The Goldman Sachs Effect: How a Bank Conquered Washington

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39276-the-goldman-sachs-effect-how-a-bank-conquered-washington

From the site:

Irony isn't a concept with which President Donald J. Trump is familiar. In his Inaugural Address, having nominated the wealthiest cabinet in American history, he proclaimed, "For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished -- but the people did not share in its wealth." Under Trump, an even smaller group will flourish -- in particular, a cadre of former Goldman Sachs executives. To put the matter bluntly, two of them (along with the Federal Reserve) are likely to control our economy and financial system in the years to come.

Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban Is Cowardly and Dangerous

https://is.gd/O492Ry

From the site:

First, reflect on the cruelty of President Trump’s decision on Friday to indefinitely suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees and temporarily ban people from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the United States. It took just hours to begin witnessing the injury and suffering this ban inflicts on families that had every reason to believe they had outrun carnage and despotism in their homelands to arrive in a singularly hopeful nation.

The first casualties of this bigoted, cowardly, self-defeating policy were detained early Saturday at American airports just hours after the executive order, ludicrously titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” went into effect. A federal judge in Brooklyn on Saturday evening issued an emergency stay, ordering that those stuck at the airports not be returned to their home countries. But the future of all the others subject to the executive order is far from settled.

Visa Ban Excludes Countries with Direct Links to Terrorism and Where Trump Has Commercial Holdings

https://is.gd/uwuRKr

From the site:

KIM BROWN: Trump has said that the ban on refugees from various Middle Eastern countries is based on the concern that those refugees could become involved in acts of terrorism here in the U.S.. What are your thoughts on the new refugee policy and its justification?

PHYLLIS BENNIS: There's no question, this is an anti-Muslim ban. This is an effort to keep Muslims out of the United States. The notion that this is somehow going to keep people in the United States safer or protect refugees in any way is simply not the case. What we're looking at is an Executive Order that essentially bans Muslims for all Muslims and indeed all people for at least 30 days, perhaps longer, but also for a much longer period excludes anyone, refugees, immigrants, or anyone else from seven named Muslim-majority countries. Now, those countries, of those seven, the U.S. is actually bombing five of them – that would be Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Somalia – it has troops deployed and military bases established, U.S. military bases established, in the 6th, which is Sudan, and has consistently imposed very harsh sanctions and frequently made threats against the 7th, which is Iran.

Now, the other thing that these seven countries all have in common, besides being countries at which the U.S. is attacking, none of them have Trump Industry projects. None of them have Trump Hotels, for instance. If you look at other Muslim-majority countries where there has been a much more direct link to terrorism, ironically enough, such as either Egypt or Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia, as we know, has long been accused of funneling money in various forms to ISIS and to other terrorist organizations, and, of course, in Egypt, largely because of increasing government repression, you have significant acts of terror being committed on their soil – neither Egypt nor Saudi Arabia is included in the list, and, what a surprise, in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Trump has significant commercial holdings, hotels, et cetera.

So, do we assume that that's just a coincidence? No, clearly, this is somehow linked here.

The order also violates international law which requires countries to provide refuge to desperate people that are fleeing persecution. This simply says we're not going to do it because we don't want to. And, indeed, there has not even been the illusion that this is designed for anything other than supposedly keeping Americans safe. It has nothing to do with the rights of desperate refugees coming from these countries.

Trumping Capitalism?

https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/trumping-capitalism-by-anatole-kaletsky-2017-01

From the site:

Donald Trump’s presidency is a symptom of an interregnum between economic orders – a period that will result in a new balance between state and market. While his administration’s economic policies are unlikely to provide the right answer, they may at least show the world what not to do.

The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot

Many people are now pointing out that our newly elected president is mentally ill. If that weren't obvious before the election it certainly is now. This article from the Washington Post offers proof of that.

https://is.gd/HpbPV8

From the site:

This account of Trump’s tumultuous first days in office comes from interviews with nearly a dozen senior White House officials and other Trump advisers and confidants, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations and moments.

By most standards, Spicer’s statement Saturday did not go well. He appeared tired and nervous in an ill-fitting gray pinstripe suit. He publicly gave faulty facts and figures — which he said were provided to him by the Presidential Inaugural Committee — that prompted a new round of media scrutiny.

Many critics thought Spicer went too far and compromised his integrity. But in Trump’s mind, Spicer’s attack on the news media was not forceful enough. The president was also bothered that the spokesman read, at times haltingly, from a printed statement.

The Women's Marches may have been the largest demonstration in US History

http://www.vox.com/2017/1/22/14350808/womens-marches-largest-demonstration-us-history-map

From the site:

Crowd estimates from Women’s Marches on Saturday are still trickling in, but political scientists say they think we may have just witnessed the largest day of demonstrations in American history.

According to data collected by Erica Chenoweth at the University of Denver and Jeremy Pressman at the University of Connecticut, marches held in more than 500 US cities were attended by at least 3.3 million people.

Donald Trump has assembled the worst Cabinet in American history

This is spot on. So many examples of cabinet appointees being unfit for their positions. Governor Ricky Perry, who once wanted to eliminate the Energy Department, has now retracted. He had no idea what the department actually does. And he is absolutely unqualified to lead that department.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/01/19/donald-trump-has-assembled-the-worst-cabinet-in-american-history/

From the site:

While prior presidents have had some miserable appointments — James Watt and Anne Gorsuch in the Reagan administration, Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown and Alberto Gonzales in George W. Bush’s — never before has one president assembled such a remarkable collection of individuals who are either unqualified for their jobs, devoted to subverting their agencies, or both, not to mention the ethical questions that will continue to swirl around this administration.

An Open Letter to Trump from the US Press Corps

This is very promising. Let's hope the media (the corporate media) will adhere to the principles outlined here.

http://www.cjr.org/covering_trump/trump_white_house_press_corps.php

From the site:

In these final days before your inauguration, we thought it might be helpful to clarify how we see the relationship between your administration and the American press corps.

It will come as no surprise to you that we see the relationship as strained. Reports over the last few days that your press secretary is considering pulling news media offices out of the White House are the latest in a pattern of behavior that has persisted throughout the campaign: You’ve banned news organizations from covering you. You’ve taken to Twitter to taunt and threaten individual reporters and encouraged your supporters to do the same. You’ve advocated for looser libel laws and threatened numerous lawsuits of your own, none of which has materialized. You’ve avoided the press when you could and flouted the norms of pool reporting and regular press conferences. You’ve ridiculed a reporter who wrote something you didn’t like because he has a disability.

Get To Know Scott Pruitt, The Climate Denier Trump Wants To Lead The EPA

This is madness! Pure and simple!

https://www.good.is/infographics/scott-pruitt-climate-denier-trump-environmental-protection-agency-explainer

From the site:

Scott Pruitt’s six-year tenure as attorney general of Oklahoma has been defined by his continuous legal assault on federal environmental and public health protections. Now he is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the very agency targeted in the majority of his lawsuits—the Environmental Protection Agency.

Donald Trump's Approval Nose-Dive

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/11/1619531/-Donald-Trump-s-Approval-Nose-Dive

From the site:

I don’t have a whole lot to say here. I’m a computer programmer of over 3 decades, so data is my first language. All I did was take 10 consecutive poll responses from Quinnipaic University’s latest national poll, and graph them.

A Practical Vision of a More Equal Society

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/06/25/practical-vision-more-equal-society/

From the site:

Anthony Atkinson occupies a unique place among economists. During the past half-century, in defiance of prevailing trends, he managed to place the question of inequality at the center of his work while demonstrating that economics is first and foremost a social and moral science. In his new book, Inequality: What Can Be Done?—more personal than his previous ones and wholly focused on a plan of action—he provides us with the broad outlines of a new radical reformism.

There’s something reminiscent of the progressive British social reformer William Beveridge in Atkinson’s reformism, and the reader ought to enjoy his way of presenting his ideas. The legendarily cautious English scholar reveals a more human side, plunges into controversy, and sets forth a list of concrete, innovative, and persuasive proposals meant to show that alternatives still exist, that the battle for social progress and equality must reclaim its legitimacy, here and now. He proposes universal family benefits financed by a return to progressive taxation—together, they are intended to reduce British inequality and poverty from American levels to European ones.

He also argues for guaranteed public-sector jobs at a minimum wage for the unemployed, and democratization of access to property ownership via an innovative national savings system, with guaranteed returns for the depositors. There will be inheritance for all, achieved by a capital endowment at age eighteen, financed by a more robust estate tax; an end to the English poll tax—a flat-rate tax for local governments—and the effective abandonment of Thatcherism. The effect is exhilarating. Witty, elegant, profound, this book should be read: it brings us the finest blend of what political economy and British progressivism have to offer.

To fully appreciate this book and its proposals, we should first place it in the larger setting of Atkinson’s career, for he has mainly produced the work of an infinitely cautious and rigorous scholar. Between 1966 and 2015, Atkinson published fifty or so books and more than 350 scholarly articles. They have brought about a profound transformation in the broader field of international studies of the distribution of wealth, inequality, and poverty. Since the 1970s, he has also written major theoretical papers, devoted in particular to the theory of optimal taxation, and these contributions alone would justify several Nobel Prizes. But Atkinson’s most important and profound work has to do with the historical and empirical analysis of inequality, carried out with respect to theoretical models that he deploys with impeccable mastery and utilizes with caution and moderation. With his distinctive approach, at once historical, empirical, and theoretical; with his extreme rigor and his unquestioned probity; with his ethical reconciliation of his roles as researcher in the social sciences and citizen of, respectively, the United Kingdom, Europe, and the world, Atkinson has himself for decades been a model for generations of students and young researchers.

Together with Simon Kuznets, Atkinson more or less single-handedly originated a new discipline within the social sciences and political economy: the study of historical trends in the distribution of income and property. Of course, the question of distribution and long-term trends already lay at the heart of nineteenth-century political economy, particularly in the work of Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. But these writers could draw only on limited data, and were frequently obliged to limit themselves to purely theoretical speculation.

Maybe This Is How Democracy Ends

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/01/11/maybe-how-democracy-ends

From the site:

The election of Donald Trump has triggered as much wonderment abroad as it has in the United States. David Runciman, a professor of politics at the University of Cambridge, has written in the London Review of Books a provocative reflection on the nature of democracy in the age of Trump: “Is this how democracy ends?” There is much to praise in his essay, including his heavy qualification that we really don’t know for sure if what we are seeing is the end phase of mature Western democracies since we do not have the appropriate historical precedents to be certain.

Capitalism Is the Problem

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39011-capitalism-is-the-problem

From the site:

Over the last century, capitalism has repeatedly revealed its worst tendencies: instability and inequality. Instances of instability include the Great Depression (1929-1941) and the Great Recession since 2008, plus eleven "downturns" in the US between those two global collapses. Each time, millions lost jobs, misery soared, poverty worsened and massive resources were wasted. Leaders promised that their "reforms" would prevent such instability from recurring. Those promises were not kept. Reforms did not work or did not endure. The system was, and remains, the problem.

Inequality likewise proved to be an inherent trend of capitalism. Only occasionally and temporarily did opposition from its victims stop or reverse it. Income and wealth inequalities have worsened in almost every capitalist country since at least the 1970s. Today we have returned to the huge 19th-century-sized gaps between the richest 1 percent and everyone else. Rescuing the "disappearing middle class" has become every aspiring politician's slogan. Extreme inequality infects all of society as corporations and the rich, to protect their positions, buy the politicians, mass media and other cultural forms that are for sale.

First on CNN: Trump's Cabinet pick invested in company, then introduced a bill to help it

Tom Price may be the frontrunner for the most corrupt appointee of the Trump administration. But, on the other hand, he has LOTS of competition.

From the site:

Rep. Tom Price last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company, raising new ethics concerns for President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary.

Price bought between $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares last March in Zimmer Biomet, according to House records reviewed by CNN.

Less than a week after the transaction, the Georgia Republican congressman introduced the HIP Act, legislation that would have delayed until 2018 a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulation that industry analysts warned would significantly hurt Zimmer Biomet financially once fully implemented.

Zimmer Biomet, one of the world's leading manufacturers of knee and hip implants, was one of two companies that would been hit the hardest by the new CMS regulation that directly impacts the payments for such procedures, according to press reports and congressional sources.

After Price offered his bill to provide Zimmer Biomet and other companies relief from the CMS regulation, the company's political action committee donated to the congressman's reelection campaign, records show.

If confirmed, Price will be a key player in Trump's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump last week said a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare will be submitted "as soon as" Price is confirmed. He will appear before the Senate health committee this week, but must also appear before the Senate Finance Committee.

The new revelation is the latest example of Price trading stock in a health care firm at the same time as pursuing legislation that could impact a company's share price. The issue has become a major liability for the congressman after The Wall Street Journal reported last month that he traded roughly $300,000 in shares over the past four years in health companies while pursuing legislation that could impact them.

The purchase of the Zimmer Biomet shares is the latest such example, raising new concerns among ethics experts that Price may have inappropriately used inside information while purchasing shares in a company. Concerns over insider trading on Capitol Hill -- where members of Congress allegedly traded stock based on intelligence gleaned from the legislative process -- prompted the enactment of the STOCK Act in 2012 aimed at combating the practice. "It clearly has the appearance of using your influence as a congressman to your financial benefit," Larry Noble, general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group, said of Price's transaction. "If he believed in the bill, he should not have purchased the stock."

With All Due Disrespect

Here's Paul Krugman on the latest disgraceful statement from the 'insane clown' (thanks Matt Taibbi!) about to occupy the White House.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/opinion/with-all-due-disrespect.html

From the site:

As a young man, Congressman John Lewis, who represents most of Atlanta, literally put his life on the line in pursuit of justice. As a key civil rights leader, he endured multiple beatings. Most famously, he led the demonstration that came to be known as Bloody Sunday, suffering a fractured skull at the hands of state troopers. Public outrage over that day’s violence helped lead to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act.

Now Mr. Lewis says that he won’t attend the inauguration of Donald Trump, whom he regards as an illegitimate president.

As you might expect, this statement provoked a hysterical, slanderous reaction from the president-elect – who, of course, got his start in national politics by repeatedly, falsely questioning President Obama’s right to hold office. But Mr. Trump — who has never sacrificed anything or taken a risk to help others — seems to have a special animus toward genuine heroes. Maybe he prefers demonstrators who don’t get beaten?

But let’s not talk about Mr. Trump’s ravings. Instead, let’s ask whether Mr. Lewis was right to say what he said. Is it O.K., morally and politically, to declare the man about to move into the White House illegitimate?

Yes, it is. In fact, it’s an act of patriotism.

By any reasonable standard, the 2016 election was deeply tainted. It wasn’t just the effects of Russian intervention on Mr. Trump’s behalf; Hillary Clinton would almost surely have won if the F.B.I. hadn’t conveyed the false impression that it had damaging new information about her, just days before the vote. This was grotesque, delegitimizing malfeasance, especially in contrast with the agency’s refusal to discuss the Russia connection.

Was there even more to it? Did the Trump campaign actively coordinate with a foreign power? Did a cabal within the F.B.I. deliberately slow-walk investigations into that possibility? Are the lurid tales about adventures in Moscow true? We don’t know, although Mr. Trump’s creepy obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin makes it hard to dismiss these allegations. Even given what we do know, however, no previous U.S. president-elect has had less right to the title. So why shouldn’t we question his legitimacy?

The UBI already exists for the 1%

https://medium.com/@MattBruenig/the-ubi-already-exists-for-the-1-d3a49fad0580#.y0ldjqrc4

From the site:

The universal basic income — a cash payment made to every individual in the country — has been critiqued recently by some commentators. Among other things, these writers dislike the fact that a UBI would deliver individuals income in a way that is divorced from working. Such an income arrangement would, it is argued, lead to meaninglessness, social dysfunction, and resentment.

One obvious problem with this analysis is that passive income — income divorced from work — already exists. It is called capital income. It flows out to various individuals in society in the form of interest, rents, and dividends. According to Piketty, Saez, and Zucman (PSZ), around 30% of all the income produced in the nation is paid out as capital income. Piketty, Saez, Zucman (2016)

If passive income is so destructive, then you would think that centuries of dedicating one-third of national income to it would have burned society to the ground by now.

Dear God, are we being punished?

Inspiring words from Martin Luther King that are so applicable to the situation we find ourselves in today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dear-god-are-we-being-punished/2017/01/13/74f320fa-d910-11e6-9f9f-5cdb4b7f8dd7_story.html?utm_term=.fc4d593a2939

From the site:

When you think of Trump, think of these words spoken by King:

“I want to say that in all of our actions, we must stick together. Unity is the great need of the hour, and if we are united we can get many of the things that we not only desire but which we justly deserve. And don’t let anybody frighten you. We are not afraid of what we are doing, because we are doing it within the law.”

King concluded:

“As we prepare ourselves for what lies ahead, let us go out with the grim and bold determination that we are going to stick together. We are going to work together.”

So on King’s day, let’s gear up to bring about the “fair, just and inclusive America” that President Obama fought hard to create.

Time to turn up the heat—Senate staffers are complaining about the avalanche of angry calls

Love this post! Call your representatives!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/13/1620094/-Time-to-turn-up-the-heat-Senate-staffers-are-complaining-about-the-avalanche-of-angry-calls

From the site:

Don’t stop now. One staffer I spoke with this week was clearly annoyed on the phone, forced to repeat his boss’s tired old talking points about why they are moving to back a racist, repeal healthcare from 20 million people. We were clearly interrupting their usual quiet days of playing solitaire, talking about where to grab lunch and passing around conservative Facebook memes. DON’T. LET. UP. Now is the time to double down. If you haven’t called, it only takes a moment. If you have called, call again. Be relentless, that’s how we win. The Tea Party was successful because they camped out in congressional and Senate offices, getting to know staffers by name. It’s time for us to do the same.

Here’s What It’s Like to Work for Trump’s Labor Secretary Nominee

http://www.ips-dc.org/heres-like-work-trumps-labor-secretary-nominee/

From the site:

Roberto Ramirez worked for nearly 18 years for the Carl’s Jr. burger chain in Los Angeles. He started doing food prep and eventually took on three additional jobs: cleaning, cashiering, and serving. Little did he know his experience would one day land him in the national political spotlight.

On January 10, Ramirez was a star witness in a sort of shadow hearing on Capitol Hill on the business practices of one Andrew Puzder, the fast-food king who is Donald Trump’s choice for Labor Secretary. Democratic senators tried to give Ramirez and others with experience working for Puzder’s Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s chains an even bigger platform, as witnesses in the nominee’s upcoming confirmation hearing. Republicans nixed that request.

Originally from Guerrero, Mexico, Ramirez addressed about a dozen senators in Spanish, explaining through an interpreter how his workload at Carl’s Jr. eventually became so unmanageable he had to put in half an hour of free labor every day before his clock-in time to be able to finish all his duties. None of this overtime was ever compensated. Ramirez testified that a manager later stole one of his paychecks while he was away and the company refused to help him recover the compensation. When he complained about it, his manager retaliated by cutting his hours to the point where he had no choice but to quit.

Meet the Leaders of the Trump Resistance

www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/meet-the-leaders-of-the-trump-resistance-w460844

From the site:

But even as the 45th president takes the oath of office, a fierce resistance is rising to confront and constrain the Trump presidency. From the ACLU to the Sierra Club to Everytown for Gun Safety, civil society is girding for battle – reinforced by an unprecedented upwelling of activist support and donations. With so many groups facing "unprecedented assaults," says Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, the progressive world is experiencing a moment of "enormous solidarity – our issues and, frankly, our activists are all connected."

Donald Trump is Remarkably Unpopular

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/13/14250944/donald-trump-unpopular

From the site:

On January 10, Quinnipiac released the first big Donald Trump poll of 2017, and it showed that he retains some strengths as a politician. Most voters think he’s intelligent and that he’s a “strong person.” A plurality believe he has “good leadership skills.”

But his job approval rating is a dismal 37 percent, with 51 percent saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing. Rather than being an effective political tactic, Trump’s habit of frequently saying untrue things has led Americans to conclude by a 53-39 margin that he is not honest. Fifty-two percent say that Trump “does not care about average Americans,” and 62 percent say that he is “not level-headed.”

Even if you make allowances for the fact that polls may be modestly understating Trump’s support, as they appear to have on Election Day, these are dismal numbers.

Defying Donald Trump’s Kleptocracy

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/defying_donald_trumps_kleptocracy_20170101

From the site:

Trump plans to oversee the last great campaign of corporate pillaging of America. It will be as crass and brazen as the fleecing of the desperate people, hoping for a miracle in the face of dead-end jobs and ruinous personal debt, who visited his casinos or shelled out thousands of dollars for the sham of Trump University. He will attempt to unleash a kleptocracy—the word comes from the Greek klépto, meaning thieves, and kratos, meaning rule, so it is literally “rule by thieves”—one that will rival the kleptocracies carried out by Suharto in Indonesia and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.

It is not that Trump and his family will use the influence of government to increase their wealth, although this will certainly take place on a massive scale; it is that hundreds of billions of federal dollars will be diverted into the hands of cronies, sleazy bankers, unethical financial firms and scabrous hedge fund managers. The pillars of the liberal state will be obliterated.

The science of white working class pain: Trump’s appeal is rooted in the body as well as the mind

This is an excellent article. But there are numerous articles like this empathizing with white workers who are victimized by our increasingly unequal economic system. That's all well and good, but we overlook the fact that other minority groups have been (and still are) victims for much longer and under more serious constraints. The truth (as taught in the book The Spirit Level) is that poverty and inequality are very much correlated with poor mental and physical health. We need unity around these issues. Writers of articles like this need to point this out.

http://www.salon.com/2017/01/08/trump-seduced-white-working-class_partner/

From the site:

I once took a drive on the back roads from Brooklyn, New York to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Cruising 55mph from small town to small town, I couldn’t help but notice all the billboards advertising treatments for illnesses and ailments: back pain, fibromyalgia, asbestos exposure, cancer. This wasn’t the America I was used to. Bombed-out Main Streets, sad sack bars, Wal-Mart, and lots of pain pills. It was depressing.

These scientists can prove it's possible to reduce prejudice

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/7/11380974/reduce-prejudice-science-transgender

From the site:

In a typical canvassing conversation, a person knocks on the door and spews statistics and facts to convince you to vote for a ballot measure. Those interactions are at best instantly forgettable and at worst incredibly annoying.

Broockman and Kalla were studying a different type of conversation, one developed in the Leadership LAB, a program of the Los Angeles LGBT Center in the wake of California's Proposition 8 that banned gay marriage. Frustrated by the loss on Prop 8, the LGBT Center's Dave Fleischer set out to talk to voters about why they decided against marriage equality. The conversations became the basis for a new technique.

The key difference between Fleischer's technique, sometimes called "deep canvassing," and the standard model is that Fleischer has voters do most of the talking.

"The key part of this is having people think back on their real, lived experience in an honest way," Fleischer tells me. "Everything we do is driven by that."

In talking about their own lives, the voters engage in what psychologists call "active processing." The idea is that people learn lessons more durably when they come to the conclusion themselves, not when someone "bitch-slaps you with a statistic," says Fleischer. Overall, it's a task designed to point out our common humanity, which then opens the door to reducing prejudice.

This will not end well: President-elect Trump’s first press conference was a total disaster

http://www.salon.com/2017/01/11/this-will-not-end-well-president-elect-trumps-first-press-conference-was-a-total-disaster/

From the site:

Donald Trump gave his first press conference as president-elect today, and it was, predictably, a disaster from start to finish. The man who will be president in just a few days finally acknowledged that Russia probably hacked the Democratic National Committee and disseminated stolen documents during the 2016 election.


He also implored that we give consideration to “what was learned from the hacking.” Thus you had the president-elect making excuses for an apparent act of foreign political espionage because it benefited him electorally.

Responding to media reports that he had been briefed on reports that Russia had compromising information that could be used to blackmail him, Trump declared war on BuzzFeed and CNN, calling the former a “failing pile of garbage” and dismissing the latter as “fake news” as he brushed off a CNN reporter’s attempt to ask a question. And after urging everyone to keep an open mind about Russia’s leaking embarrassing information about his political opponents, Trump then attacked his own intelligence community as being no better than the Third Reich over leaks that reflected poorly on him.

So that’s all insane, but it was just a sideshow to the press conference’s true purpose: Trump and his team announcing how they plan to handle his business interests for the duration of his presidency. This is a critical issue and one that cuts directly to Trump’s ability to serve capably as president. The plan they came up seems designed to give an impression of ethical conduct while doing next to nothing to avoid the massive conflicts of interest at play.

Greed Springs Eternal

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/greed-springs-eternal/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body

From the site:

To belabor what should be obvious: either the wealthy care about having more money or they don’t. If lower marginal tax rates are an incentive to produce more, the prospect of personal gain is an incentive to engage in corrupt practices. You can’t go all Ayn Rand/Gordon Gekko on the importance of greed as a motivator while claiming that wealth insulates a man from temptation.

Now, for what it’s worth, the reality is clearly that even the insanely wealthy generally want more. You can ask why they want it; the hedonistic pleasures of luxury must surely top out at a tiny fraction of what the average Trump nominee is worth. Gold-plated toilets don’t flush any better than the usual kind. But for such people, money is about ego, power, winning the game. Greed has no limit.

But what’s more interesting and revealing, I think, is the way people like Kudlow for whom incentives are supposedly all suddenly say something completely different when it comes to conflicts of interest.

And this is telling us something significant: namely, that supply-side economic theory is and always was a sham. It was never about the incentives; it was just another excuse to make the rich richer.

5 Things You Can Do Right Now About Donald J. Trump - from Michael Moore

https://www.facebook.com/mmflint/posts/10154046637756857

From the site:

5 Things You Can Do Right Now About Donald J. Trump - from Michael Moore

It's been seven weeks since Hillary beat Trump by nearly 3 million votes but lost the presidency to him. So if your head is still spinning from that mindf***, or you can't quite believe a malignant narcissist will now sit in the Oval Office, or if you are simply still working your way through the 17 stages of grief, then I am here to say to you, "There's no crying in TrumpLand -- Let's get to work!" All hands on deck! Brush your yourself off and let's get busy because: a) All hope is not lost; b) There are more of us than there are of them; and c) The roadside is littered with the ended careers of self-absorbed, narcissistic politicians whose arrogance led them to do things that caused their early resignation or impeachment. Don't think that can't happen here.

I do not say these things because I am filled with optimism. In fact, I think the first thing we all have to do in order to move on is to admit out loud what we already think privately: As bad as we know it's going to be, it's actually going to be worse. A lot worse. Now cheer up and read on...

THE FIVE THINGS EACH OF US MUST DO THIS WEEK

1. MAKE YOUR PRESENCE KNOWN. Your Senators and Members of Congress are home right now, in your town (or a nearby town), for their holiday break. Their office is open! You don't need an appointment. Just show up (to find out where the local office is click here: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and type in your zip code). Go there (take a friend!), walk in and say "I'm a constituent and I'd like a few minutes with my Congressman/woman." He/she may be busy, so tell them you'd like to speak to someone on the staff for a couple minutes. Most local congressional offices are LOATHE to turn anyone away because to them you are that one vote who could vote them out of office. Tell the person you get to speak to why you want the Congressman to block all the damage Trump is going to do (cite examples). If he/she is a Republican, they will explain why they "support the new President." You then must politely tell them you and everyone you know will work to unseat them in 2018 if they don't act independently from Trump. The calmer and cooler you say this, the more they will believe it. If your rep is a Democrat, tell him/her that you expect them to AGGRESSIVELY fight the Trump agenda -- and if they don't, you will work with others to support a true progressive in the Democratic primary in 2018. Tell them that millions of us will do what the Tea Party did to the Republicans: primary them and toss them out of office. Say it politely, thank them, then leave. You actually showing up in person to do this is as powerful as 100 letters or a large demonstration on the street in front of their office. Do this and post it on social media. Post it on my Facebook or Twitter and I'll try to re-post/tweet as many as I can.

2. WRITE TO THE DNC TONIGHT. It will take 5 minutes. Send a quick email to the Democratic National Committee (http://my.democrats.org/page/s/contact-the-democrats) and tell them you want them to elect Congressman Keith Ellison as the new chairperson of the Democratic Party. He is the future and everyone else is the past. Here's what the old guard gave us: TWICE in 16 years the Democratic candidate WON the vote for President but LOST the White House. Incredible! This has to stop! Ellison and the progressive wing of the party must take us forward. Keith has the backing of Bernie Sanders and myself, but also the endorsement of some of the old guard who've come around to see the error of past ways (Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, etc.). In addition to being born in Detroit, spending his adulthood as a community organizer and now representing the Twin Cities in the House, Ellison is also the only Muslim member of Congress. He was one of the few members of Congress brave enough to back Bernie. He will fight to turn this around and, as a son of the Midwest, bring that part of the country back from the dark side. Let's flood the DNC with emails tonight (and cc: the your state Democratic Party, too - you can look up their email address on Google).

3. FORM YOUR OWN RAPID RESPONSE TEAM. By New Year's Day this Sunday, I want you to ask 5 to 10 friends, family members, co-workers, classmates or neighbors to be part of your Rapid Response Team. Pick a name for it -- the "Doyle Family Rapid Response Team", the "Oak Street Rapid Response Team", the "Seabrook High School Rapid Response Team", the "Gilmore Girls Fan Club Rapid Response Team", etc. Set a plan to contact each other online as soon as word goes out on any given day to oppose what Trump and Congress are up to. Your Rapid Response Team will agree with each other to email elected reps, make calls, post on social media, go to protests and/or organize others at work, school or in the neighborhood. Through my own social media sites, as stuff happens, I will send out instructions immediately as to what we all must do. Sign up now to follow me on my Facebook (facebook.com/mmflint) and Twitter (twitter.com/mmflint) if you don't already. Form your team this week. I'm personally organizing a Rapid Response Team in the apartment building where I live. We need to get prepared and be ready now. If we wait til late January to organize, it will be too late.

4. MAKE PLANS NOW TO BE AT THE INAUGURATION WEEKEND PROTESTS! We need millions in the streets in DC -- and that's what it looks like it's shaping up to be. The big march will be the day after the Inauguration - the Million Women March on January 21st. Click here for details https://www.facebook.com/events/2169332969958991/. On January 20th - Inauguration Day - a call has been gone out to non-violently disrupt the proceedings. Go to http://www.disruptj20.org/ and learn about civil disobedience on that day. Planes and trains are already selling out, as are hotels. Contact the above sites to get info on buses and housing (or charter your own bus from your town). Everyone who can should be there. If you can't make it, find (or organize) a local protest in your area. Take the day off. No one should be silent that day.

5. YOU SHOULD RUN FOR OFFICE. Yes, YOU. Why not? Who else do you think is going to do it? I'm not saying you have to be the next Senator from Michigan, but why not run for State Rep. or school board or city council? At the very least, run for precinct delegate in the local Democratic Party. It's time to stop carping about politicians and become one. But a different kind of one! I ran for and got elected to the school board at 18-years old. Form your campaign committee now for the elections in 2017 and 2018. (If you need me, I'll even offer to be your honorary chair!) You know you can do this. We have no choice. We've left it up to others - yes, Democrats - and they are inept and continual losers. Haven't you had enough? Run for office, any office!

There you go. 5 Easy Pieces. Start tonight. And spread this around. ALL HANDS ON DECK! -- Michael Moore

Republicans reach staggering new heights of hypocrisy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/01/06/republicans-reach-staggering-new-heights-of-hypocrisy/?utm_term=.5e2b55565279

From the site:

When George W. Bush was president, Republicans passed huge spending bills without trying to pay for them at all, like the Medicare prescription drug benefit — the cost was just added to the deficit, at the same time as they were slashing revenue with tax giveaways to the rich. Likewise, two wars that together cost trillions of dollars were just put on the tab. The result was that the deficit nearly quadrupled between Bush’s first year in office and his last, with nary a peep of dissent from Republicans. (It should be noted that after Bush left office with some of the worst approval ratings in history, many Republicans began saying he wasn’t a “true” conservative because he didn’t cut spending, though they somehow forgot to raise any such objections when he was in office.)

But as soon as Barack Obama came into the White House, Republicans began to cry that deficits were a plague, a poison, a crisis that demanded immediate action. Though nearly all the Republicans had happily supported a stimulus package put forward by the Bush administration in January 2008 to give a boost to the economy, in the face of the worst economic crisis in eighty years they stood firm against the Obama administration’s stimulus plan. And in the ensuing years, Democrats did what Republicans never do: paid for their spending, as they did with the Affordable Care Act, every penny of which was paid for with new taxes and spending cuts. In fact, the ACA wasn’t just paid for, it significantly reduced the deficit by lowering overall health costs.

Trump national security pick Monica Crowley plagiarized multiple sources in 2012 book

I'm sure plagiarist Monica Crowley will do a great job in her National Security assignment! :)

money.cnn.com/interactive/news/kfile-trump-monica-crowley-plagiarized-multiple-sources-2012-book/

From the site:

Conservative author and television personality Monica Crowley, whom Donald Trump has tapped for a top national security communications role, plagiarized large sections of her 2012 book, a CNN KFile review has found.

The review of Crowley’s June 2012 book, "What The (Bleep) Just Happened," found upwards of 50 examples of plagiarism from numerous sources, including the copying with minor changes of news articles, other columnists, think tanks, and Wikipedia. The New York Times bestseller, published by the HarperCollins imprint Broadside Books, contains no notes or bibliography.

Crowley did not return a request for comment. Multiple requests for comment by phone and email over the past two days to HarperCollins went unreturned.

Is Growth Over?

A review of Robert Gordon's book The Rise and Fall of American Growth.

http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/43/is-growth-over/

From the site:

But Robert Gordon thinks otherwise. In his magisterial new work, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the influential economist “distinguishes between the pace of innovation and the impact of innovation.” (emphasis in original.) He argues that the main benefits of the digital age of information and communication technologies (the “third industrial revolution”) had already occurred by 2004. Further, he says, the new gadgets improve our recreation and leisure but impact only in small ways our consumption of food, housing, health, clothing, and transportation. Finally, Gordon doesn’t see major advances in the future of health care, or gains from the use of small robots, 3-D printing, big data, or driverless vehicles. All this adds up to a bleak forecast on growth: Gordon says growth in the United States will average about 1.3 percent per year for the next 25 years, which is considerably less than the 2 percent growth that existed over the twentieth century.

2017: At the Dawn of the Age of Trump

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/2017-at-the-dawn-of-the-age-of-trump/

From the site:

Let’s review what we’ve got as we head toward Inauguration Day:

Trump won the election with narrow but convincing margins in six states won by Barack Obama twice (Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, along with bigger victories in Iowa and Ohio). This kind of swing-state sweep cannot be called a fluke or an aberration, especially given Hillary Clinton’s towering financial and organizational advantages.

At the same time, Trump lost the popular vote by close to 2.9 million, the largest number ever by a candidate who captured the all-important Electoral College. Losing nationally by 2.1 percentage points will hinder Trump in various ways during his term; at the least, it provides a stinging rebuke for Trump’s opponents whenever he takes unpopular actions. (While the popular vote is not how the United States picks presidents, the Trump camp’s argument that they could easily have generated the needed votes in non-swing states if they had wanted is a weak one. The Clinton campaign could have produced millions more votes, too, had there been some payoff for doing so.)

While almost nothing Trump says or does reduces the fervency of his millions of core backers, the president-elect’s controversial tweets and braggadocio have won him few new supporters. He has not reached out to reunify a badly divided country in any sustained way. As a result, he has the lowest ratings of any modern president-elect during the transition period. Essentially, he is about at the 46% level he garnered on Election Day, while other recent presidents-elect have soared in the run-up to their swearing-in. For instance, Gallup found in mid-December that just 48% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling his presidential transition, compared to 75% for Barack Obama, 65% for George W. Bush, and 67% for Bill Clinton.

Republicans Are Courting Disaster on Health Care

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/opinion/republicans-are-courting-disaster-on-health-care.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20170105&nl=opinion-today&nl_art=0&nlid=626875&ref=headline&te=1&_r=1

From the site:

And so it begins. After six years of posturing and futile votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Republicans in the Senate have started a process to erase the most important provisions of the health reform law with a simple majority. Millions of Americans are at risk of losing their coverage.

Republican opponents of the health care law insist that it has failed, though it has reduced the number of uninsured Americans to the lowest level in history. They say that it has driven up costs, though health care costs have risen at a much slower pace since 2010 than they did in years past. And opponents promise they will somehow make health care cheaper and more readily available, though after all these years of reviling Obamacare they have yet to offer any serious alternative. The reality is that the repeal-at-all-costs crowd is ideologically opposed to any government role in the health care system, though every other advanced economy in the world has embraced some form of government intervention as the only way to manage costs and ensure universal access.

With a narrow 52-to-48 majority in the Senate, Republicans are seeking to evade a Democratic filibuster by instructing congressional committees to draft a budget reconciliation bill to effectively repeal the tax and spending provisions of the A.C.A., gutting the law and increasing the deficit. The House is expected to easily pass a repeal of the A.C.A., since it has already done so dozens of times.

Jeff Sessions says he handled these civil rights cases. He barely touched them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-sessions-says-he-handled-these-civil-rights-cases-he-barely-touched-them/2017/01/03/4ddfffa6-d0fa-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html?utm_term=.b8268a31d9ec

From the site:

Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions is trying to mislead his Senate colleagues, and the country, into believing he is a champion for civil rights. We are former Justice Department civil rights lawyers who worked on the civil rights cases that Sessions cites as evidence for this claim, so we know: The record isn’t Sessions’s to burnish. We won’t let the nominee misstate his civil rights history to get the job of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.

In the questionnaire he filed recently with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions (R-Ala.) listed four civil rights cases among the 10 most significant that he litigated “personally” as the U.S. attorney for Alabama during the 1980s. Three involved voting rights, while the fourth was a school desegregation case. Following criticism for exaggerating his role, he then claimed that he provided “assistance and guidance” on these cases.

We worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which brought those lawsuits; we handled three of the four ourselves. We can state categorically that Sessions had no substantive involvement in any of them. He did what any U.S. attorney would have had to do: He signed his name on the complaint, and we added his name on any motions or briefs. That’s it.

It was the racism, stupid: White working-class “economic anxiety” is a zombie idea that needs to die

This article, in my opinion, correctly asserts that racism is the reason many white people supported Donald Trump. Demagogic appeals to racism are nothing new in American history. Calling it economic anxiety avoids the ugly truth.

http://www.salon.com/2017/01/05/it-was-the-racism-stupid-white-working-class-economic-anxiety-is-a-zombie-idea-that-needs-to-die/?source=newsletter

From the site:

But in the immediate present, the dominant narrative for explaining the rise of Donald Trump and his fascist movement has been centered upon the “white working class” and its purported “economic anxiety.” For a variety of reasons, this is a compelling story for the American corporate news media, the pundits and other elite opinion leaders.

The white economic anxiety narrative is simplistic. It is also the result of a type of “path dependence,” whereby the answers offered are largely a function of the questions asked. The white economic anxiety thesis is also a way for the pundit class — with a majority of its members being white and from a very narrow socioeconomic background — to ignore the enduring power of racism and sexism in American society.

Here, a belief that it must be something other than racism (and sexism) that won Trump the election functions as a conceptual blinder for analysts and commentators who want to deny the ugly truth about the values and beliefs held by their fellow (white) Americans. In all, these factors are part of an effort, albeit a superficial one, to empathize with the supposed pain and anger of white working-class voters who feel “left behind” and by doing so normalize their egregious, irresponsible and hateful decision to support Donald Trump.

Trump's cabinet picks: here are all of the appointments so far

Read it and weep. A comprehensive guide to all nominations / appointments so far.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/09/donald-trump-administration-cabinet-picks-so-far

From the site:

From ExxonMobil chairman Rex Tillerson leading the state department to Steve Bannon as chief strategist, here’s who Trump has appointed so far

After Arrest, NAACP Pres. Calls for More Civil Disobedience to Oppose Sessions as Attorney General

NAACP President Cornell William Brooks talks about one of the more disgraceful nominations of the Trump administration, that of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/5/after_arrest_naacp_pres_calls_for

From the site:

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS: Our objections are, fundamentally, Senator Sessions represents a kind of dim and dystopian view of American civil liberties and civil rights. And so our objections are at least threefold, first of which is that he has demonstrated an unwillingness to acknowledge the reality of voter suppression that we have seen from one end of the country to the other, as attested to in the Fourth Circuit decision that found voter suppression in North Carolina, the Fifth Circuit decision which found voter suppression in Texas. He has not acknowledged the reality of that, and certainly not the reality of voter suppression in his own state. Instead, he has mouthed a faith in voter ID laws, premised on voter fraud. And so, not only has he not stood against voter suppression in his own state, not acknowledged the reality of voter suppression as recognized by federal courts, the one instance where he has appeared in court in terms of voting rights, it was to prosecute three civil rights activists, which it took a jury less than three hours to find innocent. And a Congress, in which he served, later provided them or honored them with Congressional Gold Medals for their civil rights activism. And one of those activists actually marched beside Dr. King. And so, in terms of voting rights, we take strong exception, and we oppose him in terms of that.

In terms of immigration rights, he is one—among one of the most conservative, ultraconservative, extremist senators in terms of his opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. In addition to that, he has voiced an openness to a immigration ban on a global religion, namely Islam, which cannot be squared in any way, shape, fashion or form with the U.S. Constitution.

Number three, his views on criminal justice reform stand in stark contrast to both red state and blue state governors. In other words, he stands for law and order in Nixonian and draconian terms, at a moment in which we have over 2 million Americans behind bars, 65 million Americans with criminal records, 1 million fathers behind bars, and we have folks on both the left and the right, Republicans and Democrats on both sides of the aisle, looking to dismantle this prison-industrial complex and bring this era of mass incarceration to an end. He, on the other hand, wants to overpopulate or continue to overpopulate the prisons and jails, while depopulating our families and communities.

So, for these reasons, coupled with his record as a prosecutor, his record as attorney general, his record as a United States senator, backed—I should say, which attest to statements that he made in the 1980s demonstrating incredible racial insensitivity. And so, the point being here is, the remarks that we found racially offensive in the '90s—I should say, in the 1980s, have been demonstrated, attested to, verified by the record which extends from that point until now. So we stand in strong opposition. And we stand in opposition with over a thousand law professors, with Governor Deval Patrick, with organizations not only on the progressive left, but I might also note there are any number of conservatives who take strong exception to the fact that Senator Sessions is—stands against whistleblowers. He stands against civil liberties. And so, folks on the left and the right, conservatives and progressives, know that Jeff Sessions represents a very dangerous turn for this country. Because we need to be clear, Amy. We need to be very clear. We, as a country, face a stark choice, not between liberalism and conservatism, but rather between democracy and authoritarianism. And an Attorney General Jeff Sessions, under a President Donald J. Trump, would take us in the wrong direction—that is to say, backward in a headlong and a full-speed fashion. And we simply can't do that.

So the NAACP is unapologetically opposed to Senator Sessions. The board of directors of the NAACP voted to oppose this nomination. And we’re doing so not only as a matter of policy, but we’re doing so bodily, spiritually, morally, by encouraging civil disobedience—that is to say, standing in the tradition of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, standing in that tradition by sitting down. And so, we understand that the odds may be difficult, but we, as the NAACP, don’t gauge our principled opposition to a nominee based upon odds and probabilities, but rather the rightness of the cause.

Bernie Just Printed a Gigantic Trump Tweet and Brought It to the Senate Floor

Thank you Bernie for this! What a good man!

https://gizmodo.com/bernie-just-printed-a-gigantic-trump-tweet-and-brought-1790767297

From the site:

To help demonstrate his point that Donald Trump promised not to cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits, Bernie decided that perhaps his argument could best be made with Trump’s own words. Or own characters, as it were.

The tweet dates from May of 2015 and proclaimed, “I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.”

Bernie said that if Trump plans to cut Medicare or Medicaid that he should just admit now that he was lying.

“Millions of people voted for him on the belief that he would keep his word,” Sanders said on the Senate floor, referring to Trump’s promises during the election campaign.

“If he was sincere, then I would hope that tomorrow or maybe today he could send out a tweet and tell his Republican colleagues to stop wasting their time and all of our time. And for Mr. Trump to tell the American people that he will veto any proposal that cuts Medicare, that cuts Medicaid or that cuts Social Security.”

It’s here: CBPP’s top graphs of last year!

Very good collection of graphs from Jared Bernstein's blog. Note that 1% of the population gets 53% of the tax breaks resulting from repeal of Obamacare.

http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/its-here-cbpps-top-graphs-of-last-year/

From the site:

Here’s one showing that while millionaires comprise less than 1 percent of all households, they end up with close to half of Trump’s tax cuts while the bottom 80 percent get less than a fifth.

Same with the repeal of the ACA. Like I said above, repeals whacks those with coverage, but we also show that the taxes supporting the program are progressive, so repeal also delivers more than half of the tax benefits to…wait for it…that same itty-bitty group of millionaires.

To state the obvious, this is a pretty chilling example of Trump’s faux populism: take from the poor/middle-class and give to the rich.

Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote for Trump

This from Nate Silver in late November after the election.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-predicted-who-would-vote-for-trump/?ex_cid=newsletter

From the site:

In short, it appears as though educational levels are the critical factor in predicting shifts in the vote between 2012 and 2016. You can come to that conclusion with a relatively simple analysis, like the one I’ve conducted above, or by using fancier methods. In a regression analysis at the county level, for instance, lower-income counties were no more likely to shift to Trump once you control for education levels.11 And although there’s more work to be done, these conclusions also appear to hold if you examine the data at a more granular level, like by precinct or among individual voters in panel surveys.

A Dilemma for Humanity: Stark Inequality or Total War

Rather grim conclusion reached by Professor Scheidel as stated in the article below. Inequality began when humans were able to produce a surplus. And economic development "almost always led to greater inequality."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/business/economy/a-dilemma-for-humanity-stark-inequality-or-total-war.html?_r=0

From the site:

History — from Ancient Rome through the Gilded Age; from the Russian Revolution to the Great Compression of incomes across the West in the middle of the 20th century — suggests that reversing the trend toward greater concentrations of income, in the United States and across the world, might be, in fact, nearly impossible.

That’s the bleak argument of Walter Scheidel, a professor of history at Stanford, whose new book, “The Great Leveler” (Princeton University Press), is due out next month. He goes so far as to state that “only all-out thermonuclear war might fundamentally reset the existing distribution of resources.” If history is anything to go by, he writes, “peaceful policy reform may well prove unequal to the growing challenges ahead.”

Professor Scheidel does not offer a grand unified theory of inequality. But scouring through the historical record, he detects a pattern: From the Stone Age to the present, ever since humankind produced a surplus to hoard, economic development has almost always led to greater inequality.

What is Neoliberalism?

Chris Hedges linked to this page in one of his recent posts. Good summary of neoliberalism.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376

From the site:

"Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.

"Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Rightwing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism.

"Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, an Scottish economist, published a book in 1776 called THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise," "free" competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished.

Economic liberalism prevailed in the United States through the 1800s and early 1900s. Then the Great Depression of the 1930s led an economist named John Maynard Keynes to a theory that challenged liberalism as the best policy for capitalists. He said, in essence, that full employment is necessary for capitalism to grow and it can be achieved only if governments and central banks intervene to increase employment. These ideas had much influence on President Roosevelt's New Deal -- which did improve life for many people. The belief that government should advance the common good became widely accepted.

But the capitalist crisis over the last 25 years, with its shrinking profit rates, inspired the corporate elite to revive economic liberalism. That's what makes it "neo" or new. Now, with the rapid globalization of the capitalist economy, we are seeing neo-liberalism on a global scale.

For Head of SEC, Trump Taps Another Fox to Guard Wall Street Henhouse

Virtually all of the cabinet appointments we have seen so far could be characterized as the "fox guarding the henhouse."

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/01/04/head-sec-trump-taps-another-fox-guard-wall-street-henhouse

From the site:

"Jay Clayton has spent his career helping big banks weasel out of accountability for robbing millions of Americans of their life savings and crushing our economy," said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "Trump supporters did not vote to let the fox guard the henhouse on Wall Street. This is yet another example of Trump betraying his own voters by turning over our economy to giant corporations and Wall Street at the expense of American working families."

Anthony Bourdain Says the 'Smug, Self-Congratulatory Left' Caused Trump's Victory

Does Anthony have a point? I think so -- but I also think that racism is more of a factor than blaming everything on the 'privileged left' would suggest.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a51985/bourdain-trump-liberals/?src=nl&mag=esq&list=nl_enl_news&date=010117

From the site:

The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we're seeing now.

I've spent a lot of time in gun-country, God-fearing America. There are a hell of a lot of nice people out there, who are doing what everyone else in this world is trying to do: the best they can to get by, and take care of themselves and the people they love. When we deny them their basic humanity and legitimacy of their views, however different they may be than ours, when we mock them at every turn, and treat them with contempt, we do no one any good. Nothing nauseates me more than preaching to the converted. The self-congratulatory tone of the privileged left—just repeating and repeating and repeating the outrages of the opposition—this does not win hearts and minds. It doesn't change anyone's opinions. It only solidifies them, and makes things worse for all of us.