Campaign For America’s Future has an excellent article Hillary Clinton’s Economic Story: Stuff Happens. Normally, I don’t like to quote too extensively from an article because I would rather you read the original to give the authors the clicks that they deserve. In this case, the message is so important, that I cannot take the chance you won’t read the original. There is still more to be read in the original than I am quoting here, as the ellipses indicate.

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A framing speech can’t and shouldn’t go into policy details, and Clinton pledged a series of speeches would fill in the missing text. But a framing speech should tell a clear story: about how we got in the hole we are in, who drove us there, how do we get out, and what leaders and movements will lead the way.

Here, Clinton’s speech was disappointing. The problem, she argued, is most Americans see “an economy that still isn’t delivering for them… It still seems, to most Americans that I have spoken with, that it is stacked for those at the top.” The “basic bargain” – work hard and get ahead – “has been eroded.” Note the passive voice.
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We have been victimized by inexorable economic forces – technology, global trade. Better ideas and policy can fix it. Completely absent from the frame is any sense of the systematic war waged by corporations and the right wing to win the battle of ideas, flood money into our politics and rig the rules of the economy to their benefit. They rigged monetary policy and fiscal policy, global trade rules, labor and wage laws, government investment, deregulation, privatization, global policing – all reinforcing the effort to weaken workers, drive down wages, and capture more of the profits at the top. And then they invested a minute portion of those profits to buy both parties and corrupt our democracy.
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Omitting the reality that our policies have been systematically and purposefully rigged to favor the few – and that our politics have been corrupted in that pursuit – both misleads Americans, and weakens that agenda’s appeal.
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Progressives are winning the economic argument among Democrats. As Clinton shows, the era of small government is over. Every Democratic candidate summons us to a new era of activist government. But the question of this populist moment is who will speak truth not to power, but to the American people. Clinton is calling people to a policy discussion. Sanders is rousing them for a political revolution. She’s one of the best qualified candidates in the history of the Republic and an overwhelming favorite to win the nomination. But he is telling a far clearer story of why working people are struggling in this wealthy country and what they must do to take it back.

This article does a much better job of explaining exactly what is missing from Clinton’s speech than my previous post about the article Clinton’s Speech on “The Economy”: Where’s the Beef?. The two articles identify many of the same issues. The current article has more details where they are needed and fewer details where they are not needed.

Naked Capitalism has the article Clinton’s Speech on “The Economy”: Where’s the Beef? For me, it was more analysis than I had the patience to read. Feel free to read as much as you have the time and patience for. I single out two issues from the article that I find most striking.

Democrats must abandon the view that balanced budgets and surpluses are a sign of virtue; they are not. And until they do, they will be in the policy straitjacket that they helpfully donned after people like the Peterson Institute helpfully held it for them; always a grand bargain of one sort or another; always “pay for.” How did FDR help win World War II, after all? By cutting domestic spending? With a balanced budget? Fiscal policy matters only for the effects it produces in the real economy.
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Also pervasive is lack of agency: There is a “crisis.” Why? For whom? But it “recedes.” Why? For everybody?

The first point is one that I often make on this blog. That’s not a coincidence as Naked Capitalism frequently makes this point. New Economic Perspectives also makes this point frequently. Both Naked Capitalism and I read the New Economic Perspectives blog.

The lack of agency issue is a trick that many Democrats and Neoliberals (meaning not liberals at all) use to hide the fact that someone must have done these awful things. They didn’t just happen. There is someone who has to be held accountable for the outcome of their evil actions. Could the deregulation king himself, Bill Clinton, be blamed for any of these problems?

PC Magazine has the WebCast What You Need to Know About Backdoor Encryption.

FBI Director James Comey wants a backdoor into every encrypted communication in America, but most security experts think that is a really bad idea. PCMag’s Editor-in-Chief Dan Costa talk to Security Analyst Fahmida Rashid about the logical, ethical, and technical problems with creating back doors in security products.

What’s New Now is PCMag’s daily report where we cover the most talked about technology story of the day. Check back every day as we suggest why the story is important to you and provide expert analysis and opinion on the topic.

The two most damaging arguments against the back door are that the bad guys will eventually get the keys, and that other countries will want the keys or they will insist on their own back doors. Some countries might ban back doors. What happens to international trade when some countries insist on something while others forbid it? If you exempt international communications, then that is a back door for avoiding our back door. Supposedly the international communications are the ones the FBI most wants to read.