The Jubilee Update - gotta have 'em

 (responding to a Methodist email)

A few updates about jubilees...

First: because interest compounds geometrically, it's a mathematical inevitability that loans become unpayable. This occurs since the loan obligation never stops increasing, while the real economy that provides repayment, tends to level out. This is so mathematically inevitable that Albert Einstein answered "What is the most powerful force in the universe?" with "compound interest."

The authority on jubilees is Michael Hudson, whose recent book "...and forgive them their debts" tells the (ancient) history of jubilees in some detail. (The link on Hudson's name is to something shorter on that subject.) There is some controversy about whether jubilees were implemented, but only because archaeological economists would deliberately mis-translate the cuneiform rather than admit jubilees occurred.

Hudson, who read the original documents, says ancient civilizations really implemented jubilees, starting in Babylon. He focuses on the meaning of the title of his book in economic terms, not in terms of behavior. Biblical scholars I've heard say a more accurate translation is "debts" rather than "trespasses"...so maybe he has a point.

In any case, the ancient Babylonians knew about the inevitability of unpayable debts...before the Jews. Apparently, the Jubilee was something the Jews brought back from the Babylonian exile. Babylonian rulers' traditionally declared a Jubilee when they took over from their predecessor. This gained them a load of goodwill, and prevented their population becoming debt slaves, who could not be warriors, so it also helped their kingdom's common defense. Jubilees were a bit easier than they would be in modern times since most debts were owed to the temple/palace complex rather than the private sector. Present-day student loans are analogous, even though the Senator from MBNA (Joe Biden) voted to make them impossible to extinguish, even in bankruptcy.

Hudson says that Jesus' first sermon, in which he announced this was the "year of our Lord" (reading Isaiah) was a declaration that it was time to forgive debts--and forgiveness of economic debts, not just sinful behavior or thoughts, was central to his ministry. The Romans opposed Jesus' system of forgiveness, and had no bankruptcy, much less a regular jubilee or other such accommodation for the inevitably unpayable debts. The Pharisees colluded with the Romans. Read Matthew 23 to see how Jesus felt about Pharisees.

Hudson says Pharisee Rabbi Hillel was trying to rewrite IOU contracts so that they were exempt from the traditional jubilee. The money changers in the temple were intimately involved in this cycle of grinding the debtors for every last nickel, too--hence an uncharacteristically angry Jesus' overturning their tables.

The question from Babylon to the present is: What does one do with the unpayable loans? For the Romans, as for the "Furnishing Man" in the post-Civil War South, the debtors become slaves or debt peons. The Federal Reserve reports 40% of the current U.S. population can't handle a $400 emergency without borrowing or selling something...so debt peonage is still with us.

Jubilees aren't always ancient, either. The victorious allies in World War II granted debt jubilees to the German and Japanese populations, and thereby laid the foundation of their "miraculous" economic recoveries. Oddly enough, they did not grant such a jubilee to the Vietnamese, who were part of the allied opposition to the Japanese in Southeast Asia.

Before World War II ,  Ho Chi Minh, and the Viet Minh fought to cast off the shackles of indebtedness to French colonials and their local oligarchy--successfully too, until the World War interrupted. In reneging on its treaty obligations to hold a plebiscite to unite Vietnam, the U.S. tried to reinstall the French colonial debt peonage the Vietnamese fought so hard to overcome. That's one of the principal motivations for the Vietnamese to fight so hard against a much-richer-and-better-armed U.S. (See War Comes to Long An by Jeffrey Race...a guy who learned Vietnamese on the boat over, then interviewed the population rather than huddling in a "strategic hamlet" ...to see what actually motivated them.)

While you're considering matters financial, you might also take a look at Corruption in America, and what is at stake by Sarah Chayes for a look at how legitimate are the debts the global north's former colonial powers continue to try to collect (or, alternatively, Tom Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man). In Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber tells the story of how the French invaded Madagascar, and told the natives they were indebted (for their lives)...then proceeded to collect. Same story in now-impoverished Haiti.

Graeber said Western banks prescribed austerity (the IMF published a staff paper saying that didn't work, but ignored it), even for loans in present day Madagascar. Because of such austerity, the government ended its mosquito eradication program. 10,000 natives died of malaria so that the former colony could pay a loan whose loss the bank could have easily borne.

I've also read recently that annually between $1 - 2 trillion still makes its way from the former colonies to their former colonial masters. The World Bank, IMF and a host of NGOs enable this. Heck, in a tribute to cluelessness the Methodists' "Social Principles" still prescribe "balanced budgets" and spending restraint (austerity). For a fuller explanation, read this.

One point Chayes makes that really resonated for me: The Muslim Middle Easterners aren't that enamored of religious fanaticism. It's the corruption of the Karzai government the U.S. installed that drives the population into the arms of the Taliban, not the population's affinity for Islamic extremism.

So...surprisingly current stuff, this. I'd still say Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years is essential reading to understand a lot of it, but the Bible is pretty up-to-date in recommending a jubilee. Mathematical inevitability lasts forever! You can read about more current jubilee-related proposals here, here, and here.

Sarah Chayes' On Corruption in America, and what is at stake.

Former NPR reporter and advisor to the U.S. military has turned her attention to America's domestic corruption which she finds eerily familiar with her experience in third world countries like Afghanistan.

Chayes begins her book with an account of a U.S. Supreme Court case prosecuting a former Virginia governor named McDonnell. Governor McDonnell had been convicted of accepting bribes by a lower court, whose verdict had been affirmed by an appeals court. Among other things, McDonnell had been treated to free private plane rides, his wife had gone shopping with the briber, receiving $75,000 worth of goods, and many other items, all to persuade the Governor to purchase and endorse the briber's products with Virginia's state money. And McDonnell had repeatedly requested those purchases and endorsements happen.

Both lower courts were persuaded this was a clear case of bribery, but the Supreme Court acquitted McDonnell unanimously, saying this is how America conducts its public policy business, and any inhibition of this behavior would be unreasonable. Remember: unanimously.

Ms. Chayes expresses her distress that the highest court in the land legitimized bribery as business as usual. She had been in those "shithole" countries where she might have expected this, but seeing it in the U.S. was unfamiliar to her. She adds that in her experience in the Muslim Middle East, the population was not so much persuaded by the religious extremism of terrorists as by their honesty. The corruption of the Afghan government installed by the U.S. is what drove the Afghan population into the arms of the Taliban.

She also examines the historical context of corruption, often referring us to the post-Civil-War "Gilded Age" as a model for the corruption that afflicts the U.S. now. A few excerpts:

p.81 "For, if this plunge into the history of the Gilded Age delivers one certainty, it is this: there is no way to access infinite wealth without rigging the system. No one becomes a billionaire honestly.

p. 102 "Given [the repetition of criminal acts] across the years, such practices must be understood as part of Goldman [Sach]'s business model. It is for all intents and purposes a criminal entity."

Historian Thomas Ferguson has discovered [p128] "Elections don't really reflect a clash between voters with different visions for improving American's lives. elections boil down to 'conflicts within the business community'--or, framed another way, to rivalry among kleptocratic networks."

p. 132 In a pipeline dispute, Louisiana state probation and parole officers "acted, as in the Gilded Age Strike Commission report would have put it, in the double capacity of pipeline employees and state officers."

p.134 In corrupt militaries, paychecks and equipment are siphoned off by corrupt officers. "When a unit is attacked and [overrun, in this case, by Nigeria's Boko Haram, it is] not because the soldiers are unable to fight, but lack weapons, ammunitions and communications equipment, the soldiers on many occasions will [run] away." Chayes adds "Such men were being court-martialed for cowardice."

p. 135 "The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are a glaring example of the abusive transfer of public wealth into the hands of private individuals, and of the consequences. But the methods used were old. They have continued largely unchanged for decades--across administrations of both political parties."

p. 136 "...shortly after taking the presidential oath in 1993, Bill Clinton put Vice President Al Gore in charge of a grand initiative 'to redesign, to reinvent, to reinvigorate the entire National Government.' With the stated goal of increasing efficiency, says [muckraking reporter] Rasor, 'the Pentagon was able to get rid of those pesky investigators and auditors' and loosen contracting standards. Efficiency became the new morality.
   
"Sick at the sight of years of effort undone, Rasor turned to health care for some years. Now, she says, the situation 'is worse than I've ever seen it.'"

p. 139 "The networks [of corruption] woven by such relationships get thicker every time people switch places, landing jobs in the private sector in return for ignoring contract terms, or going back inside government after a stint with a contractor." It's the "revolving door."

p. 164 "Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan--a Reagan appointee, reappointed twice by Clinton--flatly opposed government supervision of the banking sector. Despite the criminality that had caused the S&L crisis...it was Greenspan's view that fraud should not even be prohibited by law."

p.174 Studies demonstrate "when  different aspects of our identity join within a liberal or conservative affiliation, as ours increasingly do, we grow more tolerant of the gap between the policies we were hoping to see and what our favored leaders actually do in office. We ignore--or make excuses for--their deviations....That is a wonderful state of affairs for kleptocrats." Note: more broadly, this could include racism, xenophobia, etc. as methods kleptocrats use to divide and rule.

Ironically, Ms. Chayes observes that big crises tend to encourage even the kleptocrats to abandon their obsession with adding zeroes to their bank accounts. Sad to say, we've certainly had that (more died from COVID-19 than in World War II and Vietnam combined), but I'm not sure it's been big enough.

If “Did Not Vote” Had Been A Candidate In The 2016 US Presidential Election, It Would Have Won By a Landslide

 

American Collapse - by Indi Samarajiva

This is a series of three articles

First:  I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There

Second: Collapse Takes A Lifetime. America Is Just Getting Started 

Third: The Sadness of American Collapse

Excerpt:

I lived through Sri Lankan collapse. It took forever. I feel that Americans are really underestimating what’s going down, and how long it will take.

First off, yes, America has already collapsed. You can’t just step over your newly dead and poor. America has already lost more lives than in WWI and Vietnam, combined. The economic contraction is the worst in your recorded history. The rest of the world has stopped accepting your passports. Worst of all, this is all self-inflicted. Your leadership and 40% of the population drove off a cliff, and they’re still hitting the gas.

If this isn’t collapse, what is?

To Marcus Breton, after he "attacks" Sue Frost, and answers her answer

Mr. Breton,

It was really entertaining to ready your "attack" on Sue Frost (that's what she called it) in the first place, and even more amusing to ready your answer to her answer. Does she really not know that the press gets the last word?

Anyway, poor Ms. Frost, a victim of fake news, obviously, has yet to put on her big girl pants (see here and here) and own up to racism in the U.S.

I've read that, based on surveys of emergency room visits for overdoses, all races use drugs equally, yet people of color are three and four times more likely to do jail time--and get longer sentences--for exactly the same crimes white people commit. Ms. Frost's fans say "Just enforce the law!", but the truth is that the law didn't arrive on stone tablets, engraved by lightning, and often was set up to criminalize innocent behavior so police could arrest those people of color (example: marijuana).

Perhaps the most damaging consequence of racism, however, was the way Harry Truman's "Medicare for All" proposal was rejected in 1948. The Dixiecrats were concerned they would have to integrate their hospitals, so they turned it down. How many thousands have died because of that? How many medical bankruptcies? (about 500,000 a year).

So...Ms. Frost may think humility is out of reach for white people, and racism as it exists is harmless, but reality says otherwise.

Virgin Hyperloop Has Invented The World’s Crappiest High-Speed Rail

ALBERT BURNEKO
November 11, 2020 2:32 pm

via Virgin Hyperloop


Shocking news! In an incredible breakthrough for American mass-transit engineering, the transportation technology company Virgin Hyperloop this past weekend successfully moved two people 500 meters across the barren Las Vegas desert at a top speed of just over 100 mph, setting a new world record for the absolute most pitiful thing anyone not named “Elon Musk” has ever tried to pass off as “high-speed rail.”

Here’s video of the shameful display:

Virgin Hyperloop, an American company despite the Richard Branson branding, proposes to use a combination of magnetic levitation, or “maglev”—a decades-old technology that has been in commercial operation moving real trains filled with real people in, for example, Shanghai, China, at speeds up to 268 miles per hour, for 17 goddamn years—and “vactrain,” a concept design for an enclosed, artificially evacuated tunnel where air resistance may be as low as in the upper parts of Earth’s atmosphere, theoretically allowing for much higher top speeds at much lower levels of energy consumption. It is so goddamn embarrassing to type this. France’s electric TGV system has been in regular commercial operation for nearly 40 years; in April of 2007 one of its trains hit 357 miles per hour in a test.

CNN’s article about this event paraphrases a Virgin Hyperloop executive claiming that the hyperloop pods “can travel at the speed of aircraft.” Which is true, in the sense that commercial aircraft with dozens if not hundreds of people aboard do sometimes travel at 100 miles per hour, on the ground, for seconds at a time, during takeoff or landing, when they are going only a fraction as fast as they’re capable of going. It is also true in the sense that, strictly speaking, a paper airplane is a form of “aircraft,” and you can really whip some of those suckers across a room. A more accurate but perhaps less flattering claim would be that my Honda Odyssey can travel at the fastest speed Virgin Hyperloop has yet attained, and with four times as many people riding in it.

Hell, for that matter, as a Twitter user helpfully pointed out, a freaking steam locomotive hit 126 miles per hour in England, 82 years ago, in 1938.

Yeah, but, when it’s done, it’ll go 600 miles per hour, you’re whining, and it’ll have 25 to 30 people in a pod! When exactly will that be? France opened the TGV in 1981. Japan’s oldest high-speed line debuted in 1964—1964!—and was better and faster then than Amtrak’s Acela trains go now. Shanghai’s maglev train has been operable since John Kerry was campaigning to unseat George W. Bush as president. Measure speed by the number of riders the respective services will have moved by, say, 2050. Measure it in carbon emissions. By the year 2020, the best-funded and most sophisticated high-speed rail developer in the United States moved two (2) people 500 meters.

The United States is generations behind much of the rest of the wealthy, industrialized world in this area. For all but a very narrow corridor along the East Coast serviced by the weak half-a-loaf shit that passes for high-speed rail in this country, the best an American commuter can hope for in intercity rail options are crappy and ancient diesel Amtrak trains that top out at around 80 miles per hour. Most American cities simply are not serviced by any intercity rail network at all. The U.S.’s shameful mass-transit situation—and thus its shameful dependence on personal vehicles, and all the downstream bad shit that comes from that—could be improved a zillion percent by just aiming for the level of railroad sophistication French people considered normal before the median 2020 French person was old enough to ride a bicycle. And here are these Professor Frink–ass Hyperloop dinguses, dumping resources beyond counting into inventing some shit that already exists when for a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time they could just purchase or at the very least copy what is already working just fine even in backward-ass doofus countries like freaking Italy. It wouldn’t need test tracks! It wouldn’t need years of iteration and development! They already did all that shit, all over the rest of the world!

In a vacuum (a figurative one: an alternate universe in which the rest of the post-industrial world were not absolutely goddamn bursting with operating networks of authentic high-speed rail; where high-speed rail were not already such a well-developed form of transit that the TGV system, which routinely moves huge numbers of day-to-day commuters across large distances of France at speeds well more than twice that achieved by this sad two-person billion-dollar pod going from nowhere to nowhere across a tiny patch of worthless desert, were not both infinitely better and more sophisticated than any presently available commercial rail in the United States and fairly outmoded in comparison to newer [yet still not all that new!] systems in China and Japan and elsewhere) the Virgin Hyperloop could almost look like an impressive accomplishment. Alas, here in the world of context, its only real accomplishment is a promotional one. The business of the American technology sector and its attendant courtier press is to continually recreate and exploit something like a vacuum in the public’s awareness of what the larger world is like, so that clueless observers will congratulate a bunch of boobs for “inventing” a shittier, more expensive version of something that is already regarded as boring and normal—fast, energy-efficient rail service!—pretty much everywhere outside of this stupid and embarrassing country.

Everything about the broken incentives and hollowed-out capacities of American society is crystallized in this dumb pod moseying its way along a track to nowhere in Las Vegas. The United States has a problem: It is too dependent on inefficient, dirty, and expensive forms of transportation, because the vast majority of its people have no practical access to other kinds. Its infrastructure and the health of its communities are all jacked up by the necessity of splattering asphalt all over everything in order for people to drive their big dumb cars to, and park them near, anywhere they’d decide to go. It cannot achieve efficient levels of density or make meaningful turns toward environmental responsibility for as long as this is the case. Thankfully, a solution to this problem already exists and is in operation throughout other parts of the world with comparable levels of wealth and technological capacity: Trains! Networks of fast-moving trains that do not need internal combustion engines in order to move lots of people very quickly along their tracks! Companies and agencies make and install and operate these train systems, and have been doing so for a long time, longer even than the lifetime of the graybeard crap-bag writing this blog. They know how to do it! They can probably just be hired to do it. At some level somebody can probably just buy some of those trains, and install them, and turn them on, and take people from here to there on them.

But who could make it happen? Broke-dick, systematically impoverished municipalities, lashed to budget-balancing like a cinderblock tied to their feet? Close your eyes and try to imagine how a sane and obviously good decision like Just import the TGV and run it between the big American cities instead of spending years and fortunes inventing maglev from scratch for no reason could get made in these United States. Imagine who’d make it, and what their goals would be, and where the money would come from. It simply can’t get made on those terms. It can’t get made at all. No level of American society even has a mechanism for that anymore. If it doesn’t require a messianic assbrain with a Steve Jobs cosplay fantasy pitching some sleepy billionaire or venture capital firm on the possibility of cornering the market on a brand-new technology that will conquer the world, then it will not get done. If it merely delivers a profound benefit to the common good rather than the promise of extravagant enrichment to a shrinking class of hyper-powered parasites, then it simply cannot exist.

...

Meanwhile...

Inspiring! Private sector only needed 50 years to catch up to what US & Soviet state industries accomplished in the 1970s. The only thing the private sector needed to accomplish this feat were massive state subsidies. What will Big Tech think of next?https://t.co/02vPugFCLd

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) November 16, 2020

Why on earth would anyone vote for Donald Trump?

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Most of  my Democratic friends are amazed that anyone could ever have voted for Donald Trump. "How could 70 million people be that stupid?" is the implied question. To them, it's obvious that Trump is a con man who can't open his mouth without sticking his foot in it--the opposite of the elegant, eloquent Obama. They are also just as certain Obama didn't contribute to voter revulsion and Trump's election. Yet Republicans shamelessly don't like being called "deplorable"!

But why 70 million votes for Trump? (Trump won 74 million votes, nearly five million more than any previous presidential candidate) Says Thomas Greene (from Noteworthy): “Trump will not be defeated by educating voters, by exposing his many foibles and inadequacies. Highlighting what’s wrong with him is futile; his supporters didn’t elect him because they mistook him for a competent administrator or a decent man. They’re angry, not stupid. Trump is an agent of disruption — indeed, of revenge.....Workers now sense that economic justice — a condition in which labor and capital recognize and value each other — is permanently out of reach; the class war is over and it was an absolute rout: insatiable parasites control everything now, and even drain us gratuitously, as if exacting reparations for the money and effort they spent taming us. The economy itself, and the institutions protecting it, must be attacked, and actually crippled, to get the attention of the smug patricians in charge. Two decades of appealing to justice, proportion, and common decency have yielded nothing."

Disappointed by the conventional parties, Trump voters are willing to take a chance on a "disruptor" who his own party initially rejected. Meanwhile, Republicans are adaptive enough to embrace him as long as he helps them maintain their grip on power. 

The problem is that Obama is at the origin of Trump voters' disappointment. He promised justice, even hope, after the disastrous Bush 43 presidency. Americans were disgusted by the naked, aggressive imperialism of Bush/Cheney. Their votes reflected that, too. They gave Democrats both houses of congress and the presidency in 2008. 

That mandate is worth remembering because the conventional excuse for Obama's inadequacies is that Republican control of congress denied him any policy victories. Yet rather than using this mandate, Obama spent most of this political capital passing big-pharma-friendly "Romneycare"--a Republican health care plan. As for justice: Obama not only refused to prosecute the war crimes of Bush / Cheney, he promoted those who supervised torture and prosecuted the whistle blowers. 

Perhaps most revealing was the way Obama handled the subprime / derivatives meltdown, now called the "Global Financial Crisis" (GFC) by economists--something the Clinton administration's collusion with a Republican congress to deregulate Wall Street enabled.  In the GFC, U.S. net worth declined 40%, and nine million families lost their homes. Republican pollster Frank Luntz reports the Obama administration was the only time he saw people weep in his focus groups. The public hated seeing enormous bank bailouts--$16 - $29 trillion, in addition to TARP, the Fed's audit reports--while they were losing their homes and retirement accounts. For only $9 trillion, the Fed could have paid off everyone's mortgage; but Wall Street, whose frauds crashed the economy, not Main Street, is who got bailed out.

It's no surprise that the victims of this scam wept. And as long as the corporate Democrats--like Joe Biden--continue to ignore the public outrage at the failure of the public institutions they manage, at best they will have a precarious mandate to rule, even as systemic problems best handled by government--like the climate catastrophe--continue threaten the survival of the species. 

Unfortunately, outrage is not a solution in and of itself, but some Democratic humility might make us less divided.

Ian Welsh's post-election evaluation

2020 NOVEMBER 9
by Ian Welsh

Trump is done and Biden is on the way in.

Let us first acknowledge that Biden is senile. The man is not what he was 8 years ago. He is well known to both be lazy and unwilling to delegate, and this may become a problem. Hopefully his increasing incapacity will force him to delegate, but the question is “to whom?” If he doesn’t make a decision, then the administration will be riven with knife fights and intrigue. A fair bit of money has to be on Harris, only because she is savagely ambitious and without any noticeable ethical qualms in her pursuit for power, but the vice-Presidency is an essentially powerless office. More likely multiple fiefdoms will emerge, with people fighting for access and control of the President. Alternatively, Biden’s wife may wind up running the show as Reagan’s did during his dementia.

Next let us acknowledge that Biden’s career is that of a very conservative liberal. He was against de-segregation. He has voted for war over and over. He is a fiscal conservative in the worst way (aka. has often talked of cutting Social Security and Medicare.) He was for the crime bills of the 90s and a driving force behind the bankruptcy bill which made it impossible to discharge student loans, thus causing the current student loan crisis. He has said many good things about the environment lately, but he has also said he will not ban fracking. In terms of his actual record, about the only high point is his work against violence on women.

Biden’s, well, a bad man when it comes to how he treats people who aren’t his family or friends. It’s clear that he’s a loving father; a good boss to direct reports and a great friend (just keep your young daughters away from his roving hands and sniffing nose.) But Americans aren’t in a family relationship with Biden, and they shouldn’t think they are. You aren’t Hunter Biden.

On the plus side, one can expect that he will undo many of Trump’s worst acts. I would expect an end to separating children from parents on the border almost immediately: presumably the US will go back to locking them up together. A removal of the worst Iran sanctions is likely, and with a bit of luck a return to the Iran nuclear and peace deal should occur. He is likely to close many of the parks and reserves that Trump opened to roads, drilling and logging.

Biden’s probable cabinet is quite conservative. Per Politico, front-runners are:
State: Susan Rice
Attorney Gengeral: Doug Jones
HHS: Michelle Lujan Grisham
Transport: Eric Garcetti
Commerce: Meg Whitman
Energy: Ernest Moniz
Interior: Tom Udall
Agriculture: Heidi Heitkamp
Veteran’s Administration: Pete Buttigieg

I trust it is obvious that most of these are not progressive in any sense. Moniz, the likely Energy secretary is a creature of the fossil fuel industry. Heitkam (Agriculture) was for the Keystone XL pipeline and Trump’s appointees. Susan Rice was one of the primary war-mongers in the Obama administration.

They aren’t all bad, Udall has a good environmental record, for example, but while interior is important, oddly, Energy is more so (and arguably so is agriculture, since farming causes vast environmental harm as it is currently practiced.)

In foreign affair, Iran will benefit from Biden’s Presidency, and I suspect Cuba will as well, though Biden is notoriously aggressive and threatening to small countries, he will want to rescue Obama’s Cuba deal. One can expect Democrats to be more aggressive to Russia, after spending the last four years blaming it for everything. I remind you that while Russia is no longer a super-power in most senses, they are still a nuclear super-power and that war between the two nations is unthinkable, in the “armageddon” sense. As best I can tell Biden does not have a personal hatred for Putin the way that Hillary appears to have, and in any case, Putin appears to be setting the stage to step down. (A recent law made it impossible to charge former Presidents for crimes committed during their Presidency, for example.)

The dragon in the patch is China. Trump’s anti-China moves had a great deal of bipartisan support. The difference under Biden is likely to be a great emphasis on working with allies against China, rather than a pivot from the anti-China position. The consensus opinion in DC is that China is a rising fascist state who doesn’t obey the rules of the current order and the primary threat to American dominance. Meanwhile, China has come to the conclusion that a split with the US is essentially inevitable. They wish to buy time, but are working furiously on improving their tech and trade area (under the Belt and Road Initiative). In short, Biden will continue the march towards a new Cold War, with the world split into two areas. China and Russia will be at the heart of the second area.

One possible bright spot in Biden’s likely administration is anti-trust. Democrats are unhappy with large chunks of big-tech, starting but not ending with Facebook. Expect an anti-trust suit against Facebook to go ahead under Biden unless, perhaps, Zuckerberg grovels like a worm (which he is unlikely to do.) There is also some possibility of actions against Google, Apple and Amazon.

As with China, there’s a fair bit of bipartisan consensus on this, even if Facebook has favoured Republicans, they are not happy with its ability to choose whose message gets thru, for example.

In terms of the economy, Biden is likely to bow to the deficit myth. Especially if Republicans hold the Senate (most likely), he will struggle to get money for his priorities, but worse, his career has generally shown him to be a fairly standard Democratic centrist who believes that only Republicans have the right to spend large amounts of money and that Democrats should reduce the deficit and instead of spend, rely on tax cuts. At worst Biden may be willing to cut a deal to reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits to “fix” the deficit. (This is nonsense, but it is nonsense Biden has believed his entire career.)

The Senate requires some extra commentary. If Republicans hold it, McConnell has said he will use it aggressively to make sure that Biden’s appointments are not progressive. While this wouldn’t be a problem if progressive meant to McConnell what it does to anyone sane, what it really means is “anyone who isn’t right wing.”

There is no reason for this to hamstring Biden, all he has to do is follow Trump’s precedent and rely on Acting leaders of various agencies. The question, however, is whether Biden will be willing to do this. In fact, this is the great question of a Biden administration with a Republican Senate (or even a bare majority Democratic one), will he use the Presidency’s power to their full extent, as Republican presidents like Trump and Bush did? If so, there’s a great deal he can accomplish, if not, he will rule is as a moderate Republican even if he doesn’t want to.

This is also true with respect to the Supreme Court: there are ways around the Supremes, but they do require a President to use his power aggressively and in ways that, obviously, aren’t bipartisan. Biden’s willingness to do this is an open question, he certainly has preferred to “govern across the aisle” is the past.

As with Obama, ruling as a moderate Republican may well be what he wants, and a Republican Senate and Supreme Court may give him cover to do so, constantly blaming everything he does and doesn’t do on “we don’t control the Senate or the Court, give us more money for the next election.”

A wildcard in this is Schumer. Schumer’s certainly a centrist who has done nothing for anyone who isn’t a donor in ages, but he’s running scared of AOC. He recently talked up the possibility of using an executive order to forgive 50K in student debt, for example (which would be a wonderful thing for Biden to do.) Schumer knows AOC is a real threat to him, and the only way to innoculate himself is to become progressive enough that she doesn’t have an argument against him.

Pelosi will remain Pelosi. She will want pay-go, and be essentially conservative. But she lost seats in the last election and barely has a majority. How much power she will have remains to be seen. Still, she’ll probably hang on for at least another four years, before her advancing age forces her to retire.

One can assume that a Biden administraiton will generally be more technocratically competent. I expect the Covid response to improve significantly, for example, though stubborn red state governors and legislatures will remain a problem. Trump’s propaganda that masks don’t work; Covid is no big deal and that the closures are the problem, not the disease, will remain a huge issue crippling any American response, as will fears and refusal to take vaccines.

Getting any large aid bill through Congress will be nearly impossible if Democrats don’t retake the Senate, for the simple reason that there’s no reason for Republicans to give Democrats a win like that.

The great fear of a Biden administration, and why I only reluctantly supported Biden, is that he will start a new war. Biden isn’t as bad as Hillary, though, and we can hope that his foreign adventures remain restricted to bullying weak nations and instigating coups (Venezuela is going to have a particularly bad time.)

The other great fear is that Biden’s administration will be weak tea, like Obama’s. It won’t do much good for most people, and in four to eight years, they will turn to a Republican. That Republican will be a more disciplined, more genuinely “populist” version of Trump, and will be able to do what people thought Trump would do, but which he was fundamentally too incompetent to accomplish.

I wish the Biden administration well, but fundamentally, I don’t think it’s going to be enough different from Obama’s to really change the direction America, or the world is headed in. Some people will certainly be helped, and I’m happy for them, but that America continues its “undeveloping nation” slide as the oligarchy continues to become richer and richer and the majority of the population stagnates or becomes worse off is unlikely to change.

And while I expect Biden to be better for the environment than Trump or Obama, he will not be enough better to change the fact that climate change is now running away, and that environmental consequences which will destroy multiple countries are almost inevitable. Indeed, this administration was probably the last chance to do anything that really matters short of geo-engineering, but that window was closed when Sanders lost the primary due to Clyburn and Obama’s intervention.

Slightly better Obama administration, with a worse Republican President than Trump following seems like the best bet for the Biden administration. Hopefully, while the best best, it is not the one that comes to be.


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Seeing ourselves as others see us...

I have seen this image twice in the last 24 hours - posted first by a Kurdish friend, then by another in Brazil pic.twitter.com/4OrFZSLI53

— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) November 7, 2020

 

Old News: DINO Ami Bera Votes like a Republican

		AmiBera (D)	Paul Ryan (R)	McClin-tock (R)	Matsui (D)
H.R. 3009 Punish Sanctuary Cities		Yes	Yes	Yes	No
H.R. 3009 Punish Sanctuary Cities		Yes	Yes	Yes	No
H.R. 4038 Restrict Syrian and Iraqi Refugees		Yes	Yes	Yes	No
H.R. 1599 Ban GMO Food labels (Genetically Modified organisms)		Yes	Yes	Yes	No
H.Res 644 Condemn President Obama		Yes	Yes	Yes	No
H.R. 2642 Reduce Food Stamps for the Poor		Yes	Yes	No	Yes
H.R. 37 Weaken Dodd-Frank (Encourage Risky Bank lnvestments)		Yes	Yes	Yes	No
H.R. 3350 Undermine the Affordable Healthcare Act		Yes	Yes	Yes	No
H.R. 1737 Prevent Action Aga inst Discriminatory Car Loans		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
H.R. 1314 Trans-Pacific Partnership (Encourage Jobs to go Overseas)		Yes	Yes	Yes	No

Is the Election a Sideshow?

I know all eyes are either glazed or glued on the presidential, but the situation of state-level budgets and public services is going to be key whoever comes next. A WH-Congress stand-off will be disastrous. https://t.co/hFAduXK6K6 pic.twitter.com/Pk1o2qhB54

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) November 4, 2020

The role of public policy in public health: Compare & Contrast

The strategies pursued by South Korea, Vietnam & China are paying off. As of Nov. 1, the cumulative death rate per million is:

🇺🇸U.S.: 696
🇬🇧U.K.: 685
🇫🇷France: 563
vs.
🇰🇷South Korea: 9
🇨🇳China: 3
🇻🇳Vietnam: 0.36

[Chart shows data correct as of Oct. 30] https://t.co/bOgOVnOONG pic.twitter.com/jRLdyW0ofK

— Bloomberg Opinion (@bopinion) November 1, 2020

Meanwhile, in the U.S....

Pastor Rick Joyner, Who Said the U.S. Was Defeating COVID with Prayer, Has COVID https://t.co/yQiCV7rpdk pic.twitter.com/ClUWAABzhU

— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) November 2, 2020