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« Liberal Outrage: March 2017 | Main | Liberal Outrage: May 2017 » Liberal OutrageIt's not a tactical error Jeff Spross has a good article up on why the Democrats should stop attacking Trump on the deficit. Where i disagree with Spross is that he frames it as the Dems attacking Trump, and Republicans generally, on the hypocrisy of complaining about the deficit and then increasing it when they are in office. But i think we are way past giving the Dems the benefit of the doubt on that at this point. It may have started as a way to point out the irony or (moreso) outflank the Republicans on the right to neutralize it as a campaign issue. But they've been doing it for so long it's now just a part of their philosophy. Bill Clinton dismantled welfare and balanced the budget. The Dems re-instituted PayGo when they took back Congress in 2006. Obama tried to cut social security and balance the budget as part of the Catfood Commission Grand Bargain. And now they're attacking Trump for (as Spross points out) exactly the wrong reasons. At some point we have to accept that the party of Wall Street is doing this because it's what they believe, not because of short-sighted tactics. By fnord12 | April 28, 2017, 10:34 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link I've read a bunch of takes on this new book by Jonathan Taplin about the monopoly power of Amazon, Facebook, and Google, but i really like DDay's, i guess because in addition to summarizing the points of Taplin's book he also takes issue with some of them (i.e. when Taplin sides with copyright holders in the battle against SOPA). Personally i think all of this is a result of the fact that we're living in a game of Civilization where the player for some bizarre reason has decided to skip "Socialism" on the tech tree. By the time you have "Internet" you should definitely have "Socialism". Because a lot of these questions come down to "How do you make money on the internet?" (or, more and more, when the internet exists) and the answer really is "You shouldn't have to". By fnord12 | April 27, 2017, 2:08 PM | Liberal Outrage
& Video Games | Link Katrina vanden Heuvel implies that for all of Bernie Sanders' positive points, he's not so great on foreign policy, and says that the left needs someone to be a leader on that front. I agree with Heuvel. I did think that Bernie improved on foreign policy during the primary by going back to his 1980s roots when he really was good/outspoken on foreign policy, but unfortunately he's mostly gone silent on that front again and even (vaguely) endorsed regime change in Syria. Not directly addressing Heuvel, Yves Smith makes the counterpoint, saying that the best way to challenge the US foreign policy consensus is to kind of sneak into office by running on more popular domestic issues (that's my uncharitable interpretation of the piece but Smith actually makes a fairly convincing case so read it for yourself). On the other end of the spectrum, Bruce A. Dixon dismisses Bernie as a "pro-war Democrat" and basically is not looking to any portion of the Dems, even the Bernie faction, for leadership (Dixon's piece is not directly relevant; it's about Cornel West's call for Bernie to lead a new People's Party, which i disagree with on tactical grounds, not because of Dixon's objection to Bernie). I mostly agree with Heuvel on this. I take Smith's point: if Bernie had won it would have meant a huge improvement for our foreign policy despite (taking Dixon's point) that he isn't as strong on those issues as we'd like him to be. But just seeing the way Bernie changed the conversation on economic issues, it's clear that it would be very valuable for someone to do the same on foreign policy. And just from the little that we did see from Bernie, and even from some of the (confused, contradictory) things that Trump campaigned on (and immediately backtracked on after the election), there does seem to be a "market" for it. By fnord12 | April 27, 2017, 9:21 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link This isn't "surprising", but here's more data showing the rise of income inequality coinciding with the turn to neoliberal economics in the late 70s (and continuing to accelerate). Also "not surprising" (although it apparently was to the writers) is that sweatshops don't actually lift people in poor countries out of poverty. By fnord12 | April 27, 2017, 9:14 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link On Twitter, David Klion notes the increased support among Democratic politicians and says that both Bernie & Hillary partisans should acknowledge that Bernie is slowly but surely winning. As a supporter of Bernie and (more to the point) his policies, i'd like to take heart in that. But the problem is that $15/hour is insufficient to start with and will be even more out of date after it "slowly" garners enough support to pass (at least four years from now until after Trump is gone) and then is slowly phased in (the phase-in is necessary to not bankrupt small businesses overnight). If we were keeping up with general gains in productivity, the minimum wage would be over $20 already. Some 6+ years from now, bringing the minimum wage to $15 will of course be better than what it is currently, but it won't be doing a thing to address income inequality. By fnord12 | April 26, 2017, 9:57 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link A recent study has shown that wealthy people are getting a disproportionate amount of Social Security, since they live longer. This has given fuel to people who want to restrict Social Security payments to the rich. Ryan Cooper calls bullshit. By fnord12 | April 25, 2017, 9:40 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Again, who becomes mayor of Omaha is pretty low on my list of things to worry about, but it seems increasingly clear that Heath Mello was a scapegoat for a proxy attack on Bernie. By fnord12 | April 25, 2017, 9:26 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link I don't agree with everything here (e.g. the concern about "fake news") but this is an interesting article in NYT on how we should be dealing with the monopolies of Google, Amazon, etc.. By fnord12 | April 25, 2017, 9:02 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link The Jacobin has an article refuting a claim from one of Vox's more libertarian writers and i'm not too interested in that specifically. But i thought this was an interesting interpretation of recent history: By fnord12 | April 25, 2017, 8:54 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link I've written before about Amazon, but this article is a really good illustration of what the dangers of Amazon becoming a monopoly are. The article is actually much bigger than that, and it's pretty scary in general. By fnord12 | April 24, 2017, 9:49 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link That's the argument from Carl Beijer. By fnord12 | April 24, 2017, 9:48 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Someone put together a collection of Matt Bruenig's articles on poverty and i thought it would be good to preserve a link to it here. The summaries of the articles is actually a good read in and of itself. By fnord12 | April 24, 2017, 9:44 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link The interesting thing about this post (also from Naked Capitalism) isn't so much the content but the verb tense. I've mainly seen this "America is becoming a third world country" articles describing what could happen, but this one talks like it already is. By fnord12 | April 24, 2017, 9:38 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism looks at the latest kerfuffle over Bernie supporting a pro-abortion candidate and the failed Unity Tour with Perez in general. (There's also apparently more nuance to Mello's abortion position, but that's really besides the point.) By fnord12 | April 24, 2017, 9:18 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Eve Peyser has an interesting piece on the growing bipartisan consensus to legalize marijuana, and the most surprising part is that the very rightwing Don Young is on board. ...As soon as Young begins talking about weed--or rather "cannabis," as he corrects me--as it relates to his family and alcohol, we're on the same page, a feeling I certainly did not anticipate. ...I never binge-drank because I loved alcohol--I did so because I really wanted to get fucked up, and it was the substance most available to me. When I finally decided to quit doing something I had indulged in every single day for years, the addict inside me didn't suddenly wither away. I didn't suddenly start hating drugs. I just realized there was an alternative, a way outside of the anxiety of sobriety that wasn't going to absolutely annihilate me. And that alternative was weed. I understand this is not everyone's experience with the drug, but this narrative is not uncommon, and I share this view with Don Young, of all people. "You have to understand that I live with American Indians. That's my home. That's my wife," the Alaska congressman tells me. "Marijuana is a lot better than alcohol. I want to stress that because alcohol creates violence, and I've seen great people cut somebody's head off drunk. You don't see that with marijuana. I'm not condoning it. I'm saying that was the effect upon them, and now they smoke." By fnord12 | April 21, 2017, 3:00 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Just starting to learn about Google AMP. The idea seems to be to encourage good website design: The lite-loading HTML creates a preferred language across content manufacturers. No more poorly formatted local news sites, purposely-scaled and vaguely branded content farms... Social networks and search engines want to deliver content to users without losing them, bouncing around pages without gimmicky Outbrain related links that lead you straight to nowhere. AMP pages help Google browsers feel like they aren't just being propelled into a web of nothingness. I'm 100% on board with that. The downside seems to be that Google is making AMP available to "premium content farms" before everyone else, creating a two-tiered system of websites: "big box" sites that get top priority in search results and then sites by random people (like this one and a lot of the sites i read). The issue there ultimately stems from the fact that Google has (deservedly) won the search engine game and is effectively a monopoly, so the way that they prioritize their search results has a huge impact. By fnord12 | April 21, 2017, 10:11 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Movie piracy is no small thing in the Netherlands, and an industry group called BREIN exists to combat pirates there. But going after torrenters themselves is difficult, so BREIN has also focused on periphery targets, like advertisers on torrent sites and, now, sites that host fan-created subtitles. And a Netherlands court ruling agreed with BREIN and said that unauthorized subtitles are an infringement. This is BS on a number of levels, including the fact that subtitles have value for people well beyond pirated movies. But what i hate most about the case is that BREIN's argument in part is that fansubbers provide "unfair competition for emerging business models involving movies and TV shows". In other words, how can we monetize this if people are doing it for free? By that same argument, Encyclopedia Britannica should sue Wikipedia. The best thing about the internet is that millions of people are willing to provide content - in the form of Wikipedia articles or movie subtitles or comic book reviews - for free because it's their hobby or passion. Making a portion of that illegal because it's "unfair competition" for someone who wants to charge for it could be very damaging. By fnord12 | April 21, 2017, 8:42 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link I watched the 1990 version with Natasha Richardson ages ago having never read the book or even heard of Margaret Atwood. For years after, i was so enraged and disturbed by the rape scenes that i instinctively hated the sight of Robert Duvall and couldn't stomach seeing him in any other movies. A couple of my friends were very excited when Hulu announced they were making a new adaptation. With politicians chipping away at Roe v Wade and an internet that threatens women with rape and then acts like the threat-makers are the victims, it seemed like the right time to revisit Atwood's dystopian society. Most contradictory and recognizable of all these female collaborators is Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), the wife of Offred's commander. Before Gilead, she graced American television screens as a preternaturally blond evangelist. (Serena Joy was her stage name, a nom de guerre for the culture wars.) Even though she occupies the highest rank for a woman in this new world, she is now legally inferior to her sad-sack husband and, finding herself childless, has to employ Offred as a surrogate. Rage roils the edges of her ice-princess restraint. "She doesn't make speeches anymore," Offred notes in the book. "She stays in her home, but it doesn't seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word." And in a time when Madeleine "I think the death of 500,000 children was worth it" Albright feels she's allowed to scold young women for not supporting Hillary Clinton, it seemed like the right time to re-examine the definition of "feminism". But The Handmaid's Tale does more than present a possible future: It asks us to consider how we'd end up there. A form of feminism that celebrates power for power's sake, instead of interrogating how it is concentrated and distributed, will usher us into fascism. Feminism means something. Some choices oppress the women who make them, and some beliefs, if enforced, would oppress everyone else, too. Allow an antichoice woman to call herself a feminist, and you have ceded political territory that you cannot afford to lose. Stripped of political meaning, "feminist" becomes an entirely subjective term that anyone with any agenda can use. Because it's not just the Kellyanne Conways/Serena Joys we should be wary of. It's the "reasonable" women who want us to help boost them up to positions of power because "feminism", and not only never lend other women a hand up once we've helped them gain that power, but instead work hard to keep women down. Yes, feminism means something. By min | April 20, 2017, 6:26 PM | Boooooks & Liberal Outrage & TeeVee | Link The idea that your life only has meaning because of your job is repugnant to me. My life has meaning because i say it does, not because of what i'm employed to do. Sure, some people derive enjoyment from their work, but that should be extra. It shouldn't be the end all, be all of your self-worth. I know someone who has two full time jobs and another with one full time job and two part time jobs - all just to make ends meet. If their lives had any more "satisfaction" or "meaning", i think they'd die from exhaustion. And for those who think you must work because without work, "what would you do with your time?" - If you can't imagine having a full life without work to eat up the hours of the day, i'm sad for you. Start picking up some hobbies. By min | April 20, 2017, 3:02 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Responding to the same author as Sara Jones, Katie Halper has a long detailed takedown of the article blaming Millennial feminists for Clinton's loss. (I should note that Jones doesn't actually like the headline, on the grounds that plenty of Boomer feminists supported Bernie.) By fnord12 | April 18, 2017, 12:20 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Despite having bribed all the local Democratic parties to get anointed frontrunner status in the primary, Phil Murphy is feeling the pressure from John Wisniewski (and others), especially about his Wall Street ties. And therefore Murphy has come out with a very good proposal, a public bank in NJ. Campaign promises are of course fleeting things, but just introducing this idea into the public consciousness is a good thing, and now this is something that activists can use to hold Murphy's feet to the fire (assuming that Wiz doesn't win). By fnord12 | April 18, 2017, 9:32 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Noam Chomsky recently was interviewed by Democracy Now and gave a good context for our "conflict" with Korea that is lacking in most mainstream coverage (for example, this NYT piece that says "the roots of the Korean crisis go back a quarter-century" which is only off by four decades or so). Relatedly, the Nation has an article looking at North Korea from the perspective of South Korea, and it's really interesting. First, here's Chomsky: 1994, Clinton made--established what was called the Framework Agreement with North Korea. North Korea would terminate its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The U.S. would reduce hostile acts. It more or less worked, and neither side lived up to it totally, but, by 2000, North Korea had not proceeded with its nuclear weapons programs. George W. Bush came in and immediately launched an assault on North Korea--you know, "axis of evil," sanctions and so on. North Korea turned to producing nuclear weapons. In 2005, there was an agreement between North Korea and the United States, a pretty sensible agreement. North Korea agreed to terminate its development of nuclear weapons. In return, it called for a nonaggression pact. So, stop making hostile threats, relief from harsh sanctions, and provision of a system to provide North Korea with low-enriched uranium for medical and other purposes--that was the proposal. George Bush instantly tore it to shreds. Within days, the U.S. was imposing--trying to disrupt North Korean financial transactions with other countries through Macau and elsewhere. North Korea backed off, started building nuclear weapons again. I mean, maybe you can say it's the worst regime in history, whatever you like, but they have been following a pretty rational tit-for-tat policy. And why are they developing nuclear weapons altogether? I mean, the economy is in bad shape. They could certainly use the resources. Everyone understands that it's a deterrent. And they have a proposal, actually. There's a proposal on the table. China and North Korea proposed that North Korea should terminate its further development of nuclear weapons. In return, the United States should stop carrying out threatening military maneuvers with South Korea right on its border. Not an unreasonable proposal. It's simply dismissed. Actually, Obama dismissed it, too. There are possible steps that could be taken to alleviate which could be an extremely serious crisis. I mean, if the U.S. did decide to use force against North Korea, one immediate reaction, according to the military sources available to us, is that Seoul, the city of Seoul, would simply be wiped out by mass North Korean artillery aimed at it. And who knows where we'd go from there? But the opportunity to produce--to move towards a negotiated diplomatic settlement does not seem outlandish. I mean, this Chinese-North Korean proposal is certainly worth serious consideration, I would think. After labeling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an "Axis of Evil" and then invading Iraq, it shouldn't be a surprise that the other two countries want nuclear weapons. Chomsky also looks at the older history (the one that goes back more than the NYT's quarter century): And it's worth bearing in mind that North Korea has some memories. They were practically destroyed by some of the most intensive bombing in history. The bombing--you should--it's worth reading. Maybe you should read, people, the official Air Force history of the bombing of North Korea. It's shattering. I mean, they had flattened the country. There were no targets left. So, therefore, they decided, well, we'll attack the dams--which is a war crime, of course. And the description of the attack on the dams is--without the exact wording, I hate to paraphrase it. You should really read the--they were simply exalting, in the official histories, Air Force Quarterly and others, about the--how magnificent it will be to see this massive flood of water coursing through North Korea, wiping out crops. For Asians, the rice crops is their life. This will destroy them. It will be magnificent. The North Koreans lived through that. And having nuclear-capable B-52s flying on their border is not a joke. And now for the Nation's review of South Korea's perspective (i recommend reading the whole thing and also clicking through to the article by Bruce Cumings which expands on what Chomskey said above, but here are some excerpts): With the exception of a tiny minority of fanatical anti-communists, South Koreans have largely been unfazed by the headlines. "I'm much more worried about anything President Trump might do than the threats of war and retaliation from North Korea," a friend of mine who teaches engineering at a local university in Gwangju told me over dinner one night. South Korea will choose its next president on May 9. The two leading candidates, the liberal Moon Jae-in and the more centrist Ahn Cheol-soo, have wide leads over the likely conservative candidate, Hong Jun-pyo. The United States has been closely following the election with growing trepidation. As I reported last year before Park was deposed, US military officials and analysts have expressed alarm that the left opposition could win this year. Moon has staked out a position very different from Trump's: He has called for direct dialogue and negotiations with North Korea and a reopening of the economic cooperation with the North championed by Roh and Kim Dae-jung, the beloved opposition leader who was president in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Meanwhile, at their first group debate on April 13, both Moon and Ahn expressed strong opposition to a unilateral US pre-emptive strike and emphasized that South Korea must play a lead role in any dealings with North Korea or China. The candidates are now running neck and neck, and either one could win the presidency. It seems to me it's more that if Ahn wins, the policy might go back to Obama's, but if Moon wins it might be something even better: a real start to de-escalation and possibly (eventually) even reunification. In fact, reading between the lines, it almost seems like the Trump administration's recent escalation is an attempt to swing the election, to get South Koreans to be afraid of North Korea again and vote more conservatively. But hopefully it won't work. In a stinging editorial on Easter Sunday, the Hankyoreh newspaper, which was founded by journalists purged during the authoritarian 1970s and '80s, blamed both sides for aggravating tensions. I think it would be really amazing and positive if Moon won the election and began to defuse the situation between North and South Korea, leaving the US on the sidelines. (Title for this post, in an attempt to lighten the mood, is from Mike Sterling.) By fnord12 | April 18, 2017, 8:43 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link These people are serious. Well, and/or they think we are stupid. Budding artists are encouraged to send their original works in by April 21 with the main requirement that it "should showcase the awesomeness of fossil fuels." Cooke told ThinkProgress that the organization's fossil fuels art contest is rooted in inclusivity. "Fossil fuels seem to get left out of the Earth Day celebration," she said via email. "As an energy feminist -- pro-choice in energy sources -- I feel it's important to have hydrocarbons equally represented." By fnord12 | April 12, 2017, 11:09 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link It's one thing that she's 86 years old, but you have to be really committed to spraypaint graffiti in German. By fnord12 | April 11, 2017, 10:31 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link By fnord12 | April 11, 2017, 10:18 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Matt Bruenig summarizes a study looking at kids (now adults) with disabilities who were pushed off of welfare by Bill Clinton. By fnord12 | April 11, 2017, 10:10 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Why airlines can treat you like garbage. By fnord12 | April 11, 2017, 10:09 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Trump's missile attack on Syria has left me seething with rage on multiple levels at multiple targets, but Glenn Greenwald have saved me from writing an all-caps rant. If you really want to be sick, click on the video of Brian Williams talking about how "beautiful" our missiles are while they were raining death down on at least seven people. By fnord12 | April 7, 2017, 11:08 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Matt Stoller has an article up reviewing a study showing how the increasing size of corporations has resulted in lower wages for workers. The article also talks about, contra my post below about self driving trucks*, the increased corporate concentration is also resulting in less investment, which means that our robot future (and, with it, productivity gains) is actually slowing (but not in a way that is a reprieve for workers). *I am told that the joke in that article was too obscure: UBI stands for Universal Basic Income, people! It's how we can all benefit from increased productivity and automation. And click on the Knight Rider image for a rebuttal to some objections to the idea. By fnord12 | April 6, 2017, 9:06 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link All But 38 House Democrats Co-Sponsored a New Bill to Expand Social Security. By fnord12 | April 6, 2017, 7:23 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link There is a book coming out blaming Hillary Clinton's loss largely on Millenials too stupid to understand how wonderful she was, in part because they were hoodwinked by right wing smears. Sarah Jones has a nice response. By fnord12 | April 5, 2017, 3:55 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link The problem with eating your own dog food. I do want to call out one portion: Democrats by and large are convinced that no one actually supports their agenda, and they devote a not insignificant amount of time and political capital to explaining to their own constituents why they cannot pursue goals that a majority of them support. ("I supported single payer since before you were born," says Nancy Pelosi, who has the legislative and leadership record of someone who may support single payer but clearly doesn't actually expect it to happen in our lifetimes.) Conservatives, especially those who came up during the Obama era, have, more or less, the opposite problem: They've convinced themselves that their agenda is hugely popular and that everyone supports them. There's actually been some research on this: Politicians--both liberal ones and conservative ones--believe that the electorate is more conservative than it actually is. By fnord12 | April 5, 2017, 1:06 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Ok, for some reason in the TV show they never did merge KARR with Golaith to make a self-driving truck (which would be named Goliath Automated Roving Robot, obviously), but that was only due to the limitations of continuity in 1980s television. It's clearly what they should have done, and it was my head canon for years until i tried to rewatch the show. But in any event, they're doing it now, for real. So we're gonna need to update KIT's arsenal. By fnord12 | April 5, 2017, 9:16 AM | Liberal Outrage
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