Political Gridlock – Page 11

Monday Wake Up Call – October 17, 2016

(This is a re-post of Monday’s column which was lost after the database crash on Monday night)

Random Monday thoughts:

First, Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan is a huge part of the soundtrack to the lives of boomers, so the average person has no problem with his winning the award, despite maybe pulling for Phillip Roth, or Dom DeLillo. From Dwight Garner:

This Nobel acknowledges what we’ve long sensed to be true: that Mr. Dylan is among the most authentic voices America has produced, a maker of images as audacious and resonant as anything in Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson.

Dylan is probably the only Nobel Prize for Literature winner who was a household name. Most are people whose work is known only to the elites. Harvard Professor Richard Thomas teaches a course called “Bob Dylan”:

I don’t see any difference between a poet like Catullus or Virgil and Bob Dylan. I think they are doing the same things. It has to do with control of language, connecting of lyrics and melodies. That’s what makes it timeless.

The professor notes that in songs like “Lonesome Day Blues”, there’s a stanza that goes:

I’m going to spare the defeated, I’m going to speak to the crowd
I’m going to spare the defeated, ’cause I’m going to speak to the crowd
I’m going to teach peace to the conquered, I’m going to tame the proud

And it’s pretty much a direct quote of lines spoken in the “Aeneid” by the ghost of Aeneas’s father, Anchises, who he sees in the underworld, and who basically says to him: “Other people will make sculpture. Your art, your job as a Roman, is to ‘spare defeated peoples, tame the proud.’”

Second, what is the point of having a third presidential debate? We already know almost everything about the Pant Suit, because the Right has been studiously putting her public and private life on display for the past 30 years. There is more we might learn about Mr. McGropey Pants, but don’t expect to hear anything that sounds like policy. Expect the Pant Load to do nothing to elevate the discourse. If he says: “is the bitch through talking?” don’t be surprised.

Third, his supporters will remain loyal, even after the election. The Boston Globe reports that election night could be the start of something terrible. For the past two weeks, Trump has been stoking fears that you can’t trust what happens at the ballot box. This, from Cincinnati:

And if Trump doesn’t win, some are even openly talking about violent rebellion and assassination, as fantastical and unhinged as that may seem.

“If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton…“We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take…I would do whatever I can for my country.”

But, isn’t Trump your garden-variety Republican, and aren’t his supporters absolutely regular folks? After all, a sitting US Senator, Jeff Sessions, (R-Ala.) said in New Hampshire on Saturday that anti-Trump forces are trying to rig the election. All these people are mainstream GOP for sure.

And Mr. “in prison or shot” Bowman is just another peaceful American who is deeply concerned about the economic well-being of the working class.

Can’t you see Putin asking the UN to send in election monitors to certify the results?

Time to wake up America! You brought this on (i) by not voting in off-year elections, (ii) by not supporting media that search for truth, and (iii) by not insisting on the best possible education for your kids.

To help you wake up, here is Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue”, recorded in 1975:

https://vimeo.com/150126587

Sample Lyrics:

Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin’ coal
Pourin’ off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you
Tangled up in blue

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Isn’t It a Pity?

Wrongo and Ms. Right were in PA on 9/11, and we attended an outdoor concert at the Longwood Gardens, about 30 miles west of Philadelphia. We went to see Taj Mahal, who was in fine voice, and the crowd loved him.

The opening act was Bettye LaVette, who has spent the last 50+ years trying to become a success in blues music, finally winning Best Soul Blues Female Artist this year. She acknowledged that we were gathered on the 15^th anniversary of 9/11, and sang a searing version of George Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity“. It redefined the song for the audience, who like Wrongo, remembers it as a statement on the breakup of the Beatles.

Ms. LaVette’s version packed a fantastic wallop, and seemed entirely correct as a way to think about the 9/11 tragedy, and the various other tragedies that 9/11 has spawned over the past 15 years.

Harrison wrote the song in 1966, but it was rejected for inclusion on at least two Beatles albums. He included it on his solo album “All Things Must Pass”, issued in 1970. The song hit #1 on the Billboard charts in 1971.

Ms. LaVette had included “Isn’t It a Pity” on her 2010 CD called “Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook”. Here she is doing it live back then, although it lacks the searing emotion that we heard from her on Sunday night, it is worth a listen:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Partial Lyrics:

Isn’t it a pity, isn’t it a shame
How we break each other’s hearts, and cause each other pain
How we take each other’s love without thinking any more
Forgetting to give back, now isn’t it a pity.

Some things take so long
But how can I explain
When not too very many people
Can see we’re all the same

Thinking about 9/11, brings to mind this from the Pant Load:

trumps-big-building

Its always been about The Donald!

The Pant Suit has problems of her own, what with Pneumonia gate and the “Basket of Deplorables”. Wrongo has had pneumonia a few times in his long life, and it failed to disqualify him for anything. The Basket of Deplorables used to be sold by Harry and David for Thanksgiving, aimed at the budget-conscious consumer.

Hillary’s apologized. Is there anything more quintessentially Democratic than making a perfectly legitimate attack, and immediately apologizing when there’s pushback?

(Mostly) weird links you probably missed:

Turkish prosecutor thinks that Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen (who lives in the US), was appointed as a secret cardinal by John Paul II in 1998. Turks apparently love conspiracy theories, particularly when they can link Gulen, the enemy of Turkish president Erdogan with the US, the enemy-in-waiting.

There was a sushi chef fight on Long Island: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The violence at the Ichiban Sushi restaurant on Montauk Highway in Oakdale left one of the kitchen combatants so sliced up, he had to be rushed to Southside Hospital. His injuries were not life threatening, police said. Police busted Kong Chen for assault. It was not clear what caused tempuras to flare.

Newly discovered blood fluke is named after Obama. What a way to help burnish his legacy! Left wing anglers now prefer the new Obama flatworms when fishing in fresh water. Right wing anglers are resisting calls to take the bait.

Here a list of North American companies producing edible insects for sale. Start wherever you are comfortable with your alternative sources of protein. Billions were killed so you could try eating bugs.

Congress Returns to Do (Not) Much

From Roll Call:

After the longest summer break in modern times, lawmakers are required to accomplish a single legislative task before leaving again. But it’s a job far more politically fraught than it is procedurally simple: Assuring normal government operations continue through the end of this budgetary year and into the new one.

That’s right, once again, it’s time to fight about funding the government. And as Booman says,

This ridiculous election season would not be complete without the threat of another government shutdown, and how much money would you be willing to risk betting on Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to find a way to pass a continuing resolution that either the majority of their own caucus would support or that relies (again) on mostly Democratic votes?

The potential stalemate over spending is a headache for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) who would like to avoid a shutdown threat just weeks before the election.

The Tea Party and GOP conservatives want to kick the can ahead for six months with a temporary resolution. But Democrats and some Republicans want to finish the annual budget work in the lame duck session after the election.

Both sides are digging in for a fight.

This could become an object lesson on why Republicans shouldn’t be in the majority. The party with the majority in the House is supposed to produce the bills and along with the Senate, supply the votes to pass appropriations. But, John Boehner couldn’t do it, because the Freedom Caucus and the other conservative R’s wouldn’t work as a coalition with other Republicans and/or Democrats to actually pass spending bills.

Ryan was able to do it last time, but it isn’t looking like those Republican factions will roll over again.

If Ryan and McConnell want to buck their own members on the length of the continuing resolution, the Dems are free to refuse to provide any votes. And the Democrats do not have to protect the sitting president, so they can watch as the GOP twists in the wind.

Fun times on Capitol Hill!

Here are a few links to news you may have missed over the holiday:

Experimental new opioid blocks pain without being addictive or deadly in primates. In monkeys, the drug is a highly effective pain reliever without downsides. It needs more trials, including in humans. Meanwhile, the DEA is attempting to ban a natural, safe herb which has been used for thousands of years to do the same thing.

Holy Labor Day: On Friday, an estimated 150 million workers refused to show up for work in India and instead took to the streets to demonstrate against labor conditions. The unions involved issued 12 demands to Prime Minister Modi, including raising the minimum wage, introduction of universal social security, and a minimum pension.

Is an end to the Asian sweatshop in sight? A recent report from the International Labor Organization found that more than two-thirds of Southeast Asia’s 9.2 million textile and footwear jobs are threatened by automation. Here are the numbers: 88% of those jobs in Cambodia, 86% in Vietnam, and 64% in Indonesia. Will this be good for the workers? Doubtful.

13 Tips for reading election polls like a pro. After Labor Day, the polling deluge will begin. A guide to making sense of it all.

Boeing gets $2B in bonuses for flawed missile-defense system. From 2002 through early last year, the Pentagon conducted 11 flight tests of the nation’s homeland missile-defense system. The interceptors failed to destroy their targets in six of the 11 tests — a record that has prompted independent experts to conclude the system can’t be relied on to foil a nuclear strike by North Korea or Iran. Yet the Pentagon paid Boeing, the prime contractor, $1,959,072,946 in performance bonuses for a Job? Well? Done?

Maybe we shouldn’t complain: The US government is spending money. Money = jobs. Of course, money also = corruption. And isn’t it a good deal if Boeing’s shit doesn’t work?

Capitalism, It’s Not You, It’s Me

There is a meme that has gone global since the early days of the Occupy movement. Here it is as a wall graffiti from Greece that uses the same meme we first saw in NYC in 2011:

Capitalism Lotek

Just kidding capitalism, it really is you.

The artist is a Greek who styles himself as Lotek. The name Lotek is derived from the short story (and later, a film) by William Gibson called Johnny Mnemonic. The story is set in 2021, in a world ruled by corporations. An anti-authoritarian gang that are called Lo-Teks, fight the power. They are in fact not low tech at all, but are high tech hackers. Sound familiar?

Greece is surely a place at war with neoliberalism and free market capitalism. So is it also time for us to reconsider capitalism?

Consider this from Mark Blyth in Foreign Affairs:

An inherent tension exists between capitalism and democratic politics since capitalism allocates resources through markets, whereas democracy allocates power through voting.

The compromises both systems have struck with each other over recent history shapes our contemporary political and economic world. Blyth observes:

In the three decades that followed World War II, democracy set the rules, taming markets with the establishment of protective labor laws, restrictive financial regulations, and expanded welfare systems.
Starting in the 1970s, a globalized, deregulated capitalism, unconstrained by national borders, began to push back.

And today, capital markets and capitalists are setting the rules, and democratic governments follow them.

Some background: Cutting taxes in the 1980s caused government revenues to fall. Deficits widened, and interest rates rose as those deficits became harder to finance. At the same time, conservative governments, especially in the UK and the US, dismantled the regulations that had reined in the excesses of the financial service industry since the 1940s.

The financial industry began to grow unchecked, and as it expanded, investors sought safe assets that were highly liquid and provided good returns: the debt of developed countries.

This allowed governments to plug their deficits and spend more, all without raising taxes.

But the shift to financing the state through debt came at a cost. Since WW II, taxes on labor and capital had provided the foundation of postwar state spending. But, as governments began to rely more on debt, the tax-based states of the postwar era became the debt-based states of today.

This transformation had profound political consequences. The increase in government debt has allowed capitalists to override the preferences of citizens:

Bond-market investors can now exercise an effective veto on policies they don’t like by demanding higher interest rates when they replace old debt with new debt.
Investors can use courts to override the ability of states to default on their debts, as happened recently in Argentina
They can shut down an entire country’s payment system if that country votes against the interests of creditors, as happened in Greece in 2015.
Citizens United dictates who runs for office in the US, and in many cases, who wins.

Now that the financial industry has become more powerful than the people, should we blindly follow capitalism’s meme as the only way forward?

Free-market rhetoric hides the dependence of corporate profits on conditions provided for, and guaranteed by, governments. For example:

Our financial institutions insist that they should be free of meddlesome regulations while they depend on continuing access to cheap credit from the Federal Reserve.
Our pharmaceutical firms have resisted any government limits on their price-setting ability at the same time that they rely on government grants of monopolies through our patent system.

To use a sporting metaphor, it’s as if the best football team purchased not only the best coaches and facilities, but also bought the referees and the journalists as well. Those responsible for judging economic competition have lost all authority, which leaves the dream of ‘meritocracy’ or a ‘level playing field’ in tatters.

In our country, the divide between the business oligarchs, the political class and “the people” increasingly appears unbridgeable, marked by hostility and deep distrust. When people are told for a generation that government mustn’t make decisions that interfere with free markets, it is inevitable that people will lose faith in democratic governance, and in government’s capacity to help them solve their problems.

Capitalism in its current form no longer works for the people. We have seen a reaction in the start of movements by Occupy, by Bernie, and by others in Europe.

Remember that the greatest prosperity in living memory in the US came during the brief social democratic moment, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the constraints on business were the greatest.

More democracy and more economic justice are the necessary foundations for the path to a more prosperous, and sustainable economy.

A reformed capitalism must be a part of what emerges from that fight.

Focus on the Doughnut

(There will be limited blogging until 7/26, as Wrongo and Ms. Right spend an extended weekend in Philadelphia)

From Vox:

The first night of the Republican National Convention ended dominated by one bizarre question: Was Melania Trump’s convention speech plagiarized from a Michelle Obama convention speech from 2008?

OK, she probably would have gotten an “A” from Trump University, but pulleez, people! This isn’t a big deal.

Melania Trump is not a major figure in the GOP, and plagiarism of parts of a speech doesn’t have the same connotation in political speeches that it does in academia. So she stole a few lines from a Michelle Obama speech. So what? She isn’t running for anything, and the statements were largely clichés. If you are hoping to show the incompetence and dishonesty of the Trump campaign, there are bigger more important examples.

Why should anyone care about this? If Melania Trump has one interview with the press, and says she liked the ideas in Michelle Obama’s speech, this is over. Why is the media so focused on this? Why are they not focusing on the things of substance that were said in Cleveland yesterday, things that are legitimately terrifying because they could actually become policy?

They could have focused on Rep. Steve King (R-IA) going full white supremacist.

Or, Rudy Giuliani going off about the imminent (?) terrorist threat facing America, saying:

You know who you are, and we are coming to get you.

Or, the extended poutrage about “The Battle of Benghazi”.

Or, convention speaker actor Antonio Sabato Jr. who questioned Obama’s religion, saying the president is “absolutely” a Muslim.

Or, if they were truly interested, they could analyze the GOP 2016 Platform, its most socially conservative platform ever.

But our media wants to keep it simple: Everything else spoken from the stage last night requires explaining something complex, like matters of policy. That’s hard work for the reporters, and maybe for the people to understand. But when a candidate for first lady steals parts of the opposing party’s speech, that’s easy to report and to understand.

It appears that the media is incapable of making the sort of deep, factual critique of policy that we need from them. Wrongo can be annoyed about it, but that’s how it is.

The press should focus on the doughnut, and not the hole, particularly when the hole isn’t a policy speech.

OTOH, when a goofy low-stakes gaffe like this one gets the media saying negative things about Trump, we’ll just have to go with it.

How Not to Cut the Deficit

Congress returned from the Independence Day break on Monday. They will leave again on Friday, and won’t return until after Labor Day. From The Hill:

Congress is poised to leave Washington…without passing funding to combat the Zika virus or completing work on spending bills to avoid a government shutdown.

One bill that might get passed is the re-authorization for Federal Aviation Administration programs that expire on Friday. Since Congress likes to fly, most think they will pass an extension that will last through September 2017.

If you’ve taken a flight this summer, you’ve likely been tied up in long TSA security lines. But you may not have focused on the real reason: Funding for the TSA has been sliced by 8.5% over the past five years, leading to a 5.5% drop in the number of screeners.

Yet, in the same period, the number of air travelers has increased by more than 15%. And those business wizards in Congress should be forced to tell the rest of us how a labor-intensive business can successfully process increasing numbers of customers with a smaller work force.

Steven Rattner in the NYT:

This year, discretionary spending — which encompasses airport security, infrastructure, education, research and development and much more — will be lower than it was in 2005. (Adjusted for inflation.

The discretionary portion of the federal budget, including education, research, infrastructure and other programs, has been falling, while spending on mandatory programs (including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) has been going up. Rattner reports that total government spending is up by 23% since 2005, while mandatory spending is up 45% in the same period, and discretionary spending is down 3%.

Here are some examples:

Since 2003, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have seen their funding fall by 23%, forcing an 8% reduction in grants to researchers even as grant applications were rising by 50%.
In the past 10 years, spending on all education has fallen by 11% percent.
Since 2010, the IRS’s budget has been slashed by about 18%, even as the IRS was given new duties in connection with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The result: The enforcement staff has shrunk by 23%, leading to a similar reduction in the number of audits. Fewer audits have meant additional uncollected taxes, estimated at $14 billion over the past two years. And almost a million pieces of unanswered correspondence from taxpayers need responses.
The EPA’s budget has been cut by an enormous 27% — about $3 billion since 2010. As a result, the agency had to eliminate more than 2,000 workers, bringing its staffing to the lowest level since 1989.

Last fall, a bi-partisan group added $80 billion in new discretionary spending over the next two years. Then, Congress doubled the cost of the deal by giving more money to the military and to Medicare, taking the deal to $154 billion while paying for about half the tab with legitimate savings.

A few months later, Congress retroactively extended a raft of expired tax provisions — without even a pretense of paying for them.

As a result of Congress’s fudging, the projected 2017 deficit rose to $561 billion, from the $416 billion that was estimated just six months earlier.

We shouldn’t expect that Congress will make any big decisions involving taxes or spending in an election year. But at the least Republicans need to stop using the appropriations tool to take aim at agencies such as the IRS and the EPA, whose missions they reject.

In the case of the TSA, Republicans want it privatized. Not because privatizing will save any money or make the TSA more effective, but to help a few of their corporate sponsors have another feed at the government trough. Republicans want to see schools, prisons, and the postal service privatized. The people who are employed by these private, profit-making companies will not be paid as well, and will not receive benefits they have today.

This is what you get when you believe that government should be “run like a business.” Certainly, we need a more efficient, better managed bureaucracy, but the deficit-cutting value of their fix is peanuts compared with the simple act of generating revenue.

You know, that would be raising taxes sufficient to pay for the critical tasks we require of the government.

The GOP would like you to think that Donald Trump represents a threat to Republican tax and deficit-cutting orthodoxy. To the extent Trump has revealed his thinking on tax policy, it looks consistent with the Republican Party. Trump’s grand accomplishment is to create an alliance between the true economic interests of the Republican Party and that segment of the American electorate largely marginalized and displaced by the actions of that same elite.

Welcome to the Republican paradise.

Our National Trauma Wake Up Call – July 11, 2016

It didn’t take long after five dead officers in Dallas, victims of a racially motivated killer, for some on the right to say “Its Obama’s fault”, or “Its Black Lives Matter’s fault”.

Here is a sentiment that you would hope that all Americans can agree on:

FireShot Screen Capture #100 - EM Simpson-page-001

From Evan Osnos:

It is a vision at the heart of the modern gun movement: the more that society makes the threat of violence available to us, the safer we will be. In forty-eight hours this week, the poisonous flaw in that fantasy has been exposed from multiple angles…

Wrongo hasn’t seen the videos, and hasn’t checked deeply into the circumstances, but he can’t seem to keep these incidents at arm’s length:

The Baton Rouge incident seems to have been the result of panic among the police who shot the victim repeatedly, even though the victim was pinned down on the ground.
The Minnesota shooting of a man halted for a traffic violation, who informed the policeman that he was armed and had a permit for concealed carry of a firearm, again may have been the result of fear and/or panic by the cop. The victim was shot several times while trying to pull his identification from a pants pocket.
The attack on Dallas police, in which five policemen died, and seven were wounded, seems to be a racially motivated revenge killing by a black shooter.

Needless to say, we need people on both sides of the Black/Blue Lives Matter argument to stand down. Cooler heads need to prevail. There are probably many cops who are not in possession of the nerves of steel needed for their jobs in 2016. Policing America today is no cakewalk. Everybody has a gun, most people are angry, and many have very low points of frustration.

FWIW, these violent episodes are partly a reflection of the larger struggle reflected in our national politics. There is a palpable dissatisfaction with how our country operates. The accumulation of money and power by people controlling our institutions has brought us an elite that no longer operates in the best interests of the population at large.

Some of this frustration and anger is played out with gunfire, and guns are everywhere.

The past week shows clearly that America’s police and America’s black citizens are at odds. During the day or so after Baton Rouge and Minnesota, there was an opportunity to step back and perhaps discuss what we might have learned from these killings. But the shooter in Dallas muddied the bigger picture, making revenge the story in our national news.

Leonard Pitts, Jr. in the Miami Herald quotes former NYC Mayor John Lindsay at another time of racial division:

This is a drifting, angry America that needs to find its way again.

This week feels like a sea change. Until now, neither killings by police, nor killings of police have been happening at unusual rates. This feels completely different, but we won’t be sure for a while.

July 4, 2016

Independence Day 2016. And 240 years later, where are we?

COW Our Sad Fourth

Our founders were willing to die for an idea. They wanted home rule, not a local dictatorship run by a representative of an English King. There were spirited debates around the ideas that founded our Republic, and there were those who worked hard to keep the rule of the King in place.

So are the contentious debates of today just more of the same? Here is a small taste of Sebastian Junger’s new book, “Tribe”: (pg. 124)

Today’s veterans often come home to find that, although they’re willing to die for their country, they’re not sure how to live in it.

He goes on:

It’s hard to know how to live for a country that regularly tears itself apart along every possible ethnic and demographic boundary.

On the front lines, GI’s know their buddies are different in all sorts of ways, but they set aside their differences and form units that transcend differences, often heroically. Yet, in 2016 America, on a different set of front lines, our politicians amplify differences, going so far as to regularly accuse rivals of deliberately trying to harm their country.

Our society is at war with itself. Depending on their ideology, people speak with complete contempt about the rich, the poor, the educated, or the foreign-born. They express the same contempt for the president, and again, depending on their ideology, the entire US government.

That’s a level of contempt we have usually reserved for enemies in a time of war. But now, we apply it to our fellow citizens. Contempt is particularly toxic because it implies that the attacker has a position of moral superiority, and through that, has the agency to attack another.

So, on our most patriotic day, put down that hot dog, and ask the question: How do we unify a secure, wealthy country that is now playing a zero-sum political game?

Time to wake up, America! And to help with that, let’s dance around the room with a little rockabilly by Elvis Presley. Elvis was treated with contempt by some in the 1950s, but it was mostly silent, and by the Silent Generation, who thought they were protecting their kids from rock & roll.

Take a listen to “Good Rockin Tonight”, and remember Scotty Moore, the original guitarist for Elvis, who died last Tuesday. He was not just our last living link to the King (assuming the King is really dead), he was the force behind Elvis’s early singles. Scotty is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

His reverb-drenched rockabilly guitar was the driver in the originally drummer-less trio of Elvis, Scotty and bassist Bill Black:

COW Elvis and Scotty

Rolling Stone ranks Scotty Moore No. 29 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, saying “The playing was so forceful that it’s easy to forget there was no drummer.”

Keith Richards has said:

Everyone else wanted to be Elvis. I wanted to be Scotty.

Here are Elvis, Scotty and Bill on “Good Rockin Tonight”:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 3, 2016

The presidential choices for 2016 are Clinton or Trump. You could write-in Bernie, or Jill Stein, or one of the fringe candidates, but not all write-in votes are counted for Electoral College purposes. 43 states, representing 494 electoral votes, count write-in votes, although the candidate has to have registered electors in some of those states to be counted. So you could be throwing your vote away by writing in someone.

And this year, we can’t afford any wasted votes. If you doubt that, check out this rockin ‘n rollin’ week.

SCOTUS redefined “Undue Burden” for Texas:

COW Undue Burden

Scalia opined from beyond the grave:

COW Scalia in Hell.gif

The GOP Benghazi strategy focused on the wrong fire:

COW Benghazi Fire

The non-event called the Benghazi Congressional Report was issued:

COW Benghazi Mud

Why can’t the GOP move on from Benghazi? Please don’t say it’s because 4 people died. Think about how many have died from shootings in America since Benghazi, without any GOP interest in holding hearings on Gunz. We deserve better from these birds we elect.

Loretta Lynch knew better than to meet with the Big Dog:

Schmooze 2

Loretta Lynch used to be a prosecutor. She knows better than to speak with the spouse of someone under an active investigation. As an officer of the court, she should have told Bill that talking together was improper, and had someone else on her staff speak with him. She has tarnished the credibility of the investigation and should resign. OTOH, Mr. Bill drop kicked his wife’s good news on the Benghazi investigation to the curb, making her the story again. And he is (was) a lawyer, and ought to know the protocol as well as Lynch.

Of course, Bill denied it:

COW Bills Denial

Hillary Should Grab Populism and Run With It

The biggest change in our politics in the past 20 years is the rise of populism on the left and right. The populists believe that we are led by a selfish elite that cannot—or will not—deal with the problems of ordinary working people, and there is ample evidence that they are correct.

Trump and Clinton say they will bring back jobs that corporations have shipped offshore. They make China the scapegoat for lost economic opportunity, while the real causes are automation and the triumph of the spreadsheet in corporate strategy.

Those jobs are never coming back, and a candidate who says they can negotiate with foreign governments to bring jobs back demonstrates either their naiveté about the true cause of job loss, or a simple desire to BS the American public.

Voters can see through that.

Economic and cultural insecurity are the bedrock causes for populists. Unemployment and stagnant wages hurts working-class whites, while cultural issues are a top issue for older white Americans. The first group sees their jobs threatened by automation and globalization. They join with older whites in seeing immigrants as scroungers who work for less, grab benefits and if you believe Trump, commit crimes.

Both groups also believe that American society is being undermined by diversity and foreign-born citizens.

This is the battle line of the 2016 presidential election. The mediocre economy that has been with us for nearly 20 years has caused real harm. We remain a wealthy country, but certain groups now see their opportunity slipping away. Slow growth, or no economic growth, means only a few elites will do well, and most voters see the self-serving political class as siding with the elites.

So can a candidate unify an electorate that now plays a zero-sum political game?

The Pant Load has the better position in this game, since he can exploit pre-existing fears that are based in fact.
The Pant Suit must carefully calibrate her message, but she cannot be a “maintain the status-quo” candidate and win.

Clinton would do well to consider what William Berkson said in the WaMo:

If there is one national goal that Americans can agree on, it is opportunity for all.

Berkson makes the point that since President Reagan, Republicans have advocated a simple theory of how to grow the economy: The more you reduce government involvement in the economy and the more efficient markets become, the more the economy grows.

Sorry, but the simplistic theory of free market economics has been drowned in a tsunami of fact in the past 35 years. Berkson says:

Both Democratic administrations since Reagan—that of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—have raised taxes, and under them, the economy grew more rapidly than under the tax-cutters Reagan and George W. Bush.

This opens a path for the Pant Suit. In order to win, she must assure voters that she will deliver more and better jobs. Family income must go up. But how to achieve this?

By advocating a policy of economic opportunity through public investment in infrastructure. It fulfills the promise of opportunity for all, a populist message that has proven to work throughout America’s past. And it allows Clinton to hammer the GOP Congress and Paul Ryan about the lack of any track record for laissez-faire policies, since they have never worked, not even once, as a miracle cure for jobs and income inequality. This would be an open return to Keynesian economics. Here is Eduardo Porter in the NYT:

The Keynesian era ended when Thatcher and Reagan rode onto the scene with a version of capitalism based on tax cuts, privatization and deregulation that helped revive their engines of growth but led the workers of the world to the deeply frustrating, increasingly unequal economy of today.

And led to the low growth economy that drives today’s populist anger.

How to fund that infrastructure expense? More revenue. For the last 40 years, Democrats have been unwilling to counter the conservative argument that higher taxes are a redistribution of wealth between classes. Clinton should argue that current tax policy is really a transfer of resources from tomorrow’s generation to today’s. This is a strong populist message.

Younger Millennials understand this clearly. They already believe Social Security will not be there when they need it. She can win them over if she makes a case for new jobs and new revenues.

When conservatives say that it is unfair for people in their highest earning years to pay more taxes on that income, Clinton can point out that this is a past-due bill that they need to pay just as their elders paid higher taxes that supported the current earners when they were starting out. It was that investment in public resources such as public education and infrastructure, and in research, technology and industry that enabled today’s peak earners to get where they are.

While the strategy opens Clinton to criticism from Grover Norquist and the right about fiscal irresponsibility, it pits Trump against the Tea Party and the GOP. He would need to choose between being a populist or a doctrinaire fiscal conservative. Either way, it will bleed votes from some part of his base.

The strategy could work in down ballot races as well, particularly in the Rust Belt. Maybe working class conservatives will hear her, and not vote against their economic interests for once.

We’ll see if she will move from status quo, to “let’s go” as a campaign strategy.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Political Gridlock