November 26, 2016

Vocabulary for the Age of Trump #1: "state capture"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capture

Get used to this term. You're gonna see a lot of it in the next 4 years and it'll be nice to be able to call it something.

from Wikipedia:

[font size="4"]State capture is a type of systemic political corruption in which private interests significantly influence a state's decision-making processes to their own advantage through unobvious channels, that may not be illegal.

The influence may be through a range of state institutions, including the legislature, executive, ministries and the judiciary. It is thus similar to regulatory capture but differs through the wider variety of bodies through which it may be exercised and because, unlike regulatory capture, the influence is never overt.

Another distinguishing factor from corruption is while in case of corruption the outcome (of policy or regulatory decision) is not certain, in case of captured state the outcome of the decision is known and is to very high probability to be beneficial for captors of the state. Also in case of corruption (even rampant) there is plurality and competition of 'corruptors' to influence the outcome of the policy or distribution of resources. In case of captured state, those deciding are usually more in a position of agents to the principals (captors) who function either in monopolistic or oligopolistic (non-competitive) fashion.[/font]

"Captors" we should understand to mean the people who have captured the state. That is, people who didn't just assume offices of trust, but interred those offices with a specific intent to plunder the public wealth. A minor example is how Trump used his position as nominee of the Republican Party to put money in his pockets--renting out his private property (plane, Trump Tower office suites, resort hotel) to the GOP apparatus at highly inflated rates.

The looting of the GOP, of course, will pale in comparison to the looting of the federal treasury. This has already started with Secret Service needing to set up shop in Trump Tower. Of course it's perfectly reasonable and indeed necessary for the President's home to be protected. But Trump seems to be charging the government the same rates he was charging the RNC, a rate about 8 times higher than what he charged his own campaign organization before he got nominated.

So, yeah, corruption refers to using government authority to line the pockets of the office holders. State capture is when that's the whole point of entering government, rather than serving the public.

It's gonna get ugly, folks. Strap in.

November 23, 2016

I am from the Blutarsky wing of the Democratic party

November 23, 2016

I'm in the mood that I don't want Obama to pardon either of those fuckin' turkeys

Fry them both, I say. Pluck their little stupid feathers out, guillotine their stinkin' necks, and stuff 'em both. Grrrr....

November 21, 2016

The 96 year cycle

For devotees of American history, looking for a pattern of past events to judge and anticipate the incoming Trump Administration by, I'm going to suggest we look at the Harding Administration (1921-1923)

Tidbits from U-S-History.com. The parallels should just jump out at you

Domestic Affairs:
The undisputed goal of the Harding administration was to use governmental powers to assist American business and industry to prosper — a trend that had begun during World War I and accelerated during the New Era of the 1920s.

Election of 1920:
The American electorate turned against Wilsonian idealism and interventionism and embraced a "return to normalcy" promised by Warren G. Harding.

Recession:
A postwar economic downturn begun under Wilson continued into the early months of the Harding administration.

Emergency Tariff Act (May 1921).
Stop-gap aid was extended to U.S. farmers until a more comprehensive tariff measure could be written.

Immigration Restriction Act (May 1921).
Congressional immigration reform introduced the first use of a quota system.

Budget and Accounting Act (June 1921).
Congress granted broad powers over the preparation of annual federal budgets.

Revenue Act of 1921 (November 1921).
Treasury Secretary Mellon won only a partial victory in his quest for tax reduction.

Fordney-McCumber Tariff (September 1922).
A blatantly protective tariff answered the pleas of many American producers, but sharply reduced overall foreign trade.

Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan:
The reappearance of the Klan was evidence of some Americans' resistance to a fast-changing postwar world. The new organization targeted more groups and movements than had the original during Reconstruction.

Harding, of course, ended up running one of the three most corrupt administrations in US history (rivaling and possibly surpassing those of US Grant and George W. Bush). An essentially lazy and shallow man (with a weakness for the ladies) he may have gotten elected by promising to take things back to the way things used to be, but his real weakness was in relying on too small a pool of advisors who misdirected him and held too much sway over his final decisions. Or indecisions, more often than not. Warren Harding was in over his head.

His lack of hands on management and the time period's emphasis on wealth-as-success led to his appointment of a bunch of crooked and venial underlings who sought every opportunity to use high office to loot the country. They were far from being the Republican Party's best and brightest. Harding valued personal loyalty over actual competence (or maybe just lacked the mental acumen to tell who was competent and who wasn't). A lackadaisical press corps more or less played along, with a few exceptions, because a war-weary society, still jumpy after a series terrorism attacks by foreigners, was disinterested in following the details of the little scandals. The scandals just slowly piled up in the young administration's first two years.

In some places, the coincidences are uncanny. In other cases they don't quite play out in such parallel details. The bigger trend to look toward the future is the extent to which Trump's 3rd stringers and lobby jockeys go all Teapot Dome on us. His big projects like wall building, infrastructure rebuilding, immigrant monitoring and controlling, and deregulation of industry safety standards will be full of opportunities and temptations for official corruption. It will be a circus of corruption. It will take loads of poking from activists to get the mainstream media to pay attention to it.

This is where we at Du will be able to play a role. We must become an echo chamber to raise some noise--from here and then spreading out to all other parts of the internet and broadcast media--about the corruption in Washington.

November 7, 2016

Barack Obama in Kenya at 27 "A Journey in Black and White" (A Film by Auma Obama)

This is a film I've heard about, but never seen. It shows a young Barack and Michelle before they married visiting the Obama family in rural Kenya and exploring Luo and Kenyan culture. He's a thoughtful young man, an American abroad, and an experienced community organizer seeing the potential and impediments in a society struggling with its colonial legacy.

Sadly, the YouTube version has been watermarked by some western party. But it's well worth the 20 minutes out of your life to see this.