Bernie Sanders’s web page features the video The Koch Brothers and the Puppets They Control.

The Koch brothers – the second wealthiest family in America worth at least $80 billion – for decades operated in the shadows of American public life while pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into front groups promoting what Bernie has called the “billionaire agenda.” It is not well known, but David Koch was the 1980 Libertarian Party candidate for vice president and helped fund that party. He campaigned on a platform that called for ending all limitations on campaign spending, abolishing taxes on the wealthy and profitable corporations, shutting down Medicare and Medicaid, repealing Social Security, terminating the Postal Service and doing away with the minimum wage. “They want to repeal every major piece of legislation over the past 80 years that protects the middle class, the elderly, the children, the sick and the most vulnerable in our country,” Bernie said.

Which potential female running mate for Bernie Sanders’ seems to get the issue and talk as animatedly about this? Which one is good at compromising with people like the Koch’s?

Which one is the darling of Wall Street and which one is so feared by Wall Street that they have fought her tooth and nail? Am I asking hard questions here?

Huffington Post has the article Hillary Clinton Calls For More Sanctions On Russia.

Speaking at a University of Connecticut issues forum, the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state said she believes the sanctions against the Russian government must be “tightened and widened” to prevent the crisis from escalating.

If this statement does not disqualify Hillary Clinton from being President of The United States, then I don’t know how much more evidence you would need.  This is tantamount to saying “We must escalate to prevent the crisis from escalating.”

The behavior of Russia and the United States is like the teenage game of chicken.  Two cars drive at high speed toward each other that would ultimately lead to a fatal head-on collision.  If one side doesn’t veer away, then they both win the game of not being a chicken.  They are also both dead.  Here we have Hillary Clinton saying, let’s step on the gas, surely the other side will flinch first, if only we can frighten them enough.  Does Vladimir Putin look like the kind of person who could be intimidated?  Russia is no Grenada, despite what President Obama seems to think.

In my previous post Foreign policy and the definition of ‘manhood’, I think I just about predicted Hillary Clinton would take this position.

Also refer to my previous post “We Are Not Beginning a New Cold War, We are Well into It”: Stephen Cohen on Russia-Ukraine Crisis. I had the following quote from Stephen Cohen:

As a contemporary observer, it certainly began in November 2013 when the European Union issued an ultimatum, really, to the then-president, elected president, of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, that “Sign an agreement with us, but you can’t have one with Russia, too.” In my mind, that precipitated this crisis, because why give a country that has been profoundly divided for centuries, and certainly in recent decades, an ultimatum—an elected president: “Choose, and divide your country further”? So when we say today Putin initiated this chaos, this danger of war, this confrontation, the answer is, no, that narrative is wrong from the beginning. It was triggered by the European Union’s unwise ultimatum.

Do certian people in Sturbridge actually read anything I post?

Naked Capitalism has an excellent review and discussion in the article Corrupting Piketty in the 21st Century.

The media attention surrounding French economist Thomas Piketty’s new book Capital in the 21st Century is growing ever more fervent. Here are my two cents.

To me three things are clear to be about this book. First, it is a timely reminder that distribution of resources within society matters. This is especially important for an economics profession who has often ignored the issue and whose core analytical framework is a completely inappropriate tool for its analysis.

Second, and this is quite a surprise, the mainstream economics profession seems to be rather accepting of the book, which, when I read it, seemed to make the claim that most of their scholarly methods are flawed and that the economics profession knows very little about the more important elements of social organisation. While on the surface this appears to be a mature response by the profession to valid criticisms, I fear that the profession will corrupt the message of the book and will unfortunately not have the impact on improving economic scholarship that it seems intended to have.

Third, and this is my one personal gripe, the book fails to acknowledge the many social processes studied by sociologists and even ecologists that have been used to explain unequal outcomes in a wide variety of settings. For example, the process of preferential attachment is fundamental to producing the unequal distribution of the success of artists, musicians and even, ironically, authors. Such a process can not only explain the broader inequalities in terms of access to resources (income and wealth), but also the inequality of book success, where Piketty finds himself in the top 1% of economics authors (and there really is no shortage of books covering similar topics recently, for example here, here, here and here).

There are many links to follow in the article and in the ensuing discussion that I want to follow. One in particular, preferential attachment, has me very curious.

I am still undecided as to whether or not I want to read Piketty’s book.