HRC, who are thee?

There's not much substance left in the Democratic party these days. No real debates, no real policy formulation, no real grassroots input or even solicitation. With the coronation of Hillary Clinton now imminent, the Democratic party is expected to simply lay down and accept that the Clinton dynasty must continue if the party is to have any future at all. Its a common poli-sci joke that "Republicans fall in line, and Democrats fall in love," and as of right now, 2016 looks to be exactly that. The upcoming primary and convention look to be the least interesting in modern times, as Hillary's massive fundraising advantage is likely to drown out anyone else, save for a potential self-funded billionaire candidate.

I challenge all the giddy Democrats now eagerly brandishing "Ready for Hillary" paraphernalia to describe three of her domestic policy proposals. Not 10, not 5, just three. And they can't do it-- why? Not because they haven't done their research, its because Hillary has yet to reveal any domestic policy proposals for 2016. It appears that much of the Democratic party is eager to commit the same mistakes as 2008- nominating an exciting, feel good candidate that we know nothing about. The prospect of electing the first female president in 2016 seems to be enough for many Democrats to blindly support her, no matter her/her husband's disastrous neoliberal record. Hillary knows, that like Obama, she can raise a ton of money, say the right words, push the right buttons, be completely substance free, and cruise into the White House with minimal resistance. She has no reason or incentive to say anything mildly controversial on her way to 1600 Penn.

What we do know is the legacy from her and her husband's time in the White House. While Bill's presidency is somehow cast as a "success", lets do a quick overview. First, the Clintons debut a national healthcare plan, without the input of Congress, which quickly crashed and burned. Next, Bill signed NAFTA, which was written by his predecessor and aggressively opposed by labor unions. NAFTA's legacy is now hardly in dispute, as even centrist economists like Robert Reich who originally supported it openly admit that it destroyed America's manufacturing base, taking millions of decent paying jobs with it. Next came the Brady (gun control) bill, which both failed to reduce gun violence and succeeded at riling up much of white male America against the Democratic party and swelling the membership of the NRA.

Then came the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Act was claimed to foster competition. Instead, it continued the historic industry consolidation reducing the number of major media companies from around 50 in 1983 to 6 by 2005. An FCC study found that the Act had led to a drastic decline in the number of radio station owners, even as the actual number of commercial stations in the United States had increased. This decline in owners and increase in stations has reportedly had the effect of radio homogenization, where programming has become similar across formats. The massive right wind media outlets such as Fox News and EIB Radio, which spew fear and hatred 24/7, would not exist in their current form if this law had been passed.

Then, under pressure from Dick Morris to "move to the center", Clinton signed PRWORA, aka "welfare deform", which gutted the US safety net for the most vulnerable (women and children). This act eliminated the AFDC program and replaced with this block-grant, state administered TANF which still exists today. TANF introduced work requirements and put strict limits on the length/amount benefits, to fulfill Clinton's campaign promise of "ending welfare as we know it." Despite his many other failures, Clinton did suceed at that promise- studies have shown that TANF is nowhere near as effective at meeting the (small) cash needs of the most desperate members of society. For 99 percent of TANF recipients, the purchasing power of TANF benefits is below 1996 levels, after adjusting for inflation. TANF provides a safety net to relatively few poor families: in 2012, just 25 families received TANF benefits for every 100 poor families, down from 68 families receiving TANF for every 100 in poverty in 1996.  But for the families that participate in the program, it often is their only source of support, and without it, they would have no cash income to meet their basic needs.

Last but not least were the two financial deregulation bills, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000. GLB, informally known as the Citigroup relief bill, tore down the remaining barriers between deposit-insured banking and speculative financial market activity. The CFMA was passed to deliberately prevent the CFTC, under direction of the tough and prescient Brooksley Borne, from actively regulating and supervising the rapidly growing financial derivatives markets. While I could write a whole book on how bad these bills were, suffice to say that both of them are widely regarded as having exacerbated the housing bubble of the 2000's and the subsequent financial crisis and deep recession.

And perhaps worse than what Clinton did do was what he didn't. During his entire 8 years in the White House, Clinton passed no constructive pieces of legislation, made no major investments in clean technology, infrastructure, environmental protection or education, and took no steps to stem the over-financialization of the developing world, which led to financial crises in Mexico, Argentina, and southeast Asia.

Perhaps most disappointing is the mindless Clinton support coming from the burgeoning LGBT community. Hillary's highly contrived advertisement that debuted yesterday featured shots of both gay and lesbian couples, in a blatant attempt to cast herself as a modern, all-inclusive candidate. But despite the fancy camera work, you would have to look hard to find any Democrats who were worse on LGBT equality than the Clintons. As president, Bill Clinton not only signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law, but he also endorsed the military's "Dont Ask, Dont Tell" strategy for "dealing" with homosexuals who wanted to serve their country.  And in that era, Hilary's husband also signed the HIV travel ban into law (it remained on the books for 22 years thereafter), making it the only medical condition ever legislated as a bar to entering the US. Fast forward into the 2000's, and Hillary was one of the last major Democrats to endorse full marriage equality, long after the writing was on the wall. In her failed 2008 campaign, Hillary openly opposed marriage equality, and didn't publicly endorse it until two years ago. 

As far as I can tell, HRC has never publicly apologized for her and her husband's disastrously bad record on LGBT equality (or anything else for that matter). And as long as the LGBT community and Democratic party chooses to ignore her past, she has no reason to do so.

20-Episode, High Profile Short Films On Economics, Touted By Newsweek ... Falls Short of Reality. Hurts More Than It Helps.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

I shudder to imagine it's plot ... but haven't seen them all yet. So we can hope for the best.

Maybe an animated film on Control Fraud will follow? :)

And then one on Boyd, Deming, Shewhart ... and even Wallace & Darwin ...?

And then? Planck, Boltzmann, Maxwell, Kepler ... and Imhotep? :)

These topics are all inter-related ... by much more than comedy. It's just that nearly every single specialist doesn't "believe" that they are, or that THEY could use even more perspective.

Every single "discipline" is, by definition, an application of Neo-Liberal thinking that in fact degrades systemic coordination. Ya gotta wonder what a Cross-Fit CULTURE would briefly look like (another Renaissance?). One featuring Liberal Education? One that is NOT just a mob of Neo-Liberally educated specialists in distributed silos, each the supposed center of it's own, parallel universe?

Film Series Explaining Economy Makes Cotton Candy Out of Spinach

(Stav Ziv, Newsweek)

Morgan Spurlock, who produced the McDonald's documentary Super Size Me is undertaking a daunting task: making a series of short documentaries about economics and the related issues that are effecting our lives. He has a host of big-name entertainment people participating. GEI hopes to be able to make the films available on-site in the not-too-distant future. 

(hat tip John Lounsbury, www.econintersect.com)

Why is there little or no teaching of distributed control & Democracy as fused subjects?

As soon as you say "distributed control" of aggregate navigation ... you're already stating the task of a tribe, or an aggregate or an electorate navigating overall context.

It's amazing how much is separately known in policy-politics fields, & in engineering-biomechanics-biology fields .... that is NOT allowed to interact!

What a waste. We could easily make all students aware of this by age 10.

Neo-Liberals to Bill Mitchell: "Let Them Eat Snake-Oil" (but that don't make no sense!)

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

In his latest blog, Bill Mitchell reviews data which does NOT support the std presumption of Neo-Liberals, i.e., that there is a "skills mismatch" leaving dynamic capitalists with jobs to fill, but no "employable" peasants to hire.

Overwhelming data indicates that there are not enough buyers to induce more production. Diners can't eat more when their belt is too tight. And vendors can't sell when main street buyers aren't allowed liquidity units to buy with. There's more to banking than just hoarding currency past the point of social utility. Fiat currency supply is supposed to automatically FOLLOW aggregate demand, and NOT be a tool for suppressing it. Is anti-fiat in our dictionary yet?

US labour market beset by massive job shortages

The Neo-Liberals claim the public is unfit to use it's own initiative?

How convenient, when those same oligarchs have maladaptively laid claim to the vast majority of our present capital - static, dynamic, human or otherwise - while also spouting an unending stream of dire messages warning us not to express any more Public Initiative, aka, fiat.

Marie Antoinette might be personally proud of their defiance, but I can't for the life of me understand WHY Marie or the present Neo-Liberals see any evolutionary logic in their own behaviors.

History suggests that it will not be kind to either flavor of venal hoarder, whether Aristocratic or Neo-Liberal.

These people are a mistake that's already happened. We can't gain by letting them or us just sit on the static measures of our Public Initiative. A culture sitting on it's collective butt is going nowhere. Especially if it's entire purpose for it's inactivity is to "save initiative." As any peasant would tell you, "that don't make no sense."

What kind of idiot truly believes that we as a people can run out of public initiative, aka, fiat, denominated as fiat currency units? Can math students run out of numerals? Can atoms run out of photons or bosons to exchange?

If the Neo-Liberals aren't that dumb, then they're that criminal, for trying to promote an idea that even they don't believe.

Either way, why on Earth does an electorate possessing so much American ingenuity put up with such idiocy?

We the people can make as much lunch as we want. We merely need Desired Outcomes worthy of our distributed talents. If we just continuously express our growing, distributed initiative, then even the 1% can't continue eating our lunch forever. They'll simply burst - or at least fail to capture it all.

They're already hoarding obscene amounts which are close to killing them just with the stress of guarding it.

And then they have the audacity to tell us that WE must cut back public initiative, so that their hoard of our initiative won't "decrease in value." Maybe exorcists could convince us to stop our head-spinning attempts to swallow their snake-oil logic?

Just what the hell is the Neo-Liberal measure of adaptive value? They can sit on all the static and dynamic assets they want. The only outcome is that they'll soon die with fat asses and sclerosed semi-brains.

Such brains are already obsolete. The rest of us just have to start acting like owners of our own Public Initiative, and find some Desired Outcomes (Public Purpose) that has more meaning than simply over-feeding Neo-Liberals waxing fat on dumb.

Let them choke on their snake-oil.

Right To Cultural Life Party, Sponsored by MANLI. Please Notify Jane and Joe Sixpack.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

X-ray image of a pregnant cat with six kittens.

Now imagine a nation-wide "X-ray" of an entire, pregnant nation, usually bulging with a distributed, fetal Middle Class, the output not just of sexual-recombination, but also of "cultural recombination" on a massive and massively parallel scale.

Now image Neo-Liberals aborting that entire fetal Middle Class.

And everyone else too, in the process.

Right to Cultural Life, anyone?

Or do you really want Free Trade in Middle-Class-aborting methods - practiced by "elite" social parasites? Sounds to me like class-based, forced eugenics masquerading as orthodox macro-economics, with any surviving MC-preemies doomed to permanent sharecropper status, until our culture declines and starves.

Herding sheeple to fleecings.

The Control Frauds and their Neo-Liberal economists are definitely working together.

(Thanks to Russ Huntley for help modifying the image.)

This message comes courtesy of MANLI.  "Mother's Against Neo-Liberal Idiocy."

Neo-Liberals Can't Understand the Fallacy of Scale? Or Kleptomaniacs Can't Help Themselves?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)

Well, define "rich".

No matter how you define it, it's still true that we have to save these people from themselves - in order to save our aggregate! If for no other reason than that the variance inherent in sexual-recombination produces a small but steady proportion of such sociopaths, just like the median frequency of left-handed, LGBT or schizophrenic people, just to name some arbitrarily defined segments of our electorate's resiliency base.

So, has anyone tried altering the "fallacy of scale" story to make it more obviously applicable to Neo-Liberals?

How's this?

"If you hoard more in an aggregate, YOU (seem to) get a local advantage. 

So, if EVERYONE hoards more ... we're all better off. ... Right? ???" 

:(

Klepto-Liberals of the Big Yard, please self-medicate with something other than our distributed fiat!

The Great Library At Alexandria Was Destroyed By Budget Cuts, Not Fire

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Or, consituting a look at:

Dumb-Ass Neo-Liberals throughout the ages

Google "Emir Amrou Ibn el-Ass" - just one in a long trail of multi-ethnic, multi-religious dumb-asses, doing what they were told. The damage had already been done, long before, by those re-cooking the books.

Seems our current textbooks are worse than useless, yet again. :(

If we don't do something, we'll be left with an electorate that only cnows how to thinc. Without that missing real ability, it won't matter HOW much "STEM" data they memorize.

Now, aren't you happy that we've cut Public Initiative enough to balance our fiat? Oops! Pardon my illicit use of contraband. Oh what a feeling. Right. Was it worth it.