For many, it confirms that The New York Times has abandoned its presumed position of leadership. Some see it as a mockery of whatever values it was still pretending to uphold. And it wasn’t just the endorsement itself, but the way it was done. Presented as a self-promotional half-hour-long TV show in which spectators were invited to witness the seriously elaborate process of The Times’ decision-making before discovering the suspense-laden outcome, many viewers lost patience before the program could reach its monumentally important conclusion that would deliver the judgment of the gods.

In the Run-Up to the US Election, Storytelling Becomes Rather Less Innocent

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In an impatient, luminary journalist and inspired storyteller Dan Rather complained of having to watch a reality show and concluded: “I’m comfortable flipping around Netflix and waiting until tomorrow for their announcement.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Two:

A number that in US culture represents the shame of indecision, the failure to show that highest of moral virtues, resoluteness and, worse, signals the renunciation of the obligation to always focus on the only thing that counts: the uniqueness of being number one

Contextual Note

Many have called The NYT’s double endorsement a . Such a critical judgment can be explained by the curious status the idea of the number two has in US culture. To be taken seriously, two must signify the staging of a competition or even a combat that can only be resolved through the victory of one of the competitors.

That’s why, unlike most other developed countries, there are only two political parties in the US. Like two teams in professional sports, they exist to be paired together in regularly programmed combat to provide the spectacle of seeing which one can vanquish the other. One of the reasons that football (which is known as soccer to Americans) can never reach the level of popularity of American sports in the US is that a game can end in, with no cry of victory and no whimper of defeat. (The other even more obvious reason is that, as a game, it isn’t properly structured to permit the commercial breaks that are essential for American TV broadcasts.)

The number two lacks respectability. Marriage may be the one institution that is still permitted to celebrate the number two, but that seems to be a question of biological fatalism rather than comfort with the idea of a pair. And even so, the elevation of divorce to the level of the domestic norm means that people perceive the idea of two as fragile and temporary and is always in need of being overcome.

For poker players, a pair of deuces represents the lowest possible winning hand, which means that two stands as something of negligible value. Deuces are as low as you can go, but while having two deuces in your hand lends them some value, the only way to make them pay off is with bluffing. Poker players know that two of a kind, even of aces, designates the bottom of the barrel. Three of kind brings you into the shining realm of noble combinations, followed by the increasing glory of straights, flushes, full houses and four of a kind.

Although the $2 bill has existed since 1862, it remains to this day an extremely rare denomination. John Bennardo, the producer and director of a documentary on the $2 bill, offered several complementary explanations for the shameful status of the banknote.

The first derives from what most people perceive as the most disgraceful of professions: politics. “Politicians used to be known for bribing people for votes, and they would give them a $2 bill, so if you had one it meant that perhaps you’d been bribed by a politician,” he said. He then cited another professional activity, nearly (but not quite) as shameful: “Prostitution back in the day was $2 for a trick, so if you were spending $2 bills it might get you into trouble with your wife.” His final example is the horse races: “$2 is the standard bet at a race track, so if you were betting $2 and you won, you might get a bunch of $2 bills back and that would show that you were gambling.”

Historical Note

CBS News identified the that swayed The Times’ jury toward selecting two candidates. The first was the idea of being “open to new ideas,” which justified the selection of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. The second was “seeking stability,” which attracted them to Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.

Going in both of those directions represents The NYT’s effort to acknowledge and fail to take a position on an undeniable historical trend: the splitting of the Democratic Party into two distinct camps. It’s the Clintonite establishment, often called the center, and the progressives, often termed the radical left. Over recent decades (and perhaps longer), The New York Times, generally kind to Democrats, has demonstrated its discomfort with anything that challenged establishment values. But with its image as a “liberal” newspaper appealing to educated, “open-minded” Americans, it has always promoted a culture that embraces establishment values while seeking to show its indulgent curiosity for some of the themes that challenge those values.

Its choice of “two” for the endorsement sends a further message that applies to today’s historical situation. Thanks to the history of the 2016 presidential election and recent polling, the public appears to understand that, while there is a vast field of candidates to choose from, there is clearly one identified leader of each of the wings of the Democratic Party: Joe Biden, on the side of the establishment, and Bernie Sanders, on the progressive side. The others are competing with them for the leadership of their wings but, despite the advanced age of these two men, they have weathered the storms and proved their symbolic positioning.

Over the current election cycle, The Times has been indulgent with former Vice President Biden and critical of Senator Sanders throughout the duration of the campaign. Sanders’ capacity not only to maintain his symbolic leadership but also to generate exceptional enthusiasm among large swathes of the population appears to worry The Times. It truly fears that Sanders may generate enough enthusiasm to win the party nomination and possibly even the election in November, after which he might continue to promote policies that the business, financial and political oligarchy finds threatening. That would be the worst of all possible worlds for the oligarchs who count on The New York Times to define and constrain the realm of “sane politics.” (Among the topics of “sane politics” that The Times newsroom pushed for three years was Russiagate. Among the “sane” causes it promoted under George W. Bush was the invasion of Iraq in 2003)

As many of the commentators have remarked, the point of an endorsement is to identify exactly one preferred candidate, not to deliver the suspect message that “politics comes in two flavors so take your pick.” By selecting two candidates to endorse and appealing to the fact that both are women, The Times has found the most convenient way of marginalizing the one candidate who, because of his very real prospect of transforming the Democratic Party, clearly makes them ill at ease. (The NYT prefers to systematically smear another candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, who challenges the newspaper’s even more essential commitment to US exceptionalism and imperial reach.)

Sanders’ policies and personality contradict everything The Times has consistently stood for: the maintenance and extension of a superficially prosperous status quo that depends on what it considers to be the necessarily “benevolent” project of US economic, military and political imperialism. It’s a program the “liberal” newspaper supported even during Bush’s irresponsible adventurism in the Middle East in the name of ensuring international stability. It’s “benevolent” because Americans always play the role of the good guys, even if the stability they promise to enforce destabilizes an entire region and its neighboring continents.

As someone who appreciates the system as it is, Amy Klobuchar fulfills The Times’ criterion of “seeking stability.” Though Elizabeth Warren made her reputation as a left-wing radical on domestic issues, she has made a serious effort in recent months to show her support for a similar commitment to stability by affirming that, on the economic front, unlike the socialist Sanders, committed to the basic tenets of US ideology. She identified herself as “capitalist to my bones” and, though shaky on foreign policy, she has shown herself to be globally supportive of an aggressive attitude toward national movements that oppose Western domination.

Warren is not, however, quite as keen as The Times on invasion, war and occupation, but once elected, that can be remedied (as it was for the peace candidate, Barack Obama, in 2008). For The Times, her positions on the economic justice as a corrective to monopolistic capitalism indicates that she is “open to new ideas,” which the newspaper finds deeply reassuring because it knows that new ideas often have no impact on practical politics.

Though Klobuchar is polling at only around 4%, The Times considers her a, which means that, if elected, she will never let any of the ideas to which she may or may not be open get in the way of carrying on politics as usual.

Many of the have complained that The Times has demonstrated its incoherence by endorsing two women with different “policy agendas, and fundamentally different world views.” To the extent that Warren continues to be identified as the other progressive alongside Sanders, The Times’ position does appear potentially contradictory. Which wing of the party is The NYT supporting: the center or the left? But since the real goal of the endorsement was to use two sticks to beat down the one villain that The Times appears most worried about, Warren and Klobuchar are similar enough to get the job done on terms that the paper appreciates.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The New York Times Sees Double appeared first on 51�Թ�.

During the Democratic presidential debate on January 14, in a bizarre line of questioning on a bit of campaign gossip reported third-hand, CNN’s moderators sought to get to the bottom of what they saw as the major issue of the day. This concerned whether Bernie Sanders had, during a private meeting toward the end of 2018, told Elizabeth Warren that “he believed a woman could not win” the presidency.

Can Sanders or Warren Clinch the Democratic Nomination?

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During the debate organized and broadcast by CNN, moderator Abby Phillip first addressed Senator Sanders, citing the rumor and claiming that Warren had confirmed it: “In 2018 you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?” Sanders immediately denied having said it and explained why it made no sense.

Up to that point, the only Senator Warren had made on the rumor had been when she explained two days earlier: “Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate. I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.” This sounds as if it was a debate about probability or weighing the odds, not about the legitimacy of a female president. But CNN clearly decided that the Warren campaign’s comprehensible but trivial ploy to reveal a secret summed up Sanders’ sincere and definitive viewpoint about women in politics.

Immediately after Sanders’ explanation, Phillip began by reading from her script, rather than reacting to the explanation Sanders had just given. She asked Warren: “What did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?” Warren began her answer cleverly with the phrase, “I disagreed,” which, as any lawyer will recognize, indicated that she accepted the factual basis of the question without committing herself to affirm it. She then added: “This question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised and it’s time for us to attack it head on.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Raised question:

A speculative question that can be turned into a living controversy through the injection of unrelated substances and hot air, much like a loaf of bread that is raised by mixing inert dough with leavening and subjecting it to intense heat

Contextual Note

Warren chose her words carefully when she said, “This question … has been raised” in response to Phillip’s question. Just as her statement, “I disagreed” avoided making a direct accusation by using the passive form of the verb, Warren avoided directly implicating Sanders, since the sentence literally means someone, somewhere has raised this question at some point in time. She cleverly left the impression that she validated the assumption contained in the moderator’s question.

Though the issue lacked any serious substance, this was clearly a tense moment, which, from CNN’s point of view, makes for exciting television. A day after the debate, the news broadcaster released the that followed the debate in which Warren appeared to refuse to shake Sanders’ hand. The audio revealed that she accused Sanders of calling her a liar on national TV, presumably because he denied uttering the words quoted by Philip. Sanders responded, “You called me a liar,” though he may have recognized her talent for carefully avoiding a direct accusation.

CNN has been milking this story all week and has even managed to turn it into a kind of TV serial, with at least three successive episodes and possibly more to come. For an objective observer, it should stand as an illustration of everything honest journalism should not be, as well as a demonstration of how political rhetoric can work in the hands of a clever politician such as Warren. She stole the show with her set-piece that followed, about the superior performance of female candidates compared to men. Her handling of the controversy with Sanders demonstrated her ability to produce effective, cleverly disingenuous rhetoric. She was, after all, trained to be a lawyer before going into teaching and politics.

As many serious have pointed out, CNN’s lines of questioning throughout the Democratic debate revealed a total insensitivity to political and even historical context. The questions were written to make all the candidates uncomfortable, some more than others. But a good journalist should know that the point of such challenging questions is to open a debate and to probe into motivations while revealing possible contradictions. Instead, CNN’s moderators simply followed a script and took no account of the varying points of view expressed on issues — such as foreign policy — that are complex and vital for the public to understand, especially in the current context.

In the case of the Warren/Sanders spat, rather than inquire as to what the tenor of the original conversation had been back in 2018, Phillip simply assumed the statement was true and asked Sanders to defend a position he credibly denies having. In the courtroom tradition of the US, this type of interrogation is equated with the: “When did you stop beating your wife?”

CNN’s journalists were apparently instructed to suppress any journalistic curiosity they might have had about establishing what was actually said in the private conversation between Sanders and Warren. Phillip carefully avoided the opportunity to find out whether there may have been a misunderstanding. As Matt Taibbi on Rolling Stone concerning the question Phillip asked: “Not ‘did you say that,’ but ‘why did you say that?’”

A good journalist would have asked Sanders an even more probing question: What was that conversation all about in which you reportedly doubted the capacity of a woman to win the election? The simple word “reportedly” not only reminds the audience of the fact that the quote is hearsay. It also makes it possible to aim for clarity and at least approach the facts. But CNN apparently had a different agenda.

If the truth ever were to come out, a likely scenario for the conversation would have been a comparison between the two candidates of their weaknesses. Warren might have suggested that at 78 years old, age was his enemy. Sanders may have countered that a woman would be in a particularly vulnerable position facing President Donald Trump. If that were the case, Warren knew she had a trump card (no pun intended). Sanders could not bring up, in public, her point about his age because it would highlight his weakness. But, when needed, Warren could cite his remark about being a woman. 

If Warren can succeed at that style of poker with Sanders, she might just be able to accomplish something similar with Trump. Electoral politics is all about exploiting any advantage you can find to win the game.

Historical Note

Matt Taibbi calls this a “CNN ambush” and cites another equally egregious one from a presidential debate in recent history, “when Bernard Shaw in 1988 crotch-kicked Mike Dukakis with a question about whether he’d favor the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife, Kitty.”

Taibbi makes the point that the truly controversial question here that emerges from this debate is not Sanders’ attitude toward women in politics, but rather the responsibility of the media, and CNN in particular, with regard to investigating and reporting real news. As he observes after citing many of the other clearly biased features of CNN’s handling of this week’s debate, the real winner may have been Donald Trump, who has repeatedly accused CNN of being “fake news.”

CNN put on a convincing display of its ability to present a hidden agenda as news and its taste for manipulating democratic processes. Taibbi sums up this sorry performance: “CNN bid farewell to what remained of its reputation as a nonpolitical actor via a remarkable stretch of factually dubious reporting, bent commentary, and heavy-handed messaging.”

The history of the relationship between politics and the media in the US over the past half-century has been one of continuous degradation. The news presented in the corporate media has increasingly become nothing more than a form of entertainment. Taibbi quotes a comment of Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chair and, preceding the debate: “This is a heavyweight match tonight. This is going to be frisky, it’s going to be competitive.” 

This is the language of the world of professional sports, veering toward the hyperreal style of professional wrestling rather than that of honest athletic competitions. By turning public political discourse into, at best, a match of cleverly disingenuous practitioners of political rhetoric and, at worst, a pre-scripted TV serial, is it any wonder that the public has lost its last vestige of faith in US democracy and the media?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post At the Democratic Debate, CNN Magnifies the Rumors appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Elizabeth Warren’s Grudging Acceptance of Billionaires

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In November, Warren announced a  of her  wealth tax proposal of January 2019, doubling the levy on households with more than a billion dollars in net worth. Under her plan, households would pay an annual 2% tax on every dollar of net worth exceeding $50 million and a 6% tax on net worth more than $1 billion. The tax would impact some 75,000 households who comprise the top 0.1% of US households, according to  by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California-Berkeley.

“A small group of families has taken a massive amount of the wealth American workers have produced, while America’s middle class has been hollowed out,” Warren said in the introduction to her latest plan. “It’s time for the rich to pay their fair share.” She cited findings by Saez and Zucman that the 400 richest Americans now own  wealth than all black households and a quarter of Latino households combined.

Revised Estimates

, Wharton professor of business economics and public policy and faculty director of the PWBM, explained why the PWBM estimate is less optimistic than Warren’s. Speaking on the , he said, “We assume that people will change their behavior to try to avoid some of the tax.” Some of this could be “legal behavior” on the part of the ultra-millionaires, such as setting up foundations that have less than a billion dollars or other devices “to escape at least the high threshold of the tax, especially if they are planning on giving some of their money away,” he added.

In trying to model “a reasonable avoidance mechanism,” the PWBM gathered international evidence on how taxpayers responded to wealth taxes and conducted interviews with tax experts. The study also drew upon the experience of its own team, which includes former Treasury officials who have worked on tax avoidance in the past.

The PWBM estimated the revenues the wealth tax could generate under two scenarios. If there were no avoidance of the wealth tax, the measure would raise $4.8 trillion from fiscal years 2021 to 2030. With “extreme avoidance,” that revenue estimate would drop to $1.4 trillion. Somewhere between those two extreme scenarios lies the PWBM’s best estimate of a total revenue increase of $2.7 trillion from fiscal years 2021 to 2030.

Impacts on GDP and Wages

The PWBM projected that the wealth tax would cause the US gross domestic product to fall by 0.9% in 2050 under the “standard budget scoring convention” that new tax revenues would be used to reduce the federal budget deficit. However, if those revenues were instead spent on public investments, it projected GDP in 2050 to fall between 1.1% and 2.1%, depending on the productivity of the investment. The tax would also cause average pre-tax hourly wages in 2050 to fall between 0.8% and 2.3% because it would reduce private capital formation, the PWBM study stated.

“If this [revenue] is all just coming from billionaires having fewer yachts to buy, that’s one thing,” said Smetters. “No one is going to have too many tears shed over that. But where it really comes in for everybody else, where the rubber hits the road, is in wages. Billionaires are billionaires because they’re invested in companies that aren’t being worked by billionaires. They’re being worked by you and me, who get wages and so forth.”

The PWBM’s projections of the wealth tax’s potential impact on GDP and wages are not particularly large, “but often people focus on the sign — whether it’s positive or negative — and it is, in fact, in a negative direction,” said Smetters. The estimates are in a range because much depends on how the money is ultimately spent, he added.

In a , Diane Lim, senior advisor at PWBM, and Richard Prisinzano, PWBM’s director of policy analysis, discussed the highlights of the Warren wealth tax proposal.

Great Expectations

Warren has focused on programs such as pre-K education, which generate returns of 7% to 10% on spending, but her campaign has not matched the money sought to be raised with government spending programs, Smetters noted. So, the PWBM study looked at a broad basket of productivity-boosting public spending programs, using the current distribution of public spending including on pre-K education and roads and infrastructure. In its calculations, it has assumed “pretty high” annual returns of 12% on money spent, he said. “If anything, we’ve given a pretty nice return to that spending,” said Smetters. “But even with that, you still have some economic activity that has been reduced, even with positive spending returns.”

Smetters said the PWBM estimate of returns is “aggressive” because it takes a long time for the benefits of programs like pre-K education or road construction to filter through. If, for instance, the public spending has to offset the negative effects of the wealth tax on the GDP, it has to earn returns of 15%, according to the PWBM. He also pointed to some “secondary effects” of such public spending. “For example, if some lower-income females suddenly had access to childcare, maybe they could go to work,” he said, noting that the Warren campaign has discussed that possibility.

Any of those scenarios involves “a fundamental tradeoff,” Smetters said. “If you believe that you’re going to get more revenue than what we’re suggesting, then you also have to believe that the tax actually has more bite to it. So there’s a fundamental, classic tradeoff between equity and efficiency.”

Unattractive Option

Wealth taxes are not new internationally, but over time, fewer governments have taken that route, the PWBM report noted. In 1990, 12 of the 36 member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) imposed wealth taxes, but by 2019, only four of them continued with that approach (Norway, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland). The report cited an OECD , which concluded that “administrative difficulties, modest revenues, and failure to adequately address wealth inequality are among the main reasons why most member countries have abandoned wealth taxes.”

Smetters said the debate comes down to how net worth is defined. “How do we count that? That has been the struggle a lot of countries have had,” he noted. Unlike the value of a publicly-traded stock, it becomes “more challenging” to value privately-held businesses, he said. “[For instance], if you’re talking about a pension plan that’s giving you a stream of income over time, should that value be capitalized into its present value and treated as an asset? All those things are very challenging to figure out, and that’s where a lot of countries have found that very hard to administer.”

Families or other entities could own businesses with a net worth of $50 million or more — and the wealth tax could have a significant impact on them. Some countries like Spain, which still has a wealth tax, have exempted privately-held businesses precisely for that reason, since they are worried that it might compel the families that own them to sell their businesses, Smetters said. He dismissed suggestions from some economists that those wealthy businesses could give some shares to the government instead of paying the wealth tax. “That creates a lot of challenges because ultimately the government doesn’t want shares, it wants money,” he said.

Enforcement Matters

Smetters pointed out that while the PWBM does not take advocacy positions, “taxing wealth is challenging.” He said taxing high-income or wealthy people and enforcing it is much easier with, say, an estate tax, which kicks in at the end of a person’s life.

In the same way, capital gains taxes could be increased in order to get more revenue. Plugging loopholes that allow much wealth to remain untaxed upon death could also help raise tax revenues, Smetters said. “There are lots of ways that you can hit at this wealth, but they are much easier to administer if they focus on the income from the wealth, rather than the wealth itself.”

*[This article was originally published by , a partner institution of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax Proposal Too Optimistic? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Importantly, these hearings should be yet another reminder that having some competent public servants in key positions is no guarantee against the development and execution of dubious policy decisions at great cost to the nation. Often-studied foreign policy disasters in, for example, Iraq and Vietnam continue to yield few lessons learned.

The current clash over Trump’s actions in Ukraine is instructive not just for impeachment purposes, but for examining serious institutional shortcomings in the development and execution of public policy. The “official” US policy toward Ukraine requires the overt deification of Ukraine as a vulnerable cradle of latent democracy striving to be free and to align itself with American ideals. The Trump version of Ukraine policy features a weak and faltering country of little consequence to US interests that can be corruptly bent to serve his personal and political interests. The truth about Ukraine almost surely lies somewhere in between.

If Russia overwhelmed Ukraine tomorrow and set up shop there, not much would be lost in America while the narrative got sorted out. Therefore, examination of the Ukraine drama should be inwardly focused to serve as an alarm about the extent to which US institutions are being undermined every day by Trump and his cabal and the putrefaction of the Republican Party. Much of value is being lost in America every day. If the US government is allowed to further rot from the top, both national security and institutional integrity are at grave risk.

With this backdrop in mind, there is a natural inner turmoil among those on the left in America that pits disposing of Trump as the only priority against an attempt to seize the moment created by Trump to drive home long overdue systemic reforms in an America hopelessly corrupted by unrestrained capitalism and its corporate progeny. If you think the nation is in peril on either front, the current Democratic Party “dialogue” should be a cause for critical concern.

The easiest path to angst is to picture a titanic battle between Trump and Joe Biden. The first is a corrupt and narcissistic pathological liar with a highly committed following of willfully ignorant and dangerously self-interested acolytes, and the other is an aging centrist throwback with a sometimes distinguished past, a limited present and a hardly committed following of wistfully hopeful supporters looking for anything that will upend Trump. Maybe hope can win, but the last time it did, the nation didn’t get much out of it.

Two Rich Guys From New York

Enter Michael Bloomberg, another old white man, into the Democratic scrum. Bloomberg has tons of money, earned largely by monetizing what originally seemed like a good idea, something of an earlier version of Mark Zuckerberg. He is also fairly articulate, has some serious experience at governance, and seems fully committed to advancing at least two issues of critical importance to the left — addressing climate change and confronting rampant gun violence. Bloomberg would likely be an upgrade from Biden as a president, but he seems so short of the common touch that it is hard to see him delivering much more than Hillary Clinton was able to deliver in 2016. That could leave the nation in serious peril of a Trump repeat.

If Bloomberg somehow captures the Democratic Party nomination, and you aren’t too concerned about who wins the presidential election in 2020, it could be entertaining to watch two self-proclaimed rich guys from New York trying to outdo each other for the “man of the people” mantle. America again is the big loser.

So let’s suppose for a moment —those of us on the left who don’t want to settle — that sending Trump to prison is not enough of a goal. That means a protracted fight for the Democratic nomination, most probably trying to ride Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to near the finish line and then making the hard choice about who should win in the end. The risk is high that neither Sanders nor Warren can win the general election. But the reward could be very high if one of them does.

I think it is way too early to give up on the fight for true systemic reform. The continuing battle is for the soul of the Democratic Party, a battle launched in 2016 by Sanders. It is way too early to let Biden and Bloomberg have a clear path to anything, because even if one of them beats Trump, the reward will be four years of trying to undo the Trump damage to remake the nation in Barack Obama’s image. This is not nearly enough for me at this juncture.

What Americans Need

I want single-payer health insurance, I want universal access to meaningful health care, I want a living wage for everyone, I want real tax reform, I want strong government regulation of capitalism’s excesses, I want confiscatory gun control, I want real reduction of student debt, I want a national affordable housing program, I want a humane and welcoming immigration system, and I want us all to confront the racial demons that are at the core of much of what ails the nation. Then, I want America to lead the way to a cleaner environment, to a respect for the world’s natural resources and to an assault on climate change. And I want religion out of public life. 

This is a lot to ask of an America mired in deep social, cultural, racial and ethnic divisions. But I am sure of one thing — that to accomplish any of what I want, the nation must reject Trump and his warped national vision. To that end, I may have to be willing to sacrifice some of what I want for all of what the nation most needs now.

*[A version of this article was cross-posted on the author’s , Hard Left Turn.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post What Americans Need in 2020 appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Concerning the major reforms required to address the distinctly unsolvable problems at the core of the US economy — such as the debt crisis as well as the stultifying cost of health care and education — the two candidates have shown themselves ready to jump into the ring and challenge any Democrat who says that the solutions to these issues can only be achieved by minimalist approaches consisting primarily of gentle nudging or minor tweaks to existing laws and institutions.

As a subsidiary of Fox News — a powerful news outlet dedicated to seeking ways to discredit Democrats — Fox Business has its own for calling attention to the points of convergence and divergence between the two progressive candidates. Thanks to a debate that has increasingly focused on taxing billionaires’ fortunes, Fox focuses on a quasi-philosophical question on which Sanders and Warren appear to disagree. It is, quite simply, whether billionaires should or should not exist. Since Sanders has, on moral grounds, that they shouldn’t exist, the media obviously wanted to know if Warren agrees.

Warren’s response to the question correlates with her — intended clearly to differentiate herself from the “Democratic socialist” Sanders — that she is a capitalist to the bones. “Look, somebody has a great idea, and they follow it through and they work hard and they build something, good for them,” Warren said.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Great idea:

In the framework of the “American dream,” the ideal substitute for the otherwise inevitable conclusion that hard work is the unique natural source of income. Belief in the power of the “great idea” justifies the average person’s faith in the moral value of capitalism, a system in which there is one way to survive — hard work — and two ways to become successful: start with a large sum of inherited money or come up with the kind of great idea that can con masses of people into paying considerably more than the actual worth of the great product that results from the great idea.

Contextual Note

The media shy away from the idea that Sanders and Warren are a tag team for two notable reasons. One is political and the other cultural.

The cultural reason boils down to the notion that an election, rather than being an opportunity to assess ideas and plans for government, is essentially a competition between ambitious, talented individuals. Casting the two progressive candidates as combative rivals, even while recognizing the similarities in their thinking and programs, allows the media to comfort the idea, present at the core of American culture, that life itself is a zero-sum game played out by ambitious individuals.

On any issue and at any given moment, everyone is either a winner or a loser. Losers can nevertheless hope to win the next time, just as winners will fear losing the next time. Alas, it’s often the ideas themselves that are lost or forgotten once the winner emerges and the loser retreats into the shadows.

The political reason follows the same logic but turns out to be a bit more cynical. The public sees Sanders and Warren as similar in their take on the economy and their insistence on the need for a serious shift in the approach to essential dollars-and-cents questions. The media, in contrast, want every election to look like a horse race in which they can highlight the drama of competing thoroughbreds digging their hoofs in the dirt to be the one to cross the line first as the crowd expresses its rising emotion. Treating the two progressive candidates as rivals rather than as objective allies allows the media to focus on the combat rather than the substance of the issues they raise.

This has an advantage for the media. It allows them to avoid the real story the polls have been telling, one that reflects the deeper trends in US politics, which the media appear to prefer ignoring because it would oblige them to think rather than just report. It concerns the growing fault line within the Democratic Party itself, which has little to do with the individual candidates and everything to do with the future of the republic.

There is, after all, more than one way to read the endless parade of polls that mark the campaign. The corporate media gain by reinforcing the belief that an election is nothing more than a horse race. But the real story delivers a lesson the establishment Democrats, who guide much of the media’s reporting, don’t want voters to hear.

Most observers seem to agree that there are three leading Democratic candidates among the 20 or so who have been announced: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Practically everyone agrees that Biden and some of the candidates with low polling numbers (Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris and Julian Castro, for example) represent the Democratic establishment. As the former vice president under Barack Obama, Biden himself embodies it nearly as emblematically as Hillary Clinton.

The real story of this election is less a question of which individual in the party will emerge as the Democratic National Convention’s nominee, but rather which side in the rift that now divides the Democratic Party in two will end up carrying the party’s flag to battle in 2020 against the redoubtable Donald Trump.

The rift began with Bernie Sanders’ startlingly effective primary campaign against Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. With the arrival of the youthful, feminine contingent now referred to as “The Squad” after the 2018 midterm elections, the movement initiated by Sanders has turned into a commanding historical trend. Whether it will transform the Democratic Party, disappear into the mists of history as a minor, losing challenge to the authority of a dominant system or spawn a reconfiguration of the entire political landscape, possibly with the emergence of a third party, no one knows. For the moment, all eyes are focused on the horse race. 

The gap between the establishmentarians and the progressive trouble-makers — which, in terms of voting blocks, is also a generational gap — has nevertheless created a dramatic scenario that upsets and radically undermines the reassuring sense of a unified historical mission that dominated an era of tranquility, extending from Bill Clinton’s presidency through Barack Obama’s.

The political headlines now focus regularly on which candidate is ahead in the polls, who is advancing and who’s falling behind. That has enabled Biden, the emblem of the establishment, to continue to appear as the favorite, even in polls where Warren equals or even surpasses his score.

But if the media analyzed the drama of the primaries in terms of its long-term historical significance — the question of which political and economic philosophy (and which generation) will achieve dominance inside the Democratic electorate — Biden and the other establishment Democrats would be trailing miserably behind the combined popularity of Sanders and Warren. By the same token, in terms of pure marketing impact, The Squad have clearly outdistanced the hyper-conventional Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Historical Note

The 2016 Democratic primary resulted in a head-to-head that Hillary Clinton had to win to reassure the Democratic Party that it was still the political force crafted by her husband a quarter of a century earlier. The Democratic National Committee did everything it needed to do and more to ensure that result. Bernie Sanders couldn’t count on the party’s machinery, which meant that even if he had pulled marginally ahead, he would have remained in a position of weakness. 

The corporate capitalism defended by Clinton and Pelosi constituted the party’s fundamental strength. It presented itself as capable of credibly governing a powerful set of institutions — financial, military, industrial and global in their intricately woven economic and cultural complexity — that defined the wooly concept known as the “national interest.” This has come to mean that the trivial interests and concerns of ordinary citizens will always be subsidiary to the more deeply-considered, more judiciously-weighed interests of the privately-owned corporations charged metaphorically with the programming of what we are tempted to call the “government-corporate operating system.” The metaphor, as in all hyperreal structures, may, in many people’s minds, be more real and have more impact than reality itself.

The algorithms that regulate the system’s behavior are coded deep within its logic, which was stabilized ideologically nearly two centuries ago, first in the UK and then, with increased agility, in the US, as the logic of empire moved from one side of the Atlantic to the other. A recent article in The New Yorker the founder of The Economist, James Wilson, who in the 19th century specifically defended the sanctity of profit, in comparison to possible concerns about the health of a company’s customers or workers, with this iron-clad statement of principle: “Where the most profit is made, the public is best served. Limit the profit, and you limit the exertion of ingenuity in a thousand ways.”

That, according to the system’s logic repeated in today’s debates, is why we need billionaires. Society places a higher premium on ingenuity and the riches it creates than on people’s well-being. Some find the logic flawed, but even our system of education has inculcated in us the axiom that, because successful innovation — Warren’s “great idea” — produces billionaires, the only valid reason for having a great idea and innovating is to get rich. The corollary is that if something has made someone rich, it is innovative and socially desirable. 

To differentiate herself from Sanders, Warren has demonstrated her own ingenuity by hitting upon a compromise that even the existing system can accept as consistent with its logic: “You make it to the top, to the tip-top, then the answer is: Pay a wealth tax so we can invest and create opportunities for everyone else.” 

The only flaw in her logic is that in a society that insists everything is about competitive advantage, the motivation to “create opportunities for everyone else” simply doesn’t exist or, rather, can’t compete with the motivation to accumulate as much as possible for oneself. That line of code about the value of generosity and sharing was never written into the operating system. And had anyone attempted it, it would have produced a fatal system error.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Elizabeth Warren’s Grudging Acceptance of Billionaires appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Interviewed by CNBC, Cooperman because, while defending billionaires, he also criticized Donald Trump. He went so far as to encourage the sitting president and fellow billionaire to retire from politics, while nevertheless praising the Republican president for the positive effect he has had on the stock market. He appears to believe that Trump’s systematic political and economic gifts to the super-wealthy may translate, in the mind of the public, as unwelcome PR for the moneyed class.

Once his criticism of Trump was out of the way, Cooperman expressed a far more severe opinion of the political platforms of Democratic primary candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, whom he accused of “presenting a lot of ideas to the public which are morally and socially bankrupt.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Morally bankrupt:

A meaningless insult typically used by people who are more familiar with the mechanics and strategies related to bankruptcy than with moral principles

Contextual Note

To set the scene in the interview, Cooperman prefaced his remarks with the disclaimer, “I’m not a political analyst, I’m a financial analyst.” Nor is he a moral philosopher, it should be noticed. Cooperman does at one point in the interview attempt to quote Aristotle, punctuating his diatribe against today’s politicians with this remark: “Aristotle I think observed that basically the last virtue of a society is tolerance and indifference.” At least Cooperman is honest when he admits that he “thinks” Aristotle said something that he never actually said, though it would be difficult to make any sense out of his reformulation of Aristotle’s thought.

Cooperman’s attempt at interpreting Aristotle reveals not only his ignorance of Greek philosophy, but also his failure to mention the of this quote. The apocryphal quotation he attributes to Aristotle usually goes like this: “Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.” It is a pure invention that has apparently been circulating for over a century in white supremacist publications as an argument against multiculturalism.

Had Cooperman consulted Aristotle’s writings, he might have taken away this far more pertinent and succinct lesson from his work: “.” Aristotle argues that from a moral point of view “all riches must have a limit,” while admitting that in practice “all getters of wealth increase their hoard of coin without limit.” As one commentator of Aristotle’s political thought, “For Aristotle, the legitimate end of money is as a medium of exchange but not as wealth or as a store of value.”

Aristotle makes this reproach to those who, like modern billionaires, focus on accumulating wealth: “Nevertheless, some men turn every quality or art into a means of getting wealth; this they conceive to be the end, and to the promotion of the end they think all things must contribute.” What better description could anyone imagine of the narrow-minded reasoning of a hedge fund manager?

In other words, Cooperman himself offers as a supreme example of intellectual bankruptcy augmented by moral perversion when he cites a half-baked idea that derives from the worst racist traditions spawned by right-wing American culture. And yet, the media present Cooperman as basically a “good guy” because he’s rich — therefore to be admired — and because he must be “liberal” as he says he’s in favor of a progressive tax system. He even strives to distance himself from his own racist attachments evident in the phony Aristotle quote by citing a black conservative economist, Thomas Sowell, insisting on his African American identity: “Since this is an era when many people are concerned about fairness and social justice, what is your fair share of what someone else has worked for?”

Cooperman calls this the “essence of the argument.” Translated into pragmatic English, it conveys this meaning: We rich people will let those who are too lazy to be rich steal some of our honestly earned wealth because we are generous people, but we will also tell you what your “fair share” is. Or as the black singer, in a far more philosophical treatment of the same subject: “Rich relations give/ Crust of bread and such/ You can help yourself/ But don’t take too much.”

Historical Note

If Cooperman really trusts Aristotle, he should pay heed to a pithy bit of the philosopher’s wisdom undoubtedly intended for the edification of hedge fund managers: “For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest.”

For centuries, Christian Europe took this Greek condemnation of usury so seriously that the Catholic Church banned lending at interest, as anyone familiar with Shakespeare’s play, “The Merchant of Venice,” will be aware. Islamic banking still follows this tradition. Until the triumph of capitalism in the 18th century, when they needed cash, Christians somewhat hypocritically managed to deal with this moral stricture by subcontracting to Jews the nasty business of lending with interest. That hypocrisy played a role in aggravating the phenomenon of anti-Semitism in Europe, defining the Jews as an imperfect race that is outside the true moral law.

For right-wing thinkers and committed racists, that tradition persists today. As Ann Coulter it back in 2007, “We just want Jews to be perfected.” For the enlightenment of her Jewish interviewer on CNBC, she added this: “We consider ourselves perfected Christians.”

Cooperman calls Warren’s wealth tax “morally bankrupt.” But what moral philosophy is he appealing to? We know it isn’t Aristotle’s ethics and, of course, it can’t be the Christian tradition that began with two notable and often-cited warnings. Jesus provided the first (): “[I]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” St Paul added this reflection (): “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

Like many rich Americans, Cooperman probably believes that, as a privileged citizen of the United States, a nation blessed by God, he has already entered the kingdom of heaven and no longer needs to worry about squeezing through the eye of the needle.

Cooperman may be unconsciously appealing to a philosophical tradition that can be traced back to , who saw property as an “inalienable” right, alongside life and liberty. The nation’s founders considered property — which, for some, included slaves — as sacred. John Adams that, “The moment an idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” 

The libertarian strain in US politics shows that Americans are still not clear about whether the nation itself has the right to tax something that they consider sacred, notably their “hard-earned cash,” which billionaires continue accumulating even in their sleep. Then there is the question of the status of money: Is it property or is it, as Aristotle maintained, something designed by the community to be used for exchange?

In the first case, money or wealth is the property of the individual who controls it. In the second, it has a social definition, related to the role it plays in human relations. The wealth of a nation is something that is bound to be shared. That reflects a cultural, rather than a purely legal principle. It justifies the taxing of citizens and deciding on the rules of taxation. Or as one man stated two millennia ago, it is about unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. 

The author Philip Goff : “This feeling that your pre-tax income is ‘your money’ is difficult to shake.” That appears to be what’s behind the moral principle — if that’s what it can be called — that Cooperman is appealing to. In US culture, taxation, though acknowledged as minimally necessary, is seen as immoral, an assault on the pristine purity of property. 

But, of course, the US Constitution defines the government’s right to levy taxes. Cooperman’s “moral” sentiment about property and wealth being inalienable is undermined by the law itself and has been throughout human history. Once anyone — even a billionaire — acknowledges the government’s right to tax while respecting the duty to apply the law equitably, the moral quality of that government’s policies can only be judged on whether they are oriented toward the public good or private interests.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders insist they are focused on the public good. In contrast, Leon Cooperman appears to be voting for the priority of private interests, which, after all, is a totally understandable position for a billionaire.

BREAKING NEWS: A billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, that he may step into the Democratic primaries to save the party and defeat billionaire Donald Trump.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post US Media Look to Billionaires for Moral Wisdom appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Now, The Times has perceived a new source of disappointment: the lackluster roster of electable establishment Democratic candidates for the upcoming presidential primaries. Their preferred figure, Joe Biden, has shown himself to be vulnerable and not only in the primaries. The shady business with his son in Ukraine will make him an easy target for US President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

For The NY Times and establishment Democrats, the next most likely candidates are two obviously uncontrollable radicals: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, though Warren may be easier to bring into the fold than Sanders. Warren has even gone to the trouble of as a “capitalist to my bones.”

Still, all middle-of-the-road Democrats consider the pair to be “extremists” for daring to challenge the orthodoxy of the current system of oligarchic capitalism. Their unpardonable sin will be to raise taxes to pay for expensive reforms. Along with Wall Street and much of the media, mainstream Democrats have pushed the idea that Sanders and Warren are seriously threatening to undermine the institutions the Democratic Party is most committed to and dependent on: the profitability of the corporate sector and an aggressive foreign policy that legitimizes war.

Reporting on the quandary that the Democratic Party finds itself in today, the testimony of Connie Schultz: “There’s more anxiety than ever.” Schultz is a journalist “married to Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, another Democrat who some in the party would like to see join the race.” 

Other voices have similarly cried out: “‘I can see it, I can feel it, I can hear it,’ Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor, said of the unease within the party.” Britain’s The Independent, evoking a possible new run for Clinton, reaches: “[T]he report illustrates a deep unease within the Democratic donor and establishment class, which backed Ms Clinton strong and early during the 2016 election.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Unease:

For wealthy people, the feeling of profound discomfort associated with their fear of not receiving a significant payback for money spent on a political bet that may fail

Contextual Note

Why are they so worried? What’s wrong with the current crop of candidates? After all, President Trump appears to be an agonizing combatant, on the verge of impeachment, soon to be imitating Richard III, ready to do a deal to exchange his kingdom for a horse to whisk him back to Mar-a-Lago. Couldn’t any of the current Democratic candidates beat him in a fair fight?

A look at the roster that so worries the Democratic team management tells an interesting story. There’s a crowd-pleasing centrist who happens to be gay, which might just work. It would be great if he wasn’t actually gay but simply a “normal” (discreetly unmarried) politician who expressed his sympathy for people who were gay and his commitment to defend their rights.

Every reasonable person in the party has assessed the danger. Back in the America of 1960, the politically astute realized that the Roman Catholic (and Irish) John F. Kennedy could never be elected and shouldn’t have received the nomination. Likewise, running a gay today would be far too risky to gamble on. The prospect of barring a gay from the White House would excite and unify the Republicans. Kennedy nevertheless did get the nomination and won. But of course, that was simply a stroke of good fortune, thanks principally to the Roman Catholic Italian mafia in Chicago that rigged the election in his favor and delivered the crucial electoral votes of Illinois.

Beyond the trio of Biden, Warren and Sanders, there’s a range of marginals fighting it out on the monthly debate stage: a pure techie from Silicon Valley; a would-be Obama clone from New Jersey; a black woman, former prosecutor from California with less than sterling credentials as state attorney general; a maverick Texan known for his liberal use of bleepable words and his un-American opposition to the possession of assault weapons (a weakness worse than being gay); a billionaire willing to play on Trump’s electoral promise that consisted of saying, “I’m so rich I don’t need to cheat”; some more centrists with a fuzzy public image; and finally a female veteran who single-handedly challenges the war mentality that every reasonable Democrat knows is the key to ensuring the US economy’s leadership in the global economy.

Hillary Clinton has now “revealed” that this minor candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, is either a Russian or a (or both), who has no business decrying war inside a party committed to the special role war plays in the global economy and the nation’s endemic and narcissistic admiration of its own power.

The problem is Joe Biden. He appeared to be the perfect solution: continuity in his association with a two-time winner (Barack Obama), someone who seems to get along equally well with lobbyists and the working class. What else could the party ask for? Theoretically the ideal candidate, Biden’s lack of substance and tendency to undermine his own avuncular image ended up creating enough doubt among donors that no one could be sure that the funding required to push him through to victory would justify the outlay.

In a last-minute twist, Biden now seems to be reemerging. He cleverly of this crop of Democrats to eschew corporate funding, opening the floodgates to anonymous, self-interested campaign cash. Politico reports: “Calls to a half-dozen maxed-out Biden donors [on October 25] revealed that they would gladly dig deeper for the former vice president and contribute to a super PAC that enables them — and corporations — to give and spend unlimited amounts of money.” The “unease” felt by the wealthy miraculously disappears when the burden is transferred from accountable individuals to the equivalent of a corporate venture managed by oligarchs.

Historical Note

The Democratic Party is clearly split down the middle by two existential issues that have historically been present but successfully papered over by its leadership for the past 80 years. Those issues concern a belief system (capitalism) and empire, or what amounts to a disguised means of centralized control over the national and global economy: the military-industrial complex.

Over his three full terms of office starting in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt saved the faltering US capitalist economy in two complementary strokes. First, he introduced measures boosting the active role of the government in the economy, employing ideas borrowed from the economist John Maynard Keynes. Neoliberals have consistently branded those practices “socialistic,” because they require raising taxes and empowering a central government over the states, but they effectively saved the capitalist system and credo from implosion. Second, Roosevelt belatedly but effectively engaged America in World War II, which transformed the formerly isolationist US into a successful war economy.

The New Deal established the idea that the Democratic Party was committed to social justice and the active promotion of economic equality designed to attenuate the worst effects of liberal capitalism. The success of the World War II economy, which put the US in the position of arbiter of the global capitalist economy, led to the creation and rapid growth of the military-industrial complex, on which both the government and political parties became dependent, though “addicted” might be a more appropriate epithet.

For several decades, Democrats enjoyed their image as the promoters of what in post-war Germany came to be called the “.” It had as its aim “to establish a market economy tempered by social safeguards which are consistent with free market principles,” an idea borrowed from the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill.

Post-war Europe was built up around this idea, which it still applies everywhere. Almost all Europeans see it as a compromise between capitalism and socialism. But in the US, committed to ideological slogans, no compromise is possible, especially when words are concerned. And so, since Roosevelt, Democrats have accepted the ideology of capitalism and developed a mortal fear of being labeled socialist by Republicans. That explains why Bill Clinton’s found it natural to drift further and further away from the New Deal and into the logic of Milton Friedman’s neo-liberalist capitalist belief system.

In 2015, remembering the tradition inaugurated by Roosevelt, Bernie Sanders dared to counter both the Clintonite drift and Hillary Clinton’s candidacy by proudly embracing the idea of “democratic socialism.” He proposed a means of escape from the capitalist belief system that resonated particularly with the young. The powerful emotional charge attached to the words “capitalism” and “socialism” in US discourse meant that, even with partial success, Sanders had created a deep rift in the party’s culture.

Tulsi Gabbard has attacked the party’s unity on the other issue: war. That is far more delicate because of the economy’s addiction to war. Every reasonable Democrat — including Sanders and Warren — understands how deeply embedded the military mindset is in the US economy and culture. Empires always focus on defense and defense always takes place in other people’s territories. Pulling back is not an option. But the trauma of George W. Bush’s never-ending wars has alienated a significant proportion of especially young Democratic voters (and much of the Vietnam generation) to the point of splitting the party into a pro-war and pro-security state establishment on one side and a rebellious generation sensitive to the high and persistent cost of war and focused on saving the world from the climate disaster that may also undo empire.

The establishment and its donors clamor for party unity, as if the only point of democracy is to allow one party or the other to rule for a given time. That unity no longer exists and it should be apparent that there is little hope of finding it again.

That, more than the quality of the candidates, should explain the donors’ unease. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The NY Times Feels Democratic Donors’ Unease appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Former Facebook employee and best-selling author Antonio García Martínez has penned an article for to second the much-commented ��in The New York Times by Chris Hughes, a Mark Zuckerberg intimate and Facebook co-founder. Hughes has echoed Senator in calling for the of the social media giant.

Martinez explains what he observed in his time spent at the company: “Much of Zuckerberg’s limitless drive to make Facebook successful was an apparent desire to achieve “domination” rather than mere riches.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Domination:

The narcissistically motivated control over other people and society as a whole, to the point of achieving a feeling of invulnerability; the universal goal of modern entrepreneurs dreaming of establishing a monopoly defined not merely in economic terms

Contextual note��

Hughes complains about Zuckerberg’s “focus on growth [that] led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks.” This sentence contains two culturally significant ideas.

The first concerns the deeply rooted bias in today’s economic and social culture in favor of growth. In December 2018, highlighted the fact that Facebook was “ruthless about growth,” which led The Daily Devil’s Dictionary to detect a parallel with the very literally growing problem of obesity in US culture. We concluded that Facebook “is driven by an insatiable appetite and the belief that bigger is not only better, but biggest is never big enough.” Unlike the , creator of heaven and earth, Zuckerberg cannot make the decision — even after seeing that “every thing that he had made … was very good” — ��to take a seventh-day break simply to rest and enjoy his accomplishments. Zuckerberg is a driven man who sees himself as the god of social media.

Growth doesn’t imply domination, as every ecologist knows. Moreover, limitless growth is an aberration in nature. And as a further reading of the Book of Genesis reveals, the wish to appropriate for oneself the fruit of the tree of knowledge (in this case, unlimited monetizable data on user behavior) can lead even the most driven of mortals to being driven from the Garden of Eden (the ancient Mesopotamian equivalent of Silicon Valley).

Because we have all adopted both the technological and social culture of the internet and become completely inured to it, few readers will notice the second significant idea that Hughes highlights: the commodification of something called “clicks.”��Imagine someone in the year 1990 reading Hughes’ accusation that a billionaire sacrificed civility for clicks. In that year, people already knew what it was to click with a mouse, but the idea of such an act having any kind of monetizable value, let alone driving and perverting a famous entrepreneur’s moral sense, would have been impossible to imagine. In 1990, you clicked to turn the page or select an item in a menu. No one was watching, and the only thing developers of web pages were concerned about was making it as easy as possible to get to where you wanted to go.

Historical note

A mere two decades of history have brought us to this point, which concerns not just Facebook — the most extreme example because of Zuckerberg’s absolute control of his board and, therefore, the company’s policies — but also Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. The power acquired by these companies, in different ways and to slightly different degrees, is unquestionably a function of their size, which explains the inertia they have successfully created in the marketplace. It’s an inertia that inhibits the emergence of new, more sustainable and more democratic paradigms.

People use Facebook not because of loyalty to the social network, but because it’s the one place everyone happens to be. You might say they chose to be there, but that distorts the idea of choice. Facebook’s logic is closer to that of the neighborhood drug dealer who offers a fix and then is there to provide more at a price. Google and Facebook have been more successful than even the most reliable drug dealer by hiding the price tag, leaving the impression that the next desperately-needed fix costs nothing. Their generosity is boundless because there’s no direct exchange of money.

Everyone who wants to maintain a social identity becomes a prisoner of their eco-system, which in this case is short — not for ecological system — but for economic system. Google has categorized and tagged everything in the world, making it easier for any and every individual to become a “partaker” in global knowledge (as defined by Google and its algorithms). Facebook provides the environment in which everyone’s narcissism can play out with the personal satisfaction of displaying it in public instead of in front of a mirror.

The world changed radically somewhere around 2000, a few years after Google’s creation and four years before Facebook’s. By 2011, researchers had discovered and analyzed the phenomenon of “” in these terms: “Google’s personalized advertising strategies, its precise measurement of advertising costs based on users’ behaviors represented as ‘the number of clicks,’ and the unclear distinction between advertisements and serviced content commodify its users’ online activities.”

Clicks became not only the foundation of the new economy — the means by which some people made money — but also the basis of social recognition. Few people question the mathematics of clicks as the means of discovering the truth about anything. They will be one of the most important factors in the social and commercial logic of artificial intelligence, which of course will thrive according to the of “By their clicks you shall know them.”

Today, Senator Warren and 40% of the American people appear to approve of . More significantly, “just 15% oppose it.” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president for global affairs and communications, is one of the 15%. His to a society that worships success to the extent of electing a successful sociopath president — simply because he told people (and they believed him) that he was “a winner” — is that success “should not be penalized.” Usually that is enough to convince Americans, but the realization that the success of some relies on the submission of an entire society has begun to destabilize belief in the false equation between success and virtue.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is It Time to Break Up Facebook? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

After reformers, including Democratic presidential candidate , called for laws to break up the monopolies of big tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, the defenders of neoliberal economic orthodoxy have begun developing their counter-arguments in what is likely to be a long campaign to prevent a throwback to such Teddy Roosevelt-style trust-busting from ever taking place.

Michael R. Strain, in a recent , cites the “correct” way to think about the issue, defending the liberty of the tech giants to grow and grow, increasingly invading our lives. Shocked that the public might stare a gift horse in the mouth, he asks: “[A]re these companies actually stifling competition, as Cicilline and others think they may be? Not by the traditional, and correct, standard used to evaluate competition.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Standard:

A deliberately limited and vaguely defined criterion of judgment generally cited with the reassuring aim of justifying the status quo through an appeal to an impression of strong statistical frequency and repetitive pronouncements. The basis of an appeal to anonymous authority.

Contextual note��

Strain’s argument relies on our accepting two things: that the only reason for concern in the debate about monopoly is the question of stifling competition, and that there is a single “correct” standard to evaluate whether the requirement of free-market competition is being respected. But though Warren herself focuses on the legal question of fair competition, she also highlights the more fundamental and far-reaching problem of what we should call “digital monopoly”: unbridled power over people as well as the economy. “America’s big tech companies provide valuable products but also wield enormous power over our digital lives,” says Warren.

Strain cites three criteria for competition evaluation: “reducing the welfare of consumers by increasing the prices … decreasing the quality of products and services they enjoy [and] reducing the choices available to users.” The three pillars of the consumer society: price, enjoyment and choice. This approach reduces humanity to the status of , the rational decision-maker focused on self-interest. It singularly fails to define what value is other than the monetary price of an item. It judges quality by measurable performance at the time of use, not by impact on society over time. And it assumes that the existence of choice implies total and permanent freedom.

Even superficial analysis reveals that once a consumer has bought into a brand, especially if that brand is a widely shared self-sustaining system (e.g., Windows, Facebook), they no longer have a choice. They become prisoners of a network effect. Their freedom either disappears or becomes irrelevant.

You could compare it to learning a language. Consumers in the United States are free to learn and speak any language they like, but if at birth they (or their parents) had to choose only one and it wasn’t English, all their other choices — what to do, where to work, with whom to associate, etc. — would be severely restricted. Networks created and owned by corporations seek to lock people into programmed behavior, knowing that that behavior will become a monetizable resource for the corporation. Strain would undoubtedly argue that that’s what people want. But the only thing we know for sure is that that’s what the corporations and their shareholders want. As author says, “the goal is to automate us.”

Historical note

Facebook has been maligned for facilitating the dissemination of fake news to the point of complicity in the manipulation of the 2016 presidential election. Since then, after , it has doubled down in its stated efforts to minimize, if not completely eliminate the opportunities to spread fake news. Framed like a Weight-Watchers testimonial, in October 2018 Facebook proudly cited a multi-university academic study to that “during the 2016 – 2018 period, [its] role in the distribution of misinformation was dramatically reduced.”

Some may thus find a curious irony in ’s revelation this week that “Facebook is paying The Daily Telegraph to run a series of positive sponsored stories about it.” In October, Facebook proclaimed “we’re committed to our part in the long-term effort that fighting false news will require.”

“Sponsored stories,” as everyone should recognize, is advertising. It isn’t mere persuasion. It is consciously designed to make the reader believe that what is presented is solid and pertinent information, i.e., news. As Business Insider points out: “Some studies have been critical of the ad format, arguing they can mislead news consumers.” The purpose of all advertising is to orientate the potential consumer’s perception to create a favorable disposition for future decision-making. Sponsored stories are, quite simply, fake news with a mild and not always noticeable disclaimer attached.

This is the example Facebook wants to show us of its “commitment” to “fighting false news.” We learn from the that even the serious steps it claims to have taken to root out fake news may be lacking in seriousness. Facebook outsourced the work to external agencies, using both artificial intelligence algorithms and human readers, in an effort to detect and suppress or at least tag suspicious postings. But the results have been far from convincing. “More than two years on from its inception, and on International Fact-Checking Day, multiple sources within agencies working on Facebook’s global fact-checking initiative have told the BBC they feel underutilised, uninformed and often ineffective.”

Facebook apparently prefers to pay for its own rose-colored fake news in The Daily Telegraph than to fully support the effort to root out the real thing on its own platform. And The Telegraph, a media company like Facebook, prefers the revenue generated by the publication of Facebook’s sponsored content to the lack of said revenue, thereby demonstrating through its own example that, whatever happens, the news you get is the news that somebody paid for, without you necessarily knowing how or why.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]��

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