“The greatest monsters of history —men like Andrew Carnegie, JP Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Andrew Mellon — lived lives of cruel mass-exploitation, only to rehabilitate their reputations at the ends of their lives, or posthumously, by endowing charitable foundations that do genuinely good works, while plastering those monsters’ names on every tangible expression of those works. Our modern crop of monsters are pursuing the same path” @pluralistic https://doctorow.medium.com/rich-peoples-gain-is-worth-less-than-poor-people-s-pain-6c3631292841 ht @SteveRoth
when the problem is a group is being singled out for persecution, singling them out for protection may be counterproductive. it reinforces the singling out. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/05/25/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-releases-first-ever-u-s-national-strategy-to-counter-antisemitism/ ht @w7voa
“Supply-side progressives like Yglesias and Klein are skilled at detecting the structural problems in American government. They’re less concerned with the problem of power as an impediment to progress. And they’re certainly not interested in equalizing that power, aligning the interests of labor and capital, as the clearest path to deal everyone into a next-generation economy.” @ddayen https://prospect.org/economy/2023-05-25-liberalism-that-builds-power/
trust autopilot.
Is it really true, as seems to be the implication of some commentary I've read, that the way the debt ceiling is playing out reflects a peaceful transfer of power from the Klain administration to the Zients administration?
I've mostly been favorably surprised by the Biden administration. I hope that continues.
But this moment is a test, I think, of whether there in fact is a Biden administration.
We don't need another hero.
Sad about #TinaTurner. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tina-turner-dead-obit-192002/
“The eerie thing about this hyper-technologized world is that it’s very difficult to separate fantasies of persecution from its objectively shitty logic. The phones serve us ads that seem like we are being listened to. Are we? Maybe it’s just ‘the algorithm.’” #JohnGanz https://johnganz.substack.com/p/update-on-twitter-ban
it’s weird, kind of ironic, that there seems to be growing overlap between transhumanist and anti-trans communities.
or am i unfairly stereotyping “TESCREALists”?
you know you’ve played things well when both q and lgbtq are inclined to boycott you for caving to the other side.
“I think my conservative colleagues for the most part support Limit, Save, Grow, & they don't feel like we should negotiate with our hostage.” —Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) https://twitter.com/josephzeballos/status/1661080044498812928
// i hope they speak the quiet part louder and louder. i hope they revel in it like Scrooge McDuck swimming in gold.
"whichever course of action Biden chooses, we should be clear that he has other options than agreeing to crack the whip against America’s poor." #MattBruenig https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2023/05/23/the-debt-limit-situation/
“If Treasury today issued $1,000 bonds paying 8% or 10% interest, at whatever price the market’s willing to pay, it gets a lot more than $1,000. But the “national debt” only increases by $1,000, the “face value” of the bonds…Money to pay the bills, without increasing the national debt. It could make the debt-limit silliness simply immaterial and moot, forever.” @SteveRoth on Treasury selling premium bonds. https://mastodon.world/@SteveRoth/110414015390778669
but what about the Supreme Court? worries Ezra Klein. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/21/opinion/biden-mccarthy-debt-ceiling.html won't they just declare the workaround unlawful, leaving Biden to own the chaos for doing something novel?
that is precisely why it's so important to set up the republican negotiators as unreasonable extortionate goal-post movers. because a partisan Court must worry that they and the party they serve will own the chaos rather than the administration. 2/
no one wants to own the chaos.
and killing the debt ceiling after a breach is much, much worse than, say, also arguably illegal payment prioritization before a breach. it would invalidate lots of debt that will already be in (wealthy) private parties' hands.
existing US Treasury instruments go poof! is about the clearest path to calamity. Would an unpopular Supreme Court defending what the public perceives (if the admin plays this well) as extortionate brinksmanship really do that? /fin
positing 11-dimensional chess to explain US politicians' choices is a losing game, usually.
with that as caveat, i think the biden administration's strategy is to tempt republicans into a set of demands that can be portrayed to the public as unreasonable and extortionate.
that creates *political* justification to defang the debt ceiling, using any of the variety of technical and legal workarounds available (and probably the ones Biden hasn't publicly discussed at all so far). 1/
in retrospect it feels like someone hit fast-forward.
expansionary austerity is just taxing the rich.
a structural weakness of the Democratic Party relative to the Republican Party is the difference in how corruption is perceived.
corrupt Republicans are bold, cigar-chomping caudillos, unapologetic winners who can’t be bothered with your whining.
but Democrats are always on about “Democracy” and “institutions” and “rule of law”. they can’t embrace corruption like a winner, so their indulgings come off as cagey, hypocritical, obvious but pedantically denied, weak.
how does the market react on the day Treasury announces a premium bonds program or resumption of issuance of consols?
@HamonWry people are mostly nice to one another here. what’s that about?
taxes are the primary weapon that the public wields to tame the rich. that is why the rich work so assiduously to discredit them.