Pope Francis is correct about the failures of market capitalism. But there's a small problem ...

The current Pope's economic critiques make a great deal of sense. So much so that even as an atheist, it means I'm tempted to make common cause with the Church. The problem is the Pope's theological obligations, which tend to take away what the Holy Father's economic platform giveth. We pagans tend to be burned first. 

But I'll give Francis major props for daring to tackle the prevailing neoliberal dogma, even while being sure I'll hear about it, probably from the economists first.

Pope Francis Laments Failures Of Market Capitalism In Blueprint For Post-COVID World, by Sylvia Poggioli (NPR)

Pope Francis has presented his blueprint for a post-COVID-19 world, covering a vast number of issues from fraternity and income inequality to immigration and social injustice.

The document, released Sunday, is his third encyclical — the most authoritative form of papal teaching.

Its title is Fratelli Tutti, and it is a scathing description of laissez faire capitalism and a meditation on the coronavirus pandemic that has swept across the globe.

Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings.

Exactly.

Matt Stoller today at Twitter: "The core theme in the #bigtechhearings today was the contrast between democracy and monopoly power."

Why the Super-Rich Keep Getting Richer, by Grace Blakeley

Billionaires like Jeff Bezos aren't obscenely wealthy because they work harder but because their corporate empires drain society's resources – and we'd all be better off without them.

... In an interview the other day, I was asked why we should care about Jeff Bezos’ wealth if it makes everyone else better off. But the extreme inequalities generated by modern capitalism are making obvious something that Marxists have known for decades: the super-rich generate their wealth at the expense of workers, the planet and society as a whole.

In a rational and fair society, the vast resources of a tiny elite would be put to use solving our social problems.

We're depending on big pharma to save the world -- and we absolutely, positively detest big pharma.

It's another informative lead-off commentary at Bloomberg's Coronavirus Daily e-mail newsletter, which you can receive by going here.

---

Don’t Screw This Up

In the next few months, the drug industry is going to face a choice.

One of the more than 200 attempts to find a coronavirus drug or vaccine is going to work. And when it does, that product – and let’s hope it gets here soon – is going to be either a once-in-a-lifetime money-making opportunity, or a once-in-a-lifetime reputational opportunity.

The temptation for many pharma executives will be to try to do both, and be remembered only for the former.

Drug companies are the most-disliked industry in America, according to a 2019 Gallup survey. Only 27% of the country views them positively. People like advertising and public relations professionals more. Even lawyers do better. Pharma lags the federal government, oil drillers, the telephone companies, and, well, everyone. (Restaurants are the most liked.)

And yet, here they are with an opportunity to save the world. That’s no understatement. The global economy has come to a standstill and trillions of dollars have been lost in the market. Social-distancing means people can’t go to their jobs or have lost the ones they had.

An effective drug or a working vaccine is the single-most important tool for the economy and society to get back to normal. A drug means people can be exposed to the virus, get sick, and get better. A vaccine means they can be exposed and not become sick at all. The big, scary virus becomes just another bug we beat.

Six months ago, the need to ding the pharma industry for a couple tens of billions was one of the only things Democrats and Republicans could agree needed doing. And every time a new drug price bill meandered a bit closer to passing, lobbyists would dust off hobby horses like, “all of these profits are necessary to fund future research.” And then they’d raise prices again.

The current leader in the race to come up with a treatment is Gilead Sciences. In 2013, Gilead kicked off the now-seven-years-old U.S. debate over high drug prices when it introduced a pill that cured another virus, hepatitis C. It charged $84,000 for the therapy, argued that it was cheaper than a liver transplant, and set off an ugly battle in which the company made billions of dollars and the drug industry became increasingly more despised.

The major drug companies working on treatments have suggested they’re focused on the research, not on how much money they’ll make for it. That’s good – opportunities to save the world don’t come along often. Don’t screw it up. —Drew Armstrong

Dining on the poor, part two: Trey "Big Boy Pants" Hollingsworth reminds us that capital accumulation comes before YOUR life.

Context here: Dining on the poor, part one: "Meet Joseph Albert “Trey” Hollingsworth III, the biggest goober in Washington."

Yes, I'm supposed to be refraining from politics, but when an elected official says something as purely dipshittian as our imported congressman Trey Hollingsworth did yesterday, what's a lefty supposed to do?

Sweep the all the decimal point Darwinian dipshits like Trey away, that's what.

He's making Tennessee proud, right here in Indiana, but surely there's a congressional seat in Nebraska or Oklahoma or somewhere else that would be even better for his portfolio than our ultra-gerrymandered constituency.

As CNN introduced it, "GOP congressman says letting more Americans die of coronavirus is lesser of two evils compared to economy tanking."

Take it away, Trey.

"But it is always the American government's position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life of American lives, we have to always choose the latter."

Then:

"It is policymakers' decision to put on our big-boy and big-girl pants and say, ‘This is the lesser of these two evils.' That is our responsibility, and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office."

Trey Hollingsworth can sod off, now and forever. Meanwhile at Twitter, the writer Pat Blanchfield offered a countering rant, which I fully endorse.

Look, let's be real. The ultimate reason the economy "must reopen" is so everyone can once more be individually blamed for their own unemployment, desperation, etc., in this coming depression.

It is fundamentally dangerous to our system to have masses of people simultaneously unable to work or make basic ends meet in a way that would suggest blame lies elsewhere (other) than on them (whether in the virus, our leaders' failures, quarantine orders, market chicanery, etc), which is collectively experienced, and that might give them ideas.

Everything we're doing - i.e., tokenistic "aid" (which just funnels money back to creditors and landlords) - is just the barest minimum not for survival, but to ensure that we can blame people for their own starvation and misery once things are "normal" again. That's it.

Of course the fucking Dems are turning to COBRA. Of course the GOPers want to make being back at work by May Day (what an irony that!) a sign of patriotism. The faster everyone is responsibilized individually in a "reopened" economy, the faster ideas alternative possibilities can foreclosed.

"Re-opening" back to "normal" is being bipartisanly accepted and hyped as an imperative PRECISELY because it is actually totally unnecessary. It's presented as a matter of necessity precisely because it's actually a totally artificial order THAT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

None of this necessary, fucking none of it, and the people in power and with influence who are insisting that it is are either so conditioned and incentivized to not see that, OR they do, and they are fucking *shook* at the prospect everybody else will catch on too.

Dining on the poor, part one: "Meet Joseph Albert “Trey” Hollingsworth III, the biggest goober in Washington."

Originally published here on October 14, 2018; we're revisiting Hollingsworth's cash-engorged inhumanity because of this:

Dining on the poor, part two: Trey "Big Boy Pants" Hollingsworth reminds us that capital accumulation comes before YOUR life.

---

As borrowed from Facebook (sorry; the source has been lost -- is it you, Dan Canon?), this profile effectively rests the case. It remains that I have significant issues with the Democratic dumb-ocracy, but voting in favor of Hollingsworth isn't something I plan on doing in this or any other lifetime.   

This is a profile of Joseph Albert “Trey” Hollingsworth III, the biggest goober in Washington.

As his name might lead you to suspect, he has been rich since before conception. His father, Joe Jr., is a prominent Tennessee capitalist who, in addition to owning “the largest developer for semi-rural industrial property in the Southeast,” [1] is known for an “adventuristic nature” that “expands beyond taking risks with start-ups, stocks and investments” to “hang gliding in Rio de Janeiro, racing Formula 1 cars and deep sea fishing off the Great Barrier Reef.” [2]

But Trey overcame his hardscrabble upbringing and in 2005, at the age of 22, founded Hollingsworth Capital Partners, which “purchases, renovates and repositions underperforming industrial and distribution investment property throughout the nation.” [3] His daddy is a silent partner.

A decade later, Trey decided to move to Southern Indiana and buy himself a seat in the US Congress, furnishing his campaign with over $3.1 million of his own money -- 88.4% of the total amount raised by the Hollingsworth 2016 effort. This was supplemented by $1.5 Million that the Hollingsworth Companies donated to Indiana Jobs Now, a Super PAC his father created for the sole purpose of getting Trey elected (and which he terminated weeks after achieving this goal). Mostly, this fortune went to TV ad buys, which were enough to marshal 34% of the competitive Republican primary vote, securing Trey the opportunity to face a Democrat in Indiana’s gerrymandered 9th District. Then, he rode the anti-Clinton wave straight to Washington, DC.

(Campaign finance epilogue: At the end of the race, Trey still owed the strangely repetitive sum of $246,246 to his pollster and other political consultants, so he, of the nearly $60 Million asset portfolio, asked his colleagues for help paying up. “Representative-elect Hollingsworth,” said a senior campaign adviser, “is extremely appreciative of those willing to help retire campaign debt that is owed to vendors.”) [4]

My favorite detail about his 2016 run is his approach to the press, summarized neatly in this excerpt from a profile in Slate: “The 9th District... doesn’t have much local media, and Hollingsworth frequently dodged what media there was. When he did agree to interviews, he often evaded, even on seemingly benign questions. He declined to release his tax returns. When someone asked him to name his three favorite Hoosiers, he declined to do that, too. One reporter asked him where he’d lived before moving to Indiana; ‘I’ll have to go back,’ Hollingsworth said, speaking about his own life, ‘and check the record.’ Pressed on when exactly he moved to Indiana, he finally answered with early summer. Another reporter tried to clarify whether that meant June or July. ‘I think that’s a good characterization,’ Hollingsworth said.” [5]

In his 22 months in Congress, Trey has maintained this demanding level of constituent accountability, appearing in zero public in-district town halls since being sworn in. His sacrifices in the name of transparency reached their peak one week at the end of 2017, during the fight over the Free Millions for Billionaires Bill, or as it was more commonly known, “tax reform.”

One provision of the initial draft of that bill would have taxed tuition remissions, which low-wage graduate students receive, as income, meaning workers earning roughly $15,000 a year would be taxed as though they were earning around four times as much. Indiana University being the largest employer in the district, Trey’s constituents did not all smile on this prospect. Specifically, on the evening of Monday, December 11, Campus Action for Democracy grad students staged a sit-in in his office in Greenwood, demanding to hear from Trey.

Rather than call and speak to them, Trey and his DC-based security chief issued two instructions: 1) that the building manager allow the protesters to stay in his office, but have the police restrict them from going into the hall, where the bathrooms are, and b) that his pregnant staffer supervise the student demonstrators for as long as they continued the occupation. So, as the occupiers explain in this video [6], they spent hour after hour with no access to bathrooms or contact with the outside world, never quite managing to get arrested for the cause.

Four days later, on December 15th, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce announced a Koch Brothers-sponsored “Tax Reform Town Hall” [7] with Trey. It was open to the public, with a few minor provisos: 1) Attendees had to register that very day on Eventbrite, 2) The Eventbrite link didn’t work, 3) The Town Hall was to take place in three days, on a Monday, 4) at 8 o’clock in the morning, 5) one week before Christmas, and 6) in the tiny town of Scottsburg. (Scott County, of which Scottsburg is the seat, gained some notoriety years earlier when then-Governor Mike Pence closed the local Planned Parenthood clinic, the county’s only site for HIV testing. [8] When, two years later, the worst HIV outbreak owing to needle-sharing in US history broke out in Scott County, Pence took three months to permit a temporary needle exchange, in which time nearly 200 Scott County residents were notified of an HIV-positive diagnosis.)

How did the Town Hall ultimately go? Citing a mysterious “threats of violence,” Trey cancelled the event. [9] A spokesperson said that, on the recommendation of Capitol Police, they would not release any details. That very same day, I swear before God, he posted on Facebook that, due to a fire in the building, the Greenwood office -- which students had occupied precisely one week earlier -- would be closed for re-construction until January 3rd.

The fire’s devastation was evidently total: no one survived to manage to get it reported in the local paper.

In the end, Trey voted for the Free Millions for Billionaires Bill, and made out like a bandit, handing himself $4.5 Million via the law’s “Pass-Through Tax Deduction” -- more than any other Member of Congress. The Grad Student Tax was removed from the final bill, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me that he personally called Tracey, the lead organizer of Campus Action for Democracy, to explain how hard he had worked to strike that unconscionable provision.

At this point, a lot of people have noticed that Trey spends about as much time in Indiana’s 9th, now that he represents it, as he did a couple years back, before he moved to it. Liz Watson, his Democratic challenger, has repeatedly invited him to a joint candidate forum, as have several non-partisan press outlets and organizations, including Hoosier Action and Campus Action for Democracy. Citing whatever and also this other thing, he has declined these invitations.

In the Republican Primary this year, a man named James Dean Alspach challenged Trey. He did not campaign. He barely posted a website. [10] His team, whoever they were, stapled up a bunch of lawn signs that said “James Dean” and showed his face. “If I win this primary,” he told WLKY News Louisville [11], “I’m going to announce my intentions to run for President as James Dean.” Detecting the interviewer’s confusion, Dean clarified: “So my whole focus in the Congress is to legislate for my Presidency.” He got nearly a quarter of the vote.

Trey is vulnerable, especially because he is facing an unusually strong candidate in Watson, a labor attorney who wrote the federal legislation on a $15 minimum wage, a staunch supporter of Medicare for All, and a friend to Pramila Jayapal, Bernie Sanders and around twenty labor unions. Her campaign has been so impressive -- raising over $1 Million, with nearly 50,000 contributions averaging under $40 -- that the DCCC added Indiana’s 9th, which Trey won by 14 points and Trump won by 25 -- into its “Red to Blue” class of swing seats.

In collaboration with the Working Families Party, Hoosier Action is running an independent expenditure on her behalf. Between our work, Watson’s strengths, Trey’s weaknesses, the mood of the country, and Sen. Donnelly’s rise in the polls, I think we might just be able to scale this immense mountain of a political effort and unseat the biggest goober in Washington, Joseph Albert “Trey” Hollingsworth.

The third.

[1] https://hollingsworthcos.com/about/history/founder/
[2] https://hollingsworthcos.com/…/04/EntrepreneurialOdyssey.pdf
[3] https://www.inc.com/profile/hollingsworth-capital-partners
[4] https://www.usatoday.com/…/millionaire-congressma…/95446364/
[5] http://www.slate.com/…/can_tennessee_s_trey_hollingsworth_b…
[6] https://www.facebook.com/campusactionfordemocracy/videos/526096767775024/
[7] http://www.scottchamber.org/…/tax-reform-town-hall-with-con…
[8] https://www.huffpost.com/…/mike-pence-indiana-hiv_n_57f53b9…
[9] https://www.indystar.com/…/indiana-congressman-c…/961036001/
[10] http://www.jamesdeanushouse.com
[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x8uXa_qBa0

Must-read essay about oligarchic rule and why it must be destroyed: "Class: The Little Word the Elites Want You to Forget."

Seldom have I seen the gist of the matter explained as accurately and clearly as in the following essay by Chris Hedges.

Of course, today was eventful. If you're gleeful at this seeming power move on the eve of Super Tuesday -- Pete and Amy out for president, but very much with the "in crowd", Bloomberg's money still theoretically available to bankroll the nominee Biden, and Sanders at last deposed -- your satisfaction is fully shared by the ruling power structure.

The oligarchy will find nothing disturbing in a center-right "democratic" platform stripped of meaningful content, one that excludes any mention of correcting (read: attacking) inequality. Even if this "GOP Light" capitulation were enough to defeat Trump, nothing much would change with the fundamental issues, would it? The tinkle-down would continue, as it has since RayGun was in charge.

Until you grasp this basic fact, center-right moderation borne of fear is just more of the same oligarchy fluffing. You'll be sorry; but then again, that's usually the way it plays out. We'll have ineffectively treated the symptoms yet again, while allowing the disease to rage on.

Click through and read the whole damn thing. Get off those personality cult fetishes, and FOLLOW THE MONEY.

Class: The Little Word the Elites Want You to Forget (Common Dreams)

The culture wars give the oligarchs, both Democrats and Republicans, the cover to continue the pillage. Open, nonviolent revolt against the oligarchic state is our only hope.

Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith and Karl Marx grounded their philosophies in the understanding that there is a natural antagonism between the rich and the rest of us. The interests of the rich are not our interests. The truths of the rich are not our truths. The lives of the rich are not our lives. Great wealth not only breeds contempt for those who do not have it but it empowers oligarchs to pay armies of lawyers, publicists, politicians, judges, academics and journalists to censure and control public debate and stifle dissent. Neoliberalism, deindustrialization, the destruction of labor unions, slashing and even eliminating the taxes of the rich and corporations, free trade, globalization, the surveillance state, endless war and austerity—the ideologies or tools used by the oligarchs to further their own interests — are presented to the public as natural law, the mechanisms for social and economic progress, even as the oligarchs dynamite the foundations of a liberal democracy and exacerbate a climate crisis that threatens to extinguish human life.

Oligarchic rule must be destroyed. If we fail, our democracy, and finally our species, will become extinct.

The oligarchs are happy to talk about race. They are happy to talk about sexual identity and gender. They are happy to talk about patriotism. They are happy to talk about religion. They are happy to talk about immigration. They are happy to talk about abortion. They are happy to talk about gun control. They are happy to talk about cultural degeneracy or cultural freedom. They are not happy to talk about class. Race, gender, religion, abortion, immigration, gun control, culture and patriotism are issues used to divide the public, to turn neighbor against neighbor, to fuel virulent hatreds and antagonisms. The culture wars give the oligarchs, both Democrats and Republicans, the cover to continue the pillage. There are few substantial differences between the two ruling political parties in the United States. This is why oligarchs like Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg can switch effortlessly from one party to the other. Once oligarchs seize power, Aristotle wrote, a society must either accept tyranny or choose revolution.

The United States stood on the cusp of revolution—a fact President Franklin Roosevelt acknowledged in his private correspondence — amid the breakdown of capitalism in the 1930s. Roosevelt responded by aggressively curbing the power of the oligarchs. The federal government dealt with massive unemployment by creating 12 million jobs through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), making the government the largest employer in the country. It legalized unions, many of which had been outlawed, and through the National Labor Relations Act empowered organizing. It approved banking regulations, including the Emergency Banking Act, the Banking Act and the Securities Act, all in 1933, to prevent another stock market crash. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration provided the equivalent in today’s money of $9.88 billion for relief operations in cities and states. The Democratic president heavily taxed the rich and corporations. (The Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s was still taxing the highest earners at 91%.) Roosevelt’s administration instituted programs such as Social Security and a public pension program. It provided financial assistance to tenant farmers and migrant workers. It funded arts and culture. It created the United States Housing Authority and instituted the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established the minimum wage and set a limit on mandatory work hours. This heavy government intervention lifted the country out of the Great Depression. It also made Roosevelt, who was elected to an unprecedented fourth term, and the Democratic Party wildly popular among working and middle-class families. The Democratic Party, should it resurrect such policies, would win every election in a landslide.

But the New Deal was the bête noire of the oligarchs. They began to undo Roosevelt’s New Deal even before World War II broke out at the end of 1941. They gradually dismantled the regulations and programs that had not only saved capitalism but arguably democracy itself. We now live in an oligarchic state. The oligarchs control politics, the economy, culture, education and the press. Donald Trump may be a narcissist and a con artist, but he savages the oligarchic elite in his long-winded speeches to the delight of his crowds. He, like Bernie Sanders, speaks about the forbidden topic — class. But Trump, though an embarrassment to the oligarchs, does not, like Sanders, pose a genuine threat to them. Trump will, like all demagogues, incite violence against the vulnerable, widen the cultural and social divides and consolidate tyranny, but he will leave the rich alone. It is Sanders whom the oligarchs fear and hate.

The Democratic Party elites will use any mechanism, no matter how nefarious and undemocratic, to prevent Sanders from obtaining the nomination ...

The idiocy of the "pastorpreneurs" -- or, the prosperity gospel, as lifted straight from the corporate capitalist playbook.

Don't worry -- Bill Hanson's own personal pastorpreneur is back on duty in today's News and Tribune, evangelizing on a platform of mass shooting aftermaths.

Now about those ten-percent tithes to keep the one-percent ensconced on their thrones ...

A Grift From God, by Meagan Day (Jacobin)

The prosperity gospel promises material riches to believers. It’s on the rise, and no wonder: it’s the perfect religious expression of capitalism, especially in the age of Trump.

Forty percent of Americans are liquid asset poor, which means that if they don’t receive their next paycheck they have no means to make ends meet. Why?

If you’re a socialist, the answer is that society’s capitalist minority is exploiting the working-class majority. People are broke because they are dependent on wages to survive, and their bosses are paying them as little as they can get away with. Low labor costs yield high profits, and the compulsion to maximize profits is the driving principle of capitalism. It’s baked into the economic system and exacerbated by low levels of organized working-class resistance.

If you’re a believer in the prosperity gospel, though, the answer is very different. The prosperity gospel is a movement within American Christianity, also known as the Word of Faith, that says God wants you to be rich, but you have to will his financial blessing into being. Forty percent of Evangelicals are taught the prosperity gospel, according to which the root cause of poverty is faithlessness.

Barbara Ehrenreich took a glance at the prosperity gospel in her book, Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America. She links it to the overall trend of “positive thinking” that emerged first in self-help and business literature and has bled over into religion. According to the laws of positive thinking, writes Ehrenreich, “You can have all that stuff in the mall, as well as the beautiful house and car, if only you believe that you can.”

From a socialist perspective, it’s cruel enough that the prosperity gospel locates the potential for economic uplift somewhere else besides mass politics and united class struggle, distracting and demobilizing people, and making it harder for them to actually win real society-wide victories. But it gets worse.

Prosperity gospel ministers don’t usually stop at urging positive thinking. To manifest financial success, believers can’t simply have faith. They must demonstrate that faith — preferably in the form of a tithe to the person doing the preaching. As rapper Ice-T put it, “The preacher says, ‘I know God a little bit better than you. If you pay me, I’ll hook you up.’”

Like payday lenders, prosperity gospel ministers see the broke and struggling as a consumer market. Their target demographic is those who suffer from lack, and their product is the promise of abundance, or at least relief. Financially, the prosperity gospel is nothing but a swindle, prying money from people who by definition have very little and desperately wish they had more.

Ideologically, the prosperity gospel dovetails perfectly with right-wing ideology, which views poverty as a consequence of individual failure rather than rigged economic and political structures. As Ehrenreich writes, “Always, in a hissed undertone, there is the darker message that if you don’t have all that you want, if you feel sick, discouraged, or defeated, you have only yourself to blame.”

When times are hard, it’s because you didn’t think positively enough, pray hard enough, or tithe enough. It’s a spiritual spin on meritocracy, the ideological handmaiden to neoliberal capitalism.

The prosperity gospel is one of America’s greatest grifts. Little wonder, then, that it’s made its way to the White House, currently occupied by a master con artist himself ...

"The ultra-rich are benefitting from disaster capitalism as institutions, rules and democratic oversight implode."

My birthday went well, and renewed thanks to all expressing good wishes, but to be honest any thoughts of my fine day Saturday are tempered with sadness and frustration over the two mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

As such it's important to understand what too few of us care to consider, that this American system we blindly tout as "best ever, blah blah" is functioning exactly as designed, albeit not as we delude ourselves into believing it is designed, because the point of capitalism at this amok stage of its development is for violence to be fed into the machine and compounded violence to come gushing right back out the other side.

Follow the money, people.

Oligarchic government for the sake of obscene capital accumulation among the few can persist only by dividing and conquering the many, so that we fight each other and not the cancer itself, and accordingly, most of what I read on a daily basis represents little more than nitpicking over symptoms, dividing us even further.

Capitalism is diseased, and the disease mocks us as we kill time by debating the plot lines of the most recent comic book film.

#EatTheRich

From Trump to Johnson, nationalists are on the rise – backed by billionaire oligarchs, by George Monbiot (The Guardian)

The ultra-rich are benefitting from disaster capitalism as institutions, rules and democratic oversight implode

... the oligarchs want is not the same as what the old corporations wanted. In the words of their favoured theorist, Steve Bannon, they seek the “deconstruction of the administrative state”. Chaos is the profit multiplier for the disaster capitalism on which the new billionaires thrive. Every rupture is used to seize more of the assets on which our lives depend. The chaos of an undeliverable Brexit, the repeated meltdowns and shutdowns of government under Trump: these are the kind of deconstructions Bannon foresaw. As institutions, rules and democratic oversight implode, the oligarchs extend their wealth and power at our expense.

The killer clowns offer the oligarchs something else too: distraction and deflection. While the kleptocrats fleece us, we are urged to look elsewhere. We are mesmerised by buffoons who encourage us to channel the anger that should be reserved for billionaires towards immigrants, women, Jews, Muslims, people of colour and other imaginary enemies and customary scapegoats. Just as it was in the 1930s, the new demagoguery is a con, a revolt against the impacts of capital, financed by capitalists.

Followed by advice for the "centrist" Democrats; in the UK, as in the USA.

Being Anti-Boris Is Not Enough, by Ronan Burtenshaw (Jacobite)

Attacks on character and legal issues didn’t stop Berlusconi and Trump, and they won’t stop Boris Johnson. Sticking to Corbyn’s strong democratic socialist message is the way to beat him.

... Compare his barren offering with Labour’s: introducing a real living wage, nationalizing rail, mail, energy, and water, building 100,000 council houses per year, banning zero-hour contracts, introducing free childcare, abolishing tuition fees, ending punitive benefit sanctions, stopping the privatization of the National Health Service, a transition to green energy producing thousands of jobs. No wonder the Tories want a culture war.

Boris Johnson will soon face a defining moment of his premiership. On October 31, he will either have to abandon a substantial portion of his base or drag the country into an unpopular no-deal Brexit. No amount of “Churchillian” spirit — and his attempts to invoke this during his speech were almost comically weak — will overcome this political reality.

But for Labour the coming weeks are also important. There will be considerable pressure to join an anti-Boris campaign, abandoning the party’s transformational program to coalesce with whatever establishment ghoul finds the Prime Minister’s latest scandal too unseemly.

The price of such an alliance has already been made clear by Jo Swinson, newly elected leader of the Lib Dems: ditch Jeremy Corbyn. Take Boris on not with a plan to improve millions of people’s lives but with vagaries about “progressive values,” outrage over his transgressions against established politics, and a nostalgia for the recent past.

It’s easy to see the appeal of uniting all those who oppose Boris Johnson. But diluting Labour’s politics is exactly the wrong way to beat him. The only way to stop the political and moral void Johnson brings to Downing Street consuming the entire political horizon is to make it confront day-to-day hardships. Hardships his party and his class have forced on so many for so long.

THE BEER BEAT: On inauthenticity, disinformation, RateBeer and those disembodied breweries of the Trojan Zombie Afterlife.

Today, recommended reading.

Jim Vorel's essay appeared in mid-2017, and nicely outlines a position of beer-drinking principle when it comes those breweries in the Trojan Zombie Afterlife Quadrant.

The BS Arguments of Craft Beer Sell-Outs: How Brewery Buyouts Hurt Craft Beer, by Jim Vorel (Paste Magazine)

Let me tell you who I care about, in the world of beer: I care about the craft beer industry as a whole. I care about selection and availability of great craft beer, and at night I dream of a world where great beer from independent breweries can be accessed just about anywhere.

That dream is currently under attack, primarily by so-called “Big Beer,” but not entirely. For all of the wrangling and shady dealing that AB-InBev and MillerCoors are conducting in the American beer market, equally disturbing is the propensity of beer geeks and even food & drink publications to rationalize and apologize for the buyouts and practices that are currently driving craft beer into the most dangerous situation it’s faced in more than a decade. In some cases, would-be allies are willingly parroting back the exact marketing copy that AB-InBev would love to place in their mouths. Other times, beer drinkers are simply accepting the bullshit reassurances of just-purchased breweries who have huge monetary incentives to be dishonest.

But don’t take our word for it. We’re not here to simply rant and rave—we’re here to give you specific examples of BS rationalizations you’ll see in the wake of every major brewery buyout. We’re here to point out the logical chasms and blatant hypocrisy that proliferate in the public response to buyouts. And we’re here to point out exactly why these buyouts are so capable of devastating the craft brewing industry.

More recently, Fritz Hahn brilliantly connects the dots between AB-InBev, ZX Ventures and RateBeer.

The world’s biggest brewing company is thirsty for your data, by Fritz Hahn (Washington Post)

Anheuser-Busch InBev is the biggest brewing company in the world, but it has a problem it can’t shake ...

... But as sales of hoppy IPAs continue to surge, and sales of Light (and Lite) macrobrews continue to drop, AB InBev is recalibrating its approach. Rather than buying up as many craft-beer producers as it can, it’s using its vast resources to buy data — tons of it — through a little-known division called ZX Ventures.

"So where are the growth opportunities?"

That’s where ZX Ventures comes in. According to its mission statement, “ZX Ventures is hopelessly dedicated to creating and analyzing the data necessary for determining our ideal strategies, products and technologies. We believe that the more we know and learn about our consumers and products, the better chance we have of anticipating their needs in the future.”

Translation: They want to know everything about purchasing patterns and decisions. What are customers looking for? What are influencers thinking? How can they make it easier to get AB InBev’s products into the hands of people who might want beer?

ZX Ventures’ broad portfolio includes last year’s purchase of Northern Brewer Homebrew Supply and Midwest Supplies, two of the largest home-brewing businesses in the country. It also has a minority stake in PicoBrew, the countertop home-brewing system that uses Keuriglike “PicoPacks” to make beer in a certain style or mimic the recipe of an existing brand.

In October 2016, ZX Ventures purchased a minority interest in RateBeer, a 17-year-old international beer-rating site that has grown to become one of the largest online databases of crowdsourced beer, brewery and bar rankings in the world. But neither RateBeer nor ZX Ventures publicized the deal until June 2017, when beer website Good Beer Hunting published a story about the move. ZX Ventures did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Because it's all about the information, and RateBeer is like a homing device fixed to the throats of the "craft" beer sheeple.

If e-commerce is off the table, then the most important way for AB InBev to make money in an increasingly crowded marketplace is to get the right beer in front of the right customers at the right time. And right now, the world’s biggest brewer is tapping into a steady flow of data that can help it do just that.

If Trump were to consider deporting counter-revolutionary swine like these, I might consider voting for him.

ZX Ventures is a global incubator, operator, and venture capital team backed by Anheuser-Busch InBev. We are a small army of futurists, dreamers, doers, designers, engineers, scientists, marketers, brewers, builders, and data geeks.

MAINTAINING CONSUMER BONDS
Our goal is to make products, services, and technologies that bring people together and provide solutions for consumer needs. We want to positively impact society and our environment and celebrate the best this life has to offer. We're not afraid to break the mold of tradition, including launching businesses that sell directly to our customer-base. Yes, our aim is to generate profits, but those won’t come without first creating smiles, laughs and making the world a better place through innovative products, technologies, experiences and services. The more positive connections we facilitate, the more we learn about our consumers and products, and the better chance we have of anticipating their needs in the future.We truly believe that the consumer is the boss and constantly center our actions around what best fits their needs.

I'll venture one prediction about the future, in the sense that "IPA" already is sucked dry of meaning and lost to those of a "craft" persuasion. Just as decades of mass-market insipidity rendered the style "Pilsner" moot, so will the supermarket aisle stacks of Trojan Zombie Afterlife "IPAs" commoditize the concept.

Not a bold prediction, just an obvious one.

Photo essay: What NA's robber barons want, versus what NA's future really needs.

The robber barons are set in their ways. They have trouble with changing times, and they want to keep things the way they are.

Thes best way to keep things the same is to make people afraid. The robber barons are good at that.

But the robber barons are stuck in the past. Young people in New Albany want the city to be livable, and if it isn't, they'll take their talents somewhere else.

For the generations to come, our streets are designed to be used by all of the city's residents, not just the robber barons.

It's all about this relentlessly factual document. Not unexpectedly, not many of the robber barons have bothered reading it.

Maybe, for once, it's time for the robber barons to bone up and think ahead.

"Even non-believers can’t deny the inherent wisdom and clarity of the pontiff’s critique of the modern capitalist economy."

I love it. First the skeptic's examination of an icon (Zizek on "Mandela’s Socialist Failure"), and now a Pope willing to examine contemporary capitalism and its “trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.”

The world turned upside down? Unlikely, but some good reading for an atheist on a Sunday morning.

What the Pope Got Right About Capitalism: Even non-believers can’t deny the inherent wisdom and clarity of the pontiff’s critique of the modern capitalist economy, by Robert Scheer (The Nation, from Truthdig)

Forget, for the moment, that he is the pope, and that Holy Father Francis’ apostolic exhortation last week was addressed “to the bishops, clergy, consecrated persons and the lay faithful.” Even if, like me, you don’t fall into one of those categories and also take issue with the Catholic Church’s teachings on a number of contested social issues, it is difficult to deny the inherent wisdom and clarity of the pontiff’s critique of the modern capitalist economy. No one else has put it as powerfully and succinctly.

It is an appraisal based not on “just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope,” as Rush Limbaugh sneered, but rather the words of Jesus telling the tale of the Good Samaritan found in Luke, not in Das Kapital. As opposed to Karl Marx’s emphasis on the growing misery of a much-needed but exploited working class, Francis condemns today’s economy of “exclusion” leaving the “other” as the roadkill of modern capitalism ...

1Si makes one small step to reduce CEO sexting, hires non-Wassmer female exec from Benton Harbor as kingpin.

Insiders say that Kerry Stemler's personal glee club has been struggling of late. Perhaps this explains why I just went to One Southern Indiana's website to read about the new CEO hire, and there's no coverage there at all, just the usual oligarch-fluffing propaganda.

Now THAT's a bottom line for you.

Chesser is new CEO of One Southern Indiana, by John R. Karman III (Business First)

Wendy Dant Chesser, who has led an economic development organization in Benton Harbor, Mich., since 2007, is the new president and CEO of One Southern Indiana.

Hmm, Benton Harbor ... where have we heard that name before? There's a fine craft brewery there (The Livery), but you heard about Benton Harbor right here at NAC, back on December 26, 2011. The full text follows, proving that we can expect a 1Si golf course (with Chick-fil-A clubhouse) to be built where the nasty inner cities used to stand. Also, don't forget our paean to all things Kerry earlier this year: Kingpin of the week: There's only one, isn't there?

---

"Is there anything wrong with this economy that a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course can't fix?"

The New York Times offers fascinating reading about the trials and travails of Benton Harbor, Michigan, especially for those among us who've ever asked the question, rhetorically or otherwise: "Can golf revitalize New Albany?"

Now That the Factories Are Closed, It’s Tee Time in Benton Harbor, Mich., by Jonathan Mahler

 ... Watching carpenters hammer preweathered wood shingles onto homes that wouldn’t look out of place in East Hampton, Long Island, I felt almost as if I were at a resort in a third-world Caribbean country: beyond the boundaries of Harbor Shores is the poorest city in all of Michigan.

In the state of Michigan's view, Benton Harbor is so failed that democracy must no longer be permitted to exist there -- temporarily, of course. The appointment of an "emergency manager" overrides all election results, and that chortling you're hearing may or may not be Indiana's governor, Mitch Daniels, and his henchmen (see Bennett, Tony).

Benton Harbor: An Addendum by Chris Savage, by Jonathan Mahler

... I understand that Michigan cities like Benton Harbor are struggling and help is needed. The Snyder administration’s recent cuts in revenue sharing to cities and cuts to our public schools have only made matters much worse. My contention is that we must start from the baseline that democracy, even at the local level, must be preserved. Democracy isn’t always pretty and “the people” sometimes elect unqualified representatives. But that’s not an excuse to disenfranchise our citizens and democracy should be sacrosanct, the baseline from which we evaluate any potential solution. I reject the notion that this is the only answer.

Strictly speaking, the parallels between Benton Harbor and New Albany are few in number. The Whirlpool variable alone counsels caution when making comparisons. Still, I agree with Savage: It's a chilling development indeed when nixing democracy is deemed acceptable as the best American alternative to problems with many more sources than just civic corruption. Is robber baron capitalism the solution in Benton Harbor, or was it the problem? Where did the wonderful corporate citizen Whirlpool take all those jobs, anyway?

Would this make more sense to me if I played golf with the oligarchs? I certainly hope not.

"Many conservative Americans have seen their livelihoods threatened by the very neoliberal economics their party seeks to extend."

See: Chickens, Colonel Sanders, et al.

The world as seen by Republicans, in a land of myth and amnesia; US conservatives are increasingly keen to interpret their country's woes primarily in terms of threats from abroad, by Gary Younge (Guardian)

... But while liberals are more likely to see the roots of this crisis as domestic – growing economic inequalities, religious zealotry, corporatisation of media and politics – conservatives are increasingly keen to perceive the primary threat as external: immigrants, Islam, foreigners and foreign trade.

"Is there anything wrong with this economy that a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course can't fix?"

The New York Times offers fascinating reading about the trials and travails of Benton Harbor, Michigan, especially for those among us who've ever asked the question, rhetorically or otherwise: "Can golf revitalize New Albany?"

Now That the Factories Are Closed, It’s Tee Time in Benton Harbor, Mich., by Jonathan Mahler

 ... Watching carpenters hammer preweathered wood shingles onto homes that wouldn’t look out of place in East Hampton, Long Island, I felt almost as if I were at a resort in a third-world Caribbean country: beyond the boundaries of Harbor Shores is the poorest city in all of Michigan.

In the state of Michigan's view, Benton Harbor is so failed that democracy must no longer be permitted to exist there -- temporarily, of course. The appointment of an "emergency manager" overrides all election results, and that chortling you're hearing may or may not be Indiana's governor, Mitch Daniels, and his henchmen (see Bennett, Tony).

Benton Harbor: An Addendum by Chris Savage, by Jonathan Mahler

... I understand that Michigan cities like Benton Harbor are struggling and help is needed. The Snyder administration’s recent cuts in revenue sharing to cities and cuts to our public schools have only made matters much worse. My contention is that we must start from the baseline that democracy, even at the local level, must be preserved. Democracy isn’t always pretty and “the people” sometimes elect unqualified representatives. But that’s not an excuse to disenfranchise our citizens and democracy should be sacrosanct, the baseline from which we evaluate any potential solution. I reject the notion that this is the only answer.

Strictly speaking, the parallels between Benton Harbor and New Albany are few in number. The Whirlpool variable alone counsels caution when making comparisons. Still, I agree with Savage: It's a chilling development indeed when nixing democracy is deemed acceptable as the best American alternative to problems with many more sources than just civic corruption. Is robber baron capitalism the solution in Benton Harbor, or was it the problem? Where did the wonderful corporate citizen Whirlpool take all those jobs, anyway?

Would this make more sense to me if I played golf with the oligarchs? I certainly hope not.