Cromwell

Historically, the GOP has been united in support of “trickle-down economics.” By that, they mean they support reducing taxes on capital in the hope that it will ultimately be invested in new or expanded businesses. The increase in business activity leads to greater demand for labor, which in turn leads to higher wages for workers in addition to higher profits for capitalists. Hence, the popular name for the concept.

While the theory is not absurd, and may even work under some circumstances, it hasn’t worked for many years, for the following reasons:

1. Improvements in transportation and communications have made it possible to move manufacturing activities, and even some service work, away from areas with high cost labor. Globalization effectively means that the supply of workers is no longer limited to your own country, which in turn means that wages in many fields do not respond to what appear at first blush to be domestic labor shortages.

2. Demographic changes have resulted in a decrease in consumption, and an increase in savings.

3. Successful Chinese mercantilism means that globalization hasn’t necessarily resulted in an explosion of high-paying jobs in industries specializing in exports, at least in the US.

4. These three phenomena collectively mean that there is a glut of available investment capital throughout the world, and limited demand in the US. With a hollowed-out middle class, and more elderly people who can’t afford to put too many resources into consumption, why would American businesses invest in new capacity?

5. Investment, instead, has gone into share buybacks and purchases of securities sold to finance the budget deficit. Tax cuts on capital are, therefore, a form of right-wing recycling for the benefit of the wealthy; they don’t create new jobs or increase wages, but they increase the value of assets owned only by the affluent.

6. Tax increases on the wealthy and redistribution programs which are designed to increase consumption among the less affluent can address the existing imbalance and consequently result in increased growth under current conditions. All of the Democratic candidates appear to agree on this point, and they are right. It is about growth as much as fairness.

Two pundits on very different sides of the ideological spectrum are pushing the idea that Bernie Sanders could unite the Democratic Party and win the election. Ross Douthat is promoting the idea because he wants the Democrats, and the entire country, to turn right on cultural issues; Ed Kilgore, for his part, wants M4A.

Are they right? Of course not. Bernie is not a uniter. His whole campaign is a take it or leave it affair.

Douthat has hopes for Bernie because he puts less emphasis on winning the culture wars than on class warfare and the “revolution.” He’s right about that, and I think he should even go a step further; the only way to sell the “revolution” is to win over reactionary workers by moving the Democratic Party to the right on cultural issues. Bernie is making zero effort to do that, however. Just because he would rather talk about benighted workers and Wall Street oligarchs doesn’t mean he rejects the wokeness agenda.

As for M4A, it is an inherently divisive issue, even within the Democratic Party. To me, the only way to sell it is to be brutally honest with the American people about the level of disruption that it would cause, and to say that the system is so bad, there is no other viable choice. After all, the insurance industry and a large percentage of providers are going to oppose the public option just as ferociously, so you might as well go for the whole enchilada. Sanders isn’t doing that, either. He just attributes all of the problems of the system to a handful of greedy interest groups, when, in reality, the pain of M4A would be felt in some way by everyone, and doctors and hospitals in particular.

2019 was OK.

I haven’t got a lot to say.

The president is being impeached.

Our nightmare’s end is within reach.

_____________

We flew to Greece this April last

And wallowed in our culture’s past.

Santorini was just great.

With all those views, what’s there to hate?

______________

We went to Philly; Cleveland, too.

Saw my home town–what’s old and new.

We just returned from NYC.

Saw all the shows that we could see.

__________________

Our mountain home has come along.

Just a few things have gone wrong.

We love the views and mountain air.

Next year we’ll spend more time there.

_________________

This time next year, we’ll be done.

We’ll ditch our jobs and have more fun.

When it comes to working stress

More is definitely less.

__________________

My wife’s hip has now gone bad.

When it’s fixed, we’ll both be glad.

Darcy’s two; she’s doing fine.

She keeps us running all the time.

______________

2019 was all right.

The denouement is now in sight.

It’s only one year till he goes

So keep the faith, and hold your nose.

The GOP leader named Mitch

Got down with the Don in a ditch.

He’ll vote to acquit.

There’s no doubt about it.

So there’s no point in making a pitch.

Historically, the GOP (think Mitt Romney in 2012) has been tougher on the Russians than the Democrats. It is a tribute of sorts to the power Donald Trump wields over his party that this situation has completely changed; GOP members of Congress now routinely parrot Russian talking points about Ukraine in order to defend him. Putin has to be thrilled.

When they are called on this, they get very defensive. In particular, Mitch McConnell clearly hates being called “Moscow Mitch.”

So how should the Democrats deal with this state of affairs? By keeping it up. Call Moscow Mitch “Moscow Mitch” at every opportunity. Try to think of a catchy nickname for Lindsey Graham. I haven’t come up with a plausible contender to date, but perhaps someone with more imagination than I have can succeed where I have failed.

If they hate it, too bad. They’re effectively selling out their country in their desperate effort to keep the man on golf cart, and themselves, in power. They have to pay the price for that.

Just what you need to brighten the holiday season!

WE’LL IMPEACH BY CHRISTMAS

We’ll impeach by Christmas.

You can count on us.

You must know

That Trump will go.

He fills us with disgust.

___________

Christmas Eve will find us

Ramping up for trial.

We’ll impeach by Christmas.

It’s just a little while.

There is apparently a split of opinion among the proponents of reparations. The mainstream view is that they should be paid only to the direct descendants of at least one slave; the minority opinion is that all African-Americans are entitled to receive them.

You can see the appeal of the mainstream position; tying reparations to slavery is an appropriate response to the argument that people who voluntarily accepted the burdens of discrimination in exchange for the benefits provided by this country aren’t entitled to compensation. In addition, the focus on the unique evils of slavery, and not discrimination, eliminates the concern that the logic of reparations would also apply to Native Americans and Asian-Americans, as well. It is, in some respects, a politically astute position.

The down sides, from the perspective of reparation proponents, are that there is no obvious reason why white people whose ancestors did not own slaves should have to pay anything under this theory, and that the more widespread effects of discrimination after the Civil War (limited housing choices, bad schools, etc.) are logically not subject to the payment of compensation. That would be a problem for someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wants to throw a blanket of guilt over the entirety of white America.

It’s a fairly close call. Let’s hope the two sides beat each other to a pulp and consequently leave the rest of us alone.

It’s November, 2020, and Donald Trump has just lost the election. Naturally, he’s not taking it lying down. Blaming the outcome on fraud and the votes of illegal immigrants, he has filed a blizzard of lawsuits and is calling on “his” Supreme Court to save his bacon. More ominously, he is calling his supporters out in the streets to do battle with the authorities and keep him in power. Will they come?

Not this time. There is still enough faith in the system–barely–to prevent that. The rest of the GOP finally edges away from him, however tentatively, and the results of the election are respected, even if the Trump wing of the GOP openly considers the new Democratic president illegitimate.

This time, the system works. Next time, with a real man on horseback, maybe not.

In the end, Kamala Harris, for all of her impressive political skills, was doomed by two things: her inability to convince the African-American community that she was a winner; and her failure to define where she was on the ideological matrix. Was she an identity or a class politician? Was she a realo or a fundi? She ran a general election campaign in a primary, hoping that she could win votes from all sides. It might very well have worked against Trump, but it didn’t work against Biden or Warren.

Harris is still young, and she most likely isn’t done. She would balance a Biden ticket quite nicely, and the job might appeal to her, as Biden might choose not to run for reelection in 2024. Nothing she said about Biden during the debates, in my eyes, disqualified her for the job. Don’t be surprised if it happens.

It’s November, 2020. Elizabeth Warren has just been elected president, and has a small majority in the Senate. If you’re a billionaire, what do you do?

You have nearly three months before she takes office, and the process of passing the wealth tax, if it happens at all, will take at least several more months. You will immediately hire, if you don’t already have one, an army of attorneys, accountants, financial advisers, and appraisers to deal with the potential impacts of a wealth tax. You will start moving money to places the tax can’t reach as soon as possible. And Warren can’t stop you from doing it.

Even if she has a plan for that, she can’t actually do anything until it is too late. And that is only one of the many problems with the tax.

Historically, Labour was a left-leaning party grounded in the economic interests of the working class, the Conservatives were a right-leaning party dominated by the middle class, and the Liberals and Lib Dems were, well, not Labour or the Conservatives. It was easy to tell what they didn’t like, but hard to identify what they stood for in a positive sense that set them apart from the other parties.

Today, the Conservatives have become a thuggish populist party with less interest in protecting the UK’s institutions and traditional values than in power and Brexit, while Labour has a anachronistic program that makes Michael Foot look good. The Lib Dems, on the other hand, have a position on Brexit that is both firm and sensible, and they have an opportunity to become an identity-based, left-leaning alternative to Labour which actually makes sense in a country that is no longer primarily divided by class.

Barring tactical voting on an absolutely massive scale, the Conservatives are going to win the election. The real question is whether the Lib Dems can become the largest English party in the opposition. Pray that they do.

Steel and aluminum tariffs on Brazil. Are you kidding me?

This makes no sense whatsoever from a geopolitical, ideological, or economic perspective. It can only be understood as a raw exercise of power for its own sake–he can, therefore, he must. And so he does, as the rest of the world watches in bewilderment and disgust and wonders what fresh hell comes next.

Welcome to the club, guys! We feel your pain!

Generally speaking, most historical bad guys have had a few reasonably decent qualities that at least slightly redeemed them. With Trump, it’s hard to see any redeeming virtues; it is his other vices–egotism, laziness, and ignorance–that have saved us from living in an authoritarian state up until now. We should be grateful for them, I suppose.

The next comparably popular reactionary is likely to be a different story. He won’t be lazy or ignorant or capricious or completely corrupt. He’ll probably have an Ivy League education and glittering business or military credentials. He’ll be grimly determined to “impose the order and orthodoxy” of the white Christian minority on the majority of the country, regardless of the cost to our liberal democratic state. He’ll be far more Franco, and less Falstaff–a man on horseback, not golf cart.

The bottom line is that we have to hope that Trump’s weaknesses and failures will completely discredit the authoritarian project in this country before it really takes root. Will that happen? I really don’t know, but we had better hope so.

Information from Iran is sketchy, but it appears that the government has put down an uprising of sorts with considerable loss of life. Is this the precursor for the end of the regime? And will it cause the Iranian government to pull back outside its borders?

The answer to the first question is almost certainly no. Revolutions only succeed when the government is divided, doubts its own legitimacy, and is consequently unable or unwilling to use massive amounts of force to protect itself. In this case, the regime honestly thinks it is ordained by God, and the Revolutionary Guards have strong ideological and economic interests that are at risk. Finally, the violence seems to be localized. It will take far more than some burned-out gas stations to genuinely endanger the regime.

The second question is murkier. All I can say is that the hardliners tend to benefit, both economically and politically, when things go bad, so my best guess is that the regime will double down instead of turning tail.

As William Barr (among others) is eager to tell you, American Christians are a beleaguered minority whose values are constantly under attack by sinister secular forces working through government, rogue elements of the judiciary, and the media. Given that premise, religious reactionaries should be strong supporters of Catholic immigrants fleeing oppression in Central America in order to help balance the scales, right?

Umm. . . no. That tells you that genuinely religious people are a small minority on the far right. But you already knew that, because they were Cruz voters in 2016, and you know how that turned out.