The Dumbing Down Of America: ‘The Numbers Speak Volumes’

Almost everyone can see that the dumbing down of America is in full effect.  A video breakdown of a Psychology Today piece from 2014 which details the anti-intellectualism most of us have already experienced in some way.

According to Signs of the Times, there has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western countries. Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason, and anti-science have been infused into America’s political and social fabric. Mark Bauerlein, in his book, The Dumbest Generation, reveals how a whole generation of youth is being dumbed down by their aversion to reading anything of substance and their addiction to digital “crap” that is composed on social media.

Joe Joseph from The Daily Sheeple breaks it down in his new video. “You have plenty of these experts that are basically sounding the alarm,” he says. “Let’s keep it simple,” he continues. “I ask everybody a very simple question. If you think about what you learned from grade K to grade 12, give yourself a percentage of how much of that you actually use in your everyday life. Out of all of that information…now think about how much of your life experience weighs in.”

Joseph then goes over the statistics that have been compiled which are evidence of Americans getting dumber by the decade. Part of that, is because of the declining quality of higher education. After leading the world for decades in 25-34-year-olds with university degrees, the U.S. is now in 12th place. The World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. at 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010.

According to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 68% of public school children in the U.S. do not read proficiently by the time they finish third grade. And the U.S. News & World reported that barely 50% of students are ready for college-level reading when they graduate:

We’re creating a world of dummies. Angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice is heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition and confrontation. –Signs of the Times

The new elite are the angry social media posters; those who can shout loudest and more often, a clique of bullies and malcontents baying together like dogs cornering a fox. Rational thought is the enemy, says Bill Keller, writing in the New York Times.

Another Woman Accused Conyers Of Sexual Harrassment

Update: In a lawsuit unearthed by Buzzfeed, a second woman accused Conyers of sexual harassment, but later abandoned efforts to hold him accountable. According to Buzzfeed, a former scheduler for the Democrat said she faced daily harassment from the congressman in a suit she later dropped after a court denied her request to keep it sealed. The behavior dscribed in the suit took place between 2015 and 2016, meaning it happened after Conyers settled with the previous, unnamed, former staffer.

“These behaviors and actions were so common and pervasive that they created a hostile work environment,” she alleged. Unlike the settlement agreement that was published by Buzzfeed earlier Monday, this lawsuit is a public document. BuzzFeed News was not able to reach the woman for comment and also decided against releasing her name.

Asked by Buzzfeed to comment on the lawsuit Tuesday, a Conyers spokesman said: “[The former staffer] voluntarily decided to drop her case.” The congressman “vehemently” denied the previously reported allegations.

Though the staffer expressed admiration for Conyers" civil rights record in the suit, his harassment quickly became too much for her to tolerate. She even convinced a former staffer to be her "fake boyfriend". He would stop by the office once in a while in an attempt to head off Conyers" advances.

In the lawsuit filed earlier this year, the former staffer said she had a “fatherly affection” for Conyers, as well as “extreme admiration and respect for his legislative work as a Civil Rights icon.” It was because of this that “Plaintiff was extremely uncomfortable addressing this inappropriate behavior with Defendant Conyers nor did Plaintiff wish to embarrass or disparage Defendant Conyers by sharing her concerns with other members of the office staff."

She also cited his “age and failing mental capacities” in the suit, saying she was hired, in part, to keep track of his “whereabouts,” call to wake him up every morning, and deliver his medication, including on weekends. She said she asked a male staffer she’d earlier dated to be her “fake boyfriend” and make regular stops by the office in the hopes of halting Conyers’ advances.

* * *

Update: After bizarrely denying that allegations of sexual harassment ever led him to agree to a settlement with a former staffer, Conyers has finally confirmed that the documents published last night by Buzzfeed are authentic.

However, that"s about all the ground Conyers is willing to give. Because in the same statement, he denied that he ever sexually harassed staffers, according to the Washington Post.

“I expressly and vehemently denied the allegations made against me, and continue to do so,” Conyers said Tuesday in a formal statement, his first since BuzzFeed reported details of the settlement late Monday.

“My office resolved the allegations — with an express denial of liability — to save all involved from the rigors of protracted litigation. That should not be lost in the narrative,” he stated.

* * *

Update: Despite one anonymous staffer"s claim that Conyers is "untouchable" because of his longstanding status as a civil-rights icon who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., senior Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are calling for an ethics probe into the Dean of the House following a report revealed that staffers have accused the senior lawmaker of sexual harassment.

Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and  Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the second and third most-senior Democrats on the powerful committee said early that the House Ethics Committee should investigate the validity of the BuzzFeed News report published late Monday night.

"The reports about Congressman Conyers are as serious as they get. The Committee on Ethics should take up this matter immediately with a goal of promptly assessing the validity of the news account. This reported behavior cannot be tolerated in the House of Representatives or anywhere else," Lofgren said in a statement Tuesday morning, the Hill.

Nadler issued a statement around the same time calling the allegations against Conyers "extremely serious and deeply troubling."

“Obviously, these allegations must be investigated promptly by the Ethics Committee. There can be no tolerance for behavior that subjects women to the kind of conduct alleged," Nadler said.

Conyers continues to deny that the settlements happened.

* * *

Update: Conyers has told The Associated Press that he hasn"t settled any sexual harassment complaints with any staff members. Conyers, who answered the door at his Detroit home Tuesday morning, says he knows nothing about any claims of inappropriate touching and learned of the story just hours earlier. Referring to allegations of sexual harassment and assault being made against politicians and others, the veteran lawmaker says he"s "been looking at these things with amazement."

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan - who Cernovich blamed for enabling Conyers" settlement - called the settlement “extremely troubling” and vowed to continue reviewing House policy on sexual harassment in the workplace.

“People who work in the House deserve and are entitled to a workplace without harassment or discrimination,” Ryan said, outlining the recent steps the House has made to combat sexual misconduct in Congress.

As Talking Points Memo pointed out, last month the Committee on House Administration reviewed its procedures related to workplace harassment and discrimination, and last week that committee issued a new policy requiring “mandatory training for all members and staff,” he said.

* * *

Last week, we reported how Congress’s Office of Compliance paid out $17 million for 264 settlements with federal employees over 20 years for various violations, including sexual harassment – information that was brought to light by California Rep. Jackie Speiers, who claimed that two men with a history of sexual harassment continued to serve in the House – one of whom was a Republican and one a Democrat.

Now, thanks to Buzzfeed News, the mystery Democrat has been identified as Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the ranking member on the powerful House Judiciary Committee and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives. In 2014, a former Conyers staffer filed a complaint claiming she was fired for refusing his sexual advances, and that she had been subsequently blackballed from working with Congress.

The woman received a $30,000 settlement, which was paid out of Conyers’s taxpayer-funded office budget.

The woman who settled with Conyers launched the complaint with the Office of Compliance in 2014, alleging she was fired for refusing his sexual advances, and ended up facing a daunting process that ended with a confidentiality agreement in exchange for a settlement of more than $27,000. Her settlement, however, came from Conyers’ office budget rather than the designated fund for settlements.

 

Congress has no human resources department. Instead, congressional employees have 180 days to report a sexual harassment incident to the Office of Compliance, which then leads to a lengthy process that involves counseling and mediation, and requires the signing of a confidentiality agreement before a complaint can go forward.

 

After this an employee can choose to take the matter to federal district court, but another avenue is available: an administrative hearing, after which a negotiation and settlement may follow.

A law clerk who represented the woman, who was not named by Buzzfeed and has never come forward with her story, said the settlement process was like “being abused twice” for the poor woman.  In the settlement papers, other staffers in Conyers’ office discuss acting as couriers who transported women with who Conyers was allegedly having affairs.

The process was “disgusting,” said Matthew Peterson, who worked as a law clerk representing the complainant, and who listed as a signatory to some of the documents.

 

“It is a designed cover-up,” said Peterson, who declined to discuss details of the case but agreed to characterize it in general terms. “You feel like they were betrayed by their government just for coming forward. It’s like being abused twice."

 

Other lawyers named as representing the accuser could not be reached for comment. The Office of Compliance did not confirm or deny that it had dealt with the case.

The documents were first provided to BuzzFeed News by Mike Cernovich, who said he gave the documents to BuzzFeed News for vetting and further reporting, and because he said if he published them himself, Democrats and congressional leaders would “try to discredit the story by attacking the messenger.” He provided them without conditions. BuzzFeed News independently confirmed the authenticity of the documents with four people directly involved with the case, including the accuser.

In a series of tweets published last night, Cernovich explained why he leaked the story to Buzzfeed, and also blamed House Speaker Paul Ryan for covering up Conyers’ harassment.

 

Congressman John Conyers is a sexual predator, and Paul Ryan covered it all up https://t.co/rHAzX4Hevo

— Mike Cernovich ???????? (@Cernovich) November 21, 2017

 

 

Twitter manually removed John Conyers name, which had 50K tweets (way more than other trends), from the trending section! They are literally covering up for a rapist.

— Mike Cernovich ???????? (@Cernovich) November 21, 2017

 

In her wrongful dismissal complaint, the former employee said Conyers repeatedly asked her for sexual favors and often asked her to join him in a hotel room. On one occasion, she alleges that Conyers asked her to work out of his room for the evening, but when she arrived the congressman started talking about his sexual desires. She alleged he then told her she needed to “touch it,” in reference to his penis, or find him a woman who would meet his sexual demands.

As Buzzfeed pointed out, Congress has no human resources department. Instead, congressional employees have 180 days to report a sexual harassment incident to the Office of Compliance, which then leads to a lengthy process that involves counseling and mediation, and requires the signing of a confidentiality agreement before a complaint can go forward. After this, the complainant can choose to either pursue the matter in federal district court or seek a settlement through an administrative hearing.

In the complaint, which is available in full below, the woman alleges that Conyers sexually harassed her by asking her to touch his penis, or find another woman who would meet his sexual demands. Conyers also made her work nights, weekends and holidays on occasion to “keep him company.”

In her complaint, the former employee said Conyers repeatedly asked her for sexual favors and often asked her to join him in a hotel room. On one occasion, she alleges that Conyers asked her to work out of his room for the evening, but when she arrived the congressman started talking about his sexual desires. She alleged he then told her she needed to “touch it,” in reference to his penis, or find him a woman who would meet his sexual demands. She alleged Conyers made her work nights, evenings, and holidays to keep him company.

 

In another incident, the former employee alleged the congressman insisted she stay in his room while they traveled together for a fundraising event. When she told him that she would not stay with him, she alleged he told her to “just cuddle up with me and caress me before you go.”

 

“Rep. Conyers strongly postulated that the performing of personal service or favors would be looked upon favorably and lead to salary increases or promotions,” the former employee said in the documents.

Three other staff members provided affidavits submitted to the Office Of Compliance that outlined a pattern of behavior from Conyers that included touching the woman in a sexual manner and growing angry when she brought her husband around.

 

One affidavit from a former female employee states that she was tasked with flying in women for the congressman. “One of my duties while working for Rep. Conyers was to keep a list of women that I assumed he was having affairs with and call them at his request and, if necessary, have them flown in using Congressional resources,” said her affidavit. (A second staffer alleged in an interview that Conyers used taxpayer resources to fly women to him.)

One male employee who corroborated the victim’s claims in an affidavit said he witnessed Conyers touch his staffers in an inappropriate, sexual manner. The women in his office said it was widely known that Conyers had sexual relationships with his staff, something the women felt undermined their credibility.

The employee said in her affidavit that Conyers also made sexual advances toward her: “I was driving the Congressman in my personal car and was resting my hand on the stick shift. Rep. Conyers reached over and began to caress my hand in a sexual manner.”

 

The woman said she told Conyers she was married and not interested in pursuing a sexual relationship, according to the affidavit. She said she was told many times by constituents that it was well-known that Conyers had sexual relationships with his staff, and said she and other female staffers felt this undermined their credibility.

 

“I am personally aware of several women who have experienced the same or similar sexual advances made towards them by Rep[.] John Conyers,” she said in her affidavit.

 

A male employee wrote that he witnessed Rep. Conyers rub the legs and other body parts of the complainant “in what appeared to be a sexual manner” and saw the congressman rub and touch other women “in an inappropriate manner.” The employee said he confronted Conyers about this behavior.

 

“Rep. Conyers said he needed to be ‘more careful’ because bad publicity would not be helpful as he runs for re-election. He ended the conversation with me by saying he would ‘work on’ his behavior,” the male staffer said in his affidavit.

One reason Conyers’ staffers tolerated his behavior, as Buzzfeed points out, was the Congressman’s status as a civil rights icon, something his staffers believed insulated him from criticism. He is also incredibly popular among his constituents in Detroir.

Conyers is a civil rights icon. He was lauded by Martin Luther King Jr. and is a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

 

“Your story won’t do shit to him,” said the staffer. “He’s untouchable.”

Representatives for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and former Speaker John Boehner said both lawmakers were unaware of the settlements because of the confidentiality agreements. Paul Ryan’s office didn’t return Buzzfeed’s request for comment.

To help rectify Congress’s broken system, Rep. Speiers has introduced legislation to overhaul the complaint process, including requiring the Office of Compliance to publicly name the office of any member who enters into a settlement. The bill would also allow complainants to waive mediation and counseling, set up a victims" counsel, and require all congressional offices to go through harassment training every year.

In the meantime, we imagine this won’t be the last bombshell disclosure implicating a high-ranking member of Congress. Indeed, if recent trends are any guide, it’s only a matter of time, we believe, before the Republican whom Speiers alluded to is unmasked.

Read the complaint in its entirety below:

 

2017.11.21buzzfeed by zerohedge on Scribd

 

 

Is Capitalism Dead Or Merely Dying?

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

New Zealand’s new prime minister Jacinda Ardern calls capitalism a blatant failure. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis says capitalism is ‘merely’ coming to an end because it is making itself obsolete. Mathematics professor Bruce Boghosian claims that without redistribution of wealth, our market economy would not be stable, because wealth always tends to concentrate. The people at Artemis Capital Management write that the stock market has begun self-cannibalizing like a snake eating its tail, and the only reason we’re not in a recession already is ‘financial alchemy’.

At the very least we can say that the system is under pressure. But what system is that? It would be nice to have a clearcut definition of capitalism, but alas, there are many, about as many as there are different forms of it. That doesn’t make this any easier. Americans call many European economies ‘socialist’, which seems to mean they are not capitalist. But Scandinavian countries don’t function like the Soviet Union either.

And if you see how much money is involved in transfer payments to citizens in the US, the supposed bastion of free market capitalism, it’s tempting to conclude the system has already failed. But even with transfer payments, inequality is at record levels. That would seem to confirm Boghosian’s statement that “even if a society does redistribute wealth, if it’s too small an amount, “a partial oligarchy will result..” So what then?

Varoufakis and others want a “universal basic dividend”, or “universal basic income”. Would that be the end of capitalism as we know it? Or is it just a -perhaps more extreme- form of ‘state capitalism’? Varoufakis deems it inevitable because technology will eradicate so many jobs from societies that people won’t be able to make money from work. Personally, I’ve long thought that the pending large-scale demise of pensions systems will lead to some form of UBI.

37-year-young Jacinda Ardern is very clear in her assessment of New Zealand’s form of capitalism. If you’ve got the worst homelessness in the developed world, you have a broken system. If the system fails the people, it’s no good. Other people might argue that capitalism never promised to take care of everyone. Or rather, not through state interference. Labour’s Ardern has her view:

New Zealand’s New Prime Minister Brands Capitalism A ‘Blatant Failure’

[Jacinda] Ardern, has pledged her government will increase the minimum wage, write child poverty reduction targets into law, and build thousands of affordable homes. In her first full interview since becoming prime minister-elect, she told current affairs programme The Nation that capitalism had “failed our people”. “If you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that’s a blatant failure,” she said. [..] “When you have a market economy, it all comes down to whether or not you acknowledge where the market has failed and where intervention is required. Has it failed our people in recent times? Yes. How can you claim you’ve been successful when you have growth roughly 3%, but you’ve got the worst homelessness in the developed world?”

So to which extent should a state interfere in markets, and in society at large? There are obviously wide ideological divides when it comes to answering that one. Does that mean there is no answer possible at all? Perhaps not. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that the system is predestined to fail, as Boghosian’s mathematical models suggest: “Our work refutes the idea that free markets, by virtually leaving people up to their own devices, will be fair..”

That doesn’t necessarily demand a lot of interference, we could ‘simply’ write the rules of the game in such a way that the ‘natural tendency’ towards wealth concentration is blocked. An example is the history of the top US income tax rate. Arguably, the nation was doing a lot better under Eisenhower and Kennedy, with a top rate of 91%, than it is today. If you put a few rules like that in play, perhaps including Varoufakis’ idea of a ‘common welfare fund’, maybe the state doesn’t have to interfere much otherwise.

One of the main underlying claims of capitalism, and of macroeconomics in general, is that markets -and societies- will sort themselves out if left alone. Bruce Boghosian says this is not true, and that he has the math to prove it. The entire notion of markets tending towards a ‘supply-demand equilibrium’ is nonsense, he says (echoing Minsky, Steve Keen et al). Trickle-down economics is a figment of the imagination, while trickle up-economics flourishes.

This refutes much of what our economic systems are based on, which would appear to indicate that we need an urgent revision of these systems. Unless we would agree that Darwin-on-Steroids is a good idea. We don’t and won’t, because it would mean Stephen Foster’s “frail forms fainting at the door” all over the place. A market ideology that causes widespread misery has no future.

The Mathematics of Inequality

Seven years ago, the combined wealth of 388 billionaires equaled that of the poorest half of humanity , according to Oxfam International. This past January the equation was even more unbalanced: it took only eight billionaires, marking an unmistakable march toward increased concentration of wealth. Today that number has been reduced to five billionaires.

 

Trying to understand such growing inequality is usually the purview of economists, but Bruce Boghosian, a professor of mathematics, thinks he has found another explanation—and a warning. Using a mathematical model devised to mimic a simplified version of the free market, he and colleagues are finding that, without redistribution, wealth becomes increasingly more concentrated, and inequality grows until almost all assets are held by an extremely small percent of people.

 

“Our work refutes the idea that free markets, by virtually leaving people up to their own devices, will be fair,” he said. “Our model, which is able to explain the form of the actual wealth distribution with remarkable accuracy, also shows that free markets cannot be stable without redistribution mechanisms. The reality is precisely the opposite of what so-called ‘market fundamentalists’ would have us believe.”

 

While economists use math for their models, they seek to show that an economy governed by supply and demand will result in a steady state or equilibrium, while Boghosian’s efforts “don’t try to engineer a supply-demand equilibrium, and we don’t find one,” he said. [..] The model tracks the data with remarkable accuracy, he said. He and his team will soon publish a paper on how it relates to U.S. wealth data from 1989 to 2013.

 

“We have also begun to apply it to wealth data from the ECB, and so far it seems to work very well for certain European countries as well,” he said [..] It turns out that when agents do well in early transactions, the odds are so increasingly stacked in their favor that—without redistribution from taxes or other wealth-transfer mechanisms—they will get more money, and keep accruing wealth inevitably.

 

“Without redistribution of wealth, our market economy would not be stable,” said Boghosian. “One person would run away with all the wealth, and it would keep going until it came to complete oligarchy.” And even if a society does redistribute wealth, if it’s too small an amount, “a partial oligarchy will result,” Boghosian said.

If markets and societies cannot survive under current rules, theories and ideologies, what do we do? The Artemis guys strongly suggest we stop the practice of excessive stock buybacks- even if they’re the only thing propping up the whole market system. Because they’re leading us straight into a recession. Because they’re making that recession a lot worse.

Volatility and the Alchemy of Risk

The Ouroboros, a Greek word meaning ‘tail devourer’, is the ancient symbol of a snake consuming its own body in perfect symmetry. The imagery of the Ouroboros evokes the infinite nature of creation from destruction. The sign appears across cultures and is an important icon in the esoteric tradition of Alchemy. Egyptian mystics first derived the symbol from a real phenomenon in nature. In extreme heat a snake, unable to self-regulate its body temperature,will experience an out-of-control spike in its metabolism. In a state of mania, the snake is unable to differentiate its own tail from its prey,and will attack itself, self-cannibalizing until it perishes. In nature and markets, when randomness self-organizes into too perfect symmetry, order becomes the source of chaos.

 

The Ouroboros is a metaphor for the financial alchemy driving the modern Bear Market in Fear. Volatility across asset classes is at multi-generational lows. A dangerous feedback loop now exists between ultra-low interest rates, debt expansion, asset volatility, and financial engineering that allocates risk based on that volatility. In this self-reflexive loop volatility can reinforce itself both lower and higher. In a market where stocks and bonds are both overvalued, financial alchemy is the only way to feed our global hunger for yield, until it kills the very system it is nourishing.

[..] At the head of the Great Snake of Risk is unprecedented monetary policy. Since 2009 Global Central Banks have pumped in $15 trillion in stimulus creating an imbalance in the investment demand for and supply of quality assets. Long term government bond yields are now the lowest levels in the history of human civilization dating back to 1285. As of this summer there was $9.5 trillion worth of negative yielding debt globally. Last month Austria issued a 100-year bond with a coupon of only 2.1%(6) that will lose close to half its value if interest rates rise 1% or more. The global demand for yield is now unmatched in human history. None of this makes sense outside a framework of financial repression.

 

Amid this mania for investment, the stock market has begun self-cannibalizing… literally. Since 2009, US companies have spent a record $3.8 trillion on share buy-backs financed by historic levels of debt issuance. Share buybacks are a form of financial alchemy that uses balance sheet leverage to reduce liquidity generating the illusion of growth. A shocking +40% of the earning-per-share growth and +30% of the stock market gains since 2009 are from share buy-backs. Absent this financial engineering we would already be in an earnings recession.

 

Any strategy that systematically buys declines in markets is mathematically shorting volatility. To this effect, the trillions of dollars spent on share buybacks are equivalent to a giant short volatility position that enhances mean reversion. Every decline in markets is aggressively bought by the market itself, further lowing volatility. Stock price valuations are now at levels which in the past have preceded depressions including 1928, 1999, and 2007. The role of active investors is to find value, but when all asset classes are overvalued, the only way to survive is by using financial engineering to short volatility in some form.

Yanis Varoufakis doesn’t so much argue that capitalism has already failed, he says it is bound to fail in the near future. Because new technology, including artificial intelligence, will destroy too many jobs for society to continue to function intact. That is already happening, in that we both produce and consume Google’s ‘products’, but we get none of the profits. An example:

Google’s Plan To Revolutionise Cities Is A Takeover In All But Name

Alphabet’s weapons are impressive. Cheap, modular buildings to be assembled quickly; sensors monitoring air quality and building conditions; adaptive traffic lights prioritising pedestrians and cyclists; parking systems directing cars to available slots. Not to mention delivery robots, advanced energy grids, automated waste sorting, and, of course, ubiquitous self-driving cars. Alphabet essentially wants to be the default platform for other municipal services. Cities, it says, have always been platforms; now they are simply going digital.

 

“The world’s great cities are all hubs of growth and innovation because they leveraged platforms put in place by visionary leaders,” states the proposal. “Rome had aqueducts, London the Underground, Manhattan the street grid.” Toronto, led by its own visionary leaders, will have Alphabet. Amid all this platformaphoria, one could easily forget that the street grid is not typically the property of a private entity, capable of excluding some and indulging others. Would we want Trump Inc to own it? Probably not. So why hurry to give its digital equivalent to Alphabet?

Google aims at taking over our entire communities, and claims this will be to our benefit. We let the new technology companies expand far and wide, to a large extent because our ‘leaders’ don’t understand what is happening any better than we do. But that is not a good thing, for many different reasons. It’ll be very hard to whistle them back later, both because of the wealth they’re building, and because of the intensifying links they have to government, including -or especially- the intelligence community.

Capitalism Is Ending Because It Has Made Itself Obsolete

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has claimed capitalism is coming to an end because it is making itself obsolete. The former economics professor told an audience at University College London that the rise of giant technology corporations and artificial intelligence will cause the current economic system to undermine itself.

Mr Varoufakis [..] said companies such as Google and Facebook, for the first time ever, are having their capital bought and produced by consumers. “Firstly the technologies were funded by some government grant; secondly every time you search for something on Google, you contribute to Google’s capital,” he said. “And who gets the returns from capital? Google, not you. “So now there is no doubt capital is being socially produced, and the returns are being privatised. This with artificial intelligence is going to be the end of capitalism.”

 

Warning Karl Marx “will have his revenge ”, the 56-year-old said for the first time since capitalism started, new technology “is going to destroy a lot more jobs than it creates”. He added: “Capitalism is going to undermine capitalism , because they are producing all these technologies that will make corporations and the private means of production obsolete. “And then what happens? I have no idea.”

 

Describing the present economic situation as “unsustainable” and fearing the rise of “toxic nationalism”, Mr Varoufakis said governments needed to prepare for post-capitalism by introducing redistributive wealth policies. He suggested one effective policy would be for 10% of all future issue of shares to be put into a “common welfare fund” owned by the people. Out of this a “universal basic dividend” could be paid to every citizen.

Has capitalism failed already, as Jacinda Ardern claims, or will that happen only in the future, as Varoufakis says? It may be a moot question once the system and the markets start collapsing. That they will, and must, is not a question but a certainty, even a mathematical one. Whatever your ideology, that is not a good thing. And the current ideology has caused this, that much is clear.

If the remaining wealth is not divided better than it is today, those who have gathered most of it will also find themselves in non-functioning societies and communities. Unless perhaps you’re George W. and have property in Paraguay.

But even then. We’re eating our tails.

Bernie Sanders To Introduce Single-Payer Healthcare Bill In September

For a couple of years now we"ve highlighted various data points suggesting that Obamacare was, and continues to be, in an inescapable death spiral that will end in a spectacular collapse of healthcare exchanges around the country.  While there are a number of reasons that Obamacare was doomed from the start, it basically all boils down to the original failed logic that millions of young, healthy Americans would gladly pay out the nose for a product they didn"t want and knew they would never use all to fulfill a civic obligation to subsidize the healthcare costs of their older and/or less fortunate neighbors. 

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, most Americans simply aren"t wired that way.

In fact, as we pointed last week, a study from Mark Farrah and Associates found that the "off-exchange market" (i.e. people who make too much money to quality for subsidies and whose premiums are required to subsidize everyone else who does qualify) contracted by 2.1mm in 2016, or a 29% drop.  With those kind of declines, it"s only a matter of time until there are no more rich fools in the pool willing to continue subsidizing a broken system.

Also, MFA published the same report in 2016, facilitating a year-over-year comparison. The on-exchange market fell from 12,681,874 to 12,216,003 individuals, a reduction of 465,871 or 4 percent. However, the off-exchange market fell from 7,520,939 to 5,361,451, a reduction of 2,159,488 or 29 percent. In other words, enrollment is steady among those who receive subsidies but declining dramatically among those who do not.

Much has been made of the question of whether the individual markets are in a “death spiral.” Given that the on-exchange market enrollment is relatively stable, there is clearly not a death spiral in the subsidized market. However, with a reduction in the unsubsidized market of 29 percent in just one year, that pattern certainly looks like one we would expect in a market spiraling down.

That said, for some folks, including Bernie Sanders, the problem with Obamacare isn"t that it"s too socialist for Americans but rather not quite socialist enough.  As such, we learn today that he Vermont Senator will introduce a bill calling for a single-payer healthcare system as soon as he gets back to Washington DC from his month-long vacation.  Per The Hill:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) plans to introduce his "Medicare for all" single-payer healthcare bill after Congress returns in September.

Speaking to constituents in Vermont Monday, Sanders admitted that the bill is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Congress or be signed by President Trump.

"If we pass this thing, it"s not going to be tomorrow, it would be the most significant step forward legislatively since I suspect the creation of Social Security in the 1930s. It"s a big deal," he said, according to The Associated Press.

Sanders has long argued in favor of a government-run universal healthcare system, commonly referred to as single-payer. It was included in his platform during his 2016 run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Of course, what Bernie"s "Medicare for all" plan really equates to is another massive tax hike for Americans...you know, because the federal government has demonstrated time and again what efficient allocators of capital they are.

All of which just proves that if you don"t like your Obamacare, too bad because Bernie"s going to take your money anyway.

Two Charts Prove Obamacare Is Not "Stabilizing" In 2018

As the Obamacare repeal and replace effort raged on in Congress over the past six months, several Democrats and even some of the original Obamacare architects stepped forward to argue that the crippling premium increases from 2014 through 2017 were just a 1x market adjustment and that everything would miraculously "stabilize" in 2018.

Well, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, that prediction isn"t playing out exactly as expected.  Taking a look at 21 of the bigger healthcare markets in the United States, Kaiser found that premiums submitted so far for 2018 are increasing at an average rate of 17% YoY and ranging up to 49% in Wilmington. 

Now, we understand that the term "stabilizing" is somewhat subjective but we"re not sure that rates spiking at 10.5x prevailing inflation rates, on average, would reasonably fit anyone"s definition.

 

Meanwhile the 4-year rate increases from 2014 to 2018 are even more staggering...

 

And while Democrats continue to boast about overall Obamacare enrollments, the "off-exchange market" (i.e. people who make too much money to quality for subsidies and whose premiums are required to subsidize everyone else who does qualify) contracted by 2.1mm in 2016, or a 29% drop.  With those kind of declines, it"s only a matter of time until there are no more "rich" fools in the pool willing to continue subsidizing a broken system. More from the National Review:

Also, MFA published the same report in 2016, facilitating a year-over-year comparison. The on-exchange market fell from 12,681,874 to 12,216,003 individuals, a reduction of 465,871 or 4 percent. However, the off-exchange market fell from 7,520,939 to 5,361,451, a reduction of 2,159,488 or 29 percent. In other words, enrollment is steady among those who receive subsidies but declining dramatically among those who do not.

 

Much has been made of the question of whether the individual markets are in a “death spiral.” Given that the on-exchange market enrollment is relatively stable, there is clearly not a death spiral in the subsidized market. However, with a reduction in the unsubsidized market of 29 percent in just one year, that pattern certainly looks like one we would expect in a market spiraling down.

Of course, it"s all Trump"s fault now...

Man Freed After 17 Years in Prison After He Found His Doppelganger

Kansas City, KS — (RT) A man has been released from a Kansas prison after serving 17 years for a crime he didn’t commit, after his lookalike was found.

Richard Anthony Jones was sentenced to 19 years for a 1999 aggravated robbery he has always maintained he didn’t commit.

Jones was found guilty of the robbery in a Walmart based on eyewitness evidence. There was no physical or DNA evidence linking him to the crime.

Jones tried to have his conviction appealed but each effort was denied.

Other inmates told him about a prisoner named Ricky who they said looked exactly like him and in 2015, Jones told the Midwest Innocence Project about his doppelganger, Ricky.

The group discovered Ricky lived near the scene of the crime, in Kansas City, Kansas, while Jones lived in Kansas City, Missouri. Jones’ lawyers also argued that Jones had said he was with his girlfriend and her family at the time of the crime.

“When I saw the picture of my double it all made sense to me,” Jones said.

On Wednesday, witnesses, including the victim of the robbery, testified in Johnson County District Court that, after looking at photographs of both men, they could no longer say Jones was the man who committed the crime.

Judge Kevin Moriarty ordered Jones’ release, saying no juror would have convicted Jones based on the new evidence.

As for Ricky, he also testified and denied committing the crime.

READ MORE:  Justice Failure -- Cop Gets Job Back After Murdering Man on Video for Illegally Camping

Jones was tied to the crime when his photograph was picked out of a police database three months after the robbery. His lawyers described the lineup as “highly suggestive,” as Jones was the only person in the lineup resembling the description of the suspect.

“None of the other photos matched the description provided by the witnesses,” Alice Craig, Jones’ attorney and professor at the Project for Innocence said.

Collecting $1 Of Student Debt Costs American Taxpayers $38

Your government at work with your tax dollars.

Loan billions to brain dead teenagers so they can pretend to get smart in college. When they fail miserably due to the fact after twelve years of public school government indoctrination they can’t read, write or add, the government pays slimy collection agencies to get these unemployed dolts to pay up.

Not only has $600 billion of your tax dollars been pissed down the drain on loans to dumbasses, you now get to spend billions trying to collect the billions that will never be collected.

Clusterfuck is too kind of a word to use for this program Obama initiated to pump money into the economy and fake the true unemployment rate.

I bet you can’t wait until the government has full control of your healthcare.

While Congress originally approved the IDR plans in the 1990s and 2000s, Obama used executive actions, starting in 2010, to extend the most-generous terms to millions of borrowers which is precisely when loan volumes under the program started to skyrocket.

Congrats, taxpayers...you"ll soon have the privilege of repaying $137 billion worth of debt spent by entitled millennials on binge-drinking trips Cancun and drugs...life, after all, is just a little bit better when we spread the wealth around...

As Bloomberg"s Shahien Nasiripour reports, the federal government has, in recent years, paid debt collectors close to $1 billion annually to help distressed borrowers climb out of default and scrounge up regular monthly payments. New government figures suggest much of that money may have been wasted.

Nearly half of defaulted student-loan borrowers who worked with debt collectors to return to good standing on their loans defaulted again within three years, according to an analysis by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For their work, debt collectors receive up to $1,710 in payment from the U.S. Department of Education each time a borrower makes good on soured debt through a process known as rehabilitation. They keep those funds even if borrowers subsequently default again, contracts show. The department has earmarked more than $4.2 billion for payments to its debt collectors since the start of the 2013 fiscal year, federal spending data show.

The findings, gleaned from the bureau’s analysis of about 600,000 borrower accounts, come as the Trump administration weighs a shakeup of the government’s student loan program. For years, defaults have mounted despite the improving U.S. economy and the money invested in collecting education debt. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pledged earlier this year to “do a better job” than the Obama administration at managing the department’s loan contractors. Last week, DeVos suggested that the feds should “start afresh.”

Officials at the CFPB say the government should reexamine whether the loan program, and the lucrative contracts it bestows on private firms, is working for the millions of Americans struggling to repay their taxpayer-backed student debt.

“When student loan companies know that nearly half of their highest-risk customers will quickly fail, it’s time to fix the broken system that makes this possible,” said Seth Frotman, the consumer bureau’s top student-loan official.

Debt collectors aggressively angle for new business from the Education Department because the contracts are among the most lucrative in the industry. The government values the latest round at $2.8 billion.

The government often pays debt collectors nearly 40 times what they bring in, federal records show. Take the government’s rehabilitation program, which targets people who have defaulted on their debt—meaning they missed nine months of payments. If a borrower subsequently makes nine on-time monthly payments of as little as $5 during a 10-month period, their loans are returned to good standing and the default is supposed to be wiped from their credit reports. But the CFPB found that more than 40 percent of these borrowers defaulted again within three years.

Even when borrowers don’t default, debt collection efforts often yield little. Close to 80 percent of borrowers who rehabilitate their debt make the minimum $5 monthly payment, according to a 2015 estimate by the National Council of Higher Education Resources, a lobbying group that represents student debt collectors and servicers. That means the Education Department is paying its debt collectors up to $1,710 per borrower to collect around $45, regardless of whether the borrower continues to make her payments.

The arrangement means that debt collectors “have no ‘skin in the game,’” Frotman wrote in an October report.

The consumer bureau estimates that the vast majority of borrowers who rehabilitate their defaulted debt with $5 monthly payments are eligible for $0 payments after they exit default, under an income-based repayment plan. But about 90 percent of debtors who rehabilitated their debt failed to enroll in these programs, according to the CFPB’s analysis. All that’s needed to enroll is some paperwork that enables contracted loan servicers to confirm borrowers’ annual earnings, but experts inside and outside the government say they don’t know why this step isn’t completed, and distressed borrowers are left stuck in debt collectors’ sights. The Education Department, which rewards its loan servicers with more business if the loans they service remain in good standing, excludes rehabilitated loans when grading its servicers’ performance.

The consumer bureau says slipshod loan servicing—the business of counseling borrowers on their options and sending them monthly bills—is largely to blame. NCHER President James Bergeron said the feds need to simplify the various repayment plans they offer and “do a better job” helping previously defaulted borrowers get into repayment plans. Calls and emails to the Education Department weren’t returned.

“I don’t see how anyone wins from this system other than the collection industry,” said Adam S. Minsky, a Boston-based lawyer who represents student debtors.

Visualizing The Collapse Of The Middle Class In 20 Major U.S. Cities

When future historians look back at the beginning of the 21st century, they’ll note that we grappled with many big issues. They’ll write about the battle between nationalism and globalism, soaring global debt, a dysfunctional healthcare system, societal concerns around automation and AI, and pushback on immigration. They will also note the growing number of populist leaders in Western democracies, ranging from Marine Le Pen to Donald Trump.

However, as Visual Cpitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes, these historians will not view these ideas and events in isolation. Instead, they will link them all, at least partially, to an overarching trend that is intimately connected to today’s biggest problems: the “hollowing out” of the middle class.

VISUALIZING THE COLLAPSE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

The fact is many people have less money in their pockets – and understandably, this has motivated people to take action against the status quo.

And while the collapse of the middle class and income inequality are issues that receive a fair share of discussion, we thought that this particular animation from Metrocosm helped to put things in perspective.

The following animation shows the change in income distribution in 20 major U.S. cities between 1970 and 2015:

The differences between 1970 and 2015 are intense. At first, each distribution is more bell-shaped, with the majority of people in a middle income bracket – and by 2015, those people are “pushed” out towards the extremes as they either get richer or poorer.

A BROADER LOOK AT INCOME INEQUALITY

This phenomenon is not limited to major cities, either.

Here’s another look at the change in income distribution using smaller brackets and the whole U.S. adult population:

It’s a multi-faceted challenge, because while a significant portion of middle class households are being shifted into lower income territory, there are also many households that are doing the opposite. According to Pew Research, the percentage of households in the upper income bracket has grown from 14% to 21% between 1971 and 2015.

The end result? With people being pushed to both ends of the spectrum, the middle class has decreased considerably in size. In 1971, the middle class made up 61% of the adult population, and by 2014 it accounted for less than 50%.

As this “core” of society shrinks, it aggravates the aforementioned problems. People and governments borrow more money to make up for a lack of middle class wealth, while backlashes against globalism, free trade, and open borders are fueled. The populists who can “fix” the broken system are elected, and so on.

Don't Confuse Immigration With Naturalization

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

As the immigration debate goes on, many commentators continue to sloppily ignore the difference between the concept of naturalization and the phenomenon of immigration. 

While the two are certainly related, they are also certainly not the same thing. Recognizing this distinction can help us to see the very real differences between naturalization, which is a matter of political privilege, and immigration, which simply results from the exercise of private property rights. Immigration results naturally from allowing persons to exercise their property rights. Naturalization, on the other hand, is a political act. 

Naturalization Is about Politics, not Property

Naturalization is the process by which persons become citizens and gain access to political institutions. This is a distinct phenomenon from the process of migration. Certainly, an immigrant can relocate without any intent of going through the naturalization process, as is the case for many immigrants to the US today. Those familiar with migrant worker programs in the US, for example, are well aware that there are many workers who work in the US but do not begin the naturalization process. 

Much of the confusion in the US stems from the lax nature of US naturalization laws. Thanks to "birthright citizenship" in the United States, it is assumed in the modern US that even if a person never becomes naturalized, his or her children will automatically become citizens if born on US soil. 

In many parts of the world, however, simply being born within the boundaries of a certain state does not guarantee naturalization. 

Switzerland, for example, provides a much clearer picture of how immigration and naturalization can be viewed as quite distinct. Indeed, in Switzerland, the naturalization process can take many years for adults, and citizenship is by no means guaranteed even to the children of non-Swiss citizens on Swiss soil. For an example of this, we need look no further than this recent article in The Atlantic which outlines the story of one Nancy Holten who has lived as a non-citizen in Switzerland for 34 yeas. Recently, she was rejected for citizenship for the second time. This doesn"t mean Switzerland is a closed economy, of course. Non-citizen permanent residents are numerous in Switzerland, making up nearly one-quarter of the total population. The lack of citizenship, however, is not a barrier to owning property or entering into employment contracts. 

This reality reminds us that citizenship and political participation — i.e., naturalization — are not the same thing as the free exercise of property rights. 

Property Rights vs. Political "Rights" 

Immigration, on the other hand, can — and should — occur outside the sphere of state power. In order for immigration to take place, the state merely need take no action and leave the matter to private employers, workers, and landowners.

In other words, if a person can find someone willing to rent or sell him real estate, and if the migrant can secure income through employment or some other voluntary means, then the immigrant will be free to relocate — thanks to the invitation of private owners and employers. 

Thus, in a system where income and access to other resources must be procured largely through private means, immigration — when it occurs — is simply the natural outcome of the exercise of private property rights. Unfortunately, most modern states cloud this picture by extending the welfare state to migrants. This, in turn, changes migration from a voluntary agreement between private parties into a matter of "public" funds and political action. The answer to this, of course, is to end the subsidy — not to intervene in the private economy. 

Moreover, political problems that arise from imprudent policies on naturalization and welfare state spending do not justify government intervention in private property.  After all, unlike political "rights" such as voting, private property rights are universal and are not rendered moot by a change of government policy or a change in government jurisdiction. 

By moving from one jurisdiction to another, a person does not suddenly forfeit the right to rent an apartment freely offered to him by a landlord. He does not lose the right to take a job freely offered by an employer, and he does not lose the right to sell goods and services to persons who freely offer to buy them. 

Unlike the political privileges conferred by naturalization, these property rights remain the same always and in every location. Any interference by the state into these voluntary market activities would be rightly considered a violation of basic human rights. 

Nevertheless, in spite of states can and do engage in a variety of activities intended to hamper, prohibit, or regulate the exercise of private property rights based on whether or not a private party travels over an international boundary to conduct business. 

Often, these efforts to limit property rights take the form of preventing buyer and seller from engaging in commerce. This can be done through physical barriers or by acts of a legislature intended to impose prohibitions on certain types of employment and other voluntary contracts. 

In many cases, employers will only be allowed to employ persons with the correct government paperwork. Those who do not have the right paperwork, however, are in violation of government laws and may not be hired. In some cases, landlords are even prevented from renting their own property to potential renters who lack the correct arbitrary government designation. 

In this, of course, we see little difference from regulatory regimes such as the war on drugs in which some plants are declared to be legal, while other plants are deemed illegal and verboten. 

In all cases, of course, state enforcement of these arbitrary designations relies on the imposition of stiff fines and draconian prison sentences for many involved. This was certainly true in the case of William Hadden, a property owner who rented an apartment to non-government-approved persons:

The 69-year-old landlord was arrested and charged with dozens of crimes, including harboring fugitives and conspiracy — because his property manager rented to illegals. Although acquitted by a jury, he could have spent the rest of his life in prison, and been forced to forfeit the 60 or so units he owned jointly with his son to the State of Kentucky.

In his article "The Tragedy of Immigration Enforcement," Lew Rockwell noted that "If you give government a job to do, even one that seems justified in the abstract, it will use its power to make a terrible mess in practice." Rockwell goes in on in the article to note the many ways that federal control of immigration has empowered federal agencies to regulate, monitor, and control countless small business and employers across the US who have committed the "crime" of entering into employment contracts without federal approval. 

Indeed, in recent decades, countless small business owners have been ruined by federal intervention in these voluntary employment contracts, while countless others have been driven into black and gray markets in attempts to exercise what should be regarded as unassailable property rights. 

Those who advocate for this type of government control over private property often rationalize their position on the grounds that private owners and employers must be imprisoned, fined, harassed, and impoverished in the name of preventing immigrants from accessing the political system or the public purse. 

Unfortunately, this sort of thinking confuses the issue of naturalization and immigration. If it is a concern — for whatever reason — that immigrants have access to political institutions and public funds, then the correct response is to directly limit that access. 

Stealing the property of landlords and employers, on the other hand, — as part of a circuitous effort to stick it to immigrants — only destroys the free exercise of property rights while refusing to directly confront the issue at hand — a bloated welfare state and a broken system of naturalization.

America’s Student Debt Problem Is Much Bigger Than Anybody Realized

Submitted by Shaun Bradley via TheAntiMedia.org,

The Department of Education recently released a memo admitting that repayment rates on student loans have been grossly exaggerated. Data from 99.8% of schools across the country has been manipulated to cover up growing problems with the $1.3 trillion in outstanding student loans. New calculations show that more than half of all borrowers from 1,000 different institutions have defaulted on or not paid back a single dollar of their loans over the last seven years.

This comes in stark contrast to previous claims and should call into question any statistics provided by government agencies. The American people haven’t fully grasped the long-term implications of loaning a trillion dollars to young people who have no credit or assets.

Increases in tuition seen over the past two decades have become a point of controversy and angst for those who don’t fully understand the contributing factors. Between 1995 and 2015, the average cost of a public, four-year university skyrocketed by well over 200%. Although federal student aid programs are often championed as a necessity, they have been instrumental in making higher education unaffordable. The opportunity to pay for college by working a part-time job evaporated as soon as huge sums of money were handed out to anyone with a pulse. Since students no longer pay their tuition upfront, colleges are able to raise prices in perpetuity, knowing the government will step in and make credit easier and easier to obtain. As an added bonus, outstanding student loans account for 45% of the government’s financial assets.

Subsidizing the lives of an entire generation has turned personal growth and advancement into a choice instead of a necessity. After all, why take risks or work your way up from the bottom when with just a signature, the life you’ve always wanted could be laid at your feet? It’s not hard to figure out why so many people are tempted to take advantage of the instant gratification that comes from student loans, but like everything else in life, they have a price. The same safety net that delays the anxiety of the future also ensures that monthly payments will be owed for decades to come. Procrastinating when faced with pivotal life decisions is an instinct that used to be overcome as a teenager, but today it is worn like a badge of honor well into adulthood.

The policies of intervention haven’t stopped at federal aid, and loan forgiveness is now being offered to those willing to work in the public sector or at a non-profit for ten years. This perverse incentive only serves to drive those desperately in debt further towards government dependence. Productive jobs are created when the needs of others are met in the free market, not by joining the ranks of the state for self-preservation.

The idea that success comes exclusively through attending a university has created a stigma against some of the most valuable occupations. The lack of real skill sets has lead to a shortage of welders, electricians, carpenters, and other trade workers. Instead of learning through experience with apprenticeships, many students have embraced four years of sleeping in, drinking heavily, and getting an increasingly useless degree. While there are many fields that require specialized training, the surge in popularity of degrees like sociology, anthropology, and communications clearly illustrate a disconnect between the needs of the economy and the skills of the incoming workforce.

The normalization of this system has blinded individuals to their own potential. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs and thinkers are those who have bypassed traditional education. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and hundreds of other innovators achieved greatness by breaking from predictable paths to knowledge. Instead, passion and experience were the foundations that gave them the confidence needed to make groundbreaking strides. What it means to learn and be educated is changing rapidly as technology develops, and it will eventually force the State to adapt with it.

Albert Einstein was able to spot the innate flaws in the education system even back in 1936, but it’s doubtful he could have fathomed how far things would go:

“I want to oppose the idea that the school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which one has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialized training in school appear possible…The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost.”

Those who do achieve their degrees often do so without developing important skills like critical thinking and individual discernment. The scariest part about this revelation is that almost 90% of outstanding private loans are co-signed by parents, making this an intergenerational problem. As the instability of pension funds, social security, and economic conditions continue, any additional burdens passed onto the baby boomers could have far-reaching ramifications. The vast distortions in information that this report exposes should motivate everyone to become an independent fact checker. The only way to reform this broken system is to shift the pursuit of knowledge towards the direction of each individual’s passion instead of creating more cogs for the machine.

Protest In The Era Of Trump

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The best way to control the opposition is to lead it.

I am of the strong belief that any administration which comes into power in the current environment of nearly unrestrained executive authority, a lawless and sprawling intelligence agency complex, and a debt-driven, rent-seeking rewarding fraud economy should be assumed to represent a serious threat to the civil liberties and remaining freedoms of the American public. This would’ve been true under Hillary, and it’s also true under Trump.

Personally, I think Trump will be reacting to events outside of his control more than he will be controlling his own destiny given the extremely precarious point we are in during this geopolitical, cultural and economic cycle. This is a very dangerous period, and it will likely only get more dangerous as the years unfold. Not because of Trump, but because of the circumstances we have allowed ourselves to be boxed into as a people. As such, I fully understand and appreciate the role of non-violent protest and civil disobedience in the Trump era, just like I understood it and advocated for it during Obama’s transgressions.

Trump’s administration got off to a serious bang with the Women’s March over the weekend, which were unquestionably large events. While I think protest is important, and I don’t want to minimize the achievement of getting that many people out in the streets, there were many aspects of it that left a very foul taste in my mouth. Let’s start off with some of the people actively involved.

From the LA Times:

The Women’s March on Washington may have been filled with celebrities, singers and all sorts of Hollywood A-listers, but it was longtime feminist and writer Gloria Steinem who really revved up the crowd.

Upon exiting the Women’s March after her keynote speech in which she emphasized that protest means more than hitting the “send” button, a crowd formed around Steinem. Mothers rushed up to introduce their daughters to her; protesters held out their signs for her autograph.

Gloria Steinem, feminist icon and CIA-operative in the 1950’s and 60’s. Oh, you didn’t know that?

From The Chicago Tribune:

CIA agents are tight-lipped, but Steinem spoke openly about her relationship to “The Agency” in the 1950s and ‘60s after a magazine revealed her employment by a CIA front organization, the Independent Research Service.

While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”

Wait, what? The CIA was headed up by one of America’s most notorious psychopaths during that time, Allen Dulles. She must be aware of this fact. This is an interesting person for women to hold up as a role model, and to help lead the “resistance.”

One of the many nefarious things the CIA was up to during this time period was mind control program MK Ultra.

Project MKUltra – sometimes referred to as the CIA’s mind control program – is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects, at times illegal, designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture, in order to weaken the individual to force confessions through mind control. Organized through the Scientific Intelligence Division of the CIA, the project coordinated with the Special Operations Division of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps.

The operation began in the early 1950s, was officially sanctioned in 1953, was reduced in scope in 1964, further curtailed in 1967, and officially halted in 1973. The program engaged in many illegal activities, including the use of unwitting U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy. MKUltra used numerous methodologies to manipulate people’s mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as other forms of psychological torture.

How liberal.

For more on the CIA at that time, see: How America’s Modern Shadow Government Can Be Traced Back to One Very Evil Man – Allen Dulles

But it gets worse. Steinem was a key factor in the election of Donald Trump by irrationally supporting Hillary Clinton and belittling Sanders supporters with some very un-feminist type commentary. In case you forget about this episode back in February, Desperate for Hillary – Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Claims Young Women Support Sanders to Attract Boys. The only revolution this woman is going to lead is one that slams straight into a brick wall.

Naturally, Gloria wasn’t the only icon of female power to attend. The, always painfully desperate for attention and continued relevance, Madonna was also celebrated. Here’s some of what she had to say, courtesy of USA Today:

NEW YORK (AP) — Madonna is defending her fiery, expletive-laden speech at the Women’s March, saying her words were “taken wildly out of context.”

The singer said at the Washington, D.C., march Saturday that she had at times been angry after the election and had thought “an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

Power to the imbecile.

Moving along, another red flag about the march were the amount of Democratic lawmakers present and actively protesting. Considering Trump rose to power based on the intense anger from much of the American voting public about how things were going, I find this to be incredibly ironic, and certainly not empowering. As The Hill notes in the article, Lawmakers Join Women’s Marches in DC and Nationwide:

Democratic lawmakers are are marching with women in Washington and across the nation one day after President Trump’s inauguration.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of D.C. on Saturday for the Women’s March on Washington, joined by a large contingent of lawmakers.

Other Democrats attended satellite protests in other cities across the country.

Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Ben Cardin (Md.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) as well as Reps. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and others shared images from marches in Washington and their home states.

“And others.” Yes, there were many more Democrats out there “resisting” who went unmentioned in that article. Such as my Congressman Jared Polis, who shared many pictures of his defiance via Twitter.

America grabs back #womensmarch pic.twitter.com/59UMkhkSb3

— Jared Polis (@jaredpolis) January 21, 2017

Pharmaceutical company prostitute Cory Booker was also there.

Of course, former Senator and Secretary of State, John Kerry, was also out there voicing people power. Goldman Sachs executives must be shaking in their boots.

The whole thing makes me wish the Care Bears has led this march, they would’ve been a far more focused and threatening opposition force. At least the care bear stare gets things done.

Finally, to put an oligarch cherry on the sundae, there considerable links between everyone’s favorite Hillary Clinton supporting billionaire financier and the marches. As reported by Asra Q. Nomani via Women in the World, in association with The New York Times, Billionaire George Soros Has Ties to More Than 50 ‘Partners’ of the Women’s March on Washington:

In the pre-dawn darkness of today’s presidential inauguration day, I faced a choice, as a lifelong liberal feminist who voted for Donald Trump for president: lace up my pink Nike sneakers to step forward and take the DC Metro into the nation’s capital for the inauguration of America’s new president, or wait and go tomorrow to the after-party, dubbed the “Women’s March on Washington”?

 

The Guardian has touted the “Women’s March on Washington” as a “spontaneous” action for women’s rights. Another liberal media outlet, Vox, talks about the “huge, spontaneous groundswell” behind the march. On its website, organizers of the march are promoting their work as “a grassroots effort” with “independent” organizers. Even my local yoga studio, Beloved Yoga, is renting a bus and offering seats for $35. The march’s manifesto says magnificently, “The Rise of the Woman = The Rise of the Nation.”

 

It’s an idea that I, a liberal feminist, would embrace. But I know — and most of America knows — that the organizers of the march haven’t put into their manifesto: the march really isn’t a “women’s march.” It’s a march for women who are anti-Trump.

 

As someone who voted for Trump, I don’t feel welcome, nor do many other women who reject the liberal identity-politics that is the core underpinnings of the march, so far, making white women feel unwelcome, nixing women who oppose abortion and hijacking the agenda.

 

To understand the march better, I stayed up through the nights this week, studying the funding, politics and talking points of the some 403 groups that are “partners” of the march. Is this a non-partisan “Women’s March”?

 

Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, a march “partner,” told me his organization was “nonpartisan” but has “many concerns about the incoming Trump administration that include what we see as a misogynist approach to women.” Nick Fish, national program director of the American Atheists, another march partner, told me, “This is not a ‘partisan’ event.” Dennis Wiley, pastor of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ, another march “partner,” returned my call and said, “This is not a partisan march.”

 

Really? UniteWomen.org, another partner, features videos with the hashtags #ImWithHer, #DemsInPhily and #ThanksObama. Following the money, I pored through documents of billionaire George Soros and his Open Society philanthropy, because I wondered: What is the link between one of Hillary Clinton’s largest donors and the “Women’s March”?

 

I found out: plenty…

 

Much like post-election protests, which included a sign, “Kill Trump,” were not  “spontaneous,” as reported by some media outlets, the “Women’s March” is an extension of strategic identity politics that has so fractured America today, from campuses to communities. On the left or the right, it’s wrong. But, with the inauguration, we know the politics. With the march, “women” have been appropriated for a clearly anti-Trump day. When I shared my thoughts with her, my yoga studio owner said it was “sad” the march’s organizers masked their politics. “I want love for everyone,” she said.

 

The left’s fierce identity politics and its failure on Islamic extremism lost my vote this past election, and so, as the dawn’s first light breaks through the darkness of the morning as I write, I make my decision: I’ll lace up my pink Nikes and head to the inauguration, skipping the “Women’s March” that doesn’t have a place for women like me.

The protest felt like a march for the DNC while it was occurring, and much of what I’ve read since has only reenforced that perspective.

Moving along, you can get some sense for the tenor of the protests based on the signs. Looking through pictures of protests from around the world, a few things become pretty clear. First, one of the most common sign was “Love Trumps Hate,” which was a straight up Hillary campaign slogan. There were also plenty of “With Her” signs; so what was this, a march for women or a march for Hillary?

That said, I’d say the most common sign seems to have been some derivative of “Women’s Rights = Human Rights.” I unquestionably agree with this statement, which begs the question, who doesn’t? Well many of the barbaric, feudalist monarchies in the Middle East for starters. Saudi Arabia being a prime example, a place where women are not permitted to drive. Fortunately for them, their money is still green and the Clinton Foundation took plenty of it (between $10 million and $25 million to be exact). Democrats protested that by rigging the primary for her.

The Katy Perry revolution will be televised.

I didn’t personally attend any of the protests, so I asked my followers on Twitter who did attend to reach out to me and tell me about what they saw. I received lengthy responses from three people. One was a Gary Johnson voter, one a Hillary voter and one didn’t vote at all. They all pretty much confirmed what you could deduct from the signs. It was a message of “women power,” seemingly focused on women’s rights, specifically abortion and contraception.

This brings me to another observation, which will serve as a segue to the final thrust of this article. It appears the emotional driver of the protest was two fold — a serious concern that certain women’s rights will be rolled back, and a form of catharsis for people still reeling from the election loss. This is interesting, because the focal point appears to be not just driven by identify politics, but on preserving already existing rights.

Ok, fine, but what about all the ills currently at play? The destruction of the middle class, the surveillance state, the fact that Wall Street owns every single administration no matter who wins. What about the wars and the rapidly metastasizing military-industrial-intelligence complex. These are things that are currently happening, and have been getting worse under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Does it make sense for all this energy to be focused on a potential threat, as opposed to all of the many ongoing unethical, destructive aspects of American life in 2017?

Which brings us to the most important point of this entire article. I don’t want to be too judgmental here. While much of the messaging from the Women’s March seems to have been pretty unserious and divorced from the reality of the many serious issues plaguing the nation, I want to see a silver lining here. I think there’s little doubt that Trump’s election resulted in a certain percentage of the population finally waking up to how much trouble this country is in. The problem is that many of these people see Trump as the problem to be eliminated, as opposed to the symptom of a sick, destructive society that he actually is. This is where the entire “resistance” can be easily co-opted by the DNC and the rapidly emerging neocon/neoliberal alliance rooted in identity politics, which poses no actual threat to the people actually in power. In this sense, all of this potentially productive energy could tragically be redirected into simply bringing back the same Democratic types that were forcefully rejected during the 2016 election.

Once again, I want to quote Nafeez Ahmed, because he summarized it so perfectly:

New ties of solidarity are emerging across the left and right of the political spectrum. Constitutional conservatives and anti-Trump Republicans are finding themselves on the same side as progressives.

There is a powerful lesson here. In the wake of Trump’s victory, many of my American friends and colleagues who lamented Clinton’s failure see the future as essentially one-track: we need to get the Democratic Party back in power in another four or eight years.

Yet this utter banality in our political imagination is precisely what allowed the Trumpian moment to arise in the first-place – the abject deference to the inevitability of working within a broken two-party structure, regardless of its subservience to narrow vested interests, regardless of its accelerating distance from the American people.

The solution is not to react to Trump as if he, too, is the Other, but to recognise him as little more than the Great Orange Face of regressive social forces that we all enabled, forces tied to a global system that is no longer sustainable. That means raising the stakes, and shooting to build something bigger, better and brighter than merely an ‘anti-Trump’ movement.

In the Trumpian moment, we must be neither Republicans, nor Democrats, left nor right, conservative nor liberal. We are humans, together, not merely resisting a broken system that is beyond fixing, but planting the seeds to build a new system as we travel deeper into the post-carbon century. Yes, Trump is a psychotic blip in this great transition. But he is also the culmination of a state of political psychosis which began long before him, and which we’ve all been part of.

So the question is no longer what we’re against. The question is this: what are you really standing for? And what are you going to do to build it?

He’s exactly right, and I didn’t see much of that kind of thoughtful and forward looking thinking from the Women’s March. Nevertheless, let’s try to turn a negative into a positive.

Everyone reading this had to become politically aware at a certain moment in time. None of us were born with knowledge of how things work, and how completely messed up the planet is today. Moreover, even those of us who are relatively well informed are still pretty ignorant on all sorts of topics. Indeed, I am consistently amazed at how little I actually know as I continue along the path of understanding, a path that if done correctly, never ends by the way.

Less than ten years ago, I was a well educated, very financially successful imbecile. It took the financial crisis and the inexplicably corrupt government response to it to shake me out of my slumber. While I remained blissfully ignorant for much of life, many people were out there fighting the good fight. I rest on the shoulders of the giants that came before me, and I learned so much from them. You don’t have to agree with thoughtful dissidents on every topic to gain tremendous value from their insights. Noam Chomsky is a great example. I strongly disagree with him on several issues, but when it comes to government propaganda and the nefariousness of U.S. militarism, he has few equals.

If you recently became aware of how bad things are, then maybe you should pay attention to those who have been saying it for a while. If you thought everything was fine and then your world fell apart once Trump got elected, perhaps you haven’t been paying enough attention. If you see Trump as the problem to be solved, as opposed to a symptom of a discredited and failing system, you present more of a danger than a solution. In fact, you’ll likely stand in the way of the paradigm level change necessary.

Getting angry is step one. Getting informed is step two. Those of us who have been in this fight for a while understand this, and we need to do whatever we can to steer the latent human energy into productive purposes, as opposed to unwitting henchmen and women for the neocon/neoliberal DNC. Time is short and the establishment is fighting for their lives. Protesting like sheep will lead to nothing good.