April 19, 2016

TYT on Bernie's tax returns, another fake controversy

April 19, 2016

TYT on Clinton's corruption and a recent fundraiser of hers

April 13, 2016

Clinton and the coup in Honduras, Indefensible

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/4/13/shes_baldly_lying_dana_frank_responds

Come on Clinton supporters, don't run away. Respond to this like adults.

April 11, 2016

The great 20th century radical economist Michal Kalecki on austerity and full employment

Written in 1943 but amazingly prescient. Deals with austerity, full employment, the power differential between capital and labor and the politics of it all. Worth a read, I think.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/kalecki220510.html

...There are, however, even more direct indications that a first-class political issue is at stake here. In the great depression in the 1930s, big business consistently opposed experiments for increasing employment by government spending in all countries, except Nazi Germany. This was to be clearly seen in the USA (opposition to the New Deal), in France (the Blum experiment), and in Germany before Hitler. The attitude is not easy to explain. Clearly, higher output and employment benefit not only workers but entrepreneurs as well, because the latter's profits rise. And the policy of full employment outlined above does not encroach upon profits because it does not involve any additional taxation. The entrepreneurs in the slump are longing for a boom; why do they not gladly accept the synthetic boom which the government is able to offer them? It is this difficult and fascinating question with which we intend to deal in this article.

The reasons for the opposition of the 'industrial leaders' to full employment achieved by government spending may be subdivided into three categories: (i) dislike of government interference in the problem of employment as such; (ii) dislike of the direction of government spending (public investment and subsidizing consumption); (iii) dislike of the social and political changes resulting from the maintenance of full employment. We shall examine each of these three categories of objections to the government expansion policy in detail.

...We have considered the political reasons for the opposition to the policy of creating employment by government spending. But even if this opposition were overcome -- as it may well be under the pressure of the masses -- the maintenance of full employment would cause social and political changes which would give a new impetus to the opposition of the business leaders. Indeed, under a regime of permanent full employment, the 'sack' would cease to play its role as a 'disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow. Strikes for wage increases and improvements in conditions of work would create political tension. It is true that profits would be higher under a regime of full employment than they are on the average under laissez-faire, and even the rise in wage rates resulting from the stronger bargaining power of the workers is less likely to reduce profits than to increase prices, and thus adversely affects only the rentier interests. But 'discipline in the factories' and 'political stability' are more appreciated than profits by business leaders. Their class instinct tells them that lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view, and that unemployment is an integral part of the 'normal' capitalist system.

April 11, 2016

Pretty amazing article from 1967 (sound familiar?), "Who's going to be the lesser-evil in 1968?"

http://isreview.org/issues/32/draper.shtml

by HAL DRAPER

...The lib-labs would then swoon, crying "The fascists are coming!" and vote for the Lesser Evil. In these last two decades, the Democrats have learned well that they have the lib-lab vote in their back pocket, and that therefore the forces to be appeased are those forces to the right. The lib-labs were kept happy enough if Hubert Humphrey showed up at a banquet to make his liberal speeches; or, before that, by the Kennedy myth which bemused them even while the first leader on this planet poised his finger over the nuclear-war button and said "Or else!" With the lib-lab votes in a pocket, politics in this country had to move steadily right-right-right-until even a Lyndon Johnson could look like a Lesser Evil. This is essentially why–even when there reall y is a Lesser Evil–making the Lesser Evil choice undercuts any possibility of really fighting the Right.

April 9, 2016

Clinton employing noise machines against journalists during fundraiser in Colorado

No big deal, right?

April 8, 2016

TYT on the biggest fake controversy of this election cycle

I would love for Clinton supporters to watch and respond to this video. Is this fake controversy worse than her behavior during the 2008 primaries? Can we compare the horrible, racist things she said about him then, or the fact that she often focused on how unqualified he was, to this comment?