Fifteen years after the Lehman Brothers collapse and following the failures of Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank, Signature Bank, as well as the forced acquisition of Credit Suisse, banks are back in the headlines. Daniel Beunza and Pierre-Christian Fink assembled an excellent panel of sociologists and social scientists, studying banks, regulation and finance, to […]
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Trump’s takeover of GOP helped him to write the delegate rules. The number winner-take-all states has grown from seven to 17 I don’t think people have truly grasped what this means: Republicans seeking to keep Donald Trump from becoming their party’s nominee will have to overcome rules even more favorable to the former president than the ones that helped him clinch the 2016 nomination. In 2024, more states will award delegates through winner-take-all primaries — a system that helped Trump when opponents divided the vote, allowing him to be awarded all or most of the delegates with less than majority support. Is it possible that the field will be cleared of everyone but DeSantis (or one of the other candidates) and they will win a majority and Trump will be defeated. But it is highly unlikely. Trump dominates the GOP primary electorate and will probably win a majority in most states even if they manage to clear the field. And, as we know, it matters where you win. If he takes the biggest states with large numbers of delegates, he wins again.
In my 2015 book – Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale (published May 2015) – I traced in considerable detail the events and views that led to the creation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU, aka the Eurozone) once the Treaty of Maastricht was pushed through as the most advanced form…
Doctor Who stars David Tennant & Catherine Tate had a little fun at their own expense while presenting during today's BAFTA TV Awards 2023.
Everyone scratched their head when pro-choice liberal North Carolina Democrat abruptly switched parties and voted for a draconian abortion ban. Everyone wondered, was it money? Was it blackmail? What could make someone completely reverse course like this and betray every value she had previously held — and do it practically overnight. I’m still not sure I buy the following explanation but maybe this person is really as shallow as she appears: Imagine campaigning for a Democratic politician—a thankless, low-paying job, especially at the state level—because you believe in what they stand for. The candidate gives powerful speeches about abortion rights that make you proud. You’re in a purple state, where every single seat in the legislature is critical to protecting abortion access. So you join the fight, help them win, and continue working for them in the legislature. Then inexplicably, in the middle of their term, that politician does an about-face, switches parties, and votes in favor of an extreme abortion ban, delivering Republicans the one vote they needed to override a veto and actually shutter clinics in the state.
Imagine this: every year during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 there were nearly four million home foreclosures. In that period, with job losses mounting, nearly 15% of American households were categorized as “food insecure.” To many of those who weren’t foreclosed upon, who didn’t lose their jobs, who weren’t “food insecure,” to the pundits writing about that disaster and the politicians dealing with it, these were undoubtedly distant events. But not to me. For me, it was all up close and personal. No, I wasn’t foreclosed upon. But my past never leaves me and so, in those years, the questions kept piling up. What, I wondered daily, was happening to all those people? Where were they going? What would they... Read more
Source: Missing in Action appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
The media spent the last couple of weeks relentlessly hyping the end of Title 42 as an apocalypse of epic proportions. Hordes of screaming migrants were supposedly gathered at the border prepared to invade the country on foot like a medieval army and there was nothing we could do about it. Well: Migrants crossing the border without documentation dropped on Friday, the first day after Title 42 was lifted, two U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials told NBC News. U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped just over 6,200 undocumented migrants on Friday compared with roughly 11,000 on Tuesday and Wednesday, and 10,000 on Thursday, the officials said. These numbers include both migrants who cross illegally between ports of entry — more than 7,000 of them on Friday — and those who present themselves legally at ports of entry without proper entry documents. The Covid-era restrictions that allowed immigration officials to quickly turn away migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border expired at 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday, ushering in tougher policies for asylum-seekers.
Very impressive “oversight” in the GOP House Lololol: Rep. James Comer (R-KY) revealed on Sunday that Republicans had lost track of a top witness in the investigation of President Joe Biden and his family. During an interview on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo asked Comer about evidence he had of Biden’s alleged corruption. “You have spoken with whistleblowers,” she noted. “You also spoke with an informant who gave you all of this information. Where is that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers?” “Well, unfortunately, we can’t track down the informant,” Comer replied. “We’re hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible.” “Hold on a second, Congressman,” Bartiromo said.
Going nuclear would likely hurt rather than enhance South Korea’s global prestige. On May 2, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed that a U.S. Ohio-class nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine will, for the first time since the 1980s, make a visit to South Korea. The visit is part of the bolstered extended deterrence consequent to Continue reading »
Today, May 15th, is the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe). And counting. I say ‘and counting’ because the theft of our land, the occupation, the siege on Gaza, the disposition of our people, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and replacement of the Palestinian nation, with Jews, often of dual nationality, from around the Continue reading »
The Australian Academy of the Humanities’ 2023 report into the knowledge capability of Australia’s universities concerning China has brought into sharp relief just how far a fraught relationship with China is permeating national life. Since at least 2017, the rhetoric of Australian political leaders and prominent media commentators has emphasised that Australia faces an existential threat to its security and prosperity Continue reading »
This has been a very good week for the recipients of primary health care (PHC) in Australia. However, a week where PHC gets a significant funding boost is also a good week for the recipients of secondary, tertiary and quaternary health care in Australia, as it means that the right people get the right care Continue reading »
England invaded Australia in 1788, releasing a terror of death and dispossession on first nations’ peoples, particularly in Tasmania. Now 235 years later, Aboriginals, through the Statement from the Heart and the Constitutional Voice, say that it is time that this terror ceased. SBS On Demand is showing an excellent drama series, ‘The War of Continue reading »
While “leaders” fail to protect the people from global warming and nuclear war, they have succeeded splendidly in hiding the truth through the denial of climate change, accounting tricks and claims of reduction in domestic emissions, while in fact opening new coal mines, oil wells and fracked coal seams, exporting hydrocarbons through the entire global atmosphere. Continue reading »
The way mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his private army have been waging a significant part of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has been well covered in the American media, not least of all because his firm, the Wagner Group, draws most of its men from Russia’s prison system. Wagner offers “freedom” from Putin’s labor camps only to send Continue reading »
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) just published a study about: The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions. The results are as any observer of such acts would expect. Sanctions are used too broadly. They hardly ever serve their supposed original purpose and do not reach their aims. They hurt the poor more than Continue reading »
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 14, 2023
by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
Population Decline Will Change the World for the Better
Stephanie Feldstein, May 4, 2023 [Scientific American, via Naked Capitalism 5-7-2023]
Words to the wise: I can’t help but feel like a chapter in the evolution of social media is drawing to a close. Now, surely some of this feeling is a product of my changing perspective. I got my first social media account when I was 19 years old and signed up for MySpace in college; I turn 41 later this month, and it’d be foolish to pretend that more than two decades of maturation hasn’t altered my relationship with social media. Still, there’s no denying that something has shifted. Between the haphazard-yet-thorough disassembly of Twitter at the hands of Elon Musk, the driftless and flailing “metaverse” obsessions of Facebook, and the can’t-put-my-finger-on-it-but-something’s-not-right-here vibe of Instagram these days, it’s hard not to feel like we’re at the end of an era. Social media will evolve and persist, but the monoculture days of everyone hanging out in the same few places are winding down. Like many, I feel a pang of loss for these spaces, spaces from which I’ve taken a lot in the past two decades. But I’m not here to throw a funeral. Instead, I view this as a sort of graduation.
As President Joe Biden swaps one asylum crackdown for another, the border’s lethality endures.
The post Desperate Families and Gun-Toting Vigilantes Converge in Arizona After Title 42 Ends appeared first on The Intercept.
Just I and me They are still out there. Moose Lodge #whatever, or the Elks, relics of a 19th century, white- male America that survive somehow in the 21st. Like Mother’s Day that way, another quaint 19th century tradition that holds on in a time when Americans in increasing numbers harbor suspicions about one another and mutual mistrust is more persistent than inflation. Ian Ward writes at Politico: “National divorce” — a term that frames America’s current political crises as symptoms of a deeper social breakup — is suddenly a well-worn phrase. Over a quarter of Americans believe that it might soon be necessary to take up arms against their government. It would be a shocking number if not for the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Ward explores the national mood with Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam (“Bowling Alone,” 2000). Putnam examined the meaning behind the decline of civic organizations like the Moose and the Elks. Social capital in decline.
Every Sunday, I blog about the geek-friendly radio shows the BBC are putting out in the forthcoming week! All of the following can be either listened to live or downloaded afterwards for free on the BBC Sounds app, no matter where you are in the world. Please note: I don’t include later episodes of most drama […]
NC’s Democratic governor rallies support behind a veto North Carolina rallied on Saturday to sustain Gov. Roy Cooper’s public veto of Republicans’ recently passed 12-week abortion ban. Politico: The Democrat decried the legislation, which he vetoed at a rally in downtown Raleigh, as a “complicated and confusing monster bill” that makes patients “navigate a wicked obstacle course just to get care.” “Standing in the way of progress right now is this Republican supermajority legislature that only took 48 hours to turn the clock back 50 years on women’s health,” Cooper said. “Let’s be clear: This bill has nothing to do with making women safer and everything to do with banning abortion.” With the GOP holding veto-proof margins in both legislative chambers, Democrats (if even they can maintain a unified front) will need the defection of at least one Republican in either chamber to sustain Cooper’s veto. The blowback on that member would be fierce.