The Zero Room

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Top Nancy Pelosi Aide Privately Tells Insurance Executives Not to Worry About Democrats Pushing “Medicare for All” — Ryan Grim in the Intercept: Less than a month after Democrats — many of them running on “Medicare for All” — won back control of the House of Representatives in November, the top health policy aide to then-prospective House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Blue Cross Blue Shield executives and assured them that party leadership had strong reservations about single-payer health care and was more focused on lowering drug prices, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Pelosi adviser Wendell Primus detailed five objections to Medicare for All and said that Democrats would be allies to the insurance industry in the fight against single-payer health care.
• You Should Never Have Trusted Flickr to Protect Your Cherished Photos — April Glaser at Slate: While no one can question the convenience of pulling up an old photo on demand, Flickr’s ultimatum—pay up or go—serves as a useful reminder that the free platforms we’ve entrusted to save our memories aren’t made for us. They’re made for the people who profit off our usage. These platforms can be sold. They can erase what we’ve saved. They can charge us later for access to our own photos, or to store more of them. They can change their terms of service and hand all of our precious memories to the police, use facial recognition to map our relationships, or use the photos for ads—as Instagram opened up its terms of service to be able to do in 2012, ditto Yahoo in 2014. Yahoo actually sold users’ Creative Commons–licensed photos as wall art without giving the photographers any of the profits.
• In Venezuela, White Supremacy is a Key to Trump’s Coup — Greg Palast: In my interviews with Chavez for BBC beginning in 2002, he talked with humor about the fury of a white ruling class finding itself displaced by dark-skinned man who was so visibly “Negro e Indio,” a label he wore loudly and proudly. Why did the poor love Chavez? (And love is not too strong a word.) As even the US CIA’s surprisingly honest Fact Book states: “Social investment in Venezuela during the Chavez administration reduced poverty from nearly 50% in 1999 to about 27% in 2011, increased school enrollment, substantially decreased infant and child mortality, and improved access to potable water and sanitation through social investment.”
• Venezuela as the pivot for New Internationalism? — an interview with Michael Hudson: By imposing sanctions that prevent Venezuela from gaining access to its U.S. bank deposits and the assets of its state-owned Citco, the United States is making it impossible for Venezuela to pay its foreign debt. This is forcing it into default, which U.S. diplomats hope to use as an excuse to foreclose on Venezuela’s oil resources and seize its foreign assets much as Paul Singer’s hedge fund sought to do with Argentina’s foreign assets. Just as U.S. policy under Kissinger was to make Chile’s “economy scream,” so the U.S. is following the same path against Venezuela. It is using that country as a “demonstration effect” to warn other countries not to act in their self-interest in any way that prevents their economic surplus from being siphoned off by U.S. investors.
• They were... Socialist Invaders from the Future! — Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling:
  
• Bernie 2020 Campaign Has Corporate Democrats Running Scared — Norman Solomon: With a launch of the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign on the near horizon, efforts to block his trajectory to the Democratic presidential nomination are intensifying. The lines of attack are already aggressive -- and often contradictory. One media meme says that Bernie has made so much headway in moving the Democratic Party leftward that he’s no longer anything special. We’re supposed to believe that candidates who’ve adjusted their sails to the latest political wind are just as good as the candidate who generated the wind in the first place.
• Bernie’s Likely 2020 Bid Could Transform the Political Landscape — Norman Solomon again, this time in Truthout: We are now at a decisive fork in the road that Justice Louis Brandeis identified long ago: “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” The two hands with the most wealth concentrated in them now belong to Amazon owner Jeff Bezos. Not coincidentally, his newspaper, The Washington Post, has been among the influential media outlets most antagonistic toward Sanders. In early March 2016, at a pivotal moment during the primary campaign, FAIR analyst Adam Johnson pointed out that The Post “ran 16 negative stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours … a window that includes the crucial Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, and the next morning’s spin.” The day after that onslaught ended, Sanders stunned the elite media by winning the Michigan primary.
• Why the Differences Between Sanders and Warren Matter — Zaid Jilani in Jacobin: Since her departure from the Republican Party, Warren has busied herself promoting a “level playing field” and a fairer system for workers and consumers. Her ideals, while not out of step with those of a mid-century liberal Republican, would represent a marked shift away from the economic status quo if implemented. […] Yet Sanders has always existed outside the traditional party system. He has more in common with non-American socialists like Evo Morales and Jeremy Corbyn than party figures like John Kennedy, to whom Warren has subtly linked herself. He would be the most progressive president the United States has ever seen. The two senators also have distinct theories of change. Sanders has long believed in bottom-up, movement-based politics. Since his days as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he has tried to energize citizens to take part in government. He generally distrusts elites and decision-making that does not include the public. Warren, on the other hand, generally accepts political reality and works to push elite decision-makers towards her point of view.
• Pro-Israel Lobby Caught on Tape Boasting That Its Money Influences Washington — Ryan Grim in the Intercept: David Ochs, founder of HaLev, which helps send young people to American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference, described for the reporter how AIPAC and its donors organize fundraisers outside the official umbrella of the organization, so that the money doesn’t show up on disclosures as coming specifically from AIPAC. He describes one group that organizes fundraisers in both Washington and New York. “This is the biggest ad hoc political group, definitely the wealthiest, in D.C.,” Ochs says, adding that it has no official name, but is clearly tied to AIPAC. “It’s the AIPAC group. It makes a difference; it really, really does. It’s the best bang for your buck, and the networking is phenomenal.” […] Without spending money, Ochs argues, the pro-Israel lobby isn’t able to enact its agenda. “Congressmen and senators don’t do anything unless you pressure them. They kick the can down the road, unless you pressure them, and the only way to do that is with money,” he explains. And, for context:
• There Is a Taboo Against Criticizing AIPAC — and Ilhan Omar Just Destroyed It — Mehdi Hasan: In 2005, Steven Rosen, then a senior official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, sat down for dinner with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, then of the New Yorker. “You see this napkin?” Rosen asked Goldberg. “In twenty-four hours, [AIPAC] could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.” I couldn’t help but be reminded of this anecdote after Rep. Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, was slammed by Democrats and Republicans alike over her suggestion, in a pair of tweets, that U.S. politicians back the state of Israel because of financial pressure from AIPAC (“It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” she declaimed). Was the flippant way in which she phrased her tweets a problem? Did it offend a significant chunk of liberal U.S. Jewish opinion? Did it perhaps unwittingly play into anti-Semitic tropes about rich Jews controlling the world? Yes, yes, and yes — as she herself has since admitted and “unequivocally” apologized for. But was she wrong to note the power of the pro-Israel lobby, to point a finger at AIPAC, to highlight — in her apology — “the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry”? No, no, and no.
• Maybe We’ll Invade Another Oil-Rich Politically Dysfunctional Sort of Socialist Country. What Could Go Wrong? — Ted Rall:
  

This fortnight, I have been mostly reading:

• Stop saying, ‘We take your privacy and security seriously’ — Zach Whittaker at TechCrunch: In my years covering cybersecurity, there’s one variation of the same lie that floats above the rest. “We take your privacy and security seriously.” You might have heard the phrase here and there. It’s a common trope used by companies in the wake of a data breach — either in a “mea culpa” email to their customers or a statement on their website to tell you that they care about your data, even though in the next sentence they all too often admit to misusing or losing it. The truth is, most companies don’t care about the privacy or security of your data. They care about having to explain to their customers that their data was stolen.
• Progressive Democrats Like Elizabeth Warren Want a Higher Minimum Wage That Is Way Too Low — Ted Rall:
  
• Why a market model is destroying the safeguards of the professions — Lisa Herzog in Aeon: In the grip of nostalgia, it’s easy to overlook the dark sides of this old vocational model. On top of the fact that professional jobs were structured around hierarchies of gender and race, laypeople were expected to obey expert judgment without even asking questions. Deference to authority was the norm, and there were few ways of holding professionals to account. […] Against this backdrop, the call for more autonomy, for more ‘choice’, seems hard to resist. This is precisely what happened with the rise of neoliberalism after the 1970s, when the advocates of ‘New Public Management’ promoted the idea that hard-nosed market thinking should be used to structure healthcare, education and other areas that typically belonged to the slow and complicated world of public red tape. In this way, neoliberalism undermined not only public institutions but the very idea of professionalism.
• Democrats Are Afraid Of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Too. And That’s A Good Thing. — Norman Solomon: In the last few days, both Politico and the New York Times have reported that freshman Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has ruffled the feathers of fellow congressional Democrats. Chief among the reasons for the tension? Ocasio-Cortez’s apparent support for progressive primary challenges against centrist Democrats. It’s one of the most significant ideas the young New York congresswoman has brought with her to Washington. That’s because turning the Democratic Party into a truly progressive force will require turning “primary” into a verb. The corporate Democrats who dominate the party’s power structure in Congress should fear losing their seats because they’re out of step with constituents. And Democratic voters should understand that if they want to change the party, the only path to do so is to change the people who represent them. Otherwise, the leverage of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex will continue to hold sway.
• Bernie Sanders could be US president in 2020 – and this is what it means for Israel and the Middle East — Robert Fisk in the Independent: Take a look through his Israel/Palestine CV, and Sanders is clearly neither an aggressive Zionist nor a liberal patsy. He’s a New Deal Democrat, which is how many would judge him. Younger, leftist voters might consider him as a kind of upwardly mobile intellectual, a Chomsky on wheels – even though the great (Jewish) philosopher, activist and linguist said before the last presidential election that he’d vote for Clinton as a frontrunner rather than Sanders in swing states in a final vote to keep Trump out. Much good did that do him. But let’s remember a few more things about Sanders. He’s always supported the “right of Israel to exist” and its right to self-defence, and he’s always condemned Palestinian attacks on Israelis. But he’s also kept away from pro-Israeli Jewish lobby groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and he didn’t restrain himself when he chose to condemn Israel for its illegal colonial project of building homes for Jews and Jews only in the occupied West Bank, nor when Israel has blatantly interfered in US domestic or electoral politics.
• Many Voters Think Trump’s a Self-Made Man. What Happens When You Tell Them Otherwise? — Jared McDonald, David Karol, and Lilliana Mason: The narrative of Trump as self-made is simply false. Throughout his life, the president has downplayed the role his father, real estate developer Fred Trump, played in his success, claiming it was “limited to a small loan of $1 million.” That isn’t true, of course: A comprehensive New York Times investigation last year estimated that over the course of his lifetime, the younger Trump received more than $413 million in today’s dollars from his father. While this exact figure was not known before the Times’ report, it was a matter of record that by the mid-1980s, Trump had been loaned at least $14 million by his father, was loaned at least $3.5 million more in 1990, had borrowed several more million against his inheritance in the 1990s after many of his ventures failed, and had benefited enormously from his father’s political connections and co-signing on loans early in his career as a builder. Of course, someone born into wealth may have great business acumen, and the question of whether Trump is “a great businessman” is a subjective evaluation. The focus of our work, however, is on whether indisputable facts regarding candidate biographies—which are often invisible to voters over the course of a campaign—affect public opinion. It turns out that they do.
• America has never worried about financing its priorities — Brendan Greeley in FT Alphaville [Registrationwalled]: Modern monetary theory is simply a different way of looking at fiscal policy, a way of describing what the real-world constraints on spending look like. It is in fact very close to how people in Washington, D.C. already approach spending. Again, we're not talking about what they say. Rather, we're talking about what they do. […] Like modern monetary theorists, Congress already appropriates away until it reaches real-world restraints on how much it can spend. It just hasn't reached any for almost the last two decades. When Washington wants something — to fight a war, to cut taxes — it appropriates. And so arguments about balancing budgets aren't actually about constraints. They're about priorities. Important programs get appropriations, full stop. Unimportant programs need to be paid for with taxes. Or, in Washington: "We can't afford that" actually just means "I don't think that's very important."
• Tom Toles:
  
• With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Americans Finally Have a Politician Who Agrees With Them About Taxes — Jon Schwarz at the Intercept: Two prominent political scientists, Martin Gilens at the University of California, Los Angeles and Benjamin Page at Northwestern University, have carefully studied the U.S. political system and demonstrated with charts and tables what most of us believe intuitively: If you don’t have money, you don’t matter. Or as Gilens and Page put it, “Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all. By contrast, economic elites are estimated to have a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy.” The last 40 years of U.S. tax policy have been the most striking demonstration imaginable of this assertion. Americans have never, in living memory, been averse to higher taxes on the rich. Nonetheless, the top marginal tax rate for the federal income tax plunged during the Reagan administration, from 70 percent to 28 percent, and has since only inched back up to 37 percent.

I don't eat jam. My wife doesn't eat jam. Kitty doesn't eat jam. The dog doesn't eat jam. Despite that there is always a jar of jam in the fridge, but I have never seen jam go mouldy. Tomato paste, my heavens yes, as soon as you take your eyes off it. Jam never.

Eventually somebody decides they're sick of moving that fecking jar of jam whenever they're looking for a jar of something they actually want, and bins it. Yet soon enough somebody thinks they want jam, when actually they crave the sweet release of death, or something, or we're expecting visitors ("Oh! Do we have jam? They'll probably want jam."), and a jar is purchased, opened, quickly closed, and refrigerated as per the label's instructions.

Perhaps Theresa May is just being overly literal about the instructions, and refrigerating after opening without actually reading between the lines and closing it also. Still, aren't we all just yesterday's jam?

As I am pushing, or perhaps being shoved towards, fifty years of age, I find myself becoming compulsively autobiographic because I am starting to properly appreciate the sweep of history in those fifty years, and perhaps more so in the fifty previous years.

By 1971, the year I was born, what started in the 50s as a covert attempt by the #US and allies to prop up a French colonial holding had turned into a purely punitive expedition, on an unimaginable scale, directed against the civilian population of three countries. Half a century later, the failure to establish client dictatorships in Afghanistan and Iraq has normalised a lawless, perpetual free fire zone from Afghan/Pakistan border region to the middle east and northern Africa, and now attention is turning back to Latin America after a period of neglect which, to the dismay of such esteemed humanitarians as John Bolton and Elliott Abrams, allowed the growth of democracy to infect that region "down there", as Reagan so memorably called it. The neocons have a new itch they need to scratch.

The insight of Howard Zinn, a historian who lived history as astutely as he analysed it, is as relevant as ever.