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alicetiermes · 4 months

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SBF’s Crypto Market Manipulations

18 October, 2023. By ALICE TIERMES. For PSM — Global.

The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), once a cryptocurrency billionaire now accused of orchestrating multibillion-dollar fraud, is under way in Manhattan’s federal court.

Customers of FTX, Bankman-Fried’s collapsed crypto exchange, lost billions in dollars when the firm declared bankruptcy after an $8 billion liquidity shortfall was exposed. The court will decide whether this deficiency is fraudulent.

Now, testimonies of SBF’s closest former employees reveal government manipulation, deliberate stifling of Bitcoin’s price, and a plot to set regulators on the path to bring down Binance.

Reasonings behind Bankman-Fried’s schemes range from petty to malicious, but the results may have had seismic effects on the cryptocurrency market as a whole.

SBF’s political friends

Bankman-Fried had significant political connections and influence within the Democratic party before the downfall of his empire. His donations totalled over $45 million to political candidates and organisations in recent years, with the majority of his contributions going to Democrats, but also a substantial amount to Republicans. He actively participated in political fundraising and built a network of lobbyists to promote his interests in the crypto industry and gain influence in Washington, D.C.

The extent of his donation and subsequent benefiting is difficult to gauge. Bankman-Fried confesses to using numerous straw donations and nonprofits to mask his identity from the public.

“All my Republican donations were dark,” Admitted Bankman-Fried, “Reporters freak the f*ck out if you donate to a Republican because they’re all super liberal. And I didn’t want to have that fight, so I just made all the Republican ones dark.”

Excess and concealed donations violate US campaign financing policies, and SBF went beyond. The disgraced entrepreneur stands accused of:

Intentionally circumventing campaign finance laws: Bankman-Fried has donated nearly $40 million in publicly disclosed contributions, but state and federal campaign finance data and nonprofit records point to undisclosed donations tying back to him.Alameda Research also donated over $12 million to SBF’s brother’s nonprofit organisation, Guarding Against Pandemics, and these funds were used to support a California ballot initiative related to pandemics. There are questions about whether the recipients knew the true source of the funds.

Misusing corporate contributions: Campaign finance records reveal Alameda Research donated $5 million in 2020 to pro-Biden group Future Forward USA.

Improperly using conduits to hide sources of the funds: Bankman-Fried and his associates also donated to charities and political causes championed by their family members, including Guarding Against Pandemics, and his mother’s super PAC, Mind the Gap.In the US, super PACs are allowed to receive unlimited funding from individuals, corporations, and labour unions alike. Nepotist practices, however, only add to SBF’s reputation of a schemer.

Alleged diversion of customer funds: Billions of dollars in customer funds have allegedly been diverted from FTX to Alameda Research, where they were subsequently used for personal gains, including political contributions.

Motivated by a desire to buy bipartisan influence and impact the direction of public policy in Washington, particularly when cryptocurrency policies would be up for debate. Bankman-Fried likely sought to exert influence and advance his interests by supporting political candidates and parties, all while keeping the majority of his donations hidden from public view.

These actions have raised questions about campaign finance violations, the circumvention of contribution limits, and the use of straw donations to mask the true identity of a political donor. While the charges do not name the specific beneficiaries of the donations, the attempt to influence political decision-making is obvious.

Now, political meddling isn’t the only money-related manipulation SBF is accused of.

SBF conspired to keep Bitcoin price under $20k

During her testimony in court on 11 October, former CEO of Alameda Research and SBF’s on-and-off girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, revealed Bankman-Fried instructed her to sell Bitcoin (BTC) should its price exceed $20,000.

Sold Bitcoin was ‘borrowed’ from FTX customers’ funds, and used to purchase ‘Sam coins’.

‘Sam coins’ are cryptocurrencies largely owned by Bankman-Fried, including FTX’s own FTT, Solana, Serum, Maps, and Oxygen.

This revelation prompted many to speculate that had SBF and Ellison not sold off customer BTC during the bull market, Bitcoin could’ve reached its anticipated $100,000 price back in 2021.

The selling of Bitcoin was not authorised by customers. The result — artificial selling pressure on Bitcoin.

During the 2021 bull run, Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $69,000. However, some predictions, particularly the Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model by PlanB, had anticipated much higher prices. The S2F model projected a price target of up to $288,000 for Bitcoin during the halving cycle, with a “worst case scenario” of $135,000 by December 2021.

After Bitcoin failed to reach these ambitious price levels, both the S2F model and PlanB faced substantial public criticism.

Unfortunately, the public data of FTX and Alameda is limited. The primary available data relates to Bitcoin wallets held by FTX, which reportedly contained less than 47,000 BTC by September 2022. It’s unclear whether Alameda Research held additional Bitcoin addresses. Given their financial difficulties, it’s unlikely they had liquid reserves.

FTX’s reported spot Bitcoin volume in July 2022 was $30 billion, equivalent to an average of $1 billion per day. However, there are concerns about FTX’s data accuracy due to past data manipulation issues.

Assuming Ellison’s sales took place on FTX, a 4,000-BTC order valued at $80 million would represent only 8% of the exchange’s daily volume. Even considering broader Bitcoin volume data from major exchanges, the speculated order size by Alameda appears inconsequential.

SBF’s plot against Binance

Caroline Ellison’s testimony uncovered significant details about the inner workings of FTX and Alameda, including SBF’s intentions to sick regulators on Binance and bring the more successful competitor down.

Ellison’s testimony reveals SBF was deeply concerned about taking regulatory actions against Binance. He had actively lobbied for this outcome and even claimed to have obtained promises from regulators to target Binance. His motivation for pursuing this path was the belief that it would allow FTX to gain a larger market share. However, when regulators appeared to delay or renege on these promises, SBF grew frustrated.

At its peak, FTX was the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange globally, with Binance holding the top position. While rivalry is common in the business world, the feud between SBF and Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), was particularly intense. This rivalry was evident in public disputes and disagreements, including their interactions during FTX’s final days.

Initially, the relationship between SBF and CZ was a business partnership, with Binance making a strategic investment in FTX in 2019. However, signs of tension emerged when FTX decided to buy out Binance’s equity stake and Binance’s subsequent decision to abstain from FTX’s series B funding round in 2021.

Ellison also testified that SBF funded the buyout of Binance’s stake in FTX using $1 billion in customer deposits.

The tenuous relationship between SBF and CZ played a crucial role in FTX’s eventual collapse. CZ added to the turmoil by publicly announcing Binance’s intention to sell FTT holdings worth over $500 million. He also hinted at FTX secretly lobbying against Binance, contributing to panic about FTX’s financial stability.

In light of these revelations, the validity of legal action Binance faces due to accusations made by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is even more questionable.

Unlimited funds, unlimited errors

The trial also heard from Gary Wang, FTX’s former chief technology officer, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud, securities fraud, and commodities fraud in December and is cooperating with the prosecution. Wang testified that, at the direction of Bankman-Fried, he helped enable Alameda to withdraw “unlimited funds” from FTX and lied about it to the public.

Adam Yedidia, a close friend of Bankman-Fried and former software developer for FTX, also testified. Yedidia allegedly discovered that Alameda Research was using FTX customer funds to pay back its creditors, ‘borrowing’ $8 billion.

To many, the implosion of FTX did not come as a surprise, in or outside of the company. A report by the Wall Street Journal suggests that employees of LedgerX, a crypto-derivatives exchange acquired by FTX, discovered a ‘back door’ in Alameda’s code, allowing the withdrawal of customer funds from FTX and carrying a negative balance of up to $65 billion. Many crypto users, too, could sense the grubbly-held rug in the hands of SBF.

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dower · 5 months

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More conscientious and less crap in ‘24.

In 2024, 2bn folks in the liberal-democratic world go to the polls and, if the current trajectory is anything to go by, the results will see a huge swing towards the right.

Rampant nationalism, isolationist policies, insular thinking, racism, populism, radicalism and pretty much the full house of bad-isms. It’s likely to be a tumultuous year of change and opportunity. It could also see the unraveling of hard-won climate concessions which could end up being the crime of the century. And the death of retail politics to match the post-truth world we achieved in 2016. Ho hum.

It’s also a year where we slip closer to climate collapse. As we increasingly play an important personal part we have cut our CO2 footprint quite dramatically over the last decade. Are we are finally running out of places to cut?

2024 is going to focus on:

REDUCING MEAT & DAIRY: So that’s cutting down on milk and beef consumption. In reality, we’re moving towards a more plant-based diet so chicken and pork consumption is going to fall, maybe 50-75% versus previous years.

I have a weakness for cheese, otherwise this section might have be called “almost eliminating meat and dairy”. Protein consumption is something watch out for as dairy is cut, especially as we’re getting older and need to keep our strength up. So thats upping the consumption of beans/legumes and eggs, one of my firm favourites.

Officially that makes us flexitarians. Sounds like a cult.

STOP BURNING STUFF: We’re quite close to zero fossil-fuel burning but we keep striving to cut more. Immediate-future plans include replacing the gas hob with induction and air-source electric heating. Neither are expected in ‘24, but planning will be complete and budgets secured for 2025.

We’ve had a full EV for a year now and with a green leccy tariff our fossil fuel transport footprint has shrunk dramatically since COVID and not bounced back very much at all in ‘22 and ‘23. We’re going abroad (Lisbon, Portugal) in February - it will be our first foreign trip together since our grand tour of Italy in 2019. International travel has got progressively more unpleasant since 9/11 and now it’s expensive so should be savoured.

By way of contrast, in 2019 we would have travelled several thousand fossil fuel car miles, several dozen thousand fossil fuel public transport miles. In 2024, we’ll see that drop to less than 3,000 personal transport petrol miles and a few thousand public transport miles, mostly short-haul holiday and some train travel inside the UK.

A life-long petrolhead, I used to drive cars tens of thousands of kilometres every year, spewing out 300gms + of CO2 every kilometre and would fly around the world at the drop of a hat. What a difference a decade makes; when I swapped my six point two litre 500 bhp V8 Mercedes for a tiny 1.5 litre 3 cylinder electric hybrid i8 in 2015 little did I know what a momentous journey I had started out on.

2024 also sees (hopefully) Derrin Water Solar Park come on stream. Invested into back in 2022 as an alternative to roof solar panels, they should see us getting an additional 6mWh per year of super-clean solar power and a handy 10-15p per kWh discount against our current green supplier, Octopus. That should see 15k miles of zero emissions EV driving every year for the next forty years. Carbon negative, baby!

CUT CONSUMPTION: We’ve not done badly here, but still far too often we get home deliveries of crap complete with acres of plastic. That has to be reduced. Stella now buys 2nd clothes, like me, and the aim to cut fast fashion in our house massively. And knock frappery on the head, including pointless presents and other rubbish that no one wants or needs.

We have sufficient bed clothes and cushions to last a lifetime, lets see if we can last a year without resorting to “I fancied a change” - the western world’s way of driving up needless consumption, creating financial dependence, and helping to ruin the planet we live on. This extends to consumer electronics, too. So no new phones, iPads, or other gadgets in ‘24, what we have now is more than enough.

If we live in 1:500 square feet now, then a good target is to aim for is 1,000 in a decade’s time. Let’s see how this one plays out, but I know we don’t need to live in a four bedroom house, nor do we need a 20ft+ long lounge or three toilets - it’s only me and Stella here.

DECLUTTER OUR WORLD: We have far too much stuff in our life and it needs to go. From clothes to motorbikes to shoes it needs to be radically reviewed and removed. If we want a smaller footprint, then we need a smaller house and that means less stuff.

I’ll start with clothes first, that should be easy - when was the last time I wore a business suit? Do I need 60 t-shirts? And there are a couple of large cupboards in my home-office that contain a sea of junk. Did anyone mention the garage? Jeez, it’s gonna be a busy year!

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laksh34 · 2 years

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Japanese former leader Abe honoured at divisive state funeral

Japan’s assassinated hawkish former leader, Shinzo Abe, was given a rare state funeral Tuesday that was full of military pomp and surrounded by throngs of mourners as well as by widespread protests, with thousands taking to the streets in opposition. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the publicly financed ceremony was a well-deserved honour for Japan’s longest-serving modern political leader, but it has deeply split public opinion. The event was attended by US Vice President Kamala Harris, Japanese Crown Prince Akishino and other foreign and Japanese dignitaries. It began with Abe’s widow, Akie Abe, in a black formal kimono, walking slowly behind Kishida into the funeral venue, carrying an urn in a wooden box wrapped in a purple cloth with gold stripes. Soldiers in white uniforms took Abe’s ashes and placed them on a pedestal filled with white and yellow chrysanthemums and decorations. Attendants stood while a military band played the Kimigayo national anthem, then observed a moment of silence before a video was shown praising Abe’s life in politics. It included his 2006 parliamentary speech vowing to build a “beautiful Japan,” his visits to disaster-hit northern Japan after the March 2011 tsunami and his 2016 Super Mario impersonation in Rio de Janeiro to promote the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Kishida, in a 12-minute eulogy, praised Abe as a politician with a clear vision for post-World War II economic growth who promoted national security, the development of Japan and the world, and a “free and open Indo-Pacific” as a counter to China’s rise. “You were a person who should have lived much longer,” Kishida said as he looked up at a massive photo of Abe. “I had a firm belief that you would contribute as a compass showing the future direction of Japan and the rest of the world for 10 or 20 more years.” Kishida said Abe will be remembered not just as the nation’s longest-serving leader but for what he achieved, and he pledged to carry on Abe’s policies for Japan and the region. During the ceremony, Harris sat in the third row next to Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, and they later joined others by placing a branch of chrysanthemums on a table near Abe’s photo. Abe was cremated in July following a private funeral at a Tokyo temple days after he was assassinated while giving a campaign speech on a street in Nara in western Japan. Tokyo was under high security for the state funeral, especially near the venue, the Budokan martial arts hall. At a protest in downtown Tokyo, thousands of people marched toward the hall, some banging drums and many shouting or holding banners and signs stating their opposition. “Shinzo Abe has not done a single thing for regular people,” participant Kaoru Mano said. Japan’s main political opposition parties boycotted the funeral, which critics say was a reminder of how prewar imperialist governments used state funerals to fan nationalism. The government maintains that the ceremony was not meant to force anyone to honour Abe. But the decision to give him the rare honour, which was made without parliamentary debate or approval, the high cost and other controversies have led to anger about the event. Kishida has also been criticised because of a widening controversy over decades of close ties between Abe and the governing Liberal Democratic Party with the Unification Church, accused of raking in huge donations by brainwashing adherents. The suspect in Abe’s assassination reportedly told police he killed Abe because of his links to the church, which he said took large amounts of money from his mother, bankrupting his family and ruining his life. “The fact that the close ties between the LDP and the Unification Church may have interfered with policymaking processes is seen by the Japanese people as a greater threat to democracy than Abe’s assassination,” Hosei University political science professor Jiro Yamaguchi wrote in a recent article. Abe’s grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, helped the South Korean-based church take root in Japan and is now seen as a key figure in the scandal. Opponents say holding a state funeral for Abe is equivalent to an endorsement of the governing party’s ties to the church. “One big problem is that there was no proper approval process,” retiree Shin Watanabe said during the demonstration Tuesday. “I’m sure there are various views. But I don’t think it’s forgivable that they will force a state funeral on us when so many of us are opposed.” Outside the Budokan hall, thousands of people carrying bouquets queued for several blocks to lay flowers in a nearby park. “I’m emotionally attached to him and I’ve been supporting the LDP, too,” Masayuki Aoki, a 70-year-old business owner, said, recalling that he shared a fist bump with Abe at a campaign stop in Yokohama days before his assassination. “I came to offer him flowers.” In what some see as an attempt to further justify the honour for Abe, Kishida has held meetings this week with visiting foreign leaders in what he calls “funeral diplomacy.” The talks are meant to strengthen ties as Japan faces regional and global challenges, including threats from China, Russia and North Korea. He was to meet about 40 foreign leaders through Wednesday, though no Group of Seven leaders are attending. (AGENCIES)

To Know More Visit- dailyexcelsior

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don-lichterman · 2 years

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BP profits soar, renewing windfall tax calls – business live | Business

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey is also calling for a windfall tax on energy firms: “The Conservative government’s refusal to introduce a windfall tax on the super profits of oil companies is becoming impossible to justify. BP is raking in eye-watering profits while millions of people struggle to pay the bills. It is an unforgivable lack of leadership from Boris Johnson at a time of national…

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foreverlogical · 4 years

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Leone and his wife have donated $400,000 to boost Trump. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Doug Leone, who has backed both TikTok and Trump, could be the bridge between the two.

The ultimate fate of TikTok could be shaped in part by the efforts of one billionaire tech investor who has earned the distinction of being a particularly rare type of Silicon Valley unicorn: a major donor to Donald Trump.

ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of the hit video sharing app, is in a boxing match with the Trump administration, which has threatened to ban it from the United States next month. But TikTok has an investor who looms large in the drama because of his personal ties and access to the White House.

Doug Leone, one of the leaders of one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated firms, Sequoia Capital, and his wife together have given about $400,000 over the last two years to Trump’s campaign and affiliated groups such as the Republican National Committee and a pro-Trump super PAC. That makes the Leones two of the very biggest donors to Trump in Silicon Valley, where business leaders have almost entirely run away from publicly backing the President.

Now, the links between Leone and Trump may shape the ending of one of the most complex business and geopolitical stories of 2020. Leone has told “people he could use his influence with Trump to help the company,” the Washington Post reported this weekend. Leone planned to reach out to Steven Mnuchin and Jared Kushner, two top Trump aides who have both been integral to Trump fundraising efforts, “to see what it would take to save TikTok,” the Wall Street Journal added.

The stories show how cultivating ties with the White House can pay dividends, even if the donations were not born from a premeditated lobbying push.

Leone declined to comment. Trump’s campaign didn’t return a request for comment.

TikTok and Microsoft — the company that is seeking to purchase it and circumvent a threatened ban of the app — both have built-out Washington operations with professionals that twist arms for a living. After all, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke with Trump directly about the potential deal. But one hallmark of Trump’s Washington has been that convincing the administration to take a certain action can be a highly irregular process, driven by personal relationships and access to Trump advisers, both formal and informal. Plus, Trump has displayed a well-documented obsession with whether someone has shown loyalty to his “team” or not.

Leone, a longtime Republican, reportedly has that access. And while Trump might not know Leone well enough to pick him out of a lineup, suffice it to say that not every Silicon Valley venture capitalist can jawbone the Secretary of the Treasury or the president’s son-in-law to help a portfolio company.

It’s still unclear whether Leone’s outreach has actually accomplished anything. And there’s no evidence that Leone only gets an audience because of a few hundred thousand bucks in donations. To be sure, Sequoia’s global managing partner is a prominent business leader in his own right. Precisely why someone gets a call returned — Is it the donations? His stature? A little bit of both? — is impossible to know.

Leone is an exception in tech. The liberal tech industry has been fighting with Trump since his first day on issues like immigration. In fact, Leone’s co-leader at Sequoia for a long time, Michael Moritz, this cycle has given millions to boost Democrats. Silicon Valley has made supporting Trump something of a scarlet letter, so much so that even the few leaders who do back him now feel pressure to do so quietly. That’s what makes Leone’s public donations unusual, especially in the image-conscious world of venture capital.

When Recode wrote last year about the Leones’ gifts to Trump — then measuring only about $100,000 — some leading voices in tech spoke to the liability that the donations could pose to Sequoia, even though it is generally regarded as the highest-performing investing firm in Silicon Valley.

Swati Mylavarapu, a former venture capitalist who is now a top Silicon Valley Democratic fundraiser, put it this way on Sunday:

Hi every entrepreneur who wants to raise money from Sequoia. You get to make a choice. Do your investors reflect your and your company's values? https://t.co/0POQLyx6oV

That liability remains very real. But what the news over the weekend makes clear is that there is an upside — less-obvious, to be sure — that complements it. One of Sequoia’s most lucrative investments is in ByteDance, with Sequoia’s stake said to be worth as much as $15 billion. And while the gifts from Leone have been made in a personal capacity and officially have nothing to do with Sequoia, his firm could benefit from the personal donations if they help maintain the value of TikTok.

The few other Silicon Valley marquee names who have supported Trump have reaped some rewards. Peter Thiel, who braved significant blowback to give over $1 million to boost Trump during his 2016 run, has stocked the administration with his allies and former aides. Larry Ellison, who hosted a fundraiser that brought $7 million to Trump’s coffers earlier this year, has pressed Trump to publicly push hydroxychloroquine, an experimental drug treatment for the coronavirus that Ellison favors.

Leone is a much lower-profile billionaire than those two titans. Some Trump fundraisers outside of Silicon Valley say they haven’t even heard of him.

But with this much money on the line — and this much international intrigue at play — having him on TikTok’s side can only help.

VISIT WEBSITE

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billehrman · 3 years

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Main Street Catches Up to Wall Street

It is a welcome relief to put 2020 in the rear-view mirror. The pandemic was the ultimate disruptor causing change everywhere. It is hard to fathom that over 1.8 million people worldwide, with 338,000 being in the U.S., have died so far from the virus. Over 83 million people caught the virus last year. Everyone’s life was impacted in some way which will influence how we live our lives and invest for years to come. We were very fortunate that monetary bodies and governments moved swiftly to provide huge amounts of liquidity to the real economy and financial system. They did a great job and deserve credit for preventing an even deeper recession than occurred. At the same time, the U.S government started project Warp Speed to accelerate handling/reducing red tape on all phases dealing with the coronavirus including medical services, equipment, therapeutics, and vaccines.

Wall Street’s financial markets went to new highs driven by excess liquidity while many parts of main street were suffering big time. 2020 was truly a tale of two cities.We thought it interesting to cite a few data points from March to November 2020 that support how much liquidity was provided to the system, far in excess of real economic needs. First, total personal income increased by over $1.03 trillion. The Cares Act added $499 billion, stimulus checks added $276 billion, and other added income was $294 billion while wages fell by only $43 billion. Second, total household outlays actually fell $535 billion as consumer durable/non-durable spending rose $99 billion while services fell a whopping $575 billion. Interest payments fell $59 billion. The combination of higher personal income and falling spending pushed the savings rate above 15% to $1.56 trillion. Currency in circulation spiked 14% since February while bank deposits are up near 20%. Where did all of this money go? Not Main Street! Herein lies the big shift that we expect in 2021.

The Fed did a great job stabilizing the market last spring, but the economic recovery and stock market move to new highs centered around all the liquidity/savings in the system. While whole sectors on the economy suffered from the pandemic, other areas that thrived in the new normal benefitting big time. Anything related to more time spent at home for every facet of life became an opportunity. As Chairman Powell said many times “this recession was caused by the pandemic rather than any financial stress in the system and it is up to the government, as well as the Fed, to provide the bridge to the other side.”

As we enter 2021, the outlook for controlling the pandemic is excellent as we are already distributing highly effective vaccines with many more on the horizon. Unlike last year, this recovery will be sustainable as the weather warms, openings increase, pent up demand is beginning to be met, inventories are built, and everyone by the summer gets vaccinated in the U.S and by the end of the year in the world.

The key word above is sustainable as we expect the recovery to pick up steam sequentially through 2021 into 2022 supported by several additional stimulus plans, rising consumer/business confidence, a desire to get out and return to a more normal existence, an accommodative Fed for another few years and finally a synchronous global recovery. While 2020 will go down as the year for Wall Street, 2021/2022 will benefit Main Street, too.

We see the prospects for a red-hot economy beginning by late spring extending well through 2022. Ironically, we do not expect the unemployment rate to fall to levels associated with the level of growth we foresee as companies have learned to do more with less which is good for margins/profits and also may be a positive holding the Fed off even further from beginning a shift in its policy away from super accommodative. After all, full employment is one of the two main Fed mandates.

We are watching the Georgia runoff. It is widely believed that a Republican win would be good for the markets as it would prevent Biden’s from passing his liberal agenda including higher taxes. We can argue the other way, too, as a Democratic controlled Congress will pass much more stimulus to support growth/employment than a split Congress and would probably wait until mid 2022 at the earliest to propose any tax changes until after the economy is well on its way on firm footing. We would be against any tax changes that penalized growth, hiring, research and capital spending. We sorely need an infrastructure program as well as revitalizing industrial America, transportation/ports, farming and technology. The U.S must remain globally competitive especially as China uses its influence to enhance its global competitive position. The U.S needs to respond to Brexit and the recent China/Eurozone trade pact.

Markets finished the year on a high note as investors poured some of their excess cash on the sidelines back in. Around $180 billion was raised from IPO’s in 2020, more than double last year’s level and is another indication that creativity is not being hurt by the likes of Facebook and Google. Corporate debt issuance was at record levels too as companies took advantage of low interest rates. All of this is further proof of all of the liquidity in the system which will be ever present in 2021 and 2022 as long as the Fed maintains its near zero interest rate policy. We are ending 2020 with over $3.5 trillion still in cash and money market funds. This money is waiting to commit so do not expect much of correction if one occurs as the pundits predict.

Investment Conclusions

2020 was the year for Wall Street as all the excess liquidity provided by monetary authorities and governments found their way into financial and hard assets. We are looking for a shift in 2021 as our economy, as well as the rest of the world hurt by the pandemic recover as the weather warms, openings accelerate, and we start to return to a more normal existence.

This recovery/expansion will be sustainable as we all have the opportunity to get vaccinated this year. We would not be surprised to see a super cycle as pent-up demand is filled, inventories are replenished and trillions of additional stimulus find its way into our economy. Profitable investing will shift from reliance on excess liquidity to economic growth/corporate profits and cash flow. We see the shift from Wall Street to Main Street in 2021/2022 benefitting those companies leveraged to a sustainable global economic recovery including industrials/capital goods, industrial commodities, transportation, special situations and technology at a fair price.

Listen closely to year-end earnings reports as we expect to hear a lot about the margin story that we see unfolding across corporate America

.Stay invested as the outlook for the next 24 months looks excellent. Main Street will kick in while the government and Fed will remain all in driving continued but diminishing excess liquidity into the system benefitting Wall Street/risk assets. Continue to avoid the bond market.

We wish all of you a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year.

Our investment webinar will be held on Monday January 4th at 8:30 am EST. You can join the webinar by entering https://zoom/us/j/9179217852 into your browser or by dialing + 646 588 8656 and entering the password 9179217852.

Remember to review all the facts; pause, reflect and consider mindset shifts; look at your asset mix with risk controls; do independent research and …

Invest Accordingly

!Bill Ehrman

Paix et Prosperite [email protected]

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learningrendezvous · 3 years

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Media and Society

FATTITUDE

By Lindsey Averill, Viridiana Lieberman

An eye-opening look at how popular media perpetuates fat hatred that results in cultural bias and discrimination.

FATTITUDE is an eye-opening look at how popular media perpetuates fat hatred that results in a cultural bias and a civil rights issue for people living in fat bodies.

Fat people are paid $1.25 less an hour than their thin counterparts and can still legally lose jobs just because they're fat. Additionally, 1 in 3 doctors associates fat bodies with hostility, dishonesty and poor hygiene. FATTITUDE looks at how this systemic cultural prejudice results in fat discrimination. Informed by a post-modern, post-colonial, feminist perspective, FATTITUDE also examines how fat-shaming crosses the lines of race, class, sexuality and gender. It features a diverse variety of voices such as academic scholars, activists, filmmakers, actors and psychologists, including Lindy West, Sonya Renee Taylor, Virgie Tovar, Ricki Lake, and more.

A body positive documentary intent on inspiring change, FATTITUDE offers alternative ideas that embrace body acceptance at all sizes, explores examples of fat positive representations being produced today by activists and the media, and focuses on real life solutions for moving forward and changing the national conversation about body image.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 88 minutes

HOW TO STEAL A COUNTRY

By Rehad Desai, Mark Kaplan

"It's been almost 10 years of unabated looting." - Investigative journalist Thanduxolo Jika

HOW TO STEAL A COUNTRY opens like a classic thriller, with investigative journalists meeting anonymous whistleblowers in a parking garage. There, they receive a hard drive filled with hundreds of thousands of explosive files and emails implicating Jacob Zuma's South African government in a massive corruption scandal.

Director Rehad Desai (Everything Must Fall, Miners Shot Down) chronicles how the three Gupta brothers, once small-scale peddlers, cultivated relationships with Zuma and other ANC figures, and parlayed them into massive profits. The brothers were involved in everything from a US$100 billion nuclear deal with Russia, to graft at the state-owned railway and power companies. Tens of millions were stolen from money earmarked for rural development and funneled into a lavish Gupta family wedding. Journalists investigating this corruption were targets of a disinformation campaign accusing them of being neo-colonialists supporting white monopoly power.

Eventually, the journalists are vindicated, and a state inquiry is called into "state capture"-a massive corruption scheme involving the Guptas, Zuma and his government, and international finance and consulting firms.

HOW TO STEAL A COUNTRY serves as a warning on how multinational companies and ruthless entrepreneurs can co-opt democracies for their own profit.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 93 minutes

BELLINGCAT: TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD

Director: Hans Pool

Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World follows the rise of the collective known as Bellingcat, a group of online researchers - all private citizens - dedicated to exposing the truth behind controversial news stories from around the world. From the Malaysian jetliner shot down over Ukraine to the poisoning of a Russian spy in England, the Bellingcat team's quest for truth brings clarity and accountability to our era of fake news and alternative facts.

Bellingcat uses cutting-edge digital techniques and crowdsourcing to create a faster, more innovative approach than traditional journalism. For the first time, the group gave exclusive access to filmmakers - allowing us to see the inner workings as they demonstrate the power of open source investigation and put networks, newspapers and governments to the test.

DVD / 2018 / 88 minutes

PROPAGANDA: THE MANUFACTURE OF CONSENT

By Jimmy Leipold

"Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can... help to bring order out of chaos." - Edward Bernays

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson ran on a platform strongly opposing US entry into WWI. But just a few months after taking office, the United States declared war on Germany. Soon after, the American people, so firmly opposed to the war just a year earlier, were enthusiastic supporters.

What happened?

The short answer: propaganda.

PROPAGANDA: THE MANUFACTURE OF CONSENT is a revealing documentary about how public relations grew out of wartime propaganda-and a portrait of one of the key architects of the field, Edward Bernays.

The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays refined the techniques used so successfully during the war to sell products to consumers, and ultimately to sell capitalism itself to workers. Public relations was also critical in building support for the New Deal, and in the pushback against it from the National Association of Manufacturers, which created materials including films aimed at children on the glories of manufacturing.

Bacon and eggs as part of a hearty breakfast? The work of Bernays on behalf of a bacon company. Cigarettes as a sign of women's liberation? Bernays, again. Casting the democratically elected government of Guatemala as a Communist threat to justify US invasion on behalf of the United Fruit Company? Once more, Bernays.

There was nothing shadowy about Bernays. He wrote a book detailing his techniques and discusses them in an archival interview with Bill Moyers from 1983. Still, it is jarring to see his pride in hijacking the women's suffrage movement in order to sell more cigarettes-one of many illuminating moments in this film.

Featuring Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Public Relations Museum co-founder Shelley Spector, historian Stuart Ewen, sociologist David Miller, and Bernays' daughter Anne, PROPAGANDA offers an insightful look into the development of public relations techniques, and how they continue to affect us today.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 53 minutes

TVTV: VIDEO REVOLUTIONARIES

Director: Paul Goldsmith

Featuring Bill Murray, Hunter Thompson, Steven Spielberg, Lynn Swan, Goldie Hawn, Abbie Hoffman, Lily Tomlin and more, "TVTV: Video Revolutionaries" is a documentary about Top Value Television (TVTV), a band of merry video makers who, from 1972 to 1977, took the then brand-new portable video camera and went out to document the world. In those days, there were only three TV networks, using giant studio cameras, and no one had ever seen a portable camera stuck in their face, let alone one held by what Newsweek called "braless, blue-jeaned video freaks." Because the technology was so new, there were no rules about how to use it or what to make. So the "freaks" used it to make format-bending satirical shows about whatever interested them - from the 1972 Republican Convention to an award-winning expose of a 15-year-old jet-set guru named Guru Maharaj Ji, called "Lord of the Universe" to capturing the Steelers and Cowboys partying hard the night before Super Bowl X.

Directed by TVTV alum Paul Goldsmith, the film is like opening a treasure chest into the 1970s, filled with cultural and political events hosted by now-famous characters who were then just beginning their climb to iconic.

DVD / 2018 / 82 minutes

ACORN AND THE FIRESTORM

Director: Reuben Atlas, Sam Pollard

If you were impoverished and politically voiceless, ACORN hoped to change your mind. For 40 years, the community-organizing group sought to empower marginalized communities. Its critics, though, believed ACORN exemplified everything wrong with liberal ideals.

Fueled by a YouTube video made by two young conservatives who posed as pimp and prostitute in a sting, ACORN's very existence would be challenged. ACORN and the Firestorm goes beyond the 24-hour news cycle and cuts to the heart of the great political divide.

DVD / 2017 / 84 minutes

CELLING YOUR SOUL

Directed by Joni Siani

An examination of our love/hate relationships with our digital devices from the first digitally socialized generation, and what we can do about it.

In one short decade, we have totally changed the way we interact with one another. The millennial generation, the first to be socialized in a digital world, is now feeling the unintended consequences.

CELLING YOUR SOUL is a powerful and informative examination of how our young people actually feel about connecting in the digital world and their love/hate relationship with technology. It provides empowering strategies for more fulfilling, balanced, and authentic human interaction within the digital landscape.

The film reveals the effects of "digital socialization" by taking viewers on a personal journey with a group of high school and college students who through a digital cleanse discover the power of authentic human connectivity, and that there is "No App" or piece of technology that can ever replace the benefits of human connection.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 6-12, College, Adult) / 48 minutes

LIVES: VISIBLE/LEFTOVERS

By Michelle Citron

LIVES: VISIBLE (2017, 35 mins): Lesbians in a box... two thousand private snapshots hidden away for over fifty years reveal the rich history of Chicago's working class butch/fem life in the pre-Stonewall era. Spanning four decades, from the 1930s to the early 1970s, the snapshots provide a rare look at a vanished and vibrant Lesbian culture: images of lovers and friends as they played, posed, serially switched partners, worked, partied, drank, and aged. Now we all take selfies; these women used a Brownie camera to tell the story of their community. LIVES: VISIBLE explores the ephemeral nature of culture and the power of the images we make.

LEFTOVERS (2014, 23 mins): Norma and Virginia were lovers for almost fifty years. They died isolated; the vibrant pre-Stonewall lesbian community of their youth long gone. A love story about the unforeseen trajectory of lives lived outside the mainstream told through the 2000 snapshots left behind.

2 DVDs (Color) / 2017 / 58 minutes

NOW HE'S OUT IN PUBLIC AND EVERYONE CAN SEE

By Natalie Bookchin

A riveting polyphonic documentary, NOW HE'S OUT IN PUBLIC AND EVERYONE CAN SEE presents a fractured narrative about an unnamed man whose racial identity is continually redrawn and contested by clusters of impassioned narrators. This intricately-edited and deeply political essay film by artist Natalie Bookchin is composed of fragments of found online video diaries made in the early days of the Obama era, a period many believed would be "post-racial" but instead ushered in a new era of racial discord.

NOW HE'S OUT IN PUBLIC AND EVERYONE CAN SEE explores this new landscape, one where mass media is transformed into social media and where cascades of disinformation, rumors, and insinuations spread across global electronic networks. Newly adapted for the cinema by the artist based on her own multi-screen gallery installation that was exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and other museums, NOW HE'S OUT illustrates the way that, as truths and falsehoods become nearly impossible to distinguish, reality is splintered and recast through a myriad of interpretations and retellings.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2017 / 24 minutes

OBIT.

Directed by Vanessa Gould

At a time when the free press is under threat, OBIT. takes a rare look inside one of the United States' foremost journalistic institutions, The New York Times. The steadfast writers of the paper's Obituaries section approach their work with journalistic rigor and narrative flair, each day depositing the details of a handful of extraordinary lives into the cultural memory. Going beyond the byline and into the minds of those chronicling the recently deceased, OBIT. is ultimately a celebration of life that conveys the central role journalism plays in capturing and reporting vital pieces of our history.

DVD (Region 1, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2017 / 95 minutes

TRUMP: THE ART OF THE INSULT

By Joel Gilbert

Donald Trump used his special brand of the Art of the Insult to attack opponents and bash the media all the way to the White House in 2016. He continues to master the art with ongoing fine-tuning from the podium, his office and of course on Twitter.

While critics insisted "The Donald" was merely a chaotic sideshow, Trump continues to dominate the 24-hour news cycle with a master plan of political incorrectness. Hurling insults like Low-Energy Jeb, Lyin' Ted, Crooked Hillary, Little Marco, Pocahontas, and Fake News, Trump has emerged as an unstoppable political phenomenon who has transformed the Presidential voice into the greatest show on earth.

Trump: The Art of the Insult tells the story of Donald Trump's improbable journey from Trump Tower to rallies across America to the debate stage, where he reveled in mocking and taunting rivals with targeted insults and nicknames, leaving them gasping for air. As President of the US, he continues the trend.

In Trump: The Art of the Insult, the President is often sophomoric and sometimes brutal, yet America seems to always find him entertaining. Love or hate Donald Trump, you'll find yourself laughing along with the leader of the free world, and marveling at Trump.

Is "the Real Donald Trump" a marketing genius and accomplished performance artist or....?

DVD / 2017 / 95 minutes

ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE: TRUTH, DECEPTION, AND THE SPIRIT OF I.F. STONE

Director: Fred Peabody

Independent journalists like Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Matt Taibbi are changing the face of journalism, providing investigative, adversarial alternatives to mainstream, corporate news outlets. Our cameras follow as they expose government and corporate deception - just as the ground-breaking independent journalist I.F. Stone did decades ago.

DVD / 2016 / 91 minutes

ALTHUSSER, AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE

By Bruno Oliviero

Philosophe, Marxist, professor, murderer. More than a quarter century after his death, Louis Althusser, one of the most influential leftist thinkers of the 20th century, remains an enigmatic figure: a man whose work rejuvenated Marxist theory through books such as For Marx and Reading Capital, a Communist who strove to create a new framework following the revelations of Stalinist terror... and a victim of mental illness who, in his darkest moment, strangled his wife of more than 30 years.

ALTHUSSER, AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE traces the development of Althusser's thought, which influenced a who's who of French philosophers, including Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes. Credited with reinterpreting Marx in a way that encouraged readers to engage directly with his work, Althusser brought the Freudian concept of overdetermination to Marxist theory, and argued that Marx's work should not be read as one consistent whole, because there was a clear 'break' between his earlier and later writings. But Althusser's most enduring contribution may be the concept of ideological state apparatuses: institutions and social structures including schools, churches, and families, that serve to reinforce the capitalist state.

The film also delves into Althusser's little-understood struggles with the mental illness that would see him hospitalized numerous times throughout his life. In intimate letters to his wife, Helene Rytmann, and mistress, Franca Madonia, Althusser describes his treatment and mental states. As Yves Duroux says, in order to understand the man, one must look not only at his philosophy and relationship with the Communist Party, but to "his own madness" which in some ways linked the two.

ALTHUSSER, AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE captures the man, and the implications of his work, in interviews with friends and colleagues such as Lucien Seve, who served more than 30 years on the central committee of the Communist Party of France, and with philosophers and former students including Etienne Balibar, Pierre Macherey, and Jacques Ranciere.

Throughout his life Althusser avoided the spotlight, preferring to be a behind-the-scenes theoretician arguing the case for Marxist revolution. But included in this film is the only TV interview he gave, shot on a rooftop in Rome in 1980-just weeks before he would kill Helene.

DVD (Color, Black and White) / 2016 / 55 minutes

CATCHING SIGHT OF THELMA & LOUISE

Directed by Jennifer Townsend

Explores the same women's and men's reactions to the groundbreaking film, "Thelma & Louise", 25 years ago and today.

Powerful, authentic, and timely, CATCHING SIGHT OF THELMA & LOUISE dives off the edge into the truth of women's experience in the world. It revisits the journey of Thelma & Louise through the lens of viewers who saw that iconic film in 1991 and shared intimate, personal, stories at that time. The same women and men were tracked down 25 years later. Are their responses different now? Has anything changed in the way women are treated?

Interview commentary mixes with clips from "Thelma & Louise" to reveal why this cinema classic continues to resonate with millions of viewers, the world over. Christopher McDonald, who played Thelma's husband, and Marco St. John, who played the truck driver, offer an insider's viewpoint.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 86 minutes

DEMOCRACY ROAD

By Turid Rogne

After more than 20 years in exile in Norway, the Burmese journalists of DVB are returning to their homeland to establish their independent news station there. Editor-in-chief Aye Chan Naing and reporter Than Win Htut have dreamt about this for years, but their struggle for freedom and democracy is not over yet.

DEMOCRACY ROAD is a road movie documentary following the journalists of DVB in Myanmar in a critical phase of the establishment of the newborn democracy. With their existence as an independent news channel and Myanmar's future as a democracy at stake, senior reporter Than Win Htut and his colleagues hit the road with their groundbreaking show "Our Nation, Our Land." Their goal is to investigate the living conditions of ordinary people off the beaten path in Myanmar, but the machinery of the old dictatorship is still running. Simultaneously, editor-in-chief, Aye Chan Naing, has to negotiate with DVB's former enemies in the infamous Ministry of Information. The road towards democracy has only just begun...

Director Turid Rogne has followed the journalists of DVB for more than 10 years. With both boldness and sensitivity, she tells the story of life in a former dictatorship through the people who try to influence history.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 60 minutes

KINGS OF THE PAGES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMIC STRIPS

Directed by Robert Lemieux

At the turn of the 20th century, two of the most powerful men in America were newspaper magnates William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Noted mostly for their contentious rivalry and sensationalist news coverage, they were also responsible for cultivating some of the era's most recognizable celebrities-Nemo, Krazy, Happy Hooligan, George McManus, Ignatz, Mutt, Buster Brown, Hans and Fritz, and Offissa Pup, to name a few.

In their ongoing battle to attract newspaper readers, both Hearst and Pulitzer had discovered that comic strips were a strategic addition. Often raiding each other's staffs to acquire the best talent, both men recognized the potential. It wasn't until Hearst unveiled the first full color, 8-page comic supplement in 1896, that the potential was fully realized, prompting Hearst's now famous quote motto... "Eight Pages of Iridescent Polychromous Effulgence That Makes The Rainbow Look Like A Lead Pipe!"

Over the next fifty years, that polychromatic effulgence would usher in the Golden Age of the American comic strip. During that time span, more than 150 different strips made their way into America's living rooms. Every week the characters and their creators provided humorous entertainment and tickled many a funny bone. Reading the comics became a cultural phenomenon.

Only available in North America.

DVD / 2016 / 24 minutes

WHAT HAPPENED TO HER

By Kristy Guevara-Flanagan

WHAT HAPPENED TO HER is a forensic exploration of our cultural obsession with images of the dead woman on screen. Interspersing found footage from films and police procedural television shows and one actor's experience of playing the part of a corpse, the film offers a meditative critique on the trope of the dead female body.

The visual narrative of the genre, one reinforced through its intense and pervasive repetition, is revealed as a highly structured pageant. The experience of physical invasion and exploitation voiced by the actor pierce the fabric of the screened fantasy. The result is recurring and magnetic film cliche laid bare. Essential viewing for Pop Culture, Women's and Cinema Studies classes.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 15 minutes

BAPTISM OF FIRE, A

By Jerome Clement-Wilz

"As it gets harder to sell pictures, we take greater and greater risks," explains Corentin Fohlen. A war correspondent still in his twenties, Fohlen is part of a new generation of freelance journalists who fly to war zones from Libya to Afghanistan on their own dime in the hope of selling images to news media outlets.

But the carefree attitude of youth can change when confronted with the harsh reality of life in wartime. When a colleague is killed in Syria, Fohlen's thirst for adventure turns into a deeper reflection on the meaning of work and life. Director Clement-Wilz followed Fohlen through shells and bullets for four years in order to create this riveting portrait of the life of a contemporary war correspondent.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2015 / 52 minutes

CAFFEINATED

Director: Hanh Nguyen, Vishal Solanki

Every cup of coffee has a story... one that begins in a lush tropical field and ends at your breakfast table. Caffeinated is a fascinating globe-hopping examination of this journey from bean to cup. A host of coffee specialists from the bean harvesters of such coffee-growing regions as Nicaragua, Guatemala and India to American shop owners to Italian industry insiders weigh in on the history and cultural impact of coffee, from the art of roasting and taste-testing to the unsung skills of your local barista. Caffeinated is a compelling, comprehensive look into the world of coffee that will leave you appreciating your morning cup as more than just a caffeine fix!

DVD (Region 1, Color) / 2015 / 80 minutes

DREAMS REWIRED

Narrated by Tilda Swinton By Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart & Thomas Tode

Tilda Swinton's hypnotic voiceover and a treasure trove of rare archival footage culled from hundreds of films from the 1880s through the 1930s-much of it previously unseen-combine to trace the anxieties of today's hyper-connected world back a hundred years. Then, too, electric media sparked idealism in the public imagination-hailed as the beginning of an era of total communication, annihilation of distance and the end of war. But then, too, fears over the erosion of privacy, security, morality proved to be well-founded.

DREAMS REWIRED traces contemporary appetites and anxieties back to the birth of the telephone, television and cinema. At the time, early electric media were as revolutionary as social media are now. The technologies were expected to serve everyone, not just the elite classes. Human relationships would become stronger, efficiency would increase and the society would be revolutionized... But these initial promises were very different from what new media eventually brought to daily life.

Using excerpts from early dramatic films, slapstick comedies, political newsreels, advertisements and recordings of scientific experiments culled during years of research in film archives around the world, co-directors Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart and Thomas Tode unearth material that is by turns hilarious, revelatory, beautiful and prescient. The archival footage, combined with poetic narration and a virtuosic score by Siegfried Friedrich forges a cross-generational connection between contemporary viewers and their idealistic forbearers of a century ago.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2015 / 85 minutes

FEAR NO FRUIT

Director: Mark Brian Smith Starring: Frieda Rapoport Caplan

Frieda Caplan, "The Queen of Kiwi," was the first woman to own a business on the L.A. Wholesale Produce Market in the 1960s. Over the past 50 plus years, Frieda's company has introduced more than 200 exotic fruits and vegetables to the U.S., transforming the supermarket produce department. The film chronicles Frieda's rise against the odds, introducing the Kiwifruit to America in 1962, taking the business to the next level with her two daughters at the helm, and establishing her impact on American cuisine. Set in California, from the farm to the supermarket, Fear No Fruit climaxes in San Luis Obispo at California Polytechnic State University, where a tireless 91-year-old Frieda receives an honorary doctorate, inspiring an audience of 30,000.

DVD (Region 1, Color) / 2015 / 96 minutes

FEED THE GREEN: FEMINIST VOICES FOR THE EARTH

By Jane Caputi

FEED THE GREEN: FEMINIST VOICES FOR THE EARTH, by Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies professor and scholar Jane Caputi, challenges the cultural imagination surrounding the destruction of the environment and the link and influence on femicide and genocide.

No nation is immune to the effects of global warming, but the impacts of climate change are felt disproportionately by those who face racial and socioeconomic inequalities. In the US, African Americans, Hispanics and other racial and ethnic minorities are more vulnerable to climate change. Globally the effects from global warming are likely to be unequal, with the world's poorest and developing regions lacking the economic and institutional capacity to cope and adapt.

FEED THE GREEN features a variety of feminist thinkers, including ecological and social justice advocates Vandana Shiva and Andrea Smith, ecosexual activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens; ecofeminist theorist and disability rights activist Ynestra King, poet Camille Dungy, scholars and bloggers Janell Hobson and Jill Schneiderman and grass roots activist La Loba Loca. Their voices are powerfully juxtaposed with images from popular culture, including advertising, myth, art, and the news, pointing to the ways that an environmentally destructive worldview is embedded in popular discourses, both contemporary and historical. Required viewing for Women's and Environmental Studies as well as Pop Culture.

DVD (Color) / 2015 / 35 minutes

HOT TYPE: 150 YEARS OF THE NATION

Director: Barbara Kopple

Hot Type: 150 Years of The Nation is a vivid, inside look at America's oldest continuously published weekly magazine. Shot over three years in intimate, cinema verite style, the film captures the day-to-day pressures and challenges of publishing the progressive magazine as it follows reporters out into the field, the editors who shape their work, and the editor-in chief who tries to keep all of the plates spinning.

Writers are the heart and soul of the magazine, and the film follows them extensively. Sasha Abramsky travels to West Texas to report on the years-long drought that has gripped the region and the devastating economic impact on farmers and residents. John Nichols unpacks what's going on behind the effort to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Amy Wilentz visits the "temporary" tent camps of Haiti, three years after the earthquake, to shed light on the dire conditions and lackluster international response. And Dani McClain reports on the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, and its dynamic leader Rev. William Barber, as they push back against an extreme right-wing takeover of the state legislature.

In all of the current-day reported stories, The Nation's incredible trove of archival articles - and roster of writers - acts as an historical touchstone and illuminates how the past continuously ripples through and shapes current events.

At a fascinating moment in American history - politically, socially and culturally - the media landscape is changing at breathtaking speed. The film charts the journey of The Nation - and the nation - evolving into the future, as it is guided by its remarkable past.

DVD / 2015 / 92 minutes

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD

Director: Jerry Rothwell

How to Change the World chronicles the adventures of an eclectic group of young pioneers - Canadian hippie journalists, photographers, musicians, scientists, and American draft dodgers - who set out to stop Richard Nixon's atomic bomb tests in Amchitka, Alaska, and end up creating the worldwide green movement.

Greenpeace was founded on tight knit, passionate friendships forged in Vancouver in the early 1970s. Together they pioneered a template for environmental activism which mixed daring iconic feats and worldwide media: placing small rubber inflatables between harpooners and whales, blocking ice-breaking sealing ships with their bodies, spraying the pelts of baby seals with dye to make them valueless in the fur market. The group had a prescient understanding of the power of media, knowing that the advent of global mass communications meant that the image had become a more effective tool for change than the strike or the demonstration.

DVD (Region 1, Color) / 2015 / 109 minutes

LOVE BETWEEN THE COVERS

By Laurie Kahn

Romance novels comprise over a billion dollars a year in book sales, outselling science fiction, fantasy, and mystery combined. So why is the genre so often dismissed as frivolous "scribble" rather than elevated as a radical literary form that pushes the envelope on gender, race, and diversity? The heroic characters, prolific writers, and voracious readers that dominate romantic fiction are primarily women. Witty and intelligent, these lovers of the written word form a collaborative, supportive, and dynamic community where readers and writers inspire one another. Emmy Award Winning director Laurie Kahn (Tupperware!) takes a comprehensive look at what goes into publishing a romantic novel, from the author's inspiration and writing process to the photo shoots for those distinctive cover designs. Speaking with literary scholars, romance fanatics, aspiring writers, and award-winning authors, including Nora Roberts, Eloisa James, Beverly Jenkins, and Radclyffe, this documentary offers fascinating insights into this female-centric literary world.

DVD (Color) / 2015 / 84 minutes

ON BEAUTY

By Joanna Rudnick

From Emmy-nominated IN THE FAMILY filmmaker Joanna Rudnick and Chicago's Kartemquin Films comes a story about challenging norms and redefining beauty. ON BEAUTY follows fashion photographer Rick Guidotti, who left the fashion world when he grew frustrated with having to work within the restrictive parameters of the industry's standard of beauty. After a chance encounter with a young woman who had the genetic condition albinism, Rick re-focused his lens on those too often relegated to the shadows to change the way we see and experience beauty.

At the center of ON BEAUTY are two of Rick's photo subjects: Sarah and Jayne. In eighth grade Sarah left public school because she was bullied so harshly for the birthmark on her face and brain. Jayne lives with albinism in Eastern Africa where society is blind to her unique health and safety needs and where witch doctors hunt people with her condition to sell their body parts. We follow Rick as he uses his lens to challenge convention and media's narrow scope of with the help of two extraordinary women.

DVD (Color) / 2015 / 31 minutes

PROJECT Z

Directed by Phillip Gara

An investigation into how war games, worst-case scenarios, complex systems, and networked media produce the very crises they seek to model, predict and report.

As the Cold War ends, a professor goes in search of an America without an enemy. Armed with a Hi8 video camera and inspired by the detective work of Walter Benjamin, he heads deep into the inner circles of the defense, entertainment and media industries, where he discovers a worst-case future being built from war games, video games, and language games.

Some thirty years later, a group of student filmmakers find the videotapes in a filing cabinet, along with a stack of old newspaper clippings, audio interviews and photographs. With the help of friends from the Global Media Project, the filmmaker produces an experimental documentary that goes back to the future, where they find the original maps for a new world order. An unexpected warning is found on the outermost edges of the maps: "Beware of Zombies!"

The result is PROJECT Z, a film that updates another warning, issued by President Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address, about the emergence of a "military-industrial complex" and the consequences should "public policy be captured by a scientific and technological elite".

Combining rare footage from inside the war machine with corrosive commentary by leading critics of global violence, injustice, and inequality, the film challenges the living to write their own future before the walking dead conjure the final global event.

DVD / 2015 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 74 minutes

SEX, LIES AND TABLOIDS!

By Jean-Baptiste Peretie

They're lurid, obnoxious, disdainful and explicit. And we love them - and love to hate them.

SEX, LIES AND TABLOIDS! charts the rise and fall of tabloid papers in the UK and US, including the New York Post, The Sun, and notorious supermarket tabloids like the National Enquirer and The Star.

In the beginning, they were upstarts. Papers that shamelessly pandered with stories about sex scandals, and celebrities - often skirting ethical lines, and sometimes outright making things up ("Run it through the typewriter again," was one editor's mantra.) But by the 1980s and '90s they had become the media heavyweights. Left behind by the tabloids' coverage of Bill Clinton's sex life, Princess Diana and the OJ Simpson trial, the mainstream media started to adopt their techniques.

SEX, LIES AND TABLOIDS! Features extensive interviews with key tabloid players such as notorious editor Kelvin MacKenzie ("If you have no news... you get a picture of Diana and make it as big as possible"), journalist Paul McMullan ("People need to understand that privacy is an evil, bad concept"), and the late Vincent Musetto (famed for the headline "Headless body in topless bar"). The film provides an insider's account of the no-holds-barred mentality driving tabloid journalism while also using fun and campy footage mimicking the style of the tabloids themselves.

Eventually, the tabs would go too far. Briefly chastened by the death of Diana and shunned after the British phone hacking scandal, the papers would go into a downward spiral, with The News of the World even shutting down. But culture they spawned is stronger than ever. Sites like TMZ and The Smoking Gun and an omni-present gotcha culture have brought the spirit of the tabloids to the Internet. At the same time, the ubiquity of sharing means photos that would once have been prized by paparazzi (hello Kim Kardashian in a bikini) are posted by celebrities and would-be-celebs themselves. The tabloids may be gone, but the tabloid spirit is everywhere.

DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2015 / 52 minutes

WORLD ACCORDING TO RUSSIA TODAY, THE

By Misja Pekel

In 2014, Malaysian Airlines passenger flight 17 was shot down with a rocket intended for the private plane of Russian president Vladimir Putin... If, that is, a viewer is relying on the satellite TV network Russia Today as their source for news.

These claims were not the first time Russia Today drew attention for counter-factual reporting: during the 2008 war in Georgia, the network reported that South Ossetians were the victims of genocide at the hands of Georgians. In 2014, the channel was warned by the British TV agency for its biased and inaccurate reporting on the uprising on Maidan Square in Kiev. The list goes on and on.

Russia Today (now renamed just RT) was launched in 2005 to bring a Russian-centric perspective on current political events to a global audience. After a decade of generous Kremlin funding, 2015 found the 24-hour news channel the biggest media organization on YouTube with 2 billion viewers: more than CNN and the BBC combined.

The network claims only to offer an alternative perspective to the monolithic view presented by mainstream Western media. But what kind of "reporting" is Russia Today actually doing? What is it like to work for the channel? How much influence does the Kremlin really have there? Is it possible to differentiate between fact and opinion on a Russian channel when the Russian interests are at stake?

In Misja Pekel's disturbing documentary THE WORLD ACCORDING TO RUSSIA TODAY, former and current news anchors, editors and correspondents for the network-including William Dunbar, Sara Firth, Marc de Jersey, Afshin Rattansi and Liz Wahl-join journalists and media professionals Alexander Nekrassov, Peter Pomerantsev, Richard Sambrook, Daniel Sandford, Derk Sauer and more in a detailed dissection of the channel's modus operandi and the challenges and dangers of reporting and consuming news in a globalized world.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2015 / 40 minutes

http://www.learningemall.com/News/Media_Society_202102.html

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mtooker21ahsgov · 4 years

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Political Interest Groups and PACs Assessment

1. Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice

2. The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to reduce society's reliance on incarceration as a solution to social problems.

3. This group believes that everyone deserves support, not incarceration, whether they are juvenile or adult. This interest group advocates for providing direct services, technical assistance, and policy analysis as well as model direct service programs. The CJCJ promotes prop 17, Senate Bill 284, and 439, and Assembly Bill 1007, which all highlight the same thing; keeping youth close to home with community support and out of prison. Special interest groups are valuable for CJCJ because they most heavily influence policy. Regular people are significant in their strategy to reach out to the public and politicians because they can involve them more closely in the research (data) and cause and effect they will have on youth.

4. One specific group the CJCJ desires to have on their side is the Republican party because they believe in minimum mandatory sentencing, which goes against the beliefs of the CJCJ. An article written in 2016 by Mike Males, who works at the center, conducted a study of republican district attorneys VS Democratic district attorneys and found “A youth arrested for a felony in 2014 was 2.4 times more likely to have his or her case direct filed in a county with a Republican DA compared to a Democratic DA”. This is not only a statement but has hard evidence to back up their claim. Because of this, they want to encourage republicans to be more moderate minded when it comes to these cases.

5. This group is located in San Francisco and serves all of Northern California. There have been local meetings in the past hosted by the CJCJ; however, there have not been meetings since 2015. Their website also does not include if the public is available to attend the meetings.

6. There are multiple volunteer opportunities and job opportunities where people can apply. Some volunteer opportunities include: authored policy and data analysis publications, authored opinion editorials published in statewide and national news forums, Maintained CJCJ's social networking presence through blog writing and other multimedia channels that distribute to the broader criminal justice community, and developed and updated program manuals used to train direct service staff. Job opportunities include Bilingual clinical case manager, recruitment specialists (community-based), and policy analyst.

7. Something I find intriguing about this group is the extensive community outreach programs that help youth get involved and on the right track. One specific thing that interests me is their Cameo house, helping women and children as alternative sentencing to prison. I think something like this is much more personal for people who are struggling.

1. Justice & Public Safety

2. This Super Pac serves to protect people and includes equal justice and public safety.

3. They have raised 2.1 Million dollars in 2020 and have spent two million dollars in Independent Expenditures

4. Zero dollars are spent, for either Republican or Democratic parties. This finding does surprise me, only because they say they are supporters (or are associated) of the democratic/liberal party, yet they have not made any contributions towards the party.

5. Some of their donors include SOROS FUND MANAGEMENT, who has made two contributions towards the PAC. Another doner includes JUSTICE & PUBLIC SAFETY (527), which supports their cause directly. Soros fund management is a private investment firm, so I can assume they know the firm personally and have acquired large donations from them.

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arcticdementor · 4 years

Link

In 2016, voters on both sides of the Atlantic shocked the political establishment by voting for Brexit and Donald Trump. In the eyes of their critics, these movements represented the resurgence of dangerous forms of populism and nationalism. Combined with earlier “nationalist-populist” victories in central Europe, and rising support for populist parties elsewhere, commentators at the time predicted—or, in most cases, feared—that a populist wave could soon sweep across the West and beyond.

Four years later, such a wave has not materialized, though populism has hardly disappeared. Andrzej Duda recently won reelection in Poland, while Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has held on to its supermajority in parliament, and populist parties represent significant voting blocs in legislatures around the world. After a three-year interlude, the United Kingdom has moved forward with Brexit under the premiership of Boris Johnson.

Today, as another U.S. presidential election approaches, it is worth taking stock of the transformations that have—and have not—occurred within American conservatism during the last four years. If Trump goes down to defeat this November, some will suggest that any attempted reconfiguration of the American Right provoked by his 2016 election was a misbegotten effort, and that, after a four-year hiatus, global liberalism can now safely resume. But a closer examination of right-wing populism’s trajectory, both within and outside the United States, suggests that such a return to Bush-era conservatism is unlikely. Regardless of what happens in the November election, the gaps between conservative ideology and practical realities will continue to push right-wing parties in postliberal directions and will continue to favor political, if not necessarily partisan, realignment.

…

Michael Lind has described the situation as a new class war. “A transatlantic class war has broken out simultaneously in many Western countries,” he writes, “between elites based in the corporate, financial, government, media, and educational sectors and disproportionately native working-class populists. The old spectrum of left and right has given way to a new dichotomy in politics among insiders and outsiders.”3 Lee Drutman’s much-discussed analysis of the 2016 electorate in the United States indicates how this reconfiguration has begun to unfold. Comparing the social and economic views of voters for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016, Drutman found, not surprisingly, that traditionally conservative voters favored Trump and traditionally liberal voters favored Clinton. What propelled Trump to victory was his three-to-one win over Clinton among populist voters—those liberal (i.e., Left) on economic issues and conservative on social questions and matters of identity. Most strikingly, populists made up 28.9 percent of the American electorate in 2016, whereas libertarian voters—those conservative on economics and Left or liberal on social questions—were only 3.8 percent of the electorate.4

It was Trump’s performance among the large number of populist voters and Trump’s disregard of libertarians that shocked the American Right in particular. Ever since Frank Meyer and William F. Buckley patched together “fusionist” conservatism in the 1950s and ’60s, the American Right has combined social and cultural traditionalism with a broadly libertarian economic outlook. The terminology has long been confusing, as American conservatives have typically held views called liberal or neoliberal in the European context: they argue for a small state with minimal intervention in the private sector; they favor (at least in theory) the privatization or elimination of many government services; and they are suspicious of public benefits as well as public services, but they make an exception for a strong military. This alliance was driven by the turn of the Democrats toward the Left, although the Democratic Party had previously been home to socially conservative Catholic immigrants who favored the corporatist agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.

…

One additional factor is needed before explaining how the Republican Party and American conservatives responded to Trump’s victory. Tocqueville was correct when he observed that America was a society full of associations, with citizens constantly forming new groups to push for political and social changes of every variety. Over the second half of the twentieth century, however, many of these associations changed from organic expressions of citizen concern to large foundations which advanced the agendas of their donors. On the right, this change meant that conservative think tanks, activist groups, and the like adopted an almost universally libertarian viewpoint—as the donors endowing these foundations held libertarian views on economics—albeit under the banner of “fusionism.” Consequently, at typical conservative conferences for university students, socially conservative students are imbued with libertarian free market doctrines (though rarely any serious empirical study of modern markets and firms).

…

The end of the Cold War and the success of Bill Clinton’s neoliberal presidency—during which he incorporated welfare reform, free trade, and stricter criminal justice policies into the Democratic platform—convinced libertarians and neoliberals on the right and left that their moment was at hand. The Republican Party came to power in the U.S. Congress in the 1994 elections on a mission to slash government spending and welfare benefits. “The era of big government,” said Clinton in his 1996 State of the Union, “is over.” While the GOP did not achieve all its dreams (it had also hoped to eliminate numerous federal agencies like the Department of Education), free trade agreements such as nafta and Chinese accession to the WTO were signed with bipartisan support. During this period, the United States conceived of a future economy that would combine the monetization of internet technology and a transition from heavy manufacturing employment to a service-sector economy (hospitality, etc.). With a few exceptions, American conservatives had little or nothing to say about this change, even as the manufacturing core of the American economy was hollowed out. Fusionist conservatives had outsourced the economic portion of their thinking to libertarians, and they mostly professed their desire to “allow market forces to work.”

In the absence of an economic policy that would help middle- and working-class Americans, however, conservatives’ insistence on conserving traditional family structures became hollow and moralistic. Many otherwise socially conservative black and Hispanic voters have avoided the Republican Party for precisely this reason. But socially conservative white voters, even those whom Republican economic policies do not help, have stayed with the party in the hopes that Republican presidents would appoint socially conservative judges to the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts. A tipping point during the 2016 campaign was Trump’s decision in May of that year to release a list of possible Supreme Court picks in order to reassure pro-life voters of his sympathy with socially conservative causes.

Yet Trump’s appointees have largely disappointed social conservatives with their recent rulings. It seems increasingly clear that, over a period of four decades, the conservative legal movement’s primary success has been to keep Republican voters engaged in a Sisyphean task. America’s underlying liberalism, as Adrian Vermeule put it recently, has meant that “in critical cases, involving central commitments of the unwritten constitution, it is highly likely that one or more of the middling conservative justices” will defect.5 Conservatives have pinned their hope on institutions designed to fail them in critical moments.

…

Following the shock of 2016, American conservatives have divided into three main categories: (1) those who opposed Trump, still oppose him, and hope to regain control of the Republican Party on the standard pro-business, laissez-faire platform of recent decades; (2) those who were initially skeptical about Trump but have rallied around the cause of nationalism; and (3) those who have used the occasion of the Trump presidency to push for a new Right. Let us take a brief look at these three groups.

…

The great hope of the Never Trumpers seems to be that a Trump loss in November, especially a decisive one, will revive their fortunes within the Republican Party. But their political prospects seem limited even in this scenario. Despite advertising themselves as responsible centrists, they have shown essentially zero interest in serious policymaking, focusing almost entirely on Trump’s character, personal scandals, their preferred vision of “American values,” and so on. Meanwhile, the few areas of potential bipartisan collaboration have shifted, for the foreseeable future, mainly to issues of industrial policy and technological competition with China—issues the Never Trumpers have totally ignored, both during the last few years and throughout their entire careers. It was Republicans like Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and Josh Hawley who recently cosponsored the American Foundries Act with Chuck Schumer, for example. And now that Democratic nominee Joe Biden has made issues like industrial policy and “Buy American” key aspects of his campaign, any Republican cooperation with a Biden administration will likely be led by the economic populists. The Never Trumpers are simply irrelevant on these issues, and their actual records when in government remain glaring liabilities for anyone associated with them. Donors and media outlets might have some use for them, as they apparently do today, but neither the Biden administration nor the post-Trump Republican leadership are likely to have much interest in these figures.

Unlike the Never Trumpers, the second group of conservatives have embraced Trump’s “nationalist” rhetoric, but they have otherwise left traditional (anti-statist) American conservatism intact. Among voters, these were Americans who gravitated to Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” along with immigration restrictions and a rejection of globalism in economic and foreign policy. Some conservative intellectuals embraced the nationalist framework from the beginning, such as Michael Anton, whose article “The Flight 93 Election” starkly contrasted the options of Trump and Hillary Clinton. Writing in 2016 at the ironically titled blog Journal of American Greatness under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus (a blog to which I contributed as well), Anton excoriated “checklist conservatives” for having stuck with free market ideology and neoconservative foreign policy even in the face of repeated failures. This group of nationalist conservatives have congregated around the Claremont Institute and its Claremont Review of Books and affiliated publications. Aside from becoming generally more nationalist on foreign and immigration policy, however, this group has had little to say about the implications of broader political realignment.

In summer 2019, the Israeli intellectual Yoram Hazony launched a conference in Washington under the name “National Conservatism,” aiming to gather intellectuals and politicos who reject the Never Trump framework. Hazony’s own defense of nationalism, published in the 2018 book The Virtue of Nationalism, is itself sui generis. In Hazony’s account, nations are the permanent opposition to empires, against which they always find themselves locked in struggle, though it is difficult to fit into this framework nations that became or acquired empires (what would anti-imperial nationalism say about Algeria, for example?). Hazony’s view of nations is based heavily on the Old Testament and the experience of Israel and England, as well as a peculiarly English view of conservatism as subrational and traditionalist. National Conservatism is also markedly Protestant in an old-fashioned way, as Hazony has promoted the view that Henry VIII’s actions constituted the first Brexit in resistance to ecclesiastical imperialism. While openly aligning itself with European populists and nationalists, however, National Conservatism has had little to say about the sources of continental right-wing thought, from Roman law to the Catholic Church, or about the conservative use of the state.

…

The difficulty facing National Conservatism, however, is that it is primarily oriented toward rethinking conservatism itself rather than thinking primarily about the challenges of contemporary politics. National Conservatism and (anti-Trump) Principled Conservatism are both arguments over the content of conservatism. In the Anglo-American context, National Conservatism, as Hazony frames it, highlights historical empiricism (or traditionalism), nationalism (i.e., against imperialism), religion, and limited executive power. While the “nationalism” element of National Conservatism is transferable to other countries, historical empiricism and limited executive power are not the most pressing political concepts, particularly in times of economic crisis and emergency.

…

Thus most of the conservative activists wearing MAGA hats at Trump rallies or conservative political conventions are simply anti-immigration libertarians. Talk to them about the need for the state to support domestic manufacturing, or the need to boost family formation through a Hungarian-style benefit program, and they will probably call you a socialist. In general, aside from opposition to immigration and support for the American military, they have no vision of how the government is to be used at all. In different circumstances, they would revert to an anti-government stance along with opposition to increases in federal spending.

…

The third group of conservatives are those who take Trump’s election, Brexit, and the rise of populist political movements in Europe to demonstrate that the configuration of political ideologies immediately prior to 2016 had fallen out of step with conditions on the ground. As it is to this group that I myself belong, I transition here from describing the circumstances of American conservatism to outlining, however briefly, an argument for this vision of the Right.

American conservatism has been anti-statist since it coalesced in opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s expansionary New Deal during the Great Depression, and particularly in its formulation after World War II. Even among conservatives who are not anti-statist per se, hostility to and skepticism of the federal government runs deep. The state is considerably less visible in daily life in America than elsewhere: health care is privately administered, public universities are not free, taxes are not suffocating, and labor is more lightly regulated. Yet most American conservative intellectuals, activists, journalists, think tank staff, and the like still act as though the primary enemy is the federal government, or use alarming rhetoric about taxation that has not been changed since the days of much higher tax rates before Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 and 1986.

From the standpoint of the postliberal Right, the liberal view of the state as a keeper of the peace and preserver of individual liberties—the view of most American conservatives before Trump—is not an adequate answer to the present situation. A correction in the direction of the state is needed. On this point the American Right has much to learn from the European Right. And as discussed above, the constituencies that delivered the Republicans to power in 2016 would likely agree. According to a major March 2019 survey of U.S. adults, pluralities of respondents favor increased federal spending in almost every category: education, veterans benefits, rebuilding highways and bridges, Medicare, environmental protection, health care, scientific research, Social Security, assistance to the needy, domestic anti-terrorism, military defense, and assistance to the needy in the world. Only in the category of assistance to the unemployed did respondents favor keeping spending the same (43 percent) rather than increasing it (31 percent).6 Trump’s victory additionally suggests that there is a majority of Americans who favor increased state intervention to align economic production with the national interest, and who favor an end to the increasingly punitive and destabilizing form of cultural progressivism dominant at present, and a correction in favor of the family.

The way to view this movement is that a maintenance or increase of state power in the United States is going to continue. The question is simply whether the Right is willing to use power when it has access to it, and use it for the sake of the common good. Twentieth-century conservatives’ devotion to unregulated markets and libertarianism has now contributed to a series of financial crises, the loss of U.S. manufacturing, and a completely demoralized society. Yet many conservatives continue to speak as though libertarianism is the solution.

…

If we consider the policy areas that can and should drive political change in the United States, two areas stand out for the new American Right: family policy and industrial policy. On the first, merely speaking about the cultural pressures that families face, as American conservatives have typically done, is not enough. Too many families cannot afford children, and all the factors hindering the choice to raise children are only becoming exacerbated in the post-Covid-19 world. The United States has the fiscal resources for a family policy, like that pioneered in Hungary and elsewhere, that would meaningfully support the formation of families—and the creation, for conservatives, of a stable electoral base. In the fall 2019 American Affairs, I outlined what a FamilyPay proposal should look like in the United States, centered on an annual $6,500 benefit for married couples with one child, $11,500 for two, and so on. As the response to coronavirus shows, rapid political change is possible under extreme circumstances, and the Right must be ready to go with spending plans that buoy American families during a time of severe economic distress.

…

The second area of advance in conservative thinking concerns industrial policy. In the United States, industrial policy largely disappeared from public discourse after the end of the Cold War and the worldwide trend toward liberalization. During that time, though, the United States arguably implemented a different kind of industrial policy—of moving labor offshore and transitioning to a digital and service-sector economy. Since 1990, China in particular has rapidly increased its share of value-added in high-tech manufacturing, while U.S. manufacturing productivity growth has stalled. American companies have become less innovative, not more; they do less investment, not more; and many spend a significant portion of their profits boosting their own stock prices. The result is that the number of low-wage, low-productivity service sector jobs has increased, while many critical manufacturing sectors have slumped.

Politicians like Senators Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton, in particular, are putting industrial policy back on the map, arguing that national security requires us to maintain industrial capacity, not only through Trump-style trade actions but through directing American investment toward strategic sectors. Government reports from Rubio’s office have emphasized the need to counteract China’s plan to dominate world manufacturing by 2025, a view which has since become something of a bipartisan consensus. While industrial policy has often been thought to be more appropriate for developing economies, the frightening reality is that Western economies are or soon will be merely “developing” compared to Chinese advances in 5G communications, artificial intelligence, and many other fields. The coronavirus crisis has also highlighted American dependence on Chinese-manufactured pharmaceuticals and medical equipment; the pressing need for an American industrial policy can no longer be ignored.

Moreover, the postliberal priorities of industrial policy and family policy are complementary. A comprehensive family policy will give statesmen on the right the stability from which to implement an ambitious industrial policy (and pursue concomitant goals of stronger labor policy and workforce skills development).

…

What the Right has not yet found is an ideology through which to integrate these elements of a new politics that takes advantage of the state for the sake of the common good. Indeed, the Right has implausibly convinced itself that modern conservatism is not an ideology at all. As the reaction against liberal democracy’s system of separations implies, however, majority or potentially majority constituencies across the West want their nations to be integral wholes: to have control over their borders, an economy put in the service of the common good, the ability to raise successful families, and the capacity to maintain their strategic advantage in the face of rising adversaries.

The discovery in 2016 of voters with morally right-wing and economically “statist” views has been mirrored elsewhere. In the United Kingdom, this group turned out in force, both in the 2016 Brexit referendum and in the December 2019 elections that were in effect a second referendum on Brexit. The same voter group has kept Victor Orbán in power in Hungary, and has established and expanded a right-wing majority in Poland—most recently sending Andrzej Duda to a second presidential term, even in the face of a concerted international campaign to delegitimize his election in advance. Countries previously thought to be immune to populism, like Spain, show growing movements in this direction. Italy has grown even cooler toward the European Union since the EU effectively hung it out to dry during the Covid-19 crisis earlier this year. And while the French Right is politically divided, a union of right-wing forces there would be politically formidable. While the circumstances are different, each of these changes follows a similar path. At some point along the way, an enterprising right-wing party realizes that liberalism has become an exhausted ideology—exhausted because it is incapable of clearly articulating what the common good is, and incapable of inspiring the loyalty and shared sacrifice that nation-states require to function.

Everywhere that the Right is successful, it is shifting toward a postliberal political stance to reintegrate society, economy, and the state. To do so, it must begin with a base of socially conservative voters, since voters split more strongly on social issues than on economic ones. Instead of trying to turn these voters into economic liberals, the Right should give them what they want: an economy oriented toward the nation by employing the means of state, and a society that is supportive of family life. Internally, this move will require the Right to change itself markedly. However important the traditions of Anglo‑American conservatism may be for some strains of conservatism, the moment is one in which politics and the state must reassert themselves against the attempt to dissolve them into markets and a borderless globalism. That will require the Right to become more corporatist in its approach to directing business activity in the national interests, and more integralist in its view of the link between government and the common good. The word integralism has come back into vogue in English, not to posit some immediate union of church and state, but to argue that the liberal separation of politics and the common good is unsustainable and must be reintegrated. Whatever word we use to label it, the policies of the next Right are already in evidence: it will use the power of the state to coordinate business and industrial enterprises toward the common goods of peace and strength, while pursuing macroeconomic policies that shore up the cultural base required for any functioning polity. In doing so, moreover, the Right’s focus will inevitably shift from internal debates over the content of conservatism to external coalition building and effecting a larger political realignment.

#gladden pappin #american affairs #read the whole thing

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

It may seem strange that former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is entering the presidential race, as he will reportedly announce on Thursday. It’s really late. The field still has 16 ”major” candidates. And Democratic voters really like the group of people already running. But Patrick has a clear rationale for running — even if his odds of winning the nomination are pretty low.

Democrats, as I wrote earlier this week, have a somewhat unorthodox set of front-runners — at least when compared to past nominees. Joe Biden is on the old side (76). Pete Buttigieg is on the young side (37). Elizabeth Warren is very liberal. And Bernie Sanders is both very liberal and old (78). The last two Democrats to win a general election — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — were 40-somethings who ran on somewhat safe ideological platforms.

Patrick, meanwhile, is 63 years old — not young, exactly, but not in his upper 70s either. He served two terms as Massachusetts governor. He’s liberal, but unlikely to push more controversial liberal policies such as Medicare for All or more drastic ones such as a wealth tax. I assume that Patrick, who is friendly with Obama, is himself wary of the current Democratic field and its lack of a Bill Clinton or Barack Obama style figure, and that his circle includes a lot of Democratic Party operatives and donors who see this void and encouraged him to run. (Or at least didn’t discourage him.)

You might think that Patrick’s logical path is to compete with Biden for black voters, and with Warren and Sanders for New Hampshire voters (all three come from neighboring states). And sure, it would help Patrick if he can peel off some of Warren’s well-educated liberal voters, particularly in New Hampshire. And to win the nomination, he will probably have to close the big lead that Biden has with African-Americans. But I think the real opening for Patrick is essentially to replace Pete Buttigieg as the candidate for voters who want a charismatic, optimistic, left-but-not-that-left candidate. Patrick, I think, is betting that there’s a “Goldilocks” opportunity for him — “Buttigieg but older,” or “Biden but younger” — a candidate who is viewed as both safe on policy and safe on electability grounds by Democratic establishment types and voters who just want a somewhat generic Democratic candidate that they are confident will win the general election.

After all, in his rise in Massachusetts politics, Patrick was not that reliant on black support — the Bay State has a fairly small black population (9 percent). Instead, he won a competitive 2006 Democratic primary for governor by emerging as preferred candidate among the state’s white, educated, activist class.

On paper, Patrick seems fairly similar to Cory Booker and Kamala Harris — charismatic, black, left-but-not-that-left. But he has two potential advantages over them. First, Patrick has a last-mover advantage — he’s seen how the other candidates have ran and can begin his candidacy to take advantage of perceived weaknesses. As a new candidate, voters might also give him a fresh look in a way that perhaps the two senators haven’t been able to get. But more importantly, Booker and Harris both spent the first half of the year trying to win some of the more liberal voters, who are likely now with Warren and Sanders. That may have made Harris, in particular, appear as though she was trying to be all things to all people. Patrick can now enter the race knowing that he is trying to win Democrats who self-identify as “moderate” and “somewhat liberal,” basically conceding the most liberal voters to Warren and Sanders.

Patrick currently works at Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Democrats spent 2012 criticizing because Mitt Romney had long worked there. That looked like a huge liability this time last year, when Patrick flirted with but ultimately ruled out a run. Back then, it seemed like the party’s left was ascendant and Patrick’s Bain work would be a deal-breaker. Now, I expect Patrick to be more unapologetic about his work, essentially leaning into the idea that he is more moderate and pro-capitalism than Warren or Sanders.

It all sounds pretty good on paper, right? You can almost see why Patrick decided to launch such a late, long-shot bid.

There is a potential problem, though: I’m not sure voters really want Buttigieg-but-older or Biden-but-younger. Whatever the Democratic elites think, Democratic voters like the current field, as I noted above. That makes me think that people in Iowa, where the South Bend mayor is surging, are not looking for Buttigieg-but-older. They’re probably well aware of how old Buttigieg is — he talks about it all the time! Biden, meanwhile, has led in national polls most of the year and has solid leads in Nevada and South Carolina — it’s possible many voters view his age and related experience as a feature not a bug. Patrick will be a fresh candidate and perhaps have a more honed message, but in the end may register with actual voters not much differently than Booker or Harris or any of the other lower-tier candidates, black or non-black.

I’m less concerned that Patrick can’t raise money or build campaign organizations in key states, although those are obviously challenges for him as well since he’s entering the race so late. (For example, the filing deadlines for two Super Tuesday states, Alabama and Arkansas, have already passed.) If he can manage to catch on with voters and thus rises in the polls, I’d bet donors and even staffers from the lagging 13 campaigns will switch to the former governor. If he is a really strong candidate, Patrick can make up for not competing in Alabama and Arkansas. Patrick will also face questions from progressive activists from his years as a corporate lawyer, particularly his tenure on the board at the now-defunct Ameriquest, which foreclosed thousands of homes in low-income areas during the early 2000’s. But I think voters who are wary of his business career and won’t support him for those reasons are already pretty firmly in the Warren and Sanders camps.

So my bottom line: Patrick is a more logical candidate to lead the Democratic Party than 77-year-old Michael Bloomberg, who has also been considering a last-ditch candidacy. The former New York City mayor is old, had tense relationships with black activists in the city and isn’t that closely tied to the Democratic Party. Patrick is black, not that old, a former civil rights lawyer and a stalwart Democrat. He would have been a totally logical Democratic nominee in 2016 and even 2020 if he had run a traditional campaign from the beginning. His late entrance, however, makes his path really, really hard. I’m sure the donor crowd that he talks to is convinced that the Democrats have four flawed frontrunners. But I’m not sure that the voters will agree.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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6hillgrove · 4 years

Text

Week Ahead In The News

Richard Hillgrove Founder of 6 Hillgrove PR takes a look at the week ahead.

News diary 9-15 March:

Chinese firm Jingye Group’s acquisition of British Steel is expected to complete on Monday in a deal that could save thousands of steelmaking jobs in the north of England. Jingye has committed to investing £1.2bn at its new sites in Scunthorpe and Teesside, and the deal marks a significant boost for an industry that has been hit hard in recent years by plant closures and the US-led tariff wars.

Former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is due to go on trial at Edinburgh’s High Court after being charged with multiple sex offences. Salmond faces a total of 14 counts including attempted rape and sexual assault, with all offences alleged to have taken place over a six-year period during his time in office. Salmond denied the charges during a preliminary hearing in November and the trial is expected to wrap up in the first week of April.

A royal reunion takes place at Westminster Abbey when the departing Duke and Duchess of Sussex join The Queen and family at the annual Commonwealth Service. The event, expected to be the couple’s final public engagement as senior royals, features an address from boxer Anthony Joshua and performances from Rewind hitmaker Craig David and X Factor winner Alexandra Burke.

Former House of Commons speaker John Bercow delivers a keynote speech on Tuesday at a conference to discuss Parliament and Brexit hosted by UK in a Changing Europe. The speech follows the release of Bercow’s autobiography Unspeakable, which details the thinking behind the controversial adjudications he made as Speaker during Parliament’s debates and votes on Brexit.

Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Washington and North Dakota hold primaries to choose their state’s Democratic presidential nominee. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders fell into second place following Joe Biden’s surprise resurgence on Super Tuesday; this week’s contests will see whether the former Vice President can sustain his newfound “joementum”.

Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren have both dropped out following a series of disappointing performances, making it now a two-man race to the convention.

On Wednesday, Rishi Sunak presents his first Budget just 27 days after replacing Sajid Javid as Chancellor with a less-than-ringing endorsement from his former boss.]

Sunak’s task of delivering on Conservative manifesto pledges within existing fiscal rules, which the influential IFS think tank has suggested would be impossible without tax rises, has been illustrated in recent days by a row over fuel duty. Some of the more difficult choices may therefore be saved for later in the year, with this Budget expected to be the first in a trio of fiscal events for the Chancellor.

Alongside the Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility publishes a forecast for the UK’s public finances which was delayed from last year by Boris Johnson’s decision to hold an election. The forecast is likely to repeat last year’s notes of caution around weak growth and Brexit-related uncertainty, and may also factor in the potential impact of a global coronavirus outbreak, all of which could leave the Chancellor with little wriggle room in future fiscal statements. To comply with its statutory requirement to produce two forecasts each year, the OBR also releases a second, updated forecast on Friday in something of a double swansong for the departing Robert Chote.

Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein faces up to 25 years in prison at his sentencing in New York, after being found guilty of third-degree rape and a criminal sex act at the conclusion of a lengthy trial last month. The hearing won’t mark the end of the Weinstein saga: he reportedly plans to appeal the conviction, despite being found not guilty of the more severe charges brought against him, and he also faces multiple sexual assault charges in Los Angeles.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse publishes its report on the nature and extent of the use of the internet to facilitate abuse on Thursday.

Tech giants including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google all gave evidence to the inquiry in secret as part of its internet investigation strand, amid concerns that public evidence could help offenders evade detection as well as criticism over the platforms’ abilities to protect children.

In Parliament, members of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee grill outgoing BBC director-general Tony Hall (pictured) and chairman David Clementi at an evidence session on the licence fee. The executives are expected to face questions about Hall’s decision to step down early, the planned overhaul of the BBC’s workforce and changes to the licence fee payments for over-75s, as well as the corporation’s recent equal pay tribunals. A Government consultation into decriminalising the non-payment of the licence fee is ongoing.

The European Central Bank’s monetary policy committee meets in Frankfurt, with speculation rife that the ECB will follow the US Federal Reserve’s lead from last week and announce measures to counteract the economic effects of the coronavirus outbreak in the eurozone. ECB President Christine Lagarde has signalled potential actions, and the issue is sure to be addressed at her post-meeting press conference.

Friday sees the publication of findings from Northern Ireland’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) inquiry. The inquiry was established by the Northern Ireland Executive in January 2017 and investigated its design, governance, implementation, and operation. Furore surrounding the scheme’s management prompted the resignation that same month of Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and the subsequent collapse of the Stormont government, which wasn’t restored until this January, ultimately allowing both abortion and same-sex marriage to be decriminalised in the country.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch publishes a final report into the January 2019 plane crash that killed Argentine footballer Emiliano Sala and pilot David Ibbotson. A preliminary report last year found that Ibbotson was not licensed to carry paying passengers, sparking calls for a clampdown on celebrities using so-called “grey” charter flights as unlicensed air taxis.

Former Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson speaks at the party’s Spring Conference on Saturday. The conference is the first major gathering of members since the Lib Dems’ heavy defeat in the December election, and follows the resignation of former leader Lord Steel following the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s accusation that he had “turned a blind eye” to accusations of child abuse against late MP Cyril Smith in the 1970s.

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is, at time of writing, scheduled to speak at the South by South West Festival, where she is likely to address the Democratic presidential primary. SXSW organisers are insisting the festival will go ahead, despite several high-profile tech and media companies – including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Netflix – withdrawing from the event, and an online petition to have it cancelled over concerns about the spread of coronavirus.

French voters go to the polls on Sunday for the first round of municipal and mayoral elections, despite government efforts to limit large gatherings in another attempt at coronavirus containment. President Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche party is steeling itself for disappointing results, after the government pushed through controversial pension reforms despite widespread protests. The party’s hopes of taking the powerful Paris mayoralty from incumbent Socialist Anne Hidalgo were dented when they had to replace their candidate, Benjamin Griveaux, over a sex scandal a month before the vote.

The 2020 Formula One season gets underway as Melbourne hosts the Australian Grand Prix. The new season could see Lewis Hamilton draw level with Michael Schumacher’s seven world championship wins, but, as with most current events, faces disruption from the coronavirus outbreak. The Chinese Grand Prix scheduled for April has already been postponed and there are growing concerns that races in Vietnam, Italy, and Bahrain could follow suit. Organisers are determined for the Australian GP to go ahead, despite concerns over whether travel restrictions could end up blocking Ferrari’s team from entering the country.

This information is provided in association with Foresight News.

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