The Biden Presidency

[Nick Danger]

Thank you, Blackchubby for your rational post. And right on cue, Robert Reich has offered a rational explanation for the rise in inflation, arguing that corporate power has been able to concentrate power and control over production and pricing, and that corporations are raising prices and taking inflation with them. He argues the anti-trust law that has been all but abandoned -there wasn't muchof it when he was in the Clinton administation either- needs to be looked at again, and for someone to bite that bullet.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...t-robert-reich


The assumption, as you suggests must be that once the worst of the Covid Pandemic is over, there will be a 'return' to a more healthy economy, though because they are global, the dislocation in supply chains and a concern that 'Just-in-Time' production methods have become vulnerable, may yet be part of a re-structuring, so one wonders if 'normal' needs to be re-defined. But politics always intervenes in these issues, just as our supply chain problems in the UK have been made worse by Brexit, something the US is free from, at least until Senator Cruz leads Texas out of the Union.

The Conservative Party/Brexit supporting Telegraph here has decided Kamala Harris is the weak link in this Presidency, my assumption is that it is always diffiicult for a Vice-President to be assertive, and the issues she has been tasked with, for example, immigration and border control, are not media friendly. But I don't know if it is the case that she is no good at her job, doesn't manage her staff welll, etc, so in the absence of more reliable reportage I don't know what to make of her.

The main worry for the Biden administration, other than the antics of Democrats in Congress, must be the posibility that the economy, 'stupid', doesn't become the critical issue on which voters make their decisions, but 'cultural' issues do, such as the hysterical attacks on Critical Race Theory in partcular, and the frankly shocking denial of Race as a driver of human relations in American society. It seems to me that any claim his killers made, that they thought Ahmaud Arbery was running from the scene of a robbery, is plain daft unless he stashed his loot in his underpants. And what proportion of the attacks on Harris are based on her actual performance, and what proportion shaped by the colour of her skin, and what Tucker might refer to as 'her Legacy'?

And, while it might be an issue over which 'Republican' voters get hyped up, rather than Democrats, the re-districting process taking place in many States has been designed to reduce the impact Democrat voters have on the result -various reports in Liberal Humanist newspapers like The Guardian (which offered an analysis of boundary changes in North Carolina and Texas) showed that wherever there are large Democrat majorities, the boundaries change to move a chunk of those voters into nearby, mostly rural districts. I think the word to use might be 'rigged', or more likely the people involved could have had a pep talk from Bannon Deux Chemises whose perambulations through the history of European Fascism and Nationalism will have led him to the quote attributed to Stalin, which seems to form the basis of the electoral strategy of Cry-Baby Trump's party of Sleaze, Sedition and Lies: It's not the Votes that Count, but who Counts the Votes.

You could end up with a scenario in which the majority of Americans vote Democrat, and get a Trumpy admin. How ironic that Cruz argued that Texas seceding would be justified if the Americans kept voting Democats into office!

"Now, listen, if the Democrats end the filibuster, if they fundamentally destroy the country, if they pack the Supreme Court, if they make D.C. a state, if they federalize elections and massively expand voter fraud, there may come a point where it’s hopeless,” Cruz continued. “We’re not there yet. And if it comes [to] a point where it’s hopeless, then I think we take NASA, take the military, take the oil.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/1643...on-texas-texit


Robert Reich's article is here-
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...t-robert-reich

The article on re-districting is here-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...mocrats-visual

Really Stavros? You don't know what political "redistricting" is called? It's not called "rigged," it's called gerrymandering, and both parties do it to their own advantage at every available opportunity.

See that's the problem with the liberal echo chamber you live in. You only get the news in which the liberals are the heroes and the conservatives are the evil overlords. But gerrymandering, for which the Democrats are at least AS notorious as the Republicans, actually works like this - a political party gains control of a state, then immediately begins re-calculating districts based on complex formulae that vary state-by-state. The only federal requirement is that there be no more than 10% population difference between the most-populated and least-populated district. The party in power does whatever is possible to increase its chances in the next election while it's in power, as easily predicted by the true underlying principle of human behavior - realpolitik. Under-the-table money and back-room deals are undoubtedly involved in the gerrymandering process, but it's standard operating procedure in the USA. Open corruption if you will, and there's not anything anyone can (will) do about it.

[filghy2]

Pretty sure nothing I said there was particularly controversial and can easily be verified by other sources than my mouth.

Okay, what are those sources?

[filghy2]

And right on cue, Robert Reich has offered a rational explanation for the rise in inflation, arguing that corporate power has been able to concentrate power and control over production and pricing, and that corporations are raising prices and taking inflation with them.

I'm not sure I find that argument convincing. Until this recent upsurge we had very little inflation for a long time, and I don't think the market power of corporations was any less during that period. It would probably be better to have less market concentration, but if there are real supply constraints (and it seems to be a general phenomenon around the world at the moment) then competition couldn't magically offset that.

[Jericho]

Gladly field that for you, Jericho.

Thanks for that.

[Stavros]

I'm not sure I find that argument convincing. Until this recent upsurge we had very little inflation for a long time, and I don't think the market power of corporations was any less during that period. It would probably be better to have less market concentration, but if there are real supply constraints (and it seems to be a general phenomenon around the world at the moment) then competition couldn't magically offset that.

But would you agree that the difference has been the impact of the Pandemic? It has changed the parameters owing to the crisis in supply chains, the loss of so many jobs, the compensation to workers sacked or laid off, paid by the Federal Govt, and with the relaxation of restictions, a surge of demand for products and services so that there are shortages of labour pushing up some wages, and shortages of some goods, pushing up prics -? Hence my argument that the assumption must be that a 'return to normal' will stabilize the economy and reduce inflation. But does that have the same meaning it would have had five years ago? In addition, I wonder if Trump's tax cuts have also fed into the situation. It does seem that the Federal Govt hopes this is a temporary rise in inflation, and that as the economy improves then it will decline -'happy days are here again'?

I think it is the reason the New Wave Fascists are promoting a different agenda which they have created, in which their 'beloved Nation' is being undermined, dare one say, 'Stolen' by Democrats whom they ridicule as 'far left' which is a dog whistle for the ignorant who can't tell left from right, and have never known what the centre is. But now that pragmatic decision making is for fools, and compromise regarded as failure, I see little hope that US politics will 'return to normal' when one wonders now when it ever was, as the rigged electoral districting process shows. Or maybe that is what normal means, crooks and racists in charge, reaping the benefits of their contempt for the people.

[Nick Danger]

Okay, what are those sources?

Are you contending that the media isn't politically biased, Flighty, or are you just hoping I'll waste 3 minutes of my life typing "painfully obvious media bias" into a search engine and copy-pasting the results for you?

[Nick Danger]

...crooks and racists in charge...

I challenge you to give me one solid example of racism in the USA, Stavros. You talk about it in every post, you must be getting a lot of information that I'm not getting.

Before you start, no, the George Floyd homicide doesn't count as racist. Floyd was a criminal, Derek Chauvin was a cop. Could have been a white man on the receiving end of Chauvin's police brutality that day, we'll never know if it was a racist incident, or simple cop-on-robber brutality.

So go ahead, Stavros, enlighten me. Tell me about what we Americans are doing that's racist. Is it our welfare system that keeps poor blacks fed and housed whether they choose to join the work force or not? Is it our Affirmative Action programs that reward universities and corporations financially for educating and hiring blacks, and penalizes them financially for failing to do so? Is it our anti-discrimination laws that charge anyone who dares to treat a black person any differently than they would a white person with a hate crime? What is it that we're doing that offends your finer sensibilities about racism, Stavros? I long to hear it.

[filghy2]

Far left news feeds also come from Buzzfeed, Daily Beast, Bloomberg, Mother Jones, Slate, the New Yorker, Vox, the Guardian, the Economist, Politico, ProPublica, USA Today, the Atlantic, Huffpost, and NPR.

Pretty sure nothing I said there was particularly controversial and can easily be verified by other sources than my mouth.

Are you contending that the media isn't politically biased, Flighty, or are you just hoping I'll waste 3 minutes of my life typing "painfully obvious media bias" into a search engine and copy-pasting the results for you?

I'm asking for the "easily verifiable" sources that prove that these sites are "far left". Obviously there are none, and this is just your usual bluster and exaggeration.

The 3rd season of the Nick Danger show is already looking like a rehash of seasons 1 and 2.

[filghy2]

But would you agree that the difference has been the impact of the Pandemic?

Most likely, though we may also be seeing a waning of the China effect which has been pushing prices down over a long period. As this article suggests, we've developed a supply system that prioritises cost-minimisation but at the expense of resilience when something abnormal happens. I suspect the system will adjust eventually and some of this will be temporary, but who knows how long that will take.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/co...braith-2021-11

[Nick Danger]

I'm asking for the "easily verifiable" sources that prove that these sites are "far left". Obviously there are none, and this is just your usual bluster and exaggeration.

The 3rd season of the Nick Danger show is already looking like a rehash of seasons 1 and 2.

Did you not get the email Flighty? I've got you on my superfan mailing list. Look for it, "More Of The Same But Now It's Spanky Time" is the subject line, talks all about Season 3.

I find it a little hard to swallow that you are seriously going to pose a counterargument to the media being biased. But here's a graphic for you, probably simple enough for you to understand. I found it by searching "media bias graphic." It doesn't disagree much at all with my evaluation. You might try a similar search sometime, Flighty. It's just...possible...that your sources are...compromised.