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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 4, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

 

Why elites are misanthropic

Billionaires and the Evolution of Overconfidence

[The Garden of Forking Paths, via The Big Picture 5-31-2023]

To understand billionaires, you need to understand horizontal inequality, illusory control, self-selection bias, quantified self-worth, and the evolution of overconfidence.

What would you do if you suddenly had a billion dollars?

The way you answer that question will tell you something about how likely you are to become a billionaire in the first place.

I guess we shouldn’t be shocked. Aside from climate change denialism, the war on science includes killing abortion doctors, declaring war on public health officers,threatening medical scientists with jail. I suppose it makes sense they would want to jail doctors providing gender affirming medical care. And now they are adding therapists to the mix apparently under the assumption that if you even acknowledge gender dysphoria and attempt to help minors deal with it, you are some kind of deviant? We are now perilously close to thought crime territory now. Therapists work with the mind, they don’t perform surgery or (unless they are medical doctors) prescribe hormones. So I guess if your kid experiences gender dysphoria, your only path to help him or her through it is through one of those violent conversion camps or what … exorcism? These people believe they can force this whole idea out of society and they are willing to use the power of the state to do it. That’s what is referred to as “freedom” in the American right wing.

Seriously, comparing the fight against Target selling tuck swimsuits and Churchill’s fight against the Nazis is beyond cringe. It’s grotesquely stupid. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters on Saturday that “woke is an existential threat to our society.” DeSantis, greeting Republican activists at a major GOP 2024 presidential cattle call in Iowa, the state whose caucuses lead off the Republican White House nominating calendar, was asked about comments former President Donald Trump made two days earlier. “I don’t like the term ‘woke’ because I hear ‘woke, woke, woke.’ It’s just a term they use, half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is,” the former president said on Thursday during remarks at the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa. Asked about Trump’s comments, the Florida governor said Saturday that “to say it’s not a big deal, that just shows you don’t understand what a lot of these issues are right now.” I dunno.

“It is a trope of twentieth and twenty-first century-life that governments faced with financial shortfalls look first to the services they provide their citizens when making cuts. Instances like these …

The post Politicians’ fine-sounding pledges offer little more than a deceitful illusion when sound finances dictate the strategy appeared first on The Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies.

Generalissimo DeSantis opens a new front All the GOP presidential candidates (except for Donald Trump who apparently had some urgent hysterical posting and golfing to do) converged on Iowa last weekend for Sen. Joanie Ernst’s Roast and Ride gathering. They gave speeches in front of haystacks and wandered around in dad jeans pressing the white Republican flesh. Florida first lady Casey DeSantis sported a black leather jacket with the words “Where Woke Goes to Die” emblazoned on the back and Mike Pence donned a leather vest and rode around on a Harley trying desperately to imitate a regular guy. It was a magical time. There were a lot of speeches but one stood out among all the rest: “… we will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of congress, we will never ever surrender to the woke mob! “ As you can see, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is fashioning himself as a wartime leader, aping Winston Churchill’s most famous speech given June 4, 1940 after the miraculous rescue of tens of thousands of British troops at Dunkirk.

Whether to pardon January 6 convicts will be the most revealing question of the Republican primary.

The post Oath Keepers Leader Stewart Rhodes Says He’s a Political Prisoner. Republicans Are Listening. appeared first on The Intercept.

During the height of the pandemic, workers at Allied Bakeries in Liverpool were hard at work. The workers, members of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), were on the verge of strike action in a pay dispute but abandoned their strike to assist with the national effort. Classed as essential workers, they strived […]

And a mockery of democracy The massacre of pro-democracy supporters in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 stays with me. I was out of town on business and saw the shocking reports in my hotel room. Maybe I remember because the next day I joined 6,000 Chinese students from across the Midwest in a protest in downtown Chicago. Or maybe we all remember because of “Tank Man.“ Anne Applebaum reminds Twitter that, far from China, Polish voters on the same day chose democracy in “partly-free elections that contributed to the fall of communism” (Associated Press): In the election, Poles voted heavily for Solidarity candidates over communists in a clear sign that they wanted a change of power. That vote accelerated the fall of communism in Poland later in 1989, and fueled the wave of revolutions in eastern Europe over the following year or two. “Poland showed to Europe and to the whole world that you can build a democracy without violence or bloodshed,” European Council leader Donald Tusk said during ceremonies in his hometown of Gdansk. Tusk was a Solidarity activist and served as Poland’s prime minister from 2007-2014. After Jan.

Showing ’em how it’s done “American carnage” was an unlikely inauguration theme. It had the merit of being memorable, even if it was “some weird shit.” And in unlikely ways prophetic. Just the sort of thing that appeals to radicalized Independent Charismatics. So what is happening in Minnesota under DFL Gov. Tim Walz is easily lost in the “carnage” fallout, rightward lurch of red-state legislatures, revanchist backlash, and Beltway hostage-taking. E.J. Dionne wants to be sure that doesn’t happen. Is the “avalanche of progressive legislation” passed with a “two-vote Democratic majority in the Minnesota House and one-vote advantage in the state Senate” a “Minnesota Miracle”?

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Life on Mars, Always Sunny, The Try Guys, Star Trek: SNW, The Winchesters, TWD: Dead City, Doctor Who & more!

‘Where do you think my grandmother spent the Second World War?’   Adam Broomberg, a prominent Jewish artist and Berlin-based photographer, asked this of the police after they grabbed him by the neck, threw him to the ground, beat him on the back then led him away in handcuffs. It was Saturday 20 May, and […]

Malbork Castle, from which the Teutonic knights dominated a swathe of central Europe in the middle ages, is a vast and impressive fortress. It also has some rather stunning interiors.

I’m just watching SG-1 defeat the human and alien villains on PlutoTV  today while playing games on my phone. I don’t want to think or write or move. Yet here I am. Writing. My thought last night was what I said on the Nicole Sandler show while talking about our mutual friend, the late great Joel Silberman. He taught progressive politicians to tell stories that illuminated their message. There is good news in the world. US job numbers are great. The Economy was not destroyed by GOP, THIS TIME. YET…. As Mrs. Spocko said, the relief that we feel when the GOP didn’t destroy the American and WORLD economy, doesn’t match the worry & anxiety that we have been feeling for weeks. Celebrating the win is important. But also infuriating when we shouldn’t have been here. I get Biden talking about “My friends across the aisle” since his plan worked. The MSM LOVES that bipartisan stuff. But I really want those assholes on the right who brought us here to be stopped. I’d like them to be punished, but that’s not Biden. So let’s look at how to punish them in their role in the insurrection.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

WTH went on down in Mar-a-Lago? I’ve been getting confused about all the latest ins and outs of the Mar-a-lago case with the boxes going in and out and who took what when. So I asked on twitter and people kindly pointed me to this speculation based upon various reports: THREAD: SPECULATION: This is what I think happened with the documents at Mar-a-Lago based on bits and pieces assembled from public reporting. THIS IS SPECULATION. 1/  May 11, 2022: The Office of Donald J. Trump is subpoenaed for all documents with classified markings. Trump asks his lawyer, Evan Corcoran, if there’s a way to defy the subpoena. Corcoran tells him there’s not and memorialized that conversation in detailed notes. 2/  Trump contacts his valet Walt nauta and tells him to move documents boxes from the storage area to his residence, and then Donald goes through the boxes and removes the classified documents he wants to keep. 3/  Trump then tells Corcoran to search the storage room.

Yikes TPM’s Hunter Walker with a chilling tale that does not strike me as far fetched. There have been a number of attacks on power stations already: The first chapter of the black-and-white PDF magazine begins with an ominous warning. Over four dense pages, the anonymous writers paint a picture of “an anti-tech revolution, beginning with the annihilation of the U.S. energy grid.” “The horrific effects of a nationwide blackout cannot be understated. Hospitals would fail. … Financial collapse,” the magazine reads, continuing to detail traffic chaos, dwindling supplies of clean water and spreading disease before concluding that a successful attack targeting key points on the electrical grid would lead to “the collapse of the system … chaos, agony, and death” The magazine was obtained by TPM in a chat group on the encrypted app Telegram dedicated to “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski.

June is Supreme Court month, when Clarence Thomas gets to hand down one edict after another. As an antidote, my publisher is offering The Enigma of Clarence Thomas on sale! You can get the Kindle version for the low price of $2.99. Buy it now!

It’s a big state. But they are a minority here, thankfully. But they can cause a lot of trouble in some of these small rural towns, just s they do in Texas: An ugly scene played out at the Temecula Valley School Board meeting as they voted 3-2 to reject an elementary school social studies book that contained information about pioneering California gay rights figure Harvey Milk. The board’s president made a baseless accusation that Milk was a pedophile before voting to ban the book.  “My question is, why even mention a pedophile?” said Board President Dr. Joseph Komrosky.  Temecula’s emotionally charged meeting resembles many others from here in Southern California and across the country as communities demand school boards to limit discussions of race and sexual orientation.  The battle over books has been an ongoing conflict in Republican-controlled states. California Gov. Gavin Newsom interjected himself into the fray last summer in a series of commercials that aired in Florida. Now, he’s taking that message directly to educators in the state through a letter directed to superintendents and school administrators.

Fossil fuel companies burnish their image with environmental sponsorships. Lakes and reservoirs drying up around the globe. China dominates the production of solar panels. Environmental charities taking the fossil fuel dollar 350 Australia, the local branch of the organisation started by Bill McKibbin, and the Climate Council have launched a Fossil Fuel Free Pledge which Continue reading »

We are at an existential turning point in the human story and, with it, the habitability of our planetary home. So-called Artificial Intelligence (AI), for all its creative ingenuity, is an imminent threat to humanity, already wedded to misappropriated power and wealth, and values to suit. In recent days, respected thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari, Continue reading »

AUKUS relies on the dubious proposition that nuclear propulsion will in 20 years or so be a viable option.  A dubious proposition in twenty years, as it hardly is value for money now. A number of defects should be obvious even to Peter Hartcher as he predicts imminent conflict. One of the wise decisions made Continue reading »

“You be the bigger person, and you walk away.” AFL Legend and Co-Founder of the GO Foundation, Adam Goodes Gets Real with former Manchester United player and England Football Captain, Rio Ferdinand covering family, leadership, racism, culture and identity, and his love for sport. Former Manchester United player and England Football Captain, Rio Ferdinand sits Continue reading »

At the post-budget Press Club lunch, Treasurer Chalmers made a telling comment about the meaning of social security and, by extension, the role of government. Responding to Shadow Treasurer Taylor’s concerns that the broader community would be funding the government’s social security measures, Chalmers happily pointed out the bleeding obvious, namely that the idea that Continue reading »