Newslogue has the article Tulsi Gabbard Knows More About Syria Than You Do (those are not my words). Here is the introduction to the article.

I have had just about enough of weak, sleazy, cowardly male pundits monologuing at war veteran and Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard about war and Syria. The western press has been completely absent from the conflict in Syria, probably as much out of cowardice as a need for plausible deniability when they get caught lying to to their audiences, so since there are no boots on the ground there doing the job that the press used to do, Gabbard went there herself to discover the truth about what’s happening. She is being rewarded for her selfless act of courage by being painted as a liar and a traitor by the pro-establishment American media, whose job she was generous enough to do.

I am sure Tulsi and many of the rest of us knew that the establishment would stop at nothing to silence her or get us to believe she is wrong and they are right. We also have to stop at nothing to prevent the corporate media from spreading lies for our government. We have to spread the truth 10 times as often as they spread the lies.

Here is the deceptively edited version from CNN, Gabbard says she met with Assad on Syria trip. See my subsequent post CNN Exclusive: Rep. Gabbard on meeting with Assad to see the whole interview, and judge for yourself.

Here is an interview with Gabbard and Tapper that Mox News published in December 2016.

The Independent has the article President Donald Trump to publish weekly list of crimes committed by immigrants.

The US President’s sweeping new executive order on immigration, which he signed on the fifth day of his presidency, includes a paragraph mandating the Secretary for Homeland Security to “make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens” in the US.

Maybe we can publish a weekly list of crimes committed by Donald Trump.

I was first introduced to this article by a Facebook Post from Steven D Grumbine.

Some of the commenters wanted to know what was wrong with trying to tell us about crimes that people commit. My response was the following:

He isn’t going to publish the level of crime among immigrants and compare it to the level of crime among non-immigrants. He is going to publish a one-sided story to convince you of something that is not true. That is what we are complaining about.

Some commenters want to know when we are going to stop people from coming to our house (country) and staying beyond their welcome. I had two responses to this general idea.

Don’t sign trade agreements, overthrow governments, and don’t encourage drug wars that encourage people to flee to the “safety” of the USA.

Also, I asked the following question:

How long are we going to continue destroying our neighbors’ homes so that they have to seek refuge with us?

Fortune has the article China Says It Will Lead the World Economy If Western Nations Stand Down.

A top Chinese diplomat has said that China is ready to lead the world economy if other nations should retreat from globalization.

That pretty much sums up the entire value of this Fortune article, For the rest of the article, Fortune manages to read between the lines on both sides of this story to misunderstand both sides. Here is just one example.

In Beijing, Zhang told reporters at the briefing that China would continue to pursue its own Asia-Pacific regional free trade deal independent of the TPP, reports the Journal. He also touted the country’s trillion-dollar One Belt, One Road trade initiative, which would connect China with countries along the ancient Silk Road trade route.

Is Fortune trying to imply that the TPP was something that China would have supported? One of our reasons for creating TPP was to fight with China. It certainly wasn’t going to be good for them, at the same time it managed not to be good for us 99%. Not all global trade policies are created equal. Depending on what is in the policy, it can either be good for the world, or it can be very bad for most people in the world. TPP fell into the second category. It would be better to have called it the rich people’s protection act (RPP).

Naked Capitalism has the article Johnson: Elites Eying the Exits Signals America’s Crisis.

In the introduction Yves Smith wrote the following:

Yves here. A former private equity partner mentioned the New Yorker story on 0.1% bunkering. He noticed how they focused on the private jet pilot as a point of vulnerability, that he might fly his family out and leave them stranded. So the approach is to assure him that his relatives get seats on the plane too.

I am light years away from the hedge fund managers, but some of what they are getting is starting to slop over on me. I may not be rich, but I am getting nervous about my “good fortune”.

Naked Capitalism has the article Bill Black: Not 4 Sale – Why the Corrupt, Worker-Hating New Democrats Must Be Purged.

Large corporations provided the bulk of PPI’s funding, but like the DLC it was also heavily funded by the Bradley Foundation. Harry Bradley, along with the Koch brothers’ father, was a charter member of the John Birch Society. That means they were off-the-charts looney and ultra-right wing. Mr. Bradley’s passion was his hatred for organized labor. He was a notorious for his employment discrimination against blacks and women. At the time the DLC and the PPI formed, the Bradley Foundation was the Nation’s most destructive funder of ultra-right wing efforts to influence policy. Today, it is the force behind Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s war against organized labor. The Nation’s most virulent and effective enemy of organized labor funded the New Democrats. The New Democrats knew what they were choosing to lie down with and they knew exactly what they were signaling to organized labor about their hostility to unions and disdain for the working class.

I used to laugh at the Tea Party members who did not realize that their organization was created with Koch Brothers’ funding. I guess I won’t be laughing anymore.

The article is too long to read it all, but I did notice one failure. I commented on the article with the following:

You keep mentioning Elizabeth Warren without mentioning that she is no longer a threat to the DLC nor the DNC. She has been bought out and completely gone over to the other side. How could you not notice what she did in support of Hillary Clinton? She is now supporting Trump’s cabinet nominees like Ben Carson for HUD. She says she would not want to stand in Carson’s way even knowing that he is totally incompetent to lead HUD. As if a vote from a Senate Democrat is needed for him to be approved.

I then read some of the other comments. I noticed that some of them had pointed out the same flaw in the article about claiming that Elizabeth Warren was still on our side.

Here is an email that I received from Tulsi Gabbard about her fact finding mission to Syria.

Here is a link to Tulsi Email for you to read outside the frame above.

This must be the official post of her comments,

And you thought the Obama administration’s screwing the middle-class would be over now that he is gone. Well, Naked Capitalism has the article The Obama Administration Bails Out Private Equity Landlords at the Expense of the Middle Class: Government Guarantees for Rental Securitization.

Here is an excerpt from the Naked Capitalism introduction.

Even though this guarantee clearly had to have been worked out during the Obama Administration, Blackstone did not make it public until it updated its filing with the SEC this week. It looks an awful lot like the timing was designed to make sure that the disclosure came after the new Trump team was in charge, meaning Obama would be unlikely to face the criticism he deserves, and the Trump Administration would be certain to let the deal stand.

Here is the closing paragraph from the article itself.

There is a darker side to corporate ownership of single-family rental homes and the financialization of rents: soaring evictions, according to the Atlanta Fed, which explicitly blames the Fed and Bernanke. Read…  Evictions by Wall-Street Mega-Landlords Soar, Financialization of Rents Cause “Housing Instability”: Atlanta Fed

I don’t think the Obama’s have to worry about their financial security after leaving office.

The Whitehouse web site has posted Presidential Memorandum Regarding Withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations and Agreement.

It is the policy of my Administration to represent the American people and their financial well-being in all negotations, particularly the American worker, and to create fair and economically beneficial trade deals that serve their interests. Additionally, in order to ensure these outcomes, it is the intention of my Administration to deal directly with individual countries on a one-on-one (or bilateral) basis in negotiating future trade deals. Trade with other nations is, and always will be, of paramount importance to my Administration and to me, as President of the United States.

While listening to various pundits from left and right tell you what President Trump thinks about trade, you might want to read his own words. I am not saying you have to believe his words, but you might find it amusing that what the pundits say he means is not very close to what he has said.

The dog whistle politics that many of the pundits accuse Trump of may be figments of their defective hearing. Only time will tell if some of the crap is coming from Trump’s mouth or some of it is in between the ears of some of the listeners.

The New York Times (that purveyor of truly fake news) has the article Trump Abandons Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama’s Signature Trade Deal.

President Trump formally abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Monday, pulling away from Asia and scrapping his predecessor’s most significant trade deal on his first full weekday in office, administration officials said.

In a discussion about whether or not the Republicans were going to kill TPP anyway, I gave my opinion.

The trouble with the Republicans was that they opposed all the good things Obama proposed. It was very risky to have to depend on them to oppose the bad things, too. Luckily the Republicans were so spiteful that they did save us from Obama’s grand bargain on entitlements and austerity. The TPP was just too good for business to have to depend on the Republicans’ killing it outside of an election season.

Don’t think business won’t keep trying. We have to depend on Trump to keep us safe. Can you imagine anyone saying that, least of all me?

People used to argue against my attitude of wanting to kill TPP that was meant to be Obama’s legacy trade deal. I always said that this was the worst legacy he could leave, and we would be doing him a favor by preventing this from being his legacy. So I guess you could say that Trump saved Obama’s legacy.

YouTube has the video L. Randall Wray – Modern Money Theory: Intellectual Origins and Policy Implications.

I am fascinated by this introduction to a topic that I have been learning for the last few years.

Despite my having read his book and having read many articles about MMT (Modern Money Theory), the first 15 minutes or so of this talk has clarified a number of issues for me. Until recently, I have rebelled against the MMT notion that taxes that must be paid in the currency of the country is what gives that currency its value. I always use China’s huge reserves of US dollars as an example of an entity that does not have to pay U.S. taxes anywhere near the extent of the dollars they have accumulated.

This is the first time I have heard the nuance that the payment of taxes is a sufficient reason for currency having a value, but it may not be necessary. He had already explained why a country like China would want to accumulate a huge stock of a currency beyond what it needs to pay taxes. (I suppose his explanation can be taken as an indication that George Soros’ bond investment strategy may also be a great driver of the dollar’s value.)

I don’t have time right now to listen to the 90 minutes left in this talk, but I anxiously look forward to when I will have time. This is one of my motivations for putting this on my blog. I won’t lose track of where to find the video to listen to the rest.

January 24, 2017

I have listened to the rest of the talk, and I was not disappointed. Wray answered so many of the questions about MMT that I still had. His discussions of the implications for policy were also very enlightening. Of course, you have to be able to take in what he is explaining and digest it. If you just cannot get the information to pass by the filters you have erroneously built up, then the talk will be useless to you. Come back at a later time when you are willing to listen.