Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 5 2024
by Tony Wikrent
Disrupting mainstream economics
Finding the Money OFFICIAL TRAILER
[Finding the Money, YouTube,
Release MAY 3, 2024: www.findingmoneyfilm.com
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Ruby experiences space for the first time in a clip from BBC & Disney+'s Ncuti Gatwa & Millie Gibson-starring Doctor Who Ep. 1 "Space Babies."
Set to debut on Disney+ on May 10th and BBC iPlayer & BBC One on May 11th, here's an impressive new set of preview images for Doctor Who.
Hakeem Jeffries on the stakes This is correct. And it happens slowly at first and then all at once. If Trump wins, he will not care about getting re-elected because he will ensure that there is an “emergency” that requires the suspension of elections and his high court will back him up. He will die in office one way or another. But the far right agenda that underlies the right wing legal agenda will remain in place and they have shown that they’re willing to radically disassemble all 20th century progress (actually 19th century progress too) in pursuit of their revolutionary desire to ensure that wealth and white, male privilege remain the dominant force in American culture and politics. If Trump wins another term there is no doubt that Thomas and Alito will retire and will be replaced with the likes of Josh Hawley and JD Vance and will secure the thousand year reich.
The right doesn’t “When the state says to a woman that you cannot have an abortion after six weeks, what the state is doing is seizing that woman’s womb for its own purposes,” said Carlos Lacasa. “That’s scary to me.” Lacasa is a Cuban American from South Florida, and a former Republican state representative. “Freedom-loving” Cuban Americans are keenly aware of Fidel Castro’s curtailing of freedom for Cubans and remain on high alert for state encroachments on it. That includes the freedom “to possess a firearm, even with a high-capacity magazine, or … to choose whether or not to be vaccinated in the case of a pandemic.” And to restrict a woman’s access to abortion. Lacasa backs the referendum on Florida’s November ballot to reverse the state’s ban on abortion after six weeks. It went into effect May 1 (Politico): The fate of a November referendum to reverse the six-week ban now rests largely on how many other Republicans feel abortion should be legal, even if they wouldn’t choose it for themselves.
They’re ba-ack Militia groups went quiet after Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 insurrection. But not for long, Tess Owen writes at Wired: “JOIN YOUR LOCAL Militia or III% Patriot Group,” a post urged the more than 650 members of a Facebook group called the Free American Army. Accompanied by the logo for the Three Percenters militia network and an image of a man in tactical gear holding a long rifle, the post continues: “Now more than ever. Support the American militia page.” Other content and messaging in the group is similar. And despite the fact that Facebook bans paramilitary organizing and deemed the Three Percenters an “armed militia group” on its 2021 Dangerous Individuals and Organizations List, the post and group remained up until WIRED contacted Meta for comment about its existence. Free American Army is just one of around 200 similar Facebook groups and profiles, most of which are still live, that anti-government and far-right extremists are using to coordinate local militia activity around the country.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Trump/Stewart, The Walking Dead, Justified, Arrowverse, Doctor Who, Bluey, The Rookie, The Acolyte, and More!
. Paul Samuelson once famously claimed that the ‘ergodic hypothesis’ is essential for advancing economics from the realm of history to the realm of science. But is it really tenable to assume — as Samuelson and most other mainstream economists — that ergodicity is essential to economics? Sometimes ergodicity is mistaken for stationarity. But although […]
Hundreds of millions of dollars are potentially at stake in the fight over airline refunds.
The 50th Seattle International Film Festival opens May 9th and runs through May 19th. This year’s SIFF features a total of 207 shorts, documentaries, and narrative films from 84 countries. The brick-and-mortar event will be immediately followed by a week of select virtual screenings from this year’s catalog (April 20-27) on the SIFF Channel. SIFF has certainly grown exponentially since its first incarnation in 1976 (in case the math is making you crazy, festival organizers “skipped” the 13th event; you know how superstitious show people get about Scottish kings and such). Compare the numbers: In 1976, the Festival boasted a whopping 19 films from 9 countries, with one lone venue (the venerable Egyptian Theater, pictured at the top of the post). This year, there are 8 venues. Then again, there were only 13 people on the staff in 1976 (compared with 110 now). Regardless of how large or small the staff, the one constant over the decades has been the quality of the curation.
What a joke Either Ted Cruz is so assured of winning that he believes he has the room to try to present himself as a human being or he’s seeing something in his polling that has him nervous. Whatever it is, it isn’t going to work: There are two sides to Ted Cruz, the Republican senator says. The self-described conservative warrior has opposed most big compromise legislation. He voted against the infrastructure law, the Chips Act and the recent Ukraine-Israel aid package. He has also opposed many of President Biden’s nominees, including almost all of his cabinet picks and his choice for the Supreme Court. On his popular podcast, he regularly rips into Democrats, particularly on immigration issues and Israel. His latest book was called “Unwoke,” which charges that the Democratic Party is “controlled by Cultural Marxists.” Yet here in Cypress, over sub sandwiches and cookies in a community clubhouse northwest of Houston, Cruz is rolling out a softer, bipartisan side to try to appeal to independents and Democrats as he faces a competitive challenger this fall in the red-leaning state.
The bipartisan duo also praised schools that brought in police to violently quell protests and connected the demonstrations to the TikTok ban.
The post In No Labels Call, Josh Gottheimer, Mike Lawler, and University Trustees Agree: FBI Should Investigate Campus Protests appeared first on The Intercept.
As Matthew Yglesias pointed out this probably isn’t being shared on Tik Tok but young people should know about it if they care about the plight of oppressed people around the world: Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton writes in his book that Trump encouraged the Chinese dictator to continue building concentration camps used to detain millions of Uighur Muslims: “At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.” I feel pretty confident that Trump will be much, much worse on every level than the current administration. But it appears people have forgotten how bad he was and aren’t aware of how bad he’s planning to be. As for the Uighur camps, Trump seems to be taking the idea and running with it.
Australian university students are setting up encampments in universities across Australia. They are not only calling for an end to the war on Gaza and freedom for Palestinians, they are calling for key changes needed in Australian universities’ relationships with Israel, including divestments in weapons research and development and sales and the cessation of links Continue reading »
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, 1905. In the summer of 1968, I was assigned to the Central Intelligence Agency’s task force on the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The task force met around the clock in the CIA operations center, which was outfitted with myriad television screens. Continue reading »
In the coming year, there will be an election for the Australian Parliament, at a time when the very future of human civilisation is precarious. Three important books have appeared in recent months that should be read by politicians and their constituents, everywhere. The first, “How to Fix a Broken Planet”, is by acclaimed, Canberra Continue reading »
This was not always my view. Like most people I examined where I could minimize my tax – where there were offsets to be gained through education, membership of professional bodies, charity donations, equipment, including computer hardwater/software/paper etc. I also had shares and a rental property so used negative gearing and imputation credits. It all Continue reading »
The Westminster Town Hall Forum in Minneapolis in the US recently hosted the leading economist, Professor Keyu Jin, from the London School of Economics, where she spoke insightfully on where China has come from – and why – and where it is headed – and why. You can watch the entire presentation here: The German-American Continue reading »
“But… did he say it on a college campus? Otherwise, it’s just not news. Sorry, them’s the rules,” said one journalist sardonically. In just the latest example of a top Israeli official openly calling for the elimination of Gaza and the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday demanded the destruction of Continue reading »