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by Bjinse Sun Nov 5th, 2017 at 08:34:45 PM EST
This isn't about Hillary Clinton. It's about a broader movement that took place within the Democratic establishment, and spread rapidly to blue-friendly media and academia. It's a kind of repeat of post-9/11 thinking, when suddenly huge pluralities of Americans decided the stakes were now too high to continue being queasy about things like torture, extralegal assassination, and habeas corpus. In the age of Trump, we're now throwing all sorts of once-treasured principles - press ethics, free speech, freedom from illegal surveillance - overboard, because the political stakes are now deemed too high to cede ground to Trump over principles. But this distrust of democracy began before Trump was even a nominee. As Brazile notes, it started within the ranks of the Democratic Party near the outset of the campaign.
It's a kind of repeat of post-9/11 thinking, when suddenly huge pluralities of Americans decided the stakes were now too high to continue being queasy about things like torture, extralegal assassination, and habeas corpus.
In the age of Trump, we're now throwing all sorts of once-treasured principles - press ethics, free speech, freedom from illegal surveillance - overboard, because the political stakes are now deemed too high to cede ground to Trump over principles.
But this distrust of democracy began before Trump was even a nominee. As Brazile notes, it started within the ranks of the Democratic Party near the outset of the campaign.
None of those things are new. He even writes about the post 9/11 psychotic episode without detailing how it ended. Because it really didn't. Guantanamo is still open. And as Chomsky was fond of pointing out before I was even born: the "Crisis of Democracy" was that there was too much of it.
Noam Chomsky - Wikiquote -
During the 1960s, large groups of people who are normally passive and apathetic began to try to enter the political arena to press their demands.... The naive might call that democracy, but that's because they don't understand. The sophisticated understand that that's the crisis of democracy. Manufacturing Consent, lecture at the University of Wisconsin (15 March 1989) [4].
Manufacturing Consent, lecture at the University of Wisconsin (15 March 1989) [4].
Sure, there are a few odd things she said that are relatively easy to disprove, but I think she has useful things to say. Especially about how utterly clueless the Clinton campaign "machine" was. keep to the Fen Causeway
1/Back from meetings in Brussels. There's good news and bad news. First, the bad news. Because it's... extremely bad. 2/ While consensus in London seems to assume trade talks kick off in December, senior EU officials now consider this, on balance, unlikely 3/ Brussels monitors UK media & ministers' statements - they can see PM has been backtracking since Florence - ie backtracking to cliff-edge 4/ Behind the scenes, also evidence that UK has reneged on guarantees for citizens that it initially signalled it would make. Really bad. 5/ As for money, if May insists she can't make any further commitments, EU will not trigger trade talks in December. It's that simple. 6/ EU went as far as it could in Oct. Nobody's asking for precise figure, just specific commitments. 60bn the ballpark figure. 7/ UK Government knows all this, incidentally. They're in denial about it. But what happens if they test EU anyway? .....
2/ While consensus in London seems to assume trade talks kick off in December, senior EU officials now consider this, on balance, unlikely
3/ Brussels monitors UK media & ministers' statements - they can see PM has been backtracking since Florence - ie backtracking to cliff-edge
4/ Behind the scenes, also evidence that UK has reneged on guarantees for citizens that it initially signalled it would make. Really bad.
5/ As for money, if May insists she can't make any further commitments, EU will not trigger trade talks in December. It's that simple.
6/ EU went as far as it could in Oct. Nobody's asking for precise figure, just specific commitments. 60bn the ballpark figure.
7/ UK Government knows all this, incidentally. They're in denial about it. But what happens if they test EU anyway? .....
and there's more keep to the Fen Causeway
26/ EFTA officials confident UK could apply to join EFTA quite quickly & provisionally apply agreement for Mar 19, seamlessly staying in EEA 27/ This, provided Norway & Iceland happy to let UK in for transitional period. But they would be under great pressure to allow it. 28/ Might even be possible for UK to negotiate 'associate' EFTA status so doesn't have to apply to join EFTA's trade deals (big concession) 29/ Only... Northern Ireland is ruined, because off-shelf EEA agreement excludes agriculture. Which means full WTO tariffs. No ifs, no buts. 30/ EEA Agreement Article 19 provides framework for agri liberalisation- but needs to be negotiated from scratch. Norway's deal took 2yrs.
Spend 15 minutes inside Carter-Page's head.
It will be...strange
WaPo - Alexandra Petri - The paranoid Carter Page transcript: What in God's name did I just read?
Carter Page's testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the transcript of which was released Monday night, was like trying to read a magic eye painting. It is the sort of thing a lawyer -- or, really, any person concerned with your welfare -- would tell you not to say to a congressional committee. Yet, here we are. For anyone who doesn't want to curl up with 243 pages of testimony and footnoted letters, here is pretty much how the thing went, severely condensed. Carter Page: Hello. I am a doctor and a scholar, and I am here about the world premiere of the dodgy dossier that inexplicably made all kinds of charges against me, an innocent man who has never met anyone directly in my life! I have been illegally wiretapped by the FBI, CIA and other U.S. propaganda agencies, and my life has been ruined. I must be continually on the move, like a shark. I have done nothing wrong, but I will answer none of the questions put to me, because I have been studying the law. I am, as I said, a scholar. Here is a letter. I know it looks like a scrawl in red crayon, but trust me -- it is a letter about the CIA's illegal dossier. Thomas Rooney: Okay. Who are you? Did you work for the Trump campaign?........
Carter Page: Hello. I am a doctor and a scholar, and I am here about the world premiere of the dodgy dossier that inexplicably made all kinds of charges against me, an innocent man who has never met anyone directly in my life! I have been illegally wiretapped by the FBI, CIA and other U.S. propaganda agencies, and my life has been ruined. I must be continually on the move, like a shark. I have done nothing wrong, but I will answer none of the questions put to me, because I have been studying the law. I am, as I said, a scholar. Here is a letter. I know it looks like a scrawl in red crayon, but trust me -- it is a letter about the CIA's illegal dossier.
Thomas Rooney: Okay. Who are you? Did you work for the Trump campaign?........
MR. PAGE: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the historic impact of big money opposition political research operations on the U.S. Intelligence Community over the past 14 months. As the American public has now learned, these epic fictitious stories primarily stemmed from the momentous world premiere of oppositin political research from the dodgy dossier which maliciously attacked me and the Trump campaign in the final weeks preceding last year's elections....
(He was) elected as a Republican to the Seventy-fifth and to the six succeeding Congresses and served from January 3, 1937, until his resignation January 2, 1950, following conviction on charges of salary fraud; chairman, Committee on Un-American Activities (Eightieth Congress); editor and publisher of three weekly newspapers in Bergen County, N.J., 1951-1955; real estate solicitor in 1955 and 1956...
I was hoping you'd flag plays in the SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE on Internal Security in the period, beginning 1951.
The chairman of the subcommittee in the 82nd United States Congress was Patrick McCarran of Nevada. William Jenner of Indiana took over during the 83rd United States Congress after the Republicans gained control of the Senate in the 1952 election. When the Democrats regained control in the 84th Congress (1955-1957), James O. Eastland of Mississippi became chairman, a position he held until the subcommittee was abolished in 1977.
McCarthy chaired this subcommittee only '53-'54. HISS, a Democrat, was indicted by HUAC in '48, however, while the Democratic Party controlled the House. (Incidentally, exonerating non-fiction is trending these days that disputes FBI paid-informant CHAMBERS testimony.)
You would have noticed in the wikipedia reference (above) conforming name change of HUAC (1969), signifying one may argue, success of House activities in suppressing and appeasing domestic threats to the Democratic Party vanguard in the southern states such as "communist-front" civil rights agitation, ergo re-allocation of resources to the war effort as well as birth of the RNC "Southern Strategy". Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
I enjoy Schlesinger's narration of it best. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Unlike the New Republic: which just goes to demonstrate how robust "communist-front" smears are. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
If the tax cuts are not enough for you....
How it became a crime to be poor in America
In the United States, a system of modern peonage - essentially, a government-run loan shark operation - has been going on for years. Beginning in the 1990s, the country adopted a set of criminal justice strategies that punish poor people for their poverty. Right now in America, 10 million people, representing two-thirds of all current and former offenders in the country, owe governments a total of $50bn in accumulated fines, fees and other impositions. The problem of "high fines and misdemeanors" exists across many parts of the country: throughout much of the south; in states ranging from Washington to Oklahoma to Colorado [...] As a result, poor people lose their liberty and often lose their jobs, are frequently barred from a host of public benefits, may lose custody of their children, and may even lose their right to vote. Immigrants, even some with green cards, can be subject to deportation. Once incarcerated, impoverished inmates with no access to paid work are often charged for their room and board. Many debtors will carry debts to their deaths, hounded by bill collectors and new prosecutions. [...] to understand America's new impulse to make being poor a crime, one has to follow the trail of tax cuts that began in the Reagan era, which created revenue gaps all over the country. The anti-tax lobby told voters they would get something for nothing: the state or municipality would tighten its belt a little, it would collect big money from low-level offenders, and everything would be fine. Deep budget cuts ensued, and the onus of paying for our justice system - from courts to law enforcement agencies and even other arms of government - began to shift to the "users" of the courts, including those least equipped to pay.
The problem of "high fines and misdemeanors" exists across many parts of the country: throughout much of the south; in states ranging from Washington to Oklahoma to Colorado [...]
As a result, poor people lose their liberty and often lose their jobs, are frequently barred from a host of public benefits, may lose custody of their children, and may even lose their right to vote. Immigrants, even some with green cards, can be subject to deportation. Once incarcerated, impoverished inmates with no access to paid work are often charged for their room and board. Many debtors will carry debts to their deaths, hounded by bill collectors and new prosecutions.
[...] to understand America's new impulse to make being poor a crime, one has to follow the trail of tax cuts that began in the Reagan era, which created revenue gaps all over the country.
The anti-tax lobby told voters they would get something for nothing: the state or municipality would tighten its belt a little, it would collect big money from low-level offenders, and everything would be fine.
Deep budget cuts ensued, and the onus of paying for our justice system - from courts to law enforcement agencies and even other arms of government - began to shift to the "users" of the courts, including those least equipped to pay.
Trump or sunshine...
About that? No. Let's roll that back to 1789.
I've had the pleasure of informing some UIDs who were complaining about the compensation CA female inmates who volunteered to work forest fires. iirc, $2/hr + incremental time served. I'm, like, cain't you see progress staring you in the face?!
XIII Amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
VIII Amendment: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted, if "peonage" be arranged instead...
Quoting Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) legitimizing apartheid in the USA ("Jim Crow") to an UID laboring with the impression that affected only poll taxes and literacy testing to exercise a vote ...
Quoting Wilson and DiIulio, high school AP American Government: Institutions and Policies, 14th Edition: "As we shall see, American welfare policy since the 1930s has been fundamentally shaped by a slow but steady change in how we have separated the 'deserving' from the 'undeserving' poor" ...
Quoting Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: Forgotten History Of How Our Government Segregated America ...
Quoting the curiously atavistic Bail Reform Acts of 1984...
Quoting Voting Rights Restoration Efforts in Virginia just last summer ...
Being poor in US America has always been a "crime." Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Map of the earth if the earth was a bear pic.twitter.com/dcOEbgbRTD— Terrible Maps (@TerribleMaps) 17. September 2017
Firmen müssten im digitalisierten Wettbewerb agil sein und schnell ihre Teams zusammenrufen können, so der Waise zur Welt am Sonntag. Auf unseren nächtlichen Anruf, wie er das denn nun genau meint und dann auch in Angriff nehmen will, hat er aber nicht reagiert. Vielleicht war er auch im Urlaub.
During a debate in the Committee on Employment of the European Parliament, a Greek Eurodeputy asked the President of the Eurogroup (the informal economic government of the Eurozone) if the Greek bail-out program was an effort to help and save Greece, or an effort to save the banks. Mr Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch Finance Minister, answered that "We have used the money of the taxpayers to save the banks. Those who say that everything was done to save the banks have some point". We remind our readers that Mr. Dijsselbloem threatened the Greek government with closure of Greek banks three days after the election of the new SYRIZA-ANEL government in January 2015, asking it to recognize the legitimacy of the debt and the validity of the neocolonial agreements signed by previous Greek governments, both accepted by Tsipras and Varoufakis one month later. He also applied every kind of pressure and blackmail during the first six months of 2015 in order to scupper any attempt by the Greek government to resist the program designed "to save banks" (and destroy Greeks), as he admitted in the Europarliament. This same Dijsselbloem said more or less the same things in a recent interview to a Greek newspaper. Speaking about the way Europe addressed the problems after the 2008 crisis he answered:...
We remind our readers that Mr. Dijsselbloem threatened the Greek government with closure of Greek banks three days after the election of the new SYRIZA-ANEL government in January 2015, asking it to recognize the legitimacy of the debt and the validity of the neocolonial agreements signed by previous Greek governments, both accepted by Tsipras and Varoufakis one month later. He also applied every kind of pressure and blackmail during the first six months of 2015 in order to scupper any attempt by the Greek government to resist the program designed "to save banks" (and destroy Greeks), as he admitted in the Europarliament.
This same Dijsselbloem said more or less the same things in a recent interview to a Greek newspaper. Speaking about the way Europe addressed the problems after the 2008 crisis he answered:...
The obituary for this government was published within days of its birth. Theresa May was a "dead woman walking", proclaimed former cabinet colleague George Osborne. Thus was a sniggering bully transformed into an acerbic prophet. Who now dares argue with that verdict? Two senior ministers out within a week, two more barely clinging on to their jobs, and an administration that makes no progress, but merely lurches from disaster to catastrophe. And so begins the Great Unravelling of the oldest political party in Europe, arguably the world. It leads the BBC bulletins. For the commentariat, it is their meat and drink and their tiramisu. Yet what almost the entire political class cannot comprehend is why it is happening. To go by the stories told by most of the press, David Cameron's Tories were essentially a haven of competence for six years - then came Brexit, then came May, then came death by pratfall. This is to get things precisely the wrong way round. What is destroying the Conservatives is not outside forces, nor the cack-handed pricking of a gusher of ministerial ineptitude. No, the fundamental cause is their own economic strategy of austerity. Of cutting taxes for the wealthy, while cutting public services and social security for the rest. Of rewarding the owners of capital, while punishing those who rely on their labour. Of claiming to have fixed the economy, while tanking voters' living standards.
And so begins the Great Unravelling of the oldest political party in Europe, arguably the world. It leads the BBC bulletins. For the commentariat, it is their meat and drink and their tiramisu.
Yet what almost the entire political class cannot comprehend is why it is happening. To go by the stories told by most of the press, David Cameron's Tories were essentially a haven of competence for six years - then came Brexit, then came May, then came death by pratfall.
This is to get things precisely the wrong way round. What is destroying the Conservatives is not outside forces, nor the cack-handed pricking of a gusher of ministerial ineptitude. No, the fundamental cause is their own economic strategy of austerity. Of cutting taxes for the wealthy, while cutting public services and social security for the rest. Of rewarding the owners of capital, while punishing those who rely on their labour. Of claiming to have fixed the economy, while tanking voters' living standards.
If they wanted to be able to pick something of value out of the ashes of their government's catastrophe it should be to sacrifice this version of Tory government for the long term interests of the nation by calling for a new referendum and recommending that Brexit be canceled. I hope that something like that happens but see little reason to think it will. And an economy shrinking by 5%l over a couple of years describes a depression brought on by political malpractice. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Anthony Eden? Neville Chamberlain? Lord North? There's tough competition.
" You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three - and perhaps as many as 16 - of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history - MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."
That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps."
https:/politicalvelcraft.org/2015/10/08/trapped-central-banks-face-keynesian-endgame-you-never-go-f ull-krugman
I do believe greed is blinding them and they would rather throw the Tories under the bus to keep EU regulators from killing their golden goose.
What will they do with Labour in power? Trust that Corbyn & Co.will be bribeable?
That's what I mean by blind, perhaps myopic woukd be better.
You could disturb a junkie while he's shooting up, but he's not going to pay you much mind even if you tell him the house is on fire.
Neoliberal capitalism is selling itself it's own future noose, pace Marx. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
I fixed it for you keep to the Fen Causeway
Who, right now, are trying to work out if they should be outraged that Putin has put in a counter-bid. It's not that they think that selling the US Govt to the Kremlin, as Trump has quite evidently done via Tillerson, is intrinsically wrong. Far from it, they're jealous it was done so cheaply. But they view the GOP as their toy and they want it back. keep to the Fen Causeway
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