CapitalistImperialistPig

I have frequently mentioned that modern genomics strongly supports the idea that race is fundamentally a social construct.  What that means is is that most human genetic diversity is not linked to conventional ideas of race.  It doesn't mean that conventional ideas of race are unimportant or imaginary.  Social constructs have great power - another couple of social constructs one might mention are money and nations.  Your inferred race has great power to affect your life and life prospects. Probably the most usual way race is identified is by skin color.  Of course there are a number of dark skinned peoples in the world who aren't especially related: Africans, Australian natives, Melanesians, and some South Asians.  It's also true that Africans as a group have more genetic diversity than the rest of the world combined. However, ancestry related differences are not imaginary.  About one third of the humans, mainly from Europe, the Middle East and par...

The horde of candidates running for the Democratic Presidential nomination are throwing all sorts of lefty tropes at the wall, hoping to find some that stick.  Here is my classification of the one I find worthwhile and not. Good: (1)Something like Medicare for America, an idea that expands health insurance to all Americans without eliminating private insurance.  This idea, in some version or other, is well tested and used in virtually every other advanced country. (2)Making college education cheap again.  We have done it before, most other advanced countries do it, and our vast pool of educational debt is a major drag on the entrepreneurial spirit of young Americans. (3)Subsidized child care.  Again, a well tested idea that frees more parents to work. (4) Take dark money out of politics.  Make every dollar be accounted for. (5)Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. Bad:  It seems like Kamala Harris likes every stupid idea on my list. (1)Reparation...

I have probably written a lot on my beefs with libertarianism, but I find I keep coming back to this theme.  So here goes one more time.  Let me count the ways. 1) It's a mask for untrammeled corporate power.  Under the guidance of the Kochs and their ilk, American libertarianism has been used to protect the depredations and outright criminality of corporate theft, murder, and environmental destruction.  See, e.g.,  Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right   2) Similarly, it justifies the political power of corporations and vast personal fortunes, creating a ruling political aristocracy that controls the legislature and the courts.  See as above. 3) It protects one kind of collective power, that of corporations and money, while attacking any collective action of workers and others who lack great financial resources - for example, labor unions. 4) It is deeply dishonest in the way it pretends to cel...

I heard a brief interview with Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money, on NPR today. She was talking about how Citizens United has made it possible for a few ultra-rich people than hardly any American has ever heard of to dominate American politics, and in particular for Rebekah Mercer to play a pivotal role in Trump's election and policy objectives. How many Americans, I wonder, have heard of this Hedge Fund heiress and boutique cookie baker? Her father, Robert Mercer, made a few zillion bucks in quantitative trading and writes a lot of the checks, but she seems to be guiding a conservative network that generates propaganda, funds "institutes" selling the party line, and finances candidates. Key among her projects was Breitbart and Steve Bannon, who some have called her Svengali. Here is an excerpt from a campaign era Politico story: Rebekah Mercer now sits at the nexus of Trump’s universe. So influential has she become that her conversation with Trump during an August f...

William Finnegan has a long article on the Venezuelan catastrophe in the New Yorker. The article is more of a look at what's happening to the people than an analysis of how this once rich country got into it's present state, but there is quite a bit of history too. It would be hard to exaggerate the scale of the Maduro regime's failures. Massive corruption and catastrophic incompetence exist here on a scale that's probably unequaled outside of Africa. And yet Venezuelan oil production is steadily falling. Since 1998, it has declined by thirty per cent—by nearly a million barrels a day. Corruption and lack of maintenance are the culprits most often cited. Crime gangs also exact a heavy tax. The state-owned oil and gas monopoly, Petróleos de Venezuela (P.D.V.S.A.), was Chávez’s piggy bank. Between 2001 and 2015, it poured perhaps a hundred billion dollars into his favored programs. Today, the piggy bank is nearly empty. Two-thirds of oil-export revenues go to payin...

The revealing last sentences of Dark Money : As a child, he [Charles Koch] used to tell an unfunny joke. When called upon to split a treat with others, he would say with a wise-guy grin, “I just want my fair share— which is all of it.” Mayer, Jane (2016-01-19). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Kindle Locations 7202-7203). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer is a superbly written and extensively documented book that tells a sickening story. It tells how a tiny group of the super wealthy, not from the 1% but from the top 1/100th of a percent, adopted the tactics of Lenin and Hitler to seize control of much of the American government and poison the minds of Americans against their own country. They combine immense wealth with low tactics like the big lie, character assassination, and intimidation with a long range strategic plan based on control of strategic opinion makers, a vast network of propaganda organizations loosely disguised as think tanks, and aggressive buying of influence in everything to from local legislative races to the oval office. Many of them have skirted the law or flouted it, their vast wealth enabling them to escape with fines and other wrist slaps. Their aims are radical: dismantling every aspect of the modern prog...

Regular readers may have noticed that I'm a big admirer of Jane Mayer's book Dark Money, but there is an unfortunate boo-boo here: But as Dr. James Baker, former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in 2005, “There’s a better scientific consensus on this than on any issue I know— except maybe Newton’s second law of [thermo] dynamics.” Mayer, Jane (2016-01-19). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Kindle Locations 3944-3946). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. I assume the brackets mean that Baker did not actually use the word "thermo" but that Mayer or some unfortunate editor slipped it in. A little knowledge is still a dangerous thing.

No economic factor has been more important to the rise of modern civilization than fossil fuel energy, and this fact has concentrated enormous political and economic power in the hands of those who find, own, and control it. The available wealth attracted the bold, the brilliant and, frequently, the slightly crazy, but public spiritedness was not necessarily a major virtue or character trait among them. The enormously wealthy men, corporations, and countries that control this precious resource were not slow to recognize the threat that public concern over global warming posed to their particular fortunes - the money at stake was clearly in the trillions of dollars. From Dark Money, funding climate denial: The first peer-reviewed academic study on the topic added further detail. Robert Brulle, a Drexel University professor of sociology and environmental science, discovered that between 2003 and 2010 over half a billion dollars was spent on what he described as a massive “campaign to...

Buying influence, Koch style. When the EPA attempted to regulate surface ozone (a major byproduct of Koch refineries), a GMU Mercatus center economist came up with the far fetched scenario that such ozone might prevent cancer. The DC circuit court judges embraced this theory. It turns out that they had been beneficiaries of Koch sponsored boondoggles that combined luxurious living with a side of libertarian propaganda. Coincidence? Their embrace of the Mercatus Center’s novel argument, however, soon proved embarrassing. The Supreme Court overruled their position unanimously, noting that the Clean Air Act’s standards are absolute and not subject to cost-benefit analysis. Although their side lost in the end, the case illustrated that the Kochs’ ideological pipeline was humming. Mayer, Jane (2016-01-19). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Kindle Locations 2951-2953). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. It seems...

At one point Jane Mayer told the story of Charles Koch's takeover of key departments at George Mason University. This bit caught my attention: Charles reportedly demanded better metrics with which to monitor students’ political views. To the dismay of some faculty members, applicants’ essays had to be run through computers in order to count the number of times they mentioned the free-market icons Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. Students were tested at the beginning and the end of each week for ideological improvement. Mayer, Jane (2016-01-19). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Kindle Locations 2878-2881). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. This strategy should appeal to old Stalinists like Lumo. Straight outa Dugashvili.

It took them a while, but the organized American plutocratic Right eventually realized that the Left's big advantage was control of prestigious American universities - Harvard, Princeton, Yale and a few others. It also realized that a frontal assault would not work. Perhaps mostly importantly, they chose their targets carefully. It's pretty obvious that much of the faculty at those schools are far to the left of the American public. Most of those faculty members are in departments with essentially zero influence on public affairs - humanities, liberal arts, ethnic and similar studies, much of social science and others. Scientists tend to be liberal rather than left, and engineers and doctors tend to be moderately right, so together they don't much affect the balance. Economics, law, government and history are exceptions, especially the first two. Dangled financial carrots persuaded top law schools that they needed Economics of Law faculty, and strategic funding pushe...

Tax exempt foundations seem to be a peculiarly or at least mainly American institution. The Rockefeller Foundation was the first. John D. Rockefeller, under pressure from the anti-trust movement and embarrassed by the exposes that had revealed the morally and legally dubious tactic by which his empire had been constructed, set out to donate a big chunk of his wealth to causes benefiting the public good: education, art, science and public health. A number of other public spirited (or intimidated) individuals followed suit. These early foundations faced a good deal of public scrutiny and criticism. Partially as a result of that skepticism, these early foundations were mostly explicitly nonpartisan and science based. This was not to be the case in the age of what Jane Mayer calls the age of "weaponized philanthropy." They were a creation of the ultra-wealthy who found they could have their ideological cake and eat it too. With the onset of World War II, Sarah Mellon Scaife...

Or, in some cases, trying to read. 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami. This book is a monster, almost 1200 pages in its paperback edition, but I listened to the 48 hour audible edition. We picked it up for a long drive, but we didn't drive nearly that long. Murakami is clearly a master, probably the best modern novelist that I have read. He is a Japanese writer, writing in Japanese, but his characters would hardly be out of place in London or New York. Murakami knows English well, and has been a prolific translator of American novels into Japanese, and oversaw the translation into English. The genre is a sort of magical realism - a realistic world into which strange events start intruding. Carver, Chandler, Salinger, and Theroux are just a small sample of the authors he has translated, and the influence of the detective yarn is strong in 1Q84. He claims to have been influenced by Shakespeare, Kafka and Stephen King. I mentally compared Murakami with a couple of notably long books ...

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer. Does it seem odd to you that one political party is populated exclusively by candidates who advocate tax policies that would generously reward the richest Americans and destroy social programs very popular with the average American? That the US has a health care system that delivers fairly poor quality care, and that only to the well off, but still costs far more than those of other developed countries? Jane Mayer's account of the remarkable institutions that have developed promote this state of affairs is a terrific and, for me, terrifying read. From the Amazon blurb: Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middl...

...is a great crime*. Fred Koch, according to Jane Mayer's Dark Money , made his big bucks building refineries for Stalin and Hitler. Koch, a founding member of the John Birch Society, came to regret his association with Stalin, but he liked Nazi Germany enough to hire a Hitler loving German nanny for his children. He also showed a fondness for pre-WWII Italy and Japan. The refinery he built for Hitler was the prime source for the high octane aviation gas used by the Luftwaffe, and the destruction of the refinery cost the lives of hundreds of allied airmen and tens of thousands of Germans on the ground. Gramps Trump made his fortune another old fashioned way. According to Wikipedia : Trump made his first fortune operating boom-town hotels, restaurants and brothels[1] in the northwestern United States and western Canada.[2] The apple doesn't fall ... *Balzac via The Godfather.

The United States was founded as a democratic republic, a compromise of sorts between monarchy and full on democracy which the founders feared would put too much power in the hands of the mob. Political power, and the vote were restricted to white males, and also by various economic tests. The vote has been progressively widened over most of the past two plus centuries, but various factors have narrowed political power, concentrating it in the hands of a tiny number of the super wealthy. Since the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision, the American election system has become a system of legalized bribery. For the most part, the bribes don't flow directly into the pockets of candidate (New Jersey governor Chris Cristie being slightly exceptional, though not, of course, in New Jersey). Instead, the bribes are direct or indirect campaign contributions. Economic and technological factors have made running for political office enormously expensive, and concentration of media own...

It doesn't look good for the Democratic party and it probably is even worse for the country. Well, I voted a few days ago. It hurt me, but I voted for two Republicans. They appeared to be slightly less crooked than their Democratic counterparts. Lesser of two weevils. Otherwise, I went Democratic Party. Unfortunately, in a couple of the most important races the Republican is likely to win. Susanna Martinez, our governor, has the advantages of incumbency, support from Sarah Palin and the likes of the Koch Machine, and her Hispanic heritage and name. Her opponent lacks notable electoral virtues, except for the name he shares with his father, a popular former governor. Our US Representative is the execrable Steve Pearce, a made guy in the Republican right wing, thoroughly dishonest guy, and advocate of every idiotic policy of the Oil Oligarchy. His opponent is little known, underfunded, and a less than brilliant campaigner. So that’s another vote of mine that is unlikely to ...

Michael Lewis is a writer you might want to read even if he wrote about something really boring, like baseball statistics - oh wait, he did - and it became a hit movie ( Moneyball ). He has a magical ability to capture interesting characters at or near the core of interesting economic events, so he is a business writer, after a fashion. His other famous movie, The Blind Side , was also sports oriented (football), but the characters are always at the center of his stories, and that's what makes his tales of Wall Street shenaningans and national bankruptcies winners. That's true of Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World , but the if it were only about some characters caught up in a global calamity, the book would be much less interesting to the analytically inclined (I've seen the movies, but I haven't read those two of his books.) The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2007 has just now created a new opportunity for travel: fi...

Tyler Cowen is selling a new electronic micro book called The Great Stagnation . It’s a tiny book – essentially just an essay – but it is cheap, $3.99 on Amazon. I like his subject, summarized in the subtitle: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History,Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better . There are a number of interesting ideas, but I liked the last few chapters better than the first. In fact, it didn’t take long for my first symptoms of indigestion to set in. He has a graph at location 142 tracing growth in median US family income from 1945 to 2007. There are two lines on the graph, one labeled actual, the other labeled “if it had kept pace with GDP per capita.” The graph shows almost steady growth in the GDP per capital line, with median family income faltering and falling well-behind after the early 1970’s. So far, so good, but next he creates a muddle. You can see the rate of growth of per capita median income slows down…” Say What? Do you mean median or p...