Much Gratitude…

Much Gratitude…

And it’s hard to dance with the devil on your back.

It’s always the darkest before the dawn.

-       Shake It Out, from Florence + The Machine

By J.M. Hamilton (11-26-2017)

Wake up.

Such are the perils of carbs, processed sugary treats, & a wine/vodka laden diet.

A diet that often induces coma.

Goodbye carbs and sugar… hello, my friends: coffee, quinoa, and steamed broccoli.

It dawned on me this morning, our family said grace at our annual gathering in South Texas; but we forgot our annual tradition of telling what we are grateful for.

Aside from family, the First Amendment, the Goddess’ good grace, and health… there is much to be thankful for this year, particularly for an economics and political junkie, such as myself.

So here’s what I’m grateful for on the economic/political front:

I’m grateful that POTUS Trump ran as a faux-populist and burned down the GOP establishment, as little more than a collective of paid political hacks.

Very much appreciate that Trump showed his true colors his first year in office, and completely reneged on his many campaign promises to help The People.  Instead, POTUS filled his cabinet with creatures of the swamp and assorted plutocrats; demonstrated his commitment to fascists and racist elements w/in the GOP (which – apparently – have become too important a voting block for the Party to let go of); and attempted several times to gut the ACA – w/out finding a better replacement – in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

JMH is happy that Trump is pushing a tax cut bill that rewards multinationals, and a handful of heirs & oligarchs, at the expense of the 99%.  And that it is the 99%, who will pay for said plutocratic welfare, via tax hikes, the diminishment of governments services, and by passing the buck onto our children and grandchildren.

The aforementioned will surely hasten the demise of a Party that no longer represents the better angels of our nature, Lincoln, or the trust busting Roosevelt; but rather, the GOP has come to represent little more than distilled avarice.

I’m grateful that The American people, particularly women, in response to POTUS Trump & the GOP, have awoken from their apathy and slumber, and are becoming involved in politics as never before.

I’m thankful that some of the business elite – members of the plutocratic class – members of Trump’s cabinet – have revealed themselves to be completely untrustworthy (by lying repeatedly before Congress, and in many instances, in bed with the Russian oligarchy).

JMH is exceptionally happy that one of my closest family members shared w/ me – after a lifetime of voting Republican & living in Texas – that they will no longer cast a vote for a Republican.  Talk about your bellwether, this woman is also born again and socially, fairly conservative.  If I may paraphrase, I believe she now finds the GOP to be morally repugnant.

I’m thankful Hillary Clinton didn’t make it into presidency.  I never believed a word she said on the campaign trail, and believe her administration would have been mired in impeachment proceedings.   Instead, we are far more likely to get our first woman POTUS from someone of Senator Warren’s caliber, or perhaps a Representative Gabbard, or Senators Gillibrand or Harris?   Now, these are women I would gladly support for POTUS.  Dr. Stein, much love for you, too, keep doing what you are doing.

Much gratitude for a record number of women running for political office, and the many women who have, bravely, come forward to expose a depraved, hollowed out, and morally bankrupt patriarchy that runs this country.  I hope these women keep kicking ass and taking names.  Too many white – entitled – males have shown themselves to be little more than animals, w/out scruples, and incapable of operating w/in the pale of human decency.

Also on the political front, much gratitude for the ascendency of the Sanders/Warren wing w/in the Democratic Party, and the rightful diminishment of GOP-Lite, Clintonian politics.

Economically, I’m grateful that the Federal Reserve appears to have abandoned its orthodoxy, tired rhetoric about inflation, and its dot charts, and will, likely, begin to raise interest rates on a regular basis next year.  (While the Fed and Central banks will never admit it, their policies have contributed to a great many distortions w/in the economy, not the least of which are: a debt bubble; industry consolidation; and wage & wealth inequality).

Trust me, there’s so much more to be grateful for.  JMH is grateful to the fourth estate (aka The MSM), as much as I like to complain about it.

Do I feel pity for the GOP?  Not really.  They managed to piss off everybody but their plutocratic owners, the aggrieved white male (too many of whom, are homophobic, misogynist, & racist), and single-issue voters, such as the anti-abortion crowd.

And they’ve really upset women.  The plutocrats – who own the GOP – would do well to remember, it was women who led the march on Versailles, and dragged King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette back to Paris.  As I seem to recall, things didn’t quite work out for the Royals.  Such is the power of women, united in mass and with a single-minded purpose.

Not so ironically, of the handful of people who know I write this blog, those who take the greatest exception are usually upper middle class white males, who are very content w/ the status quo.  Even though the billionaire class steals from my upper middle class, & middle class, colleagues and friends on a daily basis… limits their options, shuts down opportunity, leaves them to pay higher taxes at higher tax rates… they still believe business as usual is the way to go. 

It hasn’t quite dawned upon them yet, that very real change is, likely, coming.

(A quick digression: When I mentioned possible retirement in Canada at some future date, one friend asked why would I ever want to pay Canadian taxes…. My response to my friend was, “Yes, but have you seen what the proposed GOP tax plan will do to your taxes?”  As this is a family oriented blog, I cannot repeat the profanity directed at the Republican Party from the opposite end of the phone line.  Let’s just say, my phone melted in my hand.)

And on that note, let’s wrap this up. 

We often forget that change – serious change – may come quite rapidly.  When my friends tell me that a UBI is impossible, and that I’m an idealist for thinking free trade agreements can be negotiated w/ the needs of the global work force in mind, first & foremost, and the needs of the plutocracy, second…. I smile and remember.  The 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th century Royals, in Europe, often did not see the democratic movements coming that swept them from power.  Nobody, or very few, foresaw the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union’s demise almost three decades ago (or before that, the removal of the Russian Czar and his ministers in 1917). 

Civil rights, gay rights, women’s voting rights…?  All hard fought and seemingly impossible - except among those who believed - until they happened.

We often forget change, at times, comes in the blink of an eye, or like a thief in the night.

We often forget history is not dead, but rather, alive and well.

We often forget, it’s always darkest before the dawn.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2017

Our Long National Nightmare… Continues

Note, this piece has been updated to include reference, & a link, to an editorial by Katrina vanden Heuvel: Republican tax bills would be paradise for plutocrats.

An earlier version of Our Long National Nightmare… Continues has also been edited for grammar and typos.

Our Long National Nightmare… Continues

My fellow Americans: Our long national nightmare is over… Our Constitution works.  Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men.  Here, the people rule.

- POTUS Gerald Ford

The major issue of our time is the rapid movement toward international oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires own and control a significant part of the global economy. The Paradise Papers shows how these billionaires and multinational corporations get richer by hiding their wealth and profits and avoid paying their fair share of taxes. 

- U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

By J.M. Hamilton (11-13-2017)

How long O’Lord… how long can what remains of our republic withstand the swamp and the super-predators that run our country?

The last two weeks have been shocking, but not altogether surprising; and just when we think the nation’s financial elite and political leadership can’t sink any lower, they take it to a new low.

The American people, as a consequence of the elite’s actions (or the lack thereof, in response outrages that seem to increase exponentially), have grown inured and numb.

The news flow is so rapid fire, it seems as if the 99% don’t have enough time to consider the scandal before their eyes, before another abomination erupts.

The Panama Papers - revelations of offshore fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion by our global economic & political elite - were released in 2015; and now we have similar revelations from the Paradise Papers (see Senator Sanders’ comments above for a summary).

Even in the midst of GOP led tax reform, the Republican Party has made little or no effort at closing offshore & onshore loopholes, or closing out a telephone sized directory of multinational dodges w/in the U.S. tax code.  A U.S. tax code that is so porous that many members of the S&P 500 pay no taxes at all.  Indeed, as pointed out by Katrina vanden Heuvel, the number of tax loopholes for multinationals & the wealthy, under the proposed GOP plan(s), is likely to grow.

Instead, the GOP plans on sticking it to the middle class to pay for massive tax cuts for high net worth individuals, multinationals, and indolent heirs and heiresses. 

Meanwhile, its appears that many male actors, directors, and producers in Hollywood cannot keep their sex organs w/in their pants.  Female actors could have had their careers ruined or stalled if they even dared speak out against the epidemic of harassment and sexual abuse.  The New Yorker reported that one, Mr. Harvey Weinstein, hired the world’s largest corporate-intelligence company, and another organization made up, largely, of Israeli Mossad agents, Black Cube, to conduct surveillance and dig for dirt on his victims.  Apparently, it wasn’t enough for Mr. Weinstein to misbehave in a crude, lewd, and rude manner (there are even allegations of rape), he also wanted information on his victims to compel them not to tell of his unacceptable behavior.  

That is to say, Mr. Weinstein was also, likely, engaged in forms of blackmail, coercion, and extortion (not to mention a gross invasion of his victims' privacy).  

This is how the elite and the powerful roll.

But such acts aren’t limited to Hollywood.  Alabama’s GOP Senate nominee, Roy Moore - a Holy-Roller and hypocrite of the first-order - has had a least four women come forward, alleging that Mr. Moore made sexual advances upon them while they were still in their teens.  Sadly, many members of the GOP have come forward to make excuses for Mr. Moore’s prurient behavior, including one who has offered up the “Jesus, Mary and Joseph" defense.  

Spin baby, spin.  It’s as if U.S. citizens are living w/in a dystopian novel, trapped w/in George Orwell’s worst nightmare.

And speaking of surveillance, the Deep State (you know, the U.S. intelligence & surveillance agencies, and private contractors, taxpayers pay tens of billions of dollars to, per annum) seems completely incapable of stopping any American white male terrorist, who gets their hands upon - a NRA endorsed and supported - assault riffle.  The latest homicidal rampage occurred inside a church, w/in a "sleepy little town down around San Antone."  Which begs the question JMH raised before, what is the true purpose of the Deep State: corporate espionage, mass U.S. employee surveillance, and/or digging up dirt for the oligarchy and the well-connected?  

Perhaps all the above.

The fact of the matter is the United State’s leadership, both economic & political, is morally bankrupt.  And if, as JMH has argued many times, we believe cartels and monopolies are highly detrimental to American citizens, the economy, our government…. Billionaires are equally dangerous and detrimental. 

Case in point, The Guardian reported that billionaire, Joe Ricketts, shut down news sites Gothamist, DNAinfo, and Shanghaiist.  The reason Mr. Ricketts, billionaire, shut down these news organizations?  The reporters w/in his newsrooms voted to unionize.

If cartels and monopolies now control broad swaths of the economy, the billionaires & multinationals - that enjoy ownership w/in, if not outright own, said cartels & monopolies (see Mr. Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway) - also, enjoy outsized influence w/in the economy and Western governments.  If a billionaire doesn’t like what their employees are doing, they can shut down a business, layoff said biz’s pool of labor, and the associated tax base. If a billionaire doesn’t like a U.S. administration - say the Obama administration - said billionaire can engage in a capital strike.  The billionaire can wait out the administration, all the while sitting on their cash pile, withholding investment in CAPEX and labor training, and placing a boot heal on the neck of labor, by suppressing wages.

And this has occurred in the past, and is likely to occur again, at a time when the political winds of change are shifting towards a more liberal POTUS entering the White House in 2020.

In short, billionaires represent - like cartels & monopolies - the concentration of power into too few hands.  The billionaire class (or Davos Elite), collectively, can be referred to as a global oligarchy that in a coordinated, or uncoordinated, fashion can and do push their interests, first and foremost, w/ the political class, and capture entire political parties, such as the aforementioned GOP, as well as, capture Western governments, themselves (see again, the GOP’s proposed tax plan). 

How coordinated is the global oligarchy?  Well, seemingly one cannot turnover a rock, or plutocrat w/in the Trump administration, w/out encountering a Russian oligarch.  Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, the aforementioned Paradise Papers revealed, has ties to a Russian within Vladimir Putin’s inner-circle (in regards an active shipping venture).  Ties, Mr. Ross, failed to disclose during the Senate confirmation process.  

Mr. Ross, like many members of the global oligarchy, is so obsessed w/ his status & wealth that Forbes reported he embellished his net worth by some two billion dollars. 

And the good news… or the ray of hope in all this?  Just as nation states don’t have to tolerate cartels, monopolies, and unlimited consolidation/M&A… Western democracies don’t have to tolerate billionaires.  In brief, just as cartels and monopolies are creatures of governments that fail to enforce antitrust laws, billionaires are also often products of crony/rigged governments.  And global governments are perfectly capable of cracking down on billionaires, and confiscating, impounding, and redistributing their wealth (which some billionaires often obtain through a nefarious & rigged system, and the redistribution of governmental largesse).

If billionaires continue to capture and manipulate Western democracy for their own ends, they should expect blowback on a monumental scale.  The future of capitalism and democracy depends upon containing & controlling the super-predators, who would run our governments for their own enrichment, and to the 99%’s detriment.

In the interim, our long national nightmare continues.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2017