Dégringolade

Industrial Policy Is a Nostalgic Pipe Dream   Jun 25, 2024 JAMES K. GALBRAITH To address the public’s anger after four decades of neoliberalism, progressive and center-left economists are calling for innovation to create wealth “for the many” and to deal with climate change, while also reducing market concentration and power. Unfortunately, they are mistaken about where the real problem lies. SIRACUSA, ITALY – At a recent “summit” in Berlin, prominent center-left economists announced a “new consensus” on industrial policy. Their joint declaration was then published in full by the Columbia University economic historian Adam Tooze, who described it as “remarkable both for its capacious agreement on economic and industrial policy principles and the way they are embedded in a reading of the political and geopolitical risks of the moment.” According to the Berlin declaration, those risks are of two types. There are “real risks” such as climate change, “unbearable inequalities,” and “maj...

Jeffrey Sachs’ Grab for the World Bank BY LAURA FLANDERS,  MARCH 20, 2012 Counterpunch There may be worse candidates for the presidency of the World Bank than Jeffrey Sachs (Larry Summers, also a candidate, comes to mind,) but Sachs is well worth raising an alarm about. He combines a new fangled profile as a progressive with policies that amount to full steam ahead for global growth. And he’s running as the candidate of “change”  clearly hoping no one looks too closely at his record as an economic hit-man.   In the US (if not in much of the rest of the world and certainly not CounterPuncht) Sachs’s closeness with the singer/crusader Bono bestows a liberal glow. He directs the Earth Institute at Columbia University, advises the UN and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and he’s winning endorsements from among others, Congressman John Conyers and economist Mark Weisbrot.  He’ll attract predictable opposition from the Right who bristle at any mention of for...

  Voting Is Evil Your country needs YOU... not to vote.  NEMO JONES APR 28, 2024 “You’ve got to vote, vote, vote, vote. That’s it; that's the way we move forward.” ~Michelle Obama “We can all agree on the importance of voting.” ~Jenna Bush “Voting is the expression of our commitment to ourselves, one another, this country, and this world.” ~Sharon Salzberg “You cannot complain if you didn’t vote.” ~Barack Obama “The right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless.” ~Lyndon B Johnson “Voting is not just a right, it's a responsibility.” ~Don Santo “Voting is a civic sacrament.” ~Theodore Hesburgh Election day. Inhale deep of the blessed and rarified air. Your moment has come. Your time to shine. Today - at long last - your voice matters. Your voice will be heard. Your dream of a just and sane world is damn near palpable. The diligent and painstaking attention you've paid to the rational, informed and balanced debates of the day, the carefully honed a...

  Electoral Fraud: The Illusion of Democracy   by   Paul Cudenec source:   The Acorn With big elections looming up all over the place, I thought this would be a good moment to remind people of what a fraud they are, on many levels. i. Captured parties. It has become very obvious to very many people, particularly since Covid, that the main political parties everywhere are all controlled by the criminocracy. No politicians are allowed anywhere near power unless they are signed up to the whole agenda of totalitarian “sustainable development”, public-private “partnership”, pouring money into Ukraine and pretending that Israel is not carrying out mass murder in Gaza. Control of the political parties has been in place for a very long time indeed, not just by means of bribery and blackmail but also through infiltration by the public-funded “intelligence” services set up to serve the criminocrats’ interests. Even the smallest and most insignificant political group is targete...

Bay Area Revolutionary Union

Listen, Marxist! by Murray Bookchin All the old crap of the thirties is coming back again--the shit about the "class line," the "role of the working class," the "trained cadres," the "vanguard party," and the "proletarian dictatorship." It's all back again, and in a more vulgarized form than ever. The Progressive Labor Party is not the only example, it is merely the worst. One smells the same shit in various offshoots of SDS, and in the Marxist and Socialist clubs on campuses, not to speak of the Trotskyist groups, the International Socialist Clubs and the Youth Against War and Fascism. In the thirties, at least it was understandable. The United States was paralyzed by a chronic economic crisis, the deepest and the longest in its history. The only living forces that seemed to be battering at the walls of capitalism were the great organizing drives of the CIO, with their dramatic sitdown strikes, their radical militancy, and their bl...