newsclick |In
sharp contrast, Trump may have appeared indifferent to the gravity of
the coronavirus, but his persistent calls to reopen the economy
addressed the precarity issue, as they appealed to many workers whose
livelihoods were being destroyed by the pandemically induced government
restrictions placed on economic activity.
Public
health care authorities understandably directed their policy responses
toward pandemic mitigation, and the Democrats largely embraced their
recommendations. But they remained insensitive to the anxieties of tens
of millions of Americans, whose jobs were being destroyed for good,
whose household debts—rent, mortgage, and utility arrears, as well as
interest on education and car loans—were rising inexorably, even
allowing for the temporary expedient of stimulus checks from the
government until this past August.
Yet
the inability of Congress to secure extensions on relief packages did
not appear to unduly penalise Republicans, if one is to judge from the
congressional results. Equally significantly, it didn’t help the
Democrats either. This suggests that lingering fears about COVID-19 are
being matched by economic anxiety from the many millions of American
workers who are coming to realise that their jobs are simply not
essential.
The
struggle for the precariat vote will define the transformation of both
parties in the next four years, and that’s an excellent thing, as it
will force both parties to offer competing policies that begin to
address their concerns. Until this group’s longstanding economic
grievances—jobs, health, safety, pollution, the public purpose, and
above all, relative stability and employment security over long periods
of time—are addressed, the United States will remain a profoundly
divided and divisive country at war with itself.
americanthinker |We are learning more by the day about corrupt voting machines and software, and a scheme, as Trump attorney Sidney Powell describes,
“organized and conducted with the help of Silicon Valley people, the
big tech companies, the social media and even the media companies.”
It was less than a year ago that Senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden were concerned
about these voting machines, yet today this is all “conspiracy
theory.” Was there foreign interference in the election via corrupted
voting machines? Were U.S. votes routed
through servers in Spain and Germany? Election interference was of
great interest to congressional Democrats during Trump’s first term, yet
they seem to have no interest in such interference today.
Where
are the Republicans? Where are so-called conservatives? Where is the
outrage? Where are Trump’s friends? Does he have any these days?
How
ironic that George W. Bush was quick to congratulate “president-elect”
Joe Biden. Bush barely 'won" his election in 2000, while his opponent Al
Gore fought for 37 days before the U.S. Supreme Court forced his
concession. But Bush felt it reasonable to fight dimpled and hanging
chads in one single state, yet scoffs at Trump fighting multi-state
fraud?
Failed former Republican primary candidate Chris Christie suggests it may soon be time for Trump to “move on.” What a show of support. No wonder his candidacy failed.
Another
loser, Mitt Romney, joined the chorus. I would not be a bit surprised
if Romney had the 2012 election stolen from him in the same way as is
happening to Trump today. Yet like most establishment Republicans,
Romney prefers to give a “statesman-like” concession speech rather than
soil his wingtips in a street fight to claim what is legitimately his.
Interestingly, the Romney family has financial ties to voting machines.
There are a few exceptions. Leaders
from Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Slovenia, and North Korea have not offered
Biden their congratulations, prudently waiting to see how this plays
out. Perhaps they know more about a recent U.S. raid
on a voting machine server facility in Frankfurt, Germany that might
reveal an international conspiracy to switch votes in our recent
election. Perhaps, as in the case of Mexico's leader, they know the
smell of a stolen election when they see it
charleshughsmith |The global elites' techno-fantasy of a completely centralized future, The Great Reset,
is addressed as a future project. Too bad it already happened in 2008-09. The lackeys and
toadies tasked with spewing the PR are 12 years too late, and so are the critics listening to the
PR with foreboding.
Simply put, events outran our understanding of them.The future already manifested
while we were trying to cram the present arrangement into an obsolete conceptual framework.
In broad-brush, the post-World War II era ended around 1970. The legitimate prosperity
of 1946-1970 was based on cheap oil controlled by the U.S. and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar.
Everything else was merely decoration.
The Original Sin to hard-money advocates was America's abandonment of the gold standard in 1971,
but this was the only way to maintain hegemony. Maintaining the reserve currency is tricky,
as the nation issuing the reserve currency has to supply the global economy with enough of the currency
to grease commerce and stock central bank reserves around the world.
As the global economy expanded, the only way the U.S. could send enough dollars overseas was to
run trade deficits, which in a gold standard meant the gold reserves would go to zero as
trading partners holding dollars would exchange the currency for gold.
So the choice was: give up the reserve currency and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar by jacking
up the dollar's value so high that imports would collapse, or accept that hegemony was no longer
compatible with the gold standard. It wasn't a difficult decision: who would give up global
hegemony, and for what?
Many other dynamics changed around the same time: social, cultural, political.These charts reflect the
end of the postwar era and the ushering in of a new era.
Again in broad-brush, the key economic dynamic was the decline of labor's share of the
economy in favor of capital. Those who had only their labor to sell lost purchasing power,
while those who could borrow or access capital benefited enormously. The charts below tell
the story: labor's share of the national income has stairstepped lower for 50 years (since 1970)
while the super-wealthy's share has outpaced everyone else 15-fold.
The dominance of financial capital is visible in the third chart, as private-sector financial
assets are now 6 times the nation's GDP, double the percentage of the postwar era.
thefederalist | Lockdowns were once called an “unproven”
hypothesis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its
models of efficacy being unvalidated by “empirical data.” The World
Health Organization called forced isolation and quarantine “ineffective and impractical.”
Yet despite the devastating effects of banning “nonessential”
businesses and social activities, countries around the world locked
down.
Groupthink on non-pharmaceutical interventions spurred an
uncontrolled drift away from scientific justifications toward hasty
generalized rules predicated on an “abundance of caution” and
straight-up fear. Fear quickly turned into a tool for maintaining
political power and an opportunity for self-righteous snitches to
exercise control over their fellow countrymen. Snitch-level devotion to
harsh government mandates devolved into a religion in its own right, and
now we must suffer oppression not just from authorities, but from
private companies and our fellow citizens.
One can draw numerous examples of Covidian jihad from any given week
of these hellish past six months, but the progression is obvious. In
April, a father was arrested for playing softball with his family in an open field in compliance with state orders. In July, a woman was berated by a fanatical old lady at the superstore for not masking her children, who are a risk approaching zero for spreading the virus.
Now heading into fall, some people are being asked to wear masks
alone in their own homes, out in open parks, and while exercising.
They’re supposed to strap them onto infants and toddlers, who are
essentially at zero risk for spreading the Wuhan virus, and they aren’t ever supposed to complain about dental problems, headaches, or dizziness while mask-wearing — because every good COVID fanatic knows masks are harmless.
This is our world in 2020. Ironically, not even the experts can keep
pro-lockdown, pro-mask fanatics from harassing and endangering others.
If you want to prevent this reality from becoming permanent, stand up to
the bullies and stand firm on the science — including voting out
politicians who’ve abandoned science and recalling those who aren’t up
for re-election in November.
ottowacitizen | The Canadian Forces wants to establish a new organization that will
use propaganda and other techniques to try to influence the attitudes,
beliefs and behaviours of Canadians, according to documents obtained by
this newspaper.
The plan comes on the heels of the Canadian Forces
spending more than $1 million to train public affairs officers on
behaviour modification techniques of the same sort used by the parent
firm of Cambridge Analytica, as well as a controversial and bizarre
propaganda training mission in which the military forged letters from
the Nova Scotia government to warn the public that wolves were wandering in the province.
The new Defence Strategic Communication group will advance “national
interests by using defence activities to influence the attitudes,
beliefs and behaviours of audiences,” according to the document dated
October 2020. Target audiences for such an initiative would be the
Canadian public as well as foreign populations in countries where
military forces are sent.
The document is the end result of what Chief of the Defence Staff
Gen. Jon Vance has called the “weaponization” of the military’s public
affairs branch. The document is in a draft form, but work is already
underway on some aspects of the plan and some techniques have been
already tested on the Canadian public.
But the office of Defence
Minister Harjit Sajjan said Sunday that the plan, at least for now, is
not authorized to proceed. Sajjan has raised concerns about some of the
activities related to such influence and propaganda operations. “No such
plan has been approved, nor will it be,” Floriane Bonneville, Sajjan’s
press secretary, said after being asked by this newspaper about the
initiative.
But a series of town halls were already conducted last
week for a number of military personnel on the strategies contained in
the draft plan.
The report quotes Brig.-Gen. Jay Janzen, director
general military public affairs, who stated, “The motto ‘who dares,
wins’ is as applicable to strategic communication as it is to warfare.”
technologyreview | In July,
Joseph Giaime, a physics professor at Louisiana State University and
Caltech, gave me a tour of one of the most complex science experiments
in the world. He did it via Zoom on his iPad. He showed me a control
room of LIGO, a large physics collaboration based in Louisiana and Washington state. In 2015, LIGO was the first project to directly detect gravitational waves, created by the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light-years away.
About
30 large monitors displayed various aspects of LIGO’s status. The
system monitors tens of thousands of data channels in real time. Video
screens portrayed light scattering off optics, and data charts depicted
instrument vibrations from seismic activity and human movement.
I was visiting this complicated operation, on which hundreds of
specialists in discrete scientific subfields work together, to try to
answer a seemingly simple question: What does it really mean to know
anything? How well can we understand the world when so much of our
knowledge relies on evidence and argument provided by others?
The
question matters not only to scientists. Many other fields are becoming
more complex, and we have access to far more information and informed
opinions than ever before. Yet at the same time, increasing political
polarization and misinformation are making it hard to know whom or what
to trust. Medical advances, political discourse, management practice,
and a good deal of daily life all ride on how we evaluate and distribute
knowledge.
We overstate enormously the individual’s ability to
amass knowledge, and understate society’s role in possessing it. You may
know that diesel fuel is bad for gas engines and that plants use
photosynthesis, but can you define diesel or explain photosynthesis, let
alone prove photosynthesis happens? Knowledge, as I came to recognize
while researching this article, depends as much on trust and
relationships as it does on textbooks and observations.
Thirty-five years ago, the philosopher John Hardwig published a paper
on what he called “epistemic dependence,” our reliance on others’
knowledge. The paper—well-cited in some academic circles but largely
unknown elsewhere—only grows in relevance as society and knowledge
become more complex.
One common definition of knowledge is
“justified true belief”—facts you can support with data and logic. As
individuals, though, we rarely have the time or skills to justify our
own beliefs. So what do we really mean when we say we know something?
Hardwig posed a dilemma: Either much of our knowledge can be held only
by a collective, not an individual, or individuals can “know” things
they don’t really understand. (He chose the second option.)
This is my third rapid test in 24 hours. SMH. It’s routine to take c19 test before a livestream broadcast for all band and crew. Earlier I took 2 and one was positive the other neg in separate nostrils ?? We need to investigate these tests further. I want my $ back . pic.twitter.com/AFIfX9Kg1q
technologyreview | Hundreds
of thousands of Americans are dead in a pandemic, and one of the
infected is the president of the United States. But not even personally
contracting covid-19 has stopped him from minimizing the illness in
Twitter messages to his supporters.
Meanwhile, suburban moms
steeped in online health propaganda are printing out Facebook memes and
showing up maskless to stores, camera in hand and hell-bent on forcing
low-paid retail workers to let them shop anyway. Armed right-wing
militias are patrolling western towns, embracing online rumors of
“antifa” invasions. And then there’s QAnon, the online conspiracy theory
that claims Trump is waging a secret war against a ring of satanist
pedophiles.
QAnon drew new energy from the uncertainty and panic caused by the
pandemic, growing into an “omniconspiracy theory”: a roaring river fed
by dozens of streams of conspiratorial thinking. Researchers have
documented how QAnon is amplifying health misinformation about covid-19,
and infiltrating other online campaigns by masking outlandish beliefs
in a more mainstream-friendly package. “Q,” the anonymous account
treated as a prophet by QAnon’s believers, recently instructed followers
to “camouflage” themselves online and “drop all references re: ‘Q’
‘Qanon’ etc. to avoid ban/termination.” Now wellness communities,
mothers’ groups, churches, and human rights organizations are trying to
deal with the spread of this dangerous conspiracy theory in their
midst.
When Pew Research polled Americans on QAnon in early
2020, just 23% of adults knew a little or a lot about it. When Pew
surveyed people again in early September, that number had doubled—and
the way they felt about the movement was split down party lines, Pew
said: “41% of Republicans who have heard something about it say QAnon is
somewhat or very good for the country.” Meanwhile, 77% of Democrats
thought it was “very bad.”
Major platforms like Facebook and
Twitter have started to take aggressive action against QAnon accounts
and disinformation networks. Facebook banned QAnon groups altogether on Tuesday, aiming directly at one of the conspiracy theory’s more powerful distribution networks.But
those networks were able to thrive, relatively undisturbed, on social
media for years. The QAnon crackdown feels too late, as if the platforms
were trying to stop a river from flooding by tossing out water in
buckets.
mises | The 2020 election has revealed jaw-dropping levels of "liberal" or
progressive bias in the media, from the increasing ascendance of woke
language, enforced by the thought police, to deliberately ignored issues
and information considered uncongenial to those dominating the agenda.
To many, it seems as if the power being exercised against freedom of
uncoerced and uncensored expression had metastasized full-blownout of
almost nowhere. However, that ignores the fact that the bias extends
beyond the media, to think tanks and “research” devoted to creating
ammunition for the left/progressive conclusions the media loves to
reach, and this bias has been around for a substantial period of time.
An excellent example of the production of the groundwork for the bias
infusing media today is “research” published in 2003, in the American
Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin. Supported
by $1.2 million in federal money, “Political Conservatism as Motivated
Social Cognition” supposedly provided an “elegant and unifying
explanation” for political conservatism. If you have been paying
attention this year, some of its themes will seem familiar.
The authors found resistance to change and tolerance for inequality
at the core of political conservatism. While proclaiming their findings
to be nonjudgmental, they also concluded that conservatism was
“significantly linked with mental rigidity and close-mindedness,
increased dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, decreased cognitive
complexity, decreased openness to experience, uncertainty avoidance,
personal needs for order and structure, need for cognitive closure,
lowered self-esteem; fear, anger, and aggression; pessimism, disgust,
and contempt.”
The researchers also equated Hitler and Mussolini with Ronald Reagan
as “right-wing conservatives…because they all preached a return to an
idealized past and favored or condoned inequality in some form.” And the
types of inequality conservatives supposedly favored included the
Indian caste system, South African apartheid, and segregation in the US.
Of course, according to the study, that “does not mean that
conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are
necessarily false, irrational, or unprincipled.” But its authors
certainly implied it.
Unfortunately, the hit-piece “research” overlooked crucial distinctions.
“Conservative” and “liberal,” as well as “progressive,” are
adjectives that have been converted into nouns. But adjectives modify
something else. That means the questions that must be addressed if bias
is to be avoided include what it is someone is trying to conserve, in
what ways whether we are liberal is to be judged, and what is to be
considered progress.
slate | On
Thursday night, Justice Sam Alito delivered the keynote address at this
year’s all-virtual Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention. The
Federalist Society, a well-funded network
of conservative attorneys, has come under unusual scrutiny after Donald
Trump elevated scores of its members to the federal judiciary. Its
leaders insist that it is a mere debate club, a nonpartisan forum for
the exchange of legal ideas. But Alito abandoned any pretense of
impartiality in his speech, a grievance-laden tirade against Democrats,
the progressive movement, and the United States’ response to the
COVID-19 pandemic. Alito’s targets included COVID-related restrictions,
same-sex marriage, abortion, Plan B, the contraceptive mandate, LGBTQ
nondiscrimination laws, and five sitting Democratic senators.
Ironically, Alito began his prerecorded address by condemning an effort
by the U.S. Judicial Conference to forbid federal judges from being
members of the Federalist Society. He then praised, by name, the four
judges who spearheaded a successful effort to defeat the ban—or, as
Alito put it, who “stood up to an attempt to hobble the debate that the
Federalist Society fosters.” Alito warned that law school students who
are members of the Federalist Society tell him they “face harassment and
retaliation if they say anything that departs from the law school
orthodoxy.”
These
comments revealed early on that Alito would not be abiding by the usual
ethics rules, which require judges to remain impartial and avoid any
appearance of bias. The rest of his speech served as a burn book for
many cases he has participated in, particularly those in which he
dissented. Remarkably, Alito did not just grouse about the outcome of
certain cases, but the political context of those decisions, and the
broader cultural and political forces behind them. Although the justice
accused several Democratic senators of being unprofessional, he himself
defied the basic principles of judicial conduct.
For
instance, the justice criticized state governors who’ve issued strict
lockdown orders in response to COVID-19, referring to specific cases
that came before the court. Alito said these “sweeping” and “previously
unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty” have served as a
“constitutional stress test,” with ominous results. The government’s
response to COVID-19, Alito continued, has “highlighted disturbing
trends that were already present before the virus struck.” He complained
about lawmaking by an “elite group of appointed experts,” citing not
just COVID rules but the entire regulatory framework of the federal
government.
Alito
also warned of a broader, ongoing assault on religious liberty. “In
certain corners,” he alleged, “religious liberty is fast becoming a
disfavored right.” Alito condemned the Obama administration’s “
protracted campaign” and “unrelenting attack” against the Little Sisters
of the Poor, which refused to submit a form to the federal government
opting out of the contraceptive mandate. The group alleged that
submitting this notice burdened its religious exercise. Alito also
disparaged Washington state for requiring pharmacies to provide
emergency contraception—which, he claimed, “destroys an embryo after
fertilization.” (That is false.)
Finally, Alito rebuked Colorado for attempting to compel Jack Phillips
to bake a cake for a same-sex couple.* He noted that the couple was
given a free cake and supported by “celebrity chefs.”
jonathanturley | We have been discussing the calls for top Democrats for increased private censorship
on social media and the Internet. President-elect Joe Biden has
himself called for such censorship, including blocking President Donald
Trump’s criticism of mail-in voting. Now, shortly after the election,
one of Biden’s top aides is ramping up calls for a crackdown on Facebook
for allowing Facebook users to read views that he considers misleading —
users who signed up to hear from these individuals. Bill Russo, a
deputy communications director on Biden’s campaign press team, tweeted late Monday that Facebook “is shredding the fabric of our democracy” by allowing such views to be shared freely.
Russo tweeted that “If you thought disinformation on Facebook was a
problem during our election, just wait until you see how it is shredding
the fabric of our democracy in the days after.” Russo objected to the
fact that, unlike Twitter, Facebook did not move against statements that
he and the campaign viewed as “misleading.” He concluded.
“We pleaded with Facebook for over a year to be serious about these
problems. They have not. Our democracy is on the line. We need answers.”
For those of us in the free speech community, these threats are
chilling. We saw incredible abuses before the election in Twitter
barring access to a true story in the New York Post
about Hunter Biden and his alleged global influence peddling scheme.
Notably, no one in the Biden camp (including Biden himself) thought that
it was a threat to our democracy to have Twitter block the story (while
later admitting that it was a mistake).
I have previously objected to such regulation of speech. What is most
disturbing is how liberals have embraced censorship and even declared
that “China was right” on Internet controls.
outofthecave | Never before in history have we seen such fertile ground and
incentives toward groupthink and mass histrionics as we have today with
total saturation of social media. Once our mobile phones were converted
into near Star Trek level tricorders, and WiFi became ubiquitous we
found ourselves swimming in “The Spew”, without even realizing that we had become like fish in a digital aquarium.
The great enablers of digitized groupthink are the social media platforms.
All that time you spend on Facebook, arguing politics with people
you’ll never meet or care about. It can take over your life and you end
up having those same arguments with the people who truly matter in your
own life: your friends and family.
All of that time, all those threads, tweetstorms, pile-ons, trending
hashtags, updating your avatar in conformance with the issue de jour, at
some point you have to ask yourself why you are expending the bulk of
your mental energy chiming in with your opinion on things that are for
the most part completely out of your control and that you’ll never be
able to impact in any meaningful way.
Whose ends are you serving by participating in that? Certainly not your own. You don’t actually gain anything from going along with this, and if you actually consider the opportunity cost
you begin to see the possibilities of what you could accomplish in your
own life, for yourself and your family, if you spent your time doing
something else.
What is the difference?
Or, how can you tell the difference between participating in some
online social movement that you are told benefits the greater good vs.
acting in your own rational self interest?
When you click or “like” or share or block or comment you are generating data for the platform and the platform is not the greater good. It is not
the collective will of the people, it is aggregated data that can and
will be manipulated by the few to move the many in the direction that
serves the aims of other people, not you.
You see this exposed when the platform overtly signals what it
desires to be amplified versus what it seeks to attenuate. In a truly
digital “collective” the will of the aggregate would simply be expressed in the unfiltered propagation of certain narratives over others.
But that doesn’t happen and in it not happening the veneer of
legitimacy is removed from collectivism in totality, revealing it for
what it really is.
Collectivism is not community, it is not the greater good, and it is
not cooperation. There is only The Collective in the rhetorical or
symbolic sense, but in reality Collectivism is the manipulation of the
many by the few. That’s it. It’s basically marketing at the level of the
psyche except the payload isn’t brand awareness as much as they are
incentives for compliance and disincentives for wrongthink.
As Trump supporters believe this election was not conducted fairly...,
If you're wondering whether the president's strategy of alleging fraud and filing lawsuits is working, consider this @YouGov poll. About 80% of his supporters are not confident that the election he lost was "held fairly." pic.twitter.com/OddL8FVp7y
turcopolier | There are a lot of Trump supporters who are very frustrated, even angry,
with the silence of Attorney General Bill Barr in the wake of last
Tuesday’s attempted Democrat heist of the Presidential election. But
there are indications that Barr, who understands what it takes to fight
the entrenched bureaucracy that is aligned with a conspiracy that
involves the media, tech companies and computer software companies
supplying voting machines, is preparing to move in a dramatic, far
reaching strike to expose this fraud.
I have a dear friend who knows Barr very well. Rarely does he show
this kind of visceral anger. I find it difficult to believe that in the
ensuing two months, Barr has decided to curl up into a fetal position
and allow the Republic to be eviscerated.
Now look at the actions on Monday. Barr, following DOJ protocol,
sent a letter authorizing federal prosecutors across the U.S. to pursue
“substantial allegations” of voting irregularities. That same day, the
DOJ official in charge of voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, resigned.
Pilger is a compromised deep stater. I believe his resignation was, at a minimum, encouraged by Barr.
NYMag | On
September 10, Nora Dannehy resigned as the deputy to John Durham, the
federal prosecutor investigating the government’s probe into the Trump
campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. Dannehy left her post and
the Justice Department in part because of Attorney General William Barr’s
pressure on Durham to release a report on his investigation’s findings
before Election Day, according to a person familiar with her thinking.
Trump had long been hoping a report out this fall would damage
Democrats, including Joe Biden, and help him win reelection. In Trump’s
terminology, Durham’s report would reveal an “attempted overthrow” of
his administration by Democratic insiders. But Justice Department
guidelines restrict prosecutors from taking such actions within 60 days
of an election because they might affect the outcome of the election.
Both Durham and Dannehy believed that if they complied with Barr’s
demands they would be violating this doctrine, according to two people
familiar with their thinking.
Durham,
who is the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, and Dannehy were also
troubled that Barr had purposely misrepresented their work in numerous
public comments, the two people said. According to two sources familiar
with the probe, there has been no evidence found, after 18 months of
investigation, to support Barr’s claims that Trump was targeted by
politically biased Obama officials to prevent his election. (The probe
remains ongoing.) In fact, the sources said, the Durham investigation
has so far uncovered no evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden or Barack
Obama, or that they were even involved with the Russia investigation.
There “was no evidence … not even remotely … indicating Obama or Biden
did anything wrong,” as one person put it.
Shortly
after the resignation of his prized deputy and with the election
looming on the horizon, Durham phoned Barr. He forcefully told the
attorney general that his office would not be releasing a report or
taking any other significant public actions before Election Day,
according to a person with knowledge of the phone call. Dannehy’s
resignation constituted an implied but unspoken threat to Barr that
Durham or others on his team might resign if the attorney general
attempted to force the issue, according to a person familiar with
Durham’s thinking.
After hearing from Durham in September, Barr informed the president and allies that there would be no October surprise,
causing Trump to lash out. “Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for
crimes — the greatest political crimes in the history of our country —
then we’re going to get little satisfaction unless I win,” he told Fox
Business last month. “[These] people should be indicted, this was the
greatest political crime in the history of our country. And that
includes Obama and it includes Biden.”
billmoyers | This is known as the Iron Law of Institutions: “The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself.” McConnell
wants to retain power personally, and is thinking past the upcoming
loss of power for the party. (I’ve noted how he’s setting up for a
re-run of post-Obama Republican dominance as well.)
What’s been less understood is how the Iron Law of Institutions is affecting Nancy Pelosi’s decision-making as well.
Pelosi’s appearance with Wolf Blitzer was
an absolute train wreck, with her blasting him for being a GOP
“apologist” when all he said over and over again was “people are
hurting, can’t you come to a deal?” When you get in a fight with someone
so unintelligent that he broke the record for negative dollar amounts on Celebrity Jeopardy, and you lose that badly, something is wrong with your messaging. Yet Pelosi proudly displayed the transcript on her website anyway.
What was she really doing in that interview? She was defending her
committee chairs, who she has put out front and center as objecting to
this and that part of the White House’s $1.8 trillion counter-offer.
Writ large, your macro-economic pundit might see the objections as
pretty trivial. But I guarantee you they’re important to one committee
or one sub-caucus or one bloc of Democrats. For example, money for child
care, which Pelosi has consistently called to light, is critical for
women of color, who make up a near-majority of providers. Things like
the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit (which Pelosi
wants increased and made useful for the pandemic tax year) are pet
projects of Ways and Means Committee members. These are things that
Pelosi can point to and tell House Democrats that she’s fighting for
their objectives.
Underlying that is the fact that this is a purely theoretical
exercise. Pelosi taking or not taking the deal will not matter as to
whether stimulus reaches the American people. McConnell is the
roadblock, and the mission is doomed. So the only thing Pelosi needs to
protect is her status among the Democratic caucus.
So far, practically nobody inside the caucus has disagreed with her
position. One of the truly terrible after-effects of the pandemic has
been the dissolution of Congress as a legislative body. All lawmaking
has funneled up to the Speaker; the bulk of the House has been prevented
from governing. There’s something darkly comic in progressives fighting
so hard to upset incumbents and gain additional members of the Squad,
so they can sit around too until Pelosi tells them to vote for
something.
But it’s up to the caucus to be mad about that, not me. And all
indications are that they’re not mad. Pelosi’s imperiousness may have
been a problem at points during the pandemic. But people have short-term
memories, and on this negotiation, Pelosi is trying pretty hard to show
that the objections are caucus-wide, and picking out little provisions
that likely matter to key members.
The other backdrop to all of this is that Pelosi wants one last term
as Speaker with a Democratic trifecta, one last chance at a burst of
policymaking. She made a deal in 2018 that earned her the Speaker’s
gavel in this Congress, but only for two terms. And in that second term,
she needs two-thirds support of the caucus to win the Speaker’s race.
It took a lot of hustle for Pelosi to secure majority support in 2018.
So, in keeping with the Iron Law of Institutions, she’s tending to her
caucus as well.
The professional managerial class lives in an Atlassian/Tableau fantasy world (formerly Powerpoint and Excel) Their ability to ‘model’
and then ‘pitch’ (and fund) a decision (read, allocation of Other
People’s Money), using an elaborate smokescreen of elementary finance
and decision science that masks a few
dumbed down operating assumptions (or worse, ‘benchmarks and kpi's’) carries a far
higher paycheck and prestige than the hard work,
expertise and experience required to discover real world inputs.
In fact, real world experience is actively harmful in PMC
world. After all, it tends to result in ‘FUDs’ (Fear, Uncertainty,
Doubt), and therefore no greenlight and no remunerative follow on
workstreams (see ‘Bu!!sh!t Jobs)
Having a degree does not make one a member of the PMC, it is being in an institutional or professional setting where you are subject to pressure about your work product and process, despite the appearance of some degree of autonomy by virtue of elite status. It most certainly is not just about credentials or pay. And you don’t have to be senior either.
Increasingly,
if you want to get and hang on to a PMC job, that job will
involve dishonesty or exploitation of others in some way. Industries
such as finance have seized and held onto larger and larger proportions
of the economy. The same disproportionate growth can be seen in financialised healthcare and finacialised education.
In other words, being a member of the PMC critically includes that
you are sufficiently not in control of your work process or product that
if you object to widespread practices (either in the industry or at
your place of employment) that you find morally offensive,
you can expect to suffer serious career or income costs. Most people
believe they can’t afford that and so go along with the program.
1)The Professional Managerial Class (PMC) attained class consciousness.
2) The PMC was and is embubbled by a domestic psyop.
3) The press replaced reporting with advocacy.
4) Election legitimacy is determined by extra-Constitutional actors.
5) “Fascism” became an empty signifier, not an analytical tool.
Let us look at each of these claims.
1) The PMC attained class consciousness. As Thomas Frank has shown (Listen, Liberal!),
the PMC has replaced the working class as the Democrat Party base[1].
During the period 2016-2020, the PMC, collectively, experienced Trump’s
election as literal, actual trauma (as pain, as an energy suck, as
constant stress, as depression, etc. Parents wept to tell their
children, and so forth. That the burden of such trauma is — with respect
to the post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by, say, soldiers. abuse
victims, or the homeless — quite slight may lead some — well, me — to
mock it (“How was brunch?”), but the trauma is deeply felt and real).
Importantly, as Steve Randy Waldman has urged, the class position — and
hence the class consciousness — of the PMC is marked by “predatory precarity“;
the predation comes from what a professional must do to maintain their
class position in a financialized economy driven by rent-seeking; the
precarity comes from the fact that their class position is maintained,
not by the ownership of capital, or the inheritance of a title, but by
expensive “positional goods” like credentials. Trump’s right-wing
populism, with its distrust of experts — the same meritorious experts
whose Esq.s were on every foreclosure notice or dunning letter, and whose M.D.s
were on every surprise medical bill — struck directly at both exposed
nerves. Not only might they not be consulted on how best to rule, their
very credentials might turn out to be worthless. Hence the rage, the
fear, the hate, certainly universally expressed in the press, but also
in such organizations as Indivisible, the Women’s March, etc. The PMC as
a class came to consciousness screaming Make it stop!
2) The PMC was and is embubbled by a domestic psyop.Make it stop! was, however, followed hard upon by I didn’t do it! Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, in Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign,
describes how Robbie Mook deployed RussiaGate to delegitimize the newly
elected President in a meeting with the rest of the defeated Clinton
camp the day after Election Day 2016. RussiaGate became the Goebbelsian
propaganda operation that it was — if there had been anything to it,
Pelosi would have impeached Trump for it, Mueller Report or no[2] —
through an unholy alliance of the Democrat Party apparatus, the
intelligence community, and the press. All were variously motivated —
“There in stately splendor, far removed from the squalid village below,
they fight their petty battles over power and money” (Bob and Ray) — but
the effect on the PMC was extraordinary: To this very day, any
opposing or dissenting force to the liberal Democrat orthodoxy of the
day can be dismissed with a one-liner about Putin! I’ve never seen
anything like it.[3] Both (1) and (2) combined to drive turnout,
voluntering, donations, and everything else. (That the Democrat base is
too slim to rule on its own is another issue entirely.)
jacobin | Centrist Democrats are tacking hard right on the shaky premise that calls for Medicare for All and policing reform flattened the anticipated “blue wave.”
And in statehouses, that wave proved less than a ripple: Republicans
now control both legislatures in thirty states and have a “trifecta” stranglehold (claiming the governor’s office, too) in twenty-three of those.
All this will make it harder to address one of the starkest failures
of the government’s response to the COVID-19 economic crisis: the
sustained neglect of state and local finances. State and local
governments are directly responsible for providing essential services,
including education and public health. And they are an important source
of (mostly) good jobs, employing almost 20 million people — or about one in eight workers — when the virus struck.
The CARES Act included $150 billion in aid to state and local governments, but with the proviso that it could only be used to defray the unanticipated costs of fighting the pandemic — not for any “regular” budgetary lines. In some states, governors either skirted these limits (using federal funds, for instance, to fill potholes) or made dubious decisions as to who to protect. Both Arizona and Iowa
used large chunks of their CARES grants to backfill their unemployment
insurance trust funds — shielding employers from future tax increases
even as their workers lost access to extended or expanded unemployment
benefits.
The only other assistance was an effort to financialize
state and local desperation. The CARES Act authorized the Federal
Reserve (through a new Municipal Liquidity Facility) to buy state and local bonds. This line of credit just kicked the crisis down the road. And the loan terms and costs were so onerous that, as the Center for Popular Democracy concluded in June, all but a handful of the jurisdictions that met the program’s population thresholds were “functionally excluded.”
dailycaller | “Despite an obvious preference by Democratic leadership to focus on
the suburbs and former Republican voters rather than working-class
communities of color, progressives like Stacey Abrams, Rep. Omar and
Rep. Rashida Tlaib are showing us – through turnout results in their
states and cities – where Democrats must invest to build the party,” the
memo says.
“We’re not going to
be successful if we’re silencing districts like mine,” Tlaib said,
according to Politico. “Me not being able to speak on behalf of many of
my neighbors right now, many of which are black neighbors, means me
being silenced. I can’t be silent.”
“We
are not interested in unity that asks people to sacrifice their freedom
and their rights any longer,” Tlaib continued. “And if we truly want to
unify our country, we have to really respect every single voice. We say
that so willingly when we talk about Trump supporters, but we don’t say
that willingly for my Black and brown neighbors and from LGBTQ
neighbors or marginalized people.”
Progressives are pushing for power in
the Joe Biden administration, despite the criticism from moderate
Democrats. Tlaib reportedly wants to see a public educator and labor
advocates in top positions. Progressives and left-wing strategists don’t
want Biden to work across the aisle with Republicans, although Biden
has expressed his desire to create a sense of unity by doing so.
“If
[voters] can walk past blighted homes and school closures and pollution
to vote for Biden-Harris, when they feel like they don’t have anything
else, they deserve to be heard,” Tlaib said, choking up as she expressed
frustration near the end of an interview this week. “I can’t believe
that people are asking them to be quiet.”
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
is calling for an “unapologetic agenda” that is distinct from the GOP
“instead of trying to play to notions of civility,” Politico reported.
Specifically, Ocasio-Cortez wants the Democratic Party to establish a
cohesive message on racism because “Democrats don’t want to talk about
race.”
straightlinelogic | The idea of individual rights protected by
the government was the foundation of the American experiment. It was
and has been imperfectly realized; it is an ideal and humanity rarely
attains its ideals. Government is and always will be the antithesis of
that still revolutionary ideal. The US government’s massive expansion
has been at the cost of the people’s liberty and has destroyed most of
their rights. That destruction has been ongoing since the beginning of
the republic and Trump has done nothing to stop or reverse i.
Philosophical insight and consistency are not among his virtues.
Nevertheless, a Biden administration will
be worse, much worse. The Democrats now openly aspire to the
collectivist ideal—the complete subjugation of the individual to the
state. We’ve gotten a preview of coming attractions with coronavirus
totalitarianism, which has obliterated the few freedoms and joys left to
Americans. For the millions of Americans who voted for him, including
me, Trump represented the last, best hope for what we consider the
American way of life.
There’s no going back, and the way forward
is for those who cherish the American ideals of individual rights,
freedom, limited government, the rule of law, and equality before that
law to break away from Washington’s and it’s aligned states’
corruptocracy and sunder the ties that bind us. Nations and governments
are not cast in stone for time and all eternity.
Certainly the bankrupt dis-United States
and its government aren’t. The bill is coming due for the debt orgy and
an unprecedented and catastrophic global economic cataclysm will take
down whomever is unlucky enough to be the president. A defeated Trump
would dodge that bullet. The resulting chaos will be unmanageable by a
government that produces only debt, can steal little or nothing from a
bankrupt economy, cannot borrow at anything but ruinous interest rates,
and which must cover its soaring budget deficits with scrip it either
prints or creates via computer entries, whether or not it outlaws real money (gold) or forces its increasingly worthless scrip to stay in the banking system.
At that time, an organized secession
movement has a real chance. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Collapse will be freedom’s staunchest ally if the moment is seized. It
won’t be easy and it won’t be without blood. Until it happens, prepare
for the worst, it is assuredly coming and coming soon, but work towards a
brighter future in a nation that does not yet exist.
For those who don’t want to wait, almost six years ago (January 7, 2015) I published “Revolution in America,”
which presents a nonviolent way to take down the government by
attacking it at its weakest point. It requires the collective action of
millions of people and at that time I believed the recommended course of
action would remain hypothetical. Things change. Although the hour is
late, any significant fraction of Trump’s rightfully enraged 71 million
voters could still put the plan into effect. The article merits a second
look. Please pass it, and this article, on.
Asia Times | US intel is very much aware of well-documented instances of election fraud. Among them: NSA software that infiltrates any network, as previously detailed by Edward Snowden, and capable of altering vote counts; the Hammer supercomputer and its Scorecard app
that hacks computers at the transfer points of state election computer
systems and outside third party election data vaults; the Dominion software system,
known to have serious security issues since 2000, but still used in 30
states, including every swing state; those by now famous vertical jumps
to Biden in both Michigan and Wisconsin at 4am on November 4 (AFP unconvincingly tried to debunk Wisconsin and didn’t even try with Michigan); multiple instances of Dead Men Do Vote.
The key actor is the Deep State, which decides what happens next.
They have weighed the pros and cons of placing as candidate a senile,
stage 2 dementia, neocon warmonger and possible extorsionist (along with
son) as “leader of the free world”, campaigning from a basement,
incapable of filling a parking lot in hs rallies, and seconded by
someone with so little support in the Dem primaries that she was the
first to drop out.
The optics, especially seen from vast swathes of the
imperial-interfered Global South, may be somewhat terrible. Dodgy
elections are a prerogative of Bolivia and Belarus. Yet only the Empire
is able to legitimize a dodgy election – especially in its own backyard.
Welcome to the New Resistance
The GOP is in a very comfortable position. They hold the Senate and
may end up picking up as may as 12 seats in the House. They also know
that any attempt by Biden-Harris to legislate via Executive Orders will
have…consequences.
The Fox News/ New York Post angle is particularly enticing. Why are
they suddenly supporting Biden? Way beyond internal family squabbles
worthy of the Succession saga, Rupert Murdoch made it very clear, via the laptop from hell caper, that he has all sorts of kompromat on the Biden family. So they will do whatever he wants. Murdoch does not need Trump anymore.
Nor, in theory, does the GOP. Former CIA insiders assure of serious
backroom shenanigans going on between GOP honchos and the Biden-Harris
gang. Trade-offs bypassing Trump – which most of the GOP hates with a
vengeance. The most important man in Washington will be in fact GOP
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.
Still, to clear any lingering doubts, a vote recount would be
absolutely necessary in all 6 contested states – WI, MI, PA, GA, NV and
AZ. Through hand counting. One by one. The DoJ would need to act on it,
immediately. Not gonna happen. Recounts cost a ton of money. There’s no
evidence Team Trump – on top of it short of funds and manpower – will be
able to convince Daddy Bush asset William Barr to go for it.
While relentlessly demonizing Trump for spreading “a torrent of
misinformation” and “trying to undermine the legitimacy of the US
election”, mainstream media and Big Tech have declared a winner – a
classic case of pre-programming the sheep multitudes.
Toward a Biophysics of Poetry
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My long-term interest in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” (KK) is shadowed by an
interest in “This Line-Tree Bower My Prison,” (LTB) which is one of the
so-calle...
Celebrating 113 years of Mama Rosa McCauley Parks
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*February 4, 1913 -- February 4, 2026*
*Some notes: The life of the courageous activist Mama Rosa McCauley Parks*
Mama Rosa's grandfather Sylvester Ed...
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Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know
where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus,
and ...
Remembering the Spanish Civil War
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This year marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Spanish Civil
War, an epoch-defining event for the international working class, whose
close study...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
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Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
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(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
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SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
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the mill ...
