An inverted social contract? War against the IRS? Ukraine and more...

First, briefly: Another international levy that could be a win-win-win (for all except oligarchs... and a titan exporter) ... pushed by among others Emanuel Macron, would be a shipping emissions tax that could raise about $100 Billion while helping Biden to encourage the already underway resurrection of U.S. home-based manufacturing. Oh, and helping save the planet. (Also encouraging development of wind-assisted freighters!)

Somewhat related: a recent NYT article by David Leonhardt talks about "...the class inversion of American politics. "Most professionals now vote for Democrats, which is a stark change from past decades. Most working-class voters vote Republican, partly because they see Democrats as an elite party dominated by socially liberal and secular college graduates." 

And yes, that reverses the Roosevelt-era social contract that Made America Great. The essence of today's MAGA movement is now hostility toward almost all professions that deal in 'facts' - toward nerds and "Hi-IQ stupid people" - now including even the FBI/intel/military officer corps and civil servants who won the Cold War and the War on Terror.  

Hatred of nerds is a theme that's far more central to the movement than racism, fluxing openly and without let-up through every neo-confederate narrative about snooty-pushy-intellectual-elites...

... narratives that are exacerbated - never-countered - by execrable leftist tactics, like lectury finger-waggings over symbolism-pronouns and trigger-fragility. DUmb tactics that have nothing at all to do with the kinds of progress achieved by ML King & allies, who preached the very opposite - growing a thick skin in order to outlast and overcome adversity. 

Take the 2022 Pelosi bills - a wave of legislation that helped the poor and middle class and their kids and the planet and U.S. manufacturing... and should've rendered the foxites' cult incantations almost extinct. As Leonhardt puts it:

"When Democrats can flip the script on elitism and paint a Republican candidate as an out-of-touch protector of the rich, the Democratic candidate can often draw enough blue-collar support to win. John Fetterman used this approach to beat Mehmet Oz last year in Pennsylvania, the only state where a Senate seat switched parties."

Alas, though. Instead of the smart-and-good side showing tactical agility, it seems that trait is being shown by some elements of the oligarchy party! For example: I can't believe there's some GOP support for a financial transaction tax, meant to reduce the high frequency Wall Street trading that makes parasites rich without making the economy more productive. 

The transaction tax has another hugely important justification. It might stymie the very worst and most dangerous form of AI - predatory, insatiable quant HFT bots. But that's a topic for another time. (If those bots - upon reading this paragraph - don't order a hit on me.)

Overall, I hope Leonhardt is right. Victory for our nation, world and posterity may just be a matter of improving the Union side's polemics a bit. I even said so here and offered 100+ potential agile tactics.

But I fear the world oligarchy-mafiosi have darker designs.

 == Threats and more ==

Regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine, I won't comment on today's sudden, active civil war between the Muscovy War Ministry and the Wagner mercenary army, except to note that is sounds a bit like 1917.

My main suggestion remains - as you might expect - polemical, to undermine support for this obscene war among the Russian people, the one constituency that could decisively end it. 

I'd do that by demanding that a commission be formed to investigate all sides' claims and justifications. Including all the complete set of absurd cassus belli that Vlad used, to excuse his blatant aggression.

How to constitute such a thing, or make sure it has credibility?

I'd summon 500 Russians, randomly-chosen from old utility records. Offer a free, extensive and press-covered junket. To have them join 500 Ukrainians and Finns and 500 neutrals from all over the globe, in a go-anywhere, ask anything commission.  

Okay, I can see you shaking your head, because obviously Putin would refuse...

... and that's the point! His refusal would penetrate, as an insult to average Russians! And yes, they'd hear of it. Today's version of despotic info-uniformity is not like the old days of hermetically-sealed iron curtains. It is imposed less by purely sealed censorship (though that exists somewhat) and more by masturbatory-circle-jerk rote-incantations (much like our own MAGA right and (yes) certain other U.S. non MAGA groups). Self-isolating Nuremberg rallies are terrible... and terribly effective. And yet... extremely simple news and memes do get through. And this one would be a doozy! And Vlad's cowardly refusal of such a simple Truth Commission Challenge would be harsh on him, revealing contempt for his own citizens.

But there is something even simpler. Dare Putin to create a video, making his case to the U.S. public for 30 minutes on Fox & MSNBC... in exchange for us getting to do the same with 30 minutes verifiably accessible to all RF citizens.  

Again, he is guaranteed to refuse. And it is that refusal which will penetrate to Russians and smash the props from under him. 

Though who knows if this suggestion is already rendered obsolete by fast-moving events.

== Actually notice the Dems' Very Good Year ==

Despite infighting, 2021-2022 was a surprisingly productive two years for Democrats. 

Truly epic legislation shifted the U.S. from one utterly failed method of ‘economic stimulation’ - under the Bushes and Trump - to another method that blatantly worked. Shifting from roughly $10 trillions in “Supply Side” tax grifts for aristocracy (that never once delivered even a single promised benefit, across 30 years of experiments), to about $5 trillions that included tax reforms to pay for it all… including (at long last) infrastructure repairs and insourcing major manufacturing back to the U.S.

Let's reiterate that last bit. Manufacturing is moving back to U.S. shores, in a huge wave. And cause/effect is profoundly clear. Democrats did that.

The part of those Pelosi bills that the oligarchy hated most? $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service to hire new agents, modernize its technology, audit the wealthy and more. Crippling the IRS has been a top Republican priority for four decades, allowing not just American but world oligarchies to run wild. Visit any MAGA/Foxite site and you’ll find stoked-up fury at both the IRS and FBI, with screeches that agents will focus on the middle class. 

Bets? Right now… let's do wagers with major stakes over who the zillionaire talking heads at Fox fear will be audited?

This is why House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and most of the Republicans in the House 'caved' to settle the recent debt limit crisis. They got a sop to show to the oligarch masters, cutting $10 billion from the IRS. Though that money over ten years can be made up by getting other agencies to help with the desperately-needed software upgrades, leaving those new agents still free to go after the Cayman accounts of cheater-traitors.

Note. Already metrics of IRS service to the public, including help line wait times, have improved hugely.

“Democrats hammer GOP plan to impose national sales tax, abolish IRS.” Oh they are back with this garbage. The Republican plan would do away with income, payroll, estate and gift taxes, and instead impose a 23 percent national sales tax.   Across the board, there are no aspects to the GOP plan that don’t grovel before world oligarchy, the would-be feudal lords in the 0.001%, who Adam Smith, Tom Paine and the American Founders rebelled against, then Lincoln & Douglass, then the Greatest Generation who adored FDR for good reasons. 

Nothing could better prove the IQ decline of world aristocracy, than their listening to sycophant flatterers and building prepper hidey-holes, and now this doubling-down on their war vs. a modernity that gave them everything. 

Old Joe Kennedy supported the Rooseveltean Compact for a simple, obvious reason: “I’d rather half my wealth be taxed to raise up a contented middle class, than lose it all to revolution.”

 Oligarchs should heed Old Joe, or learn the word “tumbrels.”   

There’s a reason that the powers want us to hate a word – ‘politics.’ And another word, as well…

What Elon might do… probably won't... but someone must do… 

At a sage online conference on Web Disinformation, a speaker referred to my 2017 blog appraising methods of "fact-checking." Alas that none of the problems have been remotely solved and none of the suggested solution methods at all tried. Judge for yourself.

See also my posting: Can we 'fix' social media while maintaining arenas of discourse?

And the CA Democratic Party asked me for a piece of 'futuristic legislation' that would address current problems. The result? The Fact Act. 

== A do-able reform ==

I wrote the following predictions before the recent US midterm election results. And it seems nothing about it was rendered obsolete. These reforms are still guardedly possible!

We face several potential futures in the USA. Most are betting on continued gridlock in DC after the November elections.  If Moscow Mitch and Kremlin Kevin are kept out of majority mastership in Congress then we’ll eke along with good executive management and appointments and an occasional Bill of some value. If either of those two gain power, well, it will be less than in most midterms...

... and we’ll persevere until the blackmail files are ripped open. (The thing most-feared by Rupert and Putin and MBS and the rest of that cabal.)

But what if it’s good news?  A combination of world events and unexpectedly fine polemical persuasion by Biden and others give us a Real Congress of folks dedicated to ending this wretched Phase 8 of the US civil war, by ending the tsunami of cheating? 

Well, that prediction came closer than almost anyone else. So - what would/should top the to-do list? 

I have my own VERY long list! But let’s sample:

• Revive the Voting Rights Act. John Roberts has said Congress could do that, any time and thereby eviscerate a lot of the gerrymandering and voter suppression etc. that Republican/confederates depend on. Ye, Roberts will likely writhe for new excuses. Elsewhere I offer additional maneuvers t corner him, then corner him till there’s no room left.

• Forget Constitutional Amendments. Won’t happen. Grow up.

• But this suggestion (offered by one of you in this blog!) could work very well. Repeal the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act that fixed the maximum number of U.S. House of Representative members at 435. Institute the ‘Wyoming Rule,’ where the least populous state gets one rep… and the number of representatives each other state gets is proportional multiples of that population.  Wyoming’s 578,803 becomes the population needed for one representative. Hence California (population 39,237,836) gets 68 reps, an increase of 16 over its current 52.

That increases the number of House reps to 573. Not an unworkable number at all!

A decent contractor can expand the halls of Congress to seat more reps and provide office space - or these reps can work remotely based on seniority (which is how they assign office space anyways). It would leave the insanely disproportionate representation of small states in the Senate, only now in at least one chamber every citizen-voter would be equal.

This would also remove the distortions to proportional representation in the electoral college. And of course that is what would drive the goppers absolutely screeching hysteric. Their only chance would be to alter the incentives they have built in for decades, encouraging their own partisans to go Riefenstahl-insane and instead veer toward the center.

• Also make DC and Puerto Rico states (both have more population than Wyoming). DC would get 1 rep and Puerto Rico would get 6, further increasing House membership to 580.

• Dems were already giving Republicans subpoena powers in the Trump Impeachment hearings. And hence, Pelosi & co. should right now act on my suggestion to grant every House member one peremptory subpoena per year. It would ensure the minority party can always investigate! And when that minority is a pack of pig-headed confederates? Big deal! It's when decent folks are in the minority that this would pay off for us all.

Significantly, there are SCORES of additional ideas that could make a big difference... if the good guy side in this phase of the US Civil War had a scintilla of polemically practical brains. See Polemical Judo, by David Brin.

== More ideas... ==

Bradford DeLong’s new book is called Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century -- though, not Achieving Utopia. It covers the period from 1870 to 2010 when nearly all human progress — for well and ill — took place. Everything before that could be likened to humanity grudgingly and haltingly taking its foot off the brakes… rebelling just a bit from monstrous mistakes like feudalism, that stymied almost every cooperative or competitive innovation, aside from warfare. 

After 1870 (DeLong asserts with evidence) it became more like slamming on the gas. Spectacular acceleration… though the steering, through massive veers and devastating wars, seemed more like the gyrating tugs of a terrified drunkard. The unprecedentedly fast change brought with it profound political instability and conflict that (believe it or not) steadied into a better era, after 1945. In fact, as DeLong notes and I have, elsewhere, there are reasons (despite the news) to see glimmers of utopia ahead… once we get past a few cliffs… Interesting interview. 

Oh, the title is a take off on W.B. Yeats’s poem The Second Coming: 

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,. Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

"Opinion Nazi analogies are dangerous. But they are increasingly relevant today."

--Jennifer Rubin

== Cause for optimism? ==

Big Think offers: Nine astonishing ways that living standards have improved around the world. The world has improved in mind-blowing ways. This is NOT an excuse for complacency!  Rather, this and much other good news should give us confidence we CAN eliminate the remaining bad.

I would add:

#10... that 90%+ of all living humans have never witnessed war with their own eyes. Name another time when that was so.

#11. No other civilization trained all its brightest young people to be harsh critics of their own tribal leaders and societal mistakes.