Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: February 2024 Page 3 of 4

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 11, 2024

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On February 11, 2024

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 11, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

 

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

Israel’s Relentless Bombing Erases Gaza’s Heritage Sites 

[Wide Walls, via Naked Capitalism 02-09-2024]

The war in Gaza is wiping out Palestine’s education and knowledge systems 

[The Conversation, via Naked Capitalism 02-09-2024]

In the past four months, all or parts of Gaza’s 12 universities have been bombed and mostly destroyed.

Approximately 378 schools have been destroyed or damaged. The Palestinian Ministry of Education has reported the deaths of over 4,327 students, 231 teachers and 94 professors.

Numerous cultural heritage sites, including libraries, archives and museums, have also been destroyed, damaged and plundered.

 

Oligarchs’ war on the experiment of republican self-government

The Republican Party and Their Billionaire Backers’ Plot Against America

Thom Hartmann, February 8, 2024 [Common Dreams]

…The most appealing thing about a dictator is that he can “get things done.”

Dictators don’t have to worry about bureaucracies hindering them, or pesky laws and regulations. They don’t care about local opposition to their projects, or their impact on the environment.

From making the trains run on time to building an autobahn and a car company to go with it, dictators famously “get things done.”

The corollary to that old nostrum is that when things are going well, when things are working smoothly, when the people are getting what they want from their government, there is little interest in putting a dictator into office.

You have to break government pretty badly before people are willing to trade in a normal democracy for a dictatorship, but it’s sure happened before.

Germany wouldn’t have embraced Hitler if it weren’t for the depression the country had slid into because they lost World War I and were hit with fierce sanctions in the Treaty of Versailles.…

One of the most successful ways the forces of autocracy and authoritarianism have risen to power throughout history is by creating or stepping into a crisis and promising to be the “strongman” who will fix things and fix them now.

Which, of course, is why right-wing billionaires and the Republicans they own have been working so hard in the decades since the Reagan Revolution to break our government.

They want a series of terrible crises. And if they don’t happen organically, right wingers are more than happy to create them, as we saw this week when Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to do anything about our southern border or to fund aid to Ukraine and the Palestinians….

Warn Voters About the Radicalism Beyond Trump 

Nancy MacLean, February 8, 2024 [The New Republic]

…Promoters have been methodically lining up authorizations from the states since the 2012 election showed them that most Americans reject the kind of society they seek, even Mitt Romney’s mild version. So strategists concluded that the only way to permanently entrench minority rule by plutocrats and theocrats is to encase it in a dramatically altered Constitution….

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The Competition Between West And The Rest Is Already Over

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On February 10, 2024

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This is what people refuse to get: the West has already lost. It’s over. It’s done. There’ll be some shooting, but it doesn’t matter.

China has the world’s largest economy by all statistics that matter. It has by far and away the most manufacturing. It has way more shipbuilding capacity than the entire West.

China is the premier trade power. Most of the global “South” would rather trade with it: it gives better deals and it interferes less with internal politics. This will continue. Western analysts are already talking about the coming semiconductor flood, as China catches up there. In ten years or so they’ll have more reliable planes at better prices than Boeing. They lead in about two-thirds of all major tech areas and surging in the rest. They are crushing it in the auto-industry and soon will produce better cars for cheaper, if they don’t already.

They have a real economy: “China speed” is a phrase. They get things done, and fast.

Russia is now the world’s fifth largest economy and over-took Germany, which is crashing out due to high energy prices with the cut-off from Russia oil and gas. Europe barely registers on new patents. They have advanced weaponry, their economy is booming thanks to sanctions forcing them to invest in their own country, they have plenty of food, resources and water and they’re on of the few countries who will benefit for the early to mid parts of climate change and global warming.

Changes in weapon systems have made cheap weapons much more effective, especially drones and missiles. The tech has spread widely, to the point where a backwards country like Yemen has enough to shut down a key trade route. The US military can’t meet its enlistment goals, and US weapons are much more expensive and far slower to produce than their enemies. The West can’t even supply Ukraine with enough artillery shells, drones and ammunition: but China, North Korea, Iran and Russia together have been able to keep Russia armed to the teet.

The US navy still has the largest tonnage, but can’t fully man all its ships, and as noted early, China has far more shipbuilding capacity, and it now has as many ships as the US. They are pushing in on technology which will allow them to detect submarines at great distances.

The US no longer has bigfoot capacity: it can’t easily occupy foreign countries any more and it can’t hit them while not being hit in return, as the multiple strikes on US bases and the closing of the Red Sea show.

It’s over. The world economy is re-orienting to China. They will have first dibs on resources because they offer a better deal on almost everything. Soon there will be nothing important one can’t buy from China or Russia, and for less than the West can sell it for.

The US and Europe need the global south—they need those resources, but the South will have little reason to sell to us, and will prefer China and Russia and so on. (France is being kicked out Africa, right now, in exchange for Russia and China.)

Military might will continue to tend to China and Russia, it is a lagging indicator on industrial power and technological lead, and we have already lost both of those.

It’s over. We lost without most of us even realizing we’d lost. When we decided to send our industry to China in exchange for some of our elites getting richer faster for three decades, we decided to give up our centuries old hegemony.

This isn’t to say all is woe, or that Western countries who are smart can’t maintain good standards of living. But we can only do so if we stop pretending we’re , the hegemonic civilization and everyone else has to kiss our asses or else.

The Euro-American centuries are OVER. We had a good run, but all runs end. We could have eked it out for a few more generations, but decay always begins at home. We gave our lead away, deliberately and as policy.

And a lot of countries, with good reason, hate our guts. They will get their kicks in as we go down.

We’d better learn humbleness, contrition and cooperation, we’re going to need them. And our elites need to be defenestrated as a class if the rest of us are to have any chance at decent lives.

 

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The Carlson/Putin Interview

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On February 9, 2024

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I think this is worth listening to. I’ve put notes below. It’s not in essay format, just what I found significant as I was listening.

Whatever you think of Putin, at least he’s educated and speak in complete sentences and has a historical understanding (whether you agree with it or not.) He makes Trump and Biden look like the idiots they are.

In fact, Putin makes almost every Western leader look like an ill-educated moron. Orban is an exception. This isn’t a political judgment. I don’t much like Putin, but I can respect him. I can’t respect Biden, Trump, Sunak, Scholz, Macron, Von Der Leyen or my own PM, Trudeau.

Fuck, I’m loving this history lesson from Putin “oh, and here are copies of the historical documents, showing I’m not making this up.”

And Tucker’s expression, looking at Putin is hilarious. Absolutely “WTF, why is he giving me this history lesson.” How many politicians has he interviewed over the years, and this erudite (though really very much a skim) disquisition is alien to him.

Tucker’s kind of stupid, “but we have a strong China the West isn’t very afraid of”. I mean, WTF?

Putin’s point that Russia in 90s and much of the 00s wanted to be part of the West, desperately so, is entirely accurate by my memory and I was around.

Russia /should/ have been turned into a Western ally, and if it had been, China would be /much/ less of a threat. But our politicians (I won’t call them statesman, the last US statesman was James Baker) were fools.

And yes, the war against Serbia was the first great break in Russia’s trust of the West and that the West would obey international law. If Serbia can be broken up, well, why not other countries?

And yes, I remember that Russia asked to join NATO. What a different world that would be.

Pointing out that the US exerts pressure and Western countries obey, which is usually true, and has become more true.

Under Bush, the CIA confirms they are working to support the Chechen rebellion. Of course, Putin and Russia don’t like that.

And then the missile defense system, Putin offers to make it a multilateral defense system which is supposedly against Iran. America refuses.

Russia points out that if they aren’t in the missile defense system, they’ll have to find a way to overwhelm the new defense system–which they did: hypersonic missiles.

And, of course, NATO expansion makes the Russians feel unsafe, which, of course it does, when they won’t let Russia join NATO.

And the point that you can’t make a deal with Europeans, because they will bow to American pressure. But you can’t make a deal with America, because they won’t keep their word.

And Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO is a no go for Russia.

Talking about the coup-d’etas in Ukraine. Which, of course, there was and I said so at the time.

Ukraine can’t have a free trade agreement with both Russia and the EU at the same time since Russian market would be flooded. (Yeah, 100%. Would have been a disaster for Russia. Plus a route for operatives to infiltrate Russia easily though Putin doesn’t say that.)

Russia tells Yanukovich not to use armed force, because US agrees to calm down Maidan. But US doesn’t keep their deal, force is used by Maidan, and the coup happens.

The Ukrainian attacks on Donetsk are the main break point to Putin.

But also, gaurantees against the coup were ignored by the European countries. Again, a loss of trust. Can’t make a deal with the West, especially Europe.

NATO in Ukraine is the red line. (Which is what I always said.)

Then breaking the Minsk agreements. Again, the West and Ukraine won’t keep agreements with Russia.

From Putin’s POV he didn’t start the war in 2022. The war was ongoing, Minsk agreement broken, Donetsk under constant attack. He intervened, yes, but the war was already ongoing.

(Not unreasonable. I warned at the time and indeed for decades that this would happen.)

This Putin/Carlson interview is super embarassing to the West. I literally can’t think of a Western leader today who could lay out a case like this, coherently and intelligently. We are ruled by imbeciles.

I mean, I don’t agree with a lot of Russian policy, or how they’re going social conservative. But goddamn, Putin makes our leaders look like incompetents.

Putin claims that he withdrew from Kiev at western request, as a requirement for making a peace deal. As soon as the Russians did, the West ended the peace talks.

Nasty if true and yet another, never trust these fucks and impose a peace by winning the war.

Unfortunately, I find this credible. I don’t know if it’s true, but I believe Putin more than UK PM Johnson or Biden.

Putin: Ukraine’s national identity is based around glorification of Nazi collaborators as heroes, and de-Nazification means ending this national identity.

De-Nazification would be done by making Nazi and Neo-Nazism illegal in Ukraine, in the peace treaty, per Putin.

Putin hasn’t talked directly to Biden since the start of the war and sees no reason to do so.

Putin: US blew up Nord Stream: motive and ability.

Putin: Germany’s leaders are not looking after Germany’s interests primarily.

World should be safe for everyone, not just the “golden billion”.

Using dollar as weapon is one the biggest strategic mistakes of the US. (Putin)

US dollar as trade/reserve dollar, allows US inflation under control, and damaging it by using it as sanctions is a grave mistake. Even US allies are downsizing dollar reserves.

Until 2022, 80% of Russian trade was in US dollars. Now 13%.

Denies fear of Chinese economic power. China’s foreign policy is not aggressive, but looks for compromise. China/Europe economic cooperation is growing faster than China/Russia cooperation.

Bilateral trade with China is 230 billion, and is well balanced. 1992 G7 – 47% of trade, now a little over 30%. Brics only 16%, now higher than G7.

US does not understand the world is changing and does not adapt because of conceit. Trying to resist with force is failing and will fail.

President does not matter, what matters is the elite mindset. As long as American elites believe in domination at any costs the US cannot adapt.

Largest number of sanctions in the world are against Europe and at the same time Russia became 5th largest world economy and the 1st largest in Europe.

Russia can’t really understand the power centers and elections in the US.

US never seems to cooperate, but always to use pressure. In relation to US, cold war elites just kept doing the same thing, and assuming they could win the same way against China as they had against the USSR.

Definitely thinks the US deliberately provoked the Russian invasion. They controlled Ukraine and Ukraine ignore Minsk, talking about joining NATO and attacking Russians in Donetsk/Luhansk and discriminating against Russians in Ukraine.

Believes Zelensky was scared of neo-Nazis when he took charge, and realized the West supported the Neo-Nazis.

Weird series of questions on religion, like “do you see God in human history today”.

Putin: history has its laws and rhythms. Rise and fall.

Some talk on genetic sciences and AI as a threat.

Musk and others involved in AI and genetics need to be regulated.

This should be done by an international treaty.

Russia is willing to negotiate, it is the West who is refusing to negotiation: Ukraine is under US control.

Ukraine cannot defeat Russia strategically, even with NATO support, so it only makes sense to negotiate.

Putin: I know they want to negotiate, but they don’t know how to do so. But it will happen sooner or later.

The war is particular tragic, because to Putin, Ukraine and Russia are still a single civilization with a single soul.

Final Commentary: As I said at the start, Putin makes most Western leaders look like dunces. He can discuss history, economy and politics fluently. He has numbers and dates and analogies at his fingertips.

And yes, as far as I’m concerned, Russia was treated incompetently by the West. They could easily have been made into Western allies, effectively a part of Europe. Moving NATO forward was obviously a threat to Russia when Russia had been promised it wouldn’t happen and when Russia even offered to join NATO.

(Transcript of interview.)

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Western China Economic News Is Totally Deranged

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On February 8, 2024

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So, the New York Times has a headline:

China Deflation Fears Raised By Falling Prices For Food and Cars

No. China’s growth is fine, and some products dropping in price is also fine. Car prices are dropping fast because China has a competitive market for car production: they have hundreds of car companies. That is driving tech improvements and price competition. This is a good thing, it is not based on “no one has enough money to spend so everyone has to drop prices” which is what caused the Great Depression (the deflationary episode that makes everyone quake.)

I think that China is making a mistake with car production, because of climate change, but it’s not even slightly an indication of the possibility of the bad type of deflation.

As for food, China’s importing more and is coming out of a period where they have multiple huge disease outbreaks and culls for both pork (the primary meat in China) and chicken (the second most common.)

Lower food prices are a good thing as long as wages are increasing, which they are.

The constant drum-beats of doom about the Chinese economy are propaganda driven insanity. The Chinese economy is still growing faster and is overall stronger than any Western economy.

If you want a summary of what the Chinese are doing (deliberately deflating housing prices and switching investment into manufacturing, among other things), I wrote a long summary article last year on the Chinese economy’s transition last year. Read it, because you won’t find this out from any Western mainstream media source, except possibly the Financial Times (and even then, not put together properly.)

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Out Of Control Anglo Immigration

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On February 7, 2024

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It takes some deep work to make me anti-immigration. I figure people should have the ability to change countries: my mother did and so did all my ancestors, often multiple times.

But Canada’s managed it, and if I lived in Australia or Britain I’d feel the same way.

Let’s start with Canada

Yowsa! Something happened there, didn’t it?

A lot of people died during Covid. A lot of people were disabled due to Covid. That put upward pressure on wages and in a neoliberal economy, we can’t have that.

So Canada’s government decided to let in a flood of immigrants.

Result? Well, lower wages than otherwise, and…

Yeeha! One of Canada’s dirty secrets is that we have more homeless people per capita than California, with a lot worse climate.

And it isn’t just immigration:

Temporary workers, because we sure wouldn’t want to use Canadians or train them.

And hey, let’s pile on the pain with even more international students, who compete for housing too!

This is, obviously, deliberate policy. It’s bad for people who are already here, and immigrants are less thrilled than you might think, leading to record numbers of reverse immigration (immigrants going back home after finding out Canada isn’t the promised land.)

Australia’s the same:

Same student issues:

And yeah, same effect on the housing market, though it’s in a better place than Canada, which has probably the world’s worst housing bubble.

So then, Britain:

And, though it hasn’t had the same effect on housing in the US:

The difference in the US, which probably leaps out, is that it’s just a trend not a spike. it isn’t a clear deliberate policy choice, despite the squeals of Republicans. But it contributes to some of the same problems:

According to a Jan. 25 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, roughly 653,000 people reported experiencing homelessness in January of 2023, up roughly 12% from the same time a year prior and 48% from 2015. That marks the largest single-year increase in the country’s unhoused population on record, Harvard researchers said…

…That alarming jump in people struggling to keep a roof over their head came amid blistering inflation in 2021 and 2022 and as surging rental prices across the U.S. outpaced worker wage gains.

Now there’s nothing wrong with immigrants, per se and no one who isn’t a native has any leg to stand on when screaming about immigrants to North America, Australia or New Zealand as intrinsically bad.

But when you have a homeless crisis and very tight and expensive rental and housing markets, obviously bringing in lots of new people is going to hurt the people who are already there who aren’t real-estate speculators and so on, and it’s obviously going to hit the poor, the working class and the middle class where it hurts, both on rent, housing prices and wages.

That means you’re going to increase racism, because people who can’t get an affordable place (and I can tell you that in Toronto, say, every low-end place has multiple applicants, and what is low end costs hundreds of dollars more than it did a few years ago) start blaming immigrants instead of hating their own ruling class, which is where the real blame belongs.

If you want racism, increase immigration without increasing housing. And that’s what Canada, the UK and Australia are doing.

And, of course, massive immigration’s primary purpose is to hold down wages, and you can’t expect people to be happy about making less than they would have otherwise. People know, because they see how many people apply for jobs they apply for,  they hear stories from their friends, and when immigrants are from visible groups, they can see it and hear it in the accents.

When all boats are rising, only true bigots mind immigration. But when people are struggling to find good jobs and a place to live, spiking immigration is an evil act.

Politically, its a hard place. In Canada, for example, immigration is up under the Liberal party. The Conservatives talk about cutting it back but look at that UK chart: that’s under a Conservative government. Will Canada be any different?

This is a ruling class issue: they aren’t hurt by a rising housing market and the more potential workers there are, the lower wages they have to pay. Older folks who own houses win, as housing prices go up. Immigration is good for elites and people who made it into asset markets. It’s good for insiders, that is, and bad for anyone out in the cold.

Since the people with power are insulated from the pain their decisions cause, my guess is that these policies will continue until there’s enough pain inflicted on elites to change their calculus.

A few riots where the mansions are might help with that, but Brits, Australians and Canadians aren’t the type.

Yet

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Ukraine Update Feb 6, 2024

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On February 6, 2024

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The bottom line here is that Ukraine appears to be running out of both infantry and ammunition and Russia has plenty of both, plus air superiority. Ukraine is now bringing in more women, and is trying to convince EU countries to return Ukrainian refugee men so they can be conscripted.

There isn’t much map movement, but that doesn’t matter, what will happen is that the Russians will keep depleting Ukrainian forces until there simply aren’t enough, then they will leap forward and take a vast amount of terrain unless Ukraine gives them what they wants before then.

With the Ukrainian military broken, and the Russian army able to advance as it pleases, Russia will be able to dictate surrender terms, and that is what they will be. At the least: all Russian speaking areas, the coast, Crimea and the land bridge and Austrian style neutrality.

It should be pointed out that unless NATO is willing to declare war, the US has no leverage.

There’s nothing America (the EU will just do what the US tells it to) can give Russia that matters: Russia doesn’t need sanctions relief and is better off without it: their economy is doing better because of the sanctions forcing internal development than it did before the sanctions. (Yes, folks, despite what you’ve been told all you lives, free trade with everyone is stupid and always has been.)

Russia is winning, Russia will win, this was always obviously going to be the case.

May 16, 2022 I wrote who would win and lose from the Ukraine war. Re-read the article. For all intents and purposes I got everything right, except that Russia has benefited even more economically and my “marginal victory” was wrong: Russia is winning a significant victory, strategically speaking.

Sanctions will force more import substitution and help overcome the “resource curse”, making it cost-effective to make more things in Russia

If you want to know the future, read me. I don’t get everything right, no on does, but I get far more right than most.

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Construction of Reality Preview: The Ritual Masters

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On February 5, 2024

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Continuing from Interaction Ritual

Rituals can fail. The Christmas party where everyone is awkward and not enjoying themselves. The sermon and hymns that are just so plain boring so that you can hardly wait to leave. The concert where no one is dancing. (x-Collins)

Putting on a successful ritual is a skill. Being good at it takes practice in moving the participants’ attention where it should be, in encouraging emotional focus and in physical entrainment. The surroundings should be suitable, the central symbol should be framed, costumes may be needed, and on and on.

We have a lot of standardized rituals: the wake for the dead, the marriage and the trial, among others. Watch a trial, the judge dressed in formal robes, and depending on the country, perhaps wearing a white wig. Always deferred to, always addressed as “Your Honor” or “Your Lordship”. The accused sits in a specified place, witnesses in another and so on.

This is high ritual.

The person who is the center of a ritual, who conducts a ritual, if it succeeds, gains stature and energy. Look at the way rock stars are treated for a concrete example. Money, fame, glory, and all the sex they want.

There is a certain divinity associated with big enough, successful enough rituals. Whatever the symbol, the person who conducts the ritual will also become a symbol and will take on some of the power and mystery of the rite.

Who performs rites and what their role in the rite is, thus, is central to how society is organized and to our personal perception of reality. By associating ourselves with various parts of the rites, we then create who we are: how others see us, and how we see ourselves.

Rites allow us to change stories.

Consider the God King. Ubiquitous in later ancient Mesopotamia and in ancient Egypt.

Think of our early religion and ideology. There is a God or Gods, who created all. There are ancestors we are descended from, and those ancestors created our way of doing things: our civilization.

The Divine created everything, and everything good comes from the divine. Our greatest respect is reserved for the divine, with lesser but still great respect granted to our ancestors. To the divine and to our ancestors we owe everything. No human is important in comparison (x-Flannery/Marcus).

This is a story which mitigates hard against inequality and against anyone becoming too powerful. Someone may be a good hunter, but the good things do not come from them, but from God. And however good a hunter they are, they are nothing compared to the ancestor who created hunting.

This question, where do the good things come from, is essential to the structure of every society.

If the good things come from you, then you should be treated with reverence, and since they come from you, they are essentially yours.

Consider the ritual of the Aranda in the previous chapter, where older men dressed as revered ancestors.

Imagine, now, dressing as a God. Playing that role in a successful ritual. The attention is on you, you are associated with the God, and it is from the God that all the good things come.

It takes many steps to get from egalitarian hunter-gatherers to God Kings, but this is the social logic by which it happens: rituals which associate you with a God, and a story that it is from Gods that all the good things come.

Lest you smile condescendingly and think we are beyond all this, I invite you to consider the concept of the “job creator”. A job creator is someone who hires people. In our society, for almost everyone, all good things come from jobs. A job creator is thus the person from whom all good things come. It would be wrong to tax such a person highly, or to burden them with legislation, because they are the source of the good. Not coincidentally, our taxation of the rich and on corporations it at multi-generational lows.

This wasn’t always the story, in the post-war liberal period the consumer was where all good things came from, and businessmen were just meeting public demand. And the consumer was able to spend because the government had fixed an economy private industry had trashed during the Great Depression. All hail the consumer, and the government which makes sure the economy works. And all hail top marginal tax rates of eighty to ninety percent.

Stories matter, and so does your ritual position. Rituals put you in a place in the story, and the story, if it is widely accepted, then works for you.

Note that the story has an element of truth, even if that truth is socially constructed. All good things do come from a God King: the Pharoah owned everything. God Kings had wealth and power and could give good things to people. Billionaires and big corporations really do decide, directly and indirectly thru the small companies which would not exist without them, who gets many of the good jobs.

These are self-reinforcing stories.

It is not hard to extend this analysis to today’s press, with their fawning coverage of CEOs and executives; of the stock market and so on. The beautiful people bow to the powerful people in powerfully choreographed images, and we too see them as powerful.

Certainly there is more to it, wealth and military prowess and so on, but all of those rest on people believing they should obey your orders and that you should have way more stuff than anyone else. During the Great Depression Americans decided that the rich, whom they blamed for destroying the economy, didn’t deserve so much stuff, and they instituted punitive taxes.

In the Great Depression it was clear that “the good stuff” didn’t come from the rich and corporations, because they’d been substantially in charge, and buggered it up. And who helped? Government.

So, when Reagan moved to decisively end the post-War liberal era, he said “The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'”

Reagan had a story about where the good things came from, and how to get them. And that leads us to our next topic: the storytellers and the ideologues.

 

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 4, 2024

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On February 4, 2024

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 4, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

 

Global power shift

Everything You’re Told About The Global Economy Is Wrong (interview)

Philip Pilkington, YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 02-02-2024] Grab a cup of coffee. Or two cups. Starting with the Houthis and moving on from there:

Summary of The Truth About The Global Economy | Aaron Bastani Meets Philip Pilkington

The Houthis have just enacted a naval blockade with cheap technology, a first in human history with enormous consequences….The ability of the Houthis to enact a naval blockade with cheap technology represents a historical shift in warfare and global power dynamics….

In the West, the interests of capital dictate political decisions, whereas in China, political decisions dictate capital…. China’s control over investment and housing prices stabilizes their economy, while their advancements in technology and science surpass Europe and may eventually reach the same GDP per capita as the UK.

[TW: “In the West, the interests of capital dictate political decisions, whereas in China, political decisions dictate capital….” This is a key insight to promote understanding that neoliberalism and even capitalism itself are basically incompatible with the political philosophy of civic republicanism. A primary tenet of civic republicanism is that one purpose of government is to promote the general welfare. ]

 

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

Domicide: The Mass Destruction of Homes Should Be a Crime Against Humanity 

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 01-30-2024]

How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation 

[Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 02-01-2024]

Satellite image with destroyed buildings in red

Israeli Ministers Attend ‘Resettle Gaza’ Conference 

[Antiwar.com, via Naked Capitalism 01-30-2024]

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Links 01-31-2024]

 

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

How Reagan’s Embrace of “Greed is Good” Brought Us Broken Airplane Doors & Being Hours on Hold

Thom Hartmann, January 29, 2024 [DailyKos]

…In 43 short years, because Reagan implemented Bork’s policies, America has devolved from being a relatively open market economy and a functioning democracy into a largely monopolistic economy with a bought-off political system….

…Bork wrote, the entire notion of antitrust law as a vehicle to protect small and local businesses from large and national predators was a terrible mistake.

“Trying to stop “a [market] trend toward a more concentrated condition” is a blunder, Bork said, because “the existence of the trend is prima facie evidence that greater concentration is socially desirable. The trend indicates that there are emerging efficiencies or economies of scale … which make larger size more efficient.” FDR’s theory of antitrust, he noted, is “unsophisticated, but currently ascendant.” …. “If it now takes fewer salesmen and distribution personnel to move a product from the factory to the consumer than it used to; if advertising or promotion can be accomplished less expensively, that is a net gain to society. We are all richer to that extent. Multiply such additions to social wealth by hundreds and thousands of transactions and an enormously important social phenomenon is perceived. . . . To inhibit the creation of efficiency . . . is to impose a tax upon efficiency for the purpose of subsidizing the inept.”

To say that Bork’s paper (and numerous others, and 15 years of work advocating this position) changed America would be a dramatic understatement. As he himself pointed out in his paper, in the 1962 antitrust case of Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, the Supreme Court blocked the merger of Brown and G. R. Kinney, two shoe manufacturers, because the combination of the two would have captured about 5% of the US shoe market. (For comparison, post-Reagan Nike today has 18% of the US shoe market.)….

As Jonathan Tepper pointed out in The Myth of Capitalism, fully 90% of the beer that Americans drink is controlled by two companies. Air travel is mostly controlled by four companies, and over half of the nation’s banking is done by five banks.

In multiple states there are only one or two health insurance companies, high-speed internet is in a near-monopoly state virtually everywhere in America (75% of us can “choose” only one company), and three companies control around three-quarters of the entire pesticide and seed markets.

The vast majority of radio and TV stations in the country are owned by a small handful of companies, and the internet is dominated by Google, X, and Facebook.

Right now, 10 giant corporations control, either directly or indirectly, virtually every consumer product we buy. Kraft, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Unilever, and Johnson & Johnson together have a stranglehold on the American consumer. You can pick just about any industry in America and see the same monopolistic characteristics.

A study published in November 2018 by Jan De Loecker, Jan Eeckhout, and Gabriel Unger showed that as companies have gotten bigger and bigger, squashing their small and medium-sized competitors, they’ve used their increased market power to fatten their own bottom lines rather than develop new products or do things helpful to their communities or employees….

Markups (the price charged above production costs), they note, were fairly constant between the 1950s and the 1980s, but there was a sharp increase starting when Reagan was elected in 1980. Thus, they conclude, “[i]n 2016, the average markup charged is 61% over marginal cost, compared to 21% in 1980.”….

The good news is that the Biden administration is the first of either party since 1981 to seriously try to regulate corporate monopolistic behavior and stock share buybacks.

Corporate America will squeal and howl, and since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery in America, will throw millions at stopping any effort to regulate their behavior. But the ongoing damage to our business landscape, our communities, and our families can’t be ignored any longer.

Tell your members of Congress to support the Biden administration’s efforts to reign in corporate monopolies, and that corporate share buyback programs must once again be criminalized and called what they are: illegal market manipulation.

‘Rooftop solar is the future; it’s also a scam’

Thomas Neuburger, January 31, 2024

An important piece by Cory Doctorow makes several important points: about AI “reward hacking,” rooftop solar, and Wall Street. Let’s look at each, and discuss an additional point — the reason all this occurred.

The main point of Doctorow’s piece is rooftop solar; in particular, financialized rooftop solar:

“The problem starts with a pretty common finance puzzle: solar pays off big over its lifespan, saving the homeowner money and insulating them from price-shocks, emergency power outages, and other horrors. But solar requires a large upfront investment, which many homeowners can’t afford to make. To resolve this, the finance industry extends credit to homeowners (lets them borrow money) and gets paid back out of the savings the homeowner realizes over the years to come.”

But all this depended on homeowners actually wanting to spend the money. Which they didn’t, not on sufficient quantity to meet the government goal of accelerated rollout. So the government created subsidies that homeowners could get. The idea was, those subsidies would fuel the market demand for the finance industries loans.

“The government created subsidies – tax credits, direct cash, and mixes thereof – in the expectation that Wall Street would see all these credits and subsidies that everyday people were entitled to and go on the hunt for them. And they did! Armies of fast-talking sales-reps fanned out across America, ringing dooorbells and sticking fliers in mailboxes, and lying like hell about how your new solar roof was gonna work out for you.”

As with the subprime mortgage market, where the toxic loans were turned into investment vehicles (derivatives), so was solar indebtedness financialized. Why this is a problem, and what kind of problem it is, is best explained by pointing to this hard-titled piece in Time: “The Rooftop Solar Industry Could Be on the Verge of Collapse.”….

The Global Neoliberal Project

Doctorow correctly identifies the solution: “If governments are willing to spend billions incentivizing rooftop solar, they can simply spend billions installing rooftop solar – no Slow AI required.”
But let’s go one step farther. The primary goal of neoliberalism and what we ought to call the Neoliberal Project is “creating a world economy where entrepreneurs could let their fortunes bloom unimpeded by negative government intervention.” Nothing gets in the way of making more money.

Philip Mirowski has since said that neoliberalism evolved from that — government not impeding profit-making — to making sure the government actively promotes the “blooming” of fortunes….

 

Trader Joe’s Attorney Argues National Labor Relations Board Is ‘Unconstitutional’ 

HuffPo, via Naked Capitalism 01-29-2024]

Obamacare Created Big Medicine

Matt Stoller, January 29 2024 [The Lever]

There’s a basic conflict of interest at the heart of American health care. We need to break up the industry to fix it.

Whichever way the issue is looked at, to suggest that markets are rational is wrong 

[Funding the Future, via Naked Capitalism 01-28-2024]

… it is very clear that mainstream economics and politics have no idea how to manage the crises that we are in: neoliberalism is out of road, and those who are addicted to it are so frightened of giving up the only theory that they know, meaning that they would rather the world suffer than admit that they were wrong all along.

We are, to be blunt, in the middle of a crisis of staggering scale, and despite that US stock markets are hitting record highs.

Why Defense Contractors Are Saying No to Their Biggest Customer: The Pentagon 

[Wall Streeet Journal, via Naked Capitalism 01-30-2024]

Mapping the Lobbying Footprint of Harmful Industries: 23 Years of Data From OpenSecrets

[The Milbank Quarterly, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 01-31-2024]

“We found that the ultraprocessed food industry spent the most on lobbying ($1.15 billion), followed by gambling ($817 million), tobacco ($755 million), and alcohol ($541 million). Overall, companies were more active than trade associations, with associations being least active in the tobacco industry. Spending was often highly concentrated, with two organizations accounting for almost 60% of tobacco spending and four organizations accounting for more than half of alcohol spending. Lobbyists that had formerly worked in government were mainly employed by third-party lobby firms.” And the lead: “The definition of commercial determinants of health (CDoHs) set out in The Lancet 2023 series recognizes that commercial actors are diverse and have different impacts on health. Yet too often, public health advocates fail to make these distinctions, referring to ‘the industry’ or ‘corporations’ as a proxy for harmful commercial actors. This lack of nuance stymies efforts to develop a science of commercial determinants.”

It Just Got More Expensive To Fight Corporate Abuse 

Freddy Brewster, January 30, 2024 [The Lever]

You’ll now be forced to pay huge arbitration fees if you try to challenge corporate contracts.…

On Jan. 15, the American Arbitration Association (AAA), the largest private provider of arbitration services in the world, quietly implemented new fees for individuals filing a mass arbitration case seeking monetary damages or contract relief from a company.

The new fees include a $3,125 initiation fee that must be paid before AAA officials determine if the case can move forward. If the case does move forward, then consumers and employees will have to pay case management fees that were previously paid by the companies as well as new arbitrator appointment fees, according to an analysis by Goodwin Procter, one of the largest law firms in the world that specializes in a broad range of topics.

 

Oligarchy

The Top 20 Landowners In America, According To A New Report 

[Forbes, via Naked Capitalism 01-28-2024]

Musk’s $55 Billion Pay Package Voided, Threatening World’s Biggest Fortune 

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 01-31-2024]

Column: A judge voids Musk’s huge Tesla pay package as dishonest, and hoo boy, is he steamed 

[LA Times, via Naked Capitalism 02-01-2024]

Must We Limit the Wealthy’s Wealth? 

[Counterpunch, via Naked Capitalism 01-31-2024]

Ingrid Robeyns … lays out in her just-published  Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth, that economic inequality unconscionably undermines the values we say we hold dear…. In Limitarianism, she makes what may be the most accessible brief yet for capping how much fortune any one individual can hold and hoard.…

How much pushback do you get when you speak to general public audiences about limiting personal wealth? What seems to give people the most pause? How do you respond?

Some people ask me whether we could still have small companies and family firms under limitarianism. That seems to me the most substantial question/objection I get from people not sure whether limits would work.

Other people worry that a limitarian world would essentially kill the economy as we have it, in the process harming everybody….

[TW: As Thom Hartmann shows in a previous, concentrated wealth leads to oligopoly and monopoly which have extremely negative effects on entrepreneurship and capitalism itself. I made this argument over ten years ago. ]

In ‘Brazen Wealth Transfer’, Exxon and Chevron Pay Out Record Sums to Shareholders

Olivia Rosane, February 02, 2024 [Common Dreams]

Exxon reported a total of $36 billion in profits with $32.4 billion paid to shareholders, while Chevron took home $21.4 billion and paid out $26.3 billion, putting them behind only Apple, Microsoft, and Google parent Alphabet for total payouts from a U.S. company, according to a Wall StreetJournal analysis. The shareholder payouts far surpassed what either company had planned to spend on climate solutions, the Journal said.

“Everybody” Agrees: Tax The Rich… Except The Rich, Who Don’t Even Agree That They Are Rich
The Rich Have The Financial Means To Buy Political Power

Howie Klein, February 1, 2024  [downwithtyranny.com]

There are a lot of things that Barbara Lee (D-CA), Summer Lee (D-PA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Chuy Garcia (D-IL), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Jared Huffman (D-CA) have in common, all of them good. And one of those things is that they are all sponsors and co-sponsors of the Oligarch Act (Oppose Limitless Inequality Growth and Reverse Community Harms). The purpose is to create an annual wealth tax focused exclusively on containing destabilizing inequality in America and ensuring the viability of democratic capitalism for the next 250 years. UPDATE: More co-sponsors of the Oligarch Act: Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ), Jamie Raskin (MD), Cori Bush (MO), Valerie Foushee (NC), Eleanor Norton (DC), Madeleine Dean (PA), Maxwell Frost (FL), Katie Porter (CA) and Andrea Salinas (OR).….

Robert Reich
A wealth tax in Massachusetts raised $1.5 billion for free school lunches
and more by taxing millionaires.

A flat tax in Kansas will deliver a $875,000 windfall tax cut to billionaire
Charles Koch, the richest man in Kansas.

Inequality is a policy choice.

2:15 PM -Jan 31, 2024

 

The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America

Michael J. Graetz [Princeton University Press, February 2024]

In 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that the power to tax entails “the power to destroy.” But The Power to Destroy argues that tax opponents now wield this destructive power. Attacking the IRS, protecting tax loopholes, and pushing tax cuts from Reagan to Donald Trump, the antitax movement is threatening the nation’s social safety net, increasing inequality, ballooning the national debt, and sapping America’s financial strength. The book chronicles how the movement originated as a fringe enterprise promoted by zealous outsiders using false economic claims and thinly veiled racist rhetoric, and how—abetted by conservative media and Grover Norquist’s “taxpayer protection pledge”—it evolved into a mainstream political force.

The important story of how the antitax movement came to dominate and distort politics, and how it impedes rational budgeting, equality, and opportunities, The Power to Destroy is essential reading for understanding American life today.

 

Rich People’s Movements : Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent 

[Social Science Research Council]

Isaac William Martin. Oxford University Press, $29.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-19-992899-6,
September 2013

Ever since the Sixteenth Amendment introduced a Federal income tax in 1913, rich Americans have protested new public policies that they thought would threaten their wealth. But while historians have taught us much about the conservative social movements that reshaped the Republican Party in the late 20th century, the story of protest movements explicitly designed to benefit the wealthy is still little known. Rich People’s Movements is the first book to tell that story, tracking a series of protest movements that arose to challenge an expanding welfare state and progressive taxation. Drawing from a mix of anti-progressive ideas, the leaders of these movements organized scattered local constituencies into effective campaigns in the 1920s, 1950s, 1980s, and our own era. Martin shows how protesters on behalf of the rich appropriated the tactics used by the Left-from the Populists and Progressives of the early twentieth century to the feminists and anti-war activists of the 1950s and 1960s. He explores why the wealthy sometimes cut secret back-room deals and at other times protest in the public square. He also explains why people who are not rich have so often rallied to their cause.

America Is Not a Democracy

David Dayen, January 29, 2024 [The American Prospect]

The movement to save democracy from threats is too quick to overlook the problems that have been present since the founding….

You can fill a book with issue areas where public opinion roundly supports action but Congress doesn’t act. Minority vetoes are partially to blame, as is distorted representation. But there’s also the problem of who lawmakers see as their constituents: the wealthy and powerful.

The classic text on this comes from Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, two researchers who found in 2014 that the preferences of “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests” mattered far more for policy outcomes than ordinary citizens or coalitions of public-interest groups. There have been rebuttals to their data over the years, but reality is on Gilens and Page’s side. In a recent interview, Page said, “When they say democracy may be failing, I would disagree. I think it hasn’t been tried!”

Between 71 and 98 percent of U.S. federal elections over the past 20 years were determined by which candidate had the most campaign money. This was enabled by a judiciary that allowed corporations to be considered people for purposes of equal protection under the law, a constitutional provision intended to safeguard the rights of Black former slaves. Corporations later obtained what amount to free speech rights in the Citizens United case, part of a decades-long approach, as writer Corey Robin has explained, to reorient the practices of “the businessman and the banker” as speech….

WE KNOW IT’S POSSIBLE TO FASHION an agenda like this, because it’s already been done. In December 2012, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the NAACP launched the Democracy Initiative, a plan to challenge the “democracy blocks” that stymied popular reforms. It was fitting for this to come out of the labor movement. After a decisive Democratic victory in the 2008 elections, unions had a majority of votes in Congress in favor of reforming U.S. labor law, but could not get them through a supermajority Senate. This roadblock is the primary reason private-sector unionization has fallen from 35 percent to 6 percent since the 1950s.

The coalition highlighted three key areas of reform: changing Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster, limiting money in politics, and enhancing voting rights. They actually notched some partial victories. The Senate changed its rules in 2013 to allow for a majority vote for executive branch and judicial nominees. Voter participation has gradually risen in some locations, in part due to new pandemic-era rules to maximize participation, which states like Michigan have retained….

6 initiatives head to WA ballot with $6M support of Brian Heywood [Seattle Times].

[Seattle Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-01-2024]

“Pouring more than $6 million of his money into a paid signature-gathering campaign, Heywood has almost single-handedly bankrolled six initiatives that are likely headed to the November ballot. The unprecedented initiative slate would eliminate the state’s new capital gains tax, repeal a landmark climate law, allow people to opt out of a long-term care payroll tax and reverse police-pursuit restrictions passed in recent years by the Legislature. They’d also ban local and state income taxes and guarantee parents access to information on K-12 school curricula and school medical records. All six initiatives have been certified as having received the required signatures to make the 2024 ballot. The final one, targeting the state’s long-term care payroll tax, was certified on Friday by the Secretary of State’s Office.”

Intergenerational mobility in the very long run: Florence 1427-2011 (pdf)

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 02-03-2024]

.

 

Restoring balance to the economy

Austin experimented with giving people $1,000 a month. They spent the no-strings-attached cash mostly on housing, a study found. 

[Business Insider, via Naked Capitalism 01-29-2024]

Amy Klobuchar introduces bill to prevent algorithmic price fixing 

[Axios, via Naked Capitalism 02-03-2024]

Climate and environmental crises

Truth Actually 

Lapham’s Quarterly, via Naked Capitalism 01-29-2024] The deck: “A tour through a century of climate-change documentaries.”

New Evidence Reveals Fossil Fuel Industry Sponsored Climate Science in 1954 

[DeSmogBlog, via Naked Capitalism 01-31-2024]

US Cattle Herd Shrinks to 73-Year-Low in Blow for Beef Lovers 

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 02-03-2024]

 

Disrupting mainstream politics

No, Florida Is Not A Lost Cause, Despite What Republicans Want Democrats To Think

Howie Klein, January 31, 2024  [downwithtyranny.com]

…Former Orlando Congressman Alan Grayson, a candidate for the Rick Scott Senate seat … “In 1996, right around the time that I moved to Florida,” he wrote, “Bill Clinton’s campaign registered 550,000 Democrats, and he won Florida. In 2008, when I was elected to Congress, Barack Obama’s campaign registered 700,000 Democrats, and he won Florida. And following that, Stacey Abrams registered 2.6 million Georgian voters, which gave the White House and the Senate to the Democrats. Georgia, a neighboring state with a similar mix of folks, is half the size of Florida.”

“In Florida,” wrote Grayson, “we need to register 1,000,000 Democrats this year. And it will be easier than it ever was in Georgia. Here in Florida, we’re not registering people for the first time; we’re re-registering 1,000,000+ people who were registered before. Plus we have a pool of 1,500,000 convicted felons who have had their rights restored, but no one has reached out to register them. They skew 3-to-1 Democratic. Plus we have another pool of nearly 500,000 young first-time voters to register. They skew 2-to-1 Democratic.”

“This is the greatest opportunity for real change in the entire country. If we register 1,000,000 Florida Democrats, we will deprive Donald Trump of 30 Electoral Votes. He will lose (and scream that we cheated— hahahahahaha!) And we will pick up a Senate seat, currently held by Skeletor, that will help us keep the Senate…. “That’s what my campaign is all about this year— registering 1,000,000 Democrats, so that we can turn Florida Blue, and keep the White House and the Senate out of the hands of the MAGA nuts, forever,” he concluded.

Inside The Israel Lobby’s New $90 Million War Chest 

Amos Barshad, February 1, 2024 [The Lever]

Internal AIPAC materials reveal huge gifts from moguls — and the strategies lobbyists used to score the cash.

 

(anti)Republican Party

Wonder why alleged Christians are Trump Supporters? David French has a report that explains much

xaxnar,  January 28, 2024 [DailyKos]

When the Right Ignores its Sex Scandals is the headline over a column by David French about a news story you may not have heard about — almost certainly if your primary news sources are from the right wing media bubble. (The link should provide full access.) Here’s how it starts:

”Let me share with you one of the worst and most important recent news stories that you’ve probably never heard about. Late last month, the Southern Baptist Convention settled a sex abuse lawsuit brought against a man named Paul Pressler for an undisclosed sum. The lawsuit was filed in 2017 and alleged that Pressler had raped a man named Duane Rollins for decades, with the rapes beginning when Rollins was only 14 years old.

”The story would be terrible enough if Pressler were simply an ordinary predator. But while relatively unknown outside of evangelical circles, Pressler is one of the most important American religious figures of the 20th century. He and his friend Paige Patterson, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, are two of the key architects of the so-called conservative resurgence within the S.B.C.”….

And if people on the Right do hear about things like this? “Conservative partisans can simply cry “media bias!” and rely on their followers to tune it all out. To those followers, a scandal isn’t real until people they trust say it’s real.” This is a dynamic Sara Robinson detailed in her introductory piece about authoritarian movements. Scroll down to her descriptions of leaders and followers.

If you’ve been wondering why Donald Trump has such a following among the Christian Right, it’s because they’ve been conditioned by their religion to accept the leadership of patriarchs who can do no wrong, whose authority is not to be questioned, and their conviction that they are the only truly moral actors. It’s how they can support a rapist with 91 criminal cases pending against him.

Who Sowed The Seeds Of Trumpism– And Why Did Conservatives Devour Them So Readily?

Howie Klein, January 29, 2024  [downwithtyranny.com]

…They’re afraid of him— afraid for their diminished careers. And for them there’s a greater good than breaking with Trump: ensuring “that Republicans can keep living in Washington, D.C., and exercising power on behalf of a shrinking political minority. Republicans might phrase this differently: The party’s overall position is that the Democrats are so awful, and so dangerous to the nation, that the ends will now always justify the means. Rather than oppose or even criticize Trump, they retreat into the fog of ‘supporting the nominee’ and saving the country from Biden and the left-wing deep-state cabal that supposedly controls him. A tiny handful of elected Republicans have said that they will not vote for Trump. (They won’t vote for Biden either, of course, and if Trump wins— well, such is the price of saving the republic while keeping one’s hands clean.)”….

10 Oregon GOP State Senators Have Been Barred From Running For Re-Election

Howie Klein, February 2, 2024  [downwithtyranny.com]

The Oregon State Senate has 30 members, 17 Democrats, 11 Republicans and 2 independents. When the Republicans didn’t want the legislature dealing with issues they oppose (gun safety, women’s Choice, taxes, Climate Change, transgender health care…) they would just walk out and stay away making 2/3 quorum impossible. In 2022 the voters overwhelmingly passed Measure 113 which amended the constitution to prohibit members with 10 or more unexcused absences from running for reelection. It was a landslide— 1,292,127 (68.3%) to 599,204 (31.7%). Even all but 3 of Oregon’s reddest rural counties voted for it.

But that didn’t stop the Republicans last year. Republican minority leader Tim Knopp led several walk outs and exceeded the 10 days for 10 senators. Last summer Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade ruled the 10 would not be on the 2024 ballot. They sued. Yesterday, the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the Republicans. A federal district court had already ruled against them as well….

Historians File Brief In Support Of Removing Trump From Ballot 

[Huffington Post, via Naked Capitalism 01-30-2024]

Here is the filing: Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot?

Mitch McConnell’s Plan to Sabotage Social Security From Within

Alex Lawson, January 30, 2024 [Common Dreams]

…McConnell understands the political dangers of being openly hostile to Social Security. So instead, he is plotting to sabotage it from within. The latest instrument of that sabotage is Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the billionaire-funded American Enterprise Institute. Biggs is McConnell’s pick to serve on the Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB), which “provides advice and recommendations to the President, Congress, and the Commissioner of Social Security on matters related to the Social Security and Supplemental Security Income programs and policies.”….

Biggs served as an associate commissioner of Social Security under former President George W. Bush and was instrumental in Bush’s push to privatize Social Security. His goal was to hand the American people’s earned benefits over to Wall Street. Thankfully, the Bush privatization push failed due to massive grassroots opposition.

Biggs supports raising the retirement age, and has testified before Congress that people should work longer….

 

Conservative / Libertarian Drive to Civil War

Governor Abbott’s Perilous Effort at Constitutional Realignment

[Lawfare, via Naked Capitalism 01-30-2024]

“Article I, § 10, Clause 3 is primarily a statement of several things that states may not do. It includes a default rule that ‘[n]o State shall, without the Consent of Congress, … engage in War.’ It is true that the final clauses of Clause 3 create a limited right for states to respond to “invasions” in a way that the clause otherwise denies them—namely, the power to “engage in War” without congressional consent when they are ‘actually invaded” (or at imminent risk of the same). The ‘Actual Invasion Clause,’ in other words, is an exception to the default prohibition on states’ war-engagement power in Clause 3. In arguing that Clause 3 provides a federal constitutional basis for its actions along the U.S.-Mexico border, Texas has advanced two broader claims. The first is that what is currently happening along the border meets the threshold definition of ‘invasion.’ The second is that Texas can defend itself against invasions without regard to—and even in derogation of—federal laws and policies. Neither argument is persuasive, but the second is truly extraordinary.” More: “[E]ven in cases (unlike in Texas today) in which § 10 is applicable, it does not give the state any power to ‘supersede’ federal statutes. Abbott’s claim to the contrary—which he has yet to test outside of briefing in the current lawsuits between the United States and the Biden administration—is an extraordinary assertion of state supremacy over federal law. It misreads the text, purpose, and historical understanding of how the Constitution structures federal and state relationships when it comes to national defense. And however sympathetic some might be to what Texas claims it is trying to do, were courts to endorse these arguments, it could have ominous implications for national security far beyond the specific—and hotly contested—space of border security.”

Texas’ Border Stunt Is Based on the Same Legal Theory Confederate States Used to Secede

[The Daily Beast, via Naked Capitalism 01-30-2024]

“Abbott’s accusation that the federal government has breached the Constitution by having ‘broken the compact between the United States and the States’ is almost identical to South Carolina’s 1860 declaration of secession.” I don’t think “almost identical” is correct, but it’s certainly worth a click-through to see the Slave Power pounding the table. More: “Abbott’s letter espouses the fringe theory of constitutional law known as ‘compact theory,’ popularized by Confederate states during the Civil War era and supported by Confederate President Jefferson Davis. This theory posits that the United States was formed through a compact agreed upon by the states, with the federal government being a creation of the states. However, this view conflicts with the widely accepted social contract theory, which asserts that the federal government derives its authority from the consent of the people, not the states. The Supreme Court has consistently rejected compact theory, deeming it illegitimate and incompatible with constitutional law. At the crux of what’s happening at the southern border lies the question: Does the federal government have the authority to regulate access to Texas’ borders? The answer is unequivocally, yes. Texas’ embrace of compact theory and its assertion that state government can supersede federal authority directly contradict the landmark Supreme Court case of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819).”

Congressman urging Texas to ignore the Supreme Court is backed by major law firms

[Popular Information, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-02-2024]

“Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) is publicly urging Texas to ignore the Supreme Court. In previously unreported comments, Roy explained that he feared his position would push the country into ‘a post-constitutional world.’ But, Roy said, the Supreme Court is ‘pushing our hand’ by issuing a ruling related to the southern border that he opposes, and the Supreme Court needs to ‘feel the pressure.’ Major law firms and numerous prominent corporations are financially backing Roy’s reelection campaign, according to a Popular Information analysis of federal campaign finance filings…. Roy’s 2024 reelection campaign is supported by two prominent law firms. Covington & Burling is an international law firm based in Washington, DC…. Roy also received $750 on May 17, 2023, from the PAC of another prestigious DC-based law firm, Akin Gump…. Since 2023, Roy has also received financial support from the PACs of major corporations and professional organizations, including Valero Energy ($2,500), Union Pacific ($2,000), iHeartMedia ($2,000), Toyota ($1,000), Dell ($1,000), and the National Association of Realtors ($1,000).”

Texas Ignores the Constitution and the Rule of Law

Joyce Vance [via [downwithtyranny.com 02-02-2024]

Election Countdown, 282 Days to Go: The “States’ Rights” Era Returns

[James Fallows, Breaking the News, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 01-31-2024]

“This past Monday, the US Supreme Court ruled that the US federal government had jurisdiction over US national borders. And specifically that if Texas National Guard and other Texas forces kept installing razor wire along the Rio Grande, on orders from Governor Greg Abbott, they could not prevent US Border Patrol officers from removing it. The Supreme Court ruling came with no explanation and was only by a 5-4 margin. It’s a sign of our times that this was even a close call, given longstanding Court rulings that the national government controls national borders. Americans hold passports from the United States, not from Iowa or California. When an international flight lands at Newark airport, inbound passengers deal with federal agents, not New Jersey state police…. The politics of immigration and ‘the mess at the border’ are long-brewing and increasingly nasty. But the Texas reaction is significant. The Supreme Court said: Here is what you will do. Texas said: We won’t. That’s oversimplified but not by much. Even more important is what happened next. Apart from Greg Abbott in Texas, there are 26 other Republican governors. All but one of them signed a letter three days ago, supporting the Texas assertion of ‘Constitutional Right to Self-Defense.’”

“CERTAINLY INTIMIDATION”: LOUISIANA SUES EPA FOR EMAILS WITH JOURNALISTS AND CANCER ALLEY RESIDENTS
Delaney Nolan, Oliver Laughland, February 2 2024 [The Intercept]

LOUISIANA’S FAR-RIGHT GOVERNMENT has quietly obtainedOpens in a new tab hundreds of pages of communications between the Environmental Protection Agency and journalists, legal advocates, and community groups focused on environmental justice. The rare use of public records law to target citizens is a new escalation in the state’s battle with the EPA over its examination of alleged civil rights violationsOpens in a new tab in the heavily polluted region known as “Cancer Alley.”

MAGA’s Ugly New “Civil War” Fantasy Should Be Taken Seriously

Greg Sargent, January 31, 2024 [The New Republic]

Far-right personalities are fantasizing about “civil war” again, amid a standoff between Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the feds over border enforcement. That may seem silly, but unbridgeable differences over immigration truly are driving many big stories of the moment, from that Texas battle to Senate negotiations over a border bill to the House GOP impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. If you want to understand what’s really going on with all these complex issues, few voices bring more clarity than that of Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council. We chatted with him about the deeper conflicts and tensions animating this crisis….

 

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