So Manafort has violated his sentencing deal with Mueller. What does this mean?

In terms of the investigation? Probably nothing. The way Mueller knows Manafort is lying is because he already has the facts. Would Manafort have been useful? Yes, as a witness against Trump. Both he and Roger Stone provide a direct connection between Russian Intelligence and Donadl J. Trump. They met the Russians and they told Trump about it. The Quid in this equation is illegally obtained emails and other campaign support. Pro means “for” in Latin. The Quo is the anti-Sanctions Plank in the Republican Party Platform (not to exclude other things) which Manafort directly organized.

This is flat out Bribery, the exchange of something of value for Political favors and Donald J. Trump is guilty, guilty, guilty. Not quite the slam dunk case on Obstruction of Justice but pretty damn close.

Among other things Manafort could have testified about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower because he was there. That meeting will still likely send Don Jr. to jail for a very, very long time.

For Manafort personally? This is an incredibly bad move. Not only will Mueller now seek maximum sentences on the charges he’s already been convicted of, there are a boatload of them that Mueller could have brought in D.C. and the 10 in Northern Virginia where the Jury was hung (by 1 vote I might add).

What about a pardon? It’s a sucker’s bet. Even if Trump pardons him on the Federal level the Bank Fraud of which he’s accused is also a State crime and I seriously doubt that New York, where he lived and most of these crimes were committed, is going to ignore him.

Of course Manafort’s biggest fear is that he’ll meet someone called Ivan in the exercise yard. This is why he’s been in solitary, to protect him because he was a potential witness. Not any more, General Population for you. Good luck with that, it worked out fine for Whitey Bulger.

I wish I could bring you Chris Hayes for the MSNBC Trifecta, but these are the clips posted now.

Ali Velshi on Maddow

Lawrence O’Donnell

Manafort Breached Plea Deal by Repeatedly Lying, Mueller Says
By Sharon LaFraniere, The New York Times
Nov. 26, 2018

Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, repeatedly lied to federal investigators in breach of a plea agreement he signed two months ago, the special counsel’s office said in a court filing late on Monday.

Prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said Mr. Manafort’s “crimes and lies” about “a variety of subject matters” relieve them of all promises they made to him in the plea agreement. But under the terms of the agreement, Mr. Manafort cannot withdraw his guilty plea.
…
Striking a plea deal with Mr. Manafort in September potentially gave prosecutors access to information that could prove useful to their investigation. But their filing on Monday, a rare step in a plea deal, suggested that they thought Mr. Manafort was withholding details that could be pertinent to the Russia inquiry or other cases.

The question of whether Mr. Trump might pardon Mr. Manafort for his crimes has loomed over his case since he was first indicted a year ago and has lingered as a possibility. A former lawyer for Mr. Trump broached the prospect of a pardon with one of Mr. Manafort’s lawyers last year, raising questions about whether he was trying to influence Mr. Manafort’s decision about whether to cooperate with investigators.

The filing Monday suggested that prosecutors do not consider Mr. Manafort a credible witness. Even if he has provided information that helps them develop criminal cases, by asserting that he repeatedly lied, they could hardly call him to testify.

Mr. Manafort had hoped that in agreeing to cooperate with Mr. Mueller’s team, prosecutors would argue that he deserved a lighter punishment. He is expected to face at least a decade-long prison term for 10 felony counts including financial fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Instead, after at least a dozen sessions interrogating him, the special counsel’s prosecutors have not only decided Mr. Manafort does not deserve leniency, but they also could seek to refile other charges that they had agreed to dismiss as part of the plea deal.
…
A jury in Northern Virginia convicted Mr. Manafort, 69, of eight counts of financial fraud in August stemming from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine. The jury deadlocked on 10 other charges.

Faced with a second trial in the District of Columbia on related charges in September, he pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts and agreed to an open-ended arrangement requiring him to answer “fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly” questions about “any and all matters” of interest to the government.

It was unclear at that time how much Mr. Manafort had to offer prosecutors. Although he had arguably deeper ties to pro-Russian figures than anyone else connected with the Trump campaign, he had consistently said he had no information against the president. Legal experts suggested that if he had been able to significantly further Mr. Mueller’s inquiry, he could have negotiated a more favorable deal.

As it is, the plea agreement specifies that if prosecutors decide that Mr. Manafort has failed to cooperate fully or “given false, misleading or incomplete information or testimony,” they can prosecute him for crimes to which he did not plead guilty in the District of Columbia. They could also conceivably pursue the 10 charges on which the Virginia jury failed to reach a consensus. Mr. Manafort is scheduled to be sentenced in the Virginia case on Feb. 8.
…
Mr. Trump’s lawyers responded last week to questions Mr. Mueller had for the president about ties between his campaign and Russia. Among the questions were inquiries about what Mr. Trump knew about Russian offers to Mr. Manafort during the campaign to assist Mr. Trump’s presidential run. The president’s lawyers have declined to discuss what he told Mr. Mueller, and it is not clear whether any of his answers conflicted with what Mr. Manafort told investigators.

Mr. Manafort’s allies have hoped that his sessions with the special counsel would end soon so he could be sentenced and transferred to a federal prison, where conditions are comparatively better than in a local jail. At a recent court hearing in Alexandria, Mr. Manafort came into the courtroom in a wheelchair, his foot wrapped in a white bandage, possibly from an attack of gout.

But few of Mr. Manafort’s friends predicted that his sentencing would be hastened by prosecutors declaring him to be a liar. The development stunned some people close to the White House, as well as legal experts.

“Everybody who lies to Mueller gets called on it — so he had to know that Mueller would catch him. So the question is: What was he hiding that is worse than going to jail for the rest of your life?” said Joyce Vance, a professor of law at the University of Alabama law school and former federal prosecutor. “There are often rocky dealings with a cooperator, and Mueller didn’t cut bait at the first sign of trouble. It was likely more than one lie and this would not have been a minor detail — it had to be something material and significant and intentional.”

emptywheel has some interesting insights summarized in this AlterNet piece from Cody Fenwick.

This reporter argues that Trump used Manafort as a ‘mole’ inside Mueller’s investigation — but it just blew up in their faces
By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet
November 26, 2018

With the dissolution of Paul Manafort’s plea deal this week, the former Trump campaign chairman’s role in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation had been once again been thrown into doubt.

It’s not clear, for instance, if Mueller’s accusation that Manafort has been lying to the investigators marks a devastating blow for the probe or if it’s a sign that the former campaign chairman has made a serious mistake.

But Marcy Wheeler, one of most astute Mueller watchers who once provided as yet undisclosed information to the FBI about the investigation, argued compellingly that Manafort has been acting as a mole within the investigation for President Donald Trump. Even more intriguingly, though, she believes Mueller knew this and may have used Manafort against the president.

The only sane reason, she claimed in a new blog post, that Manafort would lie to Mueller even after taking a plea deal, is that he’s banking on a pardon from Trump, which would, in any case, cover only federal and not state crimes.

“Just about the only explanation for Manafort’s actions are that — as I suggested — Trump was happy to have Manafort serve as a mole in Mueller’s investigation,” she wrote.

If this is right, it could be devastating for Trump. He finally turned in his answers to the special counsel’s investigation last week — and he may have relied on Manafort’s “insider knowledge.”

“But Mueller’s team appears to have no doubt that Manafort was lying to them,” Wheeler explained. “That means they didn’t really need his testimony, at all. It also means they had no need to keep secrets — they could keep giving Manafort the impression that he was pulling a fast one over the prosecutors, all while reporting misleading information to Trump that he could use to fill out his open book test. Which increases the likelihood that Trump just submitted sworn answers to those questions full of lies.”

There are several reasons Wheeler’s argument is compelling. First, as she previously noted, Manafort’s plea agreement did not include a provision to limit him from speaking with outside parties about the investigations, even though Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy who also pleaded guilty in the probe, was forced to agree to such a provision. For some reason, Mueller wasn’t worried about Manafort’s lawyers communicating with Trump — which he has been doing.

At the same time, while Manafort’s agreement allowed him to speak to outside parties about the probe, it set a relatively low bar for the special counsel to demonstrate that the former campaign chair had broken the agreement. While Gates’ agreement required that prosecutors show that the preponderance of evidence suggests that he lied in order to overturn the deal, Manafort’s agreement only requires that prosecutors show that he has violated the agreement by “good faith,” a lower standard.

“They probably never really believed he was going to cooperate,” Wheeler said.

There’s another piece of evidence that Manafort was serving as a mole for Trump by becoming a cooperating witness.

On Nov. 15, Trump tweeted: “The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want.”

As many pointed out at the time, this suggested Trump had some new insight into the investigation that he previously lacked. Some speculated that Trump’s dubiously appointed Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker might have been the source, but Manafort could also have played this role.

A few days before that, ABC News had reported that there were “tensions” between Mueller and Manafort as investigators struggled to get the answers they wanted from him. As I reported at the time, this was most likely a leaked report from Manafort’s allies. It appeared to be an attempt to make the investigators look desperate. In fact, the Mueller team might have been intentionally playing Manafort.

Wheeler also argued that the upcoming presentation of evidence that Manafort lied could be a key moment for the Russia investigation — it may be the much anticipated “report.” The special counsel intends to submit a “sentencing submission” regarding Manafort to the court that “sets forth the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies.”

If this submission is made public, it could be revelatory. By demonstrating that Manafort lied as part of his sentencing agreement, Mueller could answer any number of outstanding questions regarding the 2016 election, the Trump campaign and Russia — and potentially implicate even Trump, who may not be otherwise indictable.

It’s an open question whether, if Wheeler’s theory is right, there was an explicit deal that Manafort would act as a mole in exchange for a pardon. It’s possible the scenario could have emerged somewhat organically as an alignment of interests, rather than a spelled-out quid pro quo. But many observers have noted that Manafort’s moves seem exceptionally risky without a pardon guarantee (and even then, nothing is for sure). And if Trump made such an explicit promise, it would clearly be an impeachable offense.

The Rebellion for Slavery

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

San Francisco Mayor shot to death; Gerald Ford named as Richard Nixon’s Vice President; Doctors perform world’s first partial face transplant; Playwright Eugene O’Neill dies.

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.

Edward Everett Hale

Continue reading

Though I could easily have titled this “I told you so“.

Look, Chris Cillizza is a moron, useful only as a Barometer of Beltway Groupthink. I should not need to remind you that the Centrist No Labels Problem Solver Caucus has never solved a single problem and consists mainly of Democrats In Name Only who wish they were Republicans so they could openly espouse their preferred policy of stealing all the money of the 99% and giving it to the wealthiest 1%, shoving the Sick and the Poor and Children and the Elderly out on an Ice Flow to die.

Especially the Black and Brown ones, the miserable “takers”.

Chris Cillizza is a card carrying member of the Civility Cult who bemoans “partisanship”, but only when Democrats are in charge and get a bit “uppity”. Never at all when White Guys in Brooks Brothers suits storm Recounts and disenfranchise Black and Brown people and suppress their votes.

Racist? Y’all stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.

There’s a reason why the hash tag given to the leaders of the anti-Pelosi faction is “#FiveWhiteGuys”-

The #FiveWhiteGuys Are Offering a Sucker’s Bet to Anti-Pelosi Democrats
By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire
Nov 14, 2018

Alas, it is my painful duty to report that the #FiveWhiteGuys are led by Seth Moulton, congresscritter from the Sixth Congressional District here in the Commonwealth (God save it!), and a man who has been farting higher than his own arse ever since he got elected in 2014. Moulton ran a strong campaign. He ousted an endangered incumbent who was all tangled in so much family corruption that a Republican pickup of that seat was a distinct possibility—or, at least, as distinct a possibility as was ever enjoyed by a Massachusetts Republican. Almost immediately, Moulton signed on to the challenge to Pelosi’s leadership mustered up by the anti-charismatic Tim Ryan of Ohio. Almost immediately, and most spectacularly, Moulton began spending a lot of time in Iowa. This is a fellow who thinks a great deal of his own inherent political gifts.

Now, it seems, they’ve gotten the band back together again. The #FiveWhiteGuys are Moulton, Ryan, Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, and Bill Foster of Illinois. The driving forces remain Moulton and Ryan, with the latter the putative leader. After an election in which the Democratic Party continues to elect a demographically and politically diverse collection of new House members, Ryan is still insisting that the party needs to “reach out” to angry white men in places like Ohio when, in fact, if the midterms proved anything, it is that the Democratic Party’s future is in places like Arizona and Nevada, and even Georgia and Florida, while, except for Sherrod Brown, god bless him, Ohio is a lost cause. It was an outlier even in its own geographic area. There were Democratic—and progressive—victories in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. Ohio and, yes, Iowa, were loss leaders.

This did not stop Moulton, who declines to challenge Pelosi himself, from spouting off in Roll Call that he and his group have the votes to block Pelosi’s elevation to the speakership on the floor of the House—although, as has now become customary, Moulton declines to provide details on exactly how many members of the House have signed on.
…
I am willing to concede—indeed, I am devoutly hoping—that this talk is all a bluff. The #FiveWhiteGuys seem to think they can scare Pelosi out of running, which is completely foolish. This is because, if it’s not a bluff, and Moulton really has these votes, it almost certainly means that he’s cut a deal with some Republicans to get them.

He spends an awful lot of time blowing off steam about bipartisan problem-solving and all those other conjuring words that will magically transport you to cable green rooms, but that also completely ignore the fact that, now that it’s in the minority, the Republican House caucus will be even crazier than it was under Paul Ryan. And arguing that the party needs a “new generation of leadership,” while playing coy over who that might be, and whom they might owe for their elevation, is a bit of smoky legerdemain that smacks of a three-card monte game.

For those members, old and new, who oppose Pelosi from the left, the #FiveWhiteGuys are offering a sucker’s bet. The #FiveWhiteGuys are of the school that believes that the Democratic Party’s needs are best served winning back all those disgruntled folks at diners in the Mahoning Valley, a theory fairly well demolished last Tuesday. It is very unlikely that a Green New Deal or Medicare For All is high on their list of priorities. The only argument that the #FiveWhiteGuys have that might resonate with their new progressive colleagues is that Pelosi is old and has been in Congress for a long time. Period. That’s not enough to dispense with the party’s most effective legislative leader since Lyndon Johnson.

So what the #FiveWhiteGuys are flirting with is not a brawl within the party, but a three-way brawl in which the progressive side and the #FiveWhiteGuys side both work to bring Pelosi down, which would set the stage for an absolute bloodbath between those two forces for the right to pick her successor. (And, strictly from a provincial standpoint here in the Commonwealth—God save it!—we are preparing to have Richard Neal as chairman of House Ways and Means and James McGovern as chairman of House Rules. If this attempted coup screws that up, Moulton’s going to have some serious ‘splainin’ to do back home.)

There is no need for any of this. Pelosi stays as speaker. Steny Hoyer goes, replaced by, say, Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Jim Clyburn does what he wants, and the new generation moves into position as deputy whips under him. Then the Democratic Party can get back to the primary business at hand: beating the Republicans sufficiently hard and sufficiently often until the Republican Party regains a semblance of sanity. It’s a long, hard job.

What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?

That about sums it up for me.

Anyway, back to Barometer. Chris Cillizza, while sometimes reliable in that role, is right about the facts only when they coincide with his preconceived beliefs. Broken Clock you see. Today he “reports” (he also has no talents except transcribing Press Releases, reading from a Teleprompter, and flipping through a Rolodex) that the anti-Pelosi revolt by ConservaDems is over.

The anti-Nancy Pelosi forces just admitted defeat
by Chris Cillizza, CNN
November 26, 2018

Immediately after the 2018 midterms, the Democrats opposed to Nancy Pelosi returning as speaker of the House started talking a VERY big game.

Asked how confident he was that the anti-Pelosi Democrats had enough votes to keep her from the speakership, Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a leading face and voice of the Pelosi resistance, told reporters he was “100% confident.”

Which makes this, from The Washington Post’s Robert Costa on Monday, sort of, well, ironic:

“A high-profile critic of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi signaled on Monday that he is seeking to hold negotiations with her about changes to her leadership team, a development that makes her ascendancy to the speakership likelier as her opponents continue to struggle to recruit a challenger.

“The decision by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) to shift his attention from Pelosi — by far the front-runner for the speakership and currently running unopposed — to potential discussions over the lower-ranking positions of House majority leader and House majority whip underscored Pelosi’s strength and the desire of her critics to reshuffle the leadership even if she holds the gavel.”

Let’s be very clear about one thing right at the start: Moulton doesn’t try to negotiate for peace if he thinks he’s winning the war. He negotiates for peace because he knows the war is lost.

And any clear-headed analysis of the last 10-ish days since Moulton made his “100% confident” boast makes clear that the Massachusetts Democrat is simply reading the writing on the wall. Consider:

1. Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, who was seen as a potentially formidable challenger to Pelosi, announced she wouldn’t challenge the California Democrat. (On a VERY related note: Pelosi announced that Fudge would serve as the chair of a subcommittee on election security in the 116th Congress.)
2. New York Rep. Brian Higgins, who signed a letter opposing Pelosi last week, announced that he would, in fact, vote for her as speaker. (On a VERY related note: Higgins said he had secured a pledge from Pelosi to prioritize an infrastructure bill in the next Congress.)
3. Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch, another Pelosi detractor, said if no Democrat runs against her for speaker — and no one has announced — he will vote for her.

For people who have watched — and bet against — Pelosi over the years (and I was once very much one of them), this all feels familiar. She didn’t become the first female speaker of the House by simply being a nice person who raises lots of money for her colleagues. She became the first female speaker by understanding power and how to wield it. Neutralizing Fudge with a prime appointment on an issue the Ohio Democrat cares about is just such a master stroke. And once Fudge was gone, the prospects of even a marginally competitive challenge to Pelosi effectively disappeared — turning opposition to her into the political equivalent of charging at windmills

Faced with such a non-starter, Moulton — as well as other members of the Pelosi resistance — are doing what politicians do best: Finding a way to make lemonade out of lemons.

So Moulton goes public with his plan to negotiate with Pelosi as a way of trying to create leverage against her to throw one of the people below her — Steny Hoyer of Maryland or Jim Clyburn of South Carolina — over the side.

“Leader Pelosi wants to boil this down to a personal argument, but this is so much bigger than her,” Moulton told the Post. “It’s about the entire, stagnant three-person leadership team and having a serious conversation about promoting leaders who reflect the future of our caucus.”

Riiiight. Except that 10 days ago, Moulton was bragging that he and his fellow anti-Pelosi forces had the votes to keep Pelosi from the speakership. Not to keep Hoyer from serving as majority leader. Or Clyburn from serving as majority whip.

This sort of goalpost moving is what defeat looks like — whether Moulton wants to admit it or not.

I told you so. Were I Pelosi I’d have the #FiveWhiteGuys scrubbing the floors of the Capitol Hill Restroom with a toothbrush until 2020 when I’d Primary them out of a job.

Ingrates.

tl;dr? Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Neo Liberalist Economics is a bunch of rattle shaking Shamen motivated by faith and greed. There is no evidence at all that it benefits any except the very wealthiest. There is considerable evidence that it is destructive of society as a whole, including (but not limited to) Negative Environmental Effects, rising Class Division, and the Erosion of Democracy.

It is Orwellian Doublespeak for Monopolism and Regulatory Capture. A thin veneer over Fascist Authoritarianism. A theft of Public Resources. Those who embrace it are Fools, Liars, or Swindlers.

Neoliberalism’s Dark Path to Fascism
by Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Nov 26, 2018

Neoliberalism as economic theory was always an absurdity. It had as much validity as past ruling ideologies such as the divine right of kings and fascism’s belief in the Übermensch. None of its vaunted promises were even remotely possible. Concentrating wealth in the hands of a global oligarchic elite—eight families now hold as much wealth as 50 percent of the world’s population—while demolishing government controls and regulations always creates massive income inequality and monopoly power, fuels political extremism and destroys democracy. You do not need to slog through the 577 pages of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” to figure this out. But economic rationality was never the point. The point was the restoration of class power.

As a ruling ideology, neoliberalism was a brilliant success. Starting in the 1970s, its Keynesian mainstream critics were pushed out of academia, state institutions and financial organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and shut out of the media. Compliant courtiers and intellectual poseurs such as Milton Friedman were groomed in places such as the University of Chicago and given prominent platforms and lavish corporate funding. They disseminated the official mantra of fringe, discredited economic theories popularized by Friedrich Hayek and the third-rate writer Ayn Rand. Once we knelt before the dictates of the marketplace and lifted government regulations, slashed taxes for the rich, permitted the flow of money across borders, destroyed unions and signed trade deals that sent jobs to sweatshops in China, the world would be a happier, freer and wealthier place. It was a con. But it worked.
…
“As a political project, it was very savvy,” he (David Harvey, author of “A Brief History of Neoliberalism) said. “It got a great deal of popular consent because it was talking about individual liberty and freedom, freedom of choice. When they talked about freedom, it was freedom of the market. The neoliberal project said to the ’68 generation, ‘OK, you want liberty and freedom? That’s what the student movement was about. We’re going to give it to you, but it’s going to be freedom of the market. The other thing you’re after is social justice—forget it. So, we’ll give you individual liberty, but you forget the social justice. Don’t organize.’ The attempt was to dismantle those institutions, which were those collective institutions of the working class, particularly the unions and bit by bit those political parties that stood for some sort of concern for the well-being of the masses.”

“The great thing about freedom of the market is it appears to be egalitarian, but there is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequals,” Harvey went on. “It promises equality of treatment, but if you’re extremely rich, it means you can get richer. If you’re very poor, you’re more likely to get poorer. What Marx showed brilliantly in volume one of ‘Capital’ is that freedom of the market produces greater and greater levels of social inequality.”

The dissemination of the ideology of neoliberalism was highly organized by a unified capitalist class. The capitalist elites funded organizations such as the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce and think tanks such as The Heritage Foundation to sell the ideology to the public. They lavished universities with donations, as long as the universities paid fealty to the ruling ideology. They used their influence and wealth, as well as their ownership of media platforms, to transform the press into their mouthpiece. And they silenced any heretics or made it hard for them to find employment. Soaring stock values rather than production became the new measure of the economy. Everything and everyone were financialized and commodified.

“Value is fixed by whatever price is realized in the market,” Harvey said. “So, Hillary Clinton is very valuable because she gave a lecture to Goldman Sachs for $250,000. If I give a lecture to a small group downtown and I get $50 for it, then obviously she is worth much more than me. The valuation of a person, of their content, is valued by how much they can get in the market.”

“That is the philosophy that lies behind neoliberalism,” he continued. “We have to put a price on things. Even though they’re not really things that should be treated as commodities. For instance, health care becomes a commodity. Housing for everybody becomes a commodity. Education becomes a commodity. So, students have to borrow in order to get the education which will get them a job in the future. That’s the scam of the thing. It basically says if you’re an entrepreneur, if you go out there and train yourself, etc., you will get your just rewards. If you don’t get your just rewards, it’s because you didn’t train yourself right. You took the wrong kind of courses. You took courses in philosophy or classics instead of taking it in management skills of how to exploit labor.”

The con of neoliberalism is now widely understood across the political spectrum. It is harder and harder to hide its predatory nature, including its demands for huge public subsidies (Amazon, for example, recently sought and received multibillion-dollar tax breaks from New York and Virginia to set up distribution centers in those states). This has forced the ruling elites to make alliances with right-wing demagogues who use the crude tactics of racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, bigotry and misogyny to channel the public’s growing rage and frustration away from the elites and toward the vulnerable. These demagogues accelerate the pillage by the global elites while at the same time promising to protect working men and women. Donald Trump’s administration, for example, has abolished numerous regulations, from greenhouse gas emissions to net neutrality, and slashed taxes for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, wiping out an estimated $1.5 trillion in government revenue over the next decade, while embracing authoritarian language and forms of control.

Neoliberalism generates little wealth. Rather, it redistributes it upward into the hands of the ruling elites. Harvey calls this “accumulation by dispossession.”

“The main argument of accumulation by dispossession rests on the idea that when people run out of the capacity to make things or provide services, they set up a system that extracts wealth from other people,” Harvey said. “That extraction then becomes the center of their activities. One of the ways in which that extraction can occur is by creating new commodity markets where there were none before. For instance, when I was younger, higher education in Europe was essentially a public good. Increasingly [this and other services] have become a private activity. Health service. Many of these areas which you would consider not to be commodities in the ordinary sense become commodities. Housing for the lower-income population was often seen as a social obligation. Now everything has to go through the market. You impose a market logic on areas that shouldn’t be open to market.”

“When I was a kid, water in Britain was provided as a public good,” Harvey said. “Then, of course, it gets privatized. You start to pay water charges. They’ve privatized transportation [in Britain]. The bus system is chaotic. There’s all these private companies running here, there, everywhere. There’s no system which you really need. The same thing happens on the railways. One of the things right now, in Britain, is interesting—the Labour Party says, ‘We’re going to take all of that back into public ownership because privatization is totally insane and it has insane consequences and it’s not working well at all.’ The majority of the population now agrees with that.”

Under neoliberalism, the process of “accumulation by dispossession” is accompanied by financialization.

“Deregulation allowed the financial system to become one of the main centers of redistributive activity through speculation, predation, fraud, and thievery,” Harvey writes in his book, perhaps the best and most concise account of the history of neoliberalism. “Stock promotions, ponzi schemes, structured asset destruction through inflation, asset stripping through mergers and acquisitions, the promotion of levels of debt incumbency that reduce whole populations even in the advanced capitalist countries to debt peonage. To say nothing of corporate fraud, dispossession of assets, the raiding of pension funds, their decimation by stock, and corporate collapses by credit and stock manipulations, all of these became central features of the capitalist financial system.”

Neoliberalism, wielding tremendous financial power, is able to manufacture economic crises to depress the value of assets and then seize them.
…
The economist Karl Polanyi understood that there are two kinds of freedoms. There are the bad freedoms to exploit those around us and extract huge profits without regard to the common good, including what is done to the ecosystem and democratic institutions. These bad freedoms see corporations monopolize technologies and scientific advances to make huge profits, even when, as with the pharmaceutical industry, a monopoly means lives of those who cannot pay exorbitant prices are put in jeopardy. The good freedoms—freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom of association, freedom to choose one’s job—are eventually snuffed out by the primacy of the bad freedoms.

“Planning and control are being attacked as a denial for freedom,” Polanyi wrote. “Free enterprise and private ownership are declared to be essentials to freedom. No society built on other foundations is said to deserve to be called free. The freedom that regulation creates is denounced as unfreedom; the justice, liberty and welfare it offers are decried as a camouflage of slavery.”

“The idea of freedom ‘thus degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise,’ which means ‘the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property,’ ” Harvey writes, quoting Polanyi. “But if, as is always the case, ‘no society is possible in which power and compulsion are absent, nor a world in which force has no function,’ then the only way this liberal utopian vision could be sustained is by force, violence, and authoritarianism. Liberal or neoliberal utopianism is doomed, in Polanyi’s view, to be frustrated by authoritarianism, or even outright fascism. The good freedoms are lost, the bad ones take over.”

Neoliberalism transforms freedom for the many into freedom for the few. Its logical result is neofascism. Neofascism abolishes civil liberties in the name of national security and brands whole groups as traitors and enemies of the people. It is the militarized instrument used by the ruling elites to maintain control, divide and tear apart the society and further accelerate pillage and social inequality. The ruling ideology, no longer credible, is replaced with the jackboot.

Depression Olympics

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

China enters Korean War; Nazis force half a million Jews into walled ghetto; Nixon’s secretary tries to explain gap on Watergate tapes; ‘Casablanca’ premieres at Hollywood Theater; Tina Turner is born.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat. George Carlin

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Velshi and Moore

Trump Is Beginning to Lose His Grip
By Stanley B. Greenberg, The New York Times
Nov. 17, 2018

Because the votes were counted so slowly across the country, we were also slow to realize that Democrats had won the national congressional vote by a margin greater than that of the Tea Party Republicans in 2010. In fact, Democrats overcame huge structural hurdles to win nearly 40 seats.

At first, the results looked like something of a stalemate. The Republican Party retained and even strengthened its hold on the Senate. President Trump’s approval rating was at 45 percent, one percentage point below his percentage of the popular vote in the 2016 election. Analysts said that Mr. Trump still knew how to get Republicans “excited, interested and turn them out” and that he had “deepened his hold on rural areas.”

In the days that followed, though, it became clear that Democrats had made substantial gains. Analysts I trusted concluded that this was because suburban and college-educated women issued “a sharp rebuke to President Trump” that set off a “blue wave through the urban and suburban House districts.” At first, I also believed that was the main story line.

But the 2018 election was much bigger than that. It was transformative, knocking down what we assumed were Electoral College certainties. We didn’t immediately see this transformation because we assumed that Mr. Trump and the polarization in his wake still governed as before.

First of all, Democrats did not win simply because white women with college degrees rebelled against Mr. Trump’s misogyny, sexism and disrespect for women. Nearly every category of women rebelled.
…
Working people are not fools, and Mr. Trump promised them a Republican president who would never cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid; who would repeal Obamacare but provide “insurance for everybody”; who would get rid of bad trade deals and “drain the swamp,” as he never tired of saying. Instead, had Mr. Trump’s effort to replace Obamacare passed, it would have imposed vast cuts in retirement programs and driven up health insurance costs. His tax reforms were heavily weighted to large corporations and the top 1 percent. So it is no surprise that more than half of white working class men now believe that Mr. Trump is “self-dealing” and corrupt.

The Democratic Senate candidates in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania called out the president on these issues and won by more than double digits.

There is a long way to go, but 10 percent of 2016 Trump voters supported Democrats this year, and 40 percent of moderate Republicans either voted Democratic or stayed home. For Mr. Trump, this setback will be corrosive, unless he decides to acknowledge the “shellacking” and starts to actually “drain the swamp.” Don’t hold your breath.
…
On Election Day, a stunning 54 percent of those who voted said immigrants “strengthen our country.” Mr. Trump’s party lost the national popular vote by seven points, but he lost the debate over whether immigrants are a strength or a burden by 20 points. Mr. Trump got more than half of Republicans to believe immigrants were a burden, but three quarters of Democrats and a large majority of independents concluded that America gains from immigration.

For their part, the Democrats embraced their diversity. They supported comprehensive immigration reform and the Dreamers, opposed Mr. Trump’s border wall and opposed the separation of children from their families. They nominated African-American candidates for governor in Georgia and Florida and fought the suppression of minority voters. When it was over, the Democrats got more votes and created a new House majority that is nearly half women, and a third people of color. It also has more LBGTQ members than ever before.

In short, the Republicans lost badly in the House by running as an anti-immigrant party, while the Democrats made major gains as a self-confident multicultural party.
…
Democrats cut the Republicans’ margin in rural areas by 13 points, according to the Edison exit poll and by seven points in one by Catalist. Democrats still lost rural America by somewhere between 14 and 18 points so that left Democrats in a pickle there. That had implications for the Senate, but it shouldn’t conceal the fact that Democrats actually made progress in rural areas.

In the senate races, Mr. Trump looked like a giant killer because he took out at least three incumbent Democrats. But he mainly campaigned in states that he won by large margins in 2016.

The Democratic wave exposed Mr. Trump’s vulnerability and suggests a less polarized country. In the face of his divisive campaign, parts of rural and working class America peeled off.

I thought it would take Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020 for America to be liberated from this suffocating polarization, but it may have already begun.

Good, except the problem is not “polarization”.

The problem is that Republicans are the Party of Greed Heads who want to take away your Social Security and Medicare and steal your money to give to Plutocratic Billionaires and MegaCorps.

And that’s the sane ones.

The rest of them are Misogynous Bigoted Nazis and Racists.

We saw how that worked out for Hitler and Himmler, and Davis and Lee too. Patriotic citizens of the United States will not tolerate that kind of attitude.

Why don’t you move to Russia if you love it so much?

I’m really surprised at the fact that both Seth and Stephen were all live last week. I kind of missed most of it as I was watching other things, but YouTube is good like that.

IKEA has declared war on Stockmanns over sweeping forest broom tariffs!

Honey, I suppressed myself!

Traitor Pence

Metal

DJing was never particularly lucrative for me. Most of the gigs were calculated to advance my buddy’s political career (I never wanted to be capo di tutti, I wanted to be consigliere), if they paid cash it went out the door faster than it came in on new and better dj equipment and new music, and the rest were straight charity which he wrote off on his taxes.

But it was never the kind of thing I did for money. I did it for fun.

After a couple of attempts he finally picked up a girlfriend and I worked for her at a convenience store for a while.

“ek, I’m shorthanded and I need someone reliable who I can trust to handle money.”

Sure, why not?

I could write a book about it but here’s one quick story. I worked afternoons and evenings and the guy who did the shift before me was nice enough in that- thanks, you didn’t leave me with a pile of crap you were too lazy to do, kind of way. He was about my height and about my build and his hair color was similar to mine. The relevance of this will become apparent momentarily.

As it turns out he was in the witness protection program having been a gang member in his youth and testifying against them in court. They were still quite active (I’m telling you, Stars Hollow is grittier than it seems) and for a while I was (I think justifiably) apprehensive that some time there would be a case of mistaken identity.

Well, not quite mistaken. They really did want Doc Brown. See that Photo Shack? Yeah, it was like that.

Anyway she was a yuuuge Metal Head and we started sneaking more and more of that into the catalog.

Panama – Van Halen

This video matches better with the story, but it has audio drop outs.

Animal – Def Leppard

Yeah, that’s the band with the one armed drummer.

One thing we did to enhance our reputation as technical geniuses is we’d produce “End of the Year” Videos for the Club. We used this song for a very good and extremely popular capo di tutti. It wasn’t his theme but it was adopted by the members and universally associated with him.

Thunderstruck – AC/DC

This was actually the girlfriend’s favorite and she’d rip off my buddy’s headphones and drag him out on the floor to dance with her.

When my buddy lost his election for capo di tutti he was sort of emotionally crushed. He had no interest in putting together another campaign. Because I was a revolutionary and the revolution was not yet accomplished I reluctantly stepped up. Took me 6 years (to be fair we had problems in the Local I had to solve and that took 3 of them). Still I persisted. I keep hanging around until you forget why you hate me.

During this time I was less and less able to do the DJ thing and my buddy’s girlfriend took over my position as Librarian and Programmer while I circulated and sucked up. My term was revolutionary, I negotiated 2 big transitions in our method of operation, broke the back of the machine (and established my own which lasted for about another 6 years), put down a palace coup, and (I’m actually proud of this) established new traditions of accountability for State Officers that focused on listening to the needs of the Locals instead of showing off their vanity and sense of self-importance.

So it was good my buddy had someone to take my place. Single handed DJing is possible, but it’s a lot of hard work.