RT (Russia Today) has the story Biden treated Ukraine ‘as his private property’, says purged prosecutor Shokin on Burisma scandal – UkraineGate documentary.

Former top Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin says he was pushed out under pressure from US Vice President Joe Biden, after he seized the assets of the oligarch behind Burisma, the gas company that employed Biden’s son.

I have been aware of this side of the story for some time, but there don’t seem to be many who have any idea about this. Somebody is lying to us about this whole affair. I don’t purport to know who. I never could understand why the Democrats wanted to make such a big issue of this, if Biden is the one who is lying. I do have to ask myself what happened to the Burisma case after Biden got the Prosecutor General of the Ukraine fired. The case that Biden claims he wanted prosecuted more vigorously seems to have died in silence after Biden got his way. Does that even raise any suspicions in your mind?

I can understand some people dismissing the source, RT. However, doesn’t my question above give you even a moment’s pause?

What does this say about our purported dislike of Russia interfering in USA elections? If we don’t like that, why do we foment trouble for Russia in the Ukraine? Is that not interfering in other country’s affairs? If we don’t like it, we should stop doing it.

In my career, I tried to avoid demanding that people do things my way. I preferred to do things my way as a model for what good comes from doing things my way. Some people did adopt some of my techniques.

Here is the story on Bernie Sanders’ remarks about Fidel Castro according to Steve Greenberg. If the oligarchs in Cuba or in the USA insist on taking all the benefits of the economy for themselves, and don’t share those benefits with the rest of the people, eventually a bloody revolution will ensue. The leaders of that revolution will gain the support of the people by sharing some of the economic benefits with the people. If our oligarchs like that result, they can keep on doing what they are doing. If they want to avoid a bloody revolution, they need to stop hoarding all the benefits to themselves.

Time after time in history this scenario has played out. Except for FDR (and maybe some other examples) the oligarchs never learn in time how to prevent a bloody popular uprising. Bernie Sanders is telling us how to prevent that uprising, but the chances that the oligarchs will get the message are very slim.

I think too few current day oligarchs have any knowledge of the song Brother, Can you Spare A Dime?

The Brunswick Crosby recording made on October 25[. 1932] with Lennie Hayton and his Orchestra became the best-selling record of its period, and came to be viewed as an anthem to the shattered dreams of the era.

In an interview, Joseph Stiglitz was asked:

Ana Kasparian

In a few sentences explain democratic socialism.

Joseph Stiglitz

So all that Democratic Socialism is – let me say it’s not socialism as it was understood, until, say, 1980. Socialism was the ownership of the means of production … No one is talking about that. No one says that is the direction we are going. What Democratic Socialism is actually very close to what in Europe is called Social Democracy. …

You might look on the internet to find a definition of social democracy. Here is a wordy explanation that I am not sure captures it all, but it is a start. This is from the Wikipedia definition of Social Democracy.

Social democracy is a political, social and economic philosophy that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented economy.

For instance, Bernie Sanders is advocating that government pays for health care. If you buy a car from General Motors, I hope you don’t think you own the means of production for building cars.

If you are “white”, you may have a tough time understanding what is so wrong with Sop-and-Frisk policies. On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah tries to explain in the video clip Bloomberg and The Legacy of Stop-and-Frisk – Between the Scenes.

The Hill’s show Rising has the segment Debunked: Bloomberg’s claim that redlining led to the housing crisis

Aaron Glantz shares his thoughts on Michael Bloomberg’s comments about redlining.

Now here is where Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti do the typical pundit game of playing extremely dumb. They and their expert don’t get anywhere near the problem that caused the housing bubble. I could have explained it better than they did, at least in the part of the video I could watch before I almost threw up.

The housing bubble started when the banks figured out they could sell their mortgages to “investors” by packaging up whatever mortgages they could originate into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Once the bank was going to recoup what ever money it lent by selling the loans to investors, they had no reason to care about the quality of loans. They just needed lots of loans to sell. If they had to lie to the “investors” about the quality of the loans they were selling them, no problem. Bribe real estate appraisers, bribe bond rating agencies, no problem. Anything they had to do to originate a mortgage that they could sell. Mortgage brokers writing lies on mortgage applications that the borrower never even saw, no problem with that either. Mortgages to sell the investors (suckers) were so desperately needed that there was no depth too low for bankers to stoop to. Tell me if Krystal, Saagar, and their expert ever got around to telling you that story.

I know the story because I was an investor trying to stay clear of this kind of investment, and I got sucked in anyway a little bit.

Salon has the article Thomas Piketty says Bernie Sanders’ electoral strategy is the way to beat back the right.

New paper explores how both parties were captured by the “elite,” leaving a politically rudderless underclass

Piketty’s paper from March 2018 is Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right:Rising Inequality & the Changing Structure of Political Conflict(Evidence from France, Britain and the US, 1948-2017). After you click on the link, you have to change the “https:” to “http:”. WordPress won’t let me publish the link without the “s”, but the link won’t work with the “s”

The Outline has the article Centrist-child syndrome.

Two of the Democratic party’s most proudly moderate candidates seem to still be rebelling against their Marxist dads.

This is a terrific article. I think I understand this better than even the author does. My maternal grand-father was a socialist (although he played the capitalist game pretty well). My mother married my father whose parents were Republican. I grew up as a Republican. Somewhere around my sophomore year in college, I did some research for an essay and had an awakening. As I have grown older, I have become a “what worksist” that understand the need for a healthy dose of socialism to go along with our capitalism. My daughter and her husband are not nearly as leftist as I have become. Her in-laws are staunch working-class Republicans.

I know there are many counter-examples, but my experience has been that if your children don’t rebel against you, you have cheated. Actually, the problem may be being too doctrinaire. Maybe that is what they feel that they have to rebel, at least in some things.

If the DNC steals the nomination from Bernie, you don’t have to vote for Trump, a third party candidate, leave the ballot blank, or refrain from voting. You can write in Bernie’s name. The space alloted might be only 0.25 inches by 2.25 inches. With the thick felt-tipped marker we get at the polling place, it would be hard to write in a valid name and address. Here is a sticker you might use to paste to the ballot. I’ll uncover the street address if it ever becomes necessary to actually use this as a write-in.

Counter Punch has the article The Holocaust, the BBC and Antisemitism Smears.

I will quote a few paragraphs from the article as an example of what is there. I won’t quote more because I don’t want to violate the doctrine of fair use of copyrighted material. There is plenty more in the article, which I urge you to read.

European racism towards Jews culminated in the Holocaust; the Holocaust was used by the Zionist movement to justify European sponsorship of a Jewish state on the ruins of Palestine; Palestinians and their supporters feel aggrieved that the Holocaust has become a pretext for ignoring their plight and suppressing criticism of Israel. Each of those links is irrefutably true. And unless the truth is now antisemitic – and there is mounting evidence that it is being made so by Israel, its lobbyists and western governments – what Guerin said was not conceivably antisemitic.
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Israel could never have been established without the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland and the destruction of hundreds of their villages to prevent any return. That is why a growing number of historians have risked the wrath of the Israel lobby to declare these events ethnic cleansing – in other words, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The above is representative of the issues that trouble me about the creation of Israel. When I was much younger, I didn’t have any concept of the existence of these issues. Now that I am aware, I can no longer ignore them.

I read about three quarters of the article. By then I felt that it had made its point, and there wasn’t much more to add.

Democracy at Work has the episode Economic Update: Military Spending and Debt.

The second half of this week’s episode features an interview with journalist Bob Hennelly on military spending and debts in the US economy.

I first saw a video clip of the beginning of the second half, before I got to see the entire episode.

It is too bad that Richard Wolff and Bob Hennelly seem to be completely ignorant of Modern Money Theory. The budget of a currency user is not like the budget of the currency issuer. As an economist, Prof. Richard Wolff should be capable of understanding this.

The “borrowing” that the Federal Government does to support a war is to use the productive capacity of our economy to make war material instead of using that capacity to improve the lives of the people. If our productive capacity is used for war it isn’t and won”t be available for making lives better. There is no bankruptcy in terms of money when you are creator of the money.

The way that future generations pay for the “borrowing” the federal government does is to forego the benefit of the productive capacity that was diverted to war and not used to develop even more productive capacity for civilian use. Talking about borrowing “money” which the government freely creates only diverts attention from what was really lost.