More steps toward an open world

Okay, in this midweek roundup let's take a break to veer toward an area of "expertise." At least somewhat pertaining to what's new in the world of transparency.... but first...

== A troubled world – and the superpower in decline ==

We have a president who is “in love” with one brutal communist dictator, “on very good terms” with another, and utterly obedient to a brutal dictator who claims to be an “ex” communist, though surrounded now by mafia-oligarchs who were all – every one – raised reciting Leninist catechisms.  And now…

North Korea has released pictures of a new submarine that it could potentially use to launch nuclear weapons. If that’s the case, the country may have gained a very dangerous, stealthy ability to threaten the US and its allies — all in defiance of President Donald Trump.

The fellow behind the hilariously revised Trumpian presidential seal sells merchandise! Bumper stickers etc.  

== The killings go on... ==

All over the world, after the recent New Zealand mass gunning of innocents, citizens and journalists and politicians have called for removing a common incentive for these crimes — the perpetrator’s satisfaction derived from infamy. Generally by not mentioning his name. For example, this editorial in the San Diego paper using black boxes of “redaction” against the NZ perp. Yes! Only… I’ve been trotting out the same proposal for how long? 25 years?

Moreover, I offer ways to do it well - in this posting: Deny Killers the Notoriety They Seek, as well as this older essay on Salon.

Alas, the same paper did not follow its own advice re: a later week's Poway shooter near San Diego.


== The most important man in America is determined to win infamy ==

Speaking of historical notoriety.... look up a fellow by name of Roger Taney, who goes down as one of the most despised and despicable names in American history. That clear judgment of posterity is not what Taney would have imagined, when he was named Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. But before he died – knowing that Lincoln was about to be re-elected by a landslide - he could see what ignominy and infamy would be his fate. 

How is Roger Taney pertinent today? We must spread word so that modern Americans know about a horrible man who ensured there would be no way out except violent convulsion. His name must percolate, till the present occupant of that same office hears it over and over again. 

What happened in phase 4 of the U.S. civil war will surely happen again, if our current phase 8 goes hot. Which it surely will, if the blatant cheats empowering the New Confederate Treason are left in place. The parallels are chilling, and they need be shown to John Roberts, who may be the one to decide if we can get past the current crisis through peaceful reform. That decision – and America’s destiny -- is largely in the hands of the man currently sitting in the same chair.

Passionate and mostly-right and well-delivered, this paean to liberal progressivism narrated by Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez is worth watching and sharing with young people to inspire them. Of course it also vastly oversimplifies and oozes with sanctimony, and would benefit a lot if she credited both science and earlier reformers, like those from whom she borrowed the “New Deal” slogan. But before you lay into me, have a look at my first sentence. My crits are aimed at making her more pragmatically successful.  We are allies. And she’s a firecracker.

== A bizarre version of my longstanding demand for “war” ==

Long ago, I posited that some honest and brave developing world president might get so fed up over the trillions stolen from such countries by corrupt elites, that he would use a sovereign power of generous potential — declaring war against Switzerland, the Caymans and every other place where robber elites stash their ill-gotten case. (In EARTH (1990) this was the root of the “Helvetian War.”) 

And why not? Thousands of innocent children die, each day, because of these titanically evil thefts.

Oh, it can be more a legalistic than violent “war,” but formal belligerence allows seizure of assets and some other very powerful tools. Originally, I imagined this being done by Aquino on behalf of the Philippines. What I never imagined is this satire of the same idea.

“Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte wants Canada to come get tons of trash that was wrongly sent to his country — and he's threatening extreme steps if Canada doesn't clean up the situation. "We'll declare war against them," Duterte said.” Duterte is probably doing it for bluster. But maybe also to discredit the whole approach, in case some true leader elsewhere ever ponders… hmmm…

Some of my earlier thoughts on using "war" to end legal travesties:

     Re: Panama Papers: Secret Bankers be Warned.

     Middle Classes Rise Up.

And see the concept updated in a chapter of Polemical Judo.

== Philosophy (and history) and slippery rocks ==

See a fascinating essay revealing the admiration with which Karl Marx wrote of Abraham Lincoln. It reaches many of the same conclusions I did, about how Lincoln’s election could never have happened had northern citizens not been radicalized by depredations by bands of rampaging southern irregular cavalry, from 1852-1860. 

“Marx insisted that secession had been prompted by the Southern elite’s political fears. They knew that power within the Union was shifting against them. The South was losing its tight grip on federal institutions because of the dynamism of the Northwest, a destination for many new immigrants. As the Northwest Territory matured into free states, the South found itself outnumbered; the North was loath to recognize any new slave states. The slaveholders had alienated Northerners by requiring them to arrest and return fugitive slaves and with relentless demand that northern cities suppress and shut down nearly all of their own newspapers. They knew they needed the wholehearted support of their fellow citizens if they were to defend their “peculiar institution,” yet could only think to run roughshod over them.

"Lincoln’s election was seen as a deadly threat because he owed Southerners nothing and had promised to oppose any expansion of slavery.”

Again, now a chapter in Polemical Judo.

== The biggest of many scams ==

An important exposé from The Atlantic: “The Stock-Buyback Swindle. American corporations are spending trillions of dollars to repurchase their own stock,enriching CEOs at the expense of everyone else.” 

This latest Supply Side “voodoo economics” scam was the worst one yet. They are always sales-pitched as ways to get the rich to invest in productive capacity ("supply") and R&D... and both always... always decline after each SS tax gift largesse to aristocracy. 

This latest one avoided any and all efforts to target the cuts toward capitalization or R&D, calling that "picking winners"... but it did specifically encourage stock buybacks (banned by the Greatest Generation), which profited the CEO caste and inflated asset bubbles at the cost of company health. 

The screaming smoking gun is the metric called “money velocity,” or how quickly dollars change hands. If MV is rapid, then each dollar is working hard and the economy hums for everyone, as when a construction worker gets paid, then buys a lawnmower, whose salesman pays a grocer, and…MV always goes up with infrastructure spending, which puts $ in the pockets of workers who immediately spend it. In contrast MV *shrinks* with every Supply Side sham. Every single time. Why? 

Because the rich generally don’t spend much. Nor do they (much) invest in R&D or building factories. Adam Smith saw all this (in simpler terms), denouncing the tendency of most (not all) aristocrats to 'invest' in passive ‘rent-seeking.’ Another blatant example today is the binge of multiple house-buying by well-off families, exacerbating the problems of first time home-buyers.

Stock buybacks especially do nothing for a company’s health but plenty for the stock price, which CEOs use to cash in their performance bonuses. Read on. You’ll realize why this whole scam was made illegal by the Greatest Generation… and why the oligarchy so wanted the Reagan-Bush era “reforms.