Preamble We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justi

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

WHEN WILL CAPITALISM END

  Summary paragraph of Daniel Lubin's' article in The Nation:

We could read this as a renunciation of Hobsbawm’s old cause. But he doesn’t say that the capitalist/socialist dichotomy is useless; he says that it’s “political rather than analytical.” In other words, there’s no objective set of categories to tell us where one ends and the other begins, for any categorization is already implicated in concrete political struggles, and its precise content will change according to their contours. This doesn’t mean that we must renounce aspirations of ending capitalism. But it does mean that the bare aspiration of doing so still leaves us with a final question: What exactly do we want to end?

By Daniel Luban (Yale) in The Nation

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/francesco-boldizzoni-foretelling-end-capitalism/

WHEN WILL CAPITALISM END?

 Summary paragraph of Daniel Lubin's' article in The Nation:

We could read this as a renunciation of Hobsbawm’s old cause. But he doesn’t say that the capitalist/socialist dichotomy is useless; he says that it’s “political rather than analytical.” In other words, there’s no objective set of categories to tell us where one ends and the other begins, for any categorization is already implicated in concrete political struggles, and its precise content will change according to their contours. This doesn’t mean that we must renounce aspirations of ending capitalism. But it does mean that the bare aspiration of doing so still leaves us with a final question: What exactly do we want to end?

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/francesco-boldizzoni-foretelling-end-capitalism/

Thursday, January 21, 2021

   


The Bipartisan Neoliberal Regime Is No Alternative to Trumpism and the Far-Right

The first reason for this crisis is that the US political system is not a "democracy" at all, but rather an oligarchy run by the unchecked power of corporate bribery.

An excerpt from this article;

The left has portrayed Trump's attempt to undermine the election as an aberration from the norms of American democracy. His claims of mail-in voter fraud have been widely debunked as false. Taken in isolation, Trump's actions seem to be a deranged conspiracy designed to undermine the will of the people. However, Trump's actions did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they are a symptom of a deeper crisis in electoral politics that has been growing for several years.

The first reason for this crisis is that the US political system is not a "democracy" at all, but rather an oligarchy run by the unchecked power of corporate bribery. A 2014 Princeton study, for example, found that ordinary working people have virtually no say in government decisions.

A second reason for the political crisis is the Electoral College, which violates the basic democratic principle of "one person, one vote," and is deeply unpopular. In the past 20 years alone, the Electoral College resulted in two presidential candidates being elected despite losing the popular vote.

Trump's attempts to overturn the election, then, cannot be divorced from the broader crisis of the US political system and the Democratic establishment's subtle (but more successful!) efforts at undermining democracy.

But perhaps the most salient reason for the crisis is the electoral fraud committed by the Democratic Party establishment in recent primary campaigns. 

In 2016, the Clinton campaign relied on "Super Delegates" and other undemocratic maneuvers to rig the election against her opponent: Bernie Sanders. Then, the Democrats further undermined the general election by peddling the conspiracy that Trump was "installed" into power by Russia. The dirty tricks continued in the 2020 primaries, where the establishment candidates orchestrated a coup on Super Tuesday to secure the nomination for Biden. This was followed by the removal of Green Party candidatesfrom the ballots in several key states.

Trump's attempts to overturn the election, then, cannot be divorced from the broader crisis of the US political system and the Democratic establishment's subtle (but more successful!) efforts at undermining democracy.

Democrats can remove Trump from office. Big Tech can ban him from their platforms. And Trump's supporters can be arrested on domestic terrorism charges. But these actions only address the symptoms and leave the underlying disease unchecked.

As long as the bipartisan neoliberal consensus remains in place, far-right political violence and instability will continue to fester.”

Jonathan Rich is a PhD student in Sociology at University of California, Riverside. He teaches at Grossmont Community College in San Diego, and he is a member of the American Federation of Teachers local 1931.

From Penqin books

ABOUT THE SYSTEM

From the bestselling author of Saving Capitalism and The Common Good, comes an urgent analysis of how the “rigged” systems of American politics and power operate, how this status quo came to be, and how average citizens can enact change.

Millions of Americans have lost confidence in our political and economic system. With the characteristic clarity and passion that has made him a central civil voice, Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install an elite oligarchy, eviscerate the middle class, and undermine democracy. Using Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase as an example, Reich exposes how those at the top propagate myths about meritocracy, national competitiveness, corporate social responsibility, and the “free market” to distract most Americans from their accumulation of extraordinary wealth and power. They have chosen to uphold self-serving policies that line their own pockets and benefit their bottom line. Reich’s objective is not to foster cynicism, but rather to demystify the system so that we might instill fundamental change and demand that democracy works for the majority once again.

Video of Reich discussing The System


ABOUT DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS\

Robert Reich

Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award
Winner of the 
Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
The Nation‘s “Most Valuable Book”

“[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right.”
—The Atlantic
 
“This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of 
Democracy in Chains. . . . If you’re worried about what all this means for America’s future, you should be.”—NPR
 
An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution.

Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.

In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. 

Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy. 

Without Buchanan’s ideas and Koch’s money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.

Graphic of Koch's money far-reaching network: KOCHTTOPOLUS






Saturday, November 3, 2018

POST COURSE QUOTES, LINKS, AND COMMENTS

As I find new material of interest, I will be posting them.

The Socialist Manifesto by Bhaskar Sunkara.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/5/14/18528722/socialist-manifesto-bhaskar-sunkara-liberalism

More on the Powell Memo and its effects:

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/how-this-1971-memo-from-a-conservative-supreme-court-justice-infiltrated-every-institution-in-us-society-and-hoodwinked-american-citizens/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=219

The Oakland Teachers Strike Isn’t Just a Walk Out—It’s a Direct Challenge to Neoliberalism

BY LOIS WEINER

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21768/oakland_teachers_strike_neoliberalism_capitalism?link_id=9&can_id=7c304174349c626280cea6bc287b4a0d&source=email-how-third-way-democrats-could-get-trump-re-elected-what-aoc-and-shirley-chisholm-have-in-common&email_referrer=email_503743&email_subject=how-third-way-democrats-could-get-trump-re-elected-what-aoc-and-shirley-chisholm-have-in-common

Big Banks Need Fixing before Next Crash
https://www.facebook.com/moveon/videos/355843578515786/

Student Loan Justice, a national grassroots lobby group, is attempting to build this movement by pushing for robust legislation to return bankruptcy protections to borrowers. The group has active chapters in almost every state, with members directly lobbying their local representatives to sign on as co-sponsors to HR 2366. Activists are building a supportive community for struggling borrowers through political agitation, local engagement, storytelling, and by spreading a courageous message of hope that may embolden traumatized borrowers to come forward and unite.

From <https://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/ending-the-secrecy-of-the-student-debt-crisis-20180905?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=YTW_20180907&utm_content=YTW_20180907+CID_32c6565284282a8e2f32c4d5980a3f3c&utm_source=CM&utm_term=Ending%20the%20Secrecy%20of%20the%20Student%20Debt%20Crisis>



“Clearly US capitalism failed in providing what it promised,” says Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, referring to the benefits delivered by truly competitive markets. “Either we fix capitalism to provide what it promised, or we might end up losing capitalism or ... democracy, or maybe both at the same time.”


From <https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2018/1011/Faces-of-a-new-capitalism-How-Millennials-are-embracing-socialist-values?link_id=34&can_id=7c304174349c626280cea6bc287b4a0d&source=email-building-worker-co-ops-from-prison-a-socap18-recap-and-just-transition-in-spain&email_referrer=email_446016&email_subject=building-worker-co-ops-from-prison-a-socap18-recap-and-just-transition-in-spain

https://www.c-span.org/video/?440037-1/how-democracies-die

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_dkEgNGpzY

There are tons of fixes in this plan, from giant reforms to small tweaks and everything in between, but it rests on six big ideas:

1. Padlock the revolving door between big business and government.

Right now, Goldman Sachs has so many former employees in the Trump administration that they could open up a new branch. They’ve given obscene bonuses and payouts to executives like Gary Cohn to go work on the inside and stick taxpayers with a massive corporate tax cut. We need to make sure government works for the people, not for officials’ previous and future employers.

2. Stop public officials from using their government position to pad their own pockets and help out their former employers.

That starts at the very top – with the President of the United States. Presidents shouldn’t own companies while they’re running the country; and they should disclose their financial interests to the public. But we shouldn’t stop there. Members of Congress and leaders and high-level executive branch officials shouldn’t own and trade individual stocks – whose value they could influence with their policy decisions.

3. End lobbying as we know it.

Armies of corporate influence-peddlers flood the halls of Congress every day, but many aren’t even required to register as lobbyists. Let’s start by fixing the crummy definition of a lobbyist. And we should shine a light on ALL influence-peddling in Washington – and stop lobbyists from trading money for government favors. We can go even further by placing a lifetime ban on lobbying by high-ranking ex-officials like former members of Congress and Cabinet Secretaries.

4. Stop corporations from working in the shadows to undermine public interest rules.

Make federal agencies work for the public – not powerful industries like big oil. We can start by ending the practice of corporate bigwigs paying experts to write sham studies designed to prevent agencies from writing strong public interest rules. If conflicted studies don’t meet minimum scientific standards, agencies shouldn’t be required to consider them. And let’s empower the public to make sure that companies can’t break the rules and agencies aren’t asleep at the wheel.

5. Restore public faith in our courts and give ordinary people a fair shake.

No one should have to defend themselves in front of federal judges with conflicts of interest. We can stop corporate interests from funding fancy junkets for judges. We can put tough ethical standards in place. And we can make it easier for everyone to get their day in court.

6. Hire a new independent sheriff to police corruption.

They’ll watch over Washington like a hawk and swoop in to strike back against corruption – wherever and whenever it happens.

Here’s the bottom line: Washington should work for you even if you can’t afford to hire an army of lawyers and lobbyists.

Putting government on the side of working Americans is why I’m in this fight. That’s why I ran for Senate – even though I never in a zillion years thought I was going to run for public office.

I didn’t go to Washington to smile, nod, and write laws to help powerful people who could write big checks. No – I went to Washington to be the best Senator that money can’t buy.

We’ve got to fight corruption. It’s the only way we’ll get government to stop the big banks from wrecking our economy again, lower the costs of prescription drugs, get student debt under control, and level the playing field for working families.


From <https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/28/1791427/-It-s-time-to-end-corruption-in-Washington?detail=emaildkre

Friday, October 12, 2018

FINAL CLASS SIX _ PERSONAL INTERESTS

If we have time, I plan to discuss the role of money.
Here are some links:

OUR INDEFENSIBLE TAX SYSTEM
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/QgrcJHsbgZLzrtTqGwPKDtGXMBfTMdxxTZQ?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1

THE MACROECONOMIC EFFECTS OF STUDENT DEBT CANCELLATION
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/rpr_2_6.pdf?link_id=2&can_id=7c304174349c626280cea6bc287b4a0d&source=email-free-college-now&email_referrer=email_435083&email_subject=free-college-now

The chart shows personal earning  are actually down



THE AMERICAN ECONOMY IS RIGGED

THE WORLD BANK

WHO CONTROLS OUR MONEY


Monday, October 8, 2018

NOTES FOR CLASS FIVE - SOLUTIONS

For our last session, we will all share ideas that we personally think are valuable. About 15 minutes including a little time for questions and comments will be about average. If you wish visuals or for me to make copies, let me know.

Some slides we did not have a chance to see:



Since the Koch Brothers ('Dark Money") are so influential, I thought you MIGHT like to watch:



Saturday, September 29, 2018

NOTES FOR CLASS FOUR

We will be looking at more problems with Neoliberalism and some solutions. It is time to get ready to choose the topic you wish to discuss with the class. It need not be any we discussed with the class or you may wish to dig deeper on one of the topics we discussed. More information is on the assignment page.

You might like to click on: https://opportunityatlas.org/