Working Animals of these United States

A comment of implications of GOP Tax bill at TRNN:

I am reminded of the video of newly hatched male chicks being fed to a shredder and the knowledge that male dairy calves are turned into veal or beef. Federal tax policy now bins Americans like farm animals are binned: useless (no profit to be made) ones are actively destroyed to not 'drain' the system of resources, moderately profitable animals are rushed through the bulking process to quickly turn a profit, and most profitable are mass factory farmed to extract the most profits in the shortest time until their productivity drops into one of the lesser classes. It's clear the elderly and ill are 'useless' (proposed cuts to social programs); children are moderately profitable (school privatization & school-to-prison pipeline); and, finally, prime working age adults are underpaid and work long hours at multiple jobs until they fall ill of stress or exhaustion, at which point, they join the useless class. Working Americans are the farm animals of American capitalists.  

Resist!

Information asymmetry

It has a name! Information asymmetry is the economic term for unequal information which results in a power imbalance. In a market situation, all information asymmetry changes the balance of power; competition between sellers, between buyers and between sellers & buyers is altered. A truly free market hinges on information transparency. See here for links to a deeper discussion.

Commonalities

I caught a little bit of the NPR program 1A on hazing. A male guest (academic anti-hazing advocate) said that given the opportunity, he would choose to repeat his experience because it produced strong bond with his friends...

This sounds a lot like the bonding that happens in the military which can result from the shared torture of basic training or combat.

This also sounds like tight sibling bonds that occur in chaotic households, think abusive situations.

...so questions: Do these phenomena have same psychological basis? If so, can they be triggered without trauma... how can be triggered without trauma? The point is informed decision making by people who choose to join the military or fraternity.

Looting by any other name

 DWT has a post discussing the effect of the Ryan-Trump Tax Bill on education. My comment:

-Leverage buyout 'investment' (see Mitt Romney a la Bain Capital).-Agriculture caused desertification (Dust Bowl, expanding deserts in Africa, desertification in Latin America).
-Surface mining (includes strip mining, open pit mining and mountain top removal). All forms of looting with specialized knowledge. They are characterized by (1) speed - victims don't have time to realize danger and mount defenses; (2) dirty - function of speed; (3) crude - function of speed; (4) cheap operating costs - minimum investment in workers, capital, safety, etc. The goal is to strip a resource of everything that can be sold for money as quickly and cheaply as possible. The result is rich looters and no resources - businesses without capital to produce; land without water for farming; land without clean water, soil capable of supporting life and contaminated with introduced toxins and mine tailings. The Ryan-Trump Tax Bill loots the public commons by tax policy. Taxes are the resources of a nation; they pay for the public commons of education, healthcare, infrastructure, public services, defense, etc. By reducing the tax payments of the wealthy, this tax plan is effectively looting the public commons. The danger is the destruction will be so deep and thorough, recovery will be nigh impossible.

Opposition Strengthens

TRNN re-posted a series of interviews with Ed Herman who died recently. I watched the first one and left this comment:

Thanks for highlighting this interview. I will listen to the other segments when time permits. One take home lesson from this segment is the importance of opposition. As a leftist, Herman was attacked by other leftist for being too left. A strong version of left tribalism today are HRC supporters who fault Bernie's supporters for her loss and the Bernie-or-bust tribe. Unquestioning tribalism is how bad ideas become entrenched and normalized. Our Founding Fathers understood this so they made press freedom and free speech the first among guaranteed rights. Diversity is a strength of the Democratic Party. When the party establishment suppresses opposing ideas and challenges, they are rejecting the aspiration ideals of the Constitution the party is modeled after and they weaken the party overall.

Wayne Lapierre's gun deaths

Comment at C&L where father of murder victim fights Wayne Lapierre and the NRA:

According to everytownresearch.org, there are approximately 12,000 gun homicides per year in this country (when suicides are included, gun deaths exceed 32,000 per year). Wayne Lapierre has been head of the NRA since 1991. A gun death wall in the style of the Vietnam Memorial Wall (a little over 58,000 names) for the period of Lapierre's reign would run 5-15 times the size of the Vietnam War Memorial; it would take 40-115 hours to read all the names. The policies promoted and advocated by Mr. Lapierre doesn't put guns in the hands of 'good guys' who disarm 'bad guys'; they put guns in the hands of gun enthusiasts, criminals and terrorists who committed those and future deaths. Under the Patriot Act, Wayne Lapierre is guilty of providing aid and material support to terrorist; under many local jurisdictions, he is an accomplice to arming criminals... he should be prosecuted as such. 

I stand with Alison Parker's father in his efforts to demote Wayne Lapierre.

Economics of pollution

Comment at TRNN where economist Bill Black discusses the economic drivers of pollution:

Excellent piece. Economic considerations rule many if not all areas of public life; therefore it is important to understand and inform the public of the effects and outcomes of economic drivers. 

Bill Black answered the question of why pollution occurs... polluters profit from pollution... and how to prevent pollution... don't let polluters profit (by way of regulation). 

A similar prevention is a better definition of economies: self-organizing and self-sustaining systems of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services that promote the well-being of all participants... Anyone/any institution whose activity is not self-sustaining (in larger context of entire economy) is anti-economic and not allowed to persist.

TRNN: Pollution Kills 9 Million People a Year

Guns are anti-democratic

I written a lot about how the concentration of power is the underlying systemic imbalance in many of today's problems and how the over-sized influence of the powerful skews all policy in their economic favor. Based on my preferred definition of economy (economies are self-organizing and self-sustaining systems of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services that promote the well-being of all participants), I've argued that guns, the military industrial complex and war are all anti-economic...

On that note, guns, the military industrial complex and war are also anti-democratic because they impose the power of the wielders onto those of the oppressed. At the smallest level, a person holding a gun can intimidate everyone in their range from any number of actions including speech and movement. This is the opposite of society where everyone is free to express themselves.

Government anti-transparency

Reality Winner has been denied bail for 'allegedly passed[ing] a top-secret document to The Intercept that claimed that Russian military intelligence conducted a cyber attack on at least one U.S. voting software company just days before the 2016 election.'

This is part of an interview of Amy Goodman with Julian Assange. I have written positively about Julian Assange in the past. His actions during the 2016 presidential election brings up lots of questions about his motives. I don't know nor do I have sufficient information to form a reasonably informed opinion. But aside from his motives, releasing information for public perusal is an important mechanism of empowerment. Legitimate decisions can only be made by informed people. 

On that note, Reality Winner is a hero for informing the public of an event that was kept under wraps. She should not be imprisoned for enabling democracy.

Wisdom of Democracy

A functioning democracy relies on the Wisdom of Crowds to elect good representatives. The Wikipedia article describes four attributes of crowd intelligence: (1) Diversity of opinion, (2) Independence, (3) Decentralization and (4) Aggregation. In the past, these were all reasonable emblematic of the Democratic Party. But today's Democrat Party is very much under the control of the business establishment and closed to alternative views.

The election of 'POTUS' DJT was a failure of crowd intelligence. The intelligence of Trump voters have been under direct assault by the right wing media for decades. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Breitbart and InfoWars are only a small selection of media which deliberately deceive their audience with slights of reason, misdirection and outright lies. The election of 'POTUS' DJT was their highest achievement.

Who he identifies with

Digby described a meeting between the only African-American Republican senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and DJT:

Tim Scott of South Carolina, who had requested a meeting with the president to talk about Charlottesville. Scott reportedly believed that if Trump heard his story and understood the history better he might come to understand why his remarks were so provocative and hurtful.

          ...

Trump is asked about the meeting on Air Force One during the trip to Florida. Apparently, he thinks he taught Scott a thing or two: 

We had a great talk yesterday. I think especially in light of the advent of Antifa, if you look at what’s going on there, we have some pretty bad dudes on the other side also and essentially that’s what I said.

Now because of what’s happened since then with Antifa, you know really what’s happened since Charlottesville, a lot of people are saying, in fact a lot of people have actually written, “Gee, Trump might have a point.” I said, you’ve got some very bad people on the other side also, which is true.

It's telling that Antifa is 'the other side.' Apparently DJT sides with white supremacists.

All speakers

TRNN reported about student protests at University of Baltimore against Betsy DeVos as commencement speaker. My comment:

1) Betsy DeVos is a horrible choice for commencement speaker for a publicly funded educational institution because she doesn't believe in the mission of public education thus would not celebrate the accomplishments of its graduates.

2) Betsy DeVos and other guests should be invited and warmly welcomed to speak at any and all universities under equal conditions of academic scholarship. This means all invited speakers will be allotted the opportunity to speak after which they must answer uncensored and not pre-selected audience questions for some minimum period of time. The overarching purpose of all institutions of higher learning is to train students to think critically; this involves identifying the logical and evidentiary strengths/weaknesses of any position/argument. Critical thinking is not restricted to any field or subject but applies across the board to all specialities. The best way to develop and strengthen an argument is to address its weak points - for example, false assumptions, circular logic. In the end, a university presentation is an opportunity for invited speakers to test the strength of their arguments and for students to test the power of their analysis; positive for both.

I suspect that under the conditions of (2), Betsy DeVos would not accept an invitation to speak. Many of her positions are ideological and have little evidentiary support by scholarly research.

Real scholarship needs challenge. Real scholars welcome challenge. Universities should normalize scholarly challenge.

Related comment at PZ Myers' blog: 

Universities are places of scholarship so all speakers should be challenged on scholarly grounds. Invited speakers are free to speak but not free of challenge. Every point made by every speaker is fair grounds for scholarly challenge. Where’s the beef [evidence]!

School a la drone

With the appointment of Betsy de Vos as Secretary of Education, I read an article which mentioned that public schools were developed during the industrial revolution to teach children the skills needed by factory owners. 

In the U.S., the notion of citizen elected governance further promoted the need for voters capable of independent reasoning, at least in theory. But the advent of neo-liberal laissez-faire capitalism and government austerity, public policy has been focused on privatization of public schools and de-empowering local and teachers-union control/input into public schools. Much of this is driven by profit through two mechanisms: (1) privatizing schools to allow private school corporations to skim profits from public monies; (2) produce compliant workers and voters who are not intellectually capable of challenging the status quo or any forms of authority, in other words, worker drones.

Down with Tyranny has a post describing many yeshiva schools operated Hasidic Jewish communities which seem to exactly match the eo-liberal laissez-faire vision of public education. My comment:

Deliberately denying children a good education is child abuse analogous to sensory deprivation as torture. Unlike uncontacted people who make a deliberate choice to live isolated from modern technology, the Hasidim live in the heart modern society and hold themselves separate and morally superior while taking full advantage modern infrastructure and technology (medicine for example). Children raised in these restrictive environments never have the opportunity to fully develop their potential, a waste for themselves, personally, and their communities. These children are also taught to behave opposite of their moral code - take from society without contributing to society.

There's an important lesson here for non-Hasidims/secular citizens. Schools that provide a "...very basic English reading and arithmetic, along with minimal levels of English writing..." education produce young people who "...lack the requisite skills to obtain employment with a decent income to support themselves and their (often large) families...". This is a major goal of some powerful economic players and education reformers. They want workers who cannot think critically to challenge the status quo. They want workers who compliantly conform to authority (God, rabbi, employer). But depriving children of education is unpatriotic. A dynamic, vibrant and functioning democracy relies on the participation of informed voters & citizens capable of analytical reasoning. So the Hasidic model described here fails at all levels, from individual development to Constitutional expectations.

What is freedom?

Mike Lux asked this at C&L. My response:

In the novel, "The Kite Runner", the narrator's father said all crimes are forms of theft. For today's Republicans, freedom is their freedom to commit any and all variants of theft on anyone not in their tribe, especially for personal gain or profit. This same freedom does not extend to 'outsiders'. For progressives, freedom is the right of all people to live meaningful lives so long as they are respectful of the rights of others. The progressive view of freedom does not have an out-group.

This is my impression of how each group defines freedom. I agree with what I've assigned to progressives. I just doubt that nation-states are the best way to organize societies to deliver that form of freedom. All nation-states concentrate power and concentrated power is inherently about mass reallocation of power; in other words, a form of theft.

Orthodox Economic Theory does not Explain the Economy

Comment at TRNN. Economist Bill Black was discussing union membership in the U.S. and along the way, mentioned conventional economics does not explain today's economy:

"…that's far worse than simple inequality… economists really can't explain with conventional economics how this is occurring... that's of course because their economic theories are falsehoods... They're basically cover stories for laissez-faire..." 

The most important take home message of the segment: orthodox economic theory is wrong. If economists were responsible [social] scientists, they would go back to the drawing board, re-examine the data, develop better models/theories and test them as rigorously as possible.

It's striking how outright wrong economic theory is used to justify government policy that's bad for most people compared to how well validated science (climate change, theory of evolution) is demonized and ignored to the detriment of most people. [Climate change is validated by annual record breaking heat records of the recent 2 decades, increasing droughts & flooding and stronger hurricanes. The Theory of Evolution is supported by a wealth of biological, geological and paleontological data. The success of modern medicine also validates evolution: medicine is based on animal studies which are informative because they are evolutionarily related to humans; otherwise, there would be no way to justify the research.]

Name of segment: Low Rate of Unionization in US Consequence of Deregulation

Economic policy is not based on science

Comment at TRNN:

Trump's plan would mean 'a huge increase in the budget deficit primarily to give tax cuts to the richest people in the country,' says economist Dean Baker. 'I don't think most people would think that sounds like a very good idea'
 That climate change is occurring and caused by human activity is at near universal consensus of climate scientists. And it doesn't take a degree in economics to understand that climate change will have devastating effects on economies. One simple equation: climate change = less food = fewer or hungry people = smaller economy. And yet there are economists who argue climate mitigation to too expensive and bad for the economy. According to economists, science is bad economics.  The tax policy DJT is proposing is based on supply-side-economics and the Laffer curve which has essentially no scientific consensus; the Laffer curve doesn't even have units. According to (some) very influential economists, no science is good economics.   So is economics a science or ideology? I once compared science and religion (ideology): While there are some similarities, they are very important and significant differences. Both science and religion arise from the same social need; in the face of complete uncertainty, people want rules of behavior/conduct to avoid catastrophic outcomes. Religions codify collections of old anecdotes into rules of conduct. For example, biblical strictures against adultery/infidelity likely arise from a tragic outcome of a few adulterous incidents. But not all affairs will end in tragedy. This is akin to associating good fortune to a charm because you happened to be wearing it on the day of a good event (promotion, favorite team winning). Religions use anecdotes to predict the future. Scientific conclusions are based on carefully controlled and precisely collected data (if properly controlled, a set of anecdotes is data). Scientific predictions based on data are restricted to well defined circumstances. For example, science predicts two doses of measles vaccine are 97% effective. When sufficiently complete data is available, science is remarkably accurate in its predictions. 

[Climate] Science predicts coming changes in the climate will cause sea levels to rise, increase storm severity, and increase severity of droughts and floods, all of which will negatively impact economies. Most orthodox [neoliberal] economists pooh-pooh the predictive value of [climate] science in favor of data-free economic theories, more ideology than science.

…DJT’s tax plan is nonsense, like almost all economic policy.

Post title: Trump's Tax Cut Plan Alienates His Base

What makes for good journalism...

I just listened to a story on NPR by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton about The Boko Haram 'Brides' and it struck me the stigma these girls face on returning to their families and homes might be shared by the journalists and translators reporting their stories, after all, like all people, journalists are the products of their environments... so...

(1) do foreign reporters bring a useful outsider perspective to reporting?
(2) do local/native reporters bring better insight?
(3) what biases are brought by each group of reporters and (a) how to minimize its effect on reporting and (b) would it help to inform the audience of reporters' biases?
(4) similar issues of editorial bias...

BTW, I am not accusing Ofeibea Quist-Arcton of bias. I know I consume information with my own bias and wondered how bias in journalism can be managed to best serve news consumers.

Information transparency is better resistance

Ever since DJT assumed the position of POTUS, there has been a sustained effort to resist his words and actions from numerous groups on the left and progressive fronts. As an embodiment of concentrated power and wealth, DJT is very worthy of resistance... however, the resistors do not deserve the eventual outcome of resistance. What I mean is that movements need leaders and any position of leadership is imbued. The system we are fighting is one that concentrates power. A resistance that concentrates power to resist concentrated power will eventually fall into the same pattern of concentrated power... and the cycle continues endlessly. 

A much better way to fight the concentration of power is to distribute the power more equally. So resistance then becomes figuring out what makes individuals powerful so the what can be dispersed... and the answer is information. Controlling information is how individuals gain, hold and increase their power. Corporations (major stockholders) are rich and powerful because they control valuable intellectual property. Governments are powerful because they control information about corporations (regulation), foreign entities (spying) and the military (armaments, capabilities, deployment, etc). If valuable information were widely dispersed, no single or few individuals could concentrate power as  happens now. Increasing transparency makes better resistance.

Good Trump thing?

In a way, DJT has done Americans a service by shredding the coded civility that masks establishment political doublespeak. He has also fortified the divisions which the country needs to overcome in order to solve our problems. During a recent CNN Trump supporter panel, distrust of the media lead some to rely on uncorroborated social media for information. This degree of distrust and division destroys the general trust necessary for fundamental social interactions which, in turn, are necessary to build political movements needed to change the system. The cracks have widened into chasms. To cure these wounds, we need to build bridges and trust.

BTW, increasing transparency would automatically do this over time.

Fred Magdoff: What Every Environmentalist Should Know About Capitalism

Youtube video of a talk by Fred Magdoff that covers some of the ground I describe in my series. He seems to think an ecologically friendly economy requires more planning than I do but we do seem to see a number of the same problems with capitalism.

Truthout interview with Magdoff. He's more idealistic than I am.

Racism is an economic tactic of division

On Sat., August 12, 2017, there was a white nationalist march in Charlottesville, VA which resulted in the death of counter-protestor Heather Heyer.

On NPR's Codeswitch podcast:

NPR asked: "what you think white nationalists, like the ones in Charlottesville, expect to accomplish in 2017?" 

Answer: "to create a society where the resources of the society funnel into a whites-only space, but that it is propped up and supported by a vast labor pool without rights."

This again confirms racism is a form of economic division. It's similar to anti-feminism, anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, colonialism, etc. divide and conquer tactic of the economically powerful. Unfortunately, they're a particularly well armed movement with no qualms of using violence.

About time

Comment at TRNN. Economist Dean Baker finally starts talking about the impact of information control of intellectual property on income/wealth inequality:

"...unfortunately we're not having that discussion." 

(1) Not true. I have repeatedly commented on the corrosive effects of information control (including intellectual information) on economies and democracy. But I am *not* a prominent economist with a media presence. For that matter, I am not an economist at all. Everything I know has been picked up on wikipedia and listening to podcasts (Economic Update) so...
(2) Why has it taken *so* long for any professional economist to ask this question? The role of 'perfect information' in 'perfect competition' should be elementary economics. It's so basic and foundational, it should be a matter of debate in every economics class on the planet...
(3) This really suggests the entire field of economics has some serious flaws...
(4) [from another thread] ... economies are designed and determined by ideologues not economists. Capitalism, Keynesian economics, Marxism, Communism... all economic systems are ideologies. By adhering to a particular 'school of economics', economists aren't social scientists; they do not engage in the normal rules of science: test the predictions of a hypothesis and adjust theory(ies) to fit. Instead, economists and their followers are indoctrinated into an economic ideology and stand firm to defend it on any and all grounds with carefully constructed questions and statistics. In the end, each ideology produces a system where a small group of powerful people make the majority of economic policies that affect the lives all everyone in their purview. 

Improving education and campaign finance reform are often mentioned as ways to reform our current political/economic system. Reform of the field of economics from an ideologically driven exercise into a data driven system based science should be added to that list.

Search for <Intellectual Property Rights Protect Massive Profits of Corporations> here if link doesn't gets altered in the future.

Truthout has disabled comments

It's sad but apparently they couldn't moderate quickly enough to maintain civil exchanges.

They are victims too

Comment at DownWithTyranny post about prospect of confronting Nazis with violence:

Even if violence could resolve right wing extremism, it would be violence against our fellow citizens, friends, family and colleagues. The wounds of the American Civil War have not fully healed and now we are actually considering another civil war. Scary times. 

Not to be overly Pollyannish but here's something else to consider: White supremacists are right in the sense that they are victims, just not victims of the people they hold responsible. Like the majority of us, they are victims of an economic system that preys on workers; unlike most, they are also victims of movement recruiters who feed their aggrievement a nasty diet of race blaming. A parallel would be deceitful military recruiters. The leaders of these movements are the real evildoers. 

NPR interviewed A Reformed White Nationalist Speaks Out On Charlottesville.

Transparency for economics, transparency for democracy

From wikipedia:

In economics, perfect information is a feature of perfect competition. With perfect information in a market, all consumers and producers are assumed to have perfect knowledge of price, utility, quality and production methods of products, when theorizing the systems of free markets, and effects of financial policies.

-

In economics and game theory, complete information is a term used to describe an economic situation or game in which knowledge about other market participants or players is available to all participants. The utility functions, payoffs, strategies and "types" of players are thus common knowledge.

Inversely, in a game with incomplete information, players may not possess full information about their opponents. Some players may possess private information that the others should take into account when forming expectations about how a player would behave. A typical example is an auction: each player knows his own utility function (= valuation for the item), but does not know the utility function of the other players. 

***

This implies the defining feature of a free market is perfect information. Voting is also a type of market, as such, perfect information should be the defining feature of fully democratic participation. In real life, there is no such thing as perfect information... but we can strive for much better transparency.

Neo-liberal economics is not a modern phenomena

Abby Martin did a two part Empire files episode on human trafficking of Filipino workers. In part 2, she describes how the historical colonial roots of the modern Filipino labor export economy *and* how American imperialism drove this process. Often, discussions of colonialism focus on political power. Although more often driven by economic imperatives, the financial drivers of imperialism are frequently ignored.

Neo-liberalism, or supply-side-economics 'argues economic growth can be most effectively created by investing in capital and by lowering barriers on the production of goods and services.' In other words, give power of economic decision making to those who own capital... or the rich know best how to make more money. This is the back story to the history of the Philippines as shown in Empire Files: The Roots of the Philippines Trafficking Epidemic. American economic 'leaders' decided the best way to make more money was to steal and colonize other lands so they could exploit their people and natural resources and force those people to buy American goods. Neo-liberalism is just another name for empire building; globalization is another name for colonialism. It's always owners/capitalists/powerful taking from and exploiting workers to enrich themselves. 

Workers are always told they are competing against other workers: POTUS DJT claims immigrant workers are job stealers; Americans compete with workers in low wage countries for manufacturing jobs, etc. What workers need to understand is that this competition was and is created by owners/capitalists/powerful. The two sides of the conflict aren't workers against workers but workers against owners/capitalists/powerful. Meaningful economic reform depends on it.

Both are scary

Eddie Baza Calvo is Governor of Guam. He posted a video of his call with DJT after DJT threatened North Korea with 'fire and fury' to which they said their next missile test would be aimed at Guam which hosts multiple American military bases.

DJT said this to Gov. Calvo: “I can tell you this — tourism, you’re going to go up like 10-fold with the expenditure of no money so I congratulate you.”

... as if he's using the North Korea dispute as a way to generate free media attention to his overpriced vacation resort. This when he's also demanding Mitch McConnell 'get back to work and put Repeal & Replace, Tax Reform & Cuts and a great Infrastructure Bill on my desk for signing.' To DJT, POTUS is a figurehead whose only responsibility is to lounge in front of a television for positive media from Fox News, make a few public appearances/statements/tweets at his leisure and sign anything a Republican legislature can get to his desk. He has no responsibilities to setting or selling policy. Sad!

And if DJT weren't sad enough, Gov. Calvo said, “As an American citizen I have never felt more safe or so confident with you at the helm... With all the criticism that’s going on over there, from a guy that’s being targeted, we need a president like you.”

I hope for the sake of the people of Guam, their Governor was exercising impeccable manners and speaking from his heart.

Price control does not stifle innovation

Comment at C&L:

"on the grounds that it was harmful to innovation" 

This is the most absurd of excuses, just look at all the un-executed patents and other intellectual property that corporations have quashed to limit competition. Price controls do not prevent scientists from developing/designing new drugs; they're excuses for pharma to not transfer new treatments from innovators to markets. The middlemen don't want to sell it because they make less profit. 

If the roadblock is big pharma, would it be possible to establish an alternate route to market drugs? Maybe it's time for real competition to enter the pharmaceutical industry.

North Korean diplomacy has not failed - yet

Comment at Truthout:

To everyone who claims diplomacy has failed... if the goal of diplomacy is to not completely disintegrate the opposing party in a relationship, then diplomacy with NK has worked since the cessation of the Korean War. Although imperfect, a useful metaphor for relationships with foreign countries is that of family relationships which cannot be escaped. Close family members are allies; enemies are contentious ex-spouses/in-laws with whom children are shared. To maintain these relationships, both parties must invest time and effort to communicate. It's much easier with family because there is a higher level of trust; these relationships have a higher tolerance for neglect. The goal of the family relationship is to be up to date with each others lives like keeping up to date on the agenda and goals of allies. To maintain functional relationships with ex-spouses over children (visitation, holidays, privileges, gifts...) for the sake of children may require ongoing negotiation and third party mediators. The ongoing negotiation is the goal of ex-spouse relationship; failure to negotiate can result in abuse and/or crimes of passion. Failure of diplomacy can result in armed conflict and/or nuclear war. It's not fun or flashy but diplomacy *is* the only solution with regards to NK.

Comment at TRNN:

The key statements: "Kim Jong-un is a not a madman... He's very sober, very sane. Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung before him were the same. They have one purpose. Their purpose is to maintain their regime, to continue to be able to drink their Hennessys and their Courvoisier, and to have their women and so forth and so on. That is the sole purpose of the Kim dynasty. It is a very rational purpose, and they're very rational about achieving that purpose." 

DJT is also trying to stay in power. He's actually in a decent position: he is POTUS; his party controls all three branches of government; he has money... but he isn't taking rational action to stay in power. 

Take NK, the goal of diplomacy between international enemies is to have an active ongoing dialog to achieve mutually satisfactory detente. DJT wants a diplomatic 'win', implying the cessation and dismantling of NK's nuclear program. The NK war hawk's see NK as a mortal enemy who threatens our allies. The only way to completely resolve or 'win' the 'NK = enemy' dynamic is either become friends with them *or* take them out of the equation through armed conflict. Become friends with NK is about as rational as expecting DJT to represent the interests of all Americans, which leaves decimating NK through war as the only route to 'wining'. Considering that war in that region of the world could cost millions of lives and destroy economies, war would not be a rational action. The *only* rational action is diplomacy, even if it does no more than delay mutually assured destruction. 

BTW, why are [diplomatic] negotiations with NK viewed as 'winning' or 'losing' when labor/employer and defense/plaintiff negotiations are viewed as 'settlements' or 'contracts'? This is propaganda stirs up support for war and it only benefits the military industrial complex.

Growing wealth inequality

This article shows the ever increasing wealth gap caused by modern capitalism. It appears to validate my metaphor of capitalism to predation based food chain. As just as pure simple predator-prey models are bound to crash, capitalism is prone to boom-and-bust cycles. For a more stable economy, professional economists should study the full array of biological interactions in ecosystems and how they evolve new ecological niches for additional opportunities for interactions. We might do well to model our economies after ecosystems.

Polluting for Profit

Comment at TRNN at post title, Coal Power Plants are the Largest Source of Toxic Water Contamination: 

Like all forms of industrial pollution, toxic byproducts of coal are driven by economic profit. Producers of polluting fertilizers & agricultural chemicals profit from the sales of these materials to farmers who use it to increase their farm profits. Fossil fuel & petroleum industry extract, process & sell their products for profit. Polluted water, air and climate (including climate change) are all byproducts of profit driven polluting industries. Americans need to understand that mitigating pollution and climate change is not anti-economic. It's a economic evolution analogous to the industrial revolution - change or be left behind. This is particularly important in light of the regressive policies of DJT. The U.S. dominated technological innovation in the past but DJT's retraction from already poor investment in science (cutting funding to FDA, EPA, anti-science rhetoric) and education will decimate any hope of American revival. DJT's business specialty is the making and selling of his brand, *not* cutting edge innovation. He's a good hire to put on a spectacle but lousy at the STEM fields which will drive the economy forward. The choice to pollute [ignore pollution] for profit is an economic decision. The choice to *not* pollute for the sake of profit is also an economic decision. We consumers have the power to influence that choice. Demand transparency; be informed consumers.

Capitalism is destroying the economy

Michael Hudson was interviewed at TRNN. He links the incentives of stock market, financialized capitalism to the failure of the American economy to thrive; instead of investing in innovation and workers, owners are feeding off workers through monopoly. It fits into my ideas of how ecosystems are a metaphor/model for economies. Go read/watch/listen. It's very informative. 

My comment:

The key take homes: "Trump's donors were basically the monopolists: the Koch brothers, and the oil and gas industry, and other far-right-wing corporate organizations that are all in favor of monopoly... Both parties have the same donor class and they're trying to get elected by groups in America that they have no intention at all of carrying forth their promises to help their interests." 

Follow the money trail for motive and intent of policy. And know that a major intent of policy and regulation is to hide & control information to make it difficult or illegal to follow the money. 

As I've posted in the past, regulations are tools of power to control information. Secrecy and control of information are enemies of democracy. Without transparency, voters/consumers are choosing between packaging with no clue of what's inside, like choosing between multiple doors in a game show; they could all be hiding the same 'prize'. Increasing transparency through universal whisteblower protection is a good place to start. 

Austerity is Social Murder

Comment at TRNN at segment describing the effect of government austerity on the Grenfell Towers tragedy at social murder:

[the effects of austerity policies] is murder just as if the actions of a single individual... what happened at Grenfell Towers... is social murder. 

Capitalism is designed to transfer the wealth created by workers to owners. Austerity policies are designed to transfer wealth earned by average workers to wealthy lobbyists and their buyers. Both economic systems and government policies are social constructs; deaths caused by rampant capitalism and/or austerity politics is social murder. 

In the U.S., good examples are (1) profit driven, capitalistic gun manufacturing; NRA lobbying; defunding schools & other public services; and lax gun ownership laws/regulations, etc. (2) Profit driven, capitalistic health care delivery mediated by health insurance corporations; profit driven, capitalistic health care products manufacturers (pharma, medical devices, etc); lax (better under ACA) regulation of insurance providers; lack of transparency (especially financial - real cost of drugs, treatment, facilities, etc), etc.

Social constructs are created by people. People are enculturated to their expectations from their government(s), employers, and other institutions. In the U.S., for single-payer health care to take hold, Americans need to ingrain the expectation that health care is a right and not a privilege of wealth. Social constructs created by people are subject to change by people; it's in our hands.

Counting is innate

Apparently, the ability to count and estimate quantities is innate to many animals, including humans. We are born with the ability to enumerate a quantity we see; to use the information our senses tell us to understand our environment. Religion, especially theistic regions, completely screw this connection. Instead of seeing is believing, to religious followers, belief is reality... and analytical thinking is 'Satan' luring the faithful from the straight and narrow.

Here is a real world example of this effect. James “Ooker” Eskridge is mayor of Tangier Island, VA, a "deeply spiritual community" where "Methodism has been and remains a very strong influence." This mayor and a majority of his constituents put their faith in DJT and 'believe' that their island is disappearing because of 'erosion' and not rising water caused by climate warming. These are people living with the daily consequences of a changing climate. They can see and measure these changes in real time. But because they have been trained from infancy to 'believe' what is told to them over what they themselves can see, hear, feel, smell and touch, they are able to actually ignore the information in front of their eyes and 'believe' the words of a self-styled religious-like idol.

As an atheist, pray indeed.

Sixth mass extinction

I've written about how ecosystems are a metaphor/model for economies.

In Part 5 of the series, Figure 6 illustrates that economies rely on functioning ecosystems. In this TRNN interview, Professor Gerardo Ceballos talks about his research suggesting an ongoing mass extinction which threatens the stability of many ecosystems. If only for selfish reasons, the future of humanity requires the preservation of natural environments.

Open Insulin Project

Comment at Truthout interview about Open Insulin Project's attempt to create a cheaper insulin product for diabetes patients:

Regulations [patents] are tools of power [pharma] to control information [assign who gets to profit]. Secrecy and control of information are enemies of democracy. Transparency and informed choice gives power to the voter/buyer, not the candidate/seller.

Anthony DiFranco is attempting to re-generate the information [insulin patents] controlled by large pharma into marketable drugs. He will have the option of secret patents [like pharma] or open patents [any producer can use]. Open patents are more transparent and give consumers more informed choice.

The real enemies

Comment at Truthout:

Governments organize people into large collectives so economic leaders can put them to work and skim the fruits of their labor. [CEOs, major stock holders, central committee members (communist countries), etc don’t actually make a product or service that their companies sell for profit. They take credit for the goods made by their workers and are given the value of the goods as payment.] Wars are the forceful taking of other land *and* workers by governments for their economy. Wars are a way for governments to get more workers from whom they can take labor and gift them to their economic leaders.

The common narrative has always been nations are at war but the stakes of war tell a different story. Workers are at constant, unending conflict to protect them/ourselves from the ravages of economic leaders. It’s time to realize that the real conflict is between workers and economic leaders who concentrate their power by profiting from workers. United we workers stand, indeed.

Trumpism isn’t politics or ideology; it’s idolatry, a cult

Comment at DWT:

The Rise of Trumpism
(1) Sensory organs evolved over billions of years to provide animals mechanisms to detect and interact with their natural environments in order to survive.
(2) Theistic religions disengage human sensory input from knowledge of the universe/environment. Believing does not require seeing; invisible god(s) are real.
(3) Right wing media feeds the cognitive dissonance opened by religion (Christian Right) an unending stream of logical fallacies about American culture and politics. This completely hobbles the critical thinking ability of their audience and makes them ever more receptive to, as the Bible would say, false idols.
(4) Enter Donald J. Trump, who spent a lifetime gilding his own image with gold colored dust, onto the pedastal built by right wing media to elevate idols to the level of God.

Trumpism isn’t politics or ideology; it’s idolatry, a cult. The cure will involve mass cult recovery.

Only the most gullible among us, who believe in the existence of all powerful beings in the universe can disengage reality from rhetoric to actually believe the response of Sarah Huckabee Sanders in this exchange:

[A reporter asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders, POTUS DJT's spokesperson,] "Clearly there is a concern from some Republicans that the president is not always being as truthful as he could be," Hallie Jackson continued. "How does he plan to address that?" 

[She answers,] "I think by being truthful and transparent as he has every single day."

When 'semantics' is not 'playing games with definitions'

Comment thread at C&L:

stephen byrne Capitalism is based on trust. When trust is eroded, the system can and will collapse. Yet capitalism, by its very nature, tempts its adherents to swindle, cheat, lie and confuse. How do we correct that? Obviously, through a strict regiment of regulation. It's what keeps capitalism honest.

SkepticalPartisan to stephen byrne
Regulation are tools of the powerful. In the rare occasions the larger public has more power, they are written to benefit the public. Unfortunately, more often than not, the rich have more power and they both rewrite regulation *and* change the rules of enforcement to benefit themselves. A major tactic is regulating secrecy and control of information, both enemies of democracy. Transparency and informed choice gives power to the voter/buyer, not the candidate/seller.

Rebel Tuba to SkepticalPartisan
If regulation is the tool of the powerful, why are so many of them fanatically in favor of DE-regulation?

SkepticalPartisan to Rebel Tuba
As a practical matter, regulation/deregulation are a matter of semantics and not enforcement. Rules that outlaw informing consumers (for example, preventing testing for BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy) are backed by the same power of the state as rules requiring informing consumers (example, caloric/nutritional content). Bank 'deregulation' is the government enforcing banks' right to protect (not disclose) their information. Bank 'regulation' is government enforcing public's right (disclosure) of bank information. In the former, regulation is the exercise of banks' power; the latter is an exercise of public power. Considering most laws in recent years have served the interests of the wealthy, public power has been on the wane for decades.

Rebel Tuba to SkepticalPartisan
That's much too narrow a example and too narrow a view. Telling banks they can't pursue certain opportunistic and risky investments is the opposite of refusing to allow them to gamble with other people's money in the most dangerous ways, and that is NOT 'semantics' any more than opposing situations in general are semantics. That's playing games with definitions.
Your example of one small aspect of bank regulation and deregulation is deceptively narrow. It covers many, many more details than that, and most of them don't come down to 'semantics'. Not to mention that there are far more aspects of regulation/deregulation other than banking.

SkepticalPartisan to Rebel Tuba
"If regulation is the tool of the powerful, why are so many of them fanatically in favor of DE-regulation?"
The powerful ask for and get regulation that favors them and calls it deregulation. The power of the state backs the enforcement of all regulations. Without state backing, enforcement is vigilantism.
-semantics means 'meaning of word, phrase or sentence.'
-regulation means government telling industry something *must* be done; enforced through law; criminal charges possible.
-deregulation means government telling industry something *cannot* be done; enforced through law; criminal charges possible.
In this less 'narrow' illustration, does the government enforce regulation differently from deregulation? How does the law treat deregulation differently from regulation?

I thought I was clear!

States and corporations practice censorship

Comment thread at TRNN:

Gideon Levy was interviewed about: Israelis Shut Out Palestinian Calls for Freedom

SkepticalPartisan • 18 hours ago
This is why I support and watch independent journalism like TRNN. It's not only state sponsored/enforced censorship; MSM self censors their content on behalf of their financial interests. Secrecy and control of information is the enemy of democracy. Governments and private institutions use regulation to control information. Greater transparency enables informed choice which gives power to the voter/buyer, not the candidate/seller.

peepsqueek  to SkepticalPartisan • 11 hours ago
Can you think of anyone that does more censoring than Islamic Countries, repression of free speech and expression?
With the exception of Israel, all Middle East and North African Countries are signatories to the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 19: "There shall be NO crime or punishment EXCEPT as provided for in the Sharia."
Article 24: "All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Sharia."
Article 25: "The Islamic Sharia is the ONLY source of reference for the explanation or clarification of ANY of the articles of this Declaration."
The Jews of Israel are the only religious and ethnic minority int he Middle East that have the full right of self determination. The banner of Islam flies over 99.9% of the Middle East land mass. What would you be asking if the the situation was reversed?

SkepticalPartisan to  peepsqueek • 9 hours ago
You illustrate the exact point of my comment. Our media censors information about Israel - we do not know and cannot respond without knowledge. Israeli media also censors what their internal media reports to their residents/citizens. We have been told about censorship in Islamic Countries which enables you to comment and take a position. Information about Islamic censorship gives you the choice to act. There's little media coverage of Israeli censorship.
And yes, I agree and acknowledge Islamic Countries censor. My original comment applies across the board without regard to borders, boundaries or religions.

peepsqueek to  SkepticalPartisan • 7 hours ago
We know a lot more about Israel because they have a whole range of non-Government media and foreign press all over Israel. Israelis do not have to be afraid to speak to anyone, nor do they have to be afraid to criticize the Israeli government. There is freedom of association, speech, and expression, and Israeli Jews,

SkepticalPartisan  to peepsqueek • 7 hours ago
I am an anonymous commenter; my opinion is largely irrelevant. And yes, "Israeli Jews, Christians, and Arabs come and go as they please"... but only in undisputed parts of Israel; there is very little freedom of movement which also restricts associated in the Gaza and the West Bank. That is why I originally commented. I appreciate TRNN providing Gideon Levy the opportunity to give a Palestinian slant. I want TRNN to continue to seek and report unreported stories and viewpoints. Political coverage in the U.S. is largely limited to the very narrow spectrum defined by the two major parties; anything slightly left or up, down and sideways are either labelled extreme or ignored. The control of information removes choice and thus democracy from voters/consumers.
BTW, do residents of Gaza and the West Bank have their own media to tell their stories? Or are they dependent on Israeli and international media?

peepsqueek  to SkepticalPartisan • 7 hours ago
Gaza and the West Bank have never in history had their own newspaper. The first newspaper in the area was the Palestinian Post, which became the Jerusalem Post after Israel became an independent state.
As far as walls and fences, before the occupation and the walls and fences, who protected the Israeli civilian population from regular attacks? Now there are very few attacks. Who is protecting the civilian populations in the other 28 conflicts and border wars around the world today involving repressive Islamic regimes? Are they all freedom fighters and martyrs for Islam?
Just for balance and proper context, there are many walls and barriers involving Muslim Countries: Malaysia-Thailand border, Melilla border fence in Spain, Indo-Bangladeshi barrier, Indo-Burma barrier, Indian Kashmir barrier, Iran-Pakistan barrier, Kazakh-Uzbekistan barrier, Kuwait-Iraq barrier, Pakistan-Afghanistan barrier, Russia/Chechnya, Saudi-Yemen barrier, Arab Emirates/Oman, Saudi/Yemen, Turkmen/ Uzbekistan, Egypt/Gaza, Syria/Turkey, Sudan/Sudan, Kenya/Somalia, etc, and many more walls and fences within Muslim Countries to separate different sects from having at each other.

SkepticalPartisan to  peepsqueek • 6 hours ago
"...for balance and proper context..."
Thank you for your continual reinforcing of my original comment. Knowledge is power. Without knowledge of the barriers you describe, we have no foundation upon which to voice support or dissent; without a voice, our votes can only support the the story we are spoon fed. I would appreciate any efforts by TRNN to interview people affected by the barriers you list.

peepsqueek  to SkepticalPartisan • 6 hours ago
Without those barriers there was chaos-- religious, tribal, sectarian, and nationalistic violence. There are 7.5 billion people on the planet today, in a world with dwindling resources. Without these lines, there would be continuous violence and chaos. This is why the Western world does business with all these Middle East dictators and totalitarian governments that maintain some measure of control, even though they are repressive governments.

SkepticalPartisan  to peepsqueek • 6 hours ago
The political leaders of "the Western world does business with all these Middle East dictators and totalitarian governments". It isn't clear that the people and voters of the Western world would choose to do "business with all these Middle East dictators and totalitarian governments". Voters need information to make decisions. Without transparency, voters are choosing between packaging with no clue of what's inside, like choosing between multiple doors in a game show; they could all be hiding the same 'prize'.

Secrecy aids the powerful

This is a post at DailyKos with links briefly summarizing efforts by regulatory agencies and industry to avoid regulation and keep information away from the public. This is the Intercepted article.

We need universal whisteblower protection and much, much greater transparency.

some of the links in the post:

PoisonPapers.org

The Bioscience Resource Project

Center for Media and Democracy

Science is based on data

Comment at Down with Tyranny:

"Replace "climate" with "hell" and this would be the same reasoning used for the fire and brimstone version of religion."

This is essentially arguing [climate] science is like religion. While there are some similarities, they are very important and significant differences. Both science and religion arise from the same social need; in the face of complete uncertainty, people want rules of behavior/conduct to avoid catastrophic outcomes. Religions codify collections of old anecdotes into rules of conduct. For example, biblical strictures against adultery/infidelity likely arise from a tragic outcome of one adulterous incident. But not all affairs will end in tragedy. This is akin to associating good fortune to a charm because you happened to be wearing it on the day of a good event (promotion,favorite team winning). Religions use old anecdotes to predict the future. Scientific conclusions are based on carefully and precisely collected data (if properly controlled, a set of anecdotes can form a set of data). Scientific predictions based on data are restricted to well defined circumstances. For example, science predicts two doses of measles vaccine are 97% effective. When suffiently complete data is available, science is remarkably accurate in its predictions.

You have the right to make any choices that affect your individual well being; choose religion if that is your preference. When your actions affect the well being of the larger community, choose the path of minimum harm with most accurate predictive value. Science has proven to be a far better fortune teller than religion.