Aug 182020
 
 August 18, 2020  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Bettmann/Getty Minimum Wage 1963

 

Coronavirus Clusters Erupt At US Universities As Semester Begins (AP)
Sixty Seconds to Self-Sabotage (Cut)
They’re Angry, Not Stupid: Why Trump is Likely to Win Again (Greene)
Sanders: ‘The Future Of Our Planet Is At Stake’ In 2020 Election (JTN)
Democrats Seem All Too Willing to Surrender on Health Care Reform (Jac.)
Michelle Obama Speech Recorded Before Joe Biden Selected Kamala Harris (NYP)
Trump vs. Dems On Mail-in Voting (Chaffetz)
Trump Teases Upcoming Pardon For ‘Very Important’ Person (RT)
China’s Anti-Trump Election Meddling Raises New Alarm (Fox)
Kamala Harris Reportedly Owes $1M In Bills From Failed Presidential Run (NYP)
Twelve US Billionaires Have a Combined $1 Trillion (Ineq.org)
US States Seek $2.2 Trillion From OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma (R.)
The Need for Debt-for-Climate Swaps (PS)
The Mathematical Model of Modern Monetary Theory (Steve Keen)
And in the End (Rolling Stone)

 

 

No, I didn’t watch the Dem convention. Never perform invasive surgery on myself either, for pretty much the same reason. But I did pick up a few tidbits. It all leaves a very elitist impression. Deplorables.

 

 

New global cases below 200,000, new deaths at 4,297. Not bad. Or is that just because it was Monday?

Several European countries are spiking in what is perhaps a second wave. Pretty lousy controls, which will lead to all kinds of renewed lockdowns. Unnecessary.

 

 

New cases only just above 40,000 in the US, it was 70,000 not long ago, with new deaths at “only” 589.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This sounds just plain dumb.

Coronavirus Clusters Erupt At US Universities As Semester Begins (AP)

From the dorms at North Carolina to the halls of Notre Dame, officials at universities around the US scrambled on Monday to deal with new Covid-19 clusters at the start of the fall semester, some of them linked to off-campus parties and packed clubs. North Carolina’s flagship university cancelled in-person classes for undergraduates just a week into the fall semester Monday. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said it will switch to remote learning on Wednesday and make arrangements for students who want to leave campus housing. “We have emphasised that if we were faced with the need to change plans – take an off-ramp – we would not hesitate to do so, but we have not taken this decision lightly,” it said in a statement after reporting 130 confirmed infections among students and five among employees over the past week.


UNC said the clusters were discovered in dorms, a fraternity house and other student housing. Before the decision came down, the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, ran an editorial headlined “UNC has a clusterf*** on its hands”. The paper said that the parties that took place over the weekend were no surprise and that administrators should have begun the semester with online-only instruction at the university, which has 19,000 undergraduates. “We all saw this coming,” the editorial said. Outbreaks earlier this summer at fraternities in Washington state, California and Mississippi provided a glimpse of the challenges school officials face in keeping the virus from spreading on campuses where young people eat, live, study – and party – in close quarters.

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The DNC pushed Bernie aside until he complied with the Biden “plan”. They do the same with AOC et al, without whom they may never have had control of the House. Instead, they have Republicans and billionaires speaking, along with has-beens like the Obamas and Clintons….

Sixty Seconds to Self-Sabotage (Cut)

When the Democratic National Committee released its schedule for its big socially distanced convention this week, we learned that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, inarguably among the party’s most dynamic figures, would have just sixty seconds to address the nation. [..] the relegation of Ocasio-Cortez, who electrifies multiple parts of a Democratic base, to one meager minute, a segment that—unlike speeches by some other presenters—will be pre-recorded, isn’t just a snub. The failure of a major political party to showcase one of its most talented politicians, a young person whose communicative reach and facility positions her to be among its leaders deep into our future, is self-sabotage.

[..] Why will this convention not show off more of the historic number of women who enabled their party to retake the House in 2018? Most of them won’t be prominently featured, but former Ohio Republican governor John Kasich, who ran for governor as a Tea Partier and signed eleven laws (comprising 21 restrictions) on abortion, including a 20 week ban and the prohibition of rape crisis centers advising survivors about the option of abortion, will be. He also worked to rob Ohio’s public workers of the right to bargain collectively (voters later overturned this measure). Not only is Kasich getting a plum spot on Monday, he’s used his time in the Democratic sun to diss Ocasio-Cortez, telling Buzzfeed that just because she “gets outsized publicity doesn’t mean she represents the Democratic Party. She’s just a part, just some member of it.”

So John Kasich, Republican, feels that Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat, gets outsized attention, even as he–along with his fellow Republicans Susan Molinari (Remember her? No? Weird) and former Hewlett-Packard and eBay CEO Meg Whitman–will get more featured airtime than she at her party’s convention. But this convention seems driven to thumb its nose not only at individual politicians, but at the social movements that have transformed civic participation and changed public opinion across the nation during the course of the Trump administration. Remember those women who retook the House in 2018? A bunch of them were first time candidates who were open about how their entrance into politics was grounded in their fury about the ubiquity and pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault in the wake of Donald Trump’s election and the #metoo movement.

But the party that profited from their electoral success has offered prime speaking spots to two multiply-accused harassers: former president Bill Clinton and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. That Bloomberg’s presidential campaign met its lethal end at the hands of Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who in a February primary debate detailed his history of workplace harassment, red lining, and support of stop-and-frisk policing, all in her allotted sixty seconds (she only had a minute; an eternity was in it) makes his featured presence an insult to Warren, and the many Democrats who were far more inspired by her campaign than by his. And listen, I get it, and assume everyone else does too: Bloomberg is speaking to the Democratic convention because the Democrats need his money (he shifted $18 million from his campaign to the Democratic National Committee in March).

But if organizers had been paying attention these past two years, they might have learned that that’s actually part of the structural thing about harassment and those who get away with it: too often, you need their money.


Matt Taibbi’s drinking game bingo card for the DNC

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…and that attitude of trampling over the left leads to this… If you think BLM, Antifa, #MeToo are the only angry ones, you are mistaken.

They’re Angry, Not Stupid: Why Trump is Likely to Win Again (Greene)

The candidate Barack Obama spoke to blue-collar America. He campaigned on change that would rejuvenate careers and restore dignity. Working Americans in the swing states doubted that Hillary Clinton even knew they existed. They saw Obama as a last hope and supported him enthusiastically in the 2008 primaries and later in the general election, but he soon proved to be a disappointment. He, too, fell in love with Silicon Valley and Wall Street and neglected the people who needed him most. And they punished him: he won fewer states in 2012 than he had in 2008. People like the alternate me felt cheated by a guy who rocked a Brooks Brothers suit and talked a great game, then gave the Tech and Finance sectors everything they wanted and more.

Educated people from the best schools trusted Big Tech outfits because educated people from the best schools ran them. Elites imagine each other to be virtuous because they imagine themselves that way. Technology giants were understood not as hardy sprouts but would be treated instead with princess-and-the-pea levels of delicacy, thanks to a superstitious fear that it might all be brought to grief by, say, forcing companies with hundreds of billions in share value to tolerate an employees’ union, offer a minimum wage adequate for a decent life, or pay tax proportional to their reliance on public goods.

No one bears greater responsibility for the lack of empathy toward Old-Economy workers that led to Donald Trump’s victory than big-name Tech darlings and the New Democrats who coddled them, then openly ridiculed their own voter base: the people Hillary foolishly nicknamed “Deplorables;” that is, the millions of disappointed Obama voters who would happily have voted blue if they’d had confidence that the party would respect them, welcome them, and acknowledge their needs. But the New Economy is a gated community, shut firmly to them, whose most strenuous boosters have been the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations. Old-school, working-class Democrats are unwelcome in the party they built. No one wants them tracking mud through the salon.

Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the swing states the same way Barack Obama had: by characterizing her as disdainful toward blue-collar Americans. It was a potent message among those who once had seen decent wages in return for honest work, lately reduced to Walmart greeters and Uber drivers. Humiliated by a labor market in which they had nothing to trade, the former working class understood that they also had nothing to lose. Liberal democracy and its supporting institutions shed their veneer of sanctity when dead-end employees can aspire only to dead-end management gigs. Call them “associates” and “technicians” all you want; they know who they’ve become and what others think of them. They are why Trump won in the swing states; he was propelled to victory by disillusioned Obama voters.

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I would have expected so much more from Bernie. Folds for the DNC twice in a row, and doesn’t volunteer to return any donations.

Can someone check how many times he said the same in 2016?! “Sanders called the 2020 election the most important in the modern history of the U.S.”

Sanders: ‘The Future Of Our Planet Is At Stake’ In 2020 Election (JTN)

Former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders urged his supporters Monday to vote for nominee Joe Biden, imploring that the “future of our planet is at stake” and that the “price of failure” for not electing Biden would be “just too great to imagine.” “The future of our democracy is at stake. The future of our economy is at stake. The future of our planet is at stake,” Sanders said on opening night of the Democratic National Convention. “We must come together, defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our next president and vice president. My friends, the price of failure is just too great to imagine.” Sanders called the 2020 election the most important in the modern history of the U.S.

“We need an unprecedented response, a movement, like never before of people who are prepared to stand up and fight for democracy and decency,” said Sanders, a democratic-socialist who finished second in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. “Our campaign ended several months ago but our movement continues and is getting stronger every day. Many of the ideas we fought for, that just a few years ago were considered radical are now mainstream but let us be clear, if Donald Trump is re-elected, all the progress we have made will be in jeopardy,” he also [said].

Sanders named areas where Biden has moved the progressive agenda forward, such as raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, making it easier for workers to join unions,” creating 12 weeks of paid family leave and funding universal pre-K for 3 and 4-year olds. “Joe will rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and fight the threat of climate change by transitioning us to 100 percent clean electricity over the next 15 years. These initiatives will create millions of good paying jobs all across the country,” Sanders said. “We are the only industrialized nation not to guarantee health care for all people. While Joe and I disagree on the best path to get to universal coverage, he has a plan that will greatly expand health care and cut the cost of prescription drugs. Further, he will lower the eligibility age of Medicare from 65 to 60,” added Sanders, who worked with Biden on his final campaign platform.

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Bernie campaigner David Sirota has at least a little backbone.

Democrats Seem All Too Willing to Surrender on Health Care Reform (Jac.)

On the eve of a Democratic National Convention taking place as millions lose health care coverage, the health care industry is launching a new ad campaign pressing Democrats to back off from the party’s already compromised health care promises. That pressure seems to be having its intended effect on Capitol Hill, as congressional aides say the party will not push the initiative if Joe Biden wins the presidency. The signs of retreat come as health care industry profits are skyrocketing and the industry’s campaign cash has flooded into Democratic coffers. The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF) — a front group created by health insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital lobbying groups to oppose “Medicare for All” — announced on Friday that it is launching a new national ad campaign to persuade Democrats to abandon their plans to create a public health insurance plan.

The group said it will run ads during the Democratic National Convention (DNC) this week. PAHCF is led by a former Hillary Clinton aide and run out of the offices of a DC lobbying firm led by former top Democratic congressional aides. A substantial “public option” plan — which polls show is wildly popular — was the centerpiece of recent policy negotiations between supporters of former vice president Joe Biden and progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who had been pushing for a more expansive Medicare for All program. A draft of the party platform, approved by DNC members late last month, includes a pledge to pass a public option, or a government-run health insurance plan that would compete with private insurers.

Within twenty-four hours of the launch of the industry’s new ads, however, anonymous Democratic congressional sources were telling the Hill that Democrats likely won’t bother with the public option fight next year if Biden wins the election. Instead, they said, the party will work to tweak its 2010 health care law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has done little to limit insurance or hospital costs and has failed to ensure universal coverage. To justify the preemptive retreat, Democratic congressional aides told the newspaper that the party’s moderate crop of 2020 Senate challenger candidates could make it harder to pass a public option. That assertion comes even though every single one of those candidates is currently campaigning in support of a public option, according to a TMI review of campaign statements.

The situation echoes the Democratic promises and subsequent surrender on a public option that marked the debate over health care more than a decade ago — only this time around, the health care crisis is an even more acute emergency. While most developed countries have managed to contain COVID-19, the pandemic is spiraling out of control in the United States, and an estimated 27 million people have lost their employer-based health insurance plans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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And also recorded before Trump lost his brother?! Or wouldn’t she have cared? She did remember last night that she said it, right? Class? Grace? Where? We go low?

.. by contrast, “Joe knows the anguish of sitting at a table with an empty chair …

Michelle Obama Speech Recorded Before Joe Biden Selected Kamala Harris (NYP)

There was one glaring omission from Michelle Obama’s 20-minute Democratic National Convention speech Monday night — Kamala Harris. That’s because the former first lady recorded her rousing speech before Joe Biden selected Sen. Harris of California as his running mate. The speech was delivered remotely like all others at the DNC because of the coronavirus pandemic, and The Associated Press reports it was filmed before Harris was named last week as Biden’s VP candidate, indicating the choice was so close to the vest and down to the wire that even the Obamas were not in the loop. In her speech, Michelle Obama eloquently praised Biden and emotionally denounced Trump’s policies.

“Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us,” she said. “It is what it is,” Obama added, quoting Trump’s recent remark on coronavirus deaths. “Right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another,” Obama said. “They watch in horror as children are torn from their families and thrown into cages, and pepper spray and rubber bullets are used on peaceful protesters for a photo-op.”

She said that by contrast, “Joe knows the anguish of sitting at a table with an empty chair, which is why he gives his time so freely to grieving parents. Joe knows what it’s like to struggle, which is why he gives his personal phone number to kids overcoming a stutter of their own. His life is a testament to getting back up, and he is going to channel that same grit and passion to pick us all up, to help us heal and guide us forward.”

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The issue is not nearly as simple as some people would let you believe.

Trump vs. Dems On Mail-in Voting (Chaffetz)

With less than three months until the 2020 election and no end in sight for the coronavirus pandemic, a new debate over mail-in voting has begun. Swirling and sudden concerns about the United States Postal Service (USPS) have arisen from Democrats who are wildly accusing President Trump of cheating and manipulating the Postal Service in his favor. Conveniently they forget to mention the president is more than an arms-length away from how we vote, and the Postal Service is not under the thumb of his control. Senate Democrats joined Republicans to unanimously install postal leadership — of which, one is an Obama appointee.

No doubt President Trump has expressed deep concerns about the validity of the ballots, and rightfully so. Sending out millions of ballots without authenticating the inbound ballots is ripe for massive fraud. Democrats have desperately been seeking to legalize “ballot harvesting” (the collection and submission of ballots by someone other than the voter and without authentication) and other nefarious activities. It must be noted elections in the United States are administered by counties and certified by states. In other words, per the United States Constitution, elections are run locally and not by the executive branch of the federal government. The president has simply sought fair elections.

Ironically, it is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s H.R. 1 that seeks to federalize elections and give the president power he doesn’t currently have now. Her solution would create the problem she inaccurately blames Trump for today. [..] The president of the United States does not control the operations of the Postal Service nor does he select or appoint the Postmaster General. The Board of Governors does both of these things. The Postal Regulatory Commission sets rates, service levels and decides on postal closings, not the president. The governors are appointed by a president and confirmed by the United States Senate. No more than five of the nine governors may be from the same political party.

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Clickbait fodder.

Trump Teases Upcoming Pardon For ‘Very Important’ Person (RT)

US President Donald Trump said he would soon hand out a pardon to a “very important” person. While the details were left shrouded in mystery, he ruled out both his former advisor Michael Flynn and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. “Doing a pardon tomorrow on someone who is very, very important,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Monday, offering little elaboration other than to say it would not be Flynn – his first National Security Advisor – nor the famed whistleblower. Despite repeatedly calling Snowden a “traitor” over the years, Trump has hinted at giving the whistleblower a reprieve on more than one occasion in the last week, saying he may have been treated “unfairly” and that he would “look at” allowing him to return home.


With the president explicitly ruling him out for Tuesday’s pardon, however, it appears Snowden will have to remain in Moscow for some time longer, where he was given asylum after leaking a massive cache of purloined documents from the National Security Agency in 2013, revealing Washington’s sweeping domestic and global spying apparatus.

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They’re starting a new competition.

China’s Anti-Trump Election Meddling Raises New Alarm (Fox)

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Fox News that China poses “a greater national security threat” to the United States “than any other nation,” detailing a web of threats that includes “election influence and interference.” Intelligence officials say they are increasingly concerned about interference in the U.S. election by China, adding to existing concerns about meddling by Russia that have been around since 2016, as well as the threat of meddling from Iran. “China poses a greater national security threat to the U.S. than any other nation – economically, militarily and technologically. That includes threats of election influence and interference,” Ratcliffe told Fox News in a statement.

While Russia was widely seen as favoring now-President Trump and generally seeking to sow chaos in America during the 2016 election, the difference with China is it is seen to be seeking a Trump loss in November. Yet congressional Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who ever since 2016 have issued dire warnings about Russian meddling, have not been quite so vocal about China’s potential to interfere in the 2020 election. Pelosi, D-Calif., last week said the threats of interference from Russia and China are “not equivalent,” while urging the intelligence community to put out more information about Russian efforts, saying Moscow is “actively 24/7 interfering in our election.”

Ratcliffe said the threat from China is actually significant, and he is “committing the IC resources needed to fully understand the threat posed by China and provide U.S. policymakers with the best intelligence to counter China’s broad and deep malign activities.” “China is concerned that President Trump’s reelection would lead to a continuation of policies that they perceive to be ‘anti-China,’” Ratcliffe explained, noting that the intelligence community has briefed “hundreds of members of Congress” to raise their concerns about China “and its increased efforts to impact the U.S. policy climate in its favor.” “Fair and free elections are a bedrock of American democracy, and the IC remains vigilant against the various activities by China, as well as other threat countries and actors, which seek to affect our electoral process,” Ratcliffe said.

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Great fundraiser, they said.

Kamala Harris Reportedly Owes $1M In Bills From Failed Presidential Run (NYP)

Kamala Harris, named Tuesday to be Joe Biden’s running mate, still has more than $1 million in unpaid bills left over from her failed 2020 presidential bid, according to a report. The California senator raised about $39 million for her White House bid in 2019 and spent about $40 million, leaving her campaign with just $116,380 in the bank at the end of June, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing Federal Election Commission filings. Harris ended her campaign last December amid falling poll numbers and a lack of fundraising.


International law firm Perkins Coie LLP was still owed $523,883 at the end of June, while TorchStone Global LLC, a corporate and private security company, was owed $160,702, the report said. California political consulting firm SCRB Strategies had $92,4087 in outstanding invoices. Donors have contributed slightly more than $48,000 to her campaign this year. The report noted that the campaign can’t be shuttered until all debts are paid under federal law. And while Biden raised $26 million in a day after announcing her selection, his campaign can do little to retire Harris’ campaign debt. It can donate $2,000 and the Democratic National Committee can contribute $5,000. But Biden can ask his donors to send funds to Harris’ campaign.

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Feel free to call this a failed society.

Twelve US Billionaires Have a Combined $1 Trillion (Ineq.org)

For the first time in US history, the top twelve U.S. billionaires surpassed a combined wealth of $1 trillion. On Thursday August 13th, these 12 had a combined $1.015 trillion. This is a disturbing milestone in the US history of concentrated wealth and power. This is simply too much economic and political power in the hands of twelve people. From the point of view of a democratic self-governing society, this represents an Oligarchic Twelve or a Despotic Dozen. The Oligarchic Dozen are Jeff Bezos ($189.4b), Bill Gates ($114b), Mark Zuckerberg ($95.5b), Warren Buffett ($80b), Elon Musk ($73b), Steve Ballmer ($71b), Larry Ellison ($70.9b), Larry Page ($67.4b), Sergey Brin ($65.6b), Alice Walton ($62.5b), Jim Walton ($62.3b) and Rob Walton ($62b).

Since March 18th, the beginning of the pandemic, this Oligarchic Dozen have seen their combined wealth increase $283 billion, an increase of almost 40 percent. Elon Musk has been the biggest pandemic profiteer, seeing his wealth triple from $24.6 billion on March 18th to $73 billion on August 13, an increase of $48.5 billion or 197 percent. Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos was worth $189.4 billion on August 13, up $76 billion or 68 percent since March 18th. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was worth $95.5 billion on August 13, up $40.8 billion or 75 percent since March 18th.

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The Sacklers took out many billions, then declared bankruptcy. Now they’re “willing” to contribute more to a settlement than the entire company is worth. Sick.

US States Seek $2.2 Trillion From OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma (R.)

U.S. states claimed they are owed $2.2 trillion to address harm from OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP’s alleged role in America’s opioid epidemic, accusing the drugmaker in new filings of pushing prescription painkillers on doctors and patients while playing down the risks of abuse and overdose. In filings made as part of Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings that were disclosed on Monday, the states said Purdue, backed by the wealthy Sackler family, contributed to a public health crisis that has claimed the lives of roughly 450,000 people since 1999 and caused strains on healthcare and criminal justice systems. The filings cited more than 200,000 deaths in the U.S. tied directly to prescription opioids between 1999 and 2016.

In large states such as California and New York, claims alone totaled more than $192 billion and $165 billion, respectively. Forty-nine U.S. states, Washington, D.C. and various territories are making the claims. Oklahoma settled litigation with Purdue last year. Purdue filed for bankruptcy in 2019 under pressure from more than 2,600 lawsuits brought by cities, counties, states, Native American tribes, hospitals and others. The lawsuits said the company, and in some cases the Sacklers, used deceptive marketing and took other improper steps to flood communities with prescription opioids. The company and family have denied the allegations and pledged to help combat the opioid epidemic, including by providing addiction treatment drugs and overdose reversal medications under development.

[..] Purdue is only worth a bit more than $2 billion if liquidated. The company values a proposal to settle litigation, which includes providing addiction treatment and overdose-reversing drugs, at more than $10 billion. The Sacklers would contribute $3 billion and cede control of Purdue, with the company becoming a trust run on behalf of plaintiffs.

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These well-meaning people are mightily confused about growth:

“In the absence of new forms of liquidity support and major debt relief, the world economy cannot possibly return to pre-pandemic levels of growth..”

I think that means to want to return there.

“..the dramatic decline in the cost of renewable energy represents an opportunity for a big investment push in zero-carbon energy infrastructure, which itself would help to redress energy poverty and unsustainable growth.”

More growth? Isn’t growth itself the problem then? Never mind, anyone who talks about sustainable growth is not a serious person in my book.

The Need for Debt-for-Climate Swaps (PS)

In the absence of new forms of liquidity support and major debt relief, the world economy cannot possibly return to pre-pandemic levels of growth without risking severe climate distress and social unrest.Climate scientists tell us that in order to meet the targets outlined in the Paris climate accord, global net carbon-dioxide emissions must fall by about 45% by 2030, and by 100% by 2050. Given that the effects of climate change are already being felt around the world, countries urgently need to scale up their investments in climate adaptation and mitigation. But that will not be possible if governments are bogged down in a debt crisis. If anything, debt-service requirements will push countries to pursue export revenues at any cost, including by cutting corners on climate-resilient infrastructure and stepping up their own fossil-fuel use and extraction of resources.

This course of events would further depress commodity prices, creating a doom loop for producer countries. In light of these concerns, the G20 has called on the IMF “to explore additional tools that could serve its members’ needs as the crisis evolves, drawing on relevant experiences from previous crises.” One such tool that should be considered is a “debt-for-climate swap” facility. In the 1980s and 1990s, developing countries and their creditors engaged in “debt-for-nature swaps,” whereby debt relief was linked to investments in reforestation, biodiversity, and protections for indigenous people. This concept should now be expanded to include people-centered investments that address both climate change and inequality.

Developing countries will need additional resources if they are to have any chance of leaving fossil fuels in the ground, investing sufficiently in climate adaptation, and creating opportunities for twenty-first-century jobs. One source for such resources is debt relief conditioned on such investments. A policy tool of this type would not only put us on the path to recovery, but also could help to prevent future debt-sustainability problems that might emerge as more fossil-fuel holdings and non-resilient infrastructure become “stranded assets.” Moreover, the dramatic decline in the cost of renewable energy represents an opportunity for a big investment push in zero-carbon energy infrastructure, which itself would help to redress energy poverty and unsustainable growth.

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I should read Stephanie Kelton’s book, right?!

The Mathematical Model of Modern Monetary Theory (Steve Keen)

One Mathematical Model of Modern Monetary Operations

I confess immediately that I chose the title and subtitle for this post because their acronyms are palindromes. The subtitle is more accurate than the title, because this model considers only the monetary aspects of MMT: the Job Guarantee and inflation management components are not yet incorporated. But the monetary assertions of MMT remain in dispute in economic and political circles, so it is worth putting these into a mathematical model where their veracity can be tested. The primary stimulus for developing the model was the publication of Stephanie Kelton’s The Deficit Myth. Stephanie has written the book for non-technical readers, and she’s done a very good job: it’s a very easy read that explains why many conventional wisdoms about government spending are wrong.

But MMT is facing heavy resistance in political and economic circles, with my favourite to date being a motion before the US Congress, posted by Representative Kevin Hern, to resolve: “That the House of Representatives (1) realizes that deficits are unsustainable, irresponsible, and dangerous; and (2) recognizes— (A) that the implementation of Modern Monetary Theory would lead to higher deficits and higher inflation; and (B) the duty of the House of Representatives to condemn Modern Monetary Theory.”

The objective of this series of posts is to allow the assessment of the first part of this motion—the assertion that “deficits are unsustainable, irresponsible, and dangerous”. The models in this post are built in the Open Source system dynamics program Minsky, whose unique feature is the capacity to build models of financial flows using what are called Godley Tables (in honour of Wynne Godley, the pioneer of stock-flow-consistent-modelling). These tables enforce the “law of accounting” that (see Figure 1, A blank Godley Table).

Once an account is flagged as an “Asset” for one entity, Minsky knows that it has to also be shown as a “Liability” for another entity. This makes it possible to take an integrated look at the financial system, which allows us to assess Hern’s motion from the perspective of the entire monetary system, and not just the Government’s view of it.

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50 years later: ‘They broke up because Yoko sat on an amp!’

And in the End (Rolling Stone)

It’s a miserable Monday morning in January 1969, and the Beatles are trying to get back to where they once belonged. The Get Back project sounded like a perfect idea: just the four lads and their instruments, ready to hit the studio, return to their roots, conjure up some great songs out of thin air. Just like they used to. John, Paul, George, and Ringo have booked a TV concert special for January 18th — their first live show in years. They’ll rehearse for a couple of weeks, eyeball to eyeball, summon up genius on the spur of the moment. They’ve done it many times before. They’ve never not done it. The good news: Paul showed up today, and so did Ringo. So did the camera crew — these sessions are being filmed, so the Beatles can show a half-hour clip of rehearsal footage before their TV performance.

So here they are on Monday morning, ready to dazzle the world with a blast of spontaneous Beatles brilliance. Or at least Paul and Ringo are. Hey, has anyone heard from John and Yoko? Or George? With George, there’s a slight complication: He quit the band. On Friday, with the cameras rolling, he was trying to teach them a new song, “All Things Must Pass.” John, strung out on his new heroin habit, sneered at George with open contempt. George finally stormed out, muttering, “See you around the clubs.” John doesn’t take this seriously. “I think if George doesn’t come back by Monday or Tuesday, we ask Eric Clapton to play in it,” he says. “The point is, if George leaves, do we want to carry on the Beatles? I do. We should just get other members and carry on.” But now it’s Monday and still no George. No John and Yoko. (No Clapton, for that matter.) Paul and Ringo kill time jamming on a current radio hit, “Build Me Up Buttercup.”

But everyone gathers to discuss the crisis, complaining bitterly about Yoko’s constant presence. Surprisingly, the one who sticks up for her is Paul. He’s a sucker for a love story — he’s Paul McCartney, for God’s sake. But he also knows how much this romance means to his oldest, closest mate, his most troubled and cruel and impossible friend. “It’s not that bad,” he insists. “They want to stay together, those two. So it’s all right. Let the young lovers be together.” Paul has to chuckle, thinking about how future generations will look back at this — the Beatles, the greatest of all rock & roll bands, the world’s most legendary creative team, falling apart over such a trivial spat. Even on a winter morning as gloomy as this one, Paul breaks into a laugh. “It’s gonna be such an incredible sort of comical thing, like in 50 years’ time, you know. ‘They broke up because Yoko sat on an amp!'”

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle August 18 2020

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 49 total)
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  • #62255

    Bettmann/Getty Minimum Wage 1963   • Coronavirus Clusters Erupt At US Universities As Semester Begins (AP) • Sixty Seconds to Self-Sabotage (Cut)
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle August 18 2020]

    #62256
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Bettmann/Getty Minimum Wage 1963
    $1.50/hour…

    1963 I was working at Meier & Frank as a stock boy,
    $1.35/hour…
    Women’s shoe salesman (I moved up); $1.35/hour + comission on sales…

    Looking back; it’s hard to believe; but, that was then and this is today…
    Today? Yuck! Hard times indeed…

    #62258
    John Day
    Participant

    http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/08/pandemic-complexity-musings.html
    I have been talking to people, in the course of doing errands linked to the death and estate of an old friend, with whom I have practiced Buddhism since we both started in spring of 2001. After conversing with another friend about current events and historical patterns, I responded to an email about whether the viral threat is completely fabricated or not.
    (Then I tidied it up to be this essay…)

    The Novel coronavirus pandemic in the USA is a complex event medically, economically, and humanly.
    One faction lives in abject fear, and another faction lives in denial, while they can maintain it.
    The factions are incompatible and completely aligned against each other. (That’s not everybody, though.)

    3 per thousand people who catch novel coronavirus infection die, and mostly over 60. Older and sicker get hit harder. However, if you actually get diagnosed by a test, your chance of dying is more like 3 per 100.
    A majority of people, 80-90% never get tested, and that was revealed by the early US seropositivity studies in California and New York. The number of cases implied was about 10X the number of cases confirmed.
    Is that pattern holding? Those seropositivity studies are ongoing, but the ongoing results have been secret since April.
    The Texas Governor Knows, but I do not. I see they are tracking the viral penetration of our human population, and slowing it down with masks, and closing bars, when it gets so fast that the hospitals get overloaded. That’s it.
    There is a lot of human suffering and a lot of aunts and uncles and grandparents have died recently in our circle of friends and family.
    People suffer, and suffering people get secluded and hospitalized.
    Effective treatments are being suppressed and information about them is censored, and disparaged in the mass media.
    That censorship is not completely effective, is it?
    People do know they are being lied to and manipulated, but “which” narrative do they choose to deal with it?
    US elites are trying to herd people into blue-camp and red-camp, with different sets of lies and misconceptions, but antagonistic to each other. Each sees some of the lies that the other believes, but not the lies they believe themselves.

    This virus, militarized in a lab, does things we are only learning about. It specifically attacks the linings of blood vessels, shutting off lots of little vessels and starving lots of bits of brain, lung, kidney, liver, etc. of blood flow, which creates patterns of disease we have never seen before. It creates cottage-cheese damage to all these organs, which we have never seen the long term effects of. We have seen heart attacks, strokes, renal failure and pulmonary embolism, and we are seeing lots of all that now, from big blood clots.
    That’s one thing. The other thing is that this virus hides from the immune system, when it is reproducing in a cell, so the immune system can’t see to destroy that cell-full-of-virus before it releases the virus.
    Does this lead to sleeper-cells? Can people have dormant virus pop back up in a month or two? I just saw somebody who may have had exactly that happen to her. I can’t say yet. She had real, systemic COVID and positive nasal swabs, and stuff on CT of her chest, and typical excess clotting in her blood, twice, about 6 weeks apart.
    Do not accept a simplistic answer. COVID is not the black death and it is not trivial like a cold.

    Yes, every crisis serves the elites, just like every error favors the bank, not you.
    This virus leaked, I think, which put the elites on their back foot, pushed them to rapidly adapt, like the rest of us.
    They don’t trust each other, don’t trust us, and are mainly trying to hold onto flows of wealth and power, which are in rapid decline, but they are holding onto THEIR FLOW like it is a solid object.
    It is not, but we humans are very loath to relinquish what we feel to be “ours”. It hurts us. It’s “wrong”.
    Power elites need to keep us sidelined in fear and confusion, but power elites are also subject to the mass psychosis , which is developing.

    Be sane. Don’t follow an ideology. This is chaotic. This is people going insane and acting out a recurring pattern of history where a lot of people die, including elites. Don’t take a side. Don’t accept a partisan narrative.
    Clues are being dropped by folks like Bill Gates, that there will be more pandemics, which seems likely. Pandemics are a cull the elites can do without destroying valuable infrastructure. They are getting a better understanding of how pandemics move through the world, more comfortable with it.
    I personally suspect that internet warfare, shutting down the web and grid and phones, can be used on top of viral pandemics to take out cities and regions. All of our eggs are getting transferred into that basket these days.

    I think we humans are going into a periodic mass culling, like WW-1, and WW-2, but I really think it started with an accidental leak of weaponized virus, started before it was all agreed upon, and operational.

    It seems like history always has an element of surprise and chaos, even for ruling elites, when a real reset starts.
    I see that now in our herd-mind. There are always some who don’t much participate in the herd-mind.
    Don’t get stampeded.
    Grow a garden. Ride a bike. Meditate, Store some rice, beans, salt, sugar, oil, onions, garlic, etc.
    Try to keep a low profile, on the sidelines, without much worth stealing.
    Do help your neighbors in little ways, when the opportunity presents. Be a good citizen.

    To the elites this may be mainly about controlling us with fear, but if you get sick with this virus, you will know pain, suffering, deep fatigue, and probably fear. I talk to my patients.
    My daughter, Holly is a hospitalist in internal medicine at the country hospital in San Antonio.
    Lots of people of all kinds are dying, and they are dying alone, without their loved ones, and they are dying through different mechanisms than we saw until just a few months ago.
    You probably won’t die from this. Probably.
    You do not want to get sick with it, for sure.
    Take 5000 units per day of vitamin-D, but if you are just starting, take 10,000 units per day for the first couple of months.

    #62259
    John Day
    Participant

    @V.Arnold: See air rooting reply yesterday. I may try again some day on a certain tree.

    #62260
    lasttwo
    Participant

    thank you John Day. excellent post .

    Raul In my humble opinion seems like you have become a Trump cheerleader. Why? Biden -Harris makes me actually physically ill but Trump is doing so much damage to the core of the environment, social division , inequality, corporate socialism (fascism) and his leadership on Covid is actually deplorable. just sayin

    #62261
    zerosum
    Participant

    Growth
    Minimum Wage 1963 …. $1.50
    now in 2020 …. …………..$15.00

    • Twelve US Billionaires Have a Combined $1 Trillion
    Learn to count
    • The Mathematical Model of Modern Monetary Theory (Steve Keen)

    #62262
    oxymoron
    Participant

    John, fabulous take on things. Re avocados, I have tried Rincorn, Hass, Bacon and Fuerte. we get to minus 4C with longish winters but it is the hot summer sun – up to 45c that burns the bark and causes the cambium layer to suffer badly – I have given up but if you make sure young trees have humidity and protection with limewash on the bark you should be fine in Texas.
    Pollination is a pain but ants help

    #62264

    lasttwo

    In my humble opinion seems like you have become a Trump cheerleader.

    Why? Biden -Harris makes me actually physically ill..

    And you feel that makes you a Trump cheerleader?

    Me, it makes me feel that perhaps the Dems don’t actually want to win.

    #62266
    zerosum
    Participant

    … winning ….
    1. Get Trump out of office
    2. Correct all the bad things done by Rep.
    3. Divert cash flow to Dem.’s hidden bank accounts
    4. Lock em up
    5. Help/improve the social/economic situation of the blue collar workers
    6. Change perception of reality

    #62267
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    The album “All Things Must Pass” is George’s best work. Each and every song. In these times, as accurately summed up by John Day and Raul, beautiful music is medicine.

    FREE Julian Assange. Pardon Snowden Mr. President – you have no clue – just do it baby!

    #62268
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    Bernie never recovered from the DNC theft of 2016. His recent run lacked Heart as the truth became obvious. The next genuine progressive wave is fermenting but not ready for kegging. Bernie opened doors for AOC, KATIE PORTER and more while Covid opened doors for Mayor Lance-Bottoms, Governors Whitmer, Grisham and more. Bernie still has a role in the next phase; his patience will pay off.

    Who is angrier? In 2016 it was those angry folks who pushed Trump to victory. I disagree with the logic in the Greene article that the angry factor will prevail and deliver the knockout punch to Biden. In this moment, it is the disgusted vote that will deliver Biden the win. Same theory just a different source.

    Who is disgusted with President Trump? How can this disgust be focused, clarified and channeled, the facts collected and documented? Use Trumps own WORDS – everything you need is there. Depending on how effective the disgust campaign will be – and the campaign’s ability to translate disgust into taking the only possible meaningful action (which is run from the source of the disgust) – will determine the margin of victory.

    How is being disgusted different from being angry? Why would that make a difference? Does one move from anger to disgust? Hummm.

    Of course the Biden campaign must simultaneously build the case for their path forward. There has to be a vision that all, including the disgusted can hold on to.

    #62269
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    Amazon adds 3,500 white collar jobs and cuts 1,500 delivery/driving positions. Amazon expects record-breaking growth to continue. So who will deliver all those packages?

    Is Amazon giving the USPS an opening to raise parcel rates?

    #62270
    PlanetaryCitizen
    Participant

    “Me, it makes me feel that perhaps the Dems don’t actually want to win.”

    Oh Please! Everything you do is an assault on the Dems and a buffer (or an outright misrepresentation) to an accurate accounting of Trump and the harm he does to everything he touches. I can only imagine that Putin loves you for it!

    The TAE I once lauded and supported is gone! And now so am I.

    At least you will still have your toady, V. to comment on the art (angry expat aside) which he has so fastidiously done since you chastised him a couple of years back. As well as Dr. D-mento, that paragon of logic and common sense.

    Say whatever you want in response. I don’t care, I won’t be back to read it.

    #62271
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Raul In my humble opinion seems like you have become a Trump cheerleader. Why? Biden -Harris makes me actually physically ill but Trump is doing so much damage to the core of the environment, social division , inequality, corporate socialism (fascism) and his leadership on Covid is actually deplorable. just sayin”

    Really? Please point out specifics of things he is doing now that weren’t going on with the past five administrations?

    #62272
    Mr. House
    Participant

    What is so hard about understanding that you will lose no matter which party is running the show? I guess some people like losing at a slower pace?

    #62273
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Oh Please! Everything you do is an assault on the Dems and a buffer (or an outright misrepresentation) to an accurate accounting of Trump and the harm he does to everything he touches. I can only imagine that Putin loves you for it!

    The TAE I once lauded and supported is gone! And now so am I.

    At least you will still have your toady, V. to comment on the art (angry expat aside) which he has so fastidiously done since you chastised him a couple of years back. As well as Dr. D-mento, that paragon of logic and common sense.

    Say whatever you want in response. I don’t care, I won’t be back to read it.”

    This reads like the temper tantrum of a five year old child.

    #62274
    Mr. House
    Participant

    @Planatarycitizen (such an altruistic name)

    Have you listened to NPR recently? I’m sure Raul has a larger audience then they do so any objective reality he provides to us must really be getting the masses of the PMC frothing at the mouth. Anyways i listened to NPR last weekend while making an hour long drive. Not once did they say anything objectively negative about democrats. They had some cheerleading about the convention, which i found odd for a non partisan publicly sponsered and corporate radio station to do (they get tons of money from the ford foundation who also donated about 100 million to BLM). You don’t find that odd? The only negative story they had about politics was about guess who, come on guess

    #62275
    zerosum
    Participant

    not here

    influencer: a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.

    #62276

    I don’t understand the implied idea that I would be some secret Trump cheerleader. I get why people don’t tell pollsters if they plan to vote Trump, that’s just the political climate today. But for me, with a website in which I say what I think every single day, how does some kind of secret unspoken underlying notion make sense?

    #62277

    Google AdSense sends me a message saying that some of the content on the frontpage is unacceptable for some advertizers, because: “Adult: Sexual content”. The frontpage is either https://www.theautomaticearth.com or https://www.theautomaticearth.com/the-automatic-earth/, where you get when you click the Home button in the menubar (don’t ask me why).

    And really, beat me with a pigfoot till I bleed, but I have no idea what on the frontpage could be seen as sexual content. And they don’t specify, of course.

    #62278
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Try testing it

    Only post negative trump things and pro biden things. See if suddenly the google ad revenue starts pouring in. Worth a shot and i’d be willing to put up with it if it confirms many suspicions.

    #62279
    teri
    Participant

    Coronavirus is now the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA.

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/512427-covid-19-now-no-3-cause-of-death-in-us

    Dept of the Interior approves gas and oil leases on the ANWR

    US approves oil, gas leasing plan for Alaska wildlife refuge

    #62280

    Only post negative trump things and pro biden things. See if suddenly the google ad revenue starts pouring in.

    Not sure how either way would qualify as Adult; Sexual Content. But i’ve requested a review (can take a week). Maybe that’s the only way to find out what they’re talking about. I normally can’t be bothered, but let’s have that fun for once.

    NOTE: I see no difference in the ads here.

    #62281
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    “I have no idea what on the frontpage could be seen as sexual content.”

    Maybe it’s the beginning of the Social Experiment posting which mentions ladies of the evening micturating on the bunk?

    #62282
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “I don’t understand the implied idea that I would be some secret Trump cheerleader. I get why people don’t tell pollsters if they plan to vote Trump, that’s just the political climate today.”

    Just the political climate today huh, i consider it strong arming. Doesn’t anyone remember what life was like in high school? That’s all the anti trump hysteria has been for the last four years. The cool kids are telling us not to listen to the new kid. That is really all it is. And for all the openmindedness those on the left profess to have, their actions the past four years have only proven the exact opposite. Grow up, the game is getting serious and if you seriously want a free country and to save the planet like most of you claim, learn that neither party has your interest and start discussing creating a new one. CJ Hopkins wrote an excellent article in 2019 about Bernie, and he called it to a T. How many times does lucy have to pull the football away for you guys to learn?

    The Magic Socialist

    #62283
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    @Mr. House … you actually listened to NPR for an hour? Wow. Talk about taking one for the team. There is not an ounce of objective in any reporting they do. I’m not sure how one can even call what they do reporting.

    I haven’t commented here in a few months. It’s been rather nasty around here and I stayed out of the fray. But @Mr. House cracked me up with the “This reads like the temper tantrum of a five year old child.” Just had to login in and say … hat’s off! Thanks for the laugh.

    I don’t know what it is about Trump, but he brings out the worst in people (both the “pro” AND “con” people). He truly does. I don’t pay any attention to the daily headlines (aka, clickbait), don’t follow Twitter, and never listen to him speak. I just pick up what, generally, is the result of his actions. Watching his results using my hands off method, quite honestly, I don’t see any difference between what he accomplishes (using that term loosely) and what, say, Obama accomplished. Seems pretty much the same to me. Environment, immigrants, wages, jobs, blah, blah … what, seriously, is the difference between Obama and Trump? No one can actually say, can they, using real statistics? I suggest we put together one of those side-by-side charts and see how these 2 stack up on these pivotal issues. Want to place bets on that? 😉

    Raul, I also like Dr. House’s idea of only posting pro Biden/Harris and negative Trump things for a couple weeks to see what happens to adverts and revenue. Now THAT is a flippin’ stellar idea. Two thumbs up.

    #62284
    cloudhidden
    Participant

    Susan B. Anthony ? ? ?

    and we were thinking Assange

    WTF

    #62285
    Archie
    Participant

    I live in the deep red mountains of North Georgia. Saw my 1st Biden bumper sticker today at the local big box store parking lot. It was:

    Republicans for Biden 2020

    Apparently, some people like their shit sandwich with mustard on it.

    #62286
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    John Day, I appreciate your words of wisdom:

    US elites are trying to herd people into blue-camp and red-camp, with different sets of lies and misconceptions, but antagonistic to each other. Each sees some of the lies that the other believes, but not the lies they believe themselves.

    Be sane. Don’t follow an ideology. This is chaotic. This is people going insane and acting out a recurring pattern of history where a lot of people die, including elites. Don’t take a side. Don’t accept a partisan narrative.

    Both sides are being played.

    Here’s a graph which surprised me, after all the media stories about overwhelmed hospitals. Out of all the Emergency Department visits at US hospitals during the pandemic, the percentage of visits due to “COVID-19-Like Illness” was just 7 percent at the peak. Digging deeper into the data, the only region which got into the double digits was Region 2 (NY, NJ, and PR), which was above 10% during a four-week period, peaking at 16%.

    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/08142020/covid-like-illness.html

    When it comes to reading between the lines and thinking for yourself, these recent articles from Ted Rall are food for thought:

    There Isn’t That Much Difference between Democrats and Republicans
    August 17, 2020

    Trump Tries to End the Afghanistan War, Democrats Want to Keep Killing
    July 22, 2020

    10 Reasons I Won’t Vote for Biden
    July 12, 2020

    Like Trump, Biden Would Be a Right-Wing President
    July 10, 2020

    On Foreign Policy, Joe Biden is Worse Than Trump
    July 6, 2020

    The Data Is Clear: Progressives Should Boycott Biden
    July 1, 2020

    https://rall.com/

    #62287
    regionswork
    Participant

    Thomas Greene only has one side of the betrayal of the American working class. There’s more. Republicans are far from innocent. Not mentioned is how the borders were kept open to allow immigrants, legal or illegal, from entry to introduce wage cutting competition along with extreme centralization of once local and regional meat-cutting employment. Wage stagnation was obscured by inflation, arrival of some lower priced goods from exported industry, and of course, easy credit. The Republicans did and still do offer Christian heaven as compensation for worldly suffering. Dems can’t go that far right, but they are hardly liberal or progressive, since the moneyed object.

    Some restoration of Federal agency function is needed. In “The Fifth Risk” (2018) Michael Lewis looked at the transition and political appointments of the Trump presidency. That States are not actual partners, but competitors for Presidential favors, the strong executive model, is demonstrated in the COVID-19 response.

    Joe Bageant did lay out the Republican approach in “Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War” in 2007. Wikipedia says: “It concerns his return to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, and his take on income inequality and problems facing the working poor”. The language is rough and, of course, Jesus is in the title, so nothing here for the chattering class.

    If Trumpian anger wins again, the economic crash will be deafening. Republicans may remove him to save their corrupted brand. The wise should attend to local and state government to hang on to civil order and manage a cash economy rebuilding. Virginia, where I’ve lived since leaving Wisconsin in 1968, is fiscally conservative. Harry Flood Byrd, Governor and Senator, as a businessman, opposed credit, commercial and governmental.

    The reason was growing up in the Northern Shenandoah Valley after the Civil War. There was food, but no money. It all went to paying Civil War debt. Pay-as-you-go was a limiting, but necessary correction to misuse of debt. The future is: Pay more, get less.

    Democrats could include the spiritual card. Neither party accepts any responsibility for the current failure of the post-Soviet goal of total domination and resultant planetary depletion. War just doesn’t get things done as promised.

    Hypocrisy is always opening new territory. US diplomatic outrage about suppression of Uyghurs in China for their practice of Islam is just one example. The defense is appropriate, but the source is not credible due to everything else.

    #62288
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Not sure how either way would qualify as Adult; Sexual Content. But i’ve requested a review (can take a week). ”

    Ha come on, you think they’re telling you the truth as to why they’re cutting off the money flow to you? When was the last time you worked for a corporate entity Raul? People will screw you just because they don’t like the way you look sometimes, and you don’t even have to have a different color of skin for it to happen (shocking i know). If i were betting man, i’d bet your request for an inquiry into why they’re choking off your money flow will be some sort of corporate speak BS. After a few back and forths they’ll tell you they can’t find anything wrong with it and you’ll still continue to be without any ad revenue.

    #62289
    Mr. House
    Participant

    All these years imagining financial collapse, and trying to explain to people why it was coming, and why you shouldn’t believe politicians, and why anyone involved in government should be removed, and why the parties can’t be trusted, and being ridiculed for trying to warn people. It finally happens, and those who led us to this are still in charge, still have a strangle hold on the narrative and all of us. And the best we can do is throw temper tantrums online, pointing the finger at each other. Perhaps we aren’t worthy of saving ourselves.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/250000-las-vegans-face-eviction-next-month

    #62290
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    @upstateNYer

    Watching his results using my hands off method, quite honestly, I don’t see any difference between what he accomplishes (using that term loosely) and what, say, Obama accomplished. Seems pretty much the same to me. Environment, immigrants, wages, jobs, blah, blah … what, seriously, is the difference between Obama and Trump? No one can actually say, can they, using real statistics? I suggest we put together one of those side-by-side charts and see how these 2 stack up on these pivotal issues. Want to place bets on that? 😉

    OMG, this! I think Trump would fare pretty well in the foreign policy column compared to Obama (no new invasions, hey?) but I couldn’t say how it would wash out on the domestic side. If you don’t follow the minutiae of the Trump Outrage of the Day (“Immigrant children in cages!”, “Trump builds palace in Moscow for Putin!”, “Trump’s hands are actually tiny!” “Trump is literally shoving polar bears off ice floes in the Bering Sea!” etc, etc etc) Trump is just a Republican president, doing the Big Business-friendly things that Republican presidents do. Yes, he’s doing them in his uniquely coarse and uncouth way, with occasional slap-dashes of incompetence, but to me he’s not an outlier at all. Even setting aside Democrat presidents such as Obama, who I think is quite smart, does anyone think that Bush 1 or Bush 2, our two most recent Republican presidents prior to Trump, would have handled the pandemic better?! There would have been the same wishful thinking, the same flip-flops that favored air travel and big business over public health, the same platitudes and nonsense. Does anyone remember James Watt? Does anyone remember “Heckuva job, Brownie!” How about W’s war in Iraq that killed half a million people, predicated on lies? Or the ongoing “civil war” in Syria, started by that Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama, where we armed some of the very same people who were the villains in the prior war, only now we called them moderate rebels? But no, Trump is Hitler and democracy is stake.

    Rant off.

    #62291
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    At least you will still have your toady, V. to comment on the art (angry expat aside) which he has so fastidiously done since you chastised him a couple of years back. As well as Dr. D-mento, that paragon of logic and common sense.

    Say whatever you want in response. I don’t care, I won’t be back to read it.

    My goodness…
    Sounds like an insulted 15 yo girl…lol…
    Oh, and I’m an angry self exiled citizen; not an expat…
    PC has flounced a couple of times before; he’ll be back…it’s a pattern of flouncers across the intertubes… 😉

    #62292
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    The trillions of dollars of the listed twelve oligarchs pretty much run America. Besides the Walton family, most of the rest are intimately involved with DARPA’s Internet that Al Gore took credit for. One, Jeff Bezos, is in a cold war with Donald Trump. The two clans of plutocrats, globalists and nationalists, stomping around, positioning themselves, delayed my mail for the last two weeks. I depend on USPS for delivery of my medicine and paying my bills.

    All twelve, deep in their hearts, deny that outsourcing, cutting taxes, plus deregulation have anything to do with the collapse of government and their rapidly increasing wealth.

    When I retired almost nine years ago all the cubicles where I worked were full of people. Now it is so decimated, the few remaining are moving back to DC when the Office reopens, shortly, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Donald Trump is a disaster. The Free World is finished. US troops bring the coronavirus contagion with them.

    At least in Maryland, I can vote for the Green Party without the conundrum of being forced to vote for Joe Biden. If Donald Trump wins, there will be a million families with dead grandparents, fathers and mothers, even children. Tens of millions will be without a job or income. There will be critical shortages (California is already having rolling blackouts). Chaos is assured. Globalists and the lackey intelligence operatives will initiate a color revolt.

    On the other hand, if Joe Biden is elected, in January 2021, there will be no change. The federal government will be unable to end the pandemic unless, the jackpot vaccine really works. The unrest and the economic depression will continue. Even with a safe and effective vaccine it will be year or two before everyone feels safe to go out in public and revive the service and air travel industries.

    Without a working vaccine or treatment, it will be 1932, all over again, except without a FDR – a new dark age.

    #62293
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    It’s very apparent a couple of posters here are reading comprehension challenged.
    The repeated assertions, that Ilargi is a Trump supporter (either by comission or omission), are just ludicrous.
    Past that, it’s hardly worth a comment…

    #62294
    zerosum
    Participant

    VietnamVet
    I just couldn’t resist expanding what you said.

    Whoever win, “….. there will be a million families with dead grandparents, fathers and mothers, even children. Tens of millions will be without a job or income. There will be critical shortages …..” everywhere

    #62295
    John Day
    Participant

    @lasttwo: Thanks. I’m glad you appreciated my essay. It seemed to be what I was saying all day yesterday, talking to friends. It looks like I’m voting Green Party again. Jim Hightower said: “If the Gods had meant us to vote, they’d have given us candidates”.

    @Oxymoron
    : Thanks , Amigo. I had read your advice on whitewashing avocado trees in the sun, and I had a couple in partial shade that did get sunburned last year, but I put the drip timer to come on between 2:30 PM and 4:30 PM each day this year, and the sun is causing some discoloration on some exposed green skin, but not burning it, not killing it. Go Cambium! They are sort of thriving.

    @Susmarie108
    : Yes on All Things Must Pass. Sorry about Bernie. He’s long been able to do the long, gradual 180 degree turn, while maintaining his composure. I’m sorry he’s done it again. He has gotten nothing in this deal, for his followers, and they know it. Where’s Tulsi? Disappeared with honor.
    Bye-Bye, Planetary Citizen. Try to get free of the psychosis. It’s trying to take you over. You’ve got the right stuff to be free.
    @MrHouse: Hi. Steady-as-she-goes, Mate!

    @Teri
    : There may be another Texas of oil buried in Alaska. It has been kept top secret after a few wells were drilled in Carter years, then capped off. It could be nothing, but it would have taken them longer to be sure that it was nothing.

    @Ilargi
    :”It’s YOUR FAULT Bush beat Gore!” and stuff like that. You won’t please anybody with partisan-virus this year. The sad fact is that the Titanic is going down , no matter who is barking orders and playing requests up top. That’s overly dramatic of me, but history has taken the helm, and mass psychosis rules, so watch and prepare to survive. (More Internet Porn , Please! I missed it.)
    @Doc Robinson: Thanks. You’re in my same minority, I guess.
    @Donald Trump: Susan B. Anthony? You win that practical joke contest!

    #62297

    @ilargi: (More Internet Porn , Please! I missed it.)

    That’s it, John. Dear Google, could you please point out to me where the Adult Content is, so I can enjoy it too?

    #62298
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    @John Day: my wife’s colleague just published the data that the Texas governor hasn’t shared with you. And it supports your 10:1 estimate of infections versus confirmed cases.

    Notes from the Field: Seroprevalence Estimates of SARS-Cov-2

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