Steve's Politics Blog

Occupy Democrats has the article Watch: Bernie Sanders Schools Wal-Mart Apologist On How Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages | Occupy Democrats.

“Do you think the Walton Family (owners of Wal-Mart), worth a hundred billion dollars, is in need of welfare from the middle class of this country, or do you think maybe we should raise the minimum wage so those workers can earn a living wage and not have to get Medicaid or food stamps?”

I have been mulling over how I might clarify Sanders question.

“Do you think Walmart should be able to drive the competition out of business by paying their workers such a low wage and thereby selling goods so cheaply that the workers need government help to survive and work for Walmart? Isn’t Walmart taking advantage of government programs that they claim they are against?”

You might try to come up with how you would phrase the question to better drive home the point.

As I was posting this article on Facebook, I came up with the following:

“So we get to buy stuff at Wal-Mart cheap, but we have to pay taxes to support Medicaid and food stamps for Wal-Mart workers. Is that really a good deal for us?”

Democracy Now has the interview Seymour Hersh Details Explosive Story on Bin Laden Killing & Responds to White House, Media Backlash.

Four years after U.S. forces assassinated Osama bin Laden, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has published an explosive piece claiming much of what the Obama administration said about the attack was wrong.

Before this, I had seen headlines on the internet to vague references to a story we were not supposed to believe. When I saw this headline that Seymour Hersh wrote the story, I realized it was something worth reading about.

As promised in the video, Democracy Now had the link to the London Review Of Books article The Killing of Osama bin Laden by Seymour Hersch.

Seymour Hersh says in the interview that he doesn’t think that when President Obama made his public announcement of the killing of Osama bin Laden that he was aware of how much of his words were untrue.

Now, start thinking of President Obama’s assurances that the Transpacific Trade Partnership (TPP) does not have the awful things in it that Elizabeth Warren claims the TPP does. How does he know, if he is just going by what his advisers tell him? He claims that the events Warren worries about coming from the TPP are hypothetical, and would never happen. Do you suppose that Elizabeth Warren might actually know more about how big Wall Street banks and big corporations cheat the rest of us than Barack Obama can even imagine?

Can we trust a President who is so naive that he thinks he is in control? He claims he studied law at Harvard University to find out where the levers of power were. We know he is not dumb enough to have come away from that experience without an appreciation of how power is actually exercised. What does he think of our naivete if he thinks we will buy his explanation?

Politicus Usa has the post Bernie Sanders Is Terrifying Wall Street By Pushing Hillary Clinton To The Left.

Bernie Sanders is having a large impact on the race for the Democratic nomination. The Senator from Vermont is shaping the debate. He has shown that he is not afraid to up the ante by taking solidly liberal policy positions.

The Politicus USA story talks about the story from The Hill, Banks brace for Bernie Sanders.

Sanders (I-Vt.) last week unveiled new legislation designed to break up the nation’s largest banks, declaring that “if an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”
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Paul Merski, an executive vice president at the Independent Community Bankers Association, said many smaller community banks support Sanders’s effort.

If the big banks might think that Bernie Sanders’ legislation is “shrill, bombastic and misaligned,” it is interesting to note what the small banks think.

I also like the notion that Sanders’ opposition might might be underestimating him, while he is actually speaking for millions of Democrats that the party would like to pretend don’t exist.

The Washington Post has the story Elizabeth Warren fires back at Obama: Here’s what they’re really fighting about.

“This is a long-term problem — a six-year problem, if Fast Track passes. A Republican President could easily use a future trade deal to override our domestic financial rules. And this is hardly a hypothetical possibility: We are already deep into negotiations with the European Union on a trade agreement and big banks on both sides of the Atlantic are gearing up to use that agreement to water down financial regulations. A six-year Fast Track bill is the missing link they need to make that happen.”

I am trying to track down the video of the speech Warren made that contains the above quote. I’ll add it to this post when I find it.

Yahoo has the article Why Obama is happy to fight Elizabeth Warren on the trade deal.

“Think about the logic of that, right?” he went on. “The notion that I had this massive fight with Wall Street to make sure that we don’t repeat what happened in 2007, 2008. And then I sign a provision that would unravel it?

“I’d have to be pretty stupid,” Obama said, laughing. “This is pure speculation. She and I both taught law school, and you know, one of the things you do as a law professor is you spin out hypotheticals. And this is all hypothetical, speculative.”

What I can’t understand is why, when Obama finds himself in this hole, he doesn’t stop digging. He has exactly identified what I am wondering about him. Yes, why would he fight the massive fight for reforms like Dodd-Frank, and then turn around and sign a provision that would unravel it? It makes no sense to me, but that is exactly what he seems to be promoting.

Yes, it does look like one explanation would be that he’d have to be pretty stupid. When he gets to the heart of the matter, he won’t explain why he says that what she speculates can’t possibly happen. He doesn’t address the evidence that what Warren is speculating on has already happened, and she cites numerous example, that he makes no effort to dispute.

Here is an Agenda For America.

1. Rebuilding Our Crumbling Infrastructure
2. Reversing Climate Change
3. Creating Worker Co-ops
4. Growing the Trade Union Movement
5. Raising the Minimum Wage
6. Pay Equity for Women Workers
7. Trade Policies that Benefit American Workers
8. Making College Affordable for All
9. Taking on Wall Street
10. Health Care as a Right for All
11. Protecting the Most Vulnerable Americans
12. Real Tax Reform

If you think you might be interested in having an agenda like this for this country, then follow the link to the Agenda For America to see a little detail about each one of the items on the agenda. I don’t know if you will be surprised or not at the candidate for President that is promoting this agenda, but following the link will show you who it is.

So the trick is, think about the agenda you want, and then think about finding a candidate who supports that agenda.

Thanks to Marden Seavey for posting the link to this on his Facebook page.

This is just a conjecture about whether or not using the mark-to-market method on any asset that you want to know the value of needs to be taken into account in MMT (Modern Money Theory).

My most recent post about MMT that was posted before I started thinking about this possible flaw was When Will the White House and OMB Ever Learn About Sector Financial Balances?

I haven’t figured out yet how to pose this question to MMT experts. Following the above link to learn what mark-to-market is, I am reminded that the issue is far broader than the example I am going to use to show the problem.

MMT has a nice theory that depends on their definition of what is and what isn’t external money and internal money. MMTers then describe how people and the economy must behave, based on these obvious definitions. The issue is not whether or not the definitions are logically consistent or not. The issue is how people and markets actually behave. The issue of stock value and mark-to-market, is that whether or not you, as an MMTer, believe the value of one’s stock holdings represents a fair account of real money or not, people and the economy to some extent behave as if it were real money.

The goal we are trying to achieve is not to come up with a logically consistent definition of money. That may or may not be a path to understanding how people, markets, and economies behave. Describing and understanding that behavior is the real goal. Intermediate achievements are only important if they get us to the ultimate goal.

My most recent posts that show what started me thinking along these lines are

A Critique of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and At INET Conference, Warren Adds Two Pieces to Her Financial Reform Framework.

Older posts that show that I have always had an interest in the ramifications of mark-to-market are Musings on Mark-To-Market and A Replacement For Mark-To-Market.

Naked Capitalism has the article Gaius Publius: Sanders Raises $3 Million in Four Days; Will He Split the Party?

Yves here. While I’m loath to take the site too much in the direction of politics (as opposed to finance, economics, and political economy), Bernie Sanders’ choice of Stephanie Kelton as economist to the Senate Finance Committee, his firm opposition to toxic trade deals, and his long-standing support of social safety nets and pro-middle class policies means his campaign is focused substantially on issues of economic justice. Moreover, I was bothered to see readers take up what I regard as a misguided post by the normally excellent Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report attacking Sanders as a what amounts to a progressive stooge for the Democratic party.

I am glad to see this article mention the BAR article. I had read it before and thought that it was a silly argument. If Bernie Sanders can’t win a Democratic primary, then it is pretty certain he can’t win a general election. Other people may want him to run just to send a message. If he refuses to run a campaign that even he is sure has no hope, refusing that option puts further credence to his claim to be in it to win it.

MoveOn.Org is giving members a sneak peak at some videos in a series they are calling the Big Picture. The first one is 10 Ideas to Save the Economy: Fight For $15.

The speaker is Robert Reich.

In an interview by George Stephanopolous, Bernie Sanders said that he would consider Robert Reich for Treasury Secretary. See the interview at my previous post at about 5 minutes and 50 seconds in.

Stephanopolous: Name a couple of people you would consider for treasury secretary.

Sanders: Robert Reich is somebody I would … was in fact the Secretary of Labor. I think he has been a strong progressive and understands that what we need are economic policies that benefit working families, not the big money.