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When Trump refers to cases, he is referring to the tragedies suffered by 火箭加速器, people to whose welfare he is explicitly hostile. It is well-known that people of color have been more stricken with the virus, on average. When Trump says more testing brings more cases, he means that more testing imposes a greater communal obligation on the country by revealing more black and brown people requiring medical care, more absorption of hospital capacity, and often depending on subsidies from the government.
Of course, in absolute terms, more white people are
getting sick and dying. But as in the debates on poverty, welfare, or food stamps,
this reality gets erased, not least by white people at risk themselves.
Susceptibility to the virus due to benighted financial circumstances, as with
poverty, is a source of shame that needs to be glossed over. The pretense of
poverty or the virus being a racial matter helps to insulate the Administration
from criticism within its own racist constituencies.
At this writing, in the U.S. there are 157,000 recorded fatalities, with an end nowhere in sight. Without doubt, the actual total is higher, but 157,000 should be quite enough to commend the worst fate possible for our current overlords.
The president’s more recent babbling about saving the
suburbs testifies to his dependence on racial politics. And if that isn’t
enough, we also have the more recent story of political calculations within the
White House associated with the idiot-child Jared Kushner that the virus was
mostly a blue state problem that could be discounted in hopes of a more rapid
economic recovery.
It is impossible to imagine a U.S. regime deserving of
a worse fate than the current one. There is no comparison to Ronald Reagan or
George Bush. Suggestions to the contrary reflect profound ignorance. To be
sure, previous presidents have visited disastrous harm on other nations, as
well as on the original, indigenous populations of the Americas. Under current
circumstances, however, these comparisons are meaningless since there is no
telling what calamities lie before us. The U.S. is not merely a danger to
itself. It is a threat to the world.
The current danger can be tied to two types of error
on the part of some on the left. The obvious one is any ghost of an implication
that Joe Biden would be no better than Trump. We might ask, is there any
fatality count prior to the election that would lead one to reconsider this
premise, assuming 157,000 is not enough?
What is a public good? It is a good or service that
can be shared without any reduction in a given individual’s use. If the
government sends you $10 that you spend for personal consumption, nobody else
benefits. The money could be subdivided into nickels, but the same stricture
applies. But the extent to which that money is devoted to something that
benefits many persons at the same time ‘supercharges’ the spending power of the
government.
The preeminent public good today is public health.
Free vaccines and treatments benefit the community as a whole, as do
restrictions on behavior and regulation of commerce that reduce the incidence
of the virus. Public goods equalize well-being by raising the floor of
consumption, by expanding collective consumption.
Not a few on the left have become infatuated with
schemes such as Universal Basic Income. Its other myriad deficiencies aside, no
UBI can substitute for public goods. Only the very wealthy can afford to forego
the benefits of public services and facilities, though even they are not
entirely immune. Rich people have contracted and died from the virus too.
The obsession with cash is a surrender to
commodification, a devolution from even a basic idea of communal well-being.
Socialism means a lot more than equalization of personal money incomes.
youtube进加速器
Posted on by MaxSpeak
I would split the agenda into macro and micro pieces. Macro includes over-arching efforts in social transformation. Micro policies are aimed narrowly at policing.
In the Macro category, we could start with the agenda
of the Movement 4 Black Lives
coalition (M4BL), which includes 火箭加速器官网 (BLM) proper (but not Deray McKesson). Their
program is mainline democratic-socialist, or if you like, social-democratic
(there is really no difference, AFAIAC). Where it would differ from, say, the
platform of Bernie Sanders is the inclusion of pointedly anti-racist planks,
such as Reparations and “End the War on Black People.”
I’ve
written critically about Reparations in the past and don’t
need to rehash that here. The rest of the M4BL platform is broad enough to
command wide support.
The flip side of “defund” is that it tends to be
reduced to “cut the police budget.” No doubt some of that money could be
devoted to better purposes, but it doesn’t say much about changes in police
practices. In that sense, it isn’t all that radical.
Politicians are skilled at moving money around in a way that looks like changes have been made, while underneath it all, the result is what the pols wanted to do anyway. One can only verify a change in a government budget by reference to an unobservable counterfactual, which requires analysis not easily conducted by the lay public.
There’s nothing wrong with a radical, vague slogan, as
far as street agitation is concerned. And if you drill down into the details
of, say, M4BL’s “End
the War on Black People,” there are all sorts of things
worthy of support. I’d say the challenge is to surface the most important bits,
so that when people hear “Defund the police,” they know what the next steps should
be.
Imagine that in response to huge protests, a local
government convenes a task force to develop specific proposals. They could all
agree to “end the war on black people.” But where would it go from there? In Jesse
Jackson’s terminology, the “tree-shakers” make such meetings possible. But we
need “jelly-makers” to Get. Shit. Done.
What to do? Most broadly, we need a major shift in the
balance of resources from police to social services, or as M4BL says, “Invest
in Care, Not Cops.” Much of what police waste time in now
could be done more intelligently and more humanely by social workers,
mediators, counselors, and others. We don’t need traffic cops to be armed to
the teeth. We could also lighten the burden on police by decriminalizing more,
if not all, drug offenses. We could de-incentivize arrests and
citation-writing, especially for completely non-criminal acts, such as failing
to pay a parking ticket.
Secondly, political leaders should command police to
focus on public safety, not counterinsurgency. There is no reason to expend
vast amounts of manpower herding around crowds of peaceful demonstrators. There
is no reason to use violence against someone doing nothing more than blocking
traffic.
Then there are some possibilities in the micro bucket.
Here the “8cantwait”
menu provided by Campaign
Zero
and Deray McKesson is more relevant, though it should be noted that M4BL has loads
of fairly specific proposals as well.
I’d like to note that in the mainstream media,
McKesson is commonly associated with Black Lives Matter. He’s been a guest on
‘Oprah.’ He is networked into the DNC. In 2016, he
waltzed into Baltimore thinking that, with a bundle of tech
and celebrity money, he could be elected mayor. He ended up finishing sixth in
the primary. He is also reviled by BLM supporters on Twitter for appropriation
of the protests’ energy.
The fact is that BLM and M4BL are separate
organizations that do not include McKesson or Campaign Zero. BLM is a real
organization with members, chapters,
and leadership. Campaign Zero appears to be Deray and a handful of
collaborators, more like a small think tank than a movement group.
They are all contending for brand ownership. They are
all the beneficiaries of a new tidal wave of money from corporations and woke
celebrities. That notwithstanding, their proposals deserve serious
consideration. Their standing as leaders of the Revolution is a different
matter.
There are definitely things to like in the #8cantwait
litany, but also some items that invite ridicule (“Require officers to give a
verbal warning in all situations before using deadly force.”—shades of Joe
Biden). I’ve said before that much of it depends on police self-regulation,
which begs the question of who will police the police. Elsewhere, Campaign Zero
has spoken of civilian review boards, my own preference for an immediate,
narrow demand.
If we can get effective governance of the police, by
means of CRBs or otherwise, then all the suggestions in #8cantwait and M4BL become
more salient. As long as police are out of control, we will have a problem.
Defund Tha Police? (draft)
Posted on by MaxSpeak
I’m no expert on criminal justice, but that never
stops anybody else from holding forth, so here goes. I did have a career in
public policy, so I do think I have a few words of wisdom to impart. I’m also
thinking aloud, since these issues are not cut and dried, as far as I’m
concerned. As Marx (Groucho) said, “These are my views, if you don’t like them
I have others.” Feedback is welcome.
First we have to back up a bit. Do we think we are
going to smash the capitalist state? If we do, I’m afraid we are drunk. As long
as there is a State, it will have a police force, or under current
circumstances, several police forces. Not surprisingly, these police forces
will be obliged to preserve the power of the State.
Next question, do we think the State is an
irremediable institution impervious to reform? If we do, we can simply stop
reading now. We are doomed. But like the joke about the man who responds to a
dire medical diagnosis by resolving to find a different doctor, we could choose
to begin with different presumptions.
A more optimistic view is that the State is a contested field. It can do both good and bad things. The idea that it cannot possibly do anything good is usually cast in illogical terms, and usually by people with a weak grasp of the details of policy. If for instance you are moved to denounce some new act of commission or omission by the State, I’m afraid you are stuck with the idea that constructive reform is indeed possible. After all, if you are outraged by some new, terrible development, it means that ex ante, things were somewhat better, or less bad.
What Lenin referred to as special bodies of armed men
are surely one of the tougher nuts to crack, among other State institutions and
policies. Unlike Lenin, we are not confronting a czar, at least not yet. In the
interest of honoring #BlackLivesMatter, we should be interested in measures
that are both effective and practical. In that spirit, I want to try to sort
out the proposals that are floating around right now.
In one corner is the slick 火箭加速器 安卓 官网 campaign promoted by Campaign Zero, under the leadership of Deray McKesson. This is often identified as a Black Lives Matter project, and McKesson has claimed to be a leader of BLM. The truth is that Black Lives Matter is a wholly separate organization that does not overlap with Campaign Zero.
Unfortunately, to some extent the protests have gravitated to a polar opposite of Campaign Zero, an abolitionist “defund” stance. Now I understand that can be an abbreviation for some kind of radical restructuring of policing, or a kind of opening bid to generate political pressure. We could reduce police budgets and allocate the funds for other purposes. It’s all good.
“Defund” does not necessarily mean a fantasy world
without any police, but it does beg the question of alternatives. What it would
look like is often left to the imagination, and there are voices
literally calling for zero police. After all, abolition is an entirely negative
position. Absent some more substantive proposal, the audience for this slogan
is likely to default to a literal translation, namely that we will not have a
police force.
That’s just ridiculous. It’s a dead end. It will never
happen. People can keep yelling it, but eventually the protests will thin out.
People have lives to get back to. There is burn-out. Police enforcement
magnifies the attrition, in the form of physical injury and legal entanglement.
One angle to keep in mind, reminiscent of my younger
years, is that the intensity of the moment drives one to seek deep, radical
explanations. Back in the day, the twin evils of the Vietnam War and racism
drove students like myself to hackneyed vintages of Marxism-Leninism. A tough
problem required a tough solution. Today we see a tendency to reject reforms with
tortured arguments that they are not sufficiently radical.
So in the other corner, a prime example of the desire for ruthless criticism, which I share, is this well-circulated graphic. Its authors are obscure, if not anonymous. The basic frame for criticism is the above-cited principle of abolition. Reforms must reduce the power of the police, regarding which “defund” is the signifier. The desired alternatives are reforms that challenge the legitimacy of policing itself. This is a horse of a different color.
I’ve also a jaundiced view of ideas that rely on what
could be called self-regulation of police behavior, like an honor system, such
as the demand for body cams. This requires that officers actually turn their
body cams on, or leave them on during times when they have a substantial
interest in turning them off. Another is the plea to show badges not covered by
tape to prevent their identification.
In principle the government can discipline police who failed to self-regulate. In practice this is difficult. Police are a political power unto themselves. They can make life difficult for citizens and business owners. When they unionize, their power is enhanced. When one or a few screw up, the rest rally in support.
We ought not neglect low-hanging fruit – changes that
are simple and easy to verify. For instance, deprive the police of military
equipment that has no place in the community. Problem is, this has little practical
import. Police brutality is not committed by fancy equipment, but by means of
the most primitive of instruments – the billy club. The exception is weapons of
chemical warfare. Removing that from the police arsenal would be welcome and is
simple enough to implement.
The most relevant policy neglected in the protests is
a demand for institutions capable of policing the police, what used to be
called civilian review boards (CRB). In my ideal set-up, these boards would
command the internal affairs division of the police department and have the
power to investigate, discipline, fire, arrest, and prosecute police officers
guilty of misconduct.
Finally, there is the matter of policy, which goes to
whom we elect to public office. Over the past few weeks, a wide assortment of
liberal mayors, both black and white, have been exposed as either incapable or
unwilling to direct their police forces to focus on public safety, rather than counterinsurgency.
In other words, if less police manpower was wasted on the pointless task of
moving around large crowds of law-abiding demonstrators, they could be deployed
to prevent property damage.
The failure of local governments in this regard is mystifying. You might say they need to demonstrate the power of Capital to brutalize the population, to assert control, or ‘domination,’ as the president demands. I’m skeptical. Or perhaps police forces in conditions of mass upsurge are simply impossible for their elected bosses to control. I don’t have a better explanation. Maybe you do.
In any case there is a lot of good that could be done,
by ongoing mobilization. Pressure works, and the State will react. Its
legitimacy, which underlies the consent of the governed, is in worse shape than
ever before. Even the Amish have come out.
The failure of a medley of liberal mayors opens up a new
political space, but to fill it, a new movement needs organization and an
appealing program that goes beyond three-word slogans. Thus far the local BLM
agitation has a way to go in this regard. A demand to defund the police might
fill a town square, but it will not win an election. In the vacuum, the danger
is that an #8cantwait posture of noodling with reforms and herding people back
to supporting lackluster Democratic politicians will coopt protest energy and stave
off more compelling solutions.
The new political opening places a new burden on the
opposition. It will have to get more specific about positive reforms and self-avowed
reformers. After all, some of the failing mayors themselves came up as critics
of police misconduct. Now more than ever, there is potential for progressive
electoral campaigns, founded on candidates who make hard commitments to
reforms. In this context, the Democratic Socialists of America, to which I
belong (but do not speak for), could play a crucial role.
An account of the right way for DSA to engage the agitation, from my standpoint, is 小火箭加速器官网. I am not referring to the demands themselves, which smack a bit too much of the abolitionist error discussed above. The two key takeaways for me are: 1) cooperate with local leadership of the protests, and do not pretend to be leading them, unless there really is no other leadership; 2) be clearly identified as DSA, with banners if possible, and do not be shy about inviting others to learn more about DSA (literal recruiting on the spot would be ham-handed).
We should not require candidates to declare themselves
socialists; such affirmations are as easily abandoned as anything else. But we
can take steps to cement them into progressive positions. The key disciplining
mechanism is the establishment of independent progressive organization, which
can make credible threats to withdraw political support when necessary. An
added source of flexibility is that third party candidacies are more feasible
at the local level. There is not as much of a penalty if a left campaign causes
a centrist to lose to a right-wing candidate. We can survive conservative
mayors. Surviving another four years of Trump is altogether a different thing.
In general, the objective should be to create something
durable out of the current, unprecedented upsurge. Very few such opportunities
present themselves. It would be a tragedy to let one pass by, not least considering
the burgeoning, multiple crises with which we are now confronted.
The National Political Committee (NPC) of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which I am a member (DSA, not its NPC), has voted 13 to 4, 小火箭加速器官网 the following resolution:
“Should DSA ask members in swing
states to consider voting for Biden?”
I joined DSA after leaving the Federal government in
2017, enthused by the wave of support for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016.
It seemed well-positioned to take that wave forward into something enduring. My
optimism was elevated by the emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “the
squad.” This sort of political success was associated with the growth of DSA to
an organization of over 60,000. There had been nothing like it on the left for
decades.
It should not have been surprising that such growth also attracted those to the left of DSA. Some were like me, resigned to the impossibility of revolutionary transformation, looking for constructive, realistic alternatives with some promise of winning incremental, progressive reforms. In our flaming youth, DSA’s entrapment in Democratic Party politics was viewed as bankrupt, and DSA leaders like Michael Harrington viewed with contempt.
It cost decades of unproductive activism and
disappointment, but eventually it became clear that the old DSA view is now, if
it wasn’t always, the best of a bad set of political options. The political rules
in the U.S. render third parties impractical, and the social reality makes
socialist revolution impossible.
Like these folks, who are mostly young, my twenty-year
old self wouldn’t have listened to me today either. It was great to know
everything. The recent appeal
by veterans of Students for a Democratic Society was met with scorn. You could
reanimate Gene Debs or V.I. Lenin and they would get the same reaction.
Scolding doesn’t work.
An article in Politico
from December 2023 detailed the shape of Joe Biden’s inner circle or ‘brain
trust.’ This claque stinks to high heaven. The story makes it clear that
absolutely nothing new will come out of his Administration, aside from the
non-trivial facts that it will dethrone a neofascist regime, will probably shore
up the right to vote (for its own sake, if no other’s), and will hopefully alleviate
the impact of the current pandemic.
The argument that renunciation of progressive initiatives by a Biden Presidency paves the way for the next, worse version of Trump has merit. But much more so does a second Trump term, given its likely damage to our surviving democratic institutions. The DSA proclamations may have little electoral impact, but the course of the U.S. left will matter for resistance to fascism, as well as progress beyond neoliberalism.
I want to acknowledge that at the local level, DSA
people are doing many useful things, including supporting viable progressive
electoral campaigns. I am not announcing my resignation – nobody would care, obviously
– nor would I urge anyone else to leave. Quite the contrary, by all means, join
DSA and find some congenial activist project. They have many. Only then would
you have any chance of influencing the trend of the organization.
These enragees are apparently unaware of the differences that Trump, Obama, and Biden have brought to actual policymaking. For instance, there is a difference between allowing DACA people to stay in the U.S., which Obama did, and the threat to deport them, which could not be more obvious, coming from the Trump White House. Don’t they know? There are many such examples. Speculation about Hillary or Biden wanting to go to war with Russia or whoever is not a serious response.
I am not going to bother posting this on any DSA
forum, because I know the responses will be mostly inarticulate “LOLs” and “you
condone rape.” It’s not worth my time. We need a political formation focused on
fighting fascism as well as promoting progressive reforms. The fascist threat will
not disappear after a Biden victory. There is no real space inside of DSA to promote
such a view, but we could hope that DSA would migrate to it as its importance
and popular support became more obvious. The cure for left entrism is to build
something big enough to dissolve the irritants.
Class Always Tells
Posted on by MaxSpeak
At the risk of exploiting unforeseeable turns of events to validate all my priors, I want to argue that the unfolding of the 2023 Democratic primaries does not invalidate a class-based approach to politics. The exponent of this notion whom I want to criticize is 小火箭加速器 in “Why Bernie Sanders Failed.”
His basic argument is that the Sanders’ campaign
strategy rested on two premises that didn’t prove out. One was to ground the
appeal to the working class and youth, which fell flat because black voters
supported Biden, white workers who flirted with Bernie in 2016 are now for Biden
or Trump, and youth didn’t turn out.
The normal reason to be interested in politics is out
of an interest in policy outcomes. How will this candidate affect my life. Are
her policies good or bad for the country. So the first question ought to be,
what outcome should we prefer?
The horserace commentary seldom takes that concern as
a point of departure, perhaps on the grounds that it reflects a bias. I would
suggest that a neglect of policy is also a bias. Choose your poison.
There is widespread acknowledgment that Sanders’
proposals are popular, well beyond the boundaries of his actual electoral
showings. If the usual warnings about climate change are taken seriously, then
his proposals are not merely nice to have, but vital to the future of humanity.
Beauchamp conflates a vote for Biden not merely with a rejection of Sanders’
proposals, but with a flight from material interest.
A different conclusion is that voters interpreted
their class interest more broadly, and more pragmatically, than with support
for Medicare For All, etc. In other words, they could have concluded that
because Biden is the most electable of alternatives on offer, a vote for Biden
was the best guarantor of their class interest. One could disagree with that
reasoning, but it makes perfect sense, as far as it goes. Your class-obsessed author
happens to think a second Trump term will create more irreversible damage and
constitute a harbinger of a more open fascism. Defeating fascism is a
legitimate, class-based interest too. The underlying sentiment is not
necessarily detected from the responses to survey questions that ask, “What is
more important, beating Trump or free college?” The refusal of Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA), of which I’m a member, to endorse the only
candidate who can prevent a second Trump, namely Joe Biden, is a travesty.
One could make similar arguments when it comes to
identity or party affiliation.
I’m not the person to explain African Americans to
anyone, but it seems reasonable to suspect that Trump is viewed as profoundly
inimical to black material interests, over and above his class warfare. Trump
screws the working class, but there’s an extra turn of the screw for
minorities. Nor does it take a genius in a minority group to realize that
political power depends on alliances, which points back to electability and
class consciousness. In other words, African Americans understand they have
some common economic interests with a broader group – the working class, so
they see the Democratic Party as most deserving of their support.
When it comes to women, anyone who does not think
reproductive rights are unrelated to material interests just needs to fall
back. As for racial or religious minorities, a pragmatic choice should not be
conflated with an indifference to class.
It is true that minorities and women may perceive a
material interest that is often not well-served by a narrow class-oriented
politics. The dilemma is that there is no viable, alternative way to pursue
that interest, other than accepting the limited rewards that come from
Democratic Party rule. Support for an often disappointing alternative is
somewhat compensated for by hopes of progress, and indeed progress –
incremental, positive reforms – are often observed.
When it comes to party, of course Sanders has always
based his appeal on not being a Democrat. But why are Biden voters Democrats in
the first place? Is it possibly out of some conception of their class interest?
I don’t think one can reject this possibility out of hand, or legitimately
ignore it altogether, as Beauchamp does.
Another angle of criticism of Sanders is the claim
that voters do not act on policy, so a programmatic campaign lacks the juice
for voter appeal. This could be read as another knock on class politics, but
here again a preference for an anodyne appeal based on ‘values’ or warm
fuzzies, a performance rather than a platform (Hi, Senator Booker!), is not a
neutral policy stance. By foregoing policy commitments, we simply cede
decision-making flexibility to the powers that be.
I do think the Sanders movement is hampered by some misconceptions
and biases.
One goes to a running argument I’ve had with
anti-Sanders voices complaining that he failed to drop out in 2016 or this year
when it became obvious he could not be nominated. My point was that the Sanders
campaign is a movement, not a mere electoral vehicle. It’s raison d’etre is to
be self-sustaining, indefinitely. No letting up, no permanent victories. A
primary campaign is just another opportunity to preach the gospel, one that some
on the left discount to their disadvantage.
It is possible to continue to campaign, even compete
with Joe Biden, without diminishing his chances in November. In fact, I would
argue that a continued campaign could enhance those chances, providing it
focuses its fire on Trump. If I was Sanders, I would focus on the locales where
I had the best chance of turning non-voters or Trump voters into Democratic
voters.
Civil criticism of Biden is conducive to party unity
and heightens the contrast with the current, barbaric administration. The
contrast also tends to debunk likely Republican charges that Biden is some kind
of crypto-socialist. Moreover, the other extreme of Bernie-or-nobody reduces
the prospects for future contenders from the left for Democratic Party
nominations. You can’t expect to be welcomed to compete within the party if you
walk away after a defeat. Nobody wants to play heads-I-win/tails-you-lose.
Ironically the campaign itself may have lost sight of
this, its fundamental mission. One factor is its failure to discipline the
ranks of its most toxic supporters, which diminishes prospects in November, as
well as for the indefinite future. I happen to think that factor is highly
overblown, but it is not utterly without significance.
The other was the reported belief that Sanders could
win the nomination if he could beat the other candidates one-on-one with
pluralities of votes, what we could call a thirty percent strategy.
I go back to the question, what do we want? If it’s
ultimately the Sanders platform, the working class is the logical vehicle. It
would be foolish to fail to appeal to all who would benefit from one’s
proposals.
There has been an argument that racism has been indelibly
ingrained in white people since the dawn of America, but in one sense that is
beside the point. The nature and doings of racism are shaped by the social and
economic environment. There have been periods when class power reduced the
salience of race. In particular, the industrial union movement in the 1930s,
which included not a few profoundly racist white workers, wreaked enormous,
positive changes that benefitted the entire working class. Clearly those
benefits were not uniform across racial lines, but they left everyone better
off.
In more recent years, the Jesse Jackson campaign
resonated with a noticeable slice of the white working class, and we also have
stories about Obama-to-Trump voters. Given the closeness of the 2016 election,
it only requires the defection of a slender margin of such Trump voters to
swing the outcome to the Democrats.
The usual alternative proposed to class politics is an
appeal to ‘the suburbs.’ This is a bit of a misnomer. Of course, there are working
class suburbs. What’s really in question is politics without much of a redistributive
edge. A ‘suburban strategy’ is just another way to evade class issues, an
evasion that is equivalent to an anti-working-class posture. There is no
neutrality in this dimension. You’re always on one side or the other.
A common attack on Sanders was his neglect of race and
gender. While he is fair game for that criticism, when the choice was between
him and Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, any hint of a relative shortcoming on
issues of race is ridiculous. There was more grist for this mill in the case of
gender, but only in comparison to Clinton.
It remains the case that removing the Trump
Administration is a necessary condition for progress, since progress requires
survival. Another four years of Trump further erodes voting rights, especially
for youth and minorities, fills out the Federal judiciary with right-wing
ideologues, and removes all regulatory constraints on capitalist predation. In
that scenario, survival, much less opportunities for our revolution, look
unlikely.
All indications are that the Sanders movement, the
U.S. social-democratic movement, will keep banging away on its class program.
It has obviously gotten the message that it needs better roots in African
American communities, better turnout among youth, and more difficult work
cracking the white working class.
Coming of age in the 60s, my awakening to the
country’s racist and imperialist moorings led me to think a revolution was not
just urgent, but because it was urgent, it would also be possible in a
relatively short time. The former does not imply the latter.
Lost in the history of the New Left, a wise woman once
said something to the effect, “We had convinced ourselves we would make a
revolution. But revolutions are not made. They are rare events.” Practical possibilities
do not follow from moral imperatives.
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I ought to get my wonk on and write about the priority of bolstering state and local government resources, since I’ve worked on this intermittently since the 80s. This crisis will blow a huge hole in state government budgets, due to increased expenses and greatly reduced revenues. When I was at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), I worked with the group that designed the 火箭龟加速器_火箭龟加速器官方版下载 - 网络加速 - 非凡软件站:2021-6-10 · 火箭龟加速器是一款针对网络、网站、web、网游、视频、下载等进行加速的免费加速器软件;可伍让电信,网通,铁通,广电,教育网等全国所有运营商的用户互访互通,适合个人,网吧,伋业使用火箭龟网络加速器将伍其稳定的性能,独具匠心的设计,使您真正体验到网络冲浪的快感,并伴您度过 ... to aid the states. I was in 火箭加速器下载官网.
Federal efforts in this regard were notably
inadequate. The state-local sector suffered a huge loss during the Great
Recession, which meant less money for the full gamut of public services that
people rely upon, and a slower national recovery from the recession. At GAO, we
couldn’t tell Congress how much to spend on aid, but we could suggest the most
efficient way to distribute it.
Ezra Klein once remarked that the Federal government
was like a huge insurance company with an army. I don’t know if that witticism
was original to him. The basic point is that, aside from deploying military
force all over the world, what the Feds mainly do is mail checks to health care
providers (Medicare), seniors and the disabled (Social Security), and state
governments (Medicaid).
Services are delivered by state and local governments.
These governments lack the borrowing and money-printing capacities of the national
government. They are obliged by law and by economic reality to balance their
budgets, at least approximately. They need to keep spending in line with
revenues, in order to convince lenders the government’s loan obligations will
be honored.
An exception to strict budget balance is the practice
of capital budgeting, which allows for long-term borrowing, principally for
capital projects. The ability of governments to borrow, by selling bonds,
hinges on their perceived ability to meet their debt-service obligations. If
their finances are a mess, they must agree to pay higher interest. Borrowing
will cost more. In any event, the scope for this “off-budget” borrowing is
limited.
State laws regarding finance are relevant insofar as
they are forced to rank debt obligations above other spending, even for basic
services like public safety, water, or sanitation. It helps if a capital
project comes with a guaranteed revenue stream, such as the tolls for a bridge.
Those factors are what disciplines state and local budgeting. In a downturn,
state and local governments can only deal with lost revenues by cutting
services.
Years ago, I organized a seminar for a bond expert who noted that although the state government of Illinois was a financial basket-case, its law protected the bonds it sold. Creditors would be paid before anyone else. In this sense, state governments rarely go bankrupt. There are a few cases of local governments going bankrupt. Detroit, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico are notable examples. In extreme circumstances, the local governments are effectively superseded by some kind of control board. The citizens bear the burden of a downturn, in the form of a contraction of vital public services. The creditors are usually made whole.
Less data pertaining to state and local jurisdictions
is available on a timely basis. You can forget anything like Gross Domestic
Product at the state level. There are published numbers, but they involve some
hocus-pocus.
The best option is the local unemployment rate, which
is revised every month. It is widely understood (at least, people think they
understand it), and it is sensitive to local business conditions. It was the
key variable used to make the temporary increase in Medicaid grants sensitive
to state economic conditions.
It isn’t perfect. The monthly state unemployment data
is ‘noisy,’ meaning subject to error. Moreover, a pair of states could have the
same unemployment rate but different levels of personal income or poverty. In
principle, other data would be relevant to allocations, but other data are only
available on an annual basis, and with a lag.
In the fight over recovery act money during the Great
Recession, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia played the heroic, selfless
role. Senator Max Baucus only cared about what was in it for Montana. Certain
Republican Senate staff were most concerned with how to screw California and
New York. There was one in particular, whose name I have forgotten, with
absolutely the worst hair plugs you have ever seen. It looked like it had been
done by a first grader with library paste and dog hair. It was painful to look
at.
For the most recent annual data available, state and
local governments spent $2,364
billion. A ten percent downturn in GDP, right now an
optimistic estimate, would roughly translate to a $236 billion hole in their
budgets. You could double or triple that number to simulate the impact of a 20
or 30 percent fall in GDP.
To some extent, state shortfalls will filter down to
local governments. Services of all types will have to be curtailed. That means
police, fire, corrections, education, sanitation, etc.
The latest Congressional action provides $150 billion
to the states, clearly inadequate, and an unnecessary brake to economic
recovery. At this point, it looks like the money will be distributed on a
straight per-capita basis. It’s the simplest option, which may be encouraged
during an emergency, since it minimizes arguments. More sophisticated designs
are possible, but once politics is involved, it becomes more of a food fight.
With a more enlightened Congress, better technical fixes would be more
feasible.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has noted that the
state aid breaks with usual practice and fails to treat the District of
Columbia like a state. The aid has a floor for states with the lowest
population counts. For no rational reason, the district’s allocation has been
set well below that minimum, even though the district has higher population
counts than several states. It’s a disgrace.
One available pipeline to increase aid, used after the
previous recession, is the Medicaid program, as
the National Governors Association has proposed.
What’s also in store, on top of the $150 billion noted above, is an increase in
Medicaid matching rates for all states. Insofar as Medicaid eligibility
expands, this will be eaten up in increased medical services. The rest is
effectively unrestricted fiscal assistance, not a bad thing.
The advantage of distribution by formula is that it broadcasts
what every state will get, which facilitates planning. It is easy to agree upon
and the mechanisms are already in place, so the money can be moved quickly. The
provision of unrestricted funds in the current moment is justifiable, since it
affords discretion to state governments that are better situated to assess
needs in their own budgets than is the U.S. Congress.
State governments are not always the most solicitous of local needs in urban areas, but we have to go to this war with the system we have. Whether the politics of this struggle will yield a better system for the future remains to be seen.
Killing Us: The Genius of Capitalism
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The title was a phrase that I believe emerged after the 2008 financial meltdown. There was also a book title about a hedge fund that effectively went belly-up but was saved by action of the Federal Reserve. The latter title was “When Genius Failed.” Failure is much in evidence now.
The most recent press conference atrocity had an interesting
exchange between Trump and a reporter about the Defense Production Act. The
president went on a riff about the shortcomings of nationalization. His basic
example was the hypothetical of telling a company to produce ventilators, and “they
have no idea what ventilator is.” This sort of stupidity is killing us, in real
time.
Behind the scenes, it
has been reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been lobbying
against implementation of the DPA. So the Chamber is killing us too. Their
members, not surprisingly, don’t want to be told what to do.
For his part, I imagine the president likes the idea
of dickering with specific companies, which he imagines he is good at, trading
favors. His idea is that business firms will volunteer to produce what is in
short supply. In the fullness of time, they probably will. But that will be too
late, and the cost will be needlessly high. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York
noted that face masks that used to cost 80 cents are now being hawked for
$8.00. This is indeed the genius of capitalism.
The point of nationalization, even if temporary, is to
nail down specific production targets and fair prices. There are undoubtedly business
firms in the U.S. that can produce anything that is in short supply. New York
State seems to be doing it all by itself, if Governor Cuomo is to be believed.
The
Reconstruction Finance Corporation model is relevant here. A firm that
fails to produce what is needed, when it is needed, can be propped up with
loans or grants, or taken over if necessary.
What’s in question here is not planning versus “the
market.” There is no market in any meaningful sense of the word for critical
items. Failure to generate necessary supplies, relying on volunteers, is a plan
in its own right. A very shitty plan. We can do better.
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It’s been said that there are no atheists in foxholes, and more recently, no fiscal conservatives in a recession. In the same spirit, calls for the Federal government to send money are coming from some unlikely quarters.
There are obvious reasons to proceed.
Sending individuals money encourages consumer spending, which supports the employment of those producing and distributing the goods and services which are purchased. This boost to spending alleviates the negative impact of workers’ reduced spending resulting from layoffs and business shut-downs;
An economic slow-down will generate business bankruptcies and investment reductions that will detract from future economic growth and well-being.
Before consorting with strange bedfellows, it is best
to get prior agreement on unorthodox practices
Remedies that have been proposed include expanding the
Earned Income Tax Credit, cutting the payroll tax, and sending individuals
money directly. Aid to business firms or to state and local governments is a
separate can of worms, important but not discussed here.
They are complementary in the sense that families in
the greatest economic distress are also the most likely to spend any Federal
aid. The higher one’s income, the less this crisis is likely to detract from
one’s routine spending. So what could be seen as fair also happens to yield the
biggest ‘bang for the buck.’
This is a little too easy a judgment, however. The
reality is that any Federal aid program will be constrained to some finite
allocation of funds. We can think of reasons to forego any such limitation, but
for political and economic reasons, a ceiling on aggregate aid is likely. That
brings up the issue of targeting by means-testing, something that has become
anathema on the left.
Size matters, but for any given allocation of funds, means-testing
can improve both the spending impact of aid during an economic downturn, and
the fairness of the allocation of funds (meaning those of less means get more).
Size aside, another nostrum is that a universal program
is more politically durable than a means-tested one. Typical examples are
Social Security, as the universal case, and Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC, or popularly, ‘welfare’) as means tested. This is not a good
argument.
Here durability is not an immediate concern. The
priority is to get through the crisis. That aside, Social Security in the first
place is not universal. It requires somebody to have a record of labor
earnings. Moreover, it is more than a universal program. It is social
insurance, the political strength of which rests in great part on its
contributory nature. To be eligible (or for one’s dependents to be eligible),
one must have paid into the program directly, via the payroll tax. People can
say, “Don’t you dare cut my Social Security; I paid for it!” And they did. Besides
not quite being ‘universal,’ Social Security benefits are determined according
to a progressive formula, itself a type of means-testing.
The unpopularity of AFDC rested to a great extent on
its racialized and gendered connotations. It was viewed as an inducement to
irresponsible behavior by poor, black women with illegitimate children.
Where does this leave us as far as sending folks money
goes? We should keep in mind that in isolation, no program can live up to an
idealized scheme. It is always a question of tenable alternatives. We could
readily acknowledge that in the current crisis, most any program is better than
none. But we ought to do better than “better than nothing.”
Sending everybody (or every adult) a fixed payment,
these days, often described as a Universal Basic Income (UBI) grant, is a poor
allocation of resources. Those of greater means will spend relatively less of
their aid. So the flat payment is inefficient. At the same time, those with
lower income have greater need for aid, so a flat payment is arguably unfair as
well.
My friend Dean Baker disposes
of the “send everybody a check” idea, though a close reading reveals that he
says the idea provides both too much and too little. Too much to those who
would not spend the money, and too little to those in greater need, who would
spend their assistance. In other words, it lacks the impact and efficiency of a
targeted program.
Sending everybody a check appeals because it sounds
simple and could readily gain political approval. Yes, but that’s because it is
less progressive than alternatives. It’s easier to do because it isn’t as good.
A concession to conservative politics may sometimes be necessary, but it’s
still a concession.
A payroll tax cut is an even less fair or efficient
allocation, since there is more relief, the higher one’s salary. Moreover, it
provides nothing for those unable to work, those who have been laid off, or retirees
whose working lives are over, many of whom have low or zero income.
Bumping up the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) brings
up similar gaps as a payroll tax cut. Apparently the temporary payments supported
by the Republicans resemble an EITC: the benefit starts at zero for those with
no income and increases as income does over some range. Then it phases out over
some higher range.
For any fixed amount of funds, there is no getting
around the superiority of a negative income tax (NIT) scheme. It would provide
a fixed payment that decreases as income increases. Benefits could be as high
as you like.
It is true that such a scheme would not easily gain
political approval, but that’s because it is better – more progressive – not
because it is complex. On the complexity front, there is one extra parameter to
stipulate – the rate at which the benefit declines as income increases. That’s
it. Individuals would have to apply for it and report income and, if you like,
dependents.
Remember, the right way to evaluate an option is in
light of alternatives. Sending everybody a check sounds simple. It is not,
either administratively or politically. For one thing, there is no unified list
of “everybody.” And who is everybody? The incarcerated? The undocumented? Ex-offenders?
The homeless?
We have existing pipelines that can be used for
assistance. The IRS knows who files income tax and pays payroll tax. A problem is
that many low-income persons need not file an income tax return. They are
invisible to the IRS. The undocumented and the homeless are invisible to the
authorities entirely. The states’ Unemployment Insurance systems stand ready to
pay workers. But these sources also neglect many in greatest need, who would
spend every nickel of their assistance.
Administration is not the only basis upon which to
judge a proposal. Administration can be enhanced with a relatively modest
expenditure of funds, compared to the size of any significant program. The IRS
needs to be scaled up anyway. Moreover, all alternative schemes would have
administrative costs.
Every aid program is proposed and evaluated considering
some total expenditure. There is a continuous back and forth between
adjustments in proposals and their cost estimates. Whether anybody likes it or
not, that’s just the reality of how these laws are written. There is
competition for every public dollar among Members of Congress. Other worthy
causes are crying out for resources.
From the standpoint of fighting the coming recession
and providing the greatest possible relief to the working class, the negative
income tax is the best option. Assistance should be large and quickly
forthcoming, and nostrums about the public debt should be left by the wayside.
The permanent well-being of tens of millions of families depends directly and
significantly on the relief that is provided over the next six months.
The Story of Trumpsgiving
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“It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it”.
– Mark Twain, The Tragedy of
Pudd’nhead Wilson
The
Story of Thanksgiving (updated)
MaxSpeak Summary: Among Puritan Christian fundamentalists, the Pilgrims were treacherous, murderous swine. The Pilgrims made a treaty with the indigenous people around Plymouth until they had enough forces to wipe them out. This they later did with smallpox and guns, unless they were able to sell them into slavery, all for the greater glory of God.
Wait a minute. That wasn’t quite right. Let’s try it again. Here’s how it
goes.
The Puritans in England were subjected to religious persecution, lo unto death. They were not allowed to say ‘Merry Christmas.’ They needed borders, because without borders you don’t have a country. But in order to have borders, you need land. The Puritans tried to settle in the Netherlands, but the people there were all crooked; they refused to accept eminent domain, provide tax subsidies, or hand over land for free. The New World beckoned. It was a land without a people, with first-class hotels and golf courses, and they were a people without a land.
Upon settling around Plymouth, the first Puritans (Pilgrims) began to get
along with the Wampanoag Nation. The Wampanoug were lovely people but subject
to aggression by immigrants from other Native American groups, who sent
murderers and rapists and bad 火箭加速器
instead of their best. Sad! The Wampanoag provided thousands, no millions of
jobs for the Puritans; their alliance became an outpost of peace and freedom in
the New World.
As more Puritans arrived, they required more lebensraum. The Wampanoag, like other indigenous peoples, lacked a
modern system of property rights. They did not see fit to build fences, put up
street signs, or trade in mortgage-backed securities. The Puritans remedied
these defects of indigenous civilization. It just happened that the Puritans
ended up owning all the property, and Native Americans themselves became
classified as property.
Taking umbrage at this advance of Judeo-Christian civilization, the
indigenous people were reduced to terrorism. Some were sufficiently maniacal as
to sacrifice their own lives in order to murder innocent settlers. There was a
virtual cult of death. Underlying this irrationality was a primitive religious
belief system that celebrated exterminating one’s enemies, as well as the
consumption of locoweed and psychedelic mushrooms. Nobody knew how bad they were.
In short, the natives hated America.
As a matter of self-defense, the Puritans were compelled to rise to the challenge of this war of civilizations; they had to get tough by exterminating both the terrorists, their families, and the societies that nurtured them. There was no middle ground; you were with them or against them. Those Native Americans that were willing to live in peace were provided with alternative living arrangements, under the protection of the new government. Sadly, they proved unequal to the rigors of modern society and eventually disappeared.
Today we celebrate Thanksgiving as a tribute to their memory, and to the
invaluable assistance they unselfishly provided to the Christian conquest of
America.
Now please pass the gravy, and have a Happy Thanksgiving, from all the
MaxSpeak mispochah.
As the impeachment process struggles to be born,
Democrats in Congress are cautiously constructing a case against the president
on the narrowest grounds available – his attempt to extort the government of
Ukraine to assist his 2023 re-election campaign.
It has not mattered that Donald Trump manifested his
crookedness from day one, not to mention earlier. As one pundit noted, New York
area elites have a lot to answer for, in failing to restrain this creature
decades ago. His racist rhetoric, his vicious assault on immigrants, his
indulgence of violence-prone right-wing street goons, his blatant attempts to
obstruct justice, his myriad acts of garden-variety graft, none of this was
enough to jump-start impeachment.
We have a lot to be bitter about. It’s turning out that the Democrats are impeaching Trump for being a bad Republican, for betraying the conservative principles of Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, and their foreign policy attack dog, John Bolton.
Nevertheless, we are where we are. Democrats have
Trump dead to rights on Ukraine. A vote to impeach in the House of
Representatives is likely. Democratic Speaker-of-the-House Nancy Pelosi is not
known for calling votes she will lose.
On the Senate side, of course a vote to remove Trump
is unlikely. However, a weekly ventilation of evidence over the next six months
cannot but have a salutary political impact on public opinion and on Democratic
prospects in 2023.
One dubious objection is that failure of the Senate to
remove Trump would enable him to claim vindication. As we speak, the president
is shoveling money to Republican incumbent senators in danger of defeat next
year. The legitimacy of their votes to keep him in office is vulnerable to
derision. Trump’s burgeoning record of dishonesty increasingly diminishes the
veracity of claims he will make between now and next November.
Another objection is that removal would give us
President Pence. Of course, if the Senate doesn’t vote to remove, there will
never be a President Pence. If it does, however, the ensuing intra-Republican
bloodletting would cripple the party for several electoral cycles. Resentment
of Pence and any traitors by Trump’s core deplorable voters would lead to a
Democratic tidal wave of victories in 2023. Odds are that an embittered,
vengeful Trump would facilitate it.
In criminal proceedings, it is common for lawyers to
impugn the credibility of witnesses or defendants by reference to acts outside
whatever offense is in question. Sometimes this is legal and sometimes it
isn’t. The relevance is that while the House Democrats are pursuing a political
project – impeachment – on the narrowest of grounds, no such scruples restrain
the Left.
So impeachment can be fun. Others may take different
sorts of satisfaction with it, but our own interests can be furthered as well.
Democratic Party victories open up space for challenges to incumbents from the
left. It’s easier to consider a progressive challenger when the potential
Republican alternatives have little hope of benefitting. A higher margin of D
votes in Congress, as well as possession of the White House, puts a greater
obligation on the party establishment to produce results for the working class.
Instead of being embroiled in arguments with ridiculous Trumpist loons, we can
look forward to more serious debate with Democratic centrists on neoliberalism
vs. democratic socialism.
The alternative to progressive engagement in the impeachment drama is progressive invisibility, just as public opinion is moving left and crying for change and leadership.
It doesn’t pay to get too far ahead of where the heads of most people are at. Back in the day, at a certain point the anti-war movement that the Left had done so much to germinate became mainstream. Some radicals became bored when everybody started agreeing with them. It was no longer cool. They moved on to more distant concerns.
That was a mistake.
August 2023
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