Neither side would ever admit it, but MAGA’s ongoing authoritarian takeover is the heir of one man: Dick Cheney, the former Vice President who died this week.
Trump and his movement tried to distinguish themselves by loudly abandoning the Iraq War as a legacy of the Bush administration. During one debate in 2016, Trump pointed out to Jeb Bush that 9/11 wasn’t exactly an example of his brother having kept the country safe. Before the 2024 election, Cheney called Trump the biggest individual “threat to our republic” that the country has ever seen.
Now, now. It’s a shame they couldn’t get along, after all, they had so much in common.
Starting in the late 1980s, Cheney developed and implemented the dictator-like theory of executive power in which we all now live. The roots here lie in the long-held bitterness among many on the right over President Nixon’s resignation in the aftermath of Watergate, but, as NYT reporter Charlie Savage noted, Cheney expressed the idea fully as the Iran-Contra scandal wound to a close. That was a critique of what Cheney described as a “more assertive Congress that no longer honors the traditions” of executive power, but really a vision of a president who, when invoking national security concerns, could do whatever he or she wanted with backing by the full federal government.
At one point, in 2002, Cheney told Cokie Roberts that there had been an “erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job,” citing both the War Powers Act and the Anti-Impoundment Act…..
The U.S. president’s family raked in more than $800 million from sales of crypto assets in the first half of 2025 alone, a Reuters examination found, on top of potentially billions more in unrealized “on paper” gains. Much of that cash has come from foreign sources as Donald Trump’s sons have touted their business on an international investor roadshow.
[Wall Street Journal, via The Big Picture, November 02, 2025]
Binance facilitated $2 billion purchase of World Liberty’s stablecoin and built its technology; clemency for Changpeng Zhao surprised some in administration.
[TW: A trained historian selects the most important excerpts of Sohan Mandami’s victory speech.]
Mamdani began by lifting up New York City’s working people, noting that “[f]or as long as we can remember,” they “have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands….
But in New York City last night, he said, “we have answered those fears…. Hope is alive. Hope is a decision that tens of thousands of New Yorkers made day after day, volunteer shift after volunteer shift, despite attack ad after attack ad. More than a million of us stood in our churches, in gymnasiums, in community centers, as we filled in the ledger of democracy.”
“And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible. And we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do.” ….
“In this new age we make for ourselves,” Mamdani said, “we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another….
Mamdani took on the problem of disinformation in modern politics, noting that “many have heard our message only through the prism of misinformation. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to redefine reality and to convince our neighbors that this new age is something that should frighten them.” He laid that disinformation at the feet of the very wealthy in their quest to divide working Americans to make sure they retain power. “[A]s so often occurred,” he said, “the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour. They want the people to fight amongst ourselves so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long-broken system.”
Mamdani urged New Yorkers to embrace a “brave new course, rather than fleeing from it.” If they do, he said, “we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.”
[TW: I think it is crucial that Mandami is singling out the rich and oligarchy as the ultimate source of our economic and political dysfunction.]
For the first time in the Citizens United era of billionaires and corporate money buying U.S. elections, change may be afoot. This week, Democrats campaigning on a populist message won resounding victories in the face of big-money opposition….
An aging party establishment is still calling for Democrats to be more moderate and centrist, but what if the center has moved? What if populism is the new centrism?
On this new episode of Lever Time’sMONEYBOMB series, David Sirota sits down with Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica, author of the newsletter On Data and Democracy, to discover how the labels that we use in our political system are changing — and how this week’s election results could shift the Democratic Party’s battle against corporate power and the oligarchy.
…Although I’m much closer to Mamdani than Cuomo on Palestine, I remain a little nervous about the introduction of a foreign ethnic conflict into our city. To be clear, that was not Mamdani’s fault. He wanted to focus on affordability, and he “stayed on message,” as they say. He was not the person to introduce the specter of ethnic strife into our city politics. At the very end, his opponents played to hate and bigotry in a shameful way. Humanity has achieved something truly incredible and almost utopian in New York: millions of very different types of people living peaceably—and sometimes even amicably—side by side. That’s every bit as real as the death and destruction halfway around the world. For me, New York is the living counterpoint to all that suffering and hate. It’s worth protecting and building upon. In fact, it’s the most important thing: New York City is, in my humble opinion, the greatest accomplishment in the history of human civilization. We’ve long set the standard for art, culture, industry, literature—you name it. Every good and great thing is available here. As Pericles said of Athens in the funeral oration, “Because of the greatness of our city, the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own.” But in politics, we resigned ourselves, with a weary smile, to a certain cynicism. Now we are attempting a politics that lives up to our humane and cosmopolitan aspirations. Wedded to some hard-nosed pragmatism, it just might work.
I think Mamdani agrees with all this, or I wouldn’t have voted for him. The only thing that prevents this city from being a true utopia is that it’s just way too expensive. It’s hard to build a decent life here. I know some people think that gives rise to a competitive spirit that leads to excellence, but the golden age of New York was when the city was accessible to the middle and working classes, and, in fact, the city was a kind of island of social democracy. For it to be great, New York has to attract the world’s most talented and brilliant, and its most industrious and hardworking, not just its richest, and they are not the same thing. Think of it: All of our fond stereotypes of New York are of working-class people: the accents, the slang, the traditions, the food, etc. They made and still make the city vibrant. I’m not sure Mamdani will be able to narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots successfully, but I do know he’s right that it’s the problem….
…Mamdani long ago cast his campaign as something more than a race to run one city. He told The Leverthat “this is the heart of the battle for the future of the Democratic Party.” ….
On one side are the party’s long-standing luminaries, politicians, media elites, and operatives still clinging to the dream of a return to pre-MAGA normalcy. Many in this faction spent electiondayvalorizingCheney. Others were insisting that to win elections and face down Donald Trump’s authoritarianism, Democrats should construct a big tent that avoids any unifying national agenda at all, periodically try to out-Republican the Republicans on some social issues, and then label that incoherence “centrism.”
On the other side of the divide are Democratic voters, who, according to polls, are more enraged at their party’s leaders than they ever have been, and for good reason. After years of being told that Democratic politicians simply cannot do anything, even when those politicians have power, Democratic voters watched Republicans use that same power to do whatever MAGA wants….
All of the discontent culminated in a perfect storm in New York City — the capital of global finance, where one in four residents lives in poverty and one in 24 residents is a millionaire. An anti-oligarch message targeting the affordability crisis was bound to resonate in such Dickensian conditions, but it could only reach enough voters because of the city’s clean-election system, which provides grassroots candidates with enough public money to run competitive campaigns….
So, where does this all go from here? I’m not quite sure, but it seems like the first day of the rest of our political lives, which is probably why I’m experiencing a bit of deja vu. To me, this era seems vaguely similar to a moment in 2007 — a time when the crimes and corruption of a second-term Republican presidency were demoralizing and enraging the country every day, and Democratic leaders looked similarly dazed, confused, and complicit.
Back then, I published a book called The Uprising, which posited that the growing anger at the status quo would not dissipate. I argued that it would instead be channeled into either a center-left New Deal-esque movement or a far-right reaction — and my youthful optimism prompted my high hopes that it would be the former, not the latter.
But soon after, the nascent progressive form of populism was funneled by Barack Obama into support for the Democratic Party establishment, and conservative populism was plugged into the tea party movement. When, amid the financial crisis, Democrats turned expectations of hope and change into moreof the same, the tea party was able to foment a backlash birthing MAGA, the Trump presidency, and a societal meltdown that continues to this day….
…For Mamdani, the key to taking down the Democratic machine was creating his own coalition, stitching together a wide cross-section of voters, many of whom had been previously disengaged or ignored in city politics.
Mamdani received an early boost from the Democratic Socialists of America’s most organized and influential chapter; having done work for Sen. Jessica Ramos’s campaign early on, we were always impressed by the volunteer manpower and grassroots fundraising, which provided a long shot candidate an unusually developed campaign infrastructure. With DSA’s help, Mamdani was able to mount an expansive effort to connect with the city’s massive Muslim and Asian communities.
There had never been any concerted campaign to court the former group, leaving swaths of Brooklyn and Queens prime for organizing. Many Asian and South Asian communities had moved to the right in recent years, but a combination of affinity for the candidate and the appeal of his concrete plans, aimed at working class New Yorkers, brought them into the coalition as well. And in the end, he won Black voters by a bigger margin than any other group, unifying communities that for decades were pitted against one another in New York City….
On Friday, Elon Musk appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and falsely claimed that the government shutdown was a dispute over blue states diverting billions of dollars in fraudulent federal payments to undocumented immigrants. Musk claimed that states like California and New York would be bankrupt without federal aid and that they depend on such funding to secure votes from undocumented immigrants.
“The entire basis for the government shutdown is that… the Trump administration correctly does not want to send massive amounts of, like, hundreds of billions of dollars to fund illegal immigrants in the blue states, in all the states really,” Musk said to host Joe Rogan.
What went unmentioned, however, was the actual dispute at the heart of the shutdown: the expiration of subsidies that will dramatically increase health insurance costs for millions of Americans.
Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, and made these false claims on the number one podcast in the United States. Rogan did not push back on Musk’s claims and accepted Musk’s version of reality….
Contrary to Musk’s claims, California and New York would not “be bankrupt” without funding from the federal government. Both states pay significantly more in taxes to the federal government than they receive back in federal funding. The federal government relies on states like California and New York to subsidize states that are less wealthy.
The election wasn’t just a loss—it was a narcissistic injury, and the panic is the tell….
While the result of any of these individual elections would not be surprising, the margins and turnout outperformed expectations in every race. This was a clear reaction—the body politic’s national immune system has been activated by the Trump regime. People don’t like what’s going on in America at all….
The reaction to this moment was not political, it was psychological. It was a mass narcissistic injury sustained by primarily one demographic.
At Speaker Mike Johnson’s daily alternate reality presser, Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) complained about the Democratic victories: “Pro-terrorist Marxist radicals are now the left’s main stream.”
As proof of his claim, Emmer quoted “Commie Mamdani”—the now mayor-elect of New York City:
“‘We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.’
That is a direct quote from commie Mamdani and it should terrify every single freedom loving American.“
Emmer, the third most powerful Republican in the House, transforms the idea of government doing anything, big or small, or caring about people’s concerns, into a radical communist terror plot….
As another example of a very normal reaction to this resounding election loss, the half-trillionaire owner of Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla quote-tweeted Canadian grifter Gad Saad—who is on a mission to end the scourge of empathy. Elon Musk wrote:
“Western Civilization is doomed, unless the core weakness of suicidal empathy is recognized and actions are taken that are hard, but necessary for survival.”
Musk’s projected terror about the imminent demise of “Western Civilization” is the core eschatology for incels: If white men are not protected as the elite class—the aristocracy—humanity will degenerate into chaos. It will be a genetic apocalypse….
Evola provided a cheat code for narcissists—and insecure men who aspire to be narcissists—to justify their violence, bigotry, and hate: “ONE FREE TICKET TO VALHALLA! BECAUSE YOU ARE SPECIAL!”
The only small print is that you have to give up your humanity. You have to give up your empathy and humility because it is weak and fails to recognize your superiority.
“The morality of compassion and humility is the morality of decadence; it corresponds to a world in which the inferior prevails over the superior.”
—Revolt Against the Modern World (1934)
“Humanitarianism and compassion are not virtues, but symptoms of a dissolution of the awareness of rank and distance.”
—Men Among the Ruins (1953)
This deliberate rejection of “compassion” is at the heart of every authoritarian regime, big or small. It’s why Hannah Arendt and Gustave Gilbert both saw the absence of empathy as the definition of evil in their observations of the Nazis.
Richard Murphy, November 8 2025 [Funding the Future]
Donald Trump’s Great Gatsby–style party at Mar-a-Lago reveals everything about modern America — excess at the top, hunger at the bottom, and the deliberate cruelty of power without care. As millions faced cuts to essential payments, Trump partied. This is what happens when power forgets compassion.
There’s a theme developing on this channel at the moment, and it’s all about the unaffordability of the wealthy. And if we want an example of that, go and have a look at some of the pictures of Donald Trump partying in Mar-a-Lago last weekend at a supposed Great Gatsby lookalike party that he hosted there.
It’s obscene; wealth was on display, and so was abuse.
Notice how many black people there are in the photographs you can find.
Notice how racially divided that party was as a consequence, in a country where there are a significant number of people who are both black and brown.
Notice how young women were treated as if none of the lessons from Epstein had been learned….
Elizabeth Dwoskin, November 4, 2025 [The Washington Post]
Chris Buskirk put tech elites at the center of power in Trump’s Washington. His efforts are grounded in a controversial theory: An “aristocracy” is needed to move the country forward.
Max from @UNFTR reports on the growing cracks in the financial markets and the unprecedented lengths the Federal Reserve has already gone to in order to stabilize the global financial system. The U.S. is heading toward a full-blown liquidity crisis that threatens to seize up the financial markets. The situation is worsening daily at this point and Trump’s erratic policy decisions are contributing to the destabilization.
Seeking to cut costs, technology companies shed the most jobs, followed by the retail and services sectors, the outplacement firm found. Amazon, UPS, Microsoft and other firms have recently announced layoffs.
Lynn Parramore, Nov 6, 2025 [Institute for New Economic Thinking]
…as the government shutdown drags on (and on), the flow of official economic data has slowed to a trickle. The Fed is missing timely labor, inflation, and spending numbers. The Treasury Department is flying blind on cash flows and debt issuance. Even the smaller agencies, like the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), are skipping their usual readouts on spending, income, and investment. This is basic stuff that keeps markets steady and policymakers tethered to reality.
We are becoming untethered, and it’s not just a bureaucratic problem. For everyday people, it can ripple into mortgage rates, retirement accounts, and everything in between.
In the meantime, everyone from Wall Street to Main Street is being nudged toward private-sector data for guidance. And here’s the rub: private players — often with little oversight — have every incentive to spin the numbers in their favor….
Richard Murphy, November 3 2025 [Funding the Future]
Greg Mankiw’s ‘Principles of Economics’ is one of the most widely used textbooks in the world. It has trained millions of students, from first-year undergraduates to policymakers and journalists, in the worldview that defines modern economic orthodoxy.
Its central message is simple: markets work. Prices coordinate behaviour. Incentives shape outcomes. Government should intervene sparingly. Growth, not redistribution, is the path to prosperity.
To generations of students, this has sounded like common sense, and that is precisely the problem. Mankiw’s economics presents itself as neutral, scientific, and apolitical, when in truth it is a moral vision of society disguised as arithmetic. It assumes that market outcomes reflect merit, that inequality reflects productivity, and that the economy can be understood without reference to power.
Hence, the Mankiw Question: if economics teaches that people get what they deserve and markets reward merit, how do we explain the poverty, privilege, and inequality that surround us?
The Democratic Party and its liberal allies refuse to call for mass mobilization and strikes — the only tools that can thwart Trump’s emergent authoritarianism — fearing they too will be swept aside.
Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by Reuters show. And the social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day.
Richard Murphy, Funding the Future blog, has been writing a series of essays on the thinking of famous economists. The November 3 post linked above focused on Mankiw and his “Econ 101” textbook. The foundations for these essays is Ai search — is that better than just looking up the author on Wikipedia? I don’t know.
Murphy’s essays are exercises in moral hectoring, calls to humans to strive to form or simply be better societies. His polemic against Mankiw certainly hits, because he is right about what is wrong with Mankiw’s textbook: Mankiw is indoctrinating college students into a kind of civic religion, which takes as its premise a form of the “just world” hypothesis. Mankiw is not that far from Candide’s Doctor Pangloss, forever offering proofs that our market economy is the best of all possible worlds.
Murphy complains that Mankiw presents his religious faith in neoclassical market economic dogma as if it is a positive theory of how the existing economy works, that is, an attempt at an objective analysis. I think Murphy is right about Mankiw, but I do not see that Murphy envisions offering anything more substantive than simply a better morality. Murphy does attack Mankiw’s analysis on the usual grounds of unrealistic assumptions et cetera, but does not address the outstanding problem of how to think about political economy, as opposed to how to feel about political economy. Mankiw’s glib libertarian complacency is galling — no argument from me there.
Murphy’s formulation of “the Mankiw question” is: if economics teaches that people get what they deserve and markets reward merit, how do we explain the poverty, privilege, and inequality that surround us?
Can there be any answer that improves thinking about political economy, practically?
If a theory of economics stands in as analogous to a theory of physics, then as practical matter, we should be seeking a theory of economics that forms a foundation for effective economic engineering. In the same way that a theory of electromagnetism makes practical electrical engineering possible.
Technological marvels gave great prestige to physics, especially among those for whom those marvels were and are indistinguishable from magic. Economics claims similar prestige from myth making about the supposed successes of “free market capitalism” and the conspicuous failures of Soviet communism. But, the quality of thinking about political economy is generally very poor and miring it in further, competing moralism does little to improve public understanding or discourse.
A better, practical understanding of political economy could be used by enemies as well as friends, for good or ill by our lights. Are we willing to chance it?
Murphy continues his series. Krugman and insightful political commenter Judt have been added since Mankiw.
So much for that big Tuesday victory, right? It was a huge party in New York City with so many so-called “Progressives” present. Naomi Klein was in attendance claiming this is how you defeat fascism, for example. Kyle Kulinski was celebrating from home with drinks and a cigar and claiming “Woke” is back, whatever that means. They, the Progressives and the Liberals and the Centrist Dems, were all claiming it was the end of Trump and MAGA and the Republican-controlled Congress. It was just that easy.
Poof! All of that up in smoke because all of that was in fact smoke and mirrors. It was never real. The Dems caved and ended the shutdown and got nothing for their trouble if you can call it their trouble. The Dems snatched defeat from Tuesdays’s alleged sweeping victory. How could this be? We all know how it could be and why it is.
If you think about it, considering many, perhaps millions ultimately, will die much earlier than they would have otherwise due to no access to affordable healthcare, and you couple that with the fact these Dems represent their donors and their donors include AIPAC as well as wealthy Zionist oligarchs, it necessarily means Israel has extended the genocide to unwashed Americans. We are all Palestinians now from Israel’s perspective and the Dems capitulating could very well have been orchestrated by the Zionists as punishment for Mamdani. Israel is ensuring that its end, and it will end, will be massively brutal. The building rage when unleashed will be volcanic.
There’s an internal contradiction in the Mankiw-type mainstream economic construction. On one hand, inequality is there because some people make choices that result in them getting less money, being poor whatever, and so it’s their fault and so it’s all right. On the other, the WHOLE THEORETICAL EDIFICE rests on the idea that people by definition cannot do that–if people are not all perfect, “rational” maximizers, then their free markets are not efficient, markets don’t clear, the whole schtick doesn’t work.
In a way I think to neoliberal economists, the REAL reason the poor deserve to be poor is because they represent people’s refusal to be what the neoliberal economists defined them as–they’re failing the theory, failing to live up to the dogma’s expectations of what they are supposed to be, they’re APOSTATES just by existing.
As a side note, behaving the way economists define as “rational” would be irrational, mostly because of the foundational (and deliberate) error made early in economic history to just say that utility == money, when it quite systematically is not. The thing is that to economists, “rationality” involves treating a loss as exactly equal to a gain, so if you could gamble with a 51% chance of success, “rationally” you should. Most real people don’t, they generally treat a loss as significantly more important than a gain. That’s because it is–unless you are rich, a significant loss has important consequences; you could be unable to afford utilities or food or loan payments, or even fail to make rent–these could have cascading results into the future, potentially including homelessness. The same gain on the other hand is nice, but less important. So to an ordinary person a loss of $1000 involves a much bigger loss of utility than the utility gain you get from a gain of $1000. Economists’ “rationality” is completely irrational. It only becomes rational to take that 51% chance if you’re already rich, so the loss makes no real difference to your quality of life and you can repeat the game until averages get you a profit.
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve eventually come to the conclusion that the details of economic theories are relatively unimportant. Sure, it would be nice to have an economics that was based more in the study of what really happens in our economy, but ultimately the way our economy is structured, which shapes what happens in it, is something that was decided by people. It’s an outcome of government policies, laws and so on, in ongoing interaction with how people game the setup, which in turn is going to vary depending on their motivations. So in the end, the economy works the way people decide it will, so the important thing is who is making those decisions. If a few are in charge they will decide for the benefit of that few. If decision making power is more broadly spread to ordinary people, they will decide for the benefit of ordinary people. Sure, they may screw up, so do the elites, but when they course correct it will be in the right direction.
Apparently Uber designed its algorithms and procedures to facilitate an interesting kind of individual “fare theft” by non-arriving drivers on top of all the bigger system-wide damage designed and carried out by Uber.
The ones not running anytime soon don’t have to worry about donor support for a while yet. The ones going to retire don’t have to worry about donor support ever again. So, should i believe that donor support and donor threats specifically motivated their doublecross on this vote?
And if I am being invited to believe that Israel acting through AIPAC specifically worked to secure this death-by-disinsurance for millions of Americans, I would need some actual evidence for that beyond a speculative theory. That theory would also have to explain why the IsraelGov, acting through AIPAC, would specifically want to kill millions of Americans by engineered insurance removal. How exactly would the IsraelGov benefit from that?
There is a content creator named Parkrose Permaculture whose content did indeed used to be about permaculture. But with Trump Resurgent, she has shifted over to political content.
Here is her thinking about the Democratic Doublecross in the Senate last night.
” Thoughts on tonight’s betrayal by Senate Dems ” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl-OD5e58DM
I am on break and have to get back to work in a couple of minutes. I have just seen another Parkrose Permaculture video and I only have time to watch a couple minutes of it but I believe it promises to be interesting.
It addresses a version of the ” Democratic Senators double-crossed us to get revenge for Mamdani’s win” theory. I gather that the flavor of the theory that ParPerm has heard is that the DemSens did it all on their own out of pure personal spite over the Mamdani victory. I don’t know what she thinks of the theory but I will find out in due course.
Meanwhile, here is the title and the link . . .
” A circulating theory: Did Senate Dems do this to retaliate against Mamdani’s win?”
Why would I offer this in such haste? Because I have found that when I see something interesting on You Tube, I find that it can soon disappear beyond all hope of finding it. So I offered it here while it was still fresh and findable.
Poor construction? Hopefully the authorities will study all the other new bridges for any signs of poor constructions and fix the problems up.
Interestingly, I notice that this video got out to the wider world without any pre-emptive censorship, so far as I know. Does this show a level of confidence on the part of the CPC authorities required to face and fix problems? If so, that is a hopeful thing.
Here is an African Content Creator’s videocast, using re-broadcasted Black American content. I only had time to watch the first two sampled Black American entries.
Those two are relevant enough to the subject of Economic Combat that I decided to offer that videocast right here right now in case it disappears beyond hope of finding by my lunchtime. The second sampled speaker especially is describing in detail how Black America has long employed the economic survival strategy which Lambert Strether over at NaCap referred to as ” System D “.
” System D – A Must Read Comprehensive Guide” https://dotcommagazine.com/2024/02/system-d-a-must-read-comprehensive-guide/
The very first speaker referrences some Texas MAGA farmers expressing dismay over how Blacks have not come to replace the immigrants now missing from the fields. That first speaker reminds any of them watching that no Blacks are ever coming to work in their fields.
Let them go bankrupt. Help them go bankrupt. Help them lose their farms. Perhaps Black American farmers and wannabe-farmers will be able to aquire some of that freed-up farmland.
Break and destroy MAGA’s power, including its economic power.
Political combat can be a part of economic combat in that if the right political targets of opportunity can be destroyed in the most publicly spectacular way possible, it may divert the co-involved parts of those targets’ networks just enough to advance an economic combat goal or at least economic combat battles while the co-networks’s situational awareness is otherwise engaged.
Here is a possible treasure-trove of possibly weaponizable , disseminationizable and viralizable information to be used against selected political targets.
Some might object to Total and Utterly Disclosement of every bit of Epstein information out of a fear that Prominent Democrats and Liberals might also be named.
To which I would offer a link to a tiny You Tube micro-video of Gilbert Gottfried saying . . . ” Oh! Is that a problem?” the way I once heard him say it.
And here is a reproduction of a short video which is claimed to have been projected real huge on a building in Los Angeles . . . some video of Jeffrey Epstein with Jeffrey Epstein’s friend. Plus some visual commentary and a few words suggesting that the Republican Party gets to own the cover-up aspect of this.
If Democrats are returned to control of all branches of Federal Government ( except of course the Supreme Leo Shyster Court), they won’t do anything specific to reverse any of this. But they will default-permit a space to open up for some to begin filling with organized opposition, rejection and counter-attack. . . . and for others to try filling with a Long March of Disinfection through all the DemParty Institutions.
bruce wilder
Richard Murphy, Funding the Future blog, has been writing a series of essays on the thinking of famous economists. The November 3 post linked above focused on Mankiw and his “Econ 101” textbook. The foundations for these essays is Ai search — is that better than just looking up the author on Wikipedia? I don’t know.
Murphy’s essays are exercises in moral hectoring, calls to humans to strive to form or simply be better societies. His polemic against Mankiw certainly hits, because he is right about what is wrong with Mankiw’s textbook: Mankiw is indoctrinating college students into a kind of civic religion, which takes as its premise a form of the “just world” hypothesis. Mankiw is not that far from Candide’s Doctor Pangloss, forever offering proofs that our market economy is the best of all possible worlds.
Murphy complains that Mankiw presents his religious faith in neoclassical market economic dogma as if it is a positive theory of how the existing economy works, that is, an attempt at an objective analysis. I think Murphy is right about Mankiw, but I do not see that Murphy envisions offering anything more substantive than simply a better morality. Murphy does attack Mankiw’s analysis on the usual grounds of unrealistic assumptions et cetera, but does not address the outstanding problem of how to think about political economy, as opposed to how to feel about political economy. Mankiw’s glib libertarian complacency is galling — no argument from me there.
Murphy’s formulation of “the Mankiw question” is: if economics teaches that people get what they deserve and markets reward merit, how do we explain the poverty, privilege, and inequality that surround us?
Can there be any answer that improves thinking about political economy, practically?
If a theory of economics stands in as analogous to a theory of physics, then as practical matter, we should be seeking a theory of economics that forms a foundation for effective economic engineering. In the same way that a theory of electromagnetism makes practical electrical engineering possible.
Technological marvels gave great prestige to physics, especially among those for whom those marvels were and are indistinguishable from magic. Economics claims similar prestige from myth making about the supposed successes of “free market capitalism” and the conspicuous failures of Soviet communism. But, the quality of thinking about political economy is generally very poor and miring it in further, competing moralism does little to improve public understanding or discourse.
A better, practical understanding of political economy could be used by enemies as well as friends, for good or ill by our lights. Are we willing to chance it?
Murphy continues his series. Krugman and insightful political commenter Judt have been added since Mankiw.
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So much for that big Tuesday victory, right? It was a huge party in New York City with so many so-called “Progressives” present. Naomi Klein was in attendance claiming this is how you defeat fascism, for example. Kyle Kulinski was celebrating from home with drinks and a cigar and claiming “Woke” is back, whatever that means. They, the Progressives and the Liberals and the Centrist Dems, were all claiming it was the end of Trump and MAGA and the Republican-controlled Congress. It was just that easy.
Poof! All of that up in smoke because all of that was in fact smoke and mirrors. It was never real. The Dems caved and ended the shutdown and got nothing for their trouble if you can call it their trouble. The Dems snatched defeat from Tuesdays’s alleged sweeping victory. How could this be? We all know how it could be and why it is.
If you think about it, considering many, perhaps millions ultimately, will die much earlier than they would have otherwise due to no access to affordable healthcare, and you couple that with the fact these Dems represent their donors and their donors include AIPAC as well as wealthy Zionist oligarchs, it necessarily means Israel has extended the genocide to unwashed Americans. We are all Palestinians now from Israel’s perspective and the Dems capitulating could very well have been orchestrated by the Zionists as punishment for Mamdani. Israel is ensuring that its end, and it will end, will be massively brutal. The building rage when unleashed will be volcanic.
Purple Library Guy
There’s an internal contradiction in the Mankiw-type mainstream economic construction. On one hand, inequality is there because some people make choices that result in them getting less money, being poor whatever, and so it’s their fault and so it’s all right. On the other, the WHOLE THEORETICAL EDIFICE rests on the idea that people by definition cannot do that–if people are not all perfect, “rational” maximizers, then their free markets are not efficient, markets don’t clear, the whole schtick doesn’t work.
In a way I think to neoliberal economists, the REAL reason the poor deserve to be poor is because they represent people’s refusal to be what the neoliberal economists defined them as–they’re failing the theory, failing to live up to the dogma’s expectations of what they are supposed to be, they’re APOSTATES just by existing.
As a side note, behaving the way economists define as “rational” would be irrational, mostly because of the foundational (and deliberate) error made early in economic history to just say that utility == money, when it quite systematically is not. The thing is that to economists, “rationality” involves treating a loss as exactly equal to a gain, so if you could gamble with a 51% chance of success, “rationally” you should. Most real people don’t, they generally treat a loss as significantly more important than a gain. That’s because it is–unless you are rich, a significant loss has important consequences; you could be unable to afford utilities or food or loan payments, or even fail to make rent–these could have cascading results into the future, potentially including homelessness. The same gain on the other hand is nice, but less important. So to an ordinary person a loss of $1000 involves a much bigger loss of utility than the utility gain you get from a gain of $1000. Economists’ “rationality” is completely irrational. It only becomes rational to take that 51% chance if you’re already rich, so the loss makes no real difference to your quality of life and you can repeat the game until averages get you a profit.
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve eventually come to the conclusion that the details of economic theories are relatively unimportant. Sure, it would be nice to have an economics that was based more in the study of what really happens in our economy, but ultimately the way our economy is structured, which shapes what happens in it, is something that was decided by people. It’s an outcome of government policies, laws and so on, in ongoing interaction with how people game the setup, which in turn is going to vary depending on their motivations. So in the end, the economy works the way people decide it will, so the important thing is who is making those decisions. If a few are in charge they will decide for the benefit of that few. If decision making power is more broadly spread to ordinary people, they will decide for the benefit of ordinary people. Sure, they may screw up, so do the elites, but when they course correct it will be in the right direction.
different clue
Apparently Uber designed its algorithms and procedures to facilitate an interesting kind of individual “fare theft” by non-arriving drivers on top of all the bigger system-wide damage designed and carried out by Uber.
Here is a little video made by someone who understands this little Uber-facilitated driver-scam and who refused to play along.
” Uber driver tries to cheat customer by not picking them up, forcing them to cancel the ride, yet still get paid ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1ot8vx1/uber_driver_tries_to_cheat_customer_by_not/
different clue
I just saw a little reddit entry featuring the 8 Democratic Senators for Trump and Grindr Mike on the government shutdown vote. They are all either not running again for several years or are old and about to retire. Here is the entry.
” We’re Living in a Fucking Boomer Deathwish Republic ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/complaints/comments/1otefwp/were_living_in_a_fucking_boomer_deathwish_republic/
The ones not running anytime soon don’t have to worry about donor support for a while yet. The ones going to retire don’t have to worry about donor support ever again. So, should i believe that donor support and donor threats specifically motivated their doublecross on this vote?
And if I am being invited to believe that Israel acting through AIPAC specifically worked to secure this death-by-disinsurance for millions of Americans, I would need some actual evidence for that beyond a speculative theory. That theory would also have to explain why the IsraelGov, acting through AIPAC, would specifically want to kill millions of Americans by engineered insurance removal. How exactly would the IsraelGov benefit from that?
different clue
There is a content creator named Parkrose Permaculture whose content did indeed used to be about permaculture. But with Trump Resurgent, she has shifted over to political content.
Here is her thinking about the Democratic Doublecross in the Senate last night.
” Thoughts on tonight’s betrayal by Senate Dems ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl-OD5e58DM
different clue
I am on break and have to get back to work in a couple of minutes. I have just seen another Parkrose Permaculture video and I only have time to watch a couple minutes of it but I believe it promises to be interesting.
It addresses a version of the ” Democratic Senators double-crossed us to get revenge for Mamdani’s win” theory. I gather that the flavor of the theory that ParPerm has heard is that the DemSens did it all on their own out of pure personal spite over the Mamdani victory. I don’t know what she thinks of the theory but I will find out in due course.
Meanwhile, here is the title and the link . . .
” A circulating theory: Did Senate Dems do this to retaliate against Mamdani’s win?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzwSvZ7qukU
Why would I offer this in such haste? Because I have found that when I see something interesting on You Tube, I find that it can soon disappear beyond all hope of finding it. So I offered it here while it was still fresh and findable.
different clue
Here is a new bridge collapsing in China. ” Hongqi bridge collapses in southwest China, months after opening. ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1ouah4t/hongqi_bridge_collapses_in_southwest_china_months/
Random bad luck? Well . . . bad luck happens.
Poor construction? Hopefully the authorities will study all the other new bridges for any signs of poor constructions and fix the problems up.
Interestingly, I notice that this video got out to the wider world without any pre-emptive censorship, so far as I know. Does this show a level of confidence on the part of the CPC authorities required to face and fix problems? If so, that is a hopeful thing.
different clue
Oh look . . . an anti-drone drone.
” Anti-Drone, Drone ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1oumdg1/antidrone_drone/
different clue
Here is an African Content Creator’s videocast, using re-broadcasted Black American content. I only had time to watch the first two sampled Black American entries.
Those two are relevant enough to the subject of Economic Combat that I decided to offer that videocast right here right now in case it disappears beyond hope of finding by my lunchtime. The second sampled speaker especially is describing in detail how Black America has long employed the economic survival strategy which Lambert Strether over at NaCap referred to as ” System D “.
” System D – A Must Read Comprehensive Guide”
https://dotcommagazine.com/2024/02/system-d-a-must-read-comprehensive-guide/
” System D and “The Stealth of Nations” ”
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/system-d-and-stealth-nations
” White Texas Farmers FURIOUS As Workers STOP Showing Up – Now BEGGING Black Americans for HELP ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiXpl3KIu2I
The very first speaker referrences some Texas MAGA farmers expressing dismay over how Blacks have not come to replace the immigrants now missing from the fields. That first speaker reminds any of them watching that no Blacks are ever coming to work in their fields.
Let them go bankrupt. Help them go bankrupt. Help them lose their farms. Perhaps Black American farmers and wannabe-farmers will be able to aquire some of that freed-up farmland.
Break and destroy MAGA’s power, including its economic power.
The future is Zero Sum.
different clue
Political combat can be a part of economic combat in that if the right political targets of opportunity can be destroyed in the most publicly spectacular way possible, it may divert the co-involved parts of those targets’ networks just enough to advance an economic combat goal or at least economic combat battles while the co-networks’s situational awareness is otherwise engaged.
Here is a possible treasure-trove of possibly weaponizable , disseminationizable and viralizable information to be used against selected political targets.
” We created a searchable database with all 20,000 files from Epstein’s Estate ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1owevsa/we_created_a_searchable_database_with_all_20000/
Some might object to Total and Utterly Disclosement of every bit of Epstein information out of a fear that Prominent Democrats and Liberals might also be named.
To which I would offer a link to a tiny You Tube micro-video of Gilbert Gottfried saying . . . ” Oh! Is that a problem?” the way I once heard him say it.
different clue
( to finish my thought just above . . . ” if only such a link existed.” )
different clue
And here is a reproduction of a short video which is claimed to have been projected real huge on a building in Los Angeles . . . some video of Jeffrey Epstein with Jeffrey Epstein’s friend. Plus some visual commentary and a few words suggesting that the Republican Party gets to own the cover-up aspect of this.
“Someone in L.A. projected this onto a building last night”
https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeTikToks/comments/1oxe6cw/someone_in_la_projected_this_onto_a_building_last/
If Democrats are returned to control of all branches of Federal Government ( except of course the Supreme Leo Shyster Court), they won’t do anything specific to reverse any of this. But they will default-permit a space to open up for some to begin filling with organized opposition, rejection and counter-attack. . . . and for others to try filling with a Long March of Disinfection through all the DemParty Institutions.