgotten American.
Of course, Trump's phrase was lifted from somewhere else.
Franklin Roosevelt first rode to victory in 1932 by urging
fellow citizens to put faith in "the forgotten man at the
bottom of the economic pyramid."
Roosevelt actually did something for that overlooked
American - Social Security, minimum wage, building roads,
bridges and dams - and was rewarded with a majority coalition
that carried the United States to new heights. Therein lies
the way back to power for Democrats.
When Democrats lost the South - for multiple generations,
as it turned out - it put them in a deep hole, forcing them
to rely on a surge of young and Latino voters to turn the
demographic tide, or candidates with broad appeal beyond the
party strongholds on the coasts.
President Obama left office with soaring approval numbers
and a great legacy. But Democrats also lost 1,034 state and
federal offices in his time. Whites are still 70 percent of
the vote. If Democrats continue to hemorrhage voters among
the working class, they will never see the presidency, or
even expect to govern in one house, for a long time.
The way out is not that difficult. Yes, they should engage
in hand-to-hand combat in the capital. And certainly,
Democrats must turn to the courts when the rule of law is
broken. But they have to be for something, as well - a master
policy narrative, promoting things that help average
Americans. The old Broadway adage was how it will play in
Peoria. For Democrats, they should think of Joe Biden's
Scranton, Pa., every time they take to a podium.
The follow-up to Pelosi's statement is "No [kidding]. What
actions are you taking to protect said children and living
things?"
What's the plan for supporting Water Protectors and DAPL
protesters? What's the plan for shutting down the Senate
after McConnell and co exercise the nuclear option to force a
vote on Gorsuch? What's the plan for preventing a vote on
Gorsuch? How about CBP personnel who ignore court orders? Not
an unreasonable expectation that some will - what to do about
them? Expressions of outrage are easily ignored if there's no
follow-up action. Perpetrators' lives need to be made
difficult.
"He's what a lot of Americans would be if they had a
billion dollars."
Updated by Sean Illing
Feb 1, 2017, 9:30am EST
"Pull a lever for me and you'll horrify them all."
That's how journalist and author Matt Taibbi describes the
proposition Donald Trump made to the electorate in 2016. For
the past year, Taibbi has covered Trump for Rolling Stone.
His latest book, Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the
2016 Circus, is a collection of long- and shortform articles
drawn from that experience.
To read the pieces in chronological order is to witness a
familiar journey: In the beginning, like so many people,
Taibbi saw Trump's candidacy as a joke. But then he went to
Iowa and saw that something was afoot. Trump had tapped into
a reservoir of resentment.
And then there was the performative aspect. The way he
talked, the way he behaved, the way he treated other
candidates - it was obscene and spellbinding all at once.
Trump treated the campaign like a reality TV show, sucking
all the oxygen out of the room. It was a perfect marriage of
amorality and shamelessness.
"In a perverse way," Taibbi wrote in August 2015, "Trump
has restored a more pure democracy to this process. He's
taken the Beltway thinkfluencers out of the game and turned
the presidency into a pure high-school-style popularity
contest conducted entirely in the media."
The wave of spectacle-driven rage that Trump rode in the
primaries carried him all the way to the White House. The
people who voted for Trump knew they were voting for
dynamite, Taibbi argues, and that was the point: to extend a
giant middle finger to the establishment.
I sat down with Taibbi last week to talk about the seeds
of this resentment. I also asked him why he still felt
blindsided by the election, and why he thinks Trump was able
to circumnavigate all the institutional checks that normally
prevent someone like him from ascending to the presidency.
Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.
Sean Illing
In 2009, you wrote a book called The Great Derangement in
which you talked about various fringe political movements
around the country. A big theme was the loss of trust in
national institutions, like Congress and the media. You even
described a possible future in which politics "stopped being
about ideology and instead turned into a problem of
information."
That reads like prophecy now. What did you see in 2009?
Matt Taibbi
The main thing was that I saw people tuning out the media. A
lot of us have this idea that the truth has a kind of magical
power, that if the truth is out there it will convince the
country to unite behind it. But this isn't so. People can
simply decide to not believe a version of events now. They
can shop for information the same way they'd shop for
everything else, and they pick the reality they find most
pleasing.
Back when I was thinking about the rapture movement or the
9/11 truther movement, what struck me was that there are
bubbles now that you can stay in and you don't have to engage
with reality if you don't want to. So it occurred to me that
in the future, people might decide en masse to completely
tune out. Even the idea of having a debate with people about
a commonly accepted body of facts seemed to be slipping away
at the time.
And that's kind of what happened in this election. It was
one group of people believing one thing and another group of
people seeing something completely different.
Sean Illing
Some of this is justified insofar as people, some more than
others, feel left behind both economically and culturally.
When people feel disinvested in the system, it's a lot easier
to tune out.
Matt Taibbi
Exactly. We've had this slow, suffocating decline in the real
value of people's salaries. Real opportunities are shrinking.
Everybody has to work more. There's more debt. There's a
broad perception that the mainstream media was in league with
this group of elitist forces that were hoarding all of the
winnings from society and slowly squeezing everyone else out.
What I learned talking to people around the country is
that the press was seen as the enemy, as part of the
grinding, broken system. And that's why they didn't trust us
anymore. Fair or not, that was the perception.
Sean Illing
How much does Trump remind you of Nixon?
Matt Taibbi
When Hunter S. Thompson wrote about Nixon, he was responding
to a man he saw as symbolic of his time, a kind of monster of
his age. Nixon's personality represented this darkness that
was at the heart of everything wrong with America at the
time. And Trump is an equivalent figure in that way. But he's
not the same kind of person as Nixon. Nixon had many levels
to his personality; he was a thinker, well-educated, a
schemer. Trump is just a bundle of disorganized urges. He's
what a lot of Americans would be if they had a billion
dollars: They'd build grotesque castles, bang models, and
grow fat.
So in that sense, Trump represents something horrible
about all of us, and that's what reminds me of Nixon.
Sean Illing
I admit, I was slow to recognize what was happening last
year. For months I insisted Trump would fold, one way or the
other. Some of it was cognitive dissonance; some of it was
pure denialism. I just got it wrong.
At what point did you say, "Holy shit, this guy can win
the whole thing"?
Matt Taibbi
I went through a couple different stages with this. When he
first entered the race, I thought it was a joke. And then I
went through this period where I went to Iowa and realized
that the field of Republican candidates he was running
against were comically lightweight. At that point, I believed
he was absolutely going to win the nomination. I think when
he survived his attack on John McCain, it was even clearer.
But later, like everyone else, I fell victim to the
popular myths about the invincibility of the Obama coalition.
I ran into a Democratic operative at the RNC and he laid out
all these crazy things that had to happen in order for Trump
to win a general election, and I totally bought it. I knew
Clinton was weak, but I believed she would win. Obviously
that was a mistake.
I should've gone with what I was seeing, and what I was
seeing was Trump generating an enormous amount of energy on
the campaign trail, and also that Clinton was the perfect
opponent for him. It was all right there, in front of us, but
I didn't trust my instincts.
Sean Illing
I'm still convinced this guy never wanted to be president.
Hell, he hired a bunch of actors to stand in front of him
when made his campaign announcement speech. My sense is that
this was an exercise in brand promotion that, at some point,
exploded into something real.
Matt Taibbi
Ha! You know, Trump's foray into this campaign reminded me of
this boxer, Peter McNeeley, who fought Mike Tyson right after
he got out of jail. So McNeeley was this terrible white boxer
with a mullet who got a chance to fight Tyson at the right
time. The whole thing was like a frat dare. McNeeley got
himself all pumped up and he just ran to the center of ring,
right into Tyson's fist, and he just collapsed onto the mat.
I thought Trump's campaign would be like that: He'd go into
it with a full head of steam, and it would be fantastic for a
month or two.
But then he ran into the total stupidity of America that
embraced every dumb thing about him, and that chemically
interacted with his narcissistic personality and it turned
into this unstoppable force.
Sean Illing
Another part of this story is how craftily Trump played the
media throughout the campaign. The media was the perfect
punching bag, the perfect "cultural villain," as you put it.
He just rope-a-doped us all the way to the White House.
Matt Taibbi
He tuned in to the fact that all of us are slaves to ratings,
even if we pretend that we're not. To be fair, individually a
lot us try to do what we know we ought to do, but the reality
is that we work for companies that have to make money. Trump
understands that, and he understands that he was making
everyone money. He knew we'd keep the lights on. He knew we
needed him as much as he needed us.
Sean Illing
He was also tuned in to the rampant anti-media sentiment out
there. After every offense - insulting veterans, menstrual
jokes, mocking a disabled reporter, threatening to kill the
family members of terrorists, offering to pay the legal fees
of supporters who pummel protesters, the "grab 'em by the
pussy" scandal - he attacked the press, and most of his
supporters loved it. Whoever he offended or whatever he lied
about was an afterthought.
Matt Taibbi
Absolutely. We see ourselves as the defenders of the public
good, but so many of the people I talked to on the campaign
trail see the press as the agents of political correctness,
as self-important do-gooders who take every opportunity to
mock and punish people who don't think and talk and act like
we do. Trump was defying all of this, and peopled loved the
fact that he stood up to us.
Sean Illing
You say in the book that Trump basically went to the American
people and said, "Pull a lever for me and you'll horrify them
all." And 60 million people said, "I'm in."
Matt Taibbi
Again, you have all these people on the progressive side
asking themselves, "How can all these Trump voters not be
thinking about the reality of what a Trump presidency would
look like?" And it just reflects a total misunderstanding of
the thought process on the other side. This is about living
from second to second, and they just wanted that rush that
they were going to get when they saw the looks on our faces
when Trump got elected.
The reality of what comes next is totally secondary.
Sean Illing
An interesting question moving forward is how do we cover
Trump in a way that's illuminating but also not
counterproductive or amenable to the anti-media narrative
he's spinning?
Matt Taibbi
It's a really great question because Trump has this ability
to turn everyone in his orbit into a reality TV character,
and he's turned the media into one. We're starting to behave
radically, more emotionally, in a way we're giving in to the
demands that the public has to ditch our normal approach to
things and to be more alarmist in our reporting.
That's exactly the wrong approach, though I get it. I
realize this is ridiculous coming from a guy who just wrote a
book with the title "Insane Clown President," but I think we
should slowly, methodically focus on the hard facts of
everything he's doing and not get into flame wars and
distractions and soap operas.
It's not our job to take on Trump and beat him; our job is
to do what we do.
Sean Illing
In the book, you write that Trump is "as likely driven by gas
as ideology." He's got Steve Bannon, the intellectual light
of the alt-right, as his chief strategist. His Cabinet is
full of military generals, bankers, and billionaires -
there's really no coherent ideological thread holding it
together.
What prospect worries you more: that Trump is a
ratings-chasing nihilist or that he might actually believe
all the things he said on the trail?
Matt Taibbi
Both of those outcomes are extremely dangerous. If he's just
a tool for an evil racist revolutionary like Bannon, who
actually has a brain in his head and is capable of strategic
thought, that would be really bad. If he's just an amoral
narcissistic lunatic, as he appears to be, that's also bad. I
could easily see him hate-tweeting us into a war.
So neither scenario is terribly heartening. If it's just
him being crazy, well, the president has a lot of power and
that could go tragically wrong. If it's him being a puppet or
a willing conspirator in this alt-right revolution, that's
just as frightening.
It's like that scene in Goodwill Hunting: "Do you want the
belt, the stick, or the wrench?" Shit, I don't want any of
them.
Sean Illing
I talked to one of Trump's biographers recently, and he
echoed something I've heard from a lot of people, which is
that Trump only cares about his popularity and that he'll do
whatever he thinks will boost his ratings. That's almost
comforting, but every indication so far is that Trump is
pushing full steam ahead on the promises he made during the
campaign.
Now, signing executive orders doesn't mean things
magically happen, but it's an indicator that he intends to
advance policies that are popular with his base but not with
the majority of the country.
Matt Taibbi
I think he's spent so much time with these sycophants who
worship him and have responded positively to his loony ideas
about the wall and the Muslim ban that he feels pressure to
live up to the image of Trump as the savior and rescuer even
though it's not winning him a whole lot of popularity among
the majority of the country. He still seems to care intensely
about things like his ratings, otherwise why make all this
noise about mythical voter fraud or crowd sizes?
So I think the biographer is mostly right. I don't have
any idea what that will mean for the next four years,
however.
Sean Illing
Speaking of the next four years, your book ends on a
pessimistic note. You basically declare the dream of unified
country dead. Is it that dark?
Matt Taibbi
Yeah, I think it is.
Sean Illing
Are you encouraged at all by the massive protests or the fact
that Trump is historically unpopular?
Matt Taibbi
Not enough to feel especially hopeful about the future. I
lived in Russia for several years and one of the things that
struck me is how naive I had been growing up in the United
States. If you grew up in America, you have no idea how bad
it can get. The possibilities for awfulness in human
experience are far beyond what we're used to.
I think we're just beginning to see how bad things can
get. We have an illusion of stability thanks to our wealth
and geography and the fact that we're still a young country.
We take so much for granted. As Yeats said, things can fall
apart. The center doesn't hold forever.
I see things starting to fray here and it's unsettling.
Sean Illing
Political order is perilously contingent, and that's a lesson
America hasn't learned in a long time.
Matt Taibbi
That's exactly right. I'm not sure how this will play out,
but it feels like we're at the beginning of something.
Many, if not, most democrats also believe in "jobs" and look
on social welfare with puritan disdain. I think it will take
at least a couple of generations for USAnians to discard
their puritan economic beliefs and acknowledge that capital
should be shared (and/or even collectively owned).
Hillary proposed around $1.8 trillion / 10 years in
total new spending programs as of early last year, then
added more throughout the campaign season.
We've talked about this a number of times before and
yet you insist on pretending that infrastructural spending
is the only spending because your whole backward ideology
is predicated on lying about what Hillary Clinton actually
proposed. Seek mental help and stop being such a
mendacious twat.
Reply Wednesday, January 25, 2017 at 07:35 PM
Seems like Sanjait is the mendacious twat who gets really
angry when proven wrong. He can't argue the facts, like other
centrists, so they try to shout you down.
Clinton's bad economics - which is neoliberal economics -
is bad politics. If you google Hillary infrastructure
spending you get:
"That's why Hillary Clinton has announced a $275 billion,
five-year plan to rebuild our infrastructure-and put
Americans to work in the process"
Trump won the election partly on his promises to rebuild
the infrastructure bigly. The Senate Democrats have upped the
ante with a trillion dollar 10 year plan. That's twice as
much as Hillary's plan.
They know its good politics. The Post article says Trump
was thinking a trillion (via tax incentives and
private-public partnerships) but his friend is quoted as
saying more like $500 billion over ten years - Hillary sized.
Why wasn't Hillary's plan larger? Read Krugman's blog post
from yesterday.
Too much fiscal expansion causes the Fed to raise rates
and the dollar to appreciate. Did Hillary or her economics
surrogates ever explain this? No. Alan Blinder did say that
Hillary's fiscal plan wouldn't be large enough to cause the
Fed to alter it's rate hike path.
Krugman says fiscal deficits near full employment causes
interest rates to rise, like it's an economic law.
He's missing the middle factor, inflation. Fiscal deficits
cause inflation which cause the Fed to raise raise rates.
Oh yeah he left out the Fed also.
I repeated the story about Clinton dropping his middle
class spending bill in favor of deficit reduction but of
course the neoliberals ignore it.
"The master parable for this story is the 1990s, when the
Clinton administration came in with big plans for stimulus,
only to be slapped down by Alan Greenspan, who warned that
any increase in public spending would be offset by a
contractionary shift by the federal reserve. But once Clinton
made the walk to Canossa and embraced deficit reduction,
Greenspan's fed rewarded him with low rates, substituting
private investment in equal measure for the foregone public
spending. In the current contest, this means: Any increase in
federal borrowing will be offset one for one by a fall in
private investment - because the Fed will raise rates enough
to make it happen."
Sanjait wasn't even aware that the Fed has switched over
to the corridor system and will use IOER to help control
inflation as it raises rates. He assumed Dani Rodrik was a
woman.
And he presumes to go around and call people names about
technical issues that can be debated rationally with
reference to the facts?
"In 1992, Bill Clinton campaigned on the promise of a
short-term stimulus package. But soon after being elected, he
met privately with Alan Greenspan, chair of the Federal
Reserve Board, and soon accepted what became known as "the
financial markets strategy." It was a strategy of placating
financial markets. The stimulus package was sacrificed, taxes
were raised, spending was cut-all in a futile effort to keep
long-term interest rates from rising, and all of which helped
the Democrats lose their majority in the House. In fact, the
defeat of the stimulus package set off a sharp decline in
Clinton's public approval ratings from which his presidency
would never recover.
It is easy to forget that Clinton had other alternatives.
In 1993, Democrats in Congress were attempting to rein in the
Federal Reserve by making it more accountable and
transparent. Those efforts were led by the chair of the House
Banking Committee, the late Henry B. Gonzalez, who warned
that the Fed was creating a giant casino economy, a house of
cards, a "monstrous bubble." But such calls for regulation
and transparency fell on deaf ears in the Clinton White House
and Treasury.
The pattern was set early. The Federal Reserve became
increasingly independent of elected branches and more captive
of private financial interests. This was seen as "sound
economics" and necessary to keep inflation low. Yet the
Federal Reserve's autonomy left it a captive of a financial
constituency it could no longer control or regulate. Instead,
the Fed would rely on one very blunt policy instrument, its
authority to set short-term interest rates. As a result of
such an active monetary policy, the nation's fiscal policy
was constrained, public investment declined, critical
infrastructure needs were ignored. Moreover, the Fed's
stop-and-go interest-rate policy encouraged the growth of a
bubble economy in housing, credit, and currency markets.
Perhaps the biggest of these bubbles was the inflated U.S.
dollar, one of several troubling consequences of the Clinton
administration's free-trade policies. Although Clinton spoke
from the left on trade issues, he governed from the right and
ignored the need for any minimum floor on labor, human
rights, or environmental standards in trade agreements. After
pushing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
through Congress on the strength of Republican votes, Clinton
paved the way for China's entry into the World Trade
Organization (WTO) only a few years after China's bloody
crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square
in Beijing.
During Clinton's eight years in office, the U.S. current
account deficit, the broadest measure of trade
competitiveness, increased fivefold, from $84 billion to $415
billion. The trade deficit increased most dramatically at the
end of the Clinton years. In 1999, the U.S. merchandise trade
deficit surpassed $338 billion, a 53 percent increase from
$220 billion in 1998.
In early March 2000, Greenspan warned that the current
account deficit could only be financed by "ever-larger
portfolio and direct foreign investments in the United
States, an outcome that cannot continue without limit." The
needed capital inflows did continue for nearly eight Bush
years. But it was inevitable that the inflows would not be
sustained and the dollar would drop. Perhaps the singular
success of Bill Clinton was to hand the hot potato to another
president before the asset price bubble went bust."
"The downward spiral began with Clinton's 1993 abandonment of
his original threefold economic program--deficit reduction,
economic stimulus and government investment in the nation's
physical and human infrastructure. Facing opposition to the
last two, Clinton abandoned them and focused on deficit
reduction. This painted him into a corner that makes it near
impossible to achieve any programmatic progress in this
term--and so makes unlikely any hope of a second.
The 1993 story has been cast as the victory of the
"deficit hawks," sober economists intent on reducing the gap
between federal spending and tax revenues, over the purely
political advocates of spending on the investment programs.
But the common perception--that the "hawks" represented the
responsible economic community, as against the irresponsible
politicians--is not true.
Almost every one of the economists in the Clinton
Administration had earlier espoused economic policies where
stimulus took priority over deficit control. Rightly
frightened by the mounting deficits of the Reagan-Bush years,
however, by the 1990s they had abandoned their roots for
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's "responsible"
economics--where reduction of the deficit and fear of
inflation were the operative factors."
"Now, the irony is that Wall Street had never squawked when
the first George Bush was spending like gangbusters or when
Ronald Reagan was spending like mad. But the thought was that
a Democratic administration has to sort of prove its chops,
prove itself capable of being much more fiscally responsible
than its Republican predecessors because it's a Democratic
administration. Well, to us, to me, to those on my side of
the debate, that sounded absurd. I mean, yes, let's satisfy
the bond traders to some extent. Obviously, we have to get
the deficit down somewhat. But let's not sacrifice the
Clinton agenda.
....
Reich: The desire to do it all, to have the Clinton
priorities and yet satisfy Wall Street led to this
extraordinary effort to go line by line by line through the
budget and to try to extract enough. And then the question
was, "Well, how much is enough?" Do you bring the budget
deficit down from five percent of the gross domestic product
down to two and a half percent? Which is, basically, cutting
the deficit by half. That's what many of us said we're
perfectly fine to do.
Others, who were the deficit hawks, said, "No, no, no, no.
You actually have to reduce the absolute amount of the
deficit by half. That was your campaign promise, that's what
we need to do. That's the only way we're going to satisfy
Wall Street."
And in the background, Alan Greenspan, as head of the Fed,
was whispering in ears -- Lloyd Bentsen's ear, and I think
also the President's ear, "If you don't get this budget
deficit down, I am not going to cut short-term interest
rates. And if I don't cut short-term interest rates, by the
time you face the next election in 1996, this economy is not
going to be growing buoyantly, and you may not be
re-elected." That's called extortion."
It wasn't so long ago that American politicians lived in
fear of the bond market. During the Clinton administration,
James Carville famously said that "I used to think if there
was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or
the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come
back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody." That
phenomenon gave rise to the concept of the "bond market
vigilantes," which Krugman loves to employ.
But today, the bond market vigilantes are not much in
evidence. Or rather, they are in evidence, but they suddenly
seem unable to have much of an impact on US fiscal policy.
Bill Gross, of the ludicrously enormous bond fund PIMCO, is
running around screaming about the need for more borrowing
and more stimulus. But he has no effect, because it turns out
that while bond investors have powerful ways of constraining
US government borrowing, they have only indirect and weak
means of expanding it.
The United States has a large debt that is routinely
rolled over, and it generally runs a budget deficit (Clinton
interregnum aside). If bond investors start demanding higher
interest rates on government debts, this immediately raises
the cost of borrowing for the US government. This, in turn,
has knock-on effects throughout the economy, as interest
rates rise for everyone and economic activity is thereby
constrained. For these reasons, the US government has
powerful incentives to avoid doing things that cause the
interest rate on treasuries to rise.
Today, however, we find ourselves in the opposite
situation: what the bond market seems to want most of all is
for the US to borrow more money and stimulate the economy.
That's the best explanation for the incredibly low yield on
Treasury bonds, which is negative in real terms over some
time periods. And yet the US is not borrowing more; instead
both parties are demanding insane policies that will cause a
second recession, ostensibly based on fallacious notions
about the magical effects of budget cutting and a nonsensical
conception of the relationship between government and
household finances.
The problem here is that the power of the bond market is
asymmetrical. When the interest rate on Treasuries go up,
this immediately makes all of the government's activities
more expensive, and hence forces changes in fiscal planning.
But when the interest rate falls to near zero, this only
presents an opportunity for expanded borrowing, an
opportunity that can easily be thrown away if the political
system is too insane and dysfunctional to take advantage of
it.
Hence the bond vigilantes sit on the sidelines, impotent
and hopeless. Just like the rest of us.
"... Most of the major changes he mentions are clearly and explicitly the consequence of policy changes, mostly by Republicans, starting with Reagan: deregulation, lower taxes on the wealthy, a lack of antitrust enforcement, and the like. ..."
This is frankly rather disingenuous. Most of the major changes he mentions are clearly and explicitly
the consequence of policy changes, mostly by Republicans, starting with Reagan: deregulation,
lower taxes on the wealthy, a lack of antitrust enforcement, and the like.
libezkova -> DrDick... January 25, 2017 at 09:29 PM
Read through the link and it's not nearly that simple, especially when you consider the fact that
some trends, though plausibly or certainly reinforced through policy, aren't entirely or even
primarily caused by policy.
I did not say they were the *only* factors, but they are the primary causes. If you look at the
timelines and data trends it is pretty clear. Reagan broke the power of the Unions and started
deregulation (financialization is a consequence of this), which is the period when the big increases
began. Automation plays a secondary role in this. what has happened is that the few industries
which are most conducive to automation have remained here (like final assembly of automobiles),
while the many, more labor intensive industries (automobile components manufacturing) have been
offshored to low wage, not labor or environmental protections countries.
Both parties participated in the conversion of the USA into neoliberal society. So it was a bipartisan
move.
Clinton did a lot of dirty work in this direction and was later royally remunerated for his
betrayal of the former constituency of the Democratic Party and conversion it into "yet another
neoliberal party"
Obama actually continued Bush and Clinton work. He talked about 'change we can believe in'
while saving Wall street and real estate speculators from jail they fully deserved.
Very true. Republicans were in the vanguard and did most heavy lifting. That's undeniable.
But Clinton's negative effects were also related to the weakening the only countervailing force
remaining on the way of the neoliberalism -- trade unionism. So he played the role of "subversive
agent" in the Democratic Party. His betrayal of trade union political interests and his demoralizing
role should be underestimated.
"... The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal first "broke" in the far-right blogosphere. The accusation they made was that these gangs were being allowed to operate undisturbed because everyone was too afraid of "appearing racist" to properly investigate them . . . and nobody listened to the far-right bloggers who were breaking this story because they were afraid of "appearing racist" if they gave any credibility to those far-right sources, too. Never mind that it seemed paranoid to rely on bloggers ..."
"... the far-right blogosphere turned out to be right. ..."
"... those people ..."
"... The Podesta Emails ..."
"... The evidence is of wildly varying levels of quality, ranging from the pareidolia of "Jesus is appearing to me in my toast" to "wait, that's actually pretty damn creepy." The mountain of claims and observations and speculations being compiled in places like Voat and Steemit are too overwhelming for any one person to hope to wade through sorting wheat from chaff, and while I don't intend to try, I will summarize some just a little bit of it here. ..."
"... While many of these claims are wild speculation over coincidences (though by no means all of them are), at some point I think a bunch of weird coincidences involving pedophilia and kids becomes sort of damning in and of itself. In one email , Podesta is among those being invited to a farm and the host says, "Bonnie will be Uber Service to transport Ruby, Emerson, and Maeve Luzzatto (11, 9, and almost 7) so you'll have some further entertainment, and they will be in [the] pool for sure ." ..."
"... Could that have an innocent explanation? Sure, maybe. But inviting a group of adult men to a gathering and calling young children "further entertainment" while listing their ages is ..."
"... All the Children ..."
"... Here are just a few of the more "institutional" coincidences involved in the story: one of the men on the small list of people found "liking" photos like this one on these individuals' Instagram accounts is Arun Rao , the U.S. Attorney Chief, charged with prosecuting cases of child pornography. ..."
"... Besta Pizza, the business whose logo so closely resembled the "little boy lover" logo, is owned by Andrew Kline , who was one of four attorneys in the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit of the Department of Justice. Isn't it just a little ..."
"... The disturbing bit is that the photo uses the tag "#chickenlovers," and "chicken lover" is in fact ..."
"... Chicken Hawk ..."
"... Furthermore, Tony Podesta's favorite ..."
"... In addition to Jeffrey Epstein, the Podesta brothers are also friends with convicted sex offender Clement Freud as well as convicted serial child molester Dennis Hastert . ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... And we do know that this has happened before. ..."
"... The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal ..."
"... how we should respond to the possibility. ..."
Beginning in 1997, in an English town of more than 100,000 people, eight Pakistani men stood at
the core of a group involving as many as three hundred suspects who abused, gang-raped, pimped and
trafficked, by the most conservative estimate, well over a thousand of the town's young girls for
years.
The police were eventually accused of not just turning a blind eye, but of
participating in the abuse - even supplying the Pakistani gangs with drugs and tipping them off
when they heard of colleagues searching for children they knew to be in the gangs' possession.
Others were afraid of investigating the gangs or calling attention to their behavior because it
would have been politically incorrect to accuse the town's ethnic community of such a rampant and
heinous crime - in the words of one English writer, "
Fears of appearing racist trumped fears of more children being abused ."
But when this story first broke, guess where it appeared?
Here's how a blogger writing under the name Mehrdad Amanpour tells the story of how the story first started reaching people:
Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls were
being systematically gang-raped by Muslim gangs. It claimed this was being covered-up.
I've never had time for conspiracy theories, especially when they look as hateful as those
in the article. So I checked the links and sources in the piece. I found an American racist-far-right
website and from there, saw the original source was a similarly unpleasant website in the UK.
I did a brief search for corroboration from reputable mainstream sources. I found none. So
I wrote a curt reply to my friend: "I'd appreciate it if you didn't send me made-up crap from
neo–Nazi websites."
Some months later, I read the seminal exposé of the (mainly) ethnic-Pakistani grooming gang
phenomenon by Andrew Norfolk in The Sunday Times .
I was stunned and horrified - not just that these vile crimes were indeed happening and endemic,
but that they really were being ignored and "covered-up" by public authorities and the mainstream
media.
The
Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal first "broke" in the far-right blogosphere. The accusation
they made was that these gangs were being allowed to operate undisturbed because everyone was too
afraid of "appearing racist" to properly investigate them . . . and nobody listened to the far-right
bloggers who were breaking this story because they were afraid of "appearing racist" if they gave
any credibility to those far-right sources, too. Never mind that it seemed paranoid to rely on
bloggers to report truths like these when the allegations were so wide-reaching, involving
a literal conspiracy within the police force.
And yet, years after no one was willing to take them seriously, the far-right blogosphere
turned out to be right.
Well over a thousand (mostly) white young girls were being abused by (mostly) Pakistani
gangs.
And the authorities were covering it up.
We are now, once again, in the stage of an evolving scandal that Mehrdad Amanpour described his
experience with above. Just to be clear, I'm not going to commit myself to the idea that this is
going to be as huge as Rotherham was. We should be careful: we don't know what would or wouldn't
be confirmed with a proper investigation. The question here is not whether we've gotten to the bottom
of this online. The question is whether there is enough here to justify thinking there should be
a proper investigation.
And the parallel with Rotherham is that the relatively small number of people asking for that
are mostly the loathsome kinds of people who run "racist far-right websites." So, since the claims
are inherently conspiratorial, and the mainstream doesn't want to be associated with those people
who are talking about it, it is once again all too easy to just dismiss the claims out of hand
as paranoia run wild.
Again, the evolution of the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal was an extremely
painful lesson that the mainstream can be wrong and the "paranoid racist far-right"
can be right. And that lesson was far too expensive to simply let go to waste.
The name of this scandal is Pizzagate.
It gets the name for two reasons: first, because at the center of the scandal are high-level Washington
insiders who own a handful of businesses in the DC area, including a couple pizzerias (Comet Ping
Pong and Besta Pizza), who have fallen under suspicion for involvement in a child sex abuse ring.
Second, because the first questions arose in peoples' minds as a result of some very bizarre emails
revealed by Wikileaks in The
Podesta Emails that, quite simply, just sound strange (and usually involve weird
references to pizza). One of the strangest emails involves Joe Podesta being asked this question:
"The realtor found a handkerchief (I think it has a map that seems pizza-related). Is it yours?"
The evidence is of wildly varying levels of quality, ranging from the pareidolia of "Jesus
is appearing to me in my toast" to "wait, that's actually pretty damn creepy." The mountain of claims
and observations and speculations being compiled in places like
Voat and
Steemit are too overwhelming
for any one person to hope to wade through sorting wheat from chaff, and while I don't intend to
try, I will summarize some just a little bit of it here.
While many of these claims are wild speculation over coincidences (though by no means all
of them are), at some point I think a bunch of weird coincidences involving pedophilia and kids becomes
sort of damning in and of itself. In
one email , Podesta
is among those being invited to a farm and the host says, "Bonnie will be Uber Service to transport
Ruby, Emerson, and Maeve Luzzatto (11, 9, and almost 7) so you'll have some further entertainment,
and they will be in [the] pool for sure ."
Could that have an innocent explanation? Sure, maybe. But inviting a group of adult men to
a gathering and calling young children "further entertainment" while listing their ages is
weird , whether it ends up having an explanation or not.
If I was getting messages that listed the ages of young children that would be in a pool
And it turned out that the logo for my business contained a symbol strikingly close to
the "little boy lover" logo used by pedophiles to signify that their interest is in young boys rather
than girls . . .
And the bands that showed up at my restaurant had albums called All the Children
with images on the cover
of a child putting phallic-shaped objects into his mouth . . .
. . . and were found making creepy jokes about pedophilia (in reference to Jared Fogle: "
we all have our preferences
. . . ") . . . and there were instagram photos coming out of kids ("jokingly?") taped
to the tables in my restaurant . . .
. . . frankly, I would start asking questions about myself.
Here are just a few of the more "institutional" coincidences involved in the story: one of
the men on the small list of people found "liking" photos like this one on these individuals' Instagram
accounts is
Arun Rao , the U.S. Attorney Chief, charged with prosecuting cases of child pornography.
Besta Pizza, the business whose logo so closely resembled the "little boy lover" logo, is
owned by
Andrew Kline , who was one of four attorneys in the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit of the
Department of Justice. Isn't it just a little unusual that someone that high up in a human
trafficking division would fail to notice the symbolism?
For yet another coincidence,
Lauren Silsby-Gayler is the former director of The New Life Children's Refuge in Haiti. It is
a matter of public record that she was caught, prosecuted, and sent to jail while in that role for
trying to abduct dozens of children, most of whom had homes and families. The
main lawyer paid
to represent Silsby-Gayler, "President of the Sephardic Jewish community in the Dominican Republic,"
was himself suspected of involvement in human trafficking.
When the Clintons gained influence in the region, one of their first acts was to work to
get Silsby-Gayler
off the hook . Among the Podesta Wikileaks are
State Department emails
discussing their case. Meanwhile, she now works on the executive board of
AlertSense . . .
which collaborates with IPAWS to send out nation-wide Amber Alerts.
While some of the supposed "codewords" people have claimed to have identified in Pizzagate appear
to be made up, there is at least one unambiguous instance: here is an Instagrammed photo posted by
James Alefantis, the owner of Comet Ping Pong that appears innocent enough: a man carrying a young
child with a beaded necklace draped around both of their necks.
The disturbing bit is that the photo uses the tag "#chickenlovers," and "chicken lover" is
in fact an established term to refer to a pedophile - someone who loves "chicken," which
is also unambiguously an established term to refer to underage children (you can see this in the
gay slang dictionary subset of the
Online Dictionary
of Playground Slang ).
Complain all you want about the "speculative" and "paranoid" online discussions of Pizzagate,
but when you have clearer-cut cases like this one where James Alefantis absolutely, unquestionably
did in fact post a photo of a man holding an infant and the one and only hashtag he used for the
photo involved a term that unquestionably is a reference to pedophilia, in a context where it is
clear that there is nothing else here that "chicken" could possibly have been referring to, the likelihood
that more speculative claims might have truth to them is increased.
There is a 1994 documentary expose on NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association) called
Chicken
Hawk .
Here is yet another reference from a watchdog group from 2006, proving that this one existed
well before Pizzagate surfaced. Another confirmed fact dug up by the paranoid right-wing conspiracy
nuts on the Internet?
So here are a few more things we do know. We know that Bill Clinton has taken dozens
of international flights on a plane colloquially known as the "
Lolita Express " with Jeffrey Epstein, a man who spent 13 months in jail after being convicted
of soliciting a 13-year-old
prostitute . We know that Hillary Clinton's staff knew that
Anthony Weiner was sexting underage girls all the way back in 2011 - and covered it up. Guess
whose laptop revealed evidence that Hillary Clinton went on flights on Jeffrey Epstein's "
Lolita Express " along with Bill? That's right: Anthony Weiner's.
Now do you understand why the mainstream media was so eager to spin these emails as just a "distraction"
during the election?
The staff that ignored Weiner's sexting of young children included John Podesta himself, whose
brother Tony is one of the very men at the center of Pizzagate. Tony Podesta has rather warped tastes
in art. For instance, he owns a bronze statue of a decapitated man in a contorted position identical
to a well-known photograph of one of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's victims:
(See
here for the disturbing photo of the real victim.)
The same news story that features the image above also mentions the fact that John Podesta's
bedroom contains multiple images from a photographer "known for documentary-style pictures
of naked teenagers in their parents' suburban homes.")
Furthermore, Tony Podesta's favorite artist is Biljana Djurdjevic, whose art heavily
features images of children in BDSM-esque positions in large showers. Here's one with a row of young
girls in a shower with their hands behind their backs in a position that suggests bondage:
Here's one with a young boy in a shower tied up in the air with his hands over his head:
In addition to Jeffrey Epstein, the Podesta brothers are also friends with convicted sex offender
Clement Freud as well as convicted serial child molester
Dennis Hastert .
We do know that the New York Times , which is now dismissing Pizzagate in its
entirety as a hoax, is run by Mark Thompson - who was credibly accused a few years back of lying
to help cover up a scandal involving another high-profile public figure involved in child sex abuse,
Jimmy Savile
, during his time as
head of the BBC .
And we do know that this has happened before.
Lawrence King , the
leader of the Black Republican Caucus, who sang the national anthem at the Republican convention
in 1984, was accused by multiple claimed victims of trafficking and abusing boys out of the Boys
Town charity for years. You can
hear the chilling testimony
from three people who claim to have been victimized by King in a documentary produced shortly
after the events transpired.
You can hear the FBI, even after they received extensive testimony from victims, explain in their
own words that they weren't going to prosecute King because if anything were wrong with him, he would
have been prosecuted by a lower authority already. Eventually, King was found "O. J. guilty" of abusing
Paul Bonacci - convicted in civil court, acquitted in criminal court.
But that's not the question here. The question is how we should respond to the possibility.
Do we take the possibility seriously? History clearly indicates that we should. Even if it did
turn out to be nothing at all, I would still be more proud to belong to a community willing
to take the possibility seriously and call for investigation than I would to belong to a community
that dismissed the possibility far too hastily and luckily turned out to be right - even as it did
this and turned out to be wrong in so many cases like Rotherham before.
The real horror here would be to live in a society that responded as Reddit has - by shutting
down the whole conversation entirely, banning
r/pizzagate even while keeping subreddits like r/pedofriends, "a place for (non-offending) pedophiles
and allies to make friends with each other!" alive.
Over on his blog,
Scott Adams
asks us to keep in mind cases where confirmation bias did lead to false allegations of institutional
pedophilia, to caution against excessive confidence. (He hastens to add: "I want to be totally clear
here that I'm not saying Pizzagate is false. I see the mountain of evidence too. And collectively
it feels totally persuasive to me. It might even be true. I'm not debating the underlying truth of
it. That part I don't know.")
But which is worse? If all the evidence coming out of Pizzagate is entirely
false, what have we lost by spending time on it? On the other hand, if even five percent of the allegations
that have been made surrounding the topic are true, what have we lost by ignoring them? Which is
worse: spending too much time pursuing and thoroughly vetting false leads, or looking the other way
while any amount of child abuse goes on?
According to the FBI's National Crime Information
Center (NCIC) database, nearly 470,000 children disappear in the United States alone each year.
This number is dubious for a number of reasons. It
looks like some number of runaways
end up in the NCIC count, and to make matters worse, repeat offenders can make it into the data multiple
times. So that would suggest that the real number must be lower than this tally; but on the other
hand, we also know that many missing children are never reported in the first place, so it's possible
that that could boost the number back up. The bottom line, however, seems to be that there is no
reliable way to determine how many total children are actually missing in the U.S.
Either way, though, even if correcting for these errors took out 90% of the disappearances in
the NCIC database, and there were no unreported disappearances to account for at all, I think even
the resulting 50,000 per year would still be enough to call the problem systematic and justify suspicion
that these disappearances could well involve organized efforts-given that we already know of so many
pedophile rings in so many powerful institutions.
In 2013, Canada busted a ring involving
more than 300 adults , who had teachers, doctors, and nurses heavily represented among them.
A pedophile ring has just been identified in the
highest levels of UK football (Americans
know the sport as soccer). Norwegian police also just uncovered a ring of 50 organized pedophiles
mostly
working in the tech sector , once again including elected officials, teachers, and lawyers. The
Vatican scandals can practically go without mention - institutional involvement in child sex exploitation
is nearly an a priori given.
And the children that are being raped and murdered in the photos passed around by these
child porn rings are coming from somewhere . And when figures like politicians, teachers,
and lawyers are involved in the rings, it's hardly inconceivable that they could be involved in disappearances.
Have we identified one here?
Only time will tell. But we deserve to be paid attention. We deserve to have the matter taken
(Reprinted from Counter-Currents
Publishing by permission of author or representative)
"... Some of the "autopsy" articles (there are dozens) indicate the soul of the Democrats is right now being decided by a tug-of-war between the Brock camp and the Soros camp. ..."
"... What I found interesting is that Brockapalooza (great name!) was a gathering of the, ahem, neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party, and what they seem to have concluded is that they desperately need Bernie's supporters, a/k/a the democratic wing of the Democratic Party, and it's enthusiasm. ..."
"... Of course they want to co-opt it. That's what Obama did in 2008. But I think the Bernie wing has completely lost patience with any such strategy. ..."
"... But what is worse is the "neoliberalization" of Democratic Party under Clinton opened the door for far right renaissance. So neolib Dems created a rather dangerous situation. In a way, Bill Clinton is a godfather of Trump. ..."
It was a gathering of what Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) railed against during his presidential
campaign as "the establishment." The conference, organized by longtime Clinton family operative
David Brock, was dominated by Clintonfolk. Jon Cowan, president of the ardently centrist Third
Way think tank, was among the most prominent panelists, alongside Hillary Clinton confidante Maya
Harris, "Morning Joe" regular Harold Ford and even embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
But the overwhelming analysis emanating from Brockapalooza was essentially a haute couture
Berniecrat gripe: The Democratic Party has been writing off way too much of the electorate by
assuming it doesn't need ― or can't win ― the votes of working-class people.
"I think there's a sense that some portion of the Democratic Party shares the blame for what
happened," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told reporters. "The Democrats acquiesced
in many ways to policies making people's lives worse."
He was referring obliquely to the legacy of former President Bill Clinton ― deregulating high
finance, gutting welfare, feeding mass incarceration ― which leaders of a party ostensibly devoted
to empowering the powerless have been reluctant to acknowledge.
"How many bankers went to jail?" Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the sole senator to endorse Sanders
in the Democratic primary, asked the crowd on Saturday morning in reference to the 2008 financial
crisis. "None," he concluded.
There were real disagreements about the right course of action. But speaker after speaker said
the party's reliance on demographic trends had made it complacent on matters of economic justice.
This had cost Democrats not just the presidency, but governorships and hundreds of state legislature
seats across the country.
"The Democratic coalition lives in the economy, all right?" former Bill Clinton campaign manager
James Carville told reporters. "The idea that somehow it's only white working-class people that
live in an economy blacks, Hispanics, unmarried women, gay people ― they're like everybody else."
Some of the "autopsy" articles (there are dozens) indicate the soul of the Democrats is
right now being decided by a tug-of-war between the Brock camp and the Soros camp.
What I found interesting is that Brockapalooza (great name!) was a gathering of the, ahem,
neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party, and what they seem to have concluded is that they desperately
need Bernie's supporters, a/k/a the democratic wing of the Democratic Party, and it's enthusiasm.
Of course they want to co-opt it. That's what Obama did in 2008. But I think the Bernie
wing has completely lost patience with any such strategy.
"Of course they want to co-opt it. That's what Obama did in 2008. But I think the Bernie
wing has completely lost patience with any such strategy."
Very true. Cooptation is what they specialize at. Will not work this time, as in "too little
too late".
But what is worse is the "neoliberalization" of Democratic Party under Clinton opened the
door for far right renaissance. So neolib Dems created a rather dangerous situation. In a way,
Bill Clinton is a godfather of Trump.
Just the fact that the DNC donor club has acknowledged the problem and recognized that Bernie
was onto the solution is a really big deal. This may be the first time since the party split in
1968 that they have come to grips with working class economics rather than just relying on identity
politics and big funding. It's not like they should throw identity politics under the bus. They
just need to learn how to play to their entire constituency rather than assume one or both of
them has no other choice.
"... Of course they want to co-opt it. That's what Obama did in 2008. But I think the Bernie wing has completely lost patience with
any such strategy. ..."
It was a gathering of what Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) railed against during his presidential campaign as "the establishment."
The conference, organized by longtime Clinton family operative David Brock, was dominated by Clintonfolk. Jon Cowan, president
of the ardently centrist Third Way think tank, was among the most prominent panelists, alongside Hillary Clinton confidante Maya
Harris, "Morning Joe" regular Harold Ford and even embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
But the overwhelming analysis emanating from Brockapalooza was essentially a haute couture Berniecrat gripe: The Democratic Party
has been writing off way too much of the electorate by assuming it doesn't need ― or can't win ― the votes of working-class people.
"I think there's a sense that some portion of the Democratic Party shares the blame for what happened," New York Attorney General
Eric Schneiderman told reporters. "The Democrats acquiesced in many ways to policies making people's lives worse."
He was referring obliquely to the legacy of former President Bill Clinton ― deregulating high finance, gutting welfare, feeding
mass incarceration ― which leaders of a party ostensibly devoted to empowering the powerless have been reluctant to acknowledge.
"How many bankers went to jail?" Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the sole senator to endorse Sanders in the Democratic primary, asked
the crowd on Saturday morning in reference to the 2008 financial crisis. "None," he concluded.
There were real disagreements about the right course of action. But speaker after speaker said the party's reliance on demographic
trends had made it complacent on matters of economic justice. This had cost Democrats not just the presidency, but governorships
and hundreds of state legislature seats across the country.
"The Democratic coalition lives in the economy, all right?" former Bill Clinton campaign manager James Carville told reporters.
"The idea that somehow it's only white working-class people that live in an economy blacks, Hispanics, unmarried women, gay people
― they're like everybody else."
Some of the "autopsy" articles (there are dozens) indicate the soul of the Democrats is right now being decided by a tug-of-war
between the Brock camp and the Soros camp.
What I found interesting is that Brockapalooza (great name!) was a gathering of the, ahem, neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party,
and what they seem to have concluded is that they desperately need Bernie's supporters, a/k/a the democratic wing of the Democratic
Party, and it's enthusiasm.
Of course they want to co-opt it. That's what Obama did in 2008. But I think the Bernie wing has completely lost patience
with any such strategy.
Just the fact that the DNC donor club has acknowledged the problem and recognized that Bernie was onto the solution is a really
big deal. This may be the first time since the party split in 1968 that they have come to grips with working class economics rather
than just relying on identity politics and big funding. It's not like they should throw identity politics under the bus. They
just need to learn how to play to their entire constituency rather than assume one or both of them has no other choice.
Neoliberal Third Way caused far right renaissance in the USA, UK and elsewhere...
Notable quotes:
"... Warning: amateur political science below ..."
"... Labour moved further right (and more neoliberal) as they became more accommodating towards austerity. It was hardly a surprise that party members tried to pull the party back by electing Corbyn as leader. ..."
"... With Labour no longer seen as representing the working class, this allowed the right wing media (with the support of the Conservatives) to help convince the left behind that their problems were a consequence of immigration. ..."
Did centrism beget populism? Warning: amateur political science below
Stewart Wood has a well argued
piece in the New Statesman, saying that it was the move by left and right towards a
common centrism that laid the foundations for populism.
... ... ...
Margaret Thatcher was considered pretty right wing when she was in power. Many of her key achievement
in terms of her own agenda, such as a diminished union movement and shrinking the state through
privatisation, were not reversed by Blair and Brown. It is difficult to argue that the Cameron/Osborne
duo made any attempt to undo the Thatcher legacy. Instead they tried to go beyond it, by shrinking
the state to a size relative to GDP not seen since the end of WWII. They did it under the pretense
that they were forced to because otherwise the markets would no longer buy government debt. This
was a colossal deceit. There no evidence that markets were concerned about government debt, and
strong evidence that they were not. [1] This deceit should have become clear when Osborne cut
taxes at the same time as continuing to cut spending.
... ... ...
Labour moved to the right under Blair, while remaining socially liberal. I agree with Stewart
Wood that this alone was important in preparing the way for populism. As well as the lack of a
major industrial policy, they did nothing to curb a rampant financial sector or reverse the gains
of the 1% that were a feature of the Thatcher period, a point
emphasised
by Jean Pisani-Ferry in respect of both the UK and US. I think New Labour's position is
better described as liberal rather
than neoliberal: New Labour substantially increased the amount of resources (as a proportion
of GDP) going to the NHS, and they also did a great deal to try and reduce child poverty. Labour
moved further right (and more neoliberal) as they became more accommodating towards austerity.
It was hardly a surprise that party members tried to pull the party back by electing Corbyn as
leader.
As I argued
here
, Brexit was a perfect storm where the economically left behind united with social conservatives.
With Labour no longer seen as representing the working class, this allowed the right wing
media (with the support of the Conservatives) to help convince the left behind that their problems
were a consequence of immigration. The Leave campaign was populist in the sense I describe
here : advocating a superficially attractive policy to some that would leave everyone
worse off. Much the same is true for Trump, who won the electoral college by convincing the left
behind that he really could bring back their traditional jobs, something he will be unable to
do in any kind of general way.
not centrism, but bothsidelism - the unwillingness of the press etc to distinguish between
radical extremism and political norms. The outcome is the normalisation of relentless semi-fascism
and the acceptance of alternative facts, resulting in unsubstantiated beliefs of victimisation,
and the election of candidates who actually revel in and exacerbate the real problems people
face in the US
For the UK, those supporting Leave have essentially endorsed Iain Duncan Smith's leadership
of the Conservative Party in the early 2000s. It's no wonder New Labour cannot understand what has happened.
"If the party doesn't understand these seven truths .a third party will emerge to fill the
void." That's what will happen, since the so-called "leaders" of the Democratic Party are not
going to admit all that stuff, no matter how true it is. They're not very smart.
Yes it's hard to believe any of this will happen as even now the Dems are circling the wagons
with "The Resistance." Also is Sanders even a Democrat? Didn't he go back to being an independent
after the convention?
And just a thought on "authoritarian." Our greatest progressive president–Roosevelt–was accused
by many at the time of being authoritarian with moves like packing the court. As pointed out yesterday
he even created internment camps for Japanese-Americans which would horrify progressives today.
It's unfortunate that one must have power–that thing which corrupts–in order to accomplish anything
in government so perhaps what ultimately matters is the character of the person wielding that
power. Given that it's now the Donald that may seem bleak–remains to be seen–but Reich's distinction
between the "good" populists and the the authoritarian ones is a bit artificial and simplistic.
The Repubs have something at stake–their money–in every election and recognize that getting,
or suppressing, votes is the key. Perhaps Lambert is right that what really matters is simply
getting more people to vote.
"Reich's distinction between the "good" populists and the the authoritarian ones is a bit artificial
and simplistic." That inputting it mildly. But FDR had a Socialist Party to his Left. And he was
elected four times in a row. It wasn't until Reagan that FDR's progressive programs and tax rates
began to be dismantled.
"Didn't he go back to being an independent after the convention?"
Yes he did (very quietly) and he really should start reminding people of that. He kept his
word and fulfilled his promises to help Clinton but that ended with the election.
And what does he get in return? Turncoat Dems making sure we all get to continue to pay more
money for prescription drugs right out of the gate. If the Dems are going to continue to thwart
the people's agenda as they did with his prescription drug amendment, he needs to take the kid
gloves off.
"Also is Sanders even a Democrat? Didn't he go back to being an independent after the convention?"
So what if he did? Far more important are his ideals, his values, and his vision. They are
right in line with the Democratic Party – of 1933, which is where today's corporate party needs
to return to get back in power and steer this country in a better direction.
If anyone has ever lived in DC, you realize that being well educated doesn't make you intelligent,
and being intelligent doesn't make you wise. That said, if in your life you've had success in
doing some particular thing, it's hard to change when it no longer works. Even Einstein, smart
guy that he was, was an example of that.
If the problems of the party go as deep as Reich says, it would be far more effective for the
dems to just fire everyone at the top of their organization and replace them with random people
they meet on the street.
Precisely; Donald Trump was – and is- the Third Party candidate. That's why the Republican
establishment tried to destroy him. His ability to break into the GOP through the back door belies
the media Imbroglio about his "inexperience".
But love him or hate him – or more prudently, reserve judgment for 4 years – he IS the Third Party
candidate. I don't understand why so many academics don't get that. Around 3-4 yrs ago David Brooks
warned that the landscape was ripe for a successful 3rd party prez, but he thought it would be
a Tech billionaire.
Which was faulty – Silicon Valley had the Democratic establishment already safely tucked away
in the Cloud.
Bernie was the other third party candidate. The difference is that the press could not get
a hold on Trump, was transfixed by Trump, his 'trumping'-by-tweeting, and the constant coverage
he was able to garner.
On the other hand, the press purposefully shunned and shut the door on Bernie, on his wax from
no-percent support to the groundswell in May and June. Remember the empty podium coverage waiting
on Trump, and the no coverage of Bernie's barn-burning speech in June. The press was supporting-at
any cost- Hillary and the main-line Dem. system. And it WAS rigged.
In Canada, they simply re-branded, to the NDP the New Democratic Party.
Personally I revile two party politics, and I think both parties ignore the new populism, and
the rejection of party politics, at their peril.
Perhaps the reason Occupy progressive populism, and the Democrats are foundering is their fundamental
tolerance– they simply can't hold their noses anymore to tow the party line at the obvious expense
of those who are still being left out and marginalized. The main stream democratic party aids
and abets at keeping the status quo going.
Bernie said it best at the hearing the other day: we are NOT a compassionate country.
Trump and Bernie were the third party candidates. Bernie was in many ways the preferable of
the two, but he was eliminated because he insisted on playing nice and not going for the jugular.
You are so right. Sad! Strange to read Reich now after having seen him interviewed at the end
of Adam Curtis's documentary The Century of the Self and making similar points. How is going to
solve the problem of moneyed elites? Sanders was the third party, the anti-establishment Dem.
And look what happened. Corey Booker may be 2020 nominee. Looking very bad for Dems.
Booker doesn't have a prayer. He's basically the Democratic version of the Republican general
the GOP jack booters get hot and heavy over periodically. The nominee in 2020 probably won't be
terrible if someone tolerable runs.
The 2008 and 2016 primaries were dominated by Hillary and Obama/Oprah's celebrity profiles.
Everyone else has to campaign and interact with people they can't pre-screen. The nostalgia voters
won't have a set candidate and will be two years along.
Back in 2008, I went to New Hampshire during the season, and I stood behind Holy Joe Lieberman
in a line at Dunkin' Donuts. This is what Booker will encounter on the trail: actual voters. When
he is asked about prescription drugs at every stop and has every local teachers union hounding
him, he will be dropped by even the media that loves losers such as the Dandy Senator from South
Carolina.
Clintonites can be made to service Trump administrations washrooms complete with trendy tip
hats and stools-
Look for this action from genuine American all for one, and one for all people who are clearly
set apart from the Trump hand maidens that wrought present-
Love f l o w s both pos and neg balanced centered action and can be felt in any creature emanating
an eagalitarian nature quite foreign to those referrred to as Clinton ite herein
The cherry shaman in all will point the way look for it!!!
4. The Party's moneyed establishment-big donors, major lobbyists, retired members of Congress
who have become bundlers and lobbyists-are part of the problem. Even though many consider themselves
"liberal" and don't recoil from an active government, their preferred remedies spare corporations
and the wealthiest from making any sacrifices.
The moneyed interests in the Party allowed the deregulation of Wall Street and then encouraged
the bailout of the Street. They're barely concerned about the growth of tax havens, inside trading,
increasing market power in major industries (pharmaceuticals, telecom, airlines, private health
insurers, food processors, finance, even high tech), and widening inequality.
================================================
"They're barely concerned about the growth of tax havens, inside trading, increasing market power
in major industries "
au contraire – I would say they are very, VERY concerned and that's the problem.
I used to believe "you can do well and you can do good"
I don't believe it any more.
I suspect a good number of other people don't believe it either
I think if the only thing Democrats take away from the election is "OMG an egotistical billionaire
with dreadful hair and tacky taste has just become president" then they all deserve to be shipped
to Somalia. (In fact, they do all deserve to be shipped to Somalia but that is not the point).
The fact that America and the redneck, ignorant deplorables can elect Trump and consider him
as a man of the people, a fighter for the common man, and someone who cares about America first
tells you just how detached and elite our elected class has become. It's like hiring John Wayne
Gacy to babysit your teenage sons because all the other sitters creep you out!
Democrats are not left-wing. They are, at best, centrist but mainly ego-centrist. Washington
has sold out to the rich and powerful, mainly Wall Street and the military-industrial complex.
The election of Trump was the desperate cry of America begging for anything other than bent, self-serving
officials like Hillary Clinton.
I don't think Trump is the answer but I don't think he will be as bad as we expect. I think
Obama discovered that the establishment was more powerful than his desire for change. Trump will
face the same forces, though I think it is possible that Trump will try to call their bluff.
But as for the Democratic Party? Fuck 'em. Disband the party, arrest the members, waterboard
them, and execute them all for treason. Then move on to the Republicans. When there are no politicians
left, start all over. Ah, I can dream, can't I?
So a suicide pact. Government of, by, and for the people means you play some meager role and
are thus a politician.
Maybe step away from the gleeful destruction of what political structure we have and step up to
be a solver instead. Oh, but one might have to test their cherished notions in the marketplace,
or face up if they fail.
What Reich really needs to be saying is that it is time to take back the reins and clean up the
party. We are unlikely to become a multiparty state and the internet surveillance system will
track down dissenters. The IWW used to break anti union towns by flooding the jails. Flood the
party and you can own it as the nurses union did for Bernie. Or carp on the internet.
So it depends on the framing whether the rallies yesterday go towards #6, a movement, not a
party.
Though explicitly embracing an intersectional stance and NOT explicitly Dem or Rep, and while
disavowing that it was more anti-Trump than pro rights, justice, health care, and equality, the
pussy hats belie that too much of this was aimed at Trump personally and not the Establishment
(Empire), whose policies D or R are literally killing us, whether on the battlefield or the home
front. And the speakers were weighted toward Establishment Ds.
We can dismiss the outpouring as not connected to an analysis of the underlying reasons for
Trump (and initiatives spearheaded by women are usually dismissed).
Or we can embrace it, build on it. I think a lot of unaffiliated voters were amongst the rank
and file, so NOT all about Clinton.
I disagree with that to an extent. I marched yesterday and it was clear to everybody that it
was way bigger than Trump. The fight is not against Trump, the fight is against everything the
Republican Party stands for and Trump is just their current hood ornament. The Women's March was
the People's March against all things Republican.
If Bernie represents the future of the party then its sad seeing him stump around him Schumer
who represents everything that is wrong with it. His best bet is to get away from the Democratic
party and run as an independent, but alas the campaign finance problem. By operating inside the
party, he'll be nothing more than Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. He'll be the Ron
Paul of the Democratic Party.
I don't think Bernie had a financing problem. The genius is that he did it truly grass-roots.
The problem was that the democratic party power structure screwed him, was tone deaf, and lost
to Trump, aided and abetted by the press.
I wonder. Chuck might be hanging around Bernie, not the other way around. Perhaps because he
smells a clue - politicians are supposed to be good at that. Or maybe he is Bernie's minder.
DNC Dems may try to marginalize Bernie, but 1.) he's a crafty old guy, 2.) he got a *lot* of
votes.
BTW, another article on "what is wrong with the Dems" that doesn't mention superdelegates.
Until that is abolished, it's all handwaving.
That is a good point. Looking at how the battle lines have been drawn on the dnc chair fight,
schumer looks like a swing vote who got behind bernie. It was after that when the obama wing of
the party resisted and pushed tom perez, who seems to be the biggest opponent of ellison. It really
looks like the clintons are vanquished and the obama wing is now the right wing of the dem party.
Exactly. A smarter Dem party would look at the strategy the Republicans used over the course
of 20 years to get where they are today. Abandoning the 50 state strategy was the stupidest thing
the Dems ever did, we can see exactly how well that worked by the numbers.
ALL of who believe in equality, civil rights, tolerance, good jobs, health care for all, quality
education for all, and an end to lobbyists and financial engineers running the country need to
start running for those seats. The only way we take things back is to start local.
Reich should win a Nobel Prize here - he's right up there with Krugman and Obama.
Shorter Reich: The confrontation of the Irresistable Force of populism with the Immovable Object
of donor control will result in the Oxymoron of "radical reform".
I've always been suspicious of Reich, but here I'll give him an "A" for tuning in his snow
filled crystal ball and delivering the "soul searching" critique of the Democratic Party many
of us have been waiting for and expecting. Pretty much hits the nail on the head, I'd say.
The caveat, of course, is that Reich is not the Commander in Chief of the Democratic party.
Towards the end, I think he alludes to that too.
After yesterday, the Democratic party is running to catch up with where their constituency
is headed. That March didn't stop at 1 pm Saturday. They'll attempt to get out in front, but Team
Bernie will be there ahead of them.
One more "populist" article by Robert Reich. I know he's a party hack and will return to the
fold once they tell him to sit down. He just provides a false air of "independence" to the bought
and sold Democraps. People like him who keep returning to the fold are the very reason that the
Dims are in trouble.
This is a time for historians to review and to revisit the ("Fighting Bob") LaFollette Wisconsin
tactics in the early 1900s which came after nearly a generation of political corruption. Progressivism
needs to integrate itself in some way into the current populism.
The Clinton wing* of the party needs to be wiped out. Bill ushered in the end of the 70 year
Democratic majorities, destroyed the party at the local level, and led to George W. Bush. When
the Clintonistas were sidelined, the Democrats won commanding majorities in both houses and the
White House in two elections and established a major gotv operation. Obama brings in Rahm Emmanuel
and kaboom. Clintonistas were tolerated and look what happened.
*Don't we really mean a few hundred voters connected to the Clinton Administration or campaigns
that only hold power over people who are largely voting because of the "D" next to a name?
To understand how utterly rotten the Democratic elite is,
and unwilling to learn from the past, recent and not so recent, look no further
than the tongue bath given at Betsy DeVos' confirmation hearing to Joe Lieberman,
who is literally a traitor to the party:
Were the moment not so fraught with high political drama, it might have felt like a college
reunion. Lieberman was returning to his old stomping grounds on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon
to offer what bipartisan cover he could for Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump's nominee for education
secretary.
"I've known Joe a long time," Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, told me on Wednesday.
"He's a good guy. We served together."
in interviews, several members of the Democratic caucus spoke to their personal affection
for Lieberman. "I think Joe Lieberman is a good friend of mine, and I think everybody has the
right to say what they think," Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told me.
"Joe's a friend Joe has integrity," Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill said in an interview
in the Dirksen Senate Building on Wednesday.
Added Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the progressive Democrat who took his seat in 2014:
"Lieberman's a great friend, even if we disagree on important issues. He remains a good friend,
despite our occasional disagreements."
The definition of friendship is stretched very thin when it covers over differences that spread
between say the likes of Lieberman and Sanders. Sanders lambasted Betsy DeVos as she deserved
to be; the woman lied to the Senate about her vice chairmanship of the Prince foundation-an organization
that has devoted million$ to the concept of 'converting' gays, lesbians and bisexuals. She is
obviously ashamed of her involvement (fairly recent as IRS documents show her listed in 2014)
and for political expediency wants to distance herself from that scene. Competent psychological
studies show that such so called conversion efforts always fail resulting in what has to be termed
cruelty and deep disillusionment.That Lieberman would rise to such duplicity shows a complete
lack of personal integrity. How someone with integrity could have such a 'friend' is to put the
word friendship into the realm of meaninglessness.
IdahoSpud, Carla, fresno dan, stukuls and David S are all right on the money!
Reich is a little better than Michael Moore (who yesterday told the demonstrators to put a
call to their Congressional and Senate reps right there with brushing their teeth every day),
but that's not saying much. I didn't even see the call for voter registration and against Jim
Crow election fraud in his essay, just "drawing more people into politics".
Face it, the Democratic Party is irremiably sick to the point that it needs to be put down
and a new party formed without the Clintonite DNA.
An almost philosophical question: is there a "Democratic Party" as an institution, separate
from the career ambitions of those who have just lost power and what to take it back? I rather
suspect not, because that would imply a set of values and beliefs and institutional interests
to which individuals would subscribe, and which, under certain circumstances, they might be prepared
to put ahead of their personal ambitions.But, at least from across the water, I don't get that
impression at all; rather it looks like a group of ambitious and unscrupulous hacks, manipulating
the politics of identity to provide themselves with a power base, but now finding that tactic
doesn't work any more. If that's so, then the "Democrats" of Reich's article are trapped in a
vicious circle: they are only interested in reclaiming personal power, so they have no ideology
or beliefs to offer a mass electorate, so they'll never regain power. The best they can hope for
is that Trump makes such a mess of things that a desperate nation turns to them for salvation.
I suppose anything is possible.
I say that you make a very good point about Democrats not being able to find an ideological
map; or rather more exactly: bleating loudly about following the map that the majority of voters
want and ask to be followed and then sidestepping constantly to follow another path inimical to
what is being proclaimed. Mr. Obama did that with his dance around the subject of universal health
care or single payer. We, in the center of the progressive wing, were led to believe he was for
it. Then he abandoned us to the expediency of the day by genuflecting low and high before the
priesthood of the Health Insurance carriers and pharmaceutical companies. The latter essentially
wrote The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which is tragically misnamed on both halves;
it neither protects patients nor allows the vast majority of subscribers to find affordable insurance
for themselves and/or their families.
But this is typical of so called centrists such as Obama and the Clintons; they artfully present
themselves as being on the right side of the map (protect the environment, keep Social Security
and Medicare in place, form an alliance with minorities to advocate for an expansion of rights
and liberties, to name some of the more visible tenets) and then betray their so called allies
on a regular basis. The self proclaimed Liberals (they can't be by the very definition of the
word) get away with it because the specter of a very much more seriously flawed ilk is very real;
it seems to be the sworn duty of the Republican party to regularly present the sad evil of a lessor
nature. This time around, strategic planning on the part of Trump and total organizational incompetency
on the part of Clinton caused her to throw out her chances. Essentially the Democratic party Centrists
had their 60 year train of bluffs derailed by a clownish charlatan who delights in performing
acts of cruelty and sadism in public.
6. The life of the Party-its enthusiasm, passion, youth, principles, and ideals-was elicited
by Bernie Sanders's campaign. This isn't to denigrate what Hillary Clinton accomplished-she
did, after all, win the popular vote in the presidential election by almost 3 million people.
There's the nub of a major problem; what Hillary Clinton did not accomplish was to win votes
that aligned with the map of each state in terms of the Electoral College.
The map of Michigan shows what I mean; if the reader were to click on the blue counties in
the SE portion of the state and find Washtenaw county one would see Clinton got 68% of the vote
there. In a county that has one of the largest Universities (49,000 students and employees) in
the country, a premier world class hospital system that has 26,000 employees (some overlap with
U of M) and two high schools that in a rarity of aristocratic schooling, sill offer classes in
the art of playing in a symphony orchestra-in such a county we find the heart of so called American
Liberalism. Blue county indeed, blue stocking would be more like it. And I'm ok with all that.
My point is that HRC appealed (Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein did too, the center of the Michigan
Green party is in Ann Arbor, the Washtenaw county seat ) in large part to the people whose demographics
are so clearly delineated in that county. By and large (broad brush here) better educated, situated
in larger urban centers that are the vibrant hubs of the surrounding areas and most of all, people
who are opinion leaders. So in Ann Arbor we have large dollops of college professors, medical
and legal professionals, successful business managers and thousands of college students and millennials
-many of whom followed the lead of the Democratic party into Hillary's camp after Bernie was forced
out by the duplicity of the party leadership. All of whom would have been very deeply engaged
in the political swirl of activity.
Wayne County, where Detroit is located, has some different demographics where the support of
people of Color would be the major force. Hillary's ability to gain support in the African American
community is beyond my comprehension but it does explain what happened in the vote in Detroit.
But the proclivity outside the Large urban centers (Genesee County, Flint, is much like Wayne
County demographically) is steep and we see Clinton lost here as elsewhere across the country.
Clinton lost out and the much ballyhooed Centrist Democrats lost because they did not speak to
the average working class person who lives in dreadful fear of one thing-losing a good paying
job and not having food, housing, clothing, transportation and medical care. Fear driven politics,
as Bernie Sanders pointed out a kajillion times, is not a pretty picture. People Living in a world
of fear is a good thing for Centrists like Clinton and Obama (Trump too) because it makes for
a host of malleable minds open to manipulation.
I disagree with your analysis. In Michigan, Hillary's margin of loss was smaller than the drop-off
in voting in Wayne county (which includes Detroit as well as other urban/suburban cities). What
we saw was closer to a withdrawal of consent by the population. The votes are there for the left
to win by large margins. But the voters must be asked for their votes through policies that provide
tangible benefits. They (we) were already fooled once at the state level and national by a smooth-talking
neoliberal Democrat that only offered more of the same once in office. The only thing that can
turn this around for the Democrats is a discussion of real benefits and proposals that can only
be delivered by government (e.g., single-payer healthcare). I am not sure this is possible in
the "blue" states, where the party apparatus is still strong. I think reform in the Democrat party
will have to start in the "red" states, where the parties have been decimated by neglect.
We know the neoliberal ideology tends to hollow out the middle class.
This is most pronounced in the US where they have embraced the neoliberal ideology the hardest
Let's work out why ..
Everyone has blindly followed Milton Freidman's neo-liberal ideology without thinking .
Trade Fundamentals.
For free trade and an internationally competitive workforce you need a low cost of living so
you can pay similar wages to your competitors.
Reference – The Corn Laws and Laissez-Faire
It's all about the cost of living.
The US has probably been the most successful in making its labour force internationally uncompetitive
with soaring costs of housing, healthcare and student loan repayments.
These all have to be covered by wages and US businesses are now squealing about the high minimum
wage.
US (and all Western) labour has been priced out of global labour markets by the high cost of
living.
What did Milton Freidman miss?
The cost of full price services actually has to be paid by businesses in wages.
Milton Freidman took costs off the wealthy and placed them on business.
The West then let massive housing booms roar away raising housing costs through mortgage payments
and rent, these costs have to covered by business in wages.
Student loan costs are rising and again these costs have to covered by business in wages.
2017 – Richest 8 people as wealthy as half of world's population
It is important not to tax the wealthy to provide subsidised housing, education and healthcare
that result in lower wage costs because?
I don't know, you tell me, is it to maintain ridiculous levels of inequality?
Why does the middle class disappear?
The high costs of living in the West necessitates high wages and everything gets off-shored
to maximise profits.
Low paying service sector jobs that cannot be off-shored and highly paid executive and technical
jobs are all that's left, the rest was off-shored, it's the way neo-liberalism works
The middle class disappears.
The populists rise and with a neoliberal left they turn right.
Protectionism, it's the only option, we've made such a mess of it all.
With the hollowed out neo-liberal Western economy the Government has to make up the difference
between low wages and the high cost of living (tax credits UK).
(The private sector option – Payday loans – only 2000% interest UK)
The high levels of unemployment, need high levels of benefits due to the high cost of living.
Government debt soars and you can't recoup it off the wealthy as it wouldn't be neo-liberal.
Trump may not have to worry about NAFTA as the Mexican's have discovered neo-liberalism.
They are removing the subsidies off petrol and foodstuffs, raising the cost of living and minimum
wage.
Mexico's days as a low wage economy are numbered.
If they then have a ridiculous housing boom to inflate housing costs like the West, the cost
of living and the minimum wage will soon be the same in Mexico as the West.
Would voter registration really do much to remedy the situation with the Electoral College?
Wouldn't it be necessary for liberals and progressives en masse to leave their safe spaces in
the blue islands and migrate to red or reddish outposts like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan?
Or is that too horrible to contemplate?
A few years back a libertarian group decided to target one state where they could move in great
numbers to eventually bring about a libertarian paradise. After considerable study and strategizing,
they settled on New Hampshire, a state with a small population already somewhat friendly to libertarian
ideas that could more easily be tipped to a libertarian agenda. The result, however, was underwhelming.
Reich is right, I believe, is saying the Democratic Party must unreservedly advance a very
bold agenda to become a movement. But where is the motivation? As noted, the Iron Law of Institutions
applies. The great majority of Dems with an iron grip on the party mechanisms are happy as clams
with their wonderful combination of virtue signaling and money raking. In fact, right now with
Trump in the White House and Republicans controlling Congress, these Dems are in pretty close
to the ideal situation. With minority status, they and their filthy corporate, financial and Big
Pharma donors can virtue signal all the more flamboyantly and rest completely assured that they'll
never actually have to implement anything. Perfect!
Meanwhile, the rest of us can fritter away our time believing that there is an "inside game"
in the party when, in fact, there is no such possibility.
Catullus 76?! I don't think so, Lambert. I know my Latin is extremely rusty, but I see nothing
there that could lead to that translation. As for what I do see, this is a family blog.
But now I really wish you could come up with the source of what you quoted.
Oy vey already . . . :-) worn down from the march?
Step up yer game Katharine, are you tired?
(that's a Catullus-like line, here's another . . .)
What heavy signs and roars exhausted you,
(and another . . .)
When, with that great sexist Queen, Madonna
You hurled curses that would make a whore flinch
haha ahhahahahahha ahahahahha. I have one more cupcake to eat today!
this is what I get Googling. It in fact is the 15th and 16th lines! no kidding . . . also it's
not at all a porno piece (not that he wasn't capable of that), but if you read the English translation
it's very very spiritual.
Carmen 76 (in Latin by Catullus) Listen to 76 in Latin
<>
Available in Latin, Brazilian Port., Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish,
French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Rioplatense, Scanned, and Vercellese. Compare two
languages here. Listen to this text here.
Siqua recordanti benefacta priors voluptas
est homini, cum se cogitat esse pium,
nec sanctum violasse fidem, nec foedere nullo
divum ad fallendos numine abusum homines,
multa parata manent in longa aetate, Catulle,
ex hoc ingrato gaudia amore tibi.
Nam quaecumque homines bene cuiquam aut dicere possunt
aut facere, haec a te dictaque factaque sunt.
Omnia quae ingratae perierunt credita menti.
Quare iam te cur amplius excrucies?
Quin tu animo offirmas atque istinc te ipse reducis,
et dis invitis desinis esse miser?
Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem,
difficile est, verum hoc qualubet eficias:
una salus haec est, hoc est tibi pervincendum,
hoc facias, sive id non pote sive pote.
O di, si vestrum est misereri, aut si quibus umquam
extremam iam ipsa in morte tulistis opem,
me miserum aspicite et, si vitam puriter egi,
eripite hanc pestem perniciemque mihi,
quae mihi subrepens imos ut torpor in artus
expulit ex omni pectore laetitias.
Non iam illud quaero, contra me ut diligat illa,
aut, quod non potis est, esse pudica velit:
ipse valere opto et taetrum hunc deponere morbum.
O di, redite mi hoc pro pietate mea.
Many thank yous! My copy was apparently produced by one of those dratted editors who think
they know a better organization, and his 76 starts and ends, "Paedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,"
which the notes quaintly explain as "colloquial expressions of no particular force." You can see
why I was at sea!
Now I'm going to have to find a source with conventional order and annotate this book so I'm
not cast adrift again.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674064300
FDR had to work to purge the Democratic party to change it from a half reactionary planters party
into a progressive party. The Sanders rump will have to do the same, the leadership needs to be
torn to shreds, neolibs and republicans in sheeps clothing like Tim Kaine need to be flushed down
massive toilets. Or the party is dead, like the British Labour party
From the link–perhaps why you haven't heard of it.
the purge failed, at great political cost to the president
Since I grew up around here I'm not sure when the South has ever been purged of conservatives.
Now days however they are more interested in being toadies to big business than in getting out
the fire hoses. It took other presidents to moderate the race problem.
Maybe a re-brand, led by Bernie, with a very simple few point platform, and then recruiting
candidates at local, county, state and national level to pledge to tow the line (Think Tea Party
or Occupy Wall Street becomes Occupy Elected Positions (for real small D democratic reform.)
I'm OK with America first- I'd love to occupy fewer nations in the Mideast, stop killing brown
folks, park the drone fleet, have health CARE (not insurance) for all where all pay in and all
can benefit, lower-carbon renewable energy, income tax reform, re-instating the draft as national
service, and converting the military back to a department of defense, amongst other bigger ideas.
I think 'we' have about 14 months to get it together and going.
And I think that's a message that absolutely resonantes. I can talk to old folks who've been
indoctrinated by fox news and younger people who just haven't read anything and so believe in
alt right foolishness, and we can all agree on basic principles. People need decent food, housing,
good education for their children, and jobs they can do with dignity.
What is the current democratic party offering to meet that criteria? If you're so poor you
can't afford to drop a penny in a crack in the sidewalk you'll be put on an (X)year wait list
for subsidized housing? If you're poor and can't find a job we can put you on the shadow welfare
system, disability. But if you find a job, you have to pay us back. You can have a pittance in
food stamps if you've got no bread. As for the jobs, that's a big middle finger, go take a 4.5
hour round trip bus ride to work in amazon warehouse, loser. I have friends who work in the social
services and as they report it, things are grim.
It's not a winning program, it's not an adequate program, it's basically a social safety net
tuned to be as painful and minimal as possible while still meeting some definitional criteria.
Most people would also like to stop destroying random countries for the profit of about 18
people.
Tearing the leadership to shreds appears to be the only solution, but is it even possible today,
given that FDR had a massive and immediate economic crisis to force the change?
When anyone casts about for "Progressive"(trademarked, Democratic party) Democrats, the same
few names come up: Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, who in their support of H Clinton and Obama's
policies look more establishment than progressive.
My concern is the only lesson the current crop of Democrats will learn from the shutting down
of the Clinton Foundation is that their "personal wealth opportunity window" is closing as their
power to deliver the goods to the elite is quite weakened.
One can visualize them doubling down to become even more neolib than before while giving Obama
like fiery speeches to their supporters.
The Democrats have no bench depth. They don't have a second team ready to play a different
game.
Today's dem party planter class still likes the sharecropper system of labor relations. It's
just been repacked as the gig economy or tracked relentlessly like amazon's warehouse workers.
Regardless of the issues and frailty of the Democratic party what keeps me up at night is realizing
that the very process of democracy is at great risk. The aggressive free press/media that would
need to fight for the truth has been whittled away over the years and fears their corporate masters.
Now we have a President and Press Secretary who call every fact that goes against their intentions
'fake news' and from what I can tell their supporters simply believe them. Years of a weak press
and unchallenged Fox News and talk radio have set the stage for this. The blatant lies about the
numbers in attendance for the inauguration told by Trump and his Press Secretary and the refusal
of the later to take any questions, sets the stage for a leader who will do and say anything and
dismiss any facts or contrary opinions as invalid and 'fake'. With a President enamored with Oligarchy
who has no concern for ethics or earned respect and Republicans having dominance in Congress (and
the usual love for power at any cost) how is actual democracy going to function. Are there actually
any remaining checks and balances?
Let me terrify you some more. Half of Clinton supporters (per YouGov poll, link on request)
believe that the Russians were responsible for ballot tampering in 2016, for which there's
no evidence at all. And all it took was a few months of propaganda. That epistemic closure on
the liberal side is as readily produced as it has been on the conservative side is what keeps
me up at night. Why, I'm so old I remember when "progressives" (whoever, in retrospect,
they were) called themselves "the reality-based community."
Our 'centrist' mainstream media has always happily lied in service of war and fear, but the
shift to fox news stylehysteria based on nothing, nothing at all, is shameful and might just kill
it. Or maybe not, maybe it's good for ratings
1) corp media credibilty at record lows.
2) republicans i've met don't like sanders, but often respect him and find him honest.
3) republicans defending wikileaks and calling intel agencies filthy liars.
All these things make the next war a MUCH harder sell!!!
There are a lot of young, charged up young lions and lionnesses ready to tear the democratic
party to shreds and build a peoples party. This big march is a demonstration that the country
doesn't want the explicit rule of oligarchy. It's up to us (cliche) to actually organize, actually
support real left candidates for public office, from the city council of the smallest town all
the way to the senate.
Megacorps need to be afraid, they need to put 100% of their money in the republican party,
because some ferocious democrats are going to grab whatever's left over in the dirty money jar
and spend it to chop their legs out.
Alt Golden Rule: money determines policy. Unless Citizens United is reversed and elections
become a public service as intended, there will be no substantial change for the public's benefit.
With Republicans in control of Congress, this constitutional crisis won't be resolved. Due to
human shortsighted folly, the Revolution belongs to Nature.
My in-laws live in south-western New York and north-western Pennsylvania, basically in the
same place that their Swedish and German ancestors settled in the mid-1800's. Our cousin still
farms the same acres that his family purchased in 1863. My brother-in-law works for the county,
mending roads in summer, snow-plowing through the nights of 'lake-effect' snow in winter. They
both voted for Trump.
When I talked to my brother-in-law, back last May, he told me he was making the same amount
of money his Dad (a union trucker) had made, just before his retirement. He and his county co-workers
have been squeezed for the last decade; 'austerity' has resulted in them doing more work with
fewer people. He now rides alone, without a 'wingman', during the long dark nights of plowing
on icy county roads. He has seen no help, no sympathy even, from the Democrats. He liked what
he had heard about Bernie Sanders, but, by his own admission, didn't know that much about him
(thank you CNN for bloviating about Trump, 24/7). He felt that Trump was listening.
Our cousin, the farmer, serves as an elected supervisor for his township. He, like many farmers,
is deeply conservative and a hereditary Republican. Last weekend, on our usual Sunday night phone
conversation, he expressed his horror that the county commissioners had paid $60,000 to hire a
lobbyist to represent their county (not a wealthy one) at the state capitol. His comment: isn't
this what we elect our state legislator to do? He then went on to talk about the big topic of
the day in the township, the spraying of township roads (all dirt) with saline solution to keep
the dust down in summer. Turns out the 'saline solution' is waste fracking fluid, water combined
with unknown chemicals. People living along the treated roads have been complaining that they
don't want this chemically-laced water sprayed on their doorsteps and our cousin agrees with them.
If they don't want it, don't do it.
I have always considered myself a Democrat; but I find myself in agreement on so many points
with my in-laws who voted for Trump. A society has to give more respect, monetary as well as moral,
to the workers who keep our roads repaired and free of snow; they perform a social good that keeps
our economy humming. You can't keep on squeezing them and then recoil in horror when they vote
for someone who says he feels their pain.
Our cousin is a family farmer, he conserves the land in the best possible way; he provides
local food; veggies, fruits, eggs and meat. He is concerned about soil and water, the basics of
life. He is trying to compete with corporate agri-businesses. He wants elected officials to do
their job and represent their constituents. He has seen no help from the Democrats but, frankly,
is not particularly sanguine about Trump.
And then, at dinner last week, with a group of friends, most of whom are mid-Western conservatives,
one of the women, usually quiet, started talking about the Ox-Fam report and how terrible it was
that only a few billionaires had as much money as the poorest half of the population. Another
friend, also conservative, countered with the usual, I suppose you want everyone to make $65,000
a year, but she was quickly silenced by the others who took the position that no one 'needs' compensation
of $18 million.
So, the fractures are appearing, the narrative of the 1% is horrifying even the free-market
conservatives. We're all getting tossed about in the big caldera formed by the disappearing legitimacy
of the governing classes. If we can ignore the old divisive labels of republican, democrat, liberal,
conservative, right, left, and begin to coalesce around a few major agreements; healthy communities
with resources for people to have adequate food, shelter, clothing and education and satisfying
work; clean air and water and productive soils that provide local food . we have the opportunity
to form a new political party. Or, maybe a couple of parties.
But, reform the Democratic party? From what I have seen of our local establishment Dems, they
are more concerned with holding on to their pitiful positions of power than they are with crafting
a Sanders-like platform. They can no more envision crossing lines and allying with disaffected
Republicans than they can see themselves shape-shifting.
Thanks for taking the time to post your really thoughtful comment.
I think in this American election, especially with the Democratic primary, a lot of progressive
voters (not just in the States) woke up to what was really going on. That the DNC was deeply corrupt
and that democracy is only a very thin facade.
Half the country, well closet to 2/3 on electoral basis , and thats what counts, voted for
someone like trump over clinton. The democrats and media is still in denial over WHY.
So nothing will change.
Whining like petchulant children.
Liberalism..too far..
The nation was not born without great pain, and what will emerge from its remnants over the
next century will resemble what we know no more than the infant U.S. in its day resembled the
British Empire. Those who sit and wait for reform of irrelevant institutions (let's start with
our "three branches") will still be waiting in ten years. Their ship has sailed, with or without
them. Whether for better or for worse remains a destiny to be found out for, and by, every individual.
Lambert nails it in the intro. Quite a few of us Bernie Bros, like me, happily voted for Trump.
It was worth every minute of his doubtless corrupt and incompetent reign to see the vile Clinton
machine go down like a flaming Zeppelin. From the ruins will emerge a new Democratic Party. once
the OWS kids are all out of grad school and ready to take charge of their new world.
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz standing next to Kamala Harris on the podium at yesterday's march
does not bode well for the future of the Clinton gutted and failing Democratic party. She didn't
get to speak but she had slithered her way on the stage. The Democratic party will have to be
pried out of their cold dead hands or abandoned.
For those well versed in political science, when does political theatre evolve into a genuine
political action-successful or not? In America, there is an atmosphere of unreality to most political
protest. A sense that everyone is playing their particular part in a scripted drama. The desire
for self preservation steers dissenters into embracing these scripted roles. Marching in "designated
protest areas" and feeling the satisfaction of being arrested for the "cause" have proven ineffectual
and can be seen as actually counterproductive, as the fake moral courage acquired by these actions
are often used as a cudgel to beat down those who see this type of effort as pointless. These
efforts only use display to challenge power, while leaving the underlying structure and ideology
intact.
A new manifesto must be written and circulated for the current age, allowing individuals to
subscribe to stated goals or not. Reich's 7 points elude to this idea of proclamation, but come
off instead as a hapless plea. Those trying to resist the status quo are hopelessly stuck in trying
to change the minds of the oppressors instead of rallying the oppressed to a new vision. Inequality
and loss of opportunity must be addressed and those in power must be held to proclaiming their
stand on the issue. Currently, they are allowed to lie or just not answer the question. This also
explains much about the current Russia mania. The failures of capitalism must be obfuscated and
alternatives quashed at all costs- period. For what does Russia stand for if not an alternative
to capitalism. The anti-socialism and anti-communism conditioning will enter overdrive.
Taking land and occupying it either directly or indirectly has always been the way to forge
human societies or pull them apart. In the larger sense, finding ways to take and hold ground
for use to a particular end is the foundation of power. Labor has been made passive in America.
Labor not exercising its right to strike and boycott is powerless in the face of owners overwhelming
use of force and violence. Compromise positions don't work as proven out by our current situation.
Fake opposition and desperately hanging onto utopian notions of a "fair and equal" capitalism,
only allow the status quo to remain so.
It seems capitalist evolution has a good chance in leading to a delusional authoritarian dystopia.
A world in which everything is turned into a commodity worthy of exchange for profit. The needs
of the time have so far outrun the political process that some drastic event seems the only way
of breaking the stalemate.
Democrats and protestors in pussy hats, dont realize that the half of country that voted for
Trump, hasnt begin to get aroused and angry yet. They are the half that pays for 90% of taxes,
and they also have guns, which the liberals dont.
Many Democrats disparaged poor Republican voters over the recent election cycle and you respond
by disparaging the Democratic base as predominantly poor? Do you think this is a good strategy?
The current dregs that make up the Democratic party are people who have neither ideals nor
courage. That's why Bernie looked so good compared to them, but when push came to shove, Bernie's
guts and idealism went AWOL. None of these people will ever be transformed or transform themselves
into something other than loathsome non-entities. The same is true of the Republican party, but
while it is much hated by the public, the same public keeps them in power because they appear
less loathsome than the Democrats. But any notion that the Republican establishment had a lock
on all those people who vote for them was torn to shreds by Trump, and to a lesser extent, by
his fellow non-establishment-sanctioned candidate Cruz.
The Democrats will not fix themselves. Possibly the remains of the party apparatus will be
taken over, Trump style, by some capable demagogue who can fire up the voters. We can hope that
whoever this may be it will be an improvement over our current prospects. A slim hope indeed,
but despair is lousy option too,
Oh, bullshit. As we've said over and over, Sanders did exactly what he promised he would do.
If you didn't read the packaging before buying the product, that's on you. And if you thought
you were getting a savior instead of the best alternative, that's on you too. I'm sick of the
whinging on this, not only because it's untrue, but because its disempowering.
I was pretty disappointed at the extent to which he campaigned for her, especially as Dnc leaks
emerged, but I'm over it. He's clearly critically needed now to push progressive agenda forward.
I do wish he would speak mor for single payer and less for Obamacare as reps struggle mightily
for a way to repeal the latter without angering the part of their base that has no alternative,
there may be a real opening for something better how about this compromise; the group with greatest
need is elderly under 65, maybe drop age to 55, get nose further under tent.
And non health corps should support, reduces health care costs to corps that do provide coverage,
plus covering sickest workers cuts overall costs of covering a work force so encourages corps
that don't to begin covering workers this last bit might mollify insurance a little, maybe give
extra tax break to corps that cover. Some cuts to corp taxes better than others
And a 50-year old will see a benefit that kicks in pretty soon, he'll like the change even though
it doesn't yet affect him. Trump demographics
How about a list of the top 100 opportunities for progressive candidates, whether the hopefully
vulnerable neolib opponent is dem or rep?
To my mind, Reich's #4 doesn't go far enough. If the Democrats want to get serious about radical
reform, they need to completely forswear the cultivation of "major donors," and rely on small
donations. Sanders' campaign showed it can be done; there is no reason it should not be a sine
qua non of running as a Democrat going forward.
I agree completely. Of course, that would make it harder for lizards like Brock to sun themselves
as shindigs for donors in Florida, but maybe Brock would consider taking one for the team.
Many good points but I would say #5 is the most important. Instead what I'm getting from major
media & many Dems is the same garbage they've been giving us all along. Be nice if they were actually
FOR something.
Trump or Hillary? Wrong question. Rather, we need to realize that in so far as it is the choice
the leaders propose, it is a trap, which now we cannot escape but from which we can take instruction
for the future. In the liberal culture in which we have all been educated-Republicans or Democrats–we
are used to looking for saviors from above. We attach ourselves to the powerful. We look upward
for emancipation, but radical change and democratization come from below. That's where the hardness
is, but that's what scares us. We are soft because we don't know our own strength, and as long
as we don't know it, we are subjects–not citizens.
We should see in both the Trump and the Sanders partisan defections from the mainstream parties
the glimmer of a potential-in fact, a necessity–of organizing a party of the people. We could
even call it Party of the Basket of Deplorables, for if we exclude the "messy masses" (the term
Marx and Engels used, to mock the contempt in which they were held by the arrogant elite), we
admit that democracy hasn't a prayer. They are "messed up," but are they to blame, who have ceased
to matter, or even exist, on the front of the class war that has been launched against democracy-that
is, against us all?
The color line must be erased. That is an imperative for unity. In America, racism is the endemic,
the recurring plague. It is the root of our political disunity. So that is the first task: educate
it out of existence. Engels, who shared his life with Mary Burns, Irish Republican radical, well
understood the racism against the Irish pervading the English working class. This was no mere
psychological disorder. It arose because the manufacturers of the Midlands imported Irish labor
as scabs to break strikes. Nevertheless he saw in the English working class the strength required
for a social revolution:
"England exhibits the noteworthy fact that the lower a class stands in society and the more
'uneducated' it is in the usual sense of the word, the closer is its relation to progress and
the greater is its future." – snip
How are British/Irish conflicts even remotely racist? I appreciate the mutual hostility,
but how could they even tell each other apart, other than relatively minor speech patterns and
social habits? That's hardly racism. Your larger point is well taken, but race and class issues
in the US are a bit more entrenched and complicated than your analogy might suggest. By design,
I think.
The "relatively minor speech patterns" would have entirely sufficed to make the distinction.
There are parts of the world where people from towns only a few miles apart can be distinguished
through fairly minor intonational differences. See also the history of the word "shibboleth."
Indeed, there's little direct antagonism between the English and the Irish today and hasn't
been for a long time. By contrast, the "racism" discourse in the US seems to persist because it
serves the political interests of certain groups. Most of the rest of the world has gone beyond
this way of thinking and I'm always surprised the US is so far behind.
The main street media has us in a vice grip where they say they can not properly cover more
than 2 parties. (!!??) This 2 party system is bursting at the seams where every election is a
tie or hairsbreadth away from a tie. As long as we keep electing the same people, the democrats
are going nowhere, and their neolib philosophy will hang on to the every end – because it pays.
They don't care that they're going to hell.
"The Party's moneyed establishment-big donors, major lobbyists, retired members of Congress
who have become bundlers and lobbyists-are part of the problem."
Well . . . the millions of eager members of the Klinton Koolaid Kult are also a problem. They
will never ever vote for a Sanders figure. Never ever. They will nourish their lust for vengeance
against the Sanders primary voters and workers for decades to come.
Just go read a blog findable under the words Riverdaughter The Confluence and read the comments
and you will see what I mean. Put your nose up real close to the screen so you can smelllll the
Klintonism.
In June, 1858, in one of the great speeches in the history of our country and our politics,
Lincoln declared, quoting the New Testament, and in the teeth of the undeniable and unresolvable
antagonism between pro and anti-slavery citizens, that "A house divided against itself cannot
stand."
Lincoln's hope was that this country would not "dissolve". But at the same time he foresaw
the inevitably of civil war as the only realistic albeit tragic way in which an America divided
on grounds as fundamental as slavery for some versus (political) freedom for all, could resolve
its "crisis" and "cease to be divided".
For Lincoln there was no other alternative. There are many times when inhabitants of the "house"
disagree. Such is to be expected and disagreements are normally resolved sooner or later. The
house endures. But there are those other (rare) times when "agitation has not only not ceased,
but has constantly augmented". A "crisis" is reached, and eventually the nation "will become all
one thing or all the other." Civil war cruelly declares a victor and a loser.
There was no way to compromise. The deepest narratives by which each side, pro-slavery and
pro-"freedom" (Lincoln's word), understood the meaning of the American Republic, the great Enlightenment-inspired
experiment in representative democratic government, and ultimately what it means to live in community,
organize ourselves politically, socially, economically, and what counts to being a human person,
were mutually exclusive. How do you "negotiate" away this conflict? How do you dialectically transcend
it? Either the laborer in our cotton fields and plantation households is a human person or not.
When the organization of society depends on how we answer explicitly in argument and slogan or
implicitly in our unquestioned assumptions, questions about the origins and purposes of life itself,
war could only appear to Lincoln as inevitable, even if he refused at this point (1858) to come
right out and say it.
A question for us to think about: When, since the time of Lincoln, slavery, and the Civil War,
has America been as fundamentally divided as it is now, today, 2017? When have the basic stories
that we tell ourselves and that we have assimilated into our habits of head and heart, been more
deeply and irreconcilably opposed? Where and what is the dialectical resolution between coastal
cosmopolitans chasing a "good life" understood as an ever expanding, protected, and affirmed "market"
for individual choice and self- inventing "lifestyles", and the flyover country provincials living
in communities devastated by the corrosive solvency of aggressive finance capital on the make,
weakened by disappearing communities, impotent traditions, mocked religion, broken families, and
constant anxiety about providing the daily bread? And when have the imaginations of those so opposed
been less able to conceive workable solutions that embrace both sides? Are there solutions that
are able to embrace both sides?
Can the institution of representative democracy, arguably a product of the Age of Reason with
its belief in "nature and nature's God" and the "inalienable natural rights" that can be discovered
by the enlightened human intellect, survive in post-Enlightenment post-modernism with its hermeneutics
of suspicion in which there are no admitted "facts", no unifying "truths", and "right" is a function
of "might", the Will to Power.
It's urgent Democrats stop squabbling and recognize seven
basic truths:
1. The Party is on life support. Democrats are in the
minority in both the House and Senate, with no end in sight.
Since the start of the Obama Administration they've lost
1,034 state and federal seats. They hold only governorships,
and face 32 state legislatures fully under GOP control. No
one speaks for the party as a whole. The Party's top leaders
are aging, and the back bench is thin.
The future is bleak unless the Party radically reforms
itself. If Republicans do well in the 2018 midterms, they'll
control Congress and the Supreme Court for years. If they
continue to hold most statehouses, they could entrench
themselves for a generation.
2. We are now in a populist era. The strongest and most
powerful force in American politics is a rejection of the
status quo, a repudiation of politics as usual, and a deep
and profound distrust of elites, including the current power
structure of America.
That force propelled Donald Trump into the White House. He
represents the authoritarian side of populism. Bernie
Sanders's primary campaign represented the progressive side.
The question hovering over America's future is which form
of populism will ultimately prevail. At some point,
hopefully, Trump voters will discover they've been
hoodwinked. Even in its purist form, authoritarian populism
doesn't work because it destroys democracy. Democrats must
offer the alternative.
3. The economy is not working for most Americans. The
economic data show lower unemployment and higher wages than
eight years ago, but the typical family is still poorer today
than it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation; median weekly
earning are no higher than in 2000; a large number of
working-age people-mostly men-have dropped out of the labor
force altogether; and job insecurity is endemic.
Inequality is wider and its consequences more savage in
America than in any other advanced nation.
4. The Party's moneyed establishment-big donors, major
lobbyists, retired members of Congress who have become
bundlers and lobbyists-are part of the problem. Even though
many consider themselves "liberal" and don't recoil from an
active government, their preferred remedies spare
corporations and the wealthiest from making any sacrifices.
The moneyed interests in the Party allowed the
deregulation of Wall Street and then encouraged the bailout
of the Street. They're barely concerned about the growth of
tax havens, inside trading, increasing market power in major
industries (pharmaceuticals, telecom, airlines, private
health insurers, food processors, finance, even high tech),
and widening inequality.
Meanwhile, they've allowed labor unions to shrink to near
irrelevance. Unionized workers used to be the ground troops
of the Democratic Party. In the 1950s, more than a third of
all private-sector workers were unionized; today, fewer than
7 percent are.
5. It's not enough for Democrats to be "against Trump,"
and defend the status quo. Democrats have to fight like hell
against regressive policies Trump wants to put in place, but
Democrats also need to fight for a bold vision of what the
nation must achieve-like expanding Social Security, and
financing the expansion by raising the cap on income subject
to Social Security taxes; Medicare for all; and world-class
free public education for all.
And Democrats must diligently seek to establish
countervailing power-stronger trade unions, community banks,
more incentives for employee ownership and small businesses,
and electoral reforms that get big money out of politics and
expand the right to vote.
6. The life of the Party-its enthusiasm, passion, youth,
principles, and ideals-was elicited by Bernie Sanders's
campaign. This isn't to denigrate what Hillary Clinton
accomplished-she did, after all, win the popular vote in the
presidential election by almost 3 million people. It's only
to recognize what all of us witnessed: the huge outpouring of
excitement that Bernie's campaign inspired, especially from
the young. This is the future of the Democratic Party.
7. The Party must change from being a giant fundraising
machine to a movement.It needs to unite the poor, working
class, and middle class, black and white-who haven't had a
raise in 30 years, and who feel angry, powerless, and
disenfranchised.
Cruising all my lefty bookmarked sites, this is the only one
(Reich's bog) that comes even close to saying the Democratic
Party is risking permanent irrelevance unless sufficient
grass roots anger topples the leadership wholesale and
rebuilds from the bottom.
That's what happened to the Republican party. Trump toppled
the establishment by tapping into people's anger about the
"carnage." Now we'll see what he actually does. I don't think
think even he knows what he'll do.
Meanwhile establishment
Democrats deny that there is any carnage.
Brexit and Trump only happened b/c of a weird uptick in
racism and sexism. B/c of social media.
"... In Europe and the US it was right wing nationalist populism which opposes free trade, mass
immigration and military intervention abroad. ..."
"... Trump instinctively understood that he must keep pressing these three buttons, the importance
of which Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Party leaders, taking their cue from their donors
rather than potential voters, never appreciated. ..."
"... The vehicle for protest and opposition to the status quo in the Middle East and North Africa
is, by way of contrast, almost entirely religious and is only seldom nationalist, the most important
example being the Kurds. ..."
"... Secular nationalism was in any case something of a middle class creed in the Arab world, limited
in its capacity to provide the glue to hold societies together in the face of crisis. ..."
"... It was always absurdly simple-minded to blame all the troubles of Iraq, Syria and Libya on
Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi, authoritarian leaders whose regimes were more the
symptom than the cause of division. ..."
"... Political divisions in the US are probably greater now than at any time since the American
Civil War 150 years ago. Repeated calls for unity in both countries betray a deepening disunity and
alarm as people sense that they are moving in the dark and old norms and landmarks are no longer visible
and may no longer exist. ..."
"... Criticism of Trump in the media has lost all regard for truth and falsehood with the publication
of patently concocted reports of his antics in Russia ..."
"... But the rise of Isis, the mass influx of Syrian refugees heading for Central Europe and the
terror attacks in Paris and Brussels showed that the crises in the Middle East could not be contained.
They helped give a powerful impulse to the anti-immigrant authoritarian nationalist right and made them
real contenders for power. ..."
"... One of the first real tests for Trump will be how far he succeeds in closing down these wars,
something that is now at last becoming feasible. ..."
In the US, Europe and the Middle East there were many who saw themselves as the losers from globalisation,
but the ideological vehicle for protest differed markedly from region to region. In Europe and
the US it was right wing nationalist populism which opposes free trade, mass immigration and military
intervention abroad. The latter theme is much more resonant in the US than in Europe because
of Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump instinctively understood that he must keep pressing these three
buttons, the importance of which Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Party leaders, taking
their cue from their donors rather than potential voters, never appreciated.
The vehicle for protest and opposition to the status quo in the Middle East and North Africa
is, by way of contrast, almost entirely religious and is only seldom nationalist, the most important
example being the Kurds. This is a big change from 50 years ago when revolutionaries in the
region were usually nationalists or socialists, but both beliefs were discredited by corrupt and
authoritarian nationalist dictators and by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Secular nationalism was in any case something of a middle class creed in the Arab world, limited
in its capacity to provide the glue to hold societies together in the face of crisis. When Isis
forces were advancing on Baghdad after taking Mosul in June 2014, it was a fatwa from the Iraqi Shia
religious leader Ali al-Sistani that rallied the resistance. No non-religious Iraqi leader could
have successfully appealed to hundreds of thousands of people to volunteer to fight to the death
against Isis. The Middle East differs also from Europe and the US because states are more fragile
than they look and once destroyed prove impossible to recreate. This was a lesson that the foreign
policy establishments in Washington, London and Paris failed to take on board after the invasion
of Iraq in 2003, though the disastrous outcome of successful or attempted regime change has been
bloodily demonstrated again and again. It was always absurdly simple-minded to blame all the
troubles of Iraq, Syria and Libya on Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi, authoritarian
leaders whose regimes were more the symptom than the cause of division.
But it is not only in the Middle East that divisions are deepening. Whatever happens in Britain
because of the Brexit vote or in the US because of the election of Trump as president, both countries
will be more divided and therefore weaker than before. Political divisions in the US are probably
greater now than at any time since the American Civil War 150 years ago. Repeated calls for unity
in both countries betray a deepening disunity and alarm as people sense that they are moving in the
dark and old norms and landmarks are no longer visible and may no longer exist.
The mainline mass media is finding it difficult to make sense of a new world order which may or
may not be emerging. Journalists are generally more rooted in the established order of things than
they pretend and are shocked by radical change. Only two big newspapers – the Florida Times-Union
and the Las Vegas Review-Journal endorsed Trump before the election and few of the American
commentariat expected him to win, though this has not dented their confidence in their own judgement.
Criticism of Trump in the media has lost all regard for truth and falsehood with the publication
of patently concocted reports of his antics in Russia, but there is also genuine uncertainty
about whether he will be a real force for change, be it good or ill.
Crises in different parts of the world are beginning to cross-infect and exacerbate each other.
Prior to 2014 European leaders, whatever their humanitarian protestations, did not care much what
happened in Iraq and Syria. But the rise of Isis, the mass influx of Syrian refugees heading
for Central Europe and the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels showed that the crises in the Middle
East could not be contained. They helped give a powerful impulse to the anti-immigrant authoritarian
nationalist right and made them real contenders for power.
The Middle East is always a source of instability in the world and never more so than over the
last six years. But winners and losers are emerging in Syria where Assad is succeeding with Russian
and Iranian help, while in Iraq the Baghdad government backed by US airpower is slowly fighting its
way into Mosul. Isis probably has more fight in it than its many enemies want to believe, but is
surely on the road to ultimate defeat. One of the first real tests for Trump will be how far
he succeeds in closing down these wars, something that is now at last becoming feasible.
"... The speech was, as predicted, "Jacksonian" - populist, combative, anti-Washington, thick with promises to eradicate America's enemies and favor the forgotten man over globalist elites. ..."
"... At its darkest, this sort of protective politics veers toward fascism; at its best (and the new president's rhetoric did try to reach in that direction) it points toward a pan-ethnic nationalism, a right-wing politics of solidarity. But in neither case is it compatible with the limited-government catechism and the Republican politics that pushes for free trade deals and fights against Medicaid expansions. ..."
"The time for empty talk is over," our new president said near the end of his relatively brief Inaugural
Address. And if he actually makes good on that promise, if the speech wasn't just talk but a blueprint
for effective presidential action, then we just watched an epochal moment: the last rites of Reaganite
conservatism, and the birth of a populist and nationalist new right.
The speech was, as predicted, "Jacksonian" - populist, combative, anti-Washington, thick with
promises to eradicate America's enemies and favor the forgotten man over globalist elites.
But
if it was anti-Washington, it was not remotely anti-government: Just as he did on the campaign trail,
Trump eschewed the rhetoric of liberty in favor of expansive promises of "protection" and rhapsodic
paeans to infrastructure spending.
At its darkest, this sort of protective politics veers toward fascism; at its best (and the new
president's rhetoric did try to reach in that direction) it points toward a pan-ethnic nationalism,
a right-wing politics of solidarity. But in neither case is it compatible with the limited-government
catechism and the Republican politics that pushes for free trade deals and fights against Medicaid
expansions.
Thus, the great ideological questions of the Trump era: Will his rhetoric actually define the policy
that gets made in the halls of Congress, where a more Reaganite conservatism still theoretically
holds sway? Or will his words be a Buchananite patina on an agenda mostly written by supply-siders
and Goldman Sachs appointees? Or will the conflict between the two tendencies simply make his administration
less epochal than incoherent, less transformative than simply ineffective?
During the Trump transition, observers on both the right and left cited the political scientist Stephen
Skowronek's theory of "disjunctive" presidents who straddle transitions between old orders and emerging
ones. One such president was Jimmy Carter, who tried to maintain the creaking New Deal coalition
while also grasping at a new vision for liberal governance. He failed because his party simply couldn't
accommodate the tension, and he himself couldn't effectively blend the old and new.
Right now Trump looks like he might be similarly disjunctive. Like Mr. Carter with the '70s-era Democrats,
he has grasped - correctly - that Republican politics desperately needs to be reinvented. But his
populist-nationalist vision has seemed too racially and culturally exclusive to win him majority
support, and it's layered atop a party that still mostly believes in the "populism" of cutting the
estate tax.
Combine those brute political facts with Trump's implausibly expansive promises, and a Carter scenario
- gridlock, disappointment, collapse - seems like the most plausible way to bet. But on the evidence
of this speech, Trump has no intention of playing it safe: He will either remake conservatism in
his image, or see his presidency fail in the attempt.
Listen and you can hear the sneering "elite" liberal left narrative about how
the big dumb white working class is about to get screwed over by the incoming
multi-millionaire- and billionaire-laden Trump administration it voted into
office. Once those poor saps in the white working class wake up to their
moronic mistake, the narrative suggests, they'll come running back to their
supposed friends the Democrats.
Trump Didn't Really Win Over Working
Class America: Clinton Lost it
It's true, of course, that Trump is going to betray white working class
people who voted for him in the hope that he would be a populist champion of
their interests – a hope he mendaciously cultivated. But there are three basic
and related problems with the scornful liberal-left storyline. The first
difficulty is that the notion of a big white proletarian "rustbelt rebellion"
for Trump has been badly oversold. "The real story of the 2016 election," the
left political scientist
Anthony DiMaggio notes
, "is not that Trump won over working class America,
so much as Clinton and the Democrats lost it The decline of Democratic voters
among the working class in 2016 (compared to 2012) was far larger than the
increase in Republican voters during those two elections" If the Democrats had
run Bernie Sanders or someone else with "a meaningful history of seeking to
help the working class," DiMaggio observes, they might well have won.
Populism-Manipulation is a Bipartisan Affair
Second, betraying working class voters (of all colors, by the way) in
service to concentrated wealth and power (the "One Percent" in post-Occupy Wall
Street parlance) is what presidents and other top elected officials from
both
of the reigning capitalist U.S. political parties do. What did the
white and the broader (multiracial) working class experience when the
neoliberal corporate Democrats Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama
held the White House? Abject disloyalty towards egalitarian-sounding campaign
rhetoric and a resumption of (big) business (rule) as usual. An ever-increasing
upward distribution of income, wealth, and power into fewer hands.
It's an old story. In his 1999 book on Bill and Hillary Clinton,
No One Left to Lie To
, the still left Christopher Hitchens
usefully described "the essence of American politics, when distilled," as "the
manipulation of populism by elitism. That elite is most successful," Hitchens
added, "which can claim the heartiest allegiance of the fickle crowd; can
present itself as most 'in touch' with popular concerns; can anticipate the
tides and pulses of public opinion; can, in short, be the least apparently
'elitist.' It is no great distance from Huey Long's robust cry of 'Every man a
king' to the insipid 'inclusiveness' of [Bill Clinton's slogan] 'Putting People
First,' but the smarter elite managers have learned in the interlude that
solid, measurable pledges have to be distinguished by a reserve' tag that
earmarks them for the bankrollers and backers."
True, the Republicans don't manipulate populism in the same way as the
Democrats. The dismal, dollar-drenched Dems don the outwardly liberal and
diverse, many-colored cloak of slick, Hollywood- , Silicon Valley-, Ivy
League-and Upper West Side-approved bicoastal multiculturalism. The radically
regressive and reactionary Republicans connect their manipulation more to
white "heartland" nationalism, sexism, hyper-masculinism, nativism, evangelism,
family values, and (to be honest) racism.
But in both versions, that of the Democrats and that of the Republicans,
Goldman Sachs (and Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America et al.) always
prevails. The "bankrollers and bankers"
atop
the Deep State
continue to reign. The nation's unelected deep
state dictatorship of money (UDSDoM, UDoM for short) continues to call the
shots. That was certainly true under the
arch-neoliberal
Barack Obama
, whose relentless service to the nation's economic
ruling class has been amply documented by numerous journalists, authors (the
present
writer included
) and academics.
Obama ascended to the White House with record-setting Wall Street
contributions. He governed accordingly, from the staffing of his
administration (chock full of revolving door operatives from elite financial
institutions) to the policies he advanced – and the ones he didn't, like (to
name a handful) a financial transaction tax, the re-legalization of union
organizing, single-payer health insurance, a health insurance public option,
tough conditions on bankers receiving bailout money, and the prosecution of a
single Wall Street executive for the excesses that created the financial
meltdown.
Anyone who thinks that any of that might have changed to any significant
degree under a Hillary Clinton presidency is living in a fantasy world. She
gave
every indication
that a president Clinton 45 would be every bit as friendly
to the finance-led corporate establishment (the UDoM) as the arch-neoliberal
Cliinton42 and Obama44 presidencies. She was Wall Street's
golden/Goldman/Citigroup girl.
We are Not the 99 Percent
Third, elite liberals and left liberals often miss a key point on who white
(and nonwhite) working class people most directly interact when it comes to the
infliction of what the sociologist Richard Sennett called "
the
hidden injuries of class
." It is through regular contact with the
professional and managerial class, not the mostly invisible corporate and
financial elite, that the working class mostly commonly experiences class
inequality and oppression in America.
Working people might see hyper-opulent "rich bastards" like Trump, Bill
Gates, and even Warren Buffett on television. In their real lives, they carry
out "ridiculous orders" and receive "idiotic" reprimands from middle- and upper
middle-class coordinators-from, to quote a white university maintenance worker
I spoke with last summer, "know-it-all pencil-pushers who don't give a flying
fuck about regular working guys like me."
This worker voted for Trump "just to piss-off all the big shot (professional
class) liberals" he perceived as constantly disrespecting and pushing him
around.
It is not lost on the white working class that much of this managerial and
professional class "elite" tends to align with the Democratic Party and its
purported liberal and multicultural, cosmopolitan, and environmentalist values.
It doesn't help that the professional and managerial "elites" are often with
the politically correct multiculturalism and the environmentalism that many
white workers (actually) have (unpleasant as this might be to acknowledge) some
rational economic and other reasons to see as a threat to their living
standards, status, and well-being.
The
Green
Party
leader and Teamster union activist Howie Hawkins put it very
well last summer. "The Democratic Party ideology is the ideology of the
professional class," Hawkins said. "Meritocratic competition. Do well in
school, get well-rewarded." (Unfortunately, perhaps, his comment reminds me of
the bumper sticker slogan I've seen on the back of more than a few beat-up cars
in factory parking lots and trailer parks over the years: "My Kid Beat Up Your
Honor Student.") "The biggest threat to the Democrats isn't losing votes to the
Greens," Hawkins noted. It is losing votes to Trump, who "sounds like he's mad
at the system. So they throw a protest vote to him."
The white maintenance worker is certainly going to get screwed by Trump's
corporate presidency. You can take that to the bank. He would also have gotten
shafted by Hillary's corporate presidency if she had won. You can take that
down to your favorite financial institution too. And the worker's anger at all
the "big shots" with their Hillary and Obama bumper stickers on the back of
their Volvos and Audis and Priuses is not based merely on some foolish and
"uneducated" failure to perceive his common interests with the rest of the "99
percent" against the top hundredth.
We are the 99 Percent, except, well, we're not. Among other things, a
two-class model of America deletes the massive disparities that exist between
the working-class majority of Americans and the nation's professional and
managerial class. In the U.S. as across the world capitalist system, ordinary
working people suffer not just from the elite private and profit-seeking
capitalist ownership of workplace and society. They also confront the stark
oppression inherent in what left economists Robin Hahnel and Mike Albert call
the "corporate division of labor"-an alienating, de-humanizing, and
hierarchical subdivision of tasks "in which a few workers have excellent
conditions and empowering circumstances, many fall well below that, and most
workers have essentially no power at all."
Over time, this pecking order hardens "into a broad and pervasive class
division" whereby one class - roughly the top fifth of the workforce -"controls
its own circumstances and the circumstances of others below," while another
(the working class) "obeys orders and gets what its members can eke out." The
"coordinator class," Albert notes, "looks down on workers as instruments with
which to get jobs done. It engages workers paternally, seeing them as needing
guidance and oversight and as lacking the finer human qualities that justify
both autonomous input and the higher incomes needed to support more expensive
tastes." That sparks no small working class resentment.
It comes with ballot box implications. Many white workers will "vote against
their pocketbook interests" by embracing a viciously noxious and
super-oligarchic Republican over a supposedly liberal (neoliberal) Democrat
backed by middle- and upper middle- class elites who contemptuously lord it
over those workers daily. The negative attention that dreadful Republican
(Trump) gets from "elite" upper-middle class talking heads in corporate media
often just reinforces that ugly attachment.
2016: Hate Trumped Hate
It doesn't help the Democrats when their top candidates channel elitist
contempt of the working in their campaign rhetoric. Here's how the
silver-tongued Harvard Law graduate
Obama referred to white working-class voters
in old blue-collar towns
decimated by industrial job losses in the early spring of 2008: "They get
bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like
them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain
their frustrations." Amusingly enough, these reflections were seized on by his
neoliberal compatriot and rival for the Democratic nomination, the Yale Law
graduate Hillary Clinton. She hoped to use Obama's condescending remarks to
resuscitate her flagging campaign against a candidate she now accused of class
snotty-ness. "I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made
about people in small-town America," she said. "His remarks are
elitist
and out of touch." Clinton staffers in North Carolina even gave out stickers
saying "I'm not bitter."
How darkly ironic is to compare that (failed) campaign gambit from nearly
nine years ago with the campaign Hillary ran in 2016! Hillary's latest and
hopefully last campaign was quite consciously and recklessly about contempt for
the white working class. As
John Pilger recently reflected
:
"Today, false symbolism is all. 'Identity' is all. In 2016, Hillary Clinton
stigmatised millions of [white working class and rural – P.S.] voters as 'a
basket of deplorables, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -
you name it'. Her abuse was handed out at an LGBT rally as part of her cynical
campaign to win over minorities by abusing a white mostly working-class
majority. Divide and rule, this is called; or identity politics in which race
and gender conceal class, and allow the waging of class war. Trump understood
this."
The "deplorables" comment was a great gift to Trump, whose staffers gave
people buttons saying "I'm an Adorable Deplorable."
Disappointed Hillary voters have chanted "Love Trumps Hate" while marching
against the incoming quasi-fascist president. But, really, the 2016 U.S.
presidential election was
about one kind of hate
– the "heartland"
white nationalist Republican version –
trumping another kind of hate
,
the more bi-coastal and outwardly multicultural and diverse Democratic version.
Let us not forget former Obama campaign manager
David Ploufe's comment
to the
New York Times
last March on how the
Hillary campaign would conduct itself against a Trump candidacy: "hope and
change, not so much; more like hate and castrate."
Meanwhile, the nation's UDoM rules on, whichever party holds nominal power
atop the visible state. Pardon my French, but the working class (of all
colors) is fucked either way.
Goldman Sachs Wins Either Way
We might also think of the essence of American politics as the manipulation
of identity politics – and identity-based hatred – by elitism. Reduced to a
corporate-managed
electorate
(Sheldon Wolin), the citizenry is identity-played by a moneyed
elite that pulls the strings behind the duopoly's candidate-centered spectacles
of faux democracy. As the Left author
Chris
Hedges noted three years ago
, "Both sides of the political spectrum are
manipulated by the same forces. If you're some right-wing Christian zealot in
Georgia, then it's homosexuals and abortion and all these, you know, wedge
issues that are used to whip you up emotionally. If you are a liberal in
Manhattan, it's – you know, they'll be teaching creationism in your schools or
whatever Yet in fact it's just a game, because whether it's Bush or whether
it's Obama, Goldman Sachs always wins. There is no way to vote against the
interests of Goldman Sachs." (We can update that formulation to say "whether
it's Trump or where it's Hillary.")
For all their claims of concern for ordinary people and beneath all their
claims of bitter, personal, and partisan contempt for their major party
electoral opponents, the Republican and Democratic "elites" are united with the
capitalist "elite" in top-down hatred for the nation's multi-racial
working-class majority.
The resistance movement we need to develop cannot be merely about choosing
one of the two different major party brands of Machiavellian, ruling class
hate. The reigning political organizations are what Upton Sinclair called (in
the original
Appeal to Reason
newspaper version of
The Jungle
)
"two wings of the same bird of prey." We must come out from under both of
those two noxious wings and their obsessive and endless focus on the
quadrennial candidate-centered electoral extravaganzas, which have replaced the
recently closed Ringling Brothers show as the greatest circus in the world. We
cannot fall prey anymore to the reigning message that meaningful democratic
participation consists of going into a voting booth to mark a ballot once every
four years and then going home to (in
Noam Chomsky's words
) "let other [and very rich ] people run the world
[into the ground]."
Join
the debate on Facebook
"... In the face of the enormous political chasm between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, a strategy of elite-led, bipartisan deal-cutting premised on calls for "shared sacrifice" leaves this grossly inequitable economic and political fabric intact. As such, the 99 percent are caught in the vise of small-bore policies from their supposed friends and allies while their opponents encircle them with scorched-earth politics. ..."
"... The Obama administration and much of the leadership of the Democratic Party took extreme care not to upset these basic interests. As a consequence, they squandered an exceptional political opportunity. The financial crisis and the Great Recession were one of those moments when members of the business sector were "stripped naked as leaders and strategists," in the words of Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. The Great Depression was another. ..."
"... As he put the House of Morgan and other bankers on trial, Ferdinand Pecora, chief counsel of the Senate Banking Committee, helped popularize during the age of Al Capone a term not heard today: the "bankster." These hearings compelled Roosevelt to support stricter financial regulation than he might have otherwise. ..."
"... One cannot talk about crime in the streets today without talking about crime in the suites. ..."
"... The political intransigence lavishly on display in the Republican Party - which repeatedly brought Congress to a caustic standstill - obscured how a major segment of the Democratic Party was loath to mount any major challenge to the entrenched financial and political interests that have captured American politics today. ..."
"... For all the bluster about political polarization, the debate over what to do about the economy, the social safety net, and financial regulation - like the elite discussions over what to do about mass incarceration - oscillated within a very narrow range defined by neoliberalism for much of Obama's tenure. Indeed, the president repeatedly bragged that the federal budget for discretionary spending on domestic programs had shrunk under his watch to the smallest share of the economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president. ..."
Vast and growing economic inequalities rooted in vast and growing political inequalities are the
preeminent problem facing the United States today. They are the touchstone of many of the major issues
that vex the country - from mass incarceration to mass underemployment to climate change to the economic
recovery of Wall Street but not Main Street and Martin Luther King Street.
In the face of the enormous political chasm between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, a strategy
of elite-led, bipartisan deal-cutting premised on calls for "shared sacrifice" leaves this grossly
inequitable economic and political fabric intact. As such, the 99 percent are caught in the vise
of small-bore policies from their supposed friends and allies while their opponents encircle them
with scorched-earth politics.
The Obama administration and much of the leadership of the Democratic Party took extreme care
not to upset these basic interests. As a consequence, they squandered an exceptional political opportunity.
The financial crisis and the Great Recession were one of those moments when members of the business
sector were "stripped naked as leaders and strategists,"
in the words of Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. The
Great Depression was another.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office, the Hoover administration was thoroughly
discredited, as was the business sector. FDR recognized that the country was ready for a clean break
with the past, and symbolically and substantively cultivated that sentiment. The break did not come
from FDR alone. Massive numbers of Americans mobilized in unions, women's organizations, veterans'
groups, senior citizen associations, and civil right groups to ensure that the country switched course.
During the Depression, President Roosevelt was forced to broaden the public understanding of crime
to include corporate crime. The Senate's riveting
Pecora hearings during the waning days of the Hoover administration and the start of the Roosevelt
presidency turned a scorching public spotlight on the malfeasance of the corporate sector and its
complicity in sparking the Depression.
As he put the House of Morgan and other bankers on trial, Ferdinand Pecora, chief counsel
of the Senate Banking Committee, helped popularize during the age of Al Capone a term not heard today:
the "bankster." These hearings compelled Roosevelt to support stricter financial regulation than
he might have otherwise.
One cannot talk about crime in the streets today without talking about crime in the suites.
Over the past four decades, the public obsession with getting tougher on street crime coincided with
the retreat of the state in regulating corporate malfeasance - everything from hedge funds to credit
default swaps to workplace safety. Keeping the focus on street crime was a convenient strategy to
shift public attention and resources from crime in the suites to crime in the streets.
As billionaire financier Warren Buffet
quipped
in 2006, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making
war, and we're winning." President Obama's persistent calls during his first term for a politics
that rose above politics and championed "shared sacrifice" denied this reality and demobilized the
public. It thwarted the consolidation of a compelling alternative political vision on which new coalitions
and movements could be forged to challenge fundamental inequalities, including mass imprisonment
and the growing tentacles of the carceral state.
The political intransigence lavishly on display in the Republican Party - which repeatedly
brought Congress to a caustic standstill - obscured how a major segment of the Democratic Party was
loath to mount any major challenge to the entrenched financial and political interests that have
captured American politics today.
For all the bluster about political polarization, the debate over what to do about the economy,
the social safety net, and financial regulation - like the elite discussions over what to do about
mass incarceration - oscillated within a very narrow range defined by neoliberalism for much of Obama's
tenure. Indeed, the president repeatedly bragged that the federal budget for discretionary spending
on domestic programs had shrunk under his watch to the smallest share of the economy since Dwight
Eisenhower was president.
As such, one major problem facing Davos, is one of loss of credibility
,
as the majority of people now believe the economic and political system is failing them,
according to the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, released on Monday ahead of the Jan.
17-20 World Economic Forum.
A simpler way of putting it:
"There's a sense that
the system is broken,"
Richard Edelman, head of the communications marketing
firm that commissioned the research,
told Reuters
.
And it's not just the poor who have lost faith: "
The most shocking statistic
of this whole study is that half the people who are high-income, college-educated and
well-informed also believe the system doesn't work
."
As
Reuters
puts
it, the 3,000 business, political and academic leaders meeting in the Swiss
Alps this week find themselves increasingly out of step with many voters and populist
leaders around the world who distrust elites. And this time the increasingly angry world
is closely watching.
Governments and the media are now trusted by only 41 and 43 percent of people
respectively, with confidence in news outlets down particularly sharply after a year in
which "post-truth" become the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year. Trust in business
was slightly higher, at 52 percent, but it too has declined amid scandals, including
Volkswagen's rigged diesel emission tests and Samsung Electronics' fire-prone
smartphones.
The credibility of chief executives has fallen in every country surveyed, reaching a
low of 18 percent in Japan, while the German figure was 28 percent and the U.S. 38
percent.
Trust in governments fell in 14 of the countries surveyed, with South Africa, where
Davos regular President Jacob Zuma has faced persistent corruption allegations, ranked
bottom with just 15 percent support.
Making matters worse, according to a
PwC survey
released at Davos
, even the global business elite is starting to lose oses
confidence in the benefits of globalization, i.e. the very bread and butter of the
people present at the world's biggest echo chamber symposium.
"
there is a consensus that something huge is going on, global and
in many respects unprecedented. But we don't know what the causes are, nor how
to deal with it."
Let me explain.
The US set its heart on liberal democracy and the
end was already in sight.
The problems were there at the start but were
ignored, it was always going to go wrong in exactly the way it has.
Francis Fukuyama talked of the "end of history" and
"liberal democracy".
Liberal democracy was the bringing together of two
mutually exclusive ideas.
Economic liberalism – that enriches the few and
impoverishes the many.
Democracy – that requires the support of the majority.
Trying to bring two mutually exclusive ideas together just
doesn't work.
The ideas of "Economic Liberalism" came from Milton
Freidman and the University of Chicago. It was so radical they first tried it
in a military dictatorship in Chile, it wouldn't be compatible with democracy.
It took death squads, torture and terror to keep it in place, there was an
ethnic cleansing of anyone who still showed signs of any left wing thinking.
It was tried in a few other places in South America using
similar techniques. It then did succeed in a democracy but only by tricking the
people into thinking they were voting for something else, severe oppression was
needed when they found out what they were getting.
It brings extreme inequality and widespread poverty
everywhere it's tested, they decide it's a system that should be rolled out
globally. It's just what they are looking for.
Margaret Thatcher bought these ideas to the West and the
plan to eliminate the welfare state has only recently been revealed. Things had
to be done slowly in the West due to that bothersome democracy. The West has
now seen enough.
It was implemented far more brutally in the developing
world where Milton Freidman's "Chicago Boys" were the henchmen of "The
Washington Consensus". The IMF and World Bank acted as enforcers insisting on
neoliberal conditionalities for loans.
Global markets punished those not towing the neoliberal
line and kept nations in their place. As Nelson Mandela was released from
prison the South African Rand fell 10%, someone like this was going to be
pushing up wage costs and would be bad for the economy.
Looking back it was a grand folly of an international
elite whose greed overcame even a modicum of common sense.
Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" will take you through
all the gory details.
Underlying neo-liberalism is a different economics,
neoclassical economics, which is heavily biased towards the wealthy. Inequality
and a lack of demand in the global economy were also guaranteed from the start.
Crocodile tears. what they're really saying is that there is no body left to
exploit. Gates and his buddies from Mastercard and Visa are now literally
ragpicking the poor Indians with their destruction of the cash economy. "Get
a credit card or starve you huddled masses!" JPMorgan makes millions of $
every year off food stamps. "Thank you O'Bomber - I just love your golf
swing." The latest and greatest? Bezos is getting into the food stamp
racket... "Thanks O'Bomber - just keep those doggies rollin."
These kids
are down to seeds and stems and they don't know what the fuck to do next... The
Ruskies look tasty but they're too hard to roll... "Killoing the host" fo shuh.
the depth of their insanity is revealed in their obvious reluctance to admit
the con is over. the foot soldiers who are responsible for keeping the rabble
in check are ready for mutiny. these guys would piss in their pants and offer
their mother in their place if a red dot appeared on their forehead.
System's been broken at least since the 90s. Pretty sure many ZH readers have
been accutely aware of this as well. But hey, on behalf of the rest of us,
welcome to the party. No run for your fucking lives. Cause you destroyed
perfectly good countries with proud histories for no good goddamned reason, and
you're going to be held accountable. Scumbags.
1. the way Davos
participants open their meetings to all North African and Middle Eastern
immigrants;
2. the way Davos participants pledge to go without paychecks until next
year's Davos meeting, because they want to "feel your pain";
3. the way Davos participants fast for the entirety of the conclave, to
remind themselves that "they exist only to serve";
4. the way Davos participants meet in Syria, tour some areas
bombed-and-looted-and-raped by ISIS, crowd onto small boats, row across the
Mediterranean to Italy, and then walk the rest of the way to Davos;
5. the way Davos participants promise not to wear PURPLE all year, to show
they do NOT appreciate Hillary's bombing of Syria and killing of its leader.
The entire Global Banking System, and all the Corporate companies in the entire
world, will implode, guaranteed. They will implode because of the fact that the
Banking Oligopoly has appropriated all of the Disposable Income Gains of the
entire world population since the late 1960s. Bill Gates & Warren Buffett
should have known that they alone would have to support all the companies in
the entire world in order to keep them propped up due to the fact that they are
the only individuals with enough money to purchase all the cars, trucks,
investments, et cetera. Clearly, Warren Buffett & Bill Gates need to buy all
the high end luxury boats and condos in the entire world because no one else
can afford to purchase given that everyone is indentured into servitude to
bankers that appropriate all of their Disposable Income Gains the world over.
The Davos crowd knows what is going on, but they don't want to admit that they
stole all the world's wealth so that they could be anal retentive money
hoarders like Warren Buffett obviously is. The problems of trust is endemic
throughout the entire world now, and it will not be long before we read about
Warren Buffett hanging from a lamp post at the hands of an irate population
that is panicking.
I honestly know what is going to happen and why it is happening, but the
closed-looped Global Banking System does not care one wit about causality.
Clearly, they will care when they get lynched by angry irate mobs of people
that are going to freak out when the whole system implodes across the board.
"But we don't know what the causes are, nor how to deal with it."
I almost spit out my lunch at that one. Maybe when their heads are
in a guillotine they'll remember. Better yet, let this non-elite explain it to
you: You've rigged the system so that the rich get richer and everyone else
gets screwed. How long did you think that would go on before the masses want
you dead?
"... It was read aloud in taverns, churches and town squares, promoting the notion of republicanism, bolstering fervor for complete separation from Britain, and boosting recruitment for the fledgling Continental Army. He rallied public opinion in favor of revolution among layman, farmers, businessmen and lawmakers. It compelled the colonists to make an immediate choice. It made the case against monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny and unfair taxation, offering Americans a solution – liberty and freedom. It was an important precursor to the Declaration of Independence, which was written six months later by Paine's fellow revolutionaries. ..."
"Without the pen of the author of
Common Sense , the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain." –
John Adams
Thomas Paine was born in 1737 in Britain. His first thirty seven years of life were pretty much
a series of failures and disappointments. Business fiascos, firings, the death of his first wife
and child, a failed second marriage, and bankruptcy plagued his early life.
He then met Benjamin Franklin in 1774 and was convinced to emigrate to America, arriving in Philadelphia
in November 1774. He thus became the Father of the American Revolution with the publication of
Common Sense , pamphlets which crystallized opinion for colonial independence in 1776.
The first pamphlet was published in Philadelphia on January 10, 1776, and signed anonymously "by
an Englishman." It became an instantaneous sensation, swiftly disseminating 100,000 copies in three
months among the two and a half million residents of the 13 colonies. Over 500,000 copies were sold
during the course of the American Revolution. Paine published
Common Sense after the battle of Lexington and Concord, making the argument the colonists should
seek complete independence from Great Britain, rather than merely fighting against unfair levels
of taxation. The pamphlets stirred the masses with a fighting spirit, instilling in them the backbone
to resist a powerful empire.
It was read aloud in taverns, churches and town squares, promoting the notion of republicanism,
bolstering fervor for complete separation from Britain, and boosting recruitment for the fledgling
Continental Army. He rallied public opinion in favor of revolution among layman, farmers, businessmen
and lawmakers. It compelled the colonists to make an immediate choice. It made the case against monarchy,
aristocracy, tyranny and unfair taxation, offering Americans a solution – liberty and freedom. It
was an important precursor to the Declaration of Independence, which was written six months later
by Paine's fellow revolutionaries.
Paine's contribution to American independence 241 years ago during the first American
Fourth Turning cannot be overstated. His clarion call for colonial unity against a tyrannical
British monarch played a providential role in convincing farmers, shopkeepers, and tradesmen reconciliation
with a hereditary monarchy was impossible, and armed separation was the only common sense option.
He made the case breaking away from Britain was inevitable, and the time was now. Armed conflict
had already occurred, but support for a full-fledged revolution had not yet coalesced within the
thirteen colonies. Paine's rhetorical style within the pamphlets aroused enough resentment against
the British monarchy to rally men to arms, so their children wouldn't have to fight their battles.
"I prefer peace, but if trouble must come, let it be in my time that my children may know peace."
– Thomas Paine
Paine did not write
Common Sense or
The American Crisis pamphlets for his contemporaries like John Adams, Samuel Adams, Jefferson,
Madison, or Franklin. These intellectual giants were already convinced of the need to permanently
break away from the British Empire and form a new nation. Paine wrote his pamphlets in a style understandable
to the common man, rendering complex concepts intelligible for the average citizen. Paine seized
this historic moment of crisis to provide the intellectual basis for a republican revolution. To
inspire his citizen soldiers, George Washington had Paine's pamphlets read aloud at their encampments.
"These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in
this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love
and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation
with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we
esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put
a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom
should not be highly rated." – Thomas Paine –
The American Crisis
The wealthy landowners and firebrands who comprised the Continental Congress leadership were not
the audience Paine was trying to sway. They were focused on how a Declaration of Independence would
affect the war effort. They were deficient in making their case to the less informed populace.
Without public support and volunteers to fight the Redcoats, the revolution would have failed.
Paine's indispensable contribution to our country's independence was initiating a public debate and
disseminating ideas about independence among those who would need to do the fighting and dying if
independence was to be achieved.
Paine was able to synthesize philosophical enlightenment concepts about human rights into common
sense ideas understood by ordinary folks. Paine was not a highly educated intellectual and trusted
the common people to make sound assessments regarding major issues, based upon wisdom dispensed in
a common sense way. He used common sense to refute the professed entitlements of the British ruling
establishment. He used common sense as a weapon to de-legitimize King George's despotic monarchy,
overturning the conventional thinking among the masses.
Paine was able to fuse the common cause of the Founding Fathers and the people into a collective
revolutionary force. Even though their numbers were small, Paine convinced them they could defeat
an empire.
"It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are
sufficient to repel the force of all the world" – Thomas Paine,
Common Sense
Paine didn't know he was propelling the American Revolution
Fourth Turning towards its successful climax when he wrote those pamphlets. His use of the term
Crisis as the title to his second group of pro-revolutionary pamphlets displayed his grasp of the
mood in the colonies toward the existing social order. The majority of the 2.5 million people living
in the 13 colonies in 1776 were native born. Their loyalty to a distant monarch, treating them with
contempt and taxing them to support his far flung empire, had been waning as time progressed. They
were ready to shed the cloak of oppression and Paine gave them the rationale for doing so.
The American Revolution Crisis was ignited by the fiery Prophet Generation leader Samuel Adams
with the provocative Boston Tea Party in 1773. The colonial tinderbox was ignited as Adams' committees
of correspondence rallied resistance against the Crown and formed a political union among the 13
colonies. After the battles of Lexington & Concord, arming of militias and the formation of the Continental
Army under command of George Washington, the regeneracy was at hand.
Paine, as a Liberty Generation nomad, did what his generation was born to do – be a hands on,
pragmatic, get it done leader. His vital contribution to the revolution was rousing the colonists
with the toughness, resolution, and backbone to withstand the long difficult trials ahead. He, along
with other members of his generation – George Washington, John Adams, and Francis Marion, did the
heavy lifting throughout the American Revolution.
They knew they would hang if their labors failed, but the struggle for liberty against a tyrannical
despot drove them forward against all odds. Paine's pamphlets, followed shortly thereafter by the
Declaration of Independence, marked the regeneracy of the first American
Fourth Turning , as solidarity around the cause of liberty inspired by brave words and valiant
deeds, propelled history towards its glorious climax at Yorktown.
When you're in the midst of a Fourth Turning it is hard to step back and assess where you are
on a daily basis. This
Fourth Turning began in September 2008, with the global financial implosion created by the Fed
and their Wall Street puppet masters. We have just achieved the long awaited regeneracy as Trump
has stepped forth as the
Grey Champion to lead a revolution against the corrupt tyrannical establishment.
The election of Trump did not mark the end for the Deep State, but just the beginning of the end.
Just as Paine's
Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence denoted the beginning of a long string of bloody
trials and tribulations, Trump's ascendency to the presidency has marked the beginning of a battle
– with the outcome dependent upon our response to the clashes ahead.
The regeneracy spurred by Thomas Paine and the nation's Founding Fathers in 1776 was followed
by five years of ordeal, misery, misfortune, bloody routs, and numerous junctures where total defeat
hung in the balance. Lesser men would have abandoned the cause during the dark bitter winter at Valley
Forge in 1778.
The shocking victory by Trump has revealed the depth of corruption among the corporate mass media,
both political parties, surveillance agencies, and shadowy Deep State moneyed players behind the
scenes. The ivory tower D.C. politicians, their entitlement culture, blatant corruption, vile disregard
for the Constitution, and complete disregard for the plight of average Americans living outside their
bastions of liberal elitism (NYC, L.A., S.F., D.C., Chicago), have shown their true colors since
November 8.
Trump utilized the same populist messaging invoked by Paine in his
Common Sense pamphlets during his unorthodox presidential campaign. He mobilized the large alienated
silent majority who has been left behind as the globalists, corporatists, and militarists reaped
the rich rewards of a growing corporate fascist surveillance state. Average Americans in flyover
country watched as the fetid swamp creatures in the mainstream media, along with debased political
establishment hacks, Hollywood elites, left wing billionaires, and so called social justice warriors
coalesced behind a criminal establishment candidate. The out of touch elite have controlled the government
for decades, treating the country and its people like a two dollar whore.
Just as Paine hit a nerve among the great unwashed masses, Trump united blue collar workers, small
business owners, family men, working mothers, guns rights champions, disaffected conservatives, realistic
libertarians, disaffected millennials and various anti-establishment types sick and tired of the
status quo. He gave voice to the little man with his in your face populist rhetoric against the corrupt
dominant elites.
His plain spoken, aggressive, no holds barred, pugnacious approach to crushing his enemies rallied
millions to his cause. The Make America Great Again revolution has only just begun and the violent,
vitriolic pushback from the vested interests are only the opening volleys in this
Second American Revolution . The entrenched Deep State establishment will concede nothing. Tyranny
will not be defeated without bloodshed.
"Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people
will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed
upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows or both. The
limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." – Thomas Paine
The same common sense Paine used to argue against a tyrannical, oppressive hereditary monarchy
applies today when judging our corrupt, authoritarian, co-opted government. His themes of society
as a blessing, government as evil, and revolution as inevitable are as applicable today as they were
241 years ago. As we approach Trump's inauguration it has become clear the ruling elite feel threatened
and are using their control of the media, intelligence services, military, and financial system to
try and undermine his presidency before it begins.
As their fake news propaganda falls on the deaf ears of disgusted Americans, their next ploy will
be violence, war or assassination. The vested interests have no intention of relinquishing their
power and wealth, just as King George and his Parliament had no intention of allowing the colonies
to form an independent republic.
If you thought voting Trump into the office of the president constituted a victory, you are badly
misreading historical precedent and the inevitable paths of Fourth Turnings. The fight is just beginning.
The leftist social justice warriors, their wealthy elite puppeteers, the neo-con military industrial
complex warmongers, globalists, multi-culturists, and surveillance state apparatchiks have all made
it clear they will violently and rhetorically, through their corporate media mouthpieces, resist
Trump and his common man revolution.
I don't know if the normal people who supported Trump realize how abnormal, deviant, and despicable
their opponents are. Blood will be spilled. Violence will beget violence. The country is already
split and the divide will only grow wider. Someone will win and someone will lose. Our choices will
matter.
"The seasons of time offer no guarantees. For modern societies, no less than for all forms of
life, transformative change is discontinuous. For what seems an eternity, history goes nowhere –
and then it suddenly flings us forward across some vast chaos that defies any mortal effort to plan
our way there. The Fourth Turning will try our souls – and the saecular rhythm tells us that much
will depend on how we face up to that trial. The saeculum does not reveal whether the story will
have a happy ending, but it does tell us how and when our choices will make a difference."
– Strauss & Howe –
The Fourth Turning
In Part Two of this article I will try to show how Paine's
Common Sense , even though written three generations ago, has essential pertinence during these
troubled times of our current
Fourth Turning .
"... Davos elite faces evaporating trust in "post-trith" era ..."
"... "The most shocking statistic of this whole study is that half the people who are high-income, college-educated and well-informed also believe the system doesn't work." ..."
"... Even wealthy, well educated people understand things aren't working, which begs the question. Who does think the system is working? Well, the people attending Davos, of course. These are the folks who cheer on a world in which eight people own as much as the bottom 50%. ..."
"... The mere fact that billionaire-owned media is so hostile to populism tells you everything you need to know. Behind the idea of populism is the notion of self-government, and Davos-type elitists hate this. They believe in a technocracy in which they make all the important decisions. Populism is dangerous because populism is empowering. It implies that the people ultimately have the power. ..."
"... The global financial crisis of 2008/9 and the migrant crisis of 2015/16 exposed the impotence of politicians, deepening public disillusion and pushing people towards populists who offered simple explanations and solutions. ..."
"... Populism can be dangerous, and it's certainly messy, but it's a crucial pressure release valve for any functioning free society. If you don't allow populist movements to do their thing in the short-term, you'll get far worse outcomes in the long-term. ..."
"... Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ..."
DAVOS MAN : "A soulless man, technocratic, nationless and cultureless, severed from reality.
The modern economics that undergirded Davos capitalism is equally soulless, a managerial capitalism
that reduces economics to mathematics and separates it from human action and human creativity."
I am not a Democrat or a Republican. I do not consider myself a libertarian, progressive, socialist,
anarchist, conservative, neoconservative or neoliberal. I'm just a 38 year old guy trying to figure
it all out. Naturally, this doesn't imply that there aren't things which I hold dear. I have a strong
belief system based on key principles. It's just that I don't think it makes sense for me to self-label
and become part of a tribe. The moment you self-label, is the moment you stop thinking for yourself.
It's also the moment you stop listening. When you think you have all the answers, anyone who doesn't
think exactly as you do on all topics is either stupid or "paid opposition." I don't subscribe
to this way of thinking.
Despite my refusal to self-identify, I am comfortable stating that I'm a firm supporter of populist
movements and appreciate the instrumental role they've played historically in free societies. The
reason I like this term is because it carries very little baggage. It doesn't mean you adhere to
a specific set of policies or solutions, but that you believe above all else that the concerns of
average citizens matter and must be reflected in government policy.
Populism reaches its political potential once such concerns become so acute they translate into
popular movements, which in turn influence the levers of power. Populism is not a bug, but is a key
feature in any democratic society. It functions as a sort of pressure relief valve for free societies.
Indeed, it allows for an adjustment and recalibration of the existing order at the exact point in
the cycle when it is needed most. In our current corrupt, unethical and depraved oligarchy, populism
is exactly what is needed to restore some balance to society. Irrespective of what you think of Donald
Trump or Bernie Sanders, both political movements were undoubtably populist in nature. This doesn't
mean that Trump govern as populist once he is sworn into power, but there's little doubt that the
energy which propelled him to the Presidency was part of a populist wave.
Trump understands this, and despite having surrounded himself with an endless stream of slimy
ex-Goldman Sachs bankers and other assorted billionaires, his campaign took the following position
with regard to Davos according to
Bloomberg :
Donald Trump won't send an official representative to the annual gathering of the world's economic
elite in Davos, taking place next week in the days leading up to his inauguration, although one of
the president-elect's advisers is slated to attend.
Former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, a regular attendee in the past, told the group he would
skip 2017 after being named in December to head the National Economic Council, said people familiar
with the conference. Other top Trump appointees will also pass up the forum.
A senior member of Trump's transition team said the president-elect thought it would betray his
populist-fueled movement to have a presence at the high-powered annual gathering in the Swiss Alps.
The gathering of millionaires, billionaires, political leaders and celebrities represents the power
structure that fueled the populist anger that helped Trump win the election, said the person, who
asked for anonymity to discuss the matter.
While all of this sounds great, it's not entirely true. For example:
Hedge fund manager Anthony Scaramucci is planning to travel to Davos, though. The founder of SkyBridge
Capital and an early backer of Trump's campaign, Scaramucci was named on Thursday as an assistant
to the president.
Not that Scaramucci's presence should surprise anyone, he's the consummate banker apologist, anti-populist.
Recall what he
said last month :
"I think the cabal against the bankers is over."
This guy shouldn't be allowed within ten feet of any populist President, but Trump unfortunately
seems to have a thing for ex-Goldman Sachs bankers.
While we're on then subject, let's discuss Davos for a moment. You know, the idyllic Swiss town
where the world's most dastardly politicians, oligarchs and their fawning media servants will gather
in a technocratic orgy of panels and cocktail parties to discuss how best to manage the world's affairs
in the year ahead. Yes, that Davos.
DAVOS, Switzerland – The global economy is in better shape than it's been in years. Stock markets
are booming, oil prices are on the rise again and the risks of a rapid economic slowdown in China,
a major source of concern a year ago, have eased.
First report from Davos is in. Everything's fine.
And yet, as political leaders, CEOs and top bankers make their annual trek up the Swiss Alps to
the World Economic Forum in Davos, the mood is anything but celebratory.
Last year, the consensus here was that Trump had no chance of being elected. His victory, less
than half a year after Britain voted to leave the European Union, was a slap at the principles that
elites in Davos have long held dear, from globalization and free trade to multilateralism.
Moises Naim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was even more blunt: "There is a
consensus that something huge is going on, global and in many respects unprecedented. But we don't
know what the causes are, nor how to deal with it."
Thank you for your invaluable insight, Moises.
The titles of the discussion panels at the WEF, which runs from Jan. 17-20, evoke the unsettling
new landscape. Among them are "Squeezed and Angry: How to Fix the Middle Class Crisis" , "Politics
of Fear or Rebellion of the Forgotten?", "Tolerance at the Tipping Point?" and "The Post-EU Era".
Ah, a panel on how to fix the middle class. Sounds interesting until you find out who some of
the speakers are.
You really can't make this stuff up. Now back to Reuters .
Perhaps the central question in Davos, a four-day affair of panel discussions, lunches and cocktail
parties that delve into subjects as diverse as terrorism, artificial intelligence and wellness, is
whether leaders can agree on the root causes of public anger and begin to articulate a response.
This has to be a joke. The public has been yelling and screaming about all sorts of issues they
care about from both sides of the political spectrum for a while now. Whether people identify as
on the "right" or the "left" there's general consensus (at least in U.S. populist movements) of the
following: oligarchs must be reined in, rule of law must be restored, unnecessary military adventures
overseas must be stopped, and lobbyist written phony "free trade" deals must be scrapped and reversed.
There's no secret about how strongly the various domestic populist movements feel on those topics,
but the Davos set likes to pretends that these issues don't exist. They'd rather focus on Russia
or identify politics, that way they can control the narrative and then propose their own anti-populist,
technocratic solutions.
A WEF report on global risks released before Davos highlighted "diminishing public trust in institutions"
and noted that rebuilding faith in the political process and leaders would be a "difficult task".
It's not difficult at all, what we need are new leaders with new ideas, but the people at Davos
don't want to admit that either. After all, these are the types who unanimously and enthusiastically
supported the ultimate discredited insider for U.S. President, Hillary Clinton.
Moving along, let's take a look at a separate
Reuters
article previewing Davos, starting with the title.
Davos elite faces evaporating trust in "post-trith" era
Did you see what they did there? The evaporating trust in globalist elites has nothing to do with
"post-truth," but as usual, the media insists on making excuses for the rich and powerful. The above
title implies that elites lost the public truth as a result of a post-truth world, not because they
are a bunch of disconnected, lying, corrupt thieves. Like Hillary and the Democrats, they are never
to blame for anything that happens.
With that out of the way, let's take a look at some of the text:
Trust in governments, companies and the media plunged last year as ballots from the United States
to Britain to the Philippines rocked political establishments and scandals hit business.
The majority of people now believe the economic and political system is failing them, according
to the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, released on Monday ahead of the Jan. 17-20 World Economic
Forum (WEF).
"There's a sense that the system is broken," Richard Edelman, head of the communications marketing
firm that commissioned the research, told Reuters.
"The most shocking statistic of this whole study is that half the people who are high-income,
college-educated and well-informed also believe the system doesn't work."
Even wealthy, well educated people understand things aren't working, which begs the question.
Who does think the system is working? Well, the people attending Davos, of course. These are the
folks who cheer on a world in which eight people own as much as the bottom 50%.
As can be seen fro the above excerpts, one thing that's abundantly clear to almost everyone is
that the system is broken. This is exactly where populism comes in to perform its crucial function.
This is not an endorsement of Trump, but rather an endorsement of mass popular movements generally,
and a recognition that such movements are the only way true change is ever achieved. As Frederick
Douglass
noted in 1857:
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical,
but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of
injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted
with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of
those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held
and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance,
either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly
pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must
pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by
our lives and the lives of others .
The above is an eternal truth when it comes to human struggle. The idea that the most wealthy
and powerful individuals on earth are going to get together in a Swiss chalet and figure out how
to help the world's most vulnerable and suffering is on its face preposterous. Again, this is why
popular movements are so important. They represent the only method we know of that historically yields
tangible results. This is also why the elitists and their media minions hate populism and demonize
it every chance they get. Which is really telling, particularly when you look at the various definitions
of the word. First, here's what comes up when you type the word into Google:
pop·u·lism
/ˈpäpyəˌlizəm/
noun
support for the concerns of ordinary people.
"it is clear that your populism identifies with the folks on the bottom of the
ladder"
•the quality of appealing to or being aimed at ordinary people.
"art museums did not gain bigger audiences through a new populism"
Or how about the following from Merriam-Webster:
Definition of populist
1 :
a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people; especially, often
capitalized
:
a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests
and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
2:
a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people
-
populism
play \-ˌli-zəm\ noun
-
populistic
play \ˌpä-pyə-ˈlis-tik\ adjective
Aside from the 19th century historical reference, what's not to like about any of the above? The
mere fact that billionaire-owned media is so hostile to populism tells you everything you need to
know. Behind the idea of populism is the notion of self-government, and Davos-type elitists hate
this. They believe in a technocracy in which they make all the important decisions. Populism
is dangerous because populism is empowering. It implies that the people ultimately have the power.
I think a useful exercise for readers during this Davos circus laden week is to note whenever
the word "populism" is used within mainstream media articles. From my experience, it's almost always
portrayed in an overwhelmingly negative manner. Here's just one example from the first of the two
Reuters articles mentioned above.
The global financial crisis of 2008/9 and the migrant crisis of 2015/16 exposed the impotence
of politicians, deepening public disillusion and pushing people towards populists who offered simple
explanations and solutions.
The key phrase in the above is, " populists who offered simple explanations and solutions." This
betrays an incredible sense of arrogance and contempt for regular citizens. Note that it didn't offer
a critique of a specific populist leader and his or her polices, but rather presented a sweeping
dismissal of all popular movements as "simplistic." In other words, despite the fact that the people
mingling at Davos are the exact same people who set the world on fire, they somehow remain the only
ones capable enough to fix the world. How utterly ridiculous.
The good news is that most people now plainly see the absurdity of such a worldview, and understand
that the people at Davos represent a roadblock to progress, as opposed to any sort of solution. While
I don't endorse any particular populist movement at moment, I fully recognize the need for increased
populism as a facet of American political life, particularly at this moment in time.
Populism can be dangerous, and it's certainly messy, but it's a crucial pressure release valve
for any functioning free society. If you don't allow populist movements to do their thing in the
short-term, you'll get far worse outcomes in the long-term.
In the timeless words of JFK:
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
Cannot reconcile
your corporatist, neoliberal, war monger losing to a TV star who suggests we should not tilt with
a nuclear power with insane doctrine defining when peace should be breeched; you say the winner is
'illegitimate' or make up relations with a nationalist leader who does not toe the 'one worlder'
line.
Trump was right to point out
that the Clintons and their allies atop the Democratic National Committee rigged the game against
Bernie.
This rigging was consistent with the neoliberal corporate Democratic Party elite's longstanding
vicious hatred of left-wing of the party and anti-plutocratic populists. They hate and viciously
fight them in the ranks of their pro-Wall Street Party. It's "Clinton Third Way Democrats"
who essentially elected Trump, because Bernie for them is more dangerous than Trump.
The Democratic party became a neoliberal party of top 10% (may be top 20%), the party of bankers
and white collar professionals. "Soft" neoliberals, to distinguish them from "hard" neoliberals
(GOP).
Under Bill Clinton the Democrats have become the party of Financial Oligarchy. At this time
corporate interests were moving to finance as their main activity and that was a very profitable
betrayal for Clintons. They were royally remunerated for that.
Clintons have positioned the Dems as puppets of financial oligarchy and got in return two
major things:
Money for the Party (and themselves)
The ability to control the large part of MSM, which was owned by the same corporations,
who were instrumental in neoliberal takeover of the USA.
When the neoliberal media have to choose between their paymasters and the truth, their paymasters
win every time. Like under Bolshevism, they are soldiers of the Party.
In any case, starting from Clinton Presidency Democratic Party turned into a party of neoliberal
DemoRats and lost any connection with the majority of the USA population.
Like Republicans they now completely depends on "divide and conquer" strategy. Essentially
they became "Republicans light."
And that's why they used "identity wedge" politics to attract African American votes and
minorities (especially woman and sexual minorities; Bill Clinton probably helped to incarcerate
more black males than any other president).
As if Spanish and African-American population as a whole have different economic interests
than white working class and white lower middle class.
So Dems became a party which represents an alliance of neoliberal establishment and minorities,
where minorities are duped again and again (as in Barack Obama "change we can believe in" bait
and switch classic). This dishonest playing of race and gender cards was a trademark of Hillary
Clinton campaign.
See
10 reasons why #DemExit is serious. Getting rid of Debbie Wasserman Schultz is not enough
by Sophia A. McClennen
"... What do you call dumping a Ukraine president? And Qaddafi, blowing up the middle east, and funding al Qaeda? Fraud/treason, both Clinton neocon connections same as Reagan, shruBush and Obama. ..."
"... "In Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO had long sought to cut off Serbian nationalist and Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic from the international system through economic sanctions and military action. In 2000, the U.S. spent millions of dollars in aid for political parties, campaign costs and independent media. Funding and broadcast equipment provided to the media arms of the opposition were a decisive factor in electing opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica as Yugoslav president, according to Levin. "If it wouldn't have been for overt intervention Milosevic would have been very likely to have won another term," he said." ..."
"... Google Camp Bonesteel. A large NATO base funded mostly by you to keep Serbia under wraps. Enforcing the Clinton neocon "just peace". With threat of US' brand of expensive high tech mass murder. ..."
"... Democrats voting against legalizing drug imports from Canada (Hall of Shame:) Bennett, Cory Booker, Cantwell, Carper, Casey, Coons, Donnelly, Heinrich, Heitkamp, Menendez, Murray, Tester, and Warner. ..."
"... progressive neoliberals are libertarians and market idolators' lackies that want gays to get their wedding cakes from Christian bakeries. ..."
"... 30000 destroyed e-mails, denying the public access to records. How many felony counts is 30000? Read the Federal Records Act. ..."
What do you call dumping a Ukraine president? And Qaddafi,
blowing up the middle east, and funding al Qaeda?
Fraud/treason, both Clinton neocon connections same as
Reagan, shruBush and Obama.
The recondite democrat bar for traitor is very high.
As arcane as the demo-neolib definition of progressive!
The old saying what's good for the goose is good for the
gander. Well considering all that the Republican party and
leadership has dissed out for 8 years or so. Hey, they need
to be dissed right back. Trump has set the "TONE" that all is
fair as he set the rules, established the rule-book way below
the belt, loves playing in the swamp and slinging mud. He
deserves any and all that gets slung back from in and out of
the swamp, in all global directions! Unfortunately everyone
else will be the only citizens to suffer. He's just way above
the maddening crowd, and protected by all his cronies!
"In Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO had long sought to cut
off Serbian nationalist and Yugoslav leader Slobodan
Milosevic from the international system through economic
sanctions and military action. In 2000, the U.S. spent
millions of dollars in aid for political parties, campaign
costs and independent media. Funding and broadcast equipment
provided to the media arms of the opposition were a decisive
factor in electing opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica as
Yugoslav president, according to Levin. "If it wouldn't have
been for overt intervention Milosevic would have been very
likely to have won another term," he said."
Google Camp Bonesteel. A large NATO base funded mostly by you
to keep Serbia under wraps. Enforcing the Clinton neocon
"just peace". With threat of US' brand of expensive high tech
mass murder.
MLK's memory is defiled by the fake liberals grabbing it
for revolting political gain.
Democrats voting against legalizing drug imports from Canada
(Hall of Shame:)
Bennett, Cory Booker, Cantwell, Carper,
Casey, Coons, Donnelly, Heinrich, Heitkamp, Menendez, Murray,
Tester, and Warner.
Presumably many, like Cantwell, are avid supporters of
'free' trade--trade that is rigged in favor of certain
special interests. Legalizing drug imports from Canada would
have hurt the special interests that fund their campaigns.
Considering that Trump and the GOP majority got millions less
votes than their democratic counterparts, one can question
the legitimacy (but not the legality) of the laws they pass -
since they would not represent the will of the people.
I start this sermon with poor pk, and those who of
unsound logic who think he is not jumped the shark poor pk.
John Lewis.......
From Dr King's Vietnam Sermon Apr 1967:
"Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam
because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell
are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis
maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence
becomes betrayal."
The liberals' silence is betrayal! All the democrat
sponsored fake liberal agendas around this holiday remain
damnably silent about the evil that is Clinton/Obama war to
end "unjust peace".
Here is my comment for poor pk, Lewis and the whining
do-over tools:
Last week US drones killed 3 supposed terrorists in Yemen,
they were supposed to be al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
No charges, no jury, no judge.
AQAP is related to the guys Obama is funding to take down
Assad and put Syria in ruinous hate filled group of jihadis
like run amok in Libya.
So silent on deadly evil; but so boisterous about affronts
to gay people wanting nice cakes!
Lewis and his crooked neoliberal ilk have been milking Dr.
King for 50 years!
Hey, if it's politics every pathology from torture to
assassination to bombing civilians is approved. If you did it
as a person, you would be immediately incarcerated. This
nation state worship, or religious worship in many parts of
the world, is infused with pathology. It's in our DNA
apparently. We are over killers par excellence. Only rats are
as good. I'm betting on the rats.
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals
and ethics to stay lawyers."
George R. R. Martin
ilsm :
, -1
poor democrats!
Cannot reconcile your corporatist,
neoliberal, war monger losing to a TV star who suggests we
should not tilt with a nuclear power with insane doctrine
defining when peace should be breeched; you say the winner is
'illegitimate' or make up relations with a nationalist leader
who does not toe the 'one worlder' line.
The Congressional defeat, insured by Democrats, of the proposal by Bernie Sanders to allow the
import of drugs from Canada to lower drug prices in the United States.
'
This is only the beginning of Democrats' appeasement of Trump and Republicans...it will be stunning
to watch how much damage Republicans can do during Trump's first 90 days with only a slim majority
in the Senate. During the first 90 days under Obama, who had a true electoral mandate and big
majorities in both houses, Democrats basically sat on their hands, blaming Republicans for their
unwillingness to do much for the American people.
Ever noticed that marketing costs are 30% of revenue? This is a by product of the monopoly power
in this sector. Dean Baker has often noted we could have the government do the R&D and then have
real competition in manufacturing.
You forgot that those researchers often produce useless or even dangerous drags, which are
inferior to existing. Looks as scams practiced with hypertension drugs.
This rat race for blockbuster drugs is the same as corruption in financial industry.
Actually the industry profile is very relevant but goes in a different direction - if US firms
were compelled to charge market (not monopoly) prices, we would better compete with foreign firms.
Any excuse to charge sky high prices for drugs that don't cost that much to manufacture? If these
monopoly profits were not so high, we would buy more drugs and employ more people.
Do you think we would really buy materially more drugs if prices were lower? Particularly enough
more, at those (30-50%?) lower prices, to generate the funds to employ more people?
(If that actually generated at much or more funds, it would seem like the pharma companies,
seeking to make as much money as possible, would have already set prices at that lower per unit
level.)
In any case, that seems like a LOT more drugs.
Perhaps Anne has data on the number of scripts per person in the US vs OECD.
There are lots of poor people who don't take drugs because they can't afford them. This will become
especially true if the Republican repeal Obamacare.
The point of course is wildly exploiting ordinary people in need of healthcare in every possible
way, or a reflection of what we have come to. Returning now to the market...
Conservative activists in Nashville this week for the first-ever National Tea Party
Convention gave a hero's welcome to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who closed the event
with a speech Saturday night. Palin praised the Tea Party movement and delivered a scathing
- sometimes mocking - critique of both the economic and national security policies of the
Obama administration.
After three days of workshops and speeches by movement leaders far
less well-known, Tea Party convention delegates got to see a bona fide conservative
superstar.
"I am so proud to be an American," she called out to the cheering crowd Saturday night
in a hotel ballroom at the Opryland resort. "Thank you so much for being here tonight. Do
you love your freedom?"
She drew more big cheers when she told Tea Partiers that America is ready for another
revolution.
This was the rare Palin speech these days to be open to the press, and she used the
opportunity to tear into the president. She described his foreign policy as not recognizing
the true threats America faces. She cited the decision to criminally charge the suspect in
the Christmas Day airline bombing attempt as a move that she says puts the country at grave
risk.
"Because that's not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this. They know we're
at war, and to win that war we need a commander in chief and not a professor of law
standing at the lectern."
On the economy, she accused the White House of pushing a stimulus package that hasn't
created the promised jobs. Millions of dollars have been wasted, she said.
Palin also says the Obama administration has not been transparent, as promised during
the campaign.
"This was all part of that hope and change and transparency. Now, a year later, I gotta
ask the supporters of all that, 'How's that hopey, changey stuff working out?'
"... Our model for funding infrastructure is broken. Federal funding means project that are most needed by cities can be overlooked while projects that would destroy cities are funded. ..."
"... The neo in neoliberalism, however, establishes these principles on a significantly different analytic basis from those set forth by Adam Smith, as will become clear below. Moreover, neoliberalism is not simply a set of economic policies; it is not only about facilitating free trade, maximizing corporate profits, and challenging welfarism. ..."
"... But in so doing, it carries responsibility for the self to new heights: the rationally calculating individual bears full responsibility for the consequences of his or her action no matter how severe the constraints on this action-for example, lack of skills, education, and child care in a period of high unemployment and limited welfare benefits. ..."
"... A fully realized neoliberal citizenry would be the opposite of public-minded; indeed, it would barely exist as a public. The body politic ceases to be a body but is rather a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers . . . ..."
"... consider the market rationality permeating universities today, from admissions and recruiting to the relentless consumer mentality of students as they consider university brand names, courses, and services, from faculty raiding and pay scales to promotion criteria. ..."
"... The extension of market rationality to every sphere, and especially the reduction of moral and political judgment to a cost-benefit calculus, would represent precisely the evisceration of substantive values by instrumental rationality that Weber predicted as the future of a disenchanted world. Thinking and judging are reduced to instrumental calculation in Weber's "polar night of icy darkness"-there is no morality, no faith, no heroism, indeed no meaning outside the market. ..."
There is nothing common between articles of Zingales and Schiller.
My impression is that Schiller might lost his calling: he might achieve even greater success
as a diplomat, if he took this career. He managed to tell something important about incompatibility
of [the slogan] "Make America Great Again" with neoliberalism without offending anybody. Which
is a pretty difficult thing to do.
Zingalles is just another Friedman-style market fundamentalist. Nothing new and nothing interesting.
Noah Smith is wrong here: "This idea is important because it meant that we shouldn't expect fiscal
stimulus to have much of an effect. Government checks are a temporary form of income, so Friedman's
theory predicts that it won't change spending patterns, as advocates such as John Maynard Keynes
believed."
Friedman's view about consumption demand is the same as the Life Cycle Model (Ando and Modligiani).
OK - these models do predict that tax rebates should not affect consumption. And yes there are
households who are borrower constrained so these rebates do impact their consumption.
But this is not the only form of fiscal stimulus. Infrastructure investment would increase
aggregate demand even under the Friedman view of consumption. This would hold even under the Barro-Ricardian
version of this theory. OK - John Cochrane is too stupid to know this. And I see Noah in his rush
to bash Milton Friedman has made the same mistake as Cochrane.
What Friedman got wrong is not including current income. People with high income spend a fraction
of that income and save the rest. Their demand is met, so the additional income mostly goes to
savings.
People with low income spend everything and still have unmet demands. Additional income for
them will go to meet those unmet demands (like fixing a toothache or replacing bald tires).
Friedman was biased against fiscal intervention in an economy and sought evidence to argue
against such policies
Our model for funding infrastructure is broken. Federal funding means project that are
most needed by cities can be overlooked while projects that would destroy cities are funded.
Federal infrastructure funding destroyed city neighborhoods leaving the neighboring areas degraded.
Meanwhile, necessary projects such as a new subway tunnel from NJ to Manhattan are blocked by
States who are ok if the city fails and growth moves to their side of the river.
Money should go directly to the cities. Infrastructure should be build to serve the people
who live, walk and work there, not to allow cars to drive through at high speeds as the engineers
propose. This infrastructure harms cities and becomes a future tax liability that cannot be met
if the built infrastructure it encourages is not valuable enough to support maintenance.
We are discovering that unlike our cities where structures can increase in value, strip malls
decline in value, often to worthlessness. Road building is increasingly mechanized and provides
less employment per project than in the past. Projects such as replacing leaking water pipes require
more labor.
Simon Wren Lewis leaves open the possibility that an increase in aggregate demand can increase
real GDP as we may not be at full employment (I'd change that from "may not be" to "are not")
but still comes out against tax cuts for the rich with this:
"There is a very strong case for more public sector investment on numerous grounds. But that
investment should go to where it is most needed and where it will be of most social benefit"
Re: Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest - Bloomberg View
Friedman was not simply wrong. The key for understanding Friedman is that he was a political
hack, not a scientist.
His main achievement was creation (partially for money invested in him and Mont Pelerin Society
by financial oligarchy) of what is now called "neoliberal rationality": a pervert view of the
world, economics and social processes that now still dominates in the USA and most of Western
Europe. It is also a new mode of "govermentability".
Governmentality is distinguished from earlier forms of rule, in which national wealth is measured
as the size of territory or the personal fortune of the sovereign, by the recognition that national
economic well-being is tied to the rational management of the national population. Foucault defined
governmentality as:
"the ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses, and reflections, the calculations
and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which
has as its target population, as its principle form of knowledge political economy and as its
technical means, apparatuses of security"
A liberal political order may harbor either liberal or Keynesian economic policies -- it
may lean in the direction of maximizing liberty (its politically "conservative" tilt) or of
maximizing equality (its politically "liberal" tilt), but in contemporary political parlance,
it is no more or less a liberal democracy because of one leaning or the other.
Indeed, the American convention of referring to advocates of the welfare state as political
liberals is especially peculiar, given that American conservatives generally hew more closely
to both the classical economic and the political doctrines of liberalism -- it turns the meaning
of liberalism in the direction of liberality rather than liberty.
For our purposes, what is crucial is that the liberalism in what has come to be called neoliberalism
refers to liberalism's economic variant, recuperating selected pre-Keynesian assumptions about
the generation of wealth and its distribution, rather than to liberalism as a political doctrine,
as a set of political institutions, or as political practices. The neo in neoliberalism,
however, establishes these principles on a significantly different analytic basis from those
set forth by Adam Smith, as will become clear below. Moreover, neoliberalism is not simply
a set of economic policies; it is not only about facilitating free trade, maximizing corporate
profits, and challenging welfarism.
Rather, neoliberalism carries a social analysis that, when deployed as a form of
governmentality, reaches from the soul of the citizen-subject to education policy to practices
of empire. Neoliberal rationality, while foregrounding the market, is not only or even primarily
focused on the economy; it involves extending and disseminating market values to all institutions
and social action, even as the market itself remains a distinctive player.
... ... ...
1. The political sphere, along with every other dimension of contemporary existence,
is submitted to an economic rationality; or, put the other way around, not only is the human
being configured exhaustively as homo economicus, but all dimensions of human life are cast
in terms of a market rationality. While this entails submitting every action and policy
to considerations of profitability, equally important is the production of all human and institutional
action as rational entrepreneurial action, conducted according to a calculus of utility, benefit,
or satisfaction against a microeconomic grid of scarcity, supply and demand, and moral value-neutrality.
Neoliberalism does not simply assume that all aspects of social, cultural, and political life
can be reduced to such a calculus; rather, it develops institutional practices and rewards
for enacting this vision. That is, through discourse and policy promulgating its criteria,
neoliberalism produces rational actors and imposes a market rationale for decision making in
all spheres.
Importantly, then, neoliberalism involves a normative rather than ontological claim about
the pervasiveness of economic rationality and it advocates the institution building, policies,
and discourse development appropriate to such a claim. Neoliberalism is a constructivist project:
it does not presume the ontological givenness of a thoroughgoing economic rationality for all
domains of society but rather takes as its task the development, dissemination, and institutionalization
of such a rationality. This point is further developed in (2) below.
2. In contrast with the notorious laissez-faire and human propensity to "truck and barter"
stressed by classical economic liberalism, neoliberalism does not conceive of either the market
itself or rational economic behavior as purely natural. Both are constructed-organized
by law and political institutions, and requiring political intervention and orchestration.
Far from flourishing when left alone, the economy must be directed, buttressed, and protected
by law and policy as well as by the dissemination of social norms designed to facilitate competition,
free trade, and rational economic action on the part of every member and institution of society.
In Lemke's account, "In the Ordo-liberal scheme, the market does not amount to a natural
economic reality, with intrinsic laws that the art of government must bear in mind and respect;
instead, the market can be constituted and kept alive only by dint of political interventions.
. . . [C]ompetition, too, is not a natural fact. . . . [T]his fundamental economic mechanism
can function only if support is forthcoming to bolster a series of conditions, and adherence
to the latter must consistently be guaranteed by legal measures" (193).
The neoliberal formulation of the state and especially of specific legal arrangements and decisions
as the precondition and ongoing condition of the market does not mean that the market is controlled
by the state but precisely the opposite. The market is the organizing and regulative principle
of the state and society, along three different lines:
The state openly responds to needs of the market, whether through monetary and fiscal
policy, immigration policy, the treatment of criminals, or the structure of public education.
In so doing, the state is no longer encumbered by the danger of incurring the legitimation
deficits predicted by 1970s social theorists and political economists such as Nicos Poulantzas,
Jürgen Habermas, and James O'Connor.6 Rather, neoliberal rationality extended to the state
itself indexes the state's success according to its ability to sustain and foster the market
and ties state legitimacy to such success. This is a new form of legitimation, one that
"founds a state," according to Lemke, and contrasts with the Hegelian and French revolutionary
notion of the constitutional state as the emergent universal representative of the people.
As Lemke describes Foucault's account of Ordo-liberal thinking, "economic liberty produces
the legitimacy for a form of sovereignty limited to guaranteeing economic activity . . .
a state that was no longer defined in terms of an historical mission but legitimated itself
with reference to economic growth" (196).
The state itself is enfolded and animated by market rationality: that is, not simply
profitability but a generalized calculation of cost and benefit becomes the measure of all
state practices. Political discourse on all matters is framed in entrepreneurial terms;
the state must not simply concern itself with the market but think and behave like a market
actor across all of its functions, including law. 7
Putting (a) and (b) together, the health and growth of the economy is the basis of
state legitimacy, both because the state is forthrightly responsible for the health of the
economy and because of the economic rationality to which state practices have been submitted.
Thus, "It's the economy, stupid" becomes more than a campaign slogan; rather, it expresses
the principle of the state's legitimacy and the basis for state action-from constitutional
adjudication and campaign finance reform to welfare and education policy to foreign policy,
including warfare and the organization of "homeland security."
3. The extension of economic rationality to formerly noneconomic domains and institutions
reaches individual conduct, or, more precisely, prescribes the citizen-subject of a neoliberal
order. Whereas classical liberalism articulated a distinction, and at times even a tension,
among the criteria for individual moral, associational, and economic actions (hence the striking
differences in tone, subject matter, and even prescriptions between Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations and his Theory of Moral Sentiments), neoliberalism normatively constructs and interpellates
individuals as entrepreneurial actors in every sphere of life.
It figures individuals as rational, calculating creatures whose moral autonomy is measured
by their capacity for "self-care"-the ability to provide for their own needs and service their
own ambitions. In making the individual fully responsible for her- or himself, neoliberalism
equates moral responsibility with rational action; it erases the discrepancy between economic
and moral behavior by configuring morality entirely as a matter of rational deliberation about
costs, benefits, and consequences.
But in so doing, it carries responsibility for the self to new heights: the rationally
calculating individual bears full responsibility for the consequences of his or her action
no matter how severe the constraints on this action-for example, lack of skills, education,
and child care in a period of high unemployment and limited welfare benefits.
Correspondingly, a "mismanaged life," the neoliberal appellation for failure to navigate
impediments to prosperity, becomes a new mode of depoliticizing social and economic powers
and at the same time reduces political citizenship to an unprecedented degree of passivity
and political complacency.
The model neoliberal citizen is one who strategizes for her- or himself among various social,
political, and economic options, not one who strives with others to alter or organize these
options. A fully realized neoliberal citizenry would be the opposite of public-minded;
indeed, it would barely exist as a public. The body politic ceases to be a body but is rather
a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers . . . which is, of course, exactly how
voters are addressed in most American campaign discourse.8
Other evidence for progress in the development of such a citizenry is not far from hand:
consider the market rationality permeating universities today, from admissions and recruiting
to the relentless consumer mentality of students as they consider university brand names, courses,
and services, from faculty raiding and pay scales to promotion criteria. 9
Or consider the way in which consequential moral lapses (of a sexual or criminal nature)
by politicians, business executives, or church and university administrators are so often apologized
for as "mistakes in judgment," implying that it was the calculation that was wrong, not the
act, actor, or rationale.
The state is not without a project in the making of the neoliberal subject. It attempts
to construct prudent subjects through policies that organize such prudence: this is the basis
of a range of welfare reforms such as workfare and single-parent penalties, changes in the
criminal code such as the "three strikes law," and educational voucher schemes.
Because neoliberalism casts rational action as a norm rather than an ontology, social policy
is the means by which the state produces subjects whose compass is set entirely by their rational
assessment of the costs and benefits of certain acts, whether those acts pertain to teen pregnancy,
tax fraud, or retirement planning. The neoliberal citizen is calculating rather than rule abiding,
a Benthamite rather than a Hobbesian.
The state is one of many sites framing the calculations leading to social behaviors that
keep costs low and productivity high. This mode of governmentality (techniques of governing
that exceed express state action and orchestrate the subject's conduct toward himor herself)
convenes a "free" subject who rationally deliberates about alternative courses of action, makes
choices, and bears responsibility for the consequences of these choices. In this way, Lemke
argues, "the state leads and controls subjects without being responsible for them"; as individual
"entrepreneurs" in every aspect of life, subjects become wholly responsible for their well-being
and citizenship is reduced to success in this entrepreneurship (201).
Neoliberal subjects are controlled through their freedom-not simply, as thinkers from the
Frankfurt School through Foucault have argued, because freedom within an order of domination
can be an instrument of that domination, but because of neoliberalism's moralization of the
consequences of this freedom. Such control also means that the withdrawal of the state from
certain domains, followed by the privatization of certain state functions, does not amount
to a dismantling of government but rather constitutes a technique of governing; indeed, it
is the signature technique of neoliberal governance, in which rational economic action suffused
throughout society replaces express state rule or provision.
Neoliberalism shifts "the regulatory competence of the state onto 'responsible,' 'rational'
individuals [with the aim of] encourag[ing] individuals to give their lives a specific entrepreneurial
form" (Lemke, 202).
4. Finally, the suffusion of both the state and the subject with economic rationality
has the effect of radically transforming and narrowing the criteria for good social policy
vis-à-vis classical liberal democracy. Not only must social policy meet profitability tests,
incite and unblock competition, and produce rational subjects, it obeys the entrepreneurial
principle of "equal inequality for all" as it "multiples and expands entrepreneurial forms
with the body social" (Lemke, 195). This is the principle that links the neoliberal governmentalization
of the state with that of the social and the subject.
Taken together, the extension of economic rationality to all aspects of thought and activity,
the placement of the state in forthright and direct service to the economy, the rendering of
the state tout court as an enterprise organized by market rationality, the production of the
moral subject as an entrepreneurial subject, and the construction of social policy according
to these criteria might appear as a more intensive rather than fundamentally new form of the
saturation of social and political realms by capital. That is, the political rationality of
neoliberalism might be read as issuing from a stage of capitalism that simply underscores Marx's
argument that capital penetrates and transforms every aspect of life-remaking everything in
its image and reducing every value and activity to its cold rationale.
All that would be new here is the flagrant and relentless submission of the state and the
individual, the church and the university, morality, sex, marriage, and leisure practices to
this rationale. Or better, the only novelty would be the recently achieved hegemony of rational
choice theory in the human sciences, self-represented as an independent and objective branch
of knowledge rather than an expression of the dominance of capital. Another reading that would
figure neoliberalism as continuous with the past would theorize it through Weber's rationalization
thesis rather than Marx's argument about capital.
The extension of market rationality to every sphere, and especially the reduction of
moral and political judgment to a cost-benefit calculus, would represent precisely the evisceration
of substantive values by instrumental rationality that Weber predicted as the future of a disenchanted
world. Thinking and judging are reduced to instrumental calculation in Weber's "polar night
of icy darkness"-there is no morality, no faith, no heroism, indeed no meaning outside the
market.
Julio -> Libezkova...
I agree with this. But I think it's extraordinarily wordy, and fails to emphasize the deification
of private property which is at the root of it.
Brown - who I haven't read much of but like what I have - sounds a lot like Lasch.
Brown:
"The extension of market rationality to every sphere, and especially the reduction of
moral and political judgment to a cost-benefit calculus, would represent precisely the evisceration
of substantive values by instrumental rationality that Weber predicted as the future of a disenchanted
world. Thinking and judging are reduced to instrumental calculation in Weber's "polar night
of icy darkness"-there is no morality, no faith, no heroism, indeed no meaning outside the
market."
Lasch in Revolt of the Elites:
"... Individuals cannot learn to speak for themselves at all, much less come to an intelligent
understanding of their happiness and well-being, in a world in which there are no values except
those of the market.... The market tends to universalize itself. It does not easily coexist
with institutions that operate according to principles that are antithetical to itself: schools
and universities, newspapers and magazines, charities, families. Sooner or later the market
tends to absorb them all. It puts an almost irresistible pressure on every activity to justify
itself in the only terms it recognizes: to become a business proposition, to pay its own way,
to show black ink on the bottom line. It turns news into entertainment, scholarship into professional
careerism, social work into the scientific management of poverty. Inexorably it remodels every
institution in its own image."
"... In the case of the US, a Republican donor-class candidate should have been a Democrat donor-class candidate. Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years, effectively run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one. The collapse of the Republican establishment from below still makes my heart sing. Would that the same might occur among Democrats. ..."
"... `I do not understand the pushback [against transnational causes for these events]. Do they really believe that Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, the rise of many right-wing populist parties in Europe etc. have nothing to do with economics? That suddenly all these weird nationalists and nativists got together thanks to the social media and decided to overthrow the established order? People who believe this remind me of Saul Bellow's statement that "a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is strong."' ..."
"... These are not idiomatic one-off events due to contingent political situations peculiar to each individual country. ..."
"... Something bigger is going on. If Marine LePen wins in France (and I predict she will), that will provide even more evidence. This looks like a global rebellion against globalization + neoliberal economics because the bottom 96% are realizing they're getting screwed and all the benefits are going to the top 6% of professional class + licensed professionals + top 1% in the financial robber barony. ..."
"... Because the 'soft' left, in collaboration with the soft right (and the hard right) have worked assiduously since roughly about 1979 to destroy the 'hard left'. ..."
"... If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get the Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever weapons are to hand to do so . If 'left wing' options aren't available, they will choose 'right wing' ones. ..."
"... I think that the Democratic Party is unlikely to hand over power to the average man and woman in America, but I'm sure that the Republican Party is even less likely to do so; anybody who voted Republican in 2016 because it seemed the best chance of getting power for the average man and woman was played for a sucker. ..."
"... The original Nazis emerged and rose to power in a context where the Communists were trying to destroy the system, and also seeking to crush the Social-democrats; close to the opposite of the pattern you're describing. ..."
"... And Trump, as we all know, is highly suspicious of the EU. Moreover, there is likely to be a battle between the 'liberal (in the highly specific American sense) leaning' intelligence services (the CIA etc.) and the Trump administration. ..."
"... And, thanks to Obama, the CIA, NSA etc. have far more leeway and freedom to act than they did even 20 years ago. It is also possible/likely that MI5/MI6 might be 'let off the leash' by a British (or English) nationalist orientated Conservative Government. ..."
"... you must know why you yourself aren't doing it, and the reasons that apply to you could easily apply to other people as well. ..."
"... There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in the interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect? ..."
by Henry on January 5, 2017 A piece I wrote on Brexit and the
UK party system has
just come out
in Democracy. More than anything else, I wrote the article to get people to read Peter
Mair. I didn't know Mair at all well – he was another Irish political scientist, but was based in
various European universities and in a different set of academic networks than my own. I met him
once and liked him, and chatted briefly a couple of times after that about email. I wish I'd known
him better – his posthumously edited and published book,
Ruling the Void is the single most compelling
account I've read of what has gone wrong in European politics, and in particular what's gone wrong
for the left. It's still enormously relevant years after his death. The ever ramifying disaster that
is the British Labour party is in large part the working out of the story that Mair laid out – how
party elites became disconnected from their base, how the EU became a way to kick issues out of politics
into technocracy, and how it all went horribly wrong.
The modern Labour Party is caught in an especially unpleasant version of Mair's dilemma. Labour's
leaders tried over decades to improve the party's electoral prospects in a country where its traditional
class base was disappearing. They sought very deliberately and with some success to weaken its
party organization in order to achieve this aim. However, their success created a new governing
class within Labour, one largely disconnected from the party grassroots that it is supposed to
represent. Ed Miliband recognized this problem as party leader and tried to rebuild the party's
connection to its grassroots. However, as Mair might have predicted, there weren't any traditional
grassroots out there to cultivate. Mair argued that the leadership and the base were becoming
disengaged from each other, so that traditional parties were withering away. Labour has actually
taken this one stage further, creating a party in which the leadership and membership are at daggers
drawn, each able to stymie the other, but neither able to prevail or willing to surrender.
This has all changed. Class and ethnic and religious identities no longer provide secure
foundations for European parties, which have more and more tried to become "catchalls," appealing
to wide and diffuse groups of voters. People are not attached to parties for life anymore,
often waiting until just before Election Day to decide whom to vote for. Party membership figures
across Western Europe have shrunk by more than half in a generation.
Do you evaluate this change (on balance) positively or negatively? and why?
Also, since I'm commenting anyway, one minor query:
(Some European countries had different parties for Catholics and Protestants.)
Which countries did you have in mind? There are few European countries that have (or had) both
enough Catholics for a significant Catholic party and enough Protestants for a significant Protestant
party.
I know about the Netherlands, which had separate Catholic and Protestant parties until
the 1970s, when the Catholic party merged with the main Protestant parties (although there's
still a small Protestant party on the margins), but that's just one country.
Germany had a distinct Catholic party (but no specifically Protestant party) under the
Wilhelmine Reich and the Weimar Republic, but not the Federal Republic;
Switzerland has a Catholic-based party but no specifically Protestant-based party; where
else? (There's Northern Ireland, of course, but that's a bit different.) What am I missing?
The Labour Party is so weak that the Conservatives do not need to worry about Labour defeating
them in the next election, or perhaps in the election after that.
I don't think this is obvious, precisely because of the volatility of the situation. I remember
people saying this about the Cameron government in 2015 and I objected at the time that no-one
knew how the Brexit referendum will turn out. Now Cameron is gone and just about forgotten. It's
true that the Conservatives are still in, but it's a very different crew.
More importantly, we haven't yet seen what Brexit means, in any sense. May has been coasting
on the referendum result, and Labour has been wedged, unable to oppose the referendum outcome
and also unable to criticise May's Brexit policy because she either doesn't have one or isn't
telling. This can't continue forever (presumably not beyond March), and when the situation changes,
anything can happen.
Some scenarios where the Conservatives could come badly unstuck
(a) they put up a "have cake and eat it" proposal that is rejected so humilatingly that they
look like fools, then cave in and accept minor concessions on migration in return for a face-saving
soft Brexit
(b) hard Brexit becomes inevitable and the financial sector flees en masse
(c) train-crash Brexit with no agreement and a massive depression
The only scenarios I can see that would cement the current position are
(a) a capitulation by the EU on migration etc, with continued single market access
(b) an economically successful hard Brexit/non-fatal train crash
It seems to me that (a) is politically infeasible and (b) is economically unlikely
That's not to gloss over Labour's problems or your diagnosis, with which I generally agree.
" how party elites became disconnected from their base, how the EU became a way to kick issues
out of politics into technocracy, and how it all went horribly wrong."
This sounds exactly like what has happened to the Democratic party in America. Which suggests
that there's something transnational going on, much larger than the specific political situation
in any given country
The essay is excellent as we might expect, Henry. I'm not convinced that Labour had any other
choice but to elect Corbyn. Single data points are always suspect, but the decision by the Labor
bigwig (have succeeded in forgetting which) to mock 'white-van man' clearly suggests she was playing
to a constituency within Labour primed to share in a flash-sneer at the prols. I'd have
expected as much from any Tory. I have other quibbles, the decision by Labour to take a position
on the referendum and on Remain always seemed critical to forcing Labour to adopt anti-immigrant
Tory-light postures in order to have it both ways with working-class voters hostile to London
and Brussels.
More problematic is this paragraph: "Research by Tim Bale, Monica Poletti, and Paul Webb shows
that these new members tend to be well-educated and heavily left-wing. They wanted to join the
Labour Party to remake it into an unapologetically left-leaning party. However, the research suggests
that they aren't prepared to put in the hard grind. While most of them have posted about Labour
on social media or signed a petition, more than half have never attended a constituency meeting,
and only a small minority have gone door to door or delivered leaflets. They are at best a shaky
foundation for remaking the Labour Party." Your questionable decision to deploy 'they' and 'them'
muddies the reality a bit, as does your decision to rely on metrics from the past to predict future
behavior.
I take your point that failing to attend a political rally, or go door-to-door, means something
in a time when populist parties are in the 'ascent.' But as you point out this rise can only occur
because the 'old parties' have failed so badly to connect activists and members. Again, that said,
I'm still not convinced all is doom and gloom. Labour activists opposed to EU membership were
effectively gagged/shamed by the elite right up to the present. It is only now this week, that
Labour has elected to make English compulsory for new immigrants:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chuka-umunna-immigrants-should-be-made-to-learn-english-on-arrival-in-uk-classes-esol-social-a7509666.html
Labour wasn't anything but Tory-lite until Jeremy and the new influx of members. I'm not personally
in favor of the new policy. It does seem to me more Tory-lite. But the battles are now more out
in the open. My guess is that Labour will survive and will rule again, but only if the party can
persuade Scotland and Wales to remain part of the UK. Adopting Tory-lite policies is precisely
what alienated Scots Labour voters and drove them into the arms of the SNP, so that's that the
PLP gives you.
Britain is entering a period of flux: jobs, housing, respect for all – including all those
dead, white people who made such a mess of the world, and respect for all forms of work, and greater
social and economic movement within Britain will likely go over quite well with large sections
of the electorate. Strong borders and a sensible immigration policy is part of that.
@10 "This sounds exactly like what has happened to the Democratic party in America. Which suggests
that there's something transnational going on, much larger than the specific political situation
in any given country"
"This sounds " Yes, in general terms. Yet, the donor-class candidates could have and should
have won in Brexit and in the US.
In the case of the Brexit, I argued before and after that simply allowing Labour candidates
and members to express their own views publicly, rather than adhere to a (sufficiently unpopular)
particular policy set by Henry's elite would have negated the need to adopt anti-immigrant Tory
lite stances – a straddle that fooled nobody and drove Labour voters to UKIP in not insignificant
numbers.
In the case of the US, a Republican donor-class candidate should have been a Democrat donor-class
candidate. Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years, effectively
run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one. The collapse
of the Republican establishment from below still makes my heart sing. Would that the same might
occur among Democrats.
Had, however, the Clinton campaign actually placed the candidate in Wisconsin, in Michigan,
and in Pennsylvania rather than bank on turning off voters, we'd be looking at a veneer of stability
covering up the rot now on display.
The point being: there's always something transnational going on. I explained Brexit to my
own students as a regional rebellion against London, as much as Brussels. Henry's essay is good
on Brexit and UKIP. Both the US and UK outcomes could have been avoided.
Britain is entering a period of flux: jobs, housing, respect for all – including all those
dead, white people who made such a mess of the world, and respect for all forms of work, and
greater social and economic movement within Britain will likely go over quite well with large
sections of the electorate.
If Britain were to enter a period of jobs, housing, and respect for all, with greater social
and economic mobility, it would be reasonable to expect most people to be pleased; but there's
no evidence that anything of the kind is happening, or is going to happen.
"The PLP didn't opt to get along, they opted to fight, and got mauled."
They lost the battle but are winning the war.
Corbyn has been keeping a very low profile since his re-election, proposals for reform such
as mandatory reselection seem to have been dropped, and the left of the party is squabbling over
whether it remains a Corbyn fan club or an active agent for the democratisation of the party.
Party policy remains inchoate and receives little media publicity.
Michels hasn't been disproved just yet, and I suspect the party remains immune to lasting reform,
short of a major split.
I suspect the party remains immune to lasting reform, short of a major split.
There are plenty of examples from the UK and other countries, including the Labour Party itself,
of parties undergoing major splits, and the evidence doesn't suggest that the experience is conducive
to lasting reform.
Yes, after the second election, the PLP have opted for the long game, with the expectation
that a disastrous General Election (one of the reasons why the talk up the possibility of an early
one at every opportunity) will see a return to "normality". In the meantime, the strategy is to
make Corbyn an irrelevance, hence the lack of coverage in the MSM, except for a drip of mocking
articles of which today's by Gaby Hinsliff in the Graun is typical.
Corbyn and his organisation don't help themselves but, faced with such irredentism, they have
little leverage on the situation.
You don't make a single mention of Scotland, which is a massive omission to make. (And frankly,
it's a particularly odd mistake for an Irishman: it's supposed to be the English who blithely
assume that where they live is coterminous with the whole United Kingdom).
I like a lot of the essay, but it's gravely weakened by the fact that you're prepared to discuss
things like political elites and class allegiance- and, in a European context, religious allegiance-
but you don't mention national or regional political identities. You really can't leave those
things out and give an accurate picture of current British politics.
I agree that a Labour revival isn't coming along soon. The problem is that a lot of people in
Labour think and hope that it might, and that makes them very unwilling to start thinking about
electoral alliances, because they are committed to standing candidates everywhere.
Labour, imo, needs some further and serious bad shocks to get them into the frame of mind that
could make an anti-Tory alliance possible. Once it is, FPTP could turn from the secret of Tory
success into the mechanism for their destruction. But 2020 might be too soon.
Forming coalitions and alliances requires negotiation and making trade-offs and active listening:
unfortunately there are probably too many people in the Labour Party who would find that very
difficult. They appear not to be willing to negotiate even with their own members.
I really can't see the obsession with an 'anti-Tory alliance'. Given that it involves allying
with a party who recently were effectively part of a pro-Tory alliance, it only works in any sense
if you think that the Tories have morphed into the far-right, or if you have a well-worked out
programme of constitutional reform you want to implement.
The bit that concerns involving the SNP particularly baffles me. Given that they have been
at daggers drawn with the Labour Party in Scotland, and that they are highly unlikely to step
aside from any of their 90-odd % of Scottish seats to give their alliance partner a few more MPs,
it seems a non-starter. This impression is magnified when you consider that the spectre of a Labour-SNP
minority government was thought to have scared off potential Labour voters at the last election.
Corbyn is just awful. A toxic mix of naivity, ego, and blundering stupidity.
His concept of role is almost non-existant. He walks onto a train without having pre-booked,
finds it difficult getting two seats together, and decides on the spot that all trains must be
nationalised. He spots a man sleeping rough and decides ending rough sleeping is his top priority.
He blunders around like he's just landed from another planet, sees an injustice and thinks he,
Jeremy, is the first person ever to see such a terrible thing, and decides on the spot to make
it his top priority to eliminate this evil by the simple policy expedient of saying he will eliminate
it.
He doesn't do policy in any recognisable sense. He does positioning statements which he assembles
with mates and puts on his personal web site. Take his "Manifesto for Digital Democracy". It claims
to be a policy, but in reality its just a list of Things That Jeremy Thinks Are Good. It doesn't
appear to have gone through a discussion process or approval process. It is not clear if this
is a party policy or just a personal document.
His position on Brexit is a disaster. On the issue which is coming to define politics in the
UK he is neither clearly for it nor clearly against it. He gives the impression he finds it a
dull subject. He is at best second choice for everyone, first choice for no-one; at worst, he
is an irrelevance.
Worse, he appears completely oblivious to the power games being played out in his name. Neighbouring
constituencies are to be carved up so Jeremy's seat can be preserved. His son Seb is given a job
in John McDonnell's office. He is effectively held captive by a North London clique who look after
him, tell him he's great, and then use his "policies" as a checklist against which to assess conformance
of MPs to The One True Corbyn Way and pursue vendettas.
His personality is completely unsuited to the job of Leader, let alone Prime Minister. Even
if you believe in Jeremy's policies you need to find someone else to implement them because he
lacks any of the requisite capabilities.
Nothing is going to magically get better.
No matter how bad things get, under Jeremy they can always get worse.
'Unofficially limited' dies give one the wiggle room to assert just about anything. It's a way
of lying which can't be rebutted. If you say 'but there were 3 candidates', he'll respond that
he did say 'unofficially' limited. If you say 'but two of them did quite well', he'll respond
that he did, after all, say 'unofficially' limited. So he can take a case where there was actually
a competitive race, and make it seem like there was never a competitive race. Of course, his post
is, officially, approved by the moderators
While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than
half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door
or delivered leaflets.
There's a strong feel of "young folks aren't doing politics the way my generation used to do
politics" about this, especially given the activities you're complaining they're not doing. Is
posting on social media achieving more or less than posting leaflets to fill up people's recycling
bins?
kidneystones @14 claims: "I explained Brexit to my own students as a regional rebellion against
London, as much as Brussels."
If that's correct, why did we get: [1] Trump/Sanders in the U.S., [2] Brexit in the UK, [3]
repudiation of Matteo Renzi along with the referendum in Italy, [4] a probable win for Marine
LePen in France (wait for it, you'll be oh-so-shocked when it happens)?
`I do not understand the pushback [against transnational causes for these events]. Do they
really believe that Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, the rise of many right-wing populist parties in Europe
etc. have nothing to do with economics? That suddenly all these weird nationalists and nativists
got together thanks to the social media and decided to overthrow the established order? People
who believe this remind me of Saul Bellow's statement that "a great deal of intelligence can be
invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is strong."'
I would suggest kidneystones is simply wrong. These are not idiomatic one-off events due
to contingent political situations peculiar to each individual country.
Something bigger is going on. If Marine LePen wins in France (and I predict she will),
that will provide even more evidence. This looks like a global rebellion against globalization
+ neoliberal economics because the bottom 96% are realizing they're getting screwed and all the
benefits are going to the top 6% of professional class + licensed professionals + top 1% in the
financial robber barony.
@43 Actually, I make no claim against trans-national developments. Quite the opposite.
Elsewhere, I've written that we are dealing with a world-wide tension between advocates of
globalization and their opponents. Where you differ is in determinations and outcomes, which I
argue are based on the actors, actions and dynamics of each state and which are, as such, unique.
There is nothing at all inevitable about any of this and JQ very sensibly reminds us of the volatility
of the present moment.
What is clear to me at least is that ideas and actions matter. Labour need not have decided
in 2014, or so, to ban members from advocating either a referendum, or leaving the EU. I dug all
this up at the time and the timeline is easy enough to recreate.
Austria stepped back from the brink, as did Greece when it repudiated Golden Dawn. The French
right and left worked together to keep the presidency out of the hands of the FN, although it's
less clear how that successful these efforts will be in the future.
The next few years will be telling. I see no reliable evidence to indicate good fortune, or
end times. The safest bet is more of the same, repackaged, with all the predictable shrieks and
yells about 'never before' etc. that usually accompanies the screwing of the lower orders. The
donor class is utterly dedicated to retaining power. I think JQ is spot on regarding alliances.
We didn't come this far just to have the wheels fall off.
The populism of the right (which I support in large measure) points the way. I'd have preferred
to see a populism of the left win, but too many are/were unwilling to burn down establishment
with the same willingness and enthusiasm of those on the right. Indeed, this thread has several
vocal defenders of an utterly corrupt Democratic party apparatus busted cold for colluding to
steal the nomination. There's a reason donors forked over 1.2 billion to the Clinton crime family
and it wasn't to help Hillary turn over power to the average woman and man in America.
Because the 'soft' left, in collaboration with the soft right (and the hard right) have
worked assiduously since roughly about 1979 to destroy the 'hard left'.
'High points' in this 'epic battle' include Neil Kinnock's purging of Militant, the failure
of the trade union establishment to (in any meaningful sense) support the miners' strike (1984),
the failure of the Democratic party establishment to get behind McGovern (1972), Carter's rejections
of Keynesianism (and de facto espousal of monetarism) in roughly 1977, Blair's war on 'Bennism',
the tolerance of/espousal of Reaganite anti-Communism by most sectors of the British left by the
late 1980s/early 1990s, and so on.
So what we are left with nowadays is angry working class people who would, in previous generations
(i.e. the 1950s, and 1960s) have voted Communist or chosen some other 'radical' left wing option
(and who did vote in such a way in the 1950s/1960s) no longer have that option.
What the 'soft left' hoped is that, with 'radical' left wing options off the table, the proles
would STFU and stop voting, or at least continue to vote for a 'nice' 'respectable' soft left
party.
What they failed to predict is that (as they were designed to do) neo-liberal policies immiserated
the working class, leaving that class angrier than ever before.
And so, the working class wanted to lash out, to register their anger, their fury. But, as
noted before, the 'traditional' way to do that was off the table. Ergo: Trump, Brexit etc.
If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get
the Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever
weapons are to hand to do so . If 'left wing' options aren't available, they will choose 'right
wing' ones.
We have all read this story book before: the 'social democrats' connived with the German state
to crush the 1918/1919 working class uprising, and then were led, blubbering, to Dachau 20 years
later. One wonders how many of them reflected that they themselves might be partially responsible
for their fate.
In the same way: the 'soft left' connived and collaborated with the Right to crush the 'radical
left' in the US and the UK (and worldwide) and then were SHOCKED!! and AMAZED!! that the Right
don't really like them very much and were only using them as a tool to defeat the organised
forces of the working class, and that with the 'radicals' out of the way, the parties of the 'soft
left' (with no natural allies left) can now be picked off one by one, at the Right's leisure.
I think that the Democratic Party is unlikely to hand over power to the average man and
woman in America, but I'm sure that the Republican Party is even less likely to do so; anybody
who voted Republican in 2016 because it seemed the best chance of getting power for the average
man and woman was played for a sucker.
(Incidentally, if 'the donor class' means the same thing as 'rich people', wouldn't it be clearer
to refer to them as 'rich people'? and if 'the donor class' means something different from 'rich
people', what constitutes the difference?)
Any tirade against Corbyn is entirely pointless, because you're not addressing the reasons
why he was elected, or what he represents. I think most of those that support him have a varying
degree of criticism, and many would prefer a more able leader. The problem for Labour is that
there is not a more able leader available that understands the need to ditch Third Way nonsense.
If any of the PLP "big beasts" had done this in any meaningful way, instead of plotting against
him, they would be leader by now.
So what we are left with nowadays is angry working class people who would, in previous generations
(i.e. the 1950s, and 1960s) have voted Communist or chosen some other 'radical' left wing option
(and who did vote in such a way in the 1950s/1960s) no longer have that option.
In the US, only tiny numbers of voters supported Communist candidates in the 1950s and 1960s.
It's true that the option of voting Communist no longer exists, because the Communist Party has
stopped running candidates, but that seems to be a realistic response by the party to its derisory
level of voter support. If there are people who still want to follow the Communist line, what
they would have done in 2016 is turn out to vote against Trump (that's what the party was urging
on its website; the information is still accessible).
In Italy, on the other hand, it's true that large numbers of voters supported Communist candidates
in the 1950s and 1960s; and in Italy, voters still have the option of supporting Communist candidates,
but the numbers of those who choose to do so have become much smaller.
People who voted for Trump weren't doing so because they were denied the option of voting Communist;
and people who voted 'No' in the Italian referendum weren't doing so because they were denied
the option of voting Communist.
If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get the
Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever
weapons are to hand to do so.
The original Nazis emerged and rose to power in a context where the Communists were trying
to destroy the system, and also seeking to crush the Social-democrats; close to the opposite of
the pattern you're describing.
Yes, and another situation where 'mostpeople' have failed to follow the logic of a situation
through. Many intellectuals can see that it is not in the EU's interests for the UK to prosper
out of the EU lest it 'encourager les autres'. Fewer have pointed out that this works the other
way, too. It is no longer in the UK's interests for the EU to prosper (or, indeed, to continue),
and a new nationalist orientated Conservative government might make moves in this direction.
As Jeremy Corbyn alone has had the perspicacity to point out, insofar as there is a political
movement in the UK that is most closely aligned with Donald Trump's Republicanism, it is the Conservatives
under May (the UK's latest intervention vis a vis the UN and Israel was a blatant attempt to curry
favour with the new American administration).
And Trump, as we all know, is highly suspicious of the EU. Moreover, there is likely to
be a battle between the 'liberal (in the highly specific American sense) leaning' intelligence
services (the CIA etc.) and the Trump administration. Assuming Trump wins (not a certainty)
it is possible/likely that Trump will use the newly 'energised' intelligence services to pursue
a more 'American nationalism' orientated policy, and it is likely that this new approach will
see the EU being viewed as much more of an economic competitor to the US, rather than a tool for
the containment of Russia, as it is primarily seen at the moment.
And, thanks to Obama, the CIA, NSA etc. have far more leeway and freedom to act than they
did even 20 years ago. It is also possible/likely that MI5/MI6 might be 'let off the leash' by
a British (or English) nationalist orientated Conservative Government.
It is not implausible, therefore, that the US and the UK will use what 'soft' power they have
to weaken the EU and sow division wherever they can. And of course the EU has enough problems
of its own, such that these tactics might work. Certainly it is highly possible that the EU will
simply not exist by 2050, or at least, not in the form that we have it at present.
"One of the consequences of the phenomenon you're discussing is that volatility is incredibly
high. I'd never before seen a politically party as totally, irredeemably fecked as Fianna Fail
in 2010, but look at them now."
I think this is just one of the features of postmodern politics. For potential governmental
parties they only have to retain enough support to be a realistic alternative, and even with 20%
of the vote Fianna Fail had enough of a profile that an opportunistic campaign of opposition could
lead to them recovering their fortunes to some extent at the next election. I suspect that even
PASOK and New Democracy will receive a similar bounce at the next Greek election.
These kind of stances usually involve avoiding too close a link to certain social groups and
maintaining a distance from potentially principled and activist party memberships. This explains
the hostility of Labour MPs towards Corbyn and the left of the party. They feel that ideological
commitments and an orientation towards the poor and disadvantaged will reduce the party's freedom
of maneuver, damaging their chances of capitalizing electorally on Tory failure.
Of course, they have not provided any reason why anyone of a left-wing persuasion should support
such a cynical and opportunistic worldview, apart from the fact that the Tories are evil. And
they then wonder why many people are alienated from politics.
"Fewer have pointed out that this works the other way, too. It is no longer in the UK's interests
for the EU to prosper (or, indeed, to continue) "
Interesting, I'd not seen that elsewhere. I'd be pretty certain that this is the objective
of people like Hannan.
".. and it is likely that this new approach will see the EU being viewed as much more of an
economic competitor to the US, rather than a tool for the containment of Russia, as it is primarily
seen at the moment."
Maybe less to do with competition than regulation? The Trump view is presumably that anything
that restricts continued plundering of the economy, especially transnational institutions.
@Igor
"I think this is just one of the features of postmodern politics. For potential governmental
parties they only have to retain enough support to be a realistic alternative "
"This explains the hostility of Labour MPs towards Corbyn and the left of the party. They feel
that ideological commitments and an orientation towards the poor and disadvantaged will reduce
the party's freedom of manoeuvre, damaging their chances of capitalising electorally on Tory failure."
"Perhaps these parties are in fact in sync with global political trends because they are
all nationalist parties and nationalism is clearly on the rise at the moment. "
Yes, they are clearly part of the nationalist turn. Or at least I assume that is true of Plaid
Cymru and the SNP, but it definitely is of Sinn Fein, who are policy wise a leftist party, but
ideologically first and foremost a nationalist one. You can see this in polling on their support
base, which tends to be more reactionary* and culturally conservative than even the irish centre
right parties, yet Sinn Fein as a political party often takes position (such as their strong support
for gay marriage) in opposition to the preferences of a large chunk of their base.
This Is particularly the case with immigration, where for going on a decade local politicians
have noted that this is one of the concerns they often hear in constituency work that they don't
make a priority in national politics. It's difficult to (as Sinn Fein does) see yourself (rightly
or wrongly) as the nationalism of a historically oppressed minority, and to support the rights
of that minority in the north (I'm making no normative claims on the correctness of their interpretation)
and then attack other minorities. This is why they're institutionally , and seemingly ideologically,
commited to diversity and multiculturalism in the south of ireland, while also being fundamentally
a nationalist party. (Question is (1) does this posture survive the current leadership , and (2)
is it enough to stave off explicitly nativist parties**) Afaict this is also true of the snp,
I don't know about PC.
But there's still a lot of poison in it. "Anti englishness" , which a lot of this, (at least
implicitly") can encourage , might be more acceptable than anti immigrant sentiment, but it's
still qualitatively the same mind set.
*this is 're a big chunk if their base, but by no means the full story.
**basically what happens to the independent vote, which is (afaict)possibly the real populist
turn in ireland.
At the risk of sounding like I'm simply saying 'but Ireland is special!' I think the (partial)
resurgence of Fianna Fail is a bit of a sui generis phenomenon. Irish politics have historically
been tribal in a way that makes UK voters look like an exemplar of rational choice theory. It
is only the very slightest exaggeration to say that my father's vote in every general election
he has participated in was determined in 1922, several decades before his birth – I'm sure other
Irish Timberteers have experienced similar. Even then, FF is still far away from the kind of hegemonic
dominance it enjoyed prior to the crash – when a poll result of 38% would have been regarded as
disastrous – and the FF/FG combined vote total is still struggling to hit 60%. While I'd agree
that this looks like pretty strong evidence for the 'resurgence of the right' thesis of European
politics at first glance, the failure of the left in Ireland is more due to a) Sinn Fein and Labour
being deeply imperfect vessels for the transmission of left-wing politics (albeit for very different
reasons) b) the low-cost of entry into the Irish political system due to PR-STV leading to a splintering
of the political left.
Additionally, the attempt by former Fine Gael deputy Lucinda Creighton to tap into the supposed
right-wing resurgence via the Renua party ended in an electoral curb-stomping as comprehensive
as it was satisfying to witness. So I don't think a surge in popularity for 'the right' is what's
going on here.
It should also be noted that Michael Martin is an infinitely more talented politician than
Enda Kenny (even though that is a bit of a 'world's tallest dwarf' comparison), and has explicitly
positioned FF to the left of FG, but also as a fundamentally 'centrist' and 'moderating' force.
In other words, he's pursuing a political strategy similar to that of Tony Blair, and is reaping
political dividends for doing so. Shocking, I know! (And FWIW – I have a deep, fundamental dislike
of FF and all it stands for and would never consider voting for them, lest anyone think I'm here
to carry water for Martin).
Unfortunately, for those arguing the 'Jeremy Corbyn is only getting clobbered in the polls
because of the perfidy of the PLP/the biased right-wing media/dark forces within MI5' the Irish
experience doesn't offer much comfort. After 2010 the various hard-left groupuscules in Ireland
put aside their factional differences and were able to mount a relatively united front in two
successive elections, and under leaders like Richard Boyd Barrett, Joe Higgins and Clare Daly.
All of these individuals are relatively charismatic, as well as possessing strong skills as political
communicators (attributes even Corbyn's most ardent defenders would admit he is lacking in).
They also had an issue, in the form of water charges, that allowed them to develop an extremely
clear, very popular political position which resonated with large swathes of the electorate in
every region of the country (again, something UK Labour is severely missing).
The results? Just over 5% of the vote in the last election for a total of 10 TDs, and basically
zero influence over the actual governance of the country.
This is not because of some vast array of structural forces and barriers are arrayed against
them (as discussed above, PR-STV makes the barrier to entry into Irish politics very low). It
is because, as with Corbyn, the electorate neither trusts them to competently administer the
state, nor supports their vision for its future socio-economic development. You can argue
that the electorate are ignorant, or mistaken in this regard, but given that Corbyn has at various
points in his career argued that East Germany, Cuba and Venezuela represent optimal socio-economic
systems, I would argue that they're probably right on this particular question.
In the US, only tiny numbers of voters supported Communist candidates in the 1950s and 1960s.
The effect is not direct. It comes down to the fact that for the average working person, there
two main ways they could be significantly better or worse off; wages could be higher, or tax could
be lower.
One of those is a thing that is promised by political parties, one isn't.
The actual rate of tax, or the feasibility or secondary effects of changing, don't really matter.
Leaving the EU, whatever else it means, means not paying tax to it. A belief that the tax paid
to the EU ends up as a net benefit to the payee requires a level of trust in the system that is
easy to argue against.
The US has lower taxes than any other developed democracy, and so presumably wouldn't carry
on functioning as one if you cut further. Which means to deliver further tax cuts, you need a
politician who doesn't understand, doesn't care, or just possibly is in hock to those who wish
the US harm.
Traditional Communists similarly considered the collapse of the system to be more of a goal
than a worry. Without them, arguments against higher wages always prevail.
Kidneystones: "Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years,
effectively run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one."
Seconding Belle here – 'effectively run' means 'defeated by another, and forced to work your
way back up'.
The Labour Party as a functioning opposition seems to have vanished – seriously: what did the
general public hear from them over the last year or so apart from party infighting and accusations
of anti-semitism?
I still support many of Corbyn's policies and ironically
so does much of the general public . But he lost my trust with his ridiculous wavering over
Brexit and ineffectiveness as a politician in general.
I actually don't think it would be too hard to organize an effective opposition considering
the fact that the Tories have no idea at all what they are doing and their policies are not in
the interest of the vast majority of people. But you have to hit them over the head with this
on a daily basis and I have no idea why nobody does it.
Well I wouldn't say it was entirely pointless. It is important to establish a baseline, and
in this case the baseline is that Corbyn's leadership is most unlikely to deliver electoral success
for Labour.
But your main point is a fair one, so time to try a different tack.
Policy is a misleading guide to whether a party is left or right. The current conservative
party is running a significant deficit, is committed to maintaining the NHS free at the point
of use, has implemented a living wage, has introduced same-sex marriage, and at the last election
touted state spending as the way to improve economic performance. all these policies were traditionally
associated with left-wing parties.
Policy is free, and it isn't particularly sticky. Given those features, policy is not a particularly
reliable feature. No private company would make policy its chief USP as it can easily be replicated
and customers show little loyalty based on policy. So if policy is not a route to political identity,
what is?
What voters want from a political party is that the party holds them and their interests paramount
as it goes about its business. When it implements a policy, it makes sure that policy is implemented
in a way that benefits them and their group. They want to be sure that in the difficult and complex
world of politics, the people they have voted for will look after their interests. The modern
Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just managing families
– dead centre in her Downing Street speech. And so far she has very high levels of public support.
By contrast, Labour doesn't seem to know who it represents, who it is batting for, and what
it wants for them. It doesn't give clear signals about where British workers stand in its hierarchies
of priorities. Until someone stands up and clearly articulates a vision of ambition for the mass
of the people then Labour will get out-fought in all significant political debates.
Certainly it is highly possible that the EU will simply not exist by 2050, or at least,
not in the form that we have it at present.
What a weak and trivial assertion.
It is possible that the US will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It
is possible that the UK will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It is possible
that the Conservative Party [the Democratic Party] [the Labour Party] [the Republican Party] will
not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It is possible that MI5 [MI6] [the CIA]
[the NSA] will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. [Lather, rinse, repeat.]
'The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being
contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.' (Winston Churchill,
A History Of The English-Speaking Peoples )
@52
Yeah maybe I should clarify that. Obviously much of the UK's trade is done with the EU so in that
sense the UK does have an economic interest in the EU prospering, but only in terms of
individual states. The UK (arguably) does not have an interest, any more in the EU as a unified
political/economic entity and if, as seems plausible, the UK now moves in a more Trumpian
direction, this tendency might well continue.
@55 Your evidence argues against your own argument. You have persistently argued, across many
CT threads, that the only and sole reason that Labour is doing badly right now is because of Corbyn.
And then the evidence you provide is that the left is doing badly in Ireland too. Do you see the
problem?
The fact is that if there was any serious alternative to Corbyn, the PLP would have put him
or her forward in the recent leadership election, and s/he would probably have won. But there
is no such candidate because the problems the Labour party face are much more deeply rooted than
the current crisis caused by the Corbyn leadership and these problems are faced by almost every
centre-left political party in the West . (The 'radical' left, as I pointed out above, having
essentially vanished in almost all of the developed world).
Let's not forget that as recently as the late 1990s, almost every country in Europe was governed
by the centre left. Now, almost none* of them are. That's the scale of the collapse. Indeed the
usual phrase for this phenomenon is 'Pasokification'. Not Corbynification (at least not yet).
Corbyn certainly doesn't have a solution to this problem but then nobody else does either,
so there you go.
All elections for the last few decades:
Many people in the UK: "Can we have our share of the benefits of globalisation?"
Tacit cartel: "After the City has taken the lion's share and we've had our cut, there might be
something left that you can have."
Referendum:
Tacit cartel: "Vote Remain or everybody will lose the benefits of globalisation!"
It's obviously in the interests of (hard) Brexiteers that the EU should fail, but it's not clear
what they can do to promote this end, except in the sense that hard Brexit itself will be mutually
damaging. Supporting ideological soulmates like Le Pen might help but could be a two edged sword
(do Le Pen voters welcome British support?)
By contrast, there's a great deal that the EU can do to harm the UK at modest cost, for example,
by objecting whenever they try to carry over existing WTO arrangements made under EU auspices.
Of course, they have not provided any reason why anyone of a left-wing persuasion should
support such a cynical and opportunistic worldview, apart from the fact that the Tories are
evil.
Preventing people from doing evil seems like a powerful motivation to me.
Traditional Communists similarly considered the collapse of the system to be more of a goal
than a worry. Without them, arguments against higher wages always prevail.
It's commonplace for minimum wages to be increased without Communists playing any role.
Yes, there's a definite thread of wanting to make the EU fail from the Brexiters (at the same
time as believing that it's going to fail anyway, which is why we should get out). As you say,
it's not clear what the UK could do to make this happen, especially from the outside pissing in.
Vice versa, whatever "the EU" thinks about wanting the UK to fail, "the EU" can't do much about
it, and the interests of the member states' governments may or may not be the same. On the other
hand, if there's one way to get them to respond with one voice, the UK attempting to damage Germany's
relationship with France might be it.
What voters want from a political party is that the party holds them and their interests
paramount as it goes about its business. When it implements a policy, it makes sure that policy
is implemented in a way that benefits them and their group. They want to be sure that in the
difficult and complex world of politics, the people they have voted for will look after their
interests. The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market
– Just managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech.
Anybody who thinks that the Conservatives are going to hold paramount the interests of 'just
about managing' families has been played for a sucker.
Corbyn, like Trump, is the consequence – not the cause of the some twenty years of failed policies.
Vastly more popular than Corbyn isn't saying much. Some 20 percent of those who pulled the lever
in November for Trump don't believe he's qualified for his new position.
Henry's essay does a good job, I think, of identifying the general problem Labour faces. As
for the leadership, it's going go be extremely difficult to find a senior Labour PLP big beast
who did not vote for the Iraq war/Blairites, or who did not oppose even the referendum on Brexit,
not to mention Leave. Both of these issues are deal-breakers, it seems, for some of the more active
members still remaining in Labour. Left-leaning Labour voters, especially those in Scotland, are
unhappy with Tory-lite and with the pro-war positions of the Blairites. Labour voters hostile
to London generally (many in Wales), and to the focus on Europe, rather than depressed regions
of Britain, are unlikely to rally around PLP figures who spent much of the run-up to the vote
calling Leave supporters closet racists.
Actions and decisions have consequences and the discussions that seem to distress a few here
and there (not to mention Labour's low-standing in the polls) are both long overdue and essential
if Labour plans on offering a coherent platform on anything. Running on the NHS and education
and even housing was fine for a while, and might still be so. Intervening in Syria, Libya, and
Iraq complicates matters considerably, as does forcing Labour supporters to adhere to either side
of the Remain/Leave case.
A little civility and good will here and there would do a world of good, but I'm aware that
discussion is better suited to Henry's earlier post on science fiction.
"It's obviously in the interests of (hard) Brexiteers that the EU should fail, but it's not clear
what they can do to promote this end, except in the sense that hard Brexit itself will be mutually
damaging."
I don't think this is right. Australia has neighbours that we aren't in a trade and currency
and migration zone with, but I don't think Australia wants these countries to fail economically
or any other way. I don't see why Britain would want the EU to fail - the UK is better off being
neighbours with stable prosperous countries in the EU than a lot of failed states pulling out
of the EU I would think .??
"While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than
half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door
or delivered leaflets."
My observations is that people do more voluntary work of this hands on kind with non-profit
advocacy groups than political parties.
Maybe as the major political parties became more similar, and weren't polarised in the sense
they were in the post-war era to the 80s, people prefer to volunteer for specific causes they
believe in, rather than for major political parties.
It's not 'Britain' that wants the EU to fail; it's the people who were strong supporters of
UK withdrawal from the EU who want that, because to them failure of the EU would provide vindication,
or at least a plausible appearance of it.
you must know why you yourself aren't doing it, and the reasons that apply to you could easily
apply to other people as well.
I wasn't aware that I was supposed to organize the opposition.
There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in
the interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect?
Seriously, I don't see that. Now there might be a big media conspiracy to drown out these voices,
but I think it's more plausible that the current Labour leadership is just not very good at this
game.
'I don't see why Britain would want the EU to fail - the UK is better off being neighbours with
stable prosperous countries in the EU than a lot of failed states pulling out of the EU I would
think .??'
Yeah just to be absolutely precise (again) I don't think the UK would ever want the EU to fail,
exactly. But if the perception gains ground that the EU is trying to shaft the UK (and remember
it's in the EU's interests to do just that) 'tit for tat' moves can spiral out of control and
might be politically popular.
The joker in the pack is the new Trump Presidency. Almost all American Presidents since the
war have been (either de facto or de jure) pro-EU for reasons of realpolitik. Trump might go either
way but we know he holds grudges. In recent months Angela Merkel chose to give Trump veiled lessons
on human rights, whereas the May administration has done its utmost to ditch all its previous
'opinions' and fawn all over him.Who is Trump likely to like most?
If the UK goes to Trump and begs for help in its economic war with the EU, Trump might listen.
More generally (and a propos of nothing, more or less), it might be 'number magic' but at least
since the late 19th century 'Western' history tends to divide into 30 year blocks (more or less).
You had the 40 year bloc between the Franco-Prussian war and 1914. Then of course the 30 years
of chaos between 1914 and 1945. Then the Trente Glorieuses between 1945 and 1975. Finally we had
the era of the 'two neos': neoliberalism at home, and neoconservatism abroad (AKA the 'let them
eat war' period) between 1976 and 2006.
We now seem to be moving into a new era of Neo-Nationalism, with a concommitant suspicion of
trans-national entities (e.g. the EU), a rise in interest in economic protectionism, and increasing
suspicion of immigration. Needless to say, this is not a Weltanschauung that makes things easy
either for the Left or for Liberals. One might expect both the soft and hard right to thrive,
on the other hand.
"Preventing people from doing evil seems like a powerful motivation to me."
The problem is that merely asserting that the Tories are bad does not necessarily mean that
people will (or even should) automatically assume that you are a viable or less evil alternative.
Indeed, the response of the Labour Party's leading lights after the 2015 election was to minimise
the distance between themselves and the Tories, and their actions during the 'interregnum' between
Miliband and Corbyn demonstrated that they were quite willing to connive with evil in the shape
of Tory welfare policy as they assumed it would appease 'aspirational voters'.
This is the crux of the divide within the Labour Party. Corbyn's political career has concentrated
on defending those at home or abroad who cannot or find it difficult to defend themselves. The
majority of Labour's career politicians argue that these people are politically marginal and defending
their interests will not win elections or achieve political power. To some extent they have a
point, but they fail to acknowledge that their own brand of cynical opportunism has alienated
not just many Labour members but also many potential voters.
The accusations of anti-Semitism and sympathy for dictators made by Corbyn's enemies were so
virulent not just in an attempt to smear his reputation, but also to try and salve their own consciences,
having thrown so many of their moral scruples aside in an increasing futile quest to secure the
support of the mythical median voter.
"Policy is a misleading guide to whether a party is left or right."
You what?
I would have thought that policy, by which I mean actually implemented policies and actions,
with real effects, rather than rhetoric, sound-bites or general bullshit, is precisely how we
determine if a party is left or right.
As for the remainder of that paragraph:
"The current conservative party is running a significant deficit "
As any decent economist, and even George Osborne, will tell you, the deficit is an outcome
of the economy, not under the direct control of the chancellor so, despite the rhetoric, it's
not really meaningful to use as a policy target. Further, IIRC, in the history of modern advanced
economies, I believe they have run deficits in something like 98% of years, so the presence of
a deficit is hardly unusual if you're in government.
" is committed to maintaining the NHS free at the point of use "
This is just a bullshit phrase and, in the context of actual policy, entirely meaningless.
The Tory party has a long term project to privatise large sections of the NHS, and is currently
driving it into the ground as a means to this end. New Labour laid the foundations for this to
happen, so is equally to blame. No self-respecting left party would go anywhere near those policies.
" at the last election touted state spending as the way to improve economic performance."
More sound-bites. Nothing is delivered. Believe it or not, the state spends money with this
aim all of the time. The scope of what new spending is to be delivered is likely to be small.
The other items sound like you think that we are still in the centrist liberal nirvana of Blair/Clegg/Cameron
where we were governed by managerialist technocrats, concerned with "what works", delivering much
the same policy no matter who was elected, only competing with each other on the basis of media
platitudes. But that has caused massive resentment, failed, and is the reason for Brexit and Corbyn.
Precisely because none of those parties were delivering policies that benefited most people.
Indeed, I think that you will find that 600,000 Labour Party members believe that there is,
or rather should be, a big dividing line in policy between themselves and the Tory Party.
"The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just
managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech."
This reads like it has come directly from Central Office. Do you really believe that the Tories
give two hoots about "just managing families"? Did Hammond reduce Osborne's austerity plan in
any way in the last Budget?
Labour, as a whole, certainly doesn't seem to know who it represents ATM. There are multiple
reasons for that: an irredentist PLP, a media sympathetic to the PLP and determined to trivialise
or ignore Corbyn, and the disorganisation and incoherence of Corbyn and his organisation amongst
them. But deposing Corbyn and returning to neoliberal bullshit won't solve the reasons why he
exists.
Brexit has not happened yet, so it can be whatever you want it to be: that freedom to project
counterfactuals tends to accentuate the centrifugal not the consensual as far as diversity of
opinion is concerned. I actually think Corbyn is unusually wise for a Labour leader to mumble
and fumble a lot at this stage. If it is a personal failing, it is appropriate to circumstances.
The Tories have given themselves a demolition job to do. If your opponent is handling dynamite,
best not to get close and certainly a bad idea to try to snatch it from them.
From the standpoint of Labour constituencies like Corbyn's own in North London, taking The
City down a peg or three would possibly be a means of relief, but if any Brexit negotiating "event"
triggered an exodus of financial sector players the immediate political fallout would be akin
to the sky falling and certainly would cause consternation among Tory donor groups not that supportive
of May's brand. And, failing to invoke Article 50 is likely to be corrosive to the Tories in ways
that benefit Labour as much as the Liberal Democrats only if Labour refrains from expressions
of hostility to Leave voters - a point too subtle for some Blairites, apparently.
There are a lot of different ways for Brexit to sink the Tory ship. May could be forced to
procrastinate on invoking Article 50. Invoking Article 50 by Royal Prerogative could bring on
a constitutional crisis, or at least a dispute over whether Article 50 has been invoked at all
in a way that satisfies the Treaty. Having invoked, the EU may well step in their own dog poop,
with overtly hostile or simply opportunistic gambits, underestimating the costs imo but otherwise
as JQ suggests.
The whole negotiating scheme will almost certainly run aground on sheer complexity and the
unworkable system of decision-making in the European Council. That could result in procrastination
in an endless series of extensions that keep Britain effectively in for years and years. Or, one
side or both could just let the clock run out, with or without formally leaving negotiations.
Meanwhile, at home, in addition to The City, Scotland and Ireland are going to be nervous, possibly
hysterical.
I suppose if you think the EU is fine just as it is, it is easy to overlook the glaring defects
in its design, particularly the imperviousness to reformist, adaptive politics. The EU looks to
go down with the neoliberal ship - hell, it is the neoliberal ship! I suppose the sensible Labour
position on the EU would be a set of reform proposals that would paper over different viewpoints
within the Labour Party, but that is not possible, because EU reform is not possible, which is
why Brexit is the agenda. Corbyn's instincts seem right to me; Labour should not prematurely oppose
Brexit alienating Leave voters nor should it start a love-fest for an EU that might very shortly
make itself very ugly toward Britain.
The Euro certainly and the EU itself may well break before the next General Election in Britain
opening up policy possibilities for Tories or Labour that can scarcely be imagined now. It is
not inconceivable to me that Scandanavia, Netherlands and Switzerland might be persuaded to form
a downsized EU2 sans Euro with Britain and a reluctant Ireland.
In my view, Corbyn as a political personality is something of a stopped clock, but as others
have pointed out, Labour like other center-left neoliberal parties have been squandering all their
credibility in post-modern opportunism. A stopped clock is right more often than one perpetually
fast or slow.
Labour has a chance to remake itself as a membership party while the Tories play with Brexit
c4 (PE-4). Membership support is what distinguishes Labour from the Liberals and transforming
Labour into a new Liberal party is apparently what Blair had in mind. Let Brexit mature as an
issue and let Labour try out the alternative model of an active membership base.
I wasn't aware that I was supposed to organize the opposition.
You're not, of course. But when you wrote 'I have no idea why nobody does it', it wasn't immediately
clear to me that what you meant was 'I have no idea why the Labour leadership doesn't do it' (where
'it' referred back to 'hit them over the head with this', and 'them' referred back to 'the vast
majority of people' and 'this' referred back to 'the fact that the Tories have no idea at all
what they are doing and their policies are not in the interest of the vast majority of people').
There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in the
interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect?
Seriously, I don't see that.
Perhaps that's a result of where you've chosen to look. Seriously, where have you looked? have
you, for example, looked at the Labour Party's website?
Igor Belanov
If you think Labour is just as evil as the Conservatives, then obviously you have no motivation
to support Labour against the Conservatives.
Is that what you think, that Labour is just as evil as the Conservatives?
Sidenote to J-D @ 8 on parties with religious identification
The disappearance of religious affiliation or identity as an organizing principle in Europe
is interesting. You might recall that the British Tory Party was an Anglican Party, committed
to establishment and the political disability of Catholics and Dissenters, as defining elements
of their credo. Despite the extreme decline in religious observance in Britain, I imagine there
remain strong traces of religious identity in British party identification patterns.
Elsewhere in Europe, the Greek Orthodox Church plays a political role in Greece and Cyprus,
though the current SYRIZA government is somewhat anti-clerical. Anti-clerical doctrines have been
revived in France by tensions with Muslims.
"... I guess the good part is that writers, though shaking their heads, are admitting Sanders has even more closely aligned with the Ds and their money and his reputation from 20 years ago is no longer enough to coast on and will lose if he runs in 2020. ..."
Sanders problem isn't his age. He looks like a hypocrite supporting Ds no matter how noxious, being
the first to trot out a Trump tweet on the floor (he was memed for it), doing a Russia, Russia, Russia
townhall.
Every time he does this, a few more dozen are 'done'. Imploring Sanders to choose people over
money?
I guess the good part is that writers, though shaking their heads, are admitting Sanders has
even more closely aligned with the Ds and their money and his reputation from 20 years ago is no longer
enough to coast on and will lose if he runs in 2020.
"... "A lot of the inequality in the U.S. comes from rent seeking. It comes from firms and industry seeking special protection or special favors from the government To the very considerable extent that inequality is generated by rent seeking, we could sharply reduce inequality itself if rent seeking were to be somehow reduced." ..."
"... "In all areas of economics, the rules of the game are critical-that is emphasized by the fact that similar economics exhibit markedly different patterns of distribution, market income, and after tax and transfers income. This is especially so in an innovation economy, because innovation gives rise to rents-both from IPR and monopoly power. Who receives those rents is a matter of policy, and changes in the IPR regime have led to greater rents without having any effects on the pace of innovation," said Stigltz. ..."
"... Other than the loss of income, he said, "many men in the Rust Belt in Appalachia have lost meaningful work and are unable to find another. People want work that provides them with some agency-they want a chance to prosper, to have the satisfaction of succeeding in something. They would also appreciate the experience of developing in the course of a career, to have self expression through imagining and creating new things. The good jobs in manufacturing offered these men the prospect of some learning, some challenges, and some attendant promotions. The bottom-rung jobs in retailing services that these men are forced to take do not. In losing their good jobs, then, these men were losing the meaning of their very lives. The rise of suicide and drug related deaths among Americans might be evidence of just that sense of loss." ..."
"... The last four decades of slow growth in the U.S., said Phelps, fit Alvin Hansen's definition of secular stagnation "to a tee." Phelps traced the roots of this secular stagnation, characterized by slower growth and loss of innovation, to a "corporatist ideology that had come to permeate the government at all levels" starting with the 1960s, and has "replaced the individualist ideology supporting capitalism" ever since. ..."
"... The gap between the elite professionals and the heartlands is so wide than only someone with unimpeachable credentials like his might penetrate their Panglossian bubble. ..."
"... I am not optimistic that the greed can be punctured ..."
"... Honestly, greed might just be so thoroughly baked into the makeup of base instinct that it is unreachable. My Father reminds me regularly that males are intrinsically sexually competitive, which drives them to acquire territory, resources, and access to females at whatever the cost. To ask humans not to be greedy is to be tinkering with deep biological drives tied to successful reproduction. ..."
"... The last thirty years have been all about "firms and industry seeking special protection or special favors from the government" while everyone has been talking about the opposite thing, "free markets". Why has it taken so long to notice this? ..."
"... "Eat People" ..."
"... The elites should worry the day when the mob turns from destructive introspection, to directed agency at an external foe. That foe being the rent seekers and economic manipulators of injustice. Propaganda and monopoly violence don't last forever, and the hysterical response of the bourgeoisie to this possibility is what we are witnessing. ..."
Trump's
unexpected Presidential win appears to have delivered a wake-up call to the economics discipline.
At a major industry conference, the annual Allied Social Sciences Associations meeting, a blue-chip
panel of four Nobel Prize winners, Angus Deaton, Joe Stiglitz, Roger Myerson and Edmund Phelps, was
in surprising agreement that capitalism had become unmoored and in its current form was exacerbating
inequality. These may seem like pedestrian observations, but the severity of the critique,
as reported in the Pro-Market blog , was striking.
No video of the panel is available yet; I hope one is released soon and will post it if/when that
happens.
Tellingly, even though the panelists also included a fall in innovation, globalization and secular
stagnation as contributing to inequality, the discussion focused on rent-seeking.
Deaton was blistering by the normally judicious standards of the academy. Recall that he and his
wife Anne Case performed the landmark study, published at the end of 2015, that showed that
the death rate had increased among less educated middle aged whites, due largely to addiction and
suicides . Thus the plight of economic losers is more vivid to Deaton than his peers, and he
sees the disastrous human cost as a direct result of rent-seeeking and untrammeled monopolies.
Key extracts :
"A lot of the inequality in the U.S. comes from rent seeking. It comes from firms and industry
seeking special protection or special favors from the government To the very considerable extent
that inequality is generated by rent seeking, we could sharply reduce inequality itself if rent
seeking were to be somehow reduced."
While some forms of inequality could be linked to progress and innovation, said Deaton, inequality
in the U.S. does not stem from creative destruction. "A lot of the inequality in the U.S. is not
like this. It comes from rent seeking. It comes from firms and industry seeking special protection
or special favors from the government," he said.
Deaton highlighted a particularly salient example of rent seeking: the American health care
system which, he said, "seems optimally designed for rent seeking and very poorly designed to
improve people's health."
Deaton outflanked Stiglitz on the left. Stiglitz argued that taxes could help reduce inequality,
in concert with other policies to curb rent extraction:
"In all areas of economics, the rules of the game are critical-that is emphasized by the fact
that similar economics exhibit markedly different patterns of distribution, market income, and
after tax and transfers income. This is especially so in an innovation economy, because innovation
gives rise to rents-both from IPR and monopoly power. Who receives those rents is a matter of
policy, and changes in the IPR regime have led to greater rents without having any effects on
the pace of innovation," said Stigltz.
Deaton begged to differ:
"I don't think that rent seeking, which is incredibly profitable, is very sensitive to taxes
at all. I don't think taxes are a good way of stopping rent seeking. People should deal with rent
seeking by stopping rent seeking, not by taxing the rich," he said.
Deaton is clearly outraged by how opiate manufacturers (meaning Purdue Pharma) have profited by
killing poor whites:
"There are around 200 thousand people who have died from the opioid epidemic, were victims
of iatrogenic medicine and disease caused by the medical profession, or from drugs that should
not have been prescribed for chronic pain but were pushed by pharmaceutical companies, whose owners
have become enormously rich from these opioids," said Deaton, who later advocated for a single-payer
health care system in the U.S., saying: "I am a great believer in the market, but I think we need
a single-payer health care system. I just don't see any other sensible way to address it in this
country."
Mind you, the Case/Deaton study, despite its shattering findings, got front page treatment and
then the press and pundits moved on to the next hot news tidbit. Matt Stoller had a tweetstorm yesterday
on this issue, related to the impending revamping, which almost certainly means further crapification,
of Obamacare. You can read the whole tweetstorm staring
here . These were the linchpin of his argument:
... ... ...
Edmund Phelps, who leans conservative but is know for being eclectic, echoed Deaton's observations:
Other than the loss of income, he said, "many men in the Rust Belt in Appalachia have lost
meaningful work and are unable to find another. People want work that provides them with some
agency-they want a chance to prosper, to have the satisfaction of succeeding in something. They
would also appreciate the experience of developing in the course of a career, to have self expression
through imagining and creating new things. The good jobs in manufacturing offered these men the
prospect of some learning, some challenges, and some attendant promotions. The bottom-rung jobs
in retailing services that these men are forced to take do not. In losing their good jobs, then,
these men were losing the meaning of their very lives. The rise of suicide and drug related deaths
among Americans might be evidence of just that sense of loss."
The last four decades of slow growth in the U.S., said Phelps, fit Alvin Hansen's definition
of secular stagnation "to a tee." Phelps traced the roots of this secular stagnation, characterized
by slower growth and loss of innovation, to a "corporatist ideology that had come to permeate
the government at all levels" starting with the 1960s, and has "replaced the individualist ideology
supporting capitalism" ever since.
Even though the panelists disagreed somewhat on remedies, all were troubled by Trump's policy
proposals However, it's still telling that even if protectionism might not be a great remedy (or
would have to be applied surgically to yield meaningful net gains, something Trump's team appears
unwilling to game out), the group seemed constitutionally unable to accept that globalization had
made the working classes in the US worse off even when that is exactly what the Samuelson-Stopler
theorem predicted. For instance:
Phelps, for instance, criticized Trump's assertion that job and income losses among the American
working class were caused by trade and not by losses of innovation, and the President-elect's
"assumption that supply-side measures to boost after-tax corporate profits will bring generally
heightened incomes and employment to America," which he said runs the risk of explosion in public
debt and a deep recession.
The most hazardous, said Phelps, "is the assumption that by bullying corporations, such as
Ford, and stepping in to aid other corporations, such as Google, the Trump administration can
achieve various objectives that will widely boost employment."
Nevertheless, the very fact that a panel like this didn't even dispute the claim that rent-seeking
was the biggest contributor to the big jump in inequality is in and of itself a big step forward.
I wish Deaton would go a speaking tour of wealthy Democratic Party enclaves or become regular
on NPR (assuming the tote-bag carrying classes did not swiftly demand his removal). The gap between
the elite professionals and the heartlands is so wide than only someone with unimpeachable credentials
like his might penetrate their Panglossian bubble.
The gap between the elite professionals and the heartlands is so wide than only someone
with unimpeachable credentials like his might penetrate their Panglossian bubble.
Either these words, although I am not optimistic that the greed can be punctured, or class
violence, coupled with a decline and fall of Continental empire.
The US is the only remaining 19th century empire, all the others have fallen to self-determination,
and the EU appears to be falling apart for the same reasons.
I am not optimistic that the greed can be punctured
That is it in a nutshell. Greed. One destructive emotion has been elevated as the guiding principle
for our Western societies. The fail is baked into the cake. We are monkeys with nuclear weapons
and Donald Trump is the new leader of the Free World™. What could possibly go wrong?
Jane Goodall reported on a chimp who hit on the novel tactic of banging fuel cans together
to achieve alpha status. The noise scared his competitors witless. He didn't know what the cans
were, what they were for, or what they held, but it worked anyway. For a little while.
Honestly, greed might just be so thoroughly baked into the makeup of base instinct that it
is unreachable. My Father reminds me regularly that males are intrinsically sexually competitive,
which drives them to acquire territory, resources, and access to females at whatever the cost.
To ask humans not to be greedy is to be tinkering with deep biological drives tied to successful
reproduction.
Except we have millions upon millions of individual instances of US men over whom greed holds
no power, and scores of historical societies and even today a handful of countries so constituted
and evolved over time that there simply is no comparison on a scale of 'greed' with what goes
on in the US.
Greed obviously has a biological basis, as does everything else humans do, but culture
is quite capable of virtually erasing it.
But if you guys find a copy of this panel, also mentioned in the pro market article, please
post it.
"The Vested Interests Versus Rational Public Policy: Economists as Public Intellectuals,"
Stiglitz and Baker, along with James K. Galbraith of University of Texas at Austin, Stephanie
Kelton from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Lawrence Mishel from the Economic Policy
Institute discussed competition, trade, consumer protections, and how to reach effective public
policy. "We need to rewrite the rules of the market economy," said Stiglitz during the same
panel.
The last thirty years have been all about "firms and industry seeking special protection or
special favors from the government" while everyone has been talking about the opposite thing,
"free markets". Why has it taken so long to notice this?
Very effective propaganda and a complicit MSM. I will say it again: spend a day or two at any
statehouse in the country and you will see that the ENTIRE business of government is doing favors
for business people and their lobbyists. The notion that business people are in favor of small
or non-activist government is a big lie.
Which gets to a point that seems to get glossed over even by the better economists – that corporate
"investment" in lobbying generally has a way better ROI than real investment, often times on the
order of 1000-to-1 (for specific tax breaks).
I don't get what Deaton is saying about rent-seeking. Surely the return of the 90% tax bracket
for high incomes and estates would put a dent into modern rent-seeking. When he says, "People
should deal with rent seeking by stopping rent seeking, not by taxing the rich," what kind of
policies is he talking about? Does he mean single payer, and extended that kind of economic organization
to other industries? Once you get outside health care, that seems kind of radical for an economist.
The Mississippi Delta is just north of where we live. The "rent seeking" is mixed up with Paternalism.
Each feeds off of the other. What we have seen in our multi year search for affordable living
space has been an unending stream of overpriced habitats, and insularity.
The Paternalism encourages
an ethos of exploitation, the rent seeking finances it. At root, all these "base" motivations
are "rational." Thus, any "rational" critique undergirds the edifice of selfishness.
A corollary
of this is that any significant change requires a clean break with the past. An irrational ideology
needs must arise, if only for long enough to nurture a radical change. As with the present American
experience, an absurd excess is needed, and is looming. It sounds hardhearted, but a cleansing
fire must purge the dross from out the gold of the nations soul. Before we allow horrified sentiment
to deter us from this course, we must remember that the present system is itself the embodiment
of hardheartedness. Why else do many cultures have a myth of a Phoenix in their socio-cultural
tool kit? It has happened before. It will happen again.
As someone more erudite than myself likes to say; "Kill it with fire."
My only worry is that when mainstream economists start accepting the problem of rent seeking,
their solution is usually 'better, freer markets'. Its this logic which did so much damage to
the national electricity networks of Europe and the UK railway system and (my personal bugbear),
the domestic waste collection system in Europe. There is sometimes a fine distinction between
highly regulated markets which benefit both private companies and the consumer (for example, in
electricity generation and distribution), and manipulated regulated markets which benefit only
the seller, such as with medicines.
Plus, from what I am gathering from the summary, statements about how it was innovation that
destroyed jobs and not globalization seem to ignore the fact that the retraining and skills reeducation
that's supposed to happen after "disruption" has become rent seeking.
Education has become a massive, government controlled, rent seeking operation in the form of
student loans. Anyone seeking to better themselves with education now has become a victim.
Are taxes going to solve that, according to Stiglitz? As you say, is it going to be a "freer
markets" solution? I don't know.
Innovation destroyed jobs because Silicon Valley investors realized that corporations would
pay HUGE dollars for new processes that eliminated people. Human labor is an enormous cost, not
just in wages but in support (that useless HR team), benefits, and worst of all – pensions. The
goal of the modern corporation is to reduce head count, not to make better and more innovative
products/services. Once the investment community clued in on that, it was all about finding new
ways to eliminate jobs.
Andy Kessler's book "Eat People" is all about this topic.
I'm not an economist but even I can see that trade can increase average income while decreasing
incomes at the bottom of the distribution. Am I missing the point or are the Nobel laureates missing
it?
Do they think that some new industry will appear by magic to fill the void?
Wow! If this is what it takes to capture the attention of the American elites then I think
this society needs to think really hard about what's up with it.
I wish Deaton would go a speaking tour of wealthy Democratic Party enclaves or become regular
on NPR (assuming the tote-bag carrying classes did not swiftly demand his removal). The gap
between the elite professionals and the heartlands is so wide than only someone with unimpeachable
credentials like his might penetrate their Panglossian bubble.
You are never going to get the 10% to admit that their lifestyles are not possible without
the underlying economic conditions described at this website. All you have to do is look at Massachusetts
and see what "liberalism" has become there to understand this. The NIMBYism is rampant, and the
isolation of minorities and people of other classes is so obvious that no one can deny that it
happens. Most of the employment is so dependent on the rent seeking (Education, Biotech and Pharma,
Technology, Medical) that there is no way that they could be convinced of another way.
I believe you are right and the hysteria after the recent election demonstrates this resistance
to change (even if in the current case it may turn out to be bad change). The whole rationale
of our so-called democracy is to allow change at the top without resorting to violence which is
why attacks on the democratic process itself are the most sinister. Therefore the most interesting
story of 2016 may not be the dreary two year slog itself but what happened afterwards. One comes
to suspect that large portions of the "progressive" left have even less interest in democracy
than the Republicans do. If only those pesky proles could be kept down the comfortable middle
class of Boston could rest easy.
It's probably true that only when those middle class professionals themselves start to feel
economic pain that we will see more enthusiasm for leveling and social cohesion. A crash in the
stock market might do it or–god forbid–riots and chaos but it doesn't seem like there's a painless
way out.
Deaton highlighted a particularly salient example of rent seeking: the American health care
system which, he said, "seems optimally designed for rent seeking and very poorly designed
to improve people's health."
There is rent seeking even within sectors. Yesterday's Links had an article about large layoffs
at one of the premier academic cancer centers, driven by losses due to overruns in implementing
an electronic health records system.
Sh*t flows to the bottom and money floats to the top.
The elites should worry the day when the mob turns from destructive introspection, to directed
agency at an external foe. That foe being the rent seekers and economic manipulators of injustice.
Propaganda and monopoly violence don't last forever, and the hysterical response of the bourgeoisie
to this possibility is what we are witnessing.
We need a new term or word for the class of people dedicated to the spread of inequality. The
terms bourgeoisie, corporatists, capitalists, and fascists have been rendered ineffectual in raising
the consciousness of working people to their plight. Occupy brought the 1% into consciousness,
but there still is a lingering faith that somehow the business community can provide the necessities
for a good life, if only "something" can be done to "free" their creative potential. My take on
the Fake News phenomenon is yet another phase to keep the working population even more confused
and misdirected. It is a strategy to double down on propaganda. Propaganda questioning the validity
of propaganda.
In America, the psychic health of the nation is coming into question. Leadership that can provide
a vestige of calm amid the rising storm brought about by economic uncertainty will easily gain
followers. The crisis of leadership is daily becoming more acute.
Maybe a better strategy would be to come up with a new term for the 80% ruthlessly exploited
by the current system. A new term is needed because all others have been corrupted into impotence.
"In American, the psychic health of the nation is coming into question."
We are confused, in denial, projecting furiously Freud would have a field-day exploring our
cognitive dissonance. All this 'fake news' has begun to undermine our vision of ourselves as 'the
exceptional nation;' our mental pictures of soldiers handing out candy bars to starving child
refugees have morphed into drone operators taking out toddlers at wedding parties.
We have elders preaching the American virtues of 'self reliance,' 'personal responsibility,'
and the dangers of being coddled by an inefficient nanny state, while enjoying the benefits of
a guaranteed monthly social security check deposited into their bank accounts, and having their
hip replacements and open heart surgeries paid for by Medicare.
We are still entranced by our national narrative of 'go west, young man,' with acres of fertile
prairie and lush coastal valleys ours for the taking; all we need to follow is our sacred 'work
ethic' and success will be ours. Well, all the land is posted 'Private' and the water is in the
process of being purchased by faceless corporate entities. And the native Americans, whose land
we stole, are pissed and getting organized.
Spot on, Norb. We need new words, a new national narrative, a new vision of where we are, what
crimes we committed to get here, how we have managed to bring the planet to the brink of destruction
and, finally, how we can salvage what remains and forge a new identity, a better and more sustainable
story.
Until then, the next few years (decades?) will be messy. But filled with promise.
for all of the Media/Academia Left's obsession w/identity politics, the issues facing poor,
rural African-Americas are forgotten and "uncool" to address-just as with Appalachian whites.
Over several months many commenters have said something like the following: there can't be
any real deflation because prices keep going up. Food, health care, rents, etc. If there's deflation
why aren't prices coming down?
My opinion is you can have real deflation *and* increasing prices at the retail level if those
prices are determined by monopoly pricing power – price jacking and uncontrolled rent seeking,
which is what I think we have now. Iinstead of lowering prices for the little guy deflation increases
the profits for the monopolists and rentiers through lowered base costs for them coupled with
higher selling prices for customers, plus fees and other purely extractive costs. Monopolists
and rentiers have deformed various markets in a way such that deflation *and* higher selling/access
prices can co-exist, imo.
Longer comment lost in modland. Shorter: It's possible to have both deflation and rising sale
prices if monopolists and rentiers are setting the sale price. imo.
I keep hearing the idea that innovation can provide jobs: algorithms and robots consume many
more than they produce, AI is taking jobs from insurance agents in Japan, all seem to point the
other way. So the response is a basic minimum income, but with so much wealth off shored to tax
havens and the rest building bombs to replace the ones being dropped daily, where do the experts
see the money coming from? Sooner or later the mass' will have to stop buying the glossy widgets
which pays for the yachts and mansions.
Yves, thanks very much for this. Speaking for myself, I'd really appreciate more posts/guest
posts on this and related topics.
I'm currently reading Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting with Jesus, which addresses the desperation
of small-town northern Virginia – I knew Bageant's work (had read his essays), but the book is
great. Separate chapters, btw, on the mortgage scam in his hometown (for trailers, for heavens'
sake) and on the health care system and how that's working out in rural Virginia (it's not, and
it's a national disgrace).
It riffed off a piece by some person called Ben Shapiro, who was venting about health care
being a consumer product (he compared it to buying expensive furniture). I think I finally realized
that there are some people whose understanding of the value of human life and the basic rights
of man differ so much from my own that the divide cannot be bridged, ever. (He also sort of compared
sb who needs medical treatment but can't afford it to stealing bread. Made me wonder if he and
his physician-wife had recently caught a production of Les Miserables.) I was so appalled at his
thinking I couldn't even comment on the post.
I can't see how rent-seeking is to be reduced given the incoming regime, which appears to me
to be filled with rent-seekers of the highest order.
It's heartening to see renowned economists identifying these issues (poverty/unemployment/increasing
morbidity-mortality rates) as a genuine crisis – which it is, and it's only going to get worse;
in a few years, it won't be the lower and middle classes that are affected, but the white-collar
professional classes as well (i.e. the top 10%).
But as my Dad used to say, it's somehow "a day late and and a dollar short" – the Dems should
have been addressing this crisis years ago – if a humble citizen-observer like this commenter
saw it as a serious issue ten years ago, why didn't the professional policy guys?
I wouldn't just credit the Trump candidacy for shining the light on rent seekers, but kudos
to Yves for hosting economists who have also done this, among them Michael Hudson and (to a lesser
degree) Bill Black.
At the risk of seeming un-intellectual, I confess to having been also enlightened by library
reading the works of John Grisham – his theme is often how lawyers profit or do not profit from
big pharma medications that are introduced with great fanfare only to be discovered as the cause
of injury and/or death a few miles down the road. At which point the victims are rounded up by
low-income lawyers seeking a big windfall. One only has to be aware of certain tv commercials
to realize this is still happening, and it happens to low income people for the most part. In
the novels they are always the ultimate victims, no matter what the outcome of the lawsuits. The
money changes hands, but the poor get shafted.
juliana – I like Grisham a lot, too; the fact that he is himself a native of the "poor south"
(Arkansas, Mississippi) lends a gritty realism to his novels. More members of the credentialed
classes should read him, maybe they'd understand what's happening in the heartland better.
I've never much cared for his legal thrillers, but I was really impressed by his semi-autobiographical
novel, "A Painted House" set in rural east Arkansas in the 50s. My mother was from a small farm
in that area and I grew up not far away in Memphis and visited east Arkansas often as a kid in
the 50s and 60s. I am Grisham's age and the novel was spot on in my experience
Thinking out loud here, so take with a grain of salt: could IPR-related rents be fixed by switching
the "carrot" from monopoly on the IP to tax credits? Instead of "You are the only one that gets
to sell this for X years, unless others pay you a fee," the creator of the IP gets a tax credit
equal to a certain % of sales and/or profits that others make from use of said IP. This would,
of course, be a non-transferable right to the credit; some company cannot come along and buy it
out from the creator, nor can it be passed along to next of kin. Creator gets compensation, consumers
avoid the artificial rent cost, and by opening up the IP to the market, competition and refinements
can begin immediately.
shorter: current Bangladesh life expectancy is: males – ~ 70, females – ~73, total – ~71, world
rank – 99th.
The declining life expectancy for too many rural US populations, especially for females, is
caused by increased deaths in the 45-55 age range. Fewer are reaching the age of 60 or 70. Ergo,
these areas have lower than Bangladesh's overall life expectancy. These early US deaths are numerous
enough to lower the overall life expectancy of the US cohort, which is shocking.
adding: while the lowered overall US life expectancies are still above overall Bangladesh's,
in US counties with these large increased death rates in the 45-55 age cohort the the counties
life expectancy is lower than Bangladesh. There are so many of these US counties and such a large
percentage of the population that the overall US life expectancy has tilted down.
I suggest reading 'Deep South' by Paul Theroux for a scorching look at the day-to-day life
of the denizens of this area. That it might, in some areas, be compared to the 'Third World' is,
tragically, a compliment. How can these conditions exist in the richest country in the world?
And how can one be an American and tolerate this?
What were the economic conditions in Cambodia prior to Pol Pot and the killing fields? I'm
too young, but I that seemed to be a more modern tail of the 90% taking out the top 10%.
There has to be some shred of truth to drive people to eliminate an entire swath of their population
along economic lines only.
But the term "rent seeking" doesn't have much punch. To a moderately well educated reader,
It sounds like something we would all do in a "capitalistic" system and therefore, in some sense,
rational, and exempt from the jaundiced, deep consideration it deserves.
I believe that much of what ails us in the larger effort to make changes in (what's left of)
the Republic, is our more or less universal aversion to using the proper vocabulary to address
how one goes about "rent seeking," which is to engage in wholesale, long term and systematic bribery
of public officials who can (and will) enshrine our sought for "market" advantages.
When did "bribery" morph into "campaign finance"? There may have been a time and place in American
history when there could be fine distinctions, maybe even legitimate distinctions, drawn between
the two, but today? Any trip to "the Hill" or our state legislatures, to advocate for a policy
or law-unsupported by a major league checkbook-will convince a person that the Congress, etc.
has devolved into a massive "system" for soliciting money in exchange for agreeing to vote against
the public interest.
In short, I'd like to advocate that we bring back bribery into the "civic lexicon." The sooner
the better.
In a post-Reagan/Bush environment the third way Democrats simply adopted what seemed moderate
in relation to the zeitgeist. The failure of all those poor rural people to pick up and move to where the jobs were is a
choice which they must have rationally assessed the cost/benefit of and made decisions as autonomous
adults.
Their failure to educate and train for the jobs of the future was a choice. They were warned.
Like we are being warned now that we are redundant or soon to be, replaceable by peasants from
abroad or algorithms at home. I don't think we are going to get the Star Trek economy. I think we are getting the Logan's
Run, Aldous Huxley, Eloi vs. Morlock economy.
"Reeling from their inability to stop his election, envious of his power
to make people believe his most ridiculous statements, and rinsed by a needy
mood for self-soothing, the media and other American institutions are
greeting the era of Trump by lowering their ethical and professional
standards and indulging in attention-seeking hysteria. However cathartic it
may be, the effect is suicidal for the media and dangerous for the nation" [
The
Week
]. "[O]ur institutions can't temporarily suspend the very standards
that grant them credibility and expect to survive." And it's always possible
to make things worse
"[B]oth parties are built upon unstable coalitions. For Democrats, it is
a coalition driven by demographics. The Democratic mantra for the last eight
years has been built around the idea that an increasingly diverse and
urbanizing electorate was going to build them a permanent Electoral College
majority. But, as we saw in 2016 and every midterm election since 2008, the
only Democrat who was able to
mobilize the "Obama coalition" was Barack Obama himself" [Cook Political]. A
coalition held together by one man isn't a coalition at all, as
I
pointed out in early in 2016. As for the Republicans: "Speaker Ryan and
Majority Leader McConnell have had their policies and priorities teed up for
years. They've just been waiting for a GOP president to help implement them.
Trump, meanwhile, has shown an incredible, um, flexibility on issues,
policies and priorities. Without an ideological core to drive him and with
no experience in the give and take of the legislative process, there's no
telling what, or how, he will govern."
"The [Democrat] party is approaching the confirmation process as one of
the first steps in its rebuilding effort following painful November losses"
[
RealClearPolitics
].
"That effort includes getting opposition research and outside messaging
groups into high gear, fundraising off of certain confirmation hearing
highlights or controversies regarding some nominees, and coming up with a
way to paint the administration they will run against in four years in an
unflattering light." Hysteria is good for fundraising, so expect it to
continue.
So Booker signals he's going to run in 2020 by the noise he made at the
Sessions hearing. Then he took care to build up his campaign warchest:
"In 2020, the Democrats could run Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Beyonce,
Matt Damon, or Rosie O'Donnell. Some might guffaw at this idea. After all,
wouldn't running a celebrity candidate further associate Democrats with
coastal elitism?" [
The
New Republic
]. "But Democrats' main problem last year wasn't in
appealing to anti-elitist voters; it was in getting out the party's base. A
magnetic, attractive movie star would have a far better chance of
accomplishing that than just another accomplished, dowdy politician."
"Bernie Sanders can win in 2020, but he has to make a critical choice
right now" [
CNBC
].
I wish Sanders were four years younger .
"Is Bernie's Revolution Taking Over The California Democratic Party?" [
Down
with Tyranny
]. Yes,
according this story in Links this morning
. Note the role played by the
(badass) National Nurses Union. Organizing infrastructure really, really
helps and where else to you find it?
"... Bill Clinton's generation, however, believed that concentration of financial power could be virtuous, as long as that power was in the hands of experts. They largely dismissed the white working class as a bastion of reactionary racism. Fred Dutton, who served on the McGovern-Fraser Commission in 1970 , saw the white working class as "a major redoubt of traditional Americanism and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote." This paved the way for the creation of the modern Democratic coalition. Obama is simply the latest in a long line of party leaders who have bought into the ideology of these "new" Democrats, and he has governed likewise, with commercial policies that ravaged the heartland. ..."
Democrats can't win until they recognize how bad Obama's financial policies were
He had opportunities to help the working class, and he passed them up.
By Matt Stoller January 12 at 8:25 AM
During his final news conference of 2016, in mid-December, President Obama criticized Democratic
efforts during the election. "Where Democrats are characterized as coastal, liberal, latte-sipping,
you know, politically correct, out-of-touch folks," Obama said, "we have to be in those communities."
In fact, he went on, being in those communities - "going to fish-fries and sitting in VFW halls
and talking to farmers" - is how, by his account, he became president. It's true that Obama is
skilled at projecting a populist image; he beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa in 2008, for instance,
partly by attacking agriculture monopolies .
But Obama can't place the blame for Clinton's poor performance purely on her campaign. On the
contrary, the past eight years of policymaking have damaged Democrats at all levels. Recovering
Democratic strength will require the party's leaders to come to terms with what it has become
- and the role Obama played in bringing it to this point.
Two key elements characterized the kind of domestic political economy the administration pursued:
The first was the foreclosure crisis and the subsequent bank bailouts. The resulting policy framework
of Tim Geithner's Treasury Department was, in effect, a wholesale attack on the American home
(the main store of middle-class wealth) in favor of concentrated financial power. The second was
the administration's pro-monopoly policies, which crushed the rural areas that in 2016 lost voter
turnout and swung to Donald Trump.
Obama didn't cause the financial panic, and he is only partially responsible for the bailouts,
as most of them were passed before he was elected. But financial collapses, while bad for the
country, are opportunities for elected leaders to reorganize our culture. Franklin Roosevelt took
a frozen banking system and created the New Deal. Ronald Reagan used the sharp recession of the
early 1980s to seriously damage unions. In January 2009, Obama had overwhelming Democratic majorities
in Congress, $350 billion of no-strings-attached bailout money and enormous legal latitude. What
did he do to reshape a country on its back?
First, he saved the financial system. A financial system in collapse has to allocate losses.
In this case, big banks and homeowners both experienced losses, and it was up to the Obama administration
to decide who should bear those burdens. Typically, such losses would be shared between debtors
and creditors, through a deal like the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s or bankruptcy
reform. But the Obama administration took a different approach. Rather than forcing some burden-sharing
between banks and homeowners through bankruptcy reform or debt relief, Obama prioritized creditor
rights, placing most of the burden on borrowers. This kept big banks functional and ensured that
financiers would maintain their positions in the recovery. At a 2010 hearing, Damon Silvers, vice
chairman of the independent Congressional Oversight Panel, which was created to monitor the bailouts,
told Obama's Treasury Department: "We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure
crisis, or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can't do both."
Second, Obama's administration let big-bank executives off the hook for their roles in the
crisis. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) referred criminal cases to the Justice Department and was ignored.
Whistleblowers from the government and from large banks noted a lack of appetite among prosecutors.
In 2012, then-Attorney General Eric Holder ordered prosecutors not to go after mega-bank HSBC
for money laundering. Using prosecutorial discretion to not take bank executives to task, while
legal, was neither moral nor politically wise; in a 2013 poll, more than half of Americans still
said they wanted the bankers behind the crisis punished. But the Obama administration failed to
act, and this pattern seems to be continuing. No one, for instance, from Wells Fargo has been
indicted for mass fraud in opening fake accounts.
Third, Obama enabled and encouraged roughly 9 million foreclosures. This was Geithner's explicit
policy at Treasury. The Obama administration put together a foreclosure program that it marketed
as a way to help homeowners, but when Elizabeth Warren, then chairman of the Congressional Oversight
Panel, grilled Geithner on why the program wasn't stopping foreclosures, he said that really wasn't
the point. The program, in his view, was working. "We estimate that they can handle 10 million
foreclosures, over time," Geithner said - referring to the banks. "This program will help foam
the runway for them." For Geithner, the most productive economic policy was to get banks back
to business as usual.
Nor did Obama do much about monopolies. While his administration engaged in a few mild challenges
toward the end of his term, 2015 saw a record wave of mergers and acquisitions, and 2016 was another
busy year. In nearly every sector of the economy, from pharmaceuticals to telecom to Internet
platforms to airlines, power has concentrated. And this administration, like George W. Bush's
before it, did not prosecute a single significant monopoly under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
Instead, in the past few years, the Federal Trade Commission has gone after such villains as music
teachers and ice skating instructors for ostensible anti-competitive behavior. This is very much
a parallel of the financial crisis, as elites operate without legal constraints while the rest
of us toil under an excess of bureaucracy.
With these policies in place, it's no surprise that Thomas Piketty and others have detected
skyrocketing inequality, that most jobs created in the past eight years have been temporary or
part time, or that lifespans in white America are dropping . When Democratic leaders don't protect
the people, the people get poorer, they get angry, and more of them die.
Yes, Obama prevented an even greater collapse in 2009. But he also failed to prosecute the
banking executives responsible for the housing crisis, then approved a foreclosure wave under
the guise of helping homeowners. Though 58 percent of Americans were in favor of government action
to halt foreclosures, Obama's administration balked. And voters noticed. Fewer than four in 10
Americans were happy with his economic policies this time last year (though that was an all-time
high for Obama). And by Election Day, 75 percent of voters were looking for someone who could
take the country back "from the rich and powerful," something unlikely to be done by members of
the party that let the financiers behind the 2008 financial crisis walk free.
This isn't to say voters are, on balance, any more thrilled with what Republicans have to offer,
nor should they be. But that doesn't guarantee Democrats easy wins. Throughout American history,
when voters have felt abandoned by both parties, turnout has collapsed - and 2016, scraping along
20-year turnout lows, was no exception. Turnout in the Rust Belt , where Clinton's path to victory
dissolved, was especially low in comparison to 2012.
Trump, who is either tremendously lucky or worryingly perceptive, ran his campaign like a pre-1930s
Republican. He did best in rural areas, uniting white farmers, white industrial workers and certain
parts of big business behind tariffs and anti-immigration walls. While it's impossible to know
what he will really do for these voters, the coalition he summoned has a long, if not recent,
history in America.
Democrats have long believed that theirs is the party of the people. Therefore, when Trump
co-opts populist language, such as saying he represents the "forgotten" man, it seems absurd -
and it is. After all, that's what Democrats do, right? Thus, many Democrats have assumed that
Trump's appeal can only be explained by personal bigotry - and it's also true that Trump trafficks
in racist and nativist rhetoric. But the reality is that the Democratic Party has been slipping
away from the working class for some time, and Obama's presidency hastened rather than reversed
that departure. Republicans, hardly worker-friendly themselves, simply capitalized on it.
There's history here: In the 1970s, a wave of young liberals, Bill Clinton among them, destroyed
the populist Democratic Party they had inherited from the New Dealers of the 1930s. The contours
of this ideological fight were complex, but the gist was: Before the '70s, Democrats were suspicious
of big business. They used anti-monopoly policies to fight oligarchy and financial manipulation.
Creating competition in open markets, breaking up concentrations of private power, and protecting
labor and farmer rights were understood as the essence of ensuring that our commercial society
was democratic and protected from big money.
Bill Clinton's generation, however, believed that concentration of financial power could be
virtuous, as long as that power was in the hands of experts. They largely dismissed the white
working class as a bastion of reactionary racism. Fred Dutton, who served on the McGovern-Fraser
Commission in 1970 , saw the white working class as "a major redoubt of traditional Americanism
and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote." This paved the way for the creation of the modern Democratic
coalition. Obama is simply the latest in a long line of party leaders who have bought into the
ideology of these "new" Democrats, and he has governed likewise, with commercial policies that
ravaged the heartland.
As a result, while our culture has become more tolerant over the past 40 years, power in our
society has once again been concentrated in the hands of a small group of billionaires. You can
see this everywhere, if you look. Warren Buffett, who campaigned with Hillary Clinton, recently
purchased chunks of the remaining consolidated airlines, which have the power not only to charge
you to use the overhead bin but also to kill cities simply by choosing to fly elsewhere. Internet
monopolies increasingly control the flow of news and media revenue. Meatpackers have re-created
a brutal sharecropper-type system of commercial exploitation. And health insurers, drugstores
and hospitals continue to consolidate, partially as a response to Obamacare and its lack of a
public option for health coverage.
Many Democrats ascribe problems with Obama's policies to Republican opposition. The president
himself does not. "Our policies are so awesome," he once told staffers. "Why can't you guys do
a better job selling them?" The problem, in other words, is ideological.
Many Democrats think that Trump supporters voted against their own economic interests. But
voters don't want concentrated financial power that deigns to redistribute some cash, along with
weak consumer protection laws. They want jobs. They want to be free to govern themselves. Trump
is not exactly pitching self-government. But he is offering a wall of sorts to protect voters
against neo-liberals who consolidate financial power, ship jobs abroad and replace paychecks with
food stamps. Democrats should have something better to offer working people. If they did, they
could have won in November. In the wreckage of this last administration, they didn't.
"... The US nomenclatura is embarked on a massive media campaign to divert and reframe the election issues away from the economic and inequality concerns expressed by the Sanders campaign. No "break up the banks", no "free public college", no "medicare for all", no campaign funding reform. ..."
"... At the moment, the Democratic Party is structurally fragile and its members have shied away from the kind of radical upheaval Republicans have been forced to embrace. Nonetheless, Democrats will soon face enormously risky decisions. ..."
"... I do wonder how years went by with no one in the Obama administration wavering from their belief that they couldn't prosecute any of the banksters. These didn't just make bad loans. They stole homes. If you're going to steal, steal big, has long been the lesson. ..."
The US nomenclatura is embarked on a massive media campaign to divert and reframe the election
issues away from the economic and inequality concerns expressed by the Sanders campaign. No "break
up the banks", no "free public college", no "medicare for all", no campaign funding reform.
For a while we had the Russian hacking accusations, which have suddenly gone dormant (will we
ever get proof?). Now we have divide and conquer identity issues. But no proposed alternatives to
Trump for curing our economic malaise along the lines suggested by Sanders.
We are headed back to business as usual, with the right fighting the so-called center left (our
two neoliberal factions) for dominance. Apparently conditions have not deteriorated enough yet for
a populist uprising. How much more does it take before we reach a critical mass?
Some change is happening. Even Cuomo is now seeking the seal of approval from Bernie for supporting
a new college tuition plan for families making less than $125,000.
It's going to be a slow process though. There is a group within the Democratic Party that is
on the way out historically, and they want to do nothing other than turn the Party's politics
into nothing but vendettas, distraction and obstruction.
This is classic Cuomo. Give a bit to the right - then a bit to the left. Of course the ultra-rich
Uppity East Siders are whining we can't afford this while the Green Party is upset it does not
also cover food and rent. You can't win in NYC politics no matter what you do.
" At the moment, the Democratic Party is structurally fragile and its members have shied
away from the kind of radical upheaval Republicans have been forced to embrace. Nonetheless, Democrats
will soon face enormously risky decisions.
Does the party move left, as a choice of Keith Ellison for D.N.C. chairman would suggest? Does
it wait for internecine conflict to emerge among Republicans as Trump and his allies fulfill campaign
promises - repealing Obamacare, enacting tax reform and deporting millions of undocumented aliens?"
It's funny how there has been no discussion of the DNC chair contest, and yet the progressive
neoliberals here still whine that the forum isn't an echo chamber which reflects their views.
And then they fantasize about banning people with whom they disagree.
State governments famously (or infamously) give away billions in tax breaks to lure in firms that
make jobs. 19 Republican governors -- by rejecting Medicaid expansion -- have rejected TAKING
IN federal tax money to generate good medical jobs, not to mention the multiplier effect of new
spending ...
.. and it's the states' own money that they sent to the federal government that they don't
want to TAKE BACK ...
... oh, almost forgot; it's good for uninsured poor people too (almost forgot about that).
There was a reason why the Annapolis Convention that led almost directly to the Constitutional
convention was organized on the need to stop interjurisdictional competition in the favoring of
commercial interests so as to favor uniform commerce rules across the US, should the national
legislature exercise on the matter.
I sure like competition, recognize the federal system as a having great socio-political value,
even appreciate non-uniformity until it grabs the attention of more thoughtful view (experimentation),
but more and more I think Congress should enact the law to proscribe these crony actions by States.
Many politicians, and I've worked with many at the State level would appreciate it if these pandering
and favoring pleadings just went away.
Fed Officials See Faster Economic Growth Under Trump, but No Boom
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
JAN. 4, 2017
"Ms. Yellen has warned that fiscal stimulus, like a tax cut or a spending increase, could increase
economic growth to an unsustainable pace in the near term, resulting in increased inflation. The
Fed quite likely would seek to offset such policies by raising interest rates more quickly."
Progressive neoliberalism...
And Alan Blinder said Hillary's fiscal plans wouldn't be large enough to cause the Fed to alter
its path of rate hikes.
And Trump promised more better infrastructure like clean airports.
An update on the Chevy Cruze controversy. US consumption was 194,500 vehicles with 190,000 made
here in the US. That's 97.7% of them being produced locally. Tweet that.
I do wonder how years went by with no one in the Obama administration wavering from their belief
that they couldn't prosecute any of the banksters. These didn't just make bad loans. They stole homes. If you're going to steal, steal big, has long been the lesson.
Can you spend time on the republicans too?
Just asking for a little balance. You and I both share a dismay about the last eight years
and the presidential campaign. Your energy focused on the party in power now, even a bit, would
probably be helpful.
How the Obama Coalition Crumbled, Leaving an Opening for
Trump
Nate Cohn
DEC. 23, 2016
....
Mr. Trump's gains among white working-class voters
weren't simply caused by Democrats staying home on
Election Day.
The Clinton team knew what was wrong from the start,
according to a Clinton campaign staffer and other
Democrats. Its models, based on survey data, indicated
that they were underperforming Mr. Obama in less-educated
white areas by a wide margin - perhaps 10 points or more -
as early as the summer.
The campaign looked back to respondents who were
contacted in 2012, and found a large number of white
working-class voters who had backed Mr. Obama were now
supporting Mr. Trump.
...
Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump ran against the establishment
- and against a candidate who embodied it far more than
John McCain or Mr. Romney did. The various allegations
against Mrs. Clinton neatly complemented the notion that
she wasn't out to help ordinary Americans.
Taken together, Mr. Trump's views on immigration,
trade, China, crime, guns and Islam all had considerable
appeal to white working-class Democratic voters, according
to Pew Research data. It was a far more appealing message
than old Republican messages about abortion, same-sex
marriage and the social safety net.
...
Mrs. Clinton's gains were concentrated among the most
affluent and best-educated white voters, much as Mr.
Trump's gains were concentrated among the lowest-income
and least-educated white voters.
She gained 17 points among white postgraduates,
according to Upshot estimates, but just four points among
whites with a bachelor's degree.
There was a similar pattern by income. Over all, she
picked up 24 points among white voters with a degree
making more than $250,000, according to the exit polls,
while she made only slight gains among those making less
than $100,000 per year.
These gains helped her win huge margins in the most
well-educated and prosperous liberal bastions of the new
economy, like Manhattan, Silicon Valley, Washington,
Seattle, Chicago and Boston. There, Mrs. Clinton ran up
huge margins in traditionally liberal enclaves and stamped
out nearly every last wealthy precinct that supported the
Republicans.
Scarsdale, N.Y., voted for Mrs. Clinton by 57 points,
up from Mr. Obama's 18-point win. You could drive a full
30 miles through the leafy suburbs northwest of Boston
before reaching a town where Mr. Trump hit 20 percent of
the vote. She won the affluent east-side suburbs of
Seattle, like Mercer Island, Bellevue and Issaquah, by
around 50 points - doubling Mr. Obama's victory.
Every old-money Republican enclave of western
Connecticut, like Darien and Greenwich, voted for Mrs.
Clinton, in some cases swinging 30 points in her
direction. Every precinct of Winnetka and Glencoe, Ill.,
went to Mrs. Clinton as well.
Her gains were nearly as impressive in affluent
Republican suburbs, like those edging west of Kansas City,
Mo., and Houston; north of Atlanta, Dallas and Columbus,
Ohio; or south of Charlotte, N.C., and Los Angeles in
Orange County. Mrs. Clinton didn't always win these
affluent Republican enclaves, but she made big gains.
But the narrowness of Mrs. Clinton's gains among
well-educated voters helped to concentrate her support in
the coasts and the prosperous but safely Republican Sun
Belt. It left her short in middle-class,
battleground-state suburbs, like those around
Philadelphia, Detroit and Tampa, Fla., where far fewer
workers have a postgraduate degree, make more than
$100,000 per year or work in finance, science or
technology.
"... George Soros saw America in terms of its centers of economic and political power. He didn't care about the vast stretches of small towns and villages, of the more modest cities that he might fly over in his jet but never visit, and the people who lived in them. Like so many globalists who believe that borders shouldn't exist because the luxury hotels and airports they pass through are interchangeable, the parts of America that mattered to him were in the glittering left-wing bubble inhabited by his fellow elitists. ..."
"... Trump's victory, like Brexit, came because the neoliberals had left the white working class behind. Its vision of the future as glamorous multicultural city states was overturned in a single night. The idea that Soros had committed so much power and wealth to was of a struggle between populist nationalists and responsible internationalists. But, in a great irony, Bush was hardly the nationalist that Soros believed. Instead Soros spent a great deal of time and wealth to unintentionally elect a populist nationalist. ..."
"... Soros fed a political polarization while assuming, wrongly, that the centers of power mattered, and their outskirts did not. He was proven wrong in both the United States of America and in the United Kingdom. He had made many gambles that paid off. But his biggest gamble took everything with it. ..."
"... They sold their souls for campaign dollars and look what it got them. lmfao. ..."
"... I wouldn't give Soros that much credit. Sure, he helped, but face it, mainstream corporate media is now the Ministry of Truth. And both the Democrat and Republican elites have been working overtime in the last 16 years to dismantle the Constitution and Bill of Rights. ..."
"... The Deplorables at least understand they have been betrayed by BOTH parties. ..."
"... I'm guessing that even without the billionaire polarizing meddler Soros, the limousine liberal group, made up of the crooked Clintons, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Washerwoman-Schitz, Chuck 'the fuck' Schumer and the Obamas, was more than enough to sink a very divided, primary election-rigged Democrat Party ..."
"... Neoliberal lobbyists have successfully co-opted the policies & talking points of the center-left over the last two decades, and in so doing, poisoned progressive politics with a deep affinity for Wall Street, financialization, and free trade. Under neoliberalism, equality for all took a back seat to representational diversity within Western popular culture, redistribution was repurposed to include corporate welfare programs & taxpayer funded bail-outs for banks, and tolerance became increasingly subdued by identity politics. ..."
"... It was the takeover by neoliberalism that heralded the beginning of the end for Social Democracy. Nothing else. The consequences of this neoliberal-sized myopia, stupidity & hubris include historically low levels of trust in public institutions, and a rapidly rising tide of right-wing populism & ethnic nationalism across the West. Neoliberal policy is responsible for the current state of affairs in our societies; ergo, its advocates & pundits are to be held accountable for such events as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. This fully includes legally accountable. ..."
"... Neoliberals control by divide and conquer tactics. ..."
"... I make a salient point about the detrimental influence of neoliberal & corporate lobbying on society, and soon after a troll appears to try divert attention away from the class struggle, and channel it right back to identity politics and the scapegoating of ethnic/religious minorities. It brings to mind the following quote, actually: ..."
"... " Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacificsts for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. " - Hermann Goering ..."
"... It makes one wonder what else neoliberals and the far-right might have in common beyond the mutual adoration for corporate welfare & racial hierarchy. ..."
"... Your corporate & neoliberal sponsors are the inheritors & beneficiaries of these " American legacies". And judging by the events of the 2008 financial crisis, they are far from being done with destroying the lives of people they somehow deem inherently "inferior". ..."
"... And, if you were to give any kind of balance to your comments, you'd refer to "leftists" like Brzezinski, Carter, Rubin, Billary Clinton, Summers and Jay Rockefeller as neoliberals. ..."
"... yep, soros is finishing the job begun by Scoop Jackson and the DLC. "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties" - G. Wallace 1968. He was right then, even more correct in 2014 ..."
"... Please. He was 14 and a half when the Nazis surrendered in Budapest (where he lived). Soros may be pernicious, but drop this "Nazi collaborator" bullshit. ..."
"... The Dems a party of "radical leftists"?? Are you kidding me? they are a bunch of corrupt liars at every party level that has even a slight real influence on state or national policies, by and large. The same ist true for the republicans. ..."
"... Oh, and Soros is no leftist billionaire either. He is a globalist, elitist NWO world government crook who wants to enslave mankind for his own personal enrichment no matter what. ..."
"... His "open society" and "reflexivity" bullsh!t is just some empty talk and blabbering to fool and deceive people. ..."
"... His only "principle" and "ideology" is "Soros first". he has more money than he can ever spend in his remaining life span, yet he still cannot grab enough $$. Leftist? Not! ..."
"... Soros did a great job helping Oblivio and Hillary obliterate the Democratic Party. ..."
"... And nobody seems to discuss how Putin became Public Enemy Number One in the minds of the Dems after Russia put out a warrant on Soros. Coincidence? ..."
"... Soros was only part of the problem for the democrats, Mostly the blame falls on the ones that let it go into ruin. So blinded by the money, couldn't see the obvious. ..."
"... "They have financed both sides of every war since Napoleon. They own your news, the media, your oil and your government. Yet most of you don't even know who they are. ..."
"... The corrupt avarice of the Clintons and the Chicago Mafia were all that was needed to complete the complete destruction. ..."
"... I can think of no finer display of corrupt pettiness than how they have acted since the election. And to think they almost ended up running this country. It does appear as if the Fortunes shine upon us. Time will tell. ..."
"... Kinda like all the "russian hacking" nonsense. The neoliberals bitches and moans about foreign interference in our election, but their entire national strategy relies upon same. ..."
"... Also funny how the democrat party has allowed itself to become the big money, corporate party. They rely on billionaire money to operate. All that money spend and they still couldn't get killery her crown. I never thought Id say this, but it looks like we all owe old georgie a big thank you for what he did. I doubt the germans would feel the same, but him destroying the neoliberals trying to remake it in his imagine did us a big favor this time around. ..."
"... Destroying political parties is the easiest thing on the world, as they are completely populated by greedy sociopaths. ..."
"... The neoliberals needs demons as they don't have an actual platform that is economically feasible. Unfettered immigrants coming in coupled with jobs leaving isn't sustainable. The old saying "we make it up in volume" applies. ..."
"... The Washington Post is now referred to as Bezos' Blog. Get with the program, man. ..."
"... If Trump is moderately successful in draining the swamp I think that bodes poorly for the neocon warmongering old guard wing of the party. And that is a good thing if it happens. ..."
"... The neocons can easily move over to the Democratic Party. Some of them already are. The Democrats would welcome them. ..."
"... Actually, that is where they came from. Bill Kristol sr., Perle, etc. were democrats until democrats became the anti war party in the 60's of George McGovern, they couldn't abide with that so they moved to the republican party which was historically more isolationist and anti war, because war was bad for business. ..."
"... Funny how you forgot the military-industrial complex, wall street, healthcare scam etc. That's where most of it goes, but they keep the sheeple blaming the poor. ..."
It was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office
records. You couldn't set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling,
"Oops, I Did It Again." And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures
in the same amount of states. That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000.
In 2016, Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states. That's up from 16 in 2000.
What happened to the big donkey? Among other things, the Democrats decided to sell their base
and their soul to a very bad billionaire and they got a very bad deal for both.
... ... ...
Obama's wins concealed the scale and scope of the disaster. Then the party woke up after Obama
to realize that it had lost its old bases in the South and the Rust Belt. the neoliberals had hollowed it
out and transformed it into a party of coastal urban elites, angry college crybullies and minority
coalitions.
Republicans
control twice as many state legislative chambers as the Democrats. They
boast 25 trifectas
, controlling both legislative chambers and the governor's mansion. Trifectas had gone from being
something that wasn't seen much outside of a few hard red states like Texas to covering much of the
South, the Midwest and the West.
The Democrats have a solid lock on the West Coast and a narrow corridor of the Northeast, and
little else. The vast majority of the
country's legislatures are in Republican hands. The Democrat Governor's Association has a membership
in the teens. In former strongholds like Arkansas, Dems are going extinct. The party has gone from
holding national legislative
majorities to becoming a marginal movement.
... Much of this disaster had been funded with Soros money. Like many a theatrical villain, the
old monster had been undone by his own hubris. Had Soros aided the Democrats without trying to control
them, he would have gained a seat at the table in a national party. Instead he spent a fortune destroying
the very thing he was trying to control.
George Soros saw America in terms of its centers of economic and political power. He didn't care
about the vast stretches of small towns and villages, of the more modest cities that he might fly
over in his jet but never visit, and the people who lived in them. Like so many globalists who believe
that borders shouldn't exist because the luxury hotels and airports they pass through are interchangeable,
the parts of America that mattered to him were in the glittering left-wing bubble inhabited by his
fellow elitists.
Trump's victory, like Brexit, came because the neoliberals had left the white working class behind. Its
vision of the future as glamorous multicultural city states was overturned in a single night. The
idea that Soros had committed so much power and wealth to was of a struggle between populist nationalists
and responsible internationalists. But, in a great irony, Bush was hardly the nationalist that Soros
believed. Instead Soros spent a great deal of time and wealth to unintentionally elect a populist
nationalist.
... ... ...
Soros fed a political polarization while assuming, wrongly, that the centers of power mattered,
and their outskirts did not. He was proven wrong in both the United States of America and in the
United Kingdom. He had made many gambles that paid off. But his biggest gamble took everything with
it.
"I don't believe in standing in the way of an avalanche," Soros complained of the Republican wave
in 2010.
But he has been trying to do just that. And failing.
"There should be consequences for the outrageous statements and proposals that we've regularly
heard from candidates Trump and Cruz,"
Soros threatened this time around. He predicted a Hillary landslide.
I wouldn't give Soros that much credit.
Sure, he helped, but face it, mainstream corporate media is now the Ministry of Truth. And both the Democrat and Republican elites have been working overtime in the last 16 years
to dismantle the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The Deplorables at least understand they have been betrayed by BOTH parties.
I'm guessing that even without the billionaire polarizing meddler Soros, the limousine liberal
group, made up of the crooked Clintons, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Washerwoman-Schitz, Chuck
'the fuck' Schumer and the Obamas, was more than enough to sink a very divided, primary election-rigged
Democrat Party
" they ditched the working man to court the various hate groups - nyc skype, gay, black, illegal,
globalist warmers, etc "
Inclusive politics are not at the root of the crisis which the center-left is now experiencing
on both sides of the Atlantic. Neoliberalism is.
Neoliberal lobbyists have successfully co-opted the policies & talking points of the center-left
over the last two decades, and in so doing, poisoned progressive politics with a deep affinity
for Wall Street, financialization, and free trade. Under neoliberalism, equality for all took
a back seat to representational diversity within Western popular culture, redistribution was repurposed
to include corporate welfare programs & taxpayer funded bail-outs for banks, and tolerance became
increasingly subdued by identity politics.
Today, we witness this phenomenon across all major center-left parties & their associated media
pundits. A prominent example would be the vocal support that mainstream neoliberal outlets, such
as the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and The Economist, are consistently offering to the Social
Democratic parties & candidates. These neoliberal platforms take on a public profile of social
radicalism on key social issues, while they relentlessly advocate for unfettered free trade and
a form of laissez faire capitalism at the same time.
It was the takeover by neoliberalism that heralded the beginning of the end for Social Democracy.
Nothing else. The consequences of this neoliberal-sized myopia, stupidity & hubris include historically
low levels of trust in public institutions, and a rapidly rising tide of right-wing populism &
ethnic nationalism across the West. Neoliberal policy is responsible for the current state of
affairs in our societies; ergo, its advocates & pundits are to be held accountable for such events
as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. This fully includes legally accountable.
Erik, when haven't England and the US been governed by neoliberals? Neoliberals control by divide
and conquer tactics. In the US, elections have always been rural vs city, young vs old, white
vs non-white. Even when Obama won, he didn't win the white vote, the rural vote or the old vote.
Brexit, too, was about young vs old, rural vs city and white vs non-white.
In the big national elections, it comes down to which sides get out the vote. In the case of
the Presidential election, the Democrats, who couldn't have picked a more entitled, crooked and
repulsive candidate, just couldn't get out enough of their own vote out her. In the case of the
Brexit election, it was the fear of the non-urban whites being over run by immigrants, that made
the difference.
I make a salient point about the detrimental influence of neoliberal & corporate lobbying on society,
and soon after a troll appears to try divert attention away from the class struggle, and channel
it right back to identity politics and the scapegoating of ethnic/religious minorities. It brings
to mind the following quote, actually:
" Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is
easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacificsts for
lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. "
- Hermann Goering
Your corporate & neoliberal sponsors are the inheritors & beneficiaries of these " American
legacies". And judging by the events of the 2008 financial crisis, they are far from being done
with destroying the lives of people they somehow deem inherently "inferior".
Perhaps the legacies of class warfare & racial hierarchy should end.
EML, would it kill you to be a bit more balanced in your comments? You always end up with a rant
about the "far-right" and "identity politics". Do you deny that the far left constantly disparages
Jews and working class whites, who these leftists refer to as "white trash" and "trailer trash"?
And, if you were to give any kind of balance to your comments, you'd refer to "leftists" like Brzezinski,
Carter, Rubin, Billary Clinton, Summers and Jay Rockefeller as neoliberals. Try not being such
a polarizing one-trick pony, or at least save yourself time by using the term, 'ditto' for your
posts, since most of your posts appear to be redundant pleas for negative attention.
Hermann Goering, please. Now you are resorting to Godwin's Law. How pathetic.
yep, soros is finishing the job begun by Scoop Jackson and the DLC. "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties" -
G. Wallace 1968. He was right then, even more correct in 2014
Please. He was 14 and a half when the Nazis surrendered in Budapest (where he lived). Soros may be pernicious, but drop this "Nazi collaborator" bullshit.
The Dems a party of "radical leftists"?? Are you kidding me? they are a bunch of corrupt liars
at every party level that has even a slight real influence on state or national policies, by and
large. The same ist true for the republicans.
Oh, and Soros is no leftist billionaire either.
He is a globalist, elitist NWO world government crook who wants to enslave mankind for his own
personal enrichment no matter what.
His "open society" and "reflexivity" bullsh!t is just some
empty talk and blabbering to fool and deceive people.
He sold out his fellow jews to the Nazis
back in the dark times of the 1930s/1940s; he virtually delivered them to the Nazio slaughterhouse
and never ever regretted it. He is doing and always will do the same to everybody else.
His only
"principle" and "ideology" is "Soros first". he has more money than he can ever spend in his remaining
life span, yet he still cannot grab enough $$. Leftist? Not!
Putin showed the world that you could aspire towards Christian nationhood, and take yourselves
out from under the debt enslaved thumb of Zoinist Rothchild Bankers. For that he must be stopped.
Soros was only part of the problem for the democrats, Mostly the blame falls on the ones that
let it go into ruin. So blinded by the money, couldn't see the obvious.
"They have financed both sides of every war since Napoleon.
They own your news, the media, your oil and your government. Yet most of you don't even know who they are."
Actually, I find this post to be a very accurate summation of what the 2016 election turned
out to be. It is true that it was not Soros alone who created the evil that was done, but he was
the money bags behind it.
The corrupt avarice of the Clintons and the Chicago Mafia were all that
was needed to complete the complete destruction. What is disturbing is how incapable those whose
guilt is writ in this fiasco are of coming to terms with their very own failures. All you see
them do is try to blame others for their iniquities.
I can think of no finer display of corrupt
pettiness than how they have acted since the election. And to think they almost ended up running
this country. It does appear as if the Fortunes shine upon us. Time will tell.
Since it came from Soros, Its "good" influence. Its only bad when such things hurt democrats.
Kinda like all the "russian hacking" nonsense. The neoliberals bitches and moans about foreign interference
in our election, but their entire national strategy relies upon same.
They import millions of
foreigners who overwhelmingly vote democrat. They wouldn't stand a chance in a national election
without a shitload of non americans voting. How exactly that isn't defined as 'foreign interference
in our elections' is beyond me.
Also funny how the democrat party has allowed itself to become the big money, corporate party.
They rely on billionaire money to operate. All that money spend and they still couldn't get killery
her crown. I never thought Id say this, but it looks like we all owe old georgie a big thank you
for what he did. I doubt the germans would feel the same, but him destroying the neoliberals trying to
remake it in his imagine did us a big favor this time around.
Also have to thank Soros for Black Lives Matter. When the revolution comes, there will be
a bunch of cops on our side, and most of the angry nutbags who kill random cops will be black,
which means there will be even more cops on our side.
Within a few years maybe we will thank Soros for a fascist Europe and the giant enema which
will follow. And the Farce will come full circle for this devil who got his start betraying
his own people to the Nazis so he could steal their shit.
"Excerpts from Perfidy are printed below. We begin with Adolf Eichmann's testimonial to Kastner's
activities, which Hecht quoted from "Eichmann's Confessions" published in the November 28 and
December 5, 1960 editions of LIFE magazine.
In Hungary my basic orders were to ship all the Jews out of Hungary in as short a time as possible.
. . . In obedience to Himmler's directive, I now concentrated on negotiations with the Jewish
political officials in Budapest . . . among them Dr. Rudolf Kastner, authorized representative
of the Zionist Movement. This Dr. Kastner was a young man about my age, an ice-cold lawyer and
a fanatical Zionist. He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation -- and even keep
order in the collection camps -- if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand
young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine.
It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price . . . was not too high for
me ....We trusted each other perfectly. When he was with me, Kastner smoked cigarets as though
he were in a coffeehouse. While we talked he would smoke one aromatic cigaret after another, taking
them from a silver case and lighting them with a silver lighter. With his great polish and reserve
he would have made an ideal Gestapo officer himself.Dr. Kastner's main concern was to make it
possible for a select group of Hungarian Jews to emigrate to Israel. . . .
As a matter of fact, there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the S.S. and
the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders . . . . I believe that Kastner would
have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal. .
. . "You can have the others," he would say, "but let me have this group here." And because Kastner
rendered us a great service by helping to keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his
group escape. After all, I was not concerned with small groups of a thousand or so Jews. . . .
That was the "gentleman's agreement" I had with the Jews. (p.261) - See more at:
https://www.henrymakow.com/2013/11/Zionists-Sacrificed-Jews-in-Holocaust...
Everyone, especially politicians. Destroying political parties is the easiest thing on the
world, as they are completely populated by greedy sociopaths. As long as they are getting
rich they are "winning".
The Koch brothers stayed out of the fray as they do not like Trump. The neoliberals tried to make
the Kochs a demon but no one was buying the bullshit. The neoliberals needs demons as they don't
have an actual platform that is economically feasible. Unfettered immigrants coming in coupled
with jobs leaving isn't sustainable. The old saying "we make it up in volume" applies.
Not this year really. They were not behind Trump, supported HRC if I am not mistaken, after Trump
won the nomination.
Thing about the Krotch brothers that is different from Soros is they try to influence thing
to benefit themselves financially, not necessarily to destroy the country, where Soros is flat
out anti traditional American values and US constitution. The constitution is the only thing that
has kept us from being a full blown totalitarian state run by global government so far, so it
has to be destroyed in his mind.
I could be wrong, but don't think the Krotch brothers are out to destroy the constitution,
just obscenely enrich themselves bordering on illegally.
Russians put the weeds in your lawn ... at night. Soros has always been a major problem for the
entire world, and that is why the news will be very interesting this year, because everyone knows.
Happy new year.
Goodbye, Democratic Party. See you maybe in 16 years, but I doubt it. My guess is
a different party will be formed to challenge the Republicans in 2032, and the Democrats will
go the way of the Bull Moose Party, as in extinction.
The status of the national part of the Republican party seems a little up in the air to me.
If
Trump is moderately successful in draining the swamp I think that bodes poorly for the neocon
warmongering old guard wing of the party. And that is a good thing if it happens.
Actually, that is where they came from. Bill Kristol sr., Perle, etc. were democrats until democrats
became the anti war party in the 60's of George McGovern, they couldn't abide with that so they
moved to the republican party which was historically more isolationist and anti war, because war
was bad for business.
Then the self perpetuating MIC that Eisenhower warned of became ascendant
and then war was even more of a racket than it always was. Their influence came to the fore with
Bush Sr.
Reagan had some in his administration, but he fired many or moved them out of positions of
power when it came to his attention they were following their own agenda. And yet, he had enough
to convince him of the Iran contra stuff.
Funny how you forgot the military-industrial complex, wall street, healthcare scam etc. That's
where most of it goes, but they keep the sheeple blaming the poor.
"... If John Steinbeck could travel the West today as he traveled America three generations ago, leaving the highways to visit forgotten towns, documenting people's struggles as he did in "The Grapes of Wrath,'' he would find much the same to write about. Globalization and its masters have capitalized on enormous pay gaps between West and East, at a huge profit for them, and huge cost to others. ..."
"... The upper class has gained much more from the internationalization of trade and finances than the working class has, often in obscene ways. Bankers get bonuses despite making idiotic decisions that trigger staggering losses. ..."
"... Giant enterprises like Facebook or Apple pay minimal taxes, while blue-collar workers have to labor harder - even taking a second or third job - to maintain their standard of living. ..."
"... In Germany, some 60 percent of A.F.D. supporters say globalization has "mainly negative" effects. We live in a world, the liberal British historian Timothy Garton Ash noted lately, "which would have Marx rubbing his hands with Schadenfreude." ..."
"... When Hillary Clinton calls half of Mr. Trump's voters a "basket of deplorables," she sounds as aloof as Marie Antoinette, telling French subjects who had no bread to "eat cake." ..."
"... In Germany a recent poll showed that only 14 percent of the citizens trusted the politicians. ..."
We have a word in German, "Wutbürger," which means "angry citizen" - though like many German compound
words, its meaning can never quite be captured in a pithy English translation. And yet nothing in
either language quite frames this current political moment.
It is a relatively new expression, with a derogatory connotation. A Wutbürger rages against a
new train station and tilts against wind turbines. Wutbürgers came out in protest after the Berlin
government decided to bail out Greece and to accept roughly one million refugees and migrants into
Germany.
Wutbürgers lie at both ends of the political spectrum; they flock to the right-wing Alternative
für Deutschland (A.F.D.) and the socialist Linke (Left) Party. The left wing has long had a place
in German politics, and the Linke has deep roots in the former East Germany's ruling party. And we've
had a fringe right wing since the postwar period began. But the populist anger of the A.F.D. is something
new: Anti-establishment, anti-European Union and anti-globalization, the A.F.D. didn't exist four
years ago. Today, 18 percent of Germans would consider voting for it.
The same thing is happening elsewhere in Europe: Many British Wutbürgers voted for Brexit. French
Wutbürgers will vote for Marine Le Pen's National Front. Perhaps the most powerful Wutbürger of them
all is Donald J. Trump.
Which raises the question: How was anger hijacked?
In its pure form, anger is a wonderful force of change. Just imagine a world without anger. In
Germany, without the anger of the labor movement, we would still have a class-based voting system
that privileged the wealthy, and workers would still toil 16 hours a day without pension rights.
Britain and France would still be ruled by absolute monarchs. The Iron Curtain would still divide
Europe, the United States would still be a British colony and its slaves could only dream of casting
a vote this Nov. 8.
Karl Marx was a Wutbürger. So were Montesquieu, William Wilberforce, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. and the tens of thousands of Eastern German protesters who brought down the Berlin Wall
in 1989.
Now: Compare these spirits to the current parties claiming to stand for necessary change. Mr.
Trump vs. Dr. King. Sadly, the leaders of today's Wutbürger movements never grasped the difference
between anger driven by righteousness and anger driven by hate.
Anger works like gasoline. If you use it intelligently and in a controlled manner, you can move
the world. That's called progress. Or you just spill it about and ignite it, creating spectacular
explosions. That's called arson.
Unfortunately, a lack of maturity and prudence today exists among not just the new populist class,
but parts of the political establishment. The governing class needs to understand that just because
people are embittered and paranoid doesn't mean they don't have a case. A growing number of voters
are going into meltdown because they believe that politicians - and journalists - don't see what
they see.
Sure, the injustices they see are, in historical perspective, less stark and obvious than in the
days of Marx or King. The injustices of today are smaller, but they are more complex. And this is
what makes them all the more terrifying.
If John Steinbeck could travel the West today as he traveled America three generations ago,
leaving the highways to visit forgotten towns, documenting people's struggles as he did in "The Grapes
of Wrath,'' he would find much the same to write about. Globalization and its masters have capitalized
on enormous pay gaps between West and East, at a huge profit for them, and huge cost to others.
The upper class has gained much more from the internationalization of trade and finances than
the working class has, often in obscene ways. Bankers get bonuses despite making idiotic decisions
that trigger staggering losses.
Giant enterprises like Facebook or Apple pay minimal taxes, while blue-collar workers have
to labor harder - even taking a second or third job - to maintain their standard of living.
And this is as true in Germany, France or Austria as it is in Ohio or Florida.
In Germany, some 60 percent of A.F.D. supporters say globalization has "mainly negative" effects.
We live in a world, the liberal British historian Timothy Garton Ash noted lately, "which would have
Marx rubbing his hands with Schadenfreude."
The grievances of white, often less-educated voters on both sides of the Atlantic are often dismissed
as xenophobic, simplistic hillbillyism. But doing so comes at a cost. Europe's traditional force
of social change, its social democrats, appear to just not get it. When Hillary Clinton calls
half of Mr. Trump's voters a "basket of deplorables," she sounds as aloof as Marie Antoinette, telling
French subjects who had no bread to "eat cake." In Germany, a deputy Social Democrat leader,
Ralf Stegner, displays a similar arrogance when he calls A.F.D. supporters "racists" and "skunks."
Media reports often convey the same degree of contempt.
In Germany a recent poll showed that only 14 percent of the citizens trusted the politicians.
This is an alarming figure, in a country where faith in a progressive, democratic government has
been a cornerstone of our postwar peace. But this presumes that legitimate anger will be acknowledged
as such. If this faith is rattled, democracy loses its basic promise.
Amid their mutual finger-pointing, neither populist nor established parties acknowledge that both
are squandering people's anger, either by turning this anger into counterproductive hatred or by
denouncing and dismissing it. Mrs. Clinton has the chance to change, by leading a political establishment
that examines and processes anger instead of merely producing and dismissing it. If she does, let's
hope Europe once again looks to America as a model for democracy.
Jochen Bittner is a political editor for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a contributing
opinion writer.
"... Obama campaigned on change and vague promises, but still change. Instead he normalized atrocities that most of us had been screaming about in the Bush administration AND he didn't just squander the opportunities he had to change our course domestically because of the crash and the majorities in Congress, no he couldn't throw those away fast enough. ..."
"... Indeed. Bush was a known quantity. "Compassionate conservatism" was was blatantly hollow jingoism. My only surprise under W was how virulently evil Cheney was. ..."
"... The big O, though, was handed the opportunity to change the course of history. He took power with Wall Street on its knees. The whole world hungered for a change in course. Remember "never let a crisis go to waste". O turned Hope into blatantly hollow jingoism. ..."
"... Obama can be legitimately described as worse than Bush 43 because Obama ran as a "progressive" and flagrantly broke almost all of his promises and governed like a "Moderate" Republican. ..."
"... At the least, Bush, Sr. and Jr. ran as right wing politicos. The people basically got what they voted for with them. ..."
"... In August 1999, Barack Obama strolled amid the floats and bands making their way down Martin Luther King Drive on Chicago's South Side. Billed as the largest African-American parade in the country, the summer rite was a draw over the years to boxing heroes like Muhammad Ali and jazz greats like Duke Ellington. It was also a must-stop for the city's top politicians. ..."
"... Back then, Mr. Obama, a state senator who was contemplating a run for Congress, was so little-known in the community's black neighborhoods that it was hard to find more than a few dozen people to walk with him, recalled Al Kindle, one of his advisers at the time. Mr. Obama was trounced a year later in the Congressional race - branded as an aloof outsider more at home in the halls of Harvard than in the rough wards of Chicago politics. ..."
"... But by 2006, Mr. Obama had remade his political fortunes. He was a freshman United States senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on a long-shot White House run. When the parade wound its way through the South Side that summer, Mr. Obama was its grand marshal. ..."
"... A tight-knit community that runs through the South Side, Hyde Park is a liberal bastion of integration in what is otherwise one of the nation's most segregated cities. Mayor Washington had called it home, as did whites who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wealthy black entrepreneurs a generation removed from the civil rights battles of the 1960s. ..."
"... At its heart is the University of Chicago; at its borders are poor, predominately black neighborhoods blighted by rundown buildings and vacant lots. For Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a white Kansan mother and an African father and who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, it was a perfect fit. ..."
"... "He felt completely comfortable in Hyde Park," said Martha Minow, his former law professor and a mentor. "It's a place where you don't have to wear a label on your forehead. You can go to a bookstore and there's the homeless person and there's the professor." ..."
Now that 0bama is about to exit as US Pres, perhaps it is time to revisit the Who Is Worse: Bush43
v 0bama question.
Conventional wisdom among "Progressive" pundits, even good ones like SecularTalk, seems to be
"yes, 0bama is better than Bush43, but that is a very low bar, & not a real accomplishment. 0bama
still sucks".
IMHO, 0bama's relentless pursue of 1 Grand "Bargain" Ripoff & 2 TPP, may alone make him Even Worse
than Bush43, as far as to damage inflicted on USians had 0bama been successful in getting these 2
policies. 0bama tried for years getting these 2 policies enacted, whereas Bush43 tried quickly to
privatize SS but then forgot it, & IIRC enacted small trade deals (DR-CAFTA ?). Bush43 focus seemed
to be on neocon regime change & War On Terra TM, & even then IIRC around ~2006 Bush43 rejected some
of Darth Cheney's even more extremish neocon policy preferences, with Bush43 rejecting Cheney's desired
Iran War.
IMHO both policies would've incrementally killed thousands of USians annually, far more than 1S1S
or the Designated Foreign Boogeyman Du Jour TM could ever dream of. Grand Ripoff raising Medicare
eligibility age (IIRC 67 to 69+ ?) would kill many GenX & younger USians in the future. TPP's pharma
patent extensions would kill many USians, especially seniors. These incremental killings might exceed
the incremental life savings from the ACA (mainly ACA Adult Medicaid expansion). Furthemore, 0bama
could've potentially achieved MedicareForAll or Medicare Pt O – Public Option in ~2010 with Sen &
House D majorities, & 0bama deliberately killed these policies, as reported by FDL's Jane Hamsher
& others.
Bush43 indirectly killed USians in multiple ways, including Iraq War, War On Terra, & failing
to regulate fin svcs leading to the 2008 GFC; however it would seem that 0bama's Death Toll would
have been worse.
"What do you think?!" (c) Ed Schultz
How do Bush43 & 0bama compare to recent Presidents including Reagan & Clinton? What do you expect
of Trump? I'd guesstimate that if Trump implements P Ryan-style crapification of Medicare into an
ACA-like voucher system, that alone could render Trump Even Worse than 0bama & the other 1981-now
Reganesque Presidents.
It does seem like each President is getting Even Worse than the prior guy in this 21st Century.
#AmericanExceptionalism (exceptionally Crappy)
You hit the right priority of issues IMO, and would add a few bad things Obamanation did:
1). Bombing more nations than anyone in human history and being at war longer than any US President
ever, having never requested an end but in fact a continuation of a permanent state of war declared
by Congress.
2). The massive destruction of legal and constitutional rights from habeas corpus, illegal and
unconstitutional surveillance of all people, to asserting the right to imprison, torture, and assassinate
anyone anytime even America children just because Obama feels like doing it.
3). Austerity. This tanked any robust recovery from the 2008 recession and millions suffered because
of it, we are living with the affects even now. In fact Obamanation's deep mystical belief in austerity
helped defeat Clinton 2016.
HAMP. And not just ignoring bank mortgage fraud, but essentially enabling it and making it
the norm.
Deporting more people than Presidents before him.
Passing the Korea and Columbia free trade pacts, even lying about what the pact did to get the
Columbian one passed. KORUS alone made our trade deficit with Korea soar and lost an estimated
100,000 jobs in the US (and not those part time ones being created).
Had the chance to pass a real infrastructure repair/stimulus package, didn't.
Had the chance to put the Post Office in the black and even start a Postal Bank, didn't. Didn't
even work to get rid of the Post Office killing requirement to fund its pension 75 years out.
Furthering the erosion of our civil rights by making it legal to assassinate American citizens
without trial.
Instead of kneecapping the move to kill public education by requiring any charter school that
receives federal funding to be non-profit with real limits on allowable administrative costs,
expanded them AND expanded the testing boondoggle with Common Core.
Libya.
Expansion of our droning program.
While I do give him some credit for both the Iran deal and the attempt to rein in the Syria
mistake, I also have to take points away for not firing Carter and demoting or even bringing Votel
before a military court after their insubordination killing the ceasefire.
Should I continue. Bush was evil, Obama the more effective one.
Was that a disastrous choice? Certainly and it is a big one, but it also ignores how much of
the disastrous choices attached to that decision Barack H. Obama has either continued or expanded
upon. It also ignores how that war continues under Obama. Remember when we left Iraq? Oh, wait
we haven't we just aren't there in the previous numbers.
And what about Libya? You remember that little misadventure. Which added to our continued Saudi/Israeli
determined obsession with Syria has led to a massive refugee crisis in Europe. How many were killed
there. How much will that cost us fifteen years on?
I get that the quagmire was there before Obama. I also get that he began to get a clue late
in his administration to stop listening to the usual subjects in order to make it better. But
see that thing above about not firing people who undermined that new direction in Syria, and are
probably now some of the most pressing secret voices behind this disastrous Russia Hacked US bull.
But I think only focusing on the original decision also ignores how effective Obama has been
at normalize crime, corruption, torture and even assassination attached to those original choices
– something that Bush didn't manage (and that doesn't even consider the same decriminalization
and normalization done for and by the financial industry). Bush may have started the wheel down
the bumpy road, but Obama put rubber on the wheel and paved the road so now it is almost impossible
to stop the wheel.
As mentioned, Bush is a very low bar for comparison, and if that's the best presidential comparison
that can be made with Obama, then that says it all.
Mr. O long ago received my coveted Worst_President_Ever Award (and yes the judging included
Millard Fillmore and Andrew Johnson).
Handed the golden platter opportunity to repudiate the myriad policy disasters of Bush (which
as cited above cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives) he chose instead to continue them
absolutely unchanged, usually with the same personnel. Whether it was unprosecuted bank crime
in the tens of billions, foreign policy by drone bomb, health care mega-bezzle, hyper-spy tricks
on everyday Americans, and corporo-fascist globalist "trade" deals, Mr. O never disappointed his
Big Wall St, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Big Surveillance-Industrial Complex constituents.
Along the way he reversed the polarity of American politics, paving the way for a true corporo-fascist
to say the slightest thing that might be good for actual workers and get into the White House.
History will remember him as the president who lost Turkey and The Philippines, destroyed any
remaining shreds of credibility with utterly specious hacking claims and war crime accusations
of other nations, and presided over an era of hyper-concentration of billionaire wealth in a nation
where 70% of citizens would need to borrow to fund a $400 emergency. Those failures are now permanently
branded as "Democrat" failures. The jury is unanimous: Obama wins the award.
"HAMP. And not just ignoring bank mortgage fraud, but essentially enabling it and making it
the norm."
Exactly. That is #1 on my list making him worst president ever.
I would question "ever" simply because I know I don't know enough about the history of previous
presidents, and I doubt any of us do; even historians who focus on this kind of thing, supposing
we had any in our midst, might be hard put to it to review all 44 thoroughly.
I vote the mortgage fraud situation (see
Chain of Title by David
Dayen -not really a plug for the book) as the worst aspect of the Obama Administration. What
to say about it? Regular readers of this site are well versed in the details but one aspect of
it needs to be expounded upon; stand on the housetops and shout it kind of exposition: the mortgage
fraud worked on millions (3, 5, 7, maybe 12 million) shows that rule of law is now destroyed in
the land. Dictionary .com says this about the phrase
Rule of Law: the principle that all people and institutions are subject to and accountable
to law that is fairly applied and enforced; the principle of government by law.
* The government and its officials and agents as well as individuals and private entities
are accountable under the law.
* The laws are clear, publicized, stable, and just; are applied evenly; and protect fundamental
rights, including the security of persons and property and certain core human rights.
* The process by which the laws are enacted, administered, and enforced is accessible, fair,
and efficient.
* Justice is delivered timely by competent, ethical, and independent representatives and neutrals
who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities
they serve.
I would invite the reader to take a moment and apply those principles to what is known about
the situation concerning mortgage fraud worked on millions of homeowners during the past two decades.
The Justice Department's infamous attempts to cover up horribly harmful schemes worked by
the mortgage industry perpetrators involved the cruel irony of aiding and abetting systemic racism.
Not a lot was said in the popular press about the subject of reverse redlining but I'm convinced
by the preponderance of evidence that overly complicated mortgage products were taken into the
neighborhoods of Detroit (90% Black or Latin American, Hispanic) and foisted off on unsuspecting
homeowners. Those homeowners did not take accountants and lawyers with them to the signing but
that's how those schemes should have been approached; then most of those schemes would have hit
the trashcan. Many a charming snake oil salesman deserves innumerable nights of uncomfortable
rest for the work they did to destroy the neighborhoods of Detroit and of course many other neighborhoods
in many other cities. For this discussion I am making this a separate topic but I realize it is
connected to the overall financial skulduggery worked on us all by the FIRE sector.
However, let me return to the last principle promulgated by the World Justice Project pertaining
to Rule Of Law and focus on that: "Justice is delivered timely by competent, ethical, and independent
representatives and neutrals who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect
the makeup of the communities they serve." Now hear this: "are of sufficient number" for there,
and gentle reader, please take this to bed with you at the end of your day: we fail as a nation.
But look to the 'competent, ethical and independent' clause; we must vow to not sink into despair.
This subject is a constant struggle. Google has my back on this: Obama, during both campaigns
of '08 and '12, took millions from the very financial sector that he planned to not dismay and
then was in turn very busy directing the Attorney General of The United States, the highest law
officer in the country, to not prosecute. These very institutions that were in turn very busy
taking property worth billions. 12 million stolen homes multiplied times the average home value
= Trillions?
Finally, my main point here (I am really busy sharpening this ax, but it's a worthy ax) is
the issue of systemic racism- that the financial institutions in this country work long hours
to shackle members of minority neighborhoods into monetarily oppressive schemes in the form of
mortgages, car loans, credit cards and personal loans (think pay day scammers) and these same
makers of the shackles have the protection of the highest officials in the land. Remember the
pitchforks Obama inveighed? Irony of cruel ironies, two black men, both of whom appear to be of
honorable bearing, (Holder moved his chair right directly into the financiers, rent takers of
Covington & Burling ) work to cement the arrangements of racist, oppressive scammers who of
course also work their playbooks on other folks.
To finalize, the subject of rule of law that I have worked so assiduously to sharpen, applies
to all of the other topics we can consider as failures of the Obama Presidency. So besides racism
and systemic financial fraud we can turn to some top subjects that make '09 to '17 the nadir of
the political culture of the United States of America. Drone wars, unending war in the Middle
East, attempts to place a cloak of secrecy on the workings of the Federal Government, the reader
will have their own axes to sharpen but I maintain if the reader will fervently apply and dig
into the four principles outlined above, she, he, will agree that the principles outlining Rule
of Law have been replaced by Rule of the Person.
Here's one of many scholarly articles that reviews the subject of systemic racism in the finance
and mortgage industries.
Am Sociol Rev. 2010 October 1; 75(5): 629–651. doi:10.1177/0003122410380868
Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis
Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey
Office of Population Research, Princeton University
Arghhh, the server is apparently napping-more caffeine please for the cables.
Here's one of many scholarly articles that reviews the subject of systemic racism in the finance
and mortgage industries.
Am Sociol Rev. 2010 October 1; 75(5): 629–651. doi:10.1177/0003122410380868
Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis
Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey
Office of Population Research, Princeton University
I dunno. President Obama is not great but the comments here make me feel like it's time for
me to skedaddle. Thinking he might be worse than Shrub? 6″ tall, smh
Oh I admit it can be a tough choice, but you might really want to add up the good and the bad
for both. Not surprisingly there is little good and a whole lot of long ongoing damage inflicted
by the policies that both either embraced, adapted to or did little or nothing to stop.
Even if the list of bad was equal, I have to give Obama for the edge for two reasons. First
because Bush pretty much told us what he was going to do, Obama campaigned on change and vague
promises, but still change. Instead he normalized atrocities that most of us had been screaming
about in the Bush administration AND he didn't just squander the opportunities he had to change
our course domestically because of the crash and the majorities in Congress, no he couldn't throw
those away fast enough.
Your position is obviously different.
And I don't give a damn what height either of them are, both are small people.
Indeed. Bush was a known quantity. "Compassionate conservatism" was was blatantly hollow
jingoism. My only surprise under W was how virulently evil Cheney was.
The big O, though, was handed the opportunity to change the course of history. He took
power with Wall Street on its knees. The whole world hungered for a change in course. Remember
"never let a crisis go to waste". O turned Hope into blatantly hollow jingoism.
In the end, the black activist constitutional lawyer turned his back on all that he seemed
to be. Feint left, drive right.
With W we got what we expected. With O we got hoodwinked. What a waste.
Look, if you don't like some of the comments you see, say so. We have some thick skinned people
here. A little rancorous debate is fine. If some reasoned argumentation is thrown in, the comments
section is doing it's job. (I know, I know, "agency" issues.)
Obama can be legitimately described as worse than Bush 43 because Obama ran as a "progressive"
and flagrantly broke almost all of his promises and governed like a "Moderate" Republican.
At the least, Bush, Sr. and Jr. ran as right wing politicos. The people basically got what
they voted for with them.
Finally, " it's time for me to skedaddle." WTF? I'm assuming, yes, I do do that, that you are
a responsible and thoughtful person. That needs must include the tolerance of and engagement with
opposing points of view. Where do you want to run to; an "echo chamber" site? You only encourage
conformation bias with that move. The site administrators have occasionally mentioned the dictum;
"Embrace the churn." The site, indeed, almost any site, will live on long after any of we commenters
bite the dust. If, however, one can shift the world view of other readers with good argumentation
and anecdotes, our work will be worthwhile.
So, as I was once admonished by my ex D.I. middle school gym teacher; "Stand up and face it.
You may get beat, but you'll know you did your best. That's a good feeling."
Picking the #1 Worst Prez is a fallacy inherent in our desire to put things on a scale of 1
to 10. It's so we can say, in this case, #1 was the WORST, and then forget about #2 thru #10.
It's like picking the #1 Greatest Rock Guitar Player. There are too many great guitar players
and too many styles. It's just not possible.
Even so, I'd like to see the Russian citizen ranking of Putin vs. Yeltsin. Secret ballot, of
course.
I don't think he's worse than Bush but I agree he was horribly dishonest to run as a progressive.
He's far from progressive.
I think the ACA, deeply flawed as it is, was/is a good thing. It wasn't enough and it was badly
brought out. I hope many thousands don't get tossed off health insurance.
My major criticism of him and most politicians is that he has no center. There is nothing for
which he truly stands and he has a horrible tendency to try to make nice w the republicans. He's
not progressive. Bernie, flawed also stands for something always has, always will.
Obama is highly deceptive, but I think that Bush (43) was worse. I doubt that Obama would have
performed many of his worst deeds if Bush hadn't first paved the way. But we'll never know for
sure, so it's possible to argue on behalf of either side of the dispute.
I have to tell you it is inaccurate in material respects, and many of the people who played
important roles in the fight were written out entirely or marginalized.
GW Bush sort of had two administrations. The first two years and the last two years was sort
of a generic Republican but sane administration, sort of like his father's, and was OK. The crazy
stuff happened in the middle four years, which maybe not coincidentally the Republicans had majorities
in both house of Congress.
Obama signed off on the Big Bailout (as did GW Bush, but my impression is that the worst features
of the Big Bailout were on Obama's watch(), and that defined his administration. Sometimes you
get governments defined by one big thing, and that was it. But I suspect he may have prevented
the neocons from starting World War III, but that is the sort of thing we won't know about until
decades have passed, if we make it that long.
Obama promised hope and change and delivered the exact opposite – despair and decline. Obama
should be remembered as the Great Normalizer. All of the shitty things that were around when he
was inaugurated are now normalized. TINA to the max, in other words.
It should be no shock to anyone that Trump was elected after what Obama did to American politics.
You got it. Obama was hired to employ "The Shock Doctrine" and he did. He was and is "a Chicago
Boy"; the term Naomi Klein used for the neoliberals who slithered out of the basements of U of
Chicago to visit austerity on the masses for the enhancement of the feudal lords. It is laughable
that he said last week that he could have beaten Trump. As always, He implied that it was the
"message" not the policy. And that he could "sell" that message better than Hilary. For him it
was always about pitching that Hopey Changey "One America" spleel that suckered so many. The Archdruid
calls this "the warm fuzzies". But the Donald went right into the John Edwards land of "The Two
Americas". He said he came from the 1%; but was here to work for the 99% who had been screwed
over by bad deals. We will see if the Barons will stand in his way or figure out that it might
be time to avoid those pitchforks by giving a little to small businesses and workers in general.
Like FDR, will they try to save capitalism?
The Donald has the bad trade deals right, but looks like he doesn't know what havoc Reagan
wreaked on working people's household incomes and pension plans by breaking any power unions had
and by coming up with the 401K scam; plus the Reagan interest rates that devastated farmers and
ranchers and the idea of rewarding a CEO who put stock price above research and development and
workers' salaries. But again, I believe it was a Democratic congress and a Democratic president
Carter who eliminated the Usury law in 1979. From then on with stagnating wages, people began
the descent into debt slavery. And Jimmy started the Shock Doctrine by deregulating the airlines
and trucking. But he did penance. Can't see Obama doing that.
And once usary laws went away, credit cards were handed out to college students, with no co-sign,
even if students had no work or credit history and were unemployed.
It took until just a few years ago before they revisted that credit card policy to students.
dont want to burst your bubble(or anyone elses) but obama is not and was not the power to the
throne it was michelle and val jar (aka beria) it was a long series of luck that got that krewe
anywhere near any real power mostly, it comes from the Univ of Chicago hopey changee thingee was
a nice piece of marketing by david axelrod..
the grey lady
5-11-2008
In August 1999, Barack Obama strolled amid the floats and bands making their way down Martin
Luther King Drive on Chicago's South Side. Billed as the largest African-American parade in the
country, the summer rite was a draw over the years to boxing heroes like Muhammad Ali and jazz
greats like Duke Ellington. It was also a must-stop for the city's top politicians.
Back then, Mr. Obama, a state senator who was contemplating a run for Congress, was so little-known
in the community's black neighborhoods that it was hard to find more than a few dozen people to
walk with him, recalled Al Kindle, one of his advisers at the time. Mr. Obama was trounced a year
later in the Congressional race - branded as an aloof outsider more at home in the halls of Harvard
than in the rough wards of Chicago politics.
But by 2006, Mr. Obama had remade his political fortunes. He was a freshman United States
senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on
a long-shot White House run. When the parade wound its way through the South Side that summer,
Mr. Obama was its grand marshal.
but to capture the arrogance of hyde park (read the last line)
A tight-knit community that runs through the South Side, Hyde Park is a liberal bastion
of integration in what is otherwise one of the nation's most segregated cities. Mayor Washington
had called it home, as did whites who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wealthy
black entrepreneurs a generation removed from the civil rights battles of the 1960s.
At its heart is the University of Chicago; at its borders are poor, predominately black neighborhoods
blighted by rundown buildings and vacant lots. For Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a white
Kansan mother and an African father and who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, it was a
perfect fit.
"He felt completely comfortable in Hyde Park," said Martha Minow, his former law professor
and a mentor. "It's a place where you don't have to wear a label on your forehead. You can go
to a bookstore and there's the homeless person and there's the professor."
also note how the lib racist grey lady can not bring themselves to name the parade it is the
bud billiken parade
peaceful, fun, successful
heaven forbid the world should see a giant event run by black folk that does not end in violence
might confuse the closet racists
There are enough examples of such things for it to be a reasonable expectation.
The parade also hasn't always gone without a hitch:
The 2003 parade featured B2K.[9] The concert was free with virtually unlimited space in
the park for viewing. However, the crowd became unruly causing the concert to be curtailed.
Over 40 attendees were taken to hospitals as a result of injuries in the violence, including
two teenagers who were shot.[38] At the 2014 parade, Two teenagers were shot after an altercation
involving a group of youths along the parade route near the 4200 block of King Drive around
12:30 pm.[39][40]
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
FAIR USE NOTICEThis site contains
copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available
to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social
issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which
such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free)
site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should
be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors
of this site
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or
referenced source) and are
not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society.We do not warrant the correctness
of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be
tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without
Javascript.
Senate to examine
financial records of firm behind notorious Trump-Russia dossier
Joshua88
Prof. Cohen: Not One Piece of Factual Evidence That Russia 'Hacked the Election'
