Category: Politics

Quote of the Day

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It seems to me that the alleged “good guys” — the liberal, cosmopolitan class of which I myself am a part — have fallen into habits of ridiculing, demonizing, writing off, or, in our best moments, merely patronizing huge swathes of the polities to which we belong. They may do the same to us, but we are not toddlers, that is no excuse. In the United States, in Europe, we are allowing ourselves to disintegrate and arguing about who is to blame. Let’s all be better than that.

—Chris Arnade

The comment is about the Brexit, but I think that it can be applied more generally.

Good Point

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While there is a lot of finger pointing about the Brexit vote, there is a point to be made that the elites who support the EU and the Neoliberal agenda:

Over the past decade, elites broke the world, and were unrepentant about their failure. They created the conditions for the worst economic crisis in nearly a century, and made sure that their elite friends at the top would scoop up the post-crisis gains, stranding the vast majority of people. They decided their project of globalization and liberalization mattered more than democracy. Brexit is among the first tangible responses.

Yes, the victorious campaign to leave the European Union won on the basis of xenophobia and the demonization of immigrants. For anyone of a cosmopolitan bent it’s a terrible outcome. And those with long enough memories to remember the last time European nations broke apart instead of coming together will be pained by the outcome.

But if you tell people you know what’s best for them for years and years while their prospects wither and their lives are immiserated, at some point you should expect some kind of reaction. Practically all of the U.K.’s elites—including the leaders of both major political parties—supported remaining in the EU, and couldn’t convince enough of their citizens to go along. Democracy was the poison pill that halted the European project. And now, its architects have a choice to make: admit nothing is wrong with their abhorrent excuse for leadership and lose the rest of the continent, or change course and embrace the views of their citizens instead of ignoring them.

Consider how Europe acted after the 2008 financial crisis. They demanded balanced budgets and even surpluses from member countries that had no ability to both run them and provide for their citizens. They viewed every appeal from those countries, assembled mostly in southern Europe, as a personal affront. They turned a global recession into a morality play, so they could scold the weak sisters of the Eurozone as lazy slugabeds who deserved to suffer.

And they didn’t just do this out of spite: they explicitly wanted to empower multinational conglomerates at the expense of independent domestic producers. Last year’s list of demands for the Greek economy from the “troika” (the European Union, European Central Bank and the IMF) had little to do with preventing corruption and furthering economic opportunity. They were mostly about breaking the power of the local publishing industry, journalists, olive oil makers, mom and pop retailers, and so on. The goal was to make way for outside corporations and throw over the internal political and social culture.

………

But you must pair that with the arrogance of the elites, both in London and Brussels, to the growing desperation in the countryside. The technocratic administration of policy in the EU is obtuse to the average Briton or Italian or Frenchman. They viewed democracy the way most people view mosquito bites, as a nuisance rather than a collective voice worth listening to. Euroskepticism grew amid this neglect. For all the talk of burdensome migration, Leave did best in rural communities with few, if any, immigrants. These are the cities and towns that lost out from globalization, where deindustrialization has wiped them out and left them flat. Anger at economic stagnation played as much of a role in Brexit as anger at faceless foreigners allegedly ruining British society.

………

What Leave offers, a toxic stew of isolation and racism, isn’t any good either. But when elites spend this long doing nothing for large swathes of the population, they’re willing to listen to anyone with a different idea.

I would also note that these elites, with their “Rising Tides Lift All Boats” rhetoric have been consistently wrong for the past 50 years, and disastrously wrong over the past decade.

The rule by the “Technocrats” leads to not just undemocratic, but anti-democratic actions, and a complete lack of accountability.

This is how we ended up in our current state of affairs and how the EU ended up being run by people who are blithely wrong, because there are never any consequences to them or their policies when they are wrong.

The strength of democratic institutions is that if those making policy have screwed up badly enough, that they get tossed out and replaced.

Absent this, those in power will continue pursue failed policies, because they have no incentive to admit failure and fix things.

Yeah, This is Going to Bring the Party Together

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I understand that in US politics party platforms don’t count for much.

Still, the fact Clinton and DNC members of the platform committee have voted against a meaningful increase to the minimum wage, and for fracking and the TPP promises to make the Democratic convention a mess:

The battle over the official Democratic Party platform began in earnest this Friday at a nine-hour meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, and already the sparks of tension seem to be outweighing the calls for “unity.”

The Democratic Party’s platform is an official statement of values on a wide range of issues, and while it is officially non-binding, the platform serves as a crucial guidepost for the entire party. The 2016 platform committee comprises fifteen members, with five members chosen by Bernie Sanders, six chosen by Hillary Clinton, and four chosen by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Bernie Sanders himself had conflicting feelings about the progress and concessions made on Friday, releasing a statement on his website that said he was “pleased” with certain aspects but was “disappointed and dismayed” at other decisions, particularly those regarding trade.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Sanders representative on the committee, attempted to insert language into the platform that stated Democrats would not hold a vote on the widely derided Trans-Pacific Partnership deal in order to effectively end the plan’s prospects, but the committee rejected Ellison’s proposal so as to avoid indirectly criticizing President Obama on the issue, despite both Sanders and Clinton being against the deal.

………

The Democrats also voted to include the $15 minimum wage into the platform, even calling the current rate of $7.25 a “starvation wage.” However, there arose some confusion over this particular issue among progressive critics, as two further amendments introduced by Ellison that would have indexed the minimum wage to inflation, making it a truly “livable wage,” were voted down.

………

Bill McKibben, a Sanders appointee to the committee and prominent environmentalist who co-founded 350.org, attempted to insert language on both a carbon tax and a national moratorium on fracking, but both proposals were rejected in perhaps the most disappointing move of the proceedings.

………

The committee also rejected a single-payer Medicare-for-All plan in a decisive blow to one of Sanders’ key domestic policies. Hillary Clinton has stated in this election cycle that single-payer healthcare will “never, ever come to pass” despite supporting universal healthcare for most of her career. According to a Gallup poll conducted in May, 58% of Americans support a federally funded healthcare option. Only 48% of those polled wished to continue the Affordable Care Act.

Progressives and Sanders supporters vocalized their frustrations with what they saw as continued obstinance in the face of wide support for these programs and ideas. “What was passed was a solidly neoliberal platform — 90% of what we wanted is not getting in,” said Caleb-Michael Files, the digital strategist for People for Bernie Sanders.

………

Sanders has repeatedly stressed since the end of the campaign season that his endorsement of Clinton would depend on her platform and how closely her goals aligned with his own campaign’s. Sanders remained defiant in the closing of his statement on the platform, vowing to continue to fight for the issues as the platform continues to be debated in the coming weeks:

“If our pro-worker amendments do not carry in St. Louis we will reintroduce them before the full platform committee in Orlando, Florida. If we do not win in Orlando we can carry them to the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Our job is to pass the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.”

This is not a surprise.  Neither Clinton nor Wasserman-Schultz feel the slightest need to make nice with the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

Their goal is to assert control, and this might very well throw the election to the short fingered vulgarian.

The Blairites Strike Back

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The Blairites in Labour have taken advantage of the Brexit vote to attempt to remove Jeremy Corbyn as head of the party:

Jeremy Corbyn will attempt to confront the crisis facing his leadership on Monday morning as he enters emergency talks with the deputy Labour leader, Tom Watson, amid a series of further shadow cabinet walkouts and a likely vote of no confidence from his MPs.

The Labour leader, who was left reeling after his decision to sack the shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, was followed by the resignations of 11 senior shadow cabinet members, said he would not “betray the trust” of the people who voted for him by stepping down. He vowed to stand against anyone challenging him for the leadership.

But Corbyn has come under huge pressure from the resignations, which will pitch politicians against Labour party members who elected Corbyn by an overwhelming majority in a battle for the heart of the party.

………
Arguing that his focus was keeping his party together through turbulent times, Watson said: “It’s very clear to me that we are heading for an early general election and the Labour party must be ready to form a government. There’s much work to do.”

Corbyn responded late on Sunday, saying he regretted the resignations but was determined to reshape his shadow cabinet over the next 24 hours. “I was elected by hundreds of thousands of Labour party members and supporters with an overwhelming mandate for a different kind of politics … I am not going to betray the trust of those who voted for me– or the millions of supporters across the country who need Labour to represent them.

“Those who want to change Labour’s leadership will have to stand in a democratic election, in which I will be a candidate,” he added, arguing that the referendum result underlined how shut out of the political system millions felt.

Writing in the Guardian, Len McCluskey, the general secretary of the Unite union, warned MPs tweeting and briefing against their leader that they could face mandatory deselections if they continued with their disloyalty. “Those Labour MPs plunging their party into an unwanted crisis are betraying not only the party itself but also our national interest at one of the most critical moments any of us can recall,” he wrote.

The grassroots movement Momentum also began mobilising to protect Corbyn, with phone banks being set up to contact up to 100,000 supporters ready for another leadership battle. A petition had attracted almost 200,000 signatures to save the leader, and a protest is being planned outside parliament on Monday evening at the same time as the leader will face the vote of no confidence.

They have been waiting since his election to stage this.

I hope that the folks opposing Corbyn lose, and that its aftermath will be the removal of Blairites from senior positions in the party.

Your Brexit Update

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It’s been close all night, but the trend has been clear


The geographic divide is pretty clear


The history of EU elections mitigates against this coming to fruition

I’ve been following EU Referendum Results.

There were 46,501,241 votes cast, with 15,203,370 leave votes and 14,157,273 stay votes counted at this point, which means that Brexit leads by 51.8% to 48.2% and the stay votes will need to get 56.1% of the remaining vote to win.

So, my prediction appears to have been wrong, and Britain will vote for a Brexit.

Rather unsurprisingly, there was a significant geographic divide, with England and Wales going Brexit, and Scotland going stay. (middle pic)

The question, of course, is what it all means.  I’m inclined to believe, as Moon of Alabama posits, that neither Cameron, nor the EU, nor the City of London will meekly accede to this vote as the bottom pic clearly shows.

I rather expect that we will be talking about “When the Brexit finally happens” 10 years from now.

The pics will pop up if you click on them.

OK, so Now the Brexit Polls Have Closed

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My money is still on a close race, where the not-England parts of the UK have the Brexit rejected.

That being said, I think that there are some in this election, and when taken in juxtaposition:

  1. When ignoring the political opportunists (Hi, Boris), I think that the pro-Brexit campaigners have overwhelmingly relied on nativism, bigotry, and anti-immigrant sentiment in their campaign.
  2. The substantive complaints made about the EU by the pro-Brexit forces are essentially correct.
  3. Because of items 1, item 2 has simply not been a meaningful part of the campaign.

Personally, I believe that if the EU continues as it does, (An undemocratic font of German political hegemony and German economic mythologyz) it will lead to another war in Europe.

We can see the tensions deriving from the EU inflicting pain and suffering on the ordinary citizenry in order to protect the elites, and this (along with there being no meaningful leftwing opposition to the EU) has led to the rise of reactionary and bigoted parties across Europe.

The UK pulling out of the EU could be the dick punch that it needs to realign itself from an unelected (the European Parliament is a glorified debating society) imperial bureaucracy unto a real democratic institution.

As an aside, there are some secondary benefits to a Brexit:

  • It should reduce the incidence of foreigners using London real estate for “in case of popular uprising” bolt holes, which would make the city more affordable for ordinary Brits.
  • It should reduce the size, and hopefully influence, or Britain’s bloated and corrupt financial sector.

F%$# the Teabaggers

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I understand how the Teabagger wing of Republican Party gave us Donald Trump.

I also understand how Trump has done the nearly impossible, which is to make what is arguably the least electable candidate for President since Michael Dukakis the front runner, which must seriously roast Teabagger chestnuts:

………

This, then, is the ultimate outcome from the tea party takeover of the Republican Party by people like Wendy Day. She contributed to Trump’s ascent by blowing up the party and is now upset that it’s not her own candidate Ted Cruz who was the victor.

Cry me a river, Ms. Day.

And welcome to your worst nightmare: President Hillary Clinton.

I under the that is a schadenfreude moment, but what about the rest of us?

The rest of use are going to have to live with the consequences of this:  More war, more sucking up to Wall Street, more neoliberal economics, more privatization of essential government services, and more job destroying trade deals.

Thanks, Teabaggers.

What a Surprise, the Swiss are Running away from the EU

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After have been in process to join the EU for 24 years, Switzerland has withdrawn its application:

The upper house of the Swiss parliament on Wednesday voted to invalidate its 1992 application to join the European Union, backing an earlier decision by the lower house. The vote comes just a week before Britain decides whether to leave the EU in a referendum.

Twenty-seven members of the upper house, the Council of States, voted to cancel Switzerland’s longstanding EU application, versus just 13 senators against. Two abstained.

In the aftermath of the vote, Switzerland will give formal notice to the EU to consider its application withdrawn, the country’s foreign minister, Didier Burkhalter, was quoted as saying by Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

So not a surprise.

What the F%$#?

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British MP Jo Cox was just assassinated by a pro-Brexit terrorist:

An MP has died after she was shot and stabbed in a “horrific” assault in her constituency, police have said.

Jo Cox, Labour MP [Member of Parliament] for Batley and Spen, was left bleeding on the ground after the attack in Birstall, West Yorkshire. A man was arrested nearby.

One eyewitness told the BBC they heard her attacker shout “put Britain first” at least twice beforehand.

Tributes flooded in from politicians including David Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Mrs Cox’s husband Brendan said she would want people “to unite to fight against the hatred that killed her.”

………

Mrs Cox, 41, is the first sitting MP to be killed since 1990, when Ian Gow was the last in a string of politicians to die at the hands of Northern Irish terror groups.

An assassination in Britain, with a firearm?

I think that England may be hanging around with the wrong sort:  A mindlessly violent bloke with a firearms fetish:  the good old US od A.

Keep the Damn Mailing List Away from Clinton and the DNC

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It appears that people are starting to consider what to do with Sanders formidable mailing list, and giving it to Clinton Evil Minions™ is not high on this list:

One of the open questions in Democratic politics right now is what will happen to Bernie Sanders’s huge email list, which he’s used to raise more than a hundred million dollars from grassroots Democrats and independents all over the country.

So far, according to a senior Sanders campaign official, there’s been no discussion between the campaign and Hillary Clinton’s about what will happen to the email list.

But at least one of the Vermont senator’s top supporters is already arguing that Sanders should refuse to give the list to Clinton.

Monday, the head of the main labor group behind a pro-Sanders super PAC pledged that Sanders will not provide access to the list to Clinton.

“Bernie has run a populist campaign and the campaign is not over,” RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of National Nurses United, told BuzzFeed News. “The campaign’s in its nascent stages, really. He’s sitting on the greatest populist list in the history of this country. And he wants to use it for populist reasons.”

Asked whether Sanders would give the list to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, DeMoro said he would not, “Because he doesn’t want to hand it over to Wall Street.”

Given my experience as a Howard Dean folder in 2004, where I seemed to get way too much in the way of fundraising calls and letters from the DNC and the usual center-right suspects, I do not want either Hillary or the DNC to get their claws into that list.

They will suck the marrow out of list, and leave it a husk.

Keep the list, and use it as an effort for real Democrats, not New Dem Wall Street pukes.

This is Even More Offensive if You are Jewish

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Rudolph Giuliani just said that if Moslems have nothing to hide, they should be fine with police stationed in their mosques:

Appearing on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning, former Republican New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani argued that if mosques have nothing to hide, they wouldn’t be opposing government surveillance.

“There’s no minister, there’s no rabbi in this city — nor are there some imams — that object to having police officers in their congregation,” he argued. “In fact, they want them there, they want them to learn the message. It’s enlightening for them.”

“So if you’ve got nothing going on there but a beautiful religious service, why in His name would you not want to have police officers there?” he asked.

here is a bit of Jewish History:

The fifth-century Persian king Yezdegerd forbade the recitation of Shema. They had to comply during the morning when guards were present, but the Jews partially circumvented the decree by incorporating Shema into the Mussaf Kedushah.”

According to commentaries, Yezdegerd subsequently died after a crocodile appeared in his bedroom and devoured him, which was attributed to the prayers of the Jewish people for his death.  (No, he didn’t die that way)

Still, it is remarkable how easily Rudy Giuliani slides into the role of biblical villain.

I’m With Jim………

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Specifically Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut.

As much as I hate praising a vice chair of the Wall Street loving New Democrat Coalition, particularly one who is an alumnus of the Vampire Squid, but he is right when he announces that he is going to boycott the Congressional moment of silence for the Tampa shooting victims, because it is hypocritical political theater that is used to excuse cowardly inaction:

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) says he won’t participate in any more moments of silence on the House floor for victims of mass shootings out of frustration that they don’t lead to action on gun control.

In a House floor speech on Monday, the day after the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Himes said the moments of silence offer a symbol of lawmakers’ lack of a legislative response to mass shootings.

“Silence. That is how the leadership of the most powerful country in the world will respond to this week’s massacre of its citizens,” he said.

“Silence. Not me. Not anymore. I will no longer stand here absorbing the faux concern, contrived gravity and tepid smugness of a House complicit in the weekly bloodshed,” Himes said angrily.………

………

“As you bow your head and think of what you say to your God when you are asked what you did to slow the slaughter of innocents, there will be silence,” Himes said.

Himes first declared his boycott of future moments of silence in a series of tweets late Sunday night, writing that they “have become an abomination.”

He may be a conservadem, but he’s completely right on this issue.

The moment of silence is a completely hypocritical excuse for doing nothing.

Thanks Duncan.

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Ever since the Reagan administration, the “Very Serious People” VSPs in Washington, DC have tried to find a way to cut/privatize Social Security.

For the first time in recent political memory, expansion of Social Security has become a top of serious discussion, and the impetus for this came from one person, Duncan “Atrios” Black:

In May 2012, ABC broke into its daytime coverage to show President Obama endorsing same-sex marriage, the culmination of years of activist work to take the idea from the radical fringe into the mainstream. We saw an economic version of that this week, and while none of the networks fired up their “Breaking News” graphics for it, the impact on society could be just as large, and the people who helped make it happen should be just as lauded.

 “It’s time we finally made Social Security more generous,” said the president in Elkhart, Indiana, to applause, “and increased its benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they’ve earned.” This was totally unexpected: We knew the Elkhart speech was about the economy, but we didn’t know Obama would concur with a rallying cry on the left for several years now: Expand Social Security.

 This movement crystallized from research into the looming retirement crisis. Too many Americans are headed into their golden years without nearly the kind of savings needed to maintain their standard of living. And their defined-benefit pensions have gradually transitioned into defined-contribution plans like 401(k)s, which have rewarded Wall Street with hidden and excessive fees while eating away at individual gains. The change also shifted market risks from employers onto employees, who must hope to avoid a drop in stocks as they hit retirement age.

 ………

 Despite all this, the initial impulse from the Obama administration was to use Social Security cuts as a bargaining chip in a larger deal with Republicans. Grand bargain talks from 2011 to 2013 repeatedly invoked a different way to calculate the consumer price index (known as “chained CPI”), which would have resulted in $1,000 less a year for the average 85-year-old. Obama put chained CPI in his fiscal year 2014 budget.

 Contrary to some after-the-fact snickering, this was a very credible threat, and it allowed Republicans to point to a Democratic president favoring entitlement cuts. Only the Tea Party’s unwillingness to consider anything resembling a compromise saved retirees from cuts.

 At first, liberal groups played defense on chained CPI, accustomed to mobilizing in opposition rather than staking out a bolder claim. But the expansion movement can really be traced back to one blogger: Duncan Black, popularly known as “Atrios,” who waged an initially lonely crusade in a series of 2012 columns in USA Today, explaining why the retirement crisis was coming and how expanding Social Security represented the cleanest solution.

………

 Lawmakers followed the rank and file consensus. Elizabeth Warren jumped aboard the Harkin bill in late 2013. A House bill quickly got dozens of co-sponsors. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who holds down the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, endorsed an expansion amendment. Bernie Sanders made it a campaign plank, one that Hillary Clinton eventually had to endorse, albeit in a more targeted fashion.

 Now President Obama, who started this all by embracing the opposite position years ago, has explicitly endorsed the expansion of Social Security. This victory is a great credit to Duncan Black and everyone who moved a minority opinion in the corridors of power in the Democratic Party into the mainstream.

(emphasis mine)

Obama was dragged kicking and screaming into this.  So is Hillary Clinton.

He has seen cutting Social Security as a major legacy goal since he entered office in 2009: He thought could show himself reaching across the aisle if he could ground the proverbial “3rd rail” of American politics.

Thankfully, he was foiled by the Teabaggers in Congress, just as Bill Clinton effort to privatize Social Security was foiled by Gingrich’s impeachment efforts in the late 1990s.

Duncan Black has done this country a service by short-circuiting the efforts of the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party to divert money from retirees unto the the pockets of the banksters.