Month: October 2023

There is a furious debate going on within the right about the virtues of neo-liberalism. Reactionaries insist it has been a total failure; the PBPs, its principal beneficiaries, disagree. Who is correct here?

The principal components of neo-liberalism are as follows:

1. Cut taxes and regulations on business. This will result in additional investment, higher productivity, and increased profits, which will ultimately cause wages to increase. Everyone wins.
2. Embrace globalization and technological change. Free trade creates efficiencies and thus higher profits with lower prices on consumer goods.
3. Resist expansions of the welfare state for the benefit of the losers from globalization and technological change. They only encourage workers to lounge in the hammock of dependency.

It is fair to say that the ultimate, and predictable, outcome of neo-liberalism is the dollar store economy, which had the following symptoms:

1. Global inequality decreased significantly. If you’re a Chinese worker, that’s a great thing. If you’re an American worker, not so much.
2. Inequality in America has skyrocketed as the result of vastly increased share and asset prices. American bosses make far more money relative to workers than they did fifty years ago.
3. The price of consumer goods remained steady or even decreased. This was a substantial blessing for everyone, including the poor, that was incorrectly taken for granted until recently.
4. With the exception of Obamacare and the expiring pandemic programs, the right succeeded in preventing any redistribution of the benefits of globalization and technological change to workers and the poor. The result of this victory is right-wing populism.

The bottom line is that neo-liberalism did, in fact, create efficiencies, and could have worked for everyone if the business community had been willing to share its benefits. It didn’t; large areas of America suffered; and our current political situation is the result.

Let’s be honest here–we don’t really know what kind of testimony Trump’s attorneys are going to provide against him. What we do know is that Trump, as usual, has distanced himself from his co-conspirators, while demanding complete loyalty in return. They had every incentive to flip on him, and they did.

Could Rudy be next? Trump refuses to help him pay his rapidly mounting bills. It would make perfect sense for him to come out of the cold.

On the GOP Speaker named Mike.

I don’t see a lot there to like.

He’s supported aloud

By the burn it down crowd.

They must think it’s their turn to strike.

Joe Biden has consistently made it clear to the Israelis that they need to avoid civilian casualties to the maximum extent possible. They also need a viable exit strategy. The left is nonetheless arguing that he values Israeli lives over those of Palestinian civilians. Is that fair?

No. What Biden is saying is that Hamas is ultimately responsible for Palestinian civilian deaths, because its fighters use civilians as human shields. While the Israelis have an obligation to protect civilians, it would be a mistake for them to reward Hamas for this kind of thuggish behavior. On that point, he is completely correct.

The West Bank is hard. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have legitimate claims to the land. The Israelis base theirs on ancient and very recent history; the Palestinians base theirs on the rest of time. Is it any wonder that the two sides can’t muster the will to make a deal, even though the general outlines of one are obvious to everyone?

Gaza, on the other hand, should be easy, because the Israelis don’t want it. Nobody really wants it. Gaza is a problem because the leadership of the residents doesn’t accept the existence of Israel, not because the Israelis want to occupy and run the place.

The residents of Gaza can have peace with Israel just by accepting the fact that Israel exists. The Israelis would have no reason at that point not to let them get on with their lives. For their part, the Israelis have to understand that something like Hamas is going to return to run Gaza unless they manage to find either a competent Palestinian or international partner to run the place as their agent after the end of the occupation. At this point, the chances of that happening are pretty poor.

Religious reactionaries–the genuinely pro-life people–won’t make deals on the availability of abortion. Human life, in their eyes, is not negotiable. But they are willing to talk about beefing up the welfare state in order to make abortion less necessary. They won’t insist on it, mind you, but they are open to it.

The more secular reactionaries–the ones primarily motivated by racial, cultural, or economic grievances–dislike abortion because it empowers women and disrupts their traditional views about the leadership of society and the family. They are not genuinely pro-life. As a result, they have no interest in expanding the welfare state to improve the lot of involuntarily pregnant women (creating misery is the point, after all), but they see a national abortion ban as an obstacle to overcome in the overriding objective of winning power, so they are willing to compromise on it.

In other words, both sides are willing to make a deal on the issue the other side won’t put on the table. Since the religious reactionaries are a small minority within the GOP (just ask Mike Pence, who has now dropped out of the race), they are losing the argument within the party.

Leaf season in the NC mountains is always poignant, but this year, the colors have been spectacular. The yellows and oranges have been particularly impressive. But, as always, it is a sign of impending death. It is the last blaze of abundant life in the face of mortality. Winter is coming. It is the opposite of Easter.

We are heading back to DeSantistan tomorrow out of necessity, as it will be very cold here next week. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that the Hungarian Candidate is a much-diminished figure, even in his home state, and anyway, the legislature in North Carolina is every bit as reactionary as the one in Florida. It just doesn’t get the same amount of publicity.

Trump said a lot of harsh things about China during the campaign, but the questions remained: would he fixate on the trade deficit instead of human rights and Chinese aggression in the South China Sea; walk away from Biden’s policy of flexible containment with local allies; and offer to hand over Taiwan in exchange for increased agricultural exports? After all, Trump had always seen our relationship with China in economic, not geopolitical, terms, and he viewed our allies in the regions as being parasites.

The answer to these questions was yes. Once again, Trump’s concept of “America First” meant America alone, largely because he simply assumed, against all advice, that anything Biden did to contain China had to be wrong. We would face China with no meaningful assistance from Japan, South Korea, Australia, or India.

A few days ago, I predicted the new Speaker would be someone with a skimpy enough record to pass muster with the entire House GOP. I was right. By all accounts, Johnson is a kind of genteel reactionary, which gives hope to both sides.

Will he govern like McCarthy–making lots of promises to everyone, providing drama for the right, but making deals with Democrats when the chips are down? Or will he be a chaos agent, driving the GOP into shutdowns in an effort to make government by a right-wing strongman more appealing?

Nobody, including me, knows the answer to those questions. That’s why he won the election.

Michael Cohen has just testified that Trump directed the reverse engineering of his financial disclosures without regard to actual facts. Trump, of course, says Cohen is lying. Will that be enough to win the case?

Trump has a serious dilemma on his hands. If he doesn’t testify in this case and successfully rebut the state’s testimony as to his involvement and intent, he could lose a large part of his empire, which would be a huge blow to him, even if it didn’t cost him his freedom. If he does, he is exposing himself to cross-examination. And wouldn’t you love to be the attorney cross-examining the man who told tens of thousands of lies while in office?

My guess is that he will not testify. He will write off the proceeding at this stage and hope to prevail on appeal. That’s a high-risk strategy, but everything is high-risk for him at this point.

Trump had always said that we didn’t have a country if we didn’t control our borders, so it was no surprise that he took drastic action immediately after his inauguration. Not only did he announce that he would use funds appropriated for other purposes to finish the wall; he directed the Border Patrol to shoot anyone coming across the border outside of a regulated crossing point on sight. He justified this by saying that only massive cruelty would put an end to the immigration problem; with an appropriate program of deterrence, the incentives to cross the border illegally would disappear, and the asylum seekers would be forced to remain at home.

The new program, was, of course, a violation of both international and American law, but as far as Trump as concerned, the previous year had shown that the law was an ass, and power was all that mattered. He ignored a barrage of court orders telling him to stop. The public was outraged, but the base was delighted.

What did this accomplish? Since asylum seekers don’t carry fentanyl, it did nothing to reduce the flow of drugs across the border. American prestige around the world plunged–not that Trump cared. Most of the American electorate was appalled, and Republicans took the blame, which was only right. After all, they had never wanted a solution to the immigration problem; they just wanted to milk it for all it was worth, which at this point, was nothing.

Marx famously said that history repeats itself twice–first as tragedy, and then as farce. But what about the third time? The fourth? The fifteenth?

My vote is for insanity. What else can it be?

Doo doo doo.

Another one bites the dust.

Doo doo doo.

Another one bites the dust.

And another one gone, and another one gone.

Another one bites the dust.

Etc.

It was, of course, no surprise that Trump immediately announced that he would refuse to provide the appropriated money to the Ukrainian government upon taking office. He justified this decision by explaining that the Ukrainians were a bunch of corrupt thugs who had attempted to rig American elections against him, and that Putin was our friend. We needed him to combat China. Besides, the Russians needed a big, splashy new hotel in the middle of Moscow.

When the rest of NATO yelped, he then announced we were pulling out of the alliance. When he was told that we could not withdraw from the treaty without overwhelming support from the Senate, which would not be forthcoming, he decided we would remain on paper, but withdraw all of our forces from Europe, and refuse to fund or cooperate with any of the alliance’s activities. We would also ignore our responsibilities under Article 5. NATO quickly fell apart as a result, and the Russians, after inhaling Ukraine, started growling about the Polish border and the Baltic states.

The mainstream of the GOP was appalled by this, but did nothing in response, as usual, for fear of offending the reactionary base. “American First” would mean America alone, just the way Xi and Putin wanted it.

An overwhelming sense of victimhood, accompanied by violence and lots of swagger. This is based on the belief that God is on their side, even though the evidence strongly suggests that history isn’t.

Oh, and they both hate wokeness, too. You would think the two would be natural allies, but because Hamas isn’t Christian and doesn’t fit in the Christian narrative, they aren’t.