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washparkhorn

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Posts posted by washparkhorn

  1. 32 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    Uh, no. Once again you’re peddling nonsense and I won’t insult you by suggesting you believe it.

    Let's stick with this decade for now. And, please, answer this question - which Republican is leaning on MMT, as you suggested?  

    I don't know of any. 

    Thanks!

     

    ps - and if you need to catch up on MMT and partisan politics, here you go. We should be talking about facts rather than gut feelings.

    https://theintercept.com/2018/10/02/modern-monetary-theory-conference/

    Quote

    WHEN DONALD TRUMP signed a huge corporate and upper-income tax cut into law in December, it seemed like there was one small bright spot. With the GOP-backed bill projected to increase the national deficit by $1.9 trillion over the first decade, at the very least the Democrats could finally quit saying that an increase to the national debt — the vice that trapped so much progressive legislation — was per se political suicide. 

    In fact, as many Democrats reckoned at the time, if they reclaimed power, they could then repeal those Republican tax cuts and redirect the revenue to new social programs.

    But this month, despite the sky decidedly not falling from the Trump tax cuts, Nancy Pelosi confirmed her intent to bringing back the “pay-go” rule, which requires all new spending to be offset with budget cuts or tax hikes. Pelosi first instituted the rule in 2007, effectively barring Congress from taking up progressive legislation that would increase the national debt.

    This stark contrast between Republicans and Democrats was front-and-center at the second annual Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) conference, held last weekend at the New School in New York City. The MMT movement, started in the 1990s by a few heterodox economists, has since grown into a vocal and eclectic mix of academics and activists, trying to change the way we think about government spending.

    In a nutshell: MMT proponents believe that the government can safely spend far more money than it currently does, and increasing the federal deficit is not a bad thing in and of itself — a public deficit is also a private-sector surplus, after all. 

    While typically we hear rhetoric that our political leaders must first “find” money through new taxes or budget cuts in order to pay for new programs, MMT proponents say that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how money works. In so-called fiat currency systems (meaning societies in which money isn’t backed by physically valuable commodities like gold or silver) governments literally create the money and tax it later to control for inflation and keep it in demand. 

    Inflation is still a risk, MMT advocates say, but it’s a much more remote risk than mainstream economists let on, and it’s one that can be addressed down the line if it arises, without so much pre-emptive austerity.

    The first MMT conference was held a year ago at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where Stephanie Kelton, one of the movement’s top economists, then worked. Kelton most famously served as the chief economic adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, and before that as the chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, which was Sanders’s domain. (She now teaches at Stony Brook University in New York.) 

    About 250 people registered for that first conference, compared to this year’s more than 430. The attendees, while hailing from diverse disciplines, were overwhelmingly white and male — something Lua Kamal Yuille, a law professor and one of the few African-American conference speakers, pointedly criticized during her panel remarks.

    On Friday, Kelton gave a presentation titled “Mainstreaming MMT,” assessing how effective the movement has been in getting its ideas out to the public.

    By many measures, they’re doing quite a good job. Just last week, NPR’s Planet Money featured a podcast episode on MMT, and Bloomberg ran a story titled: “Trillion-Dollar Deficit? Whatever, Says New Consensus.” Kelton recently appeared on Jon Favreau’s popular liberal podcast, The Wilderness, and in the past year-and-a half, there’s been other deep dives into MMT in The Nation, the Huffington Post, and VICE.

    “First they don’t want to hear you,” said Kelton to her rapturous audience. “Then they ridicule you, then they attack you, and then you win.”

    While Kelton acknowledged the growing attention she and her colleagues have been receiving from mainstream outlets, she spent much of her public remarks focused on how their ideas are still unfairly cast by policymakers and the media. Paul Krugman, the New York Times economist, was a top target of Kelton’s frustration. In 2011, he blogged several critical posts about MMT, including to say that its adherents believe “deficits never matter.”

    “This became the way that many people, probably a million or more, were introduced to MMT for the first time,” said Kelton. She also pointed toVICE’s recent headline, “The Radical Theory That the Government Has Unlimited Money” as an example of being misrepresented as more extremist than they are.

    Still, MMT advocates struggled to decide just how they would frame their own movement. Were they radical or mainstream? Fringe or conventional? Rohan Grey, the conference’s head convener and president of the student-driven Modern Money Network, told The Intercept that they worked hard to “make sure there were different disciplines represented at the conference, so this isn’t seen as just a bunch of heterodox economists.”  

     

     

     

  2. The Cult, She Sells Sanctuary (1985)

    Lyrics:

    Spoiler

    Oh, the heads that turn Make my back burn And that heads that turn Make my back, make my back burn The sparkle in your eyes Keeps me alive And the sparkle in your eyes Keeps me alive, keeps me alive The world And the world turns around The world and the world yeah The world drags me down Oh, the heads that turn Make my back burn And that's heads that turn Make my back, make my back burn, yeah Hey yeah hey, yeah hey The fire in your eyes keeps me alive And the fire in your eyes keeps me alive Inside her you'll find sanctuary Inside her you'll find sanctuary And the world the world turns around And the world and the world the world drags me down And the world and the world the world turns around And the world and the world and the world and the world And the world drags me down Ah, hey yeah, hey yeah And the world and the world turns around And the world and the world Yeah, the world drags me down And the world Yeah, the world turns around And the world and the world the world drags me down Hey yeah, hey yeah Sanctuary, hey Sanctuary, hey

     

  3. 5 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    I disagree. Democratic economic policy positions represent a pretty tight continuum of mainstream ideas, even out to Warren, who is pretty much a normal 1960’s labor Democrat.

     

    The GOP “economic policy,” if you can even call it that, is sheer quackery. It’s essentially MMT with a bunch of loony think tank magic beans for grins. It doesn’t have anything to do with a set of voters. It’s just bullshit. So I can’t say that it’s the “opposite” of anything because there’s no strategic thesis beyond value extraction.

     

    No offense but a tad bit off the mark. 
     

    MMT is agnostic to parties and the left-right continuum. So is neoliberal monetarism. 
     

    MMT has ONLY been embraced by progressive Democrats this cycle. 
     

    neoliberalism is the calling card of Trump, Biden, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, Steyer, Booker, . . . Everyone other than Sanders and Warren (although her economic team are neoliberals who understand there may be a better way). 
     

    neoliberalism brought us the massive debt, trickle down, tax breaks for the wealthy, and asset inflation. And the massive and growing wealth gap with its negative externalities. 
     

    MMT explains why that massive debt has not led to dangerous inflation. 

    I hope that helps. Cheers. 

    • Like 1
  4. 5 minutes ago, BradInATX said:

    You're missing about 31%, though.

    They will go to whomever the nominee is. 

    The Biden chair is just waiting for someone to fill it. That chair will win SC, but lose IA and NH. 

    IA is the big barometer and key to the region that swung to Trump and gave him the win. NH shows the enthusiasm level for the progressive v. neoliberal wings. SC is a red state that has no bearing on the general for the Dems. 

  5. And it should be remembered the actual bomber confessed to the crime after eluding authorities for years.

    While the FBI and the media focused on the wrong person, the actual bomber planted at least three more bombs.

    The real bomber is in prison at Florence ADMAX USP and will be imprisoned for the rest of his life. 

     

  6. 2 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

    the issue here is adding a fictional element where an actual historical person (who is now dead) slept with sources for a story

    I saw her as more of a composite representation, but I understand the concern. The media was rabid to fry an innocent man was the point.

    The media was sued by Jewell and he came away with settlements. 

    Olivia Wilde was terrific in the role  - and her character is rehabilitated in the film. 

     

     

  7. Jan Blomqvist - The Space In-Between, 2017

    Lyrics:

    Spoiler
    Can't figure out how we got here,
    living on decay.
    The seven words left on paper
    will disconnect the day.
     
    and you want
    a new want
    and you want
    anything that's clear
     
    And it's all around us
    as ghosted machines.
    Would the real be just silent
    if there's a hole in the key?
    At the bar in the basement
    for an hour-glass of tea.
    Our love is a violent
    constant space in between.
     
    And the taste has got a texture,
    smoke has not a sound.
    The fabric that was fixed here
    inherent in the ground.
     
    And it's all around us
    as ghosted machines.
    Would the real be just silent
    if there's a hole in the key?
    At the bar in the basement
    for an hour-glass of tea.
    Our love is a violent
    space in between.
     
    And as much as I'd like to
    believe there's a truth
    about our illusion, well
    I've come to conclude:
    There's just nothing beyond it
    the mind can perceive
    except for the pictures
    in the space in between

     

     

    • Like 1
  8. On 12/23/2019 at 11:19 AM, NWBuck said:

    I'm glad she's got that on her Radar.

    And she frames the media problem correctly - it is an antitrust issue. Too little competition breeds a lack of diverse viewpoints - right, left and center. 

    • Like 1
  9. 7 hours ago, Fozzz said:

    That’s precisely what Warren did with her two-step approach and it blew up in her face. 

    Agree. The Sanders v. Warren battle has been a simmering rivalry. Warren moving every so slightly to the "delay M4A mode" made her a little suspect to progressives. That was too early for her. She is still criticized by the corporate Dems as too "liberal" - which is just silly. She is a center-right politician in Western Europe. The corporate Democrats are right wing in Europe. Trump is a populist in Europe (who has right and left populist candidates). 

    Elizabeth just needs to commit to concrete timelines for implementation of her effort to modernize the United States. 

    The progressive wing with Sanders and Warren have the majority. Warren needs to stay in that land  Warren and Sanders are not overattacking Biden. Maybe they want Biden to be the leading corporate Democrat candidate. Lump him in with the billionaires. They know will not win - that is hubris.

    Yang might be a good candidate who will work with the corporations to reform their civic responsibilities (i.e., pay for the negative externalities of their businesses and respect the trusted American market). It has been squeezed to death with debt and austerity. Trickle down is not working. The roots need to be watered to restore some dignity. The neglected areas span the nation - including urban decay. I think Yang has some interesting proposals about the future and bridging that divide. Yang deserves more airtime. He is being cast off as a Republican by the corporate Democrats, who, at the top,  tend to project their own weaknesses.

    The corporate lane has issues. Any battle with Trump by a corporate Democrat will be met with a "you are accusing me of something your party did as regular business."  The corrupt phase of the DNC is a liability. More of the same is not the correct path to beat Trump.

    His popularity came from really not sounding like politicians. That made him interesting. Interesting led to news coverage - with major news broadcasting his speeches live, and mass media repeating his message because it sold advertising. Rather than focusing on the core principles in his speeches, which his supporters heard, the media focused on the clickbait he seeds in all his speeches.

    The media is not going to cover more of the same from Democrats. The progressives sound different from the corporate Democrats because they have different policy priorities (people first) and  messages (sincerity, policy driven, optimistic). And they don't carry the baggage of the neoliberal phase in the US. I think most of the corporate lane (right Euro) will move to the center (progressive US/center Europe) when they learn progressives' priority is to lift people up, not to tear down. To corporate Democrats, that should be good news. They will be able to carry on usual, as the federal government prioritizes healing the goose that lays the golden egg for corporations. That should be interesting to the media but they are consumed with impeachment - a problem. 

    Elizabeth and Bernie need stay on the same message (the future). The progressive sorting out can stay on the sidelines for now. Yang needs more coverage at this stage. Biden is just keeping a seat warm, which might not ever be filled.

    And the media is covering impeachment. 

  10. 5 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

    Has it been pointed out that the next decade starts on Jan 1, 2021? 

    Wars have started over less. Sadly. 

    A kid born in 1990 was born in the nineties, not the eighties. 

    We have progressed to plain English and there will be casualties along the way.

     

    • Like 2
  11. On 12/24/2019 at 2:50 PM, Brisketexan said:

    Does this count as an assault on Christmas? Two assholes taking up SEVEN parking spaces right outside of church on Christmas Eve?

    967be80c34b2e1fbce1073b3271019dd.jpg

    I guess Trump made it safe for us to say “fuck you, I’m the only one who matters!” on Christmas again! Now THAT’S super-American.

    That photo is infuriating to my OCD. 

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