Author: Tony Wikrent Page 39 of 51

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

“This Is a Revolution, Sir”

[Jacobin, via Naked Capitalism 12-2-20]

Workers in India last week launched a general strike that brought out an estimated 250 million people, arguably the largest in human history. Now, they’re joining hands with farmers to protest Narendra Modi’s pro-corporate, far-right agenda.

Anti-Populism with Thomas Frank (podcast)

[The Dig, via Naked Capitalism 11-30-20]

Lambert Strether: “…if you want to understand why Frank has been blackballed by liberal Democrats and won’t (at least as I heard him say on Useful Idiots) be writing on politics any more, this is the podcast episode for you.”

Transcript is at: Thomas Frank: How the Democratic Party Became a Vehicle of Aristocracy​​​​​​​

[ScheerPost, 12-4-2020]

And Martin Luther King actually knew this history. The reason he knew it–it’s not, you know, hard to figure out–there was a famous historian of the South back in those days, his name was C. Vann Woodward, who wrote about this. You know, he wrote book after book after book about this story. C. Vann Woodward was a classic Southern liberal, and for him populism was the only bright spot in Southern history between the end of the Civil War–or I should say the end of Reconstruction, and then the present day in the 1960s, when he was writing populism. Was the only moment when there was even a glimmer of hope that Blacks and whites could get together in some kind of common action.

And Martin Luther King knew this history pretty well. And so he’s at this triumphant moment in Montgomery, Alabama, and he’s giving this speech. And he does this amazing shoutout to the populist movement of the 1890s. And he talks about how it threatened the Bourbon Democrats of the South, and how they instituted Jim Crow as a response to populism. So, to reinforce this idea of white solidarity, so that they could go to the, you know, to the poor white farmer who had nothing–you know, who was basically starving, almost–and say to this guy, well, you know, at least you’re a white person. So you’re better than these other people. And it’s one of King’s great moments. You can watch the speech on YouTube. But he says–I don’t want to spoil it, but you should go and watch the speech, because it’s absolutely fantastic. And he says, you know, the poor white farmer, when his stomach growled and his family called out for food, “he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was,” he was still better than these other people. It’s one of his beautiful moments….

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 29, 2020

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

For What Are America’s Wealthy Thankful? A Worsening Culture War

Matt Taibbi, TK News, via Naked Capitalism 11-26-20]

….From the “vast right-wing conspiracy” through the “basket of deplorables” to now, the Democratic message increasingly focuses on the illegitimacy of the ordinary conservative voter’s opinion: ignorant, conspiratorial, and racist, so terrible that the only hope is mass-reprogramming by educated betters.

On the other hand, Republicans from Goldwater to Trump have warned that coalitions of “marauders” from the inner cities and “bad hombres” from across the border are plotting to use socialist politics to seize the hard-earned treasure of the small-town voter, with the aid of elitist traitors in the Democratic Party.

Spool these ideas endlessly and you get culture war. Any thought that it might abate once Trump left the scene looks naive now….

This is what happens when the very wealthy stop having a stake in the outcome of a country’s future. Having long ago stopped investing in ameliorative programs to keep cities and small towns alive, they stop bothering with unifying national legends, too, letting long-simmering divisions rise….

…we’re now back to corporate-sponsored tales of half against half. What’s always forgotten is who’s paying for these messages. We have two donor-fattened parties that across decades of incompetence have each run out of convincing pitches for how to improve the lives of ordinary people. So they’ve settled into a new propaganda line that blames voters for their problems, with each party directing its base to demonize the other’s followers. Essentially, in the wake of Trump, the political class is accepting the inevitability of culture war, and urging it on, as something preferable to populist revolt.

Divided Societies In Decline Use Scapegoats To Re-Unify

Ian Welsh, November 24, 2020

America is moving towards a cold, and perhaps hot war with the rising superpower and the last superpower (China and Russia). At home, passions are hot and at some point some groups are going to be chosen as the “bad Americans. The traitors.” Some part of the elite (a small part) will be thrown to the dogs, and so will many of the powerless.

This doesn’t happen in all great powers in decline, to be sure. But it’s common play and it has powerful people other than Thiel pushing it. They see America’s decline and its disunity and they are looking for a way to turn the decline around or at least distract Americans from the actual authors of the decline (that would be people like Thiel) towards scapegoats.

Know Your Enemies

Ian Welsh, November 23, 2020

An enemy is someone who means you harm and has the means to inflict it…. You must know who wants to harm you and has the means. Let’s start here:

“If America’s distribution of income had remained the same as it was in the 3 decades following the second world war… A low-income American earning $35K this year would be earning $61K. A college-educated worker now earning $72K would be earning $120K.”

Everyone responsible for this is your enemy, unless you’re in somewhere between the top 4% to top 10%….

So the people who are responsible have robbed you of a million or more dollars, and a good, prosperous life. These people had names. It started with with intellectuals like Milton Friedman and the oligarchs who funded economics departments to overturn the economic orthodoxy the old order ran on. It moved onto politicians, executive and CEOs. Margaret Thatcher, and Reagan; then Blair and Clinton, who made their victory complete. Thatcher understood that it was Blair who made her victorious, until Labour accepted “There Is No Alternative” they could have simply undone almost everything she did. Clinton, cutting welfare and smashing blacks and poor people in the face with punitive jail sentences, was Reagan’s heir more than George Bush Sr. ever was.(Biden, of course, was there for all of it and supported almost every shitty piece of it. Enemy. If you can’t manage “enemy, but perhaps not as bad an enemy as Trump, you can’t think.”)

Now, here’s another fact: wage theft is almost equal to ALL other theft combined, except (get this) it isn’t considered a crime. That’s right, when your boss steals from you, it’s a civil/regulatory matter! Who’s the enemy?

The Epidemic

Over 900 Mayo staff have gotten COVID-19 in past two weeks

[Post-Bulletin, via Naked Capitalism 11-23-20]

Does contact tracing work? Quasi-experimental evidence from an Excel error in England (PDF)

[CAGE Research Centre, via Naked Capitalism 11-25-20]

A natural experiment. From the Abstract: “Between September 25 and October 2, 2020, a total of 15,841 COVID-19 cases in England (around 15 to 20% of all cases) were not immediately referred to the contact tracing system due to a data processing error. Case information was truncated from an Excel spreadsheet after the row limit had been reached, which was discovered on October 3. There is substantial variation in the degree to which different parts of England areas were exposed – by chance – to delayed referrals of COVID-19 cases to to the contact tracing system. We show that more affected areas subsequently experienced a drastic rise in new COVID-19 infections and deaths alongside an increase in the positivity rate and the number of test performed, as well as a decline in the performance of the contact tracing system. Conservative estimates suggest that the failure of timely contact tracing due to the data glitch is associated with more than 125,000 additional infections and over 1,500 additional COVID-19- related deaths. Our findings provide strong quasi-experimental evidence for the effectiveness of contact tracing.”

Swedish Life Expectancy to Drop for First Time in Century Due to Covid-19 

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 11-26-20]

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by Tony Wikrent

China Emerges Victorious in Trump’s Trade War

China scores victory as 15 Asian nations sign world’s biggest free-trade deal

[South China Morning Post, via Naked Capitalism 11-16-20]

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership accounts for about one-third of the world’s population and economy, but does not include the United States

East Asia Decouples from the United States: Trade War, COVID-19, and East Asia’s New Trade Blocs (PDF)

Petersen Institute for International Economics, via Naked Capitalism 11-20-20]

Lambert Strether: As Michael Pettis points out, the RCEP members are all net exporters. So who buys the goods?

KT Chong commented in the Weekend Wrap on Ian Welsh last week:

America has not yet realized: [with] the signing of the RCEP, China has effectively prevailed in — i.e., “won” — the open trade and economic war with the US.

With RCEP and the entire Asia Pacific as its economic and free trade sphere, China has maneuvered into an economic and strategic position in which it will have very little to fear from being decoupled or even sanctioned by the US. Now America and its Western allies will no longer be able to defeat China through trade, decoupling, sanctions or any economics means. With RCEP, China’s economic future is secured…. This will be the longest-lasting legacy of the Trump administration: starting and then losing the trade and economic war with China, in just three years, and now China’s rise to economic supremacy is all but certain.

RCEP set to supercharge the New Silk Roads

Pepe Escobar [Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 11-16-20]

China looms as Biden’s biggest foreign policy challenge. Here’s where he stands

[CNN, via Naked Capitalism 11-16-20]

The Elements of the China Challenge (PDF) Policy Planning Staff, Office of the Secretary of State

[via Axios, via Naked Capitalism 11-20-20]

The Pandemic

“Lawsuit: Tyson managers bet money on how many workers would contract COVID-19”

[Iowa Capital Dispatch, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-19-20]

The lawsuit was recently amended and includes a number of new allegations against the company and plant officials. Among them:

• In mid-April, around the time Black Hawk County Sherriff Tony Thompson visited the plant and reported the working conditions there “shook [him] to the core,” plant manager Tom Hart organized a cash-buy-in, winner-take-all, betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many plant employees would test positive for COVID-19.

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 15, 2020

by Tony Wikrent

America is an undeveloping state

Trump Is Staging A Coup — Why Are Dems Not Sounding The Alarm?

David Sirota, November 10, 2020

Most ominously of all, Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona are already insinuating the results may be fraudulent, even though they haven’t produced any evidence of widespread fraud.

Why is public perception so important? Because as Ohio State University law professor Edward Foley shows in a frighteningly prescient 2019 article, legislatures could use the public perception of fraud to try to invoke their  constitutional power to ignore their states’ popular votes, reject certified election results and appoint slates of Trump electors.

Trump is attempting a coup in plain sight

Ezra Klein, November 7, 2020 [Vox]

[Twitter, via Heather Cox Richardson 11-9-2020]

The Empire Strikes Back

The Democrats Are Already Back on Their Bullshit: The party is back to what it does best: blaming the left for its failures.

Paul Blest, November 6, 2020 [discourseblog]

Rep. Jim Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House who represents deep-blue Charleston, SC, implied during the call that if the Democrats talk about Medicare for All or really anything that would remotely seem like the they might try to improve people’s lives once they’re in power, it would be disastrous in Georgia, where the party is trying to secure a Senate majority by taking two seats off Republicans in January runoffs.

This is despite the fact that most of the incumbent freshman members who co-sponsored Medicare for All—many of them not exactly self-described progressives, aside from Katie Porter, the most successful of the bunch—all won their races….

One thing centrist Democrats might consider is that in a lot of places, their brand is absolute garbage even if their policies are well-liked. How else do you explain a 23-point victory for a $15 minimum wage in Florida and a three-and-a-half point loss for Biden, who supported it? How do you square a 67% defeat of right-to-work in Missouri in 2018 along with a six-point loss for Claire McCaskill? What is the lesson from voters casting ballots for recreational weed in Montana and South Dakota, and medical weed in Mississippi, despite those states all going for Trump by double-digits? It’s not the fault of trans people, socialists, or Black Lives Matter.

The Democrats are struggling in these places for the same reason they’re beginning to get successfully primaried from the left, at the local, state, and federal level, in the urban centers they’ve ruled forever. They have not learned the lesson of why Bernie Sanders was such a force in the last two primaries even if he ultimately came up short, or the lesson of why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez resonates with so many people.

Corporate Democrats Are Attacking So-Called Far-Left Policies

Senator Bernie Sanders, November 11, 2020 [USA Today, via David Sirota’s Weekly Poster 11-13-2020]

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by Tony Wikrent

The 277 Policies for Which Biden Need Not Ask Permission

[The American Prospect, via Naked Capitalism 11-5-20]

FAST FACTS:

• We found 277 policies that can be enacted through executive branch powers in the Biden-Sanders unity task force document.
• 48 of the policies, or 17 percent, are rollbacks of Trump-era policy changes.
• Immigration (78 policies), Climate Change (54 policies), and the Economy (54 policies) have the most potential executive actions.

Strategic Political Economy

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-3-20]

Which is the Real “Working Class Party” Now?

Matt Taibbi, November 5, 2020

Defying years of muddle-headed media analyses, Trump underperformed with white men, but made gains with every other demographic. Some 26 percent of his votes came from nonwhite Americans, the highest percentage for a Republican since 1960. The politician who became instantly famous — and infamous — by saying of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” performed stunningly well with Latino voters.

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by Tony Wikrent

See something? Report voter suppression and obstacles to voting.

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-8-20]

“State Fact Sheets”

[Georgetown University, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-30-20]

“[F]act sheets for all 50 states explaining the laws barring unauthorized private militia groups and what to do if groups of armed individuals are near a polling place or voter registration drive.”

The Pandemic

Mark Meadows: U.S. ‘not going to control’ COVID-19 as nation adds 83,718 new cases

[UPI, via Naked Capitalism 10-26-20]

“An Oral History of the Day Everything Changed”

Garrett Graff [Wired, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-29-20]

“On March 11, 2020, the coronavirus pandemic seemed to crystallize in the national consciousness. Americans look back on the turning point.” • Interviews with Mark Cuban, Carolyn Maloney, Elise Stefanik, Douglas Brinkley, Scott Van Pelt, Dan Pfeiffer, Claudia Sahm, Peter Tuz. Gabriella Orr, Philip Rucker, Liz Cheney, and Royce Young, among others; PMCs and upwards. However, Our elites obviously don’t read Naked Capitalism:

• January 23: China Coronavirus Watch: Updated – Another Chinese City Locked Down to Prevent Spread.
• January 28: Coronavirus: Not Looking Good
• January 29: Dr. Victor Shih: Coronavirus MUCH Worse Than SARS

So, arguably, for the truly alert, March 11 was not the day everything changed, but January 23. (And our elites don’t read Taleb either; Joseph Norman, Yaneer Bar-Yam, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb published Systemic risk of pandemic via novel pathogens – Coronavirus: A note on January 26, 2020.) So the question becomes: Why were our elites so oblivious?

Strategic Political Economy

What’s at stake? A short text on US elections

Branko Milanovic [globalinequality, via Naked Capitalism 10-25-20]

Serbian economist Milanovic originally wrote this for the Toronto Globe and Mail, but “They got what they apparently did not expect and wanted me to revise the text substantially. I am always happy to accept all factual and English-language corrections… But I do not accept changes in content. So I post the original text here.]

What are the stakes in the forthcoming US presidential election? I would put them in one word: “normalcy”. But as I write that word, I feel very uneasy…. The United States prior to Trump could hardly be described as having been in a desirable state of affairs. Not only that: it is that very “normalcy”  that brought Trump to power in the first place. It is useful to refresh one’s memories. Under George W Bush, the  US created endless wars that destabilized the Middle East and killed, according to some estimates, half a million  people. Under the same president, it also produced the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. And then under the next president it bailed out those responsible for the crisis, sowed chaos in Libya, and ignored the decimation  of the American middle class….

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by Tony Wikrent

VOTE!

See something? Report voter suppression and obstacles to voting.

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-8-20

Strategic Political Economy

The Enemies Briefcase
Andrew Cockburn [Harpers, November 2020, via Wall Street on Parade 10-18-20]

At some point in the first term, however, experts surmise that an even more secret briefing occurs, one that has never been publicly acknowledged. In it, the new president learns how to blow up the Constitution.

The session introduces “presidential emergency action documents,” or PEADs, orders that authorize a broad range of mortal assaults on our civil liberties. In the words of a rare declassified official description, the documents outline how to “implement extraordinary presidential authority in response to extraordinary situations”—by imposing martial law, suspending habeas corpus, seizing control of the internet, imposing censorship, and incarcerating so-called subversives, among other repressive measures. “We know about the nuclear briefcase that carries the launch codes,” Joel McCleary, a White House official in the Carter Administration, told me. “But over at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department there’s a list of all the so-called enemies of the state who would be rounded up in an emergency. I’ve heard it called the ‘enemies briefcase.’ ”

These chilling directives have been silently proliferating since the dawn of the Cold War as an integral part of the hugely elaborate and expensive Continuity of Government (COG) program, a mechanism to preserve state authority (complete with well-provisioned underground bunkers for leaders) in the event of a nuclear holocaust. Compiled without any authorization from Congress, the emergency provisions long escaped public discussion—that is, until Donald Trump started to brag about them. “I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about,” he boasted in March, ominously echoing his interpretation of Article II of the Constitution, which, he has claimed, gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.” He has also declared his “absolute right” to build a border wall, whatever Congress thinks, and even floated the possibility of delaying the election “until people can properly, securely, and safely vote.”

Rochester AFL-CIO Calls for General Strike if Trump Steals Election

[Payday Report, via Naked Capitalism 10-19-20]

Evo Morales’s Party’s Massive Victory Is a Rebuke to US Elites Who Hailed the Coup

[Jacobin, via Naked Capitalism 10-20-20]

How an Aversion to Masks Stems From ‘Toxic Masculinity’ 

New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 10-24-20]

When President Trump returned to the White House on Oct. 5, after spending three days hospitalized with Covid-19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he stepped out onto the balcony and ripped off his face mask to greet his supporters. He was sending a clear signal: He had gone to war with a ruthless enemy and come out unscathed, still standing strong.

“I’m better and maybe I’m immune, I don’t know. But don’t let it dominate your lives,” he said in a video later that day, minimizing the danger of the virus that has now killed more than 220,000 Americans.

That same day, when the Democratic presidential nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., posted a video of himself on Twitter wearing a face mask, the Fox News host Tomi Lahren suggested that he “carry a purse with that.” The implication: No strong, powerful man would resort to mask wearing.

I know some people who get angry at everyday people for not wearing masks. I think their anger is misplaced and misdirected. I get angry at the conservative / libertarian leaders such as Trump and the management of Fox News, who have created a political environment that celebrates and encourages selfishness.

Economic Armageddon: The COVID Collapsed Economy

Time’s up: After a reprieve, a wave of evictions expected across U.S.

[Reuters, October 19, 2020, via The American Prospect]

September’s reprieve by the CDC, which protected many, but not all, renters will expire in January.

At that point, an estimated $32 billion in back rent will come due, with up to 8 million tenants facing eviction filings, according to a tracking tool developed by the global advisory firm Stout Risius and Ross, which works with the nonprofit National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel. The nonprofit group advocates for tenants in eviction court to secure lawyers.

In a typical year, 3.6 million people face eviction cases, according to the Princeton University Eviction Lab, a national housing research center.

How The Fed Rescued Corporations And Let Everyone Else Suffer 

[The Daily Poster, via Naked Capitalism 10-20-20]

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by Tony Wikrent

VOTE! 

See something? Report voter suppression and obstacles to voting.

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-8-20]

The Epidemic

Steps for Reducing COVID Transmission

[GoogleDoc) Cyrus Maher [UCSF, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-20]

Lambert Strether’s intro: “This is the must-read for the week. It’s not only a review of the literature, it’s packed with useful, pragmatic information, and very simply and clearly written. Slide 11: Aerosol FTW; slide 20: the “Swiss Cheese” model; plus a series of slides on preventing exposure, reducing exposure, and improving your odds if you are exposed starting at slide 24; see especially slide 48. (Caveat lector: There is a pitch to enroll in UCSF’s clinical trial.)”

Inside the Fall of the CDC

[Pro Publica, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-20]

Lambert Strether notes: “ the first real explanation, nine months after the fact, of the CDC Covid testing debacle* (originally blamed on contractors, IIRC). My preference for coverage priorities would be: 1) Neoliberal hollowing out; 2) the testing debacle; and 3) political interference, because the first two corrode the clout of the CDC and lead to the third, and this article reverses that order, but it’s nevertheless very good. NOTE * Casting doubt on the ability of the PMC to regulate itself, exactly like the ObamaCare MarketPlace launch debacle. PMC professional associations also have this issue.”

Strategic Political Economy

How Deep Will the Depression Get? – Paul Jay interview of Rana Foroohar and Mark Blyth

[thenanalysis.news, October 8, 2020, via comments on Ian Welsh 10-12-20]

…do the elites get it? Yeah, they absolutely get it. And let me give you a couple of examples. They get it, and they think they’re going to be able to weather the storm….  But the idea was in their minds that the biggest companies, the Googles, the Facebook’s, the Buydo’s, the Alibaba’s had become so big that they were like the East India Company now. They are sort of sovereign international states that float above the nation-state, . . . and that they actually kind of formed their own consensus… these corporations now have so much control and big tech does have way more control even than big finance did because it can actually influence our behavioral patterns because of surveillance, capitalism, and algorithmic behavioral manipulation….

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