A comment like that one is going to make all conspiracy theories on the federal reserve, banking system feel validated.
"Hidden from voters influence".
In my view, the Presidency is also hidden from voters influence. Sorry but in spite of the massive amount of candidates who started out in the primaries, the only one who has some real change positions is Kucinich and then on some other things, he is out of his head. But of course they marginalize him, probably because he speaks truth. They marginalized Ron Paul too.
That would be awesome to simply invade the Caymans and if Obama is more like Reagan than even Clinton, maybe he would consider that one!
It's amazing how many DoD contractors are incorporated offshore to avoid corporate taxes. Sen. Byron Dorgan has given flood speeches on the Caymans as well.
David Cay Johnston has an article in the current Mother Jones. He lists a number of fiscal remedies including:
Invade the Caymans
In 1983 just 10 percent of America's corporate profits were funneled through places that charge little or no corporate income tax; today more than 25 percent of profits go through tax havens. The Obama administration could tell the Caymans—now fifth in the world in bank deposits—to repeal its bank secrecy laws or be invaded; since the island nation's total armed forces consists of about 300 police officers, it shouldn't be hard for technicians and auditors, accompanied by a few Marines, to fly in and seize all the records. Bermuda, which relies on the Royal Navy for its military, could be next, and so on. Long before we get to Switzerland and Luxembourg, their governments should have gotten the message.
Barring gunboat diplomacy (tempting as it is), there is no reason we cannot pass laws to block financial transactions with tax havens or even, Cuba-style, make it a crime for Americans to visit or do business with them without special permission. Congress could declare the hiding of funds a threat to national security and require that anyone with offshore assets disclose them to the IRS within 30 days and pay taxes, interest, and penalties within 180 days. For the holdouts, temporary special teams in the IRS and Justice Department could speedily pursue civil or criminal charges
Ripped from a post on yahoo's programmer's guild group:
---
In light of the present financial crisis, it's interesting to read what Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
---
well, you can see the poll I put over on the right hand corner but well, I agree with Newberry on this one. That's some excellent writing. I could never understand how it was managed to spin Reagan into a great President. Economically he really started the disaster rolling and the real accomplishment I feel he did was destroy the Soviet Union/stop the cold war.
They do read it. Problem is (and this is true of many blogs) they are readers and they do not even register.
I was thinking of maybe doing another series blog post that lists the best comments of the week in it, along with links summaries of outstanding writings out on the "Internets" thinking that may encourage more to register and write comments.
This is true about most blogs, unlike the "Netroots" blogs. On the established netroots blogs people will sign up and use the comments to have a discussion whereas the regular blogs people are more lurkers and then believe this or not, a lot of people don't understand how to write a comment at all.
I check our rankings periodically and we're now about 82k in Technorati and about 30 to 20 or so of the economics blog rankings.
So, it's a matter of inviting people, getting the world out, we're really still getting established, less than 1 year old but at least the readership, rankings, etc. is overall increasing! ;)
For less than 1 year old we're doing good. We're typically ranked even with RGE monitor (Dr. Doom Roubini) and Bonddad right now.
So, yes and if you cross link, eventually people start checking out a blog more. They won't if the writings are not updated daily though.
As an example, Technorati ranks about 8 million or more blogs so it shows you just how many blogs are out there and go unread and unloved.
I wish more people would use this feature, but if you see an Instapopulist where it's either good writing or a truly shocking quick story or whatever, just click the up arrow on the bottom left.
I have it set at just two to promote an Instapopulist to the front page and if I see someone wants to promote one, I'll probably give the second click.
I don't think people realize those little arrow buttons are way beyond voting for a post, they literally control the content on the site, move it around. It's the promotion/demotion system I mention so registered users control the site content.
Paleoconservatives are more the original conservatives, before the religious radical right took over the party. So, Barry Goldwater, the John Birch Society, Pat Buchanan (minus the religious radicalism), etc. Unfortunately the religious radicalism is now mixed together but originally Goldwater for example, was Pro Choice and it makes more sense because it would be separation of church and state as well as personal freedom of choice.
Probably Ross Perot is also around this category.
So, they were outraged over bad trade deals, not really supply-siders either, huge on national security, national sovereignty and severe budget hawks. Also want those more classic things like smaller, limited government but well, the trade agreements are not in the national interest, so one can believe in free trade theory yet know the trade agreements are not as such.
They kind of got their party taken over between the radical religious right plus corporatism. I'd say Andrew Sullivan is more of a paleo-conservative and that makes more sense as well because a true conservative/libertarian would never try to impose a social/religious moral view on gay rights and see that as social engineering, an obtrusion of government.
So, it's kind of interesting and there are a host of economic areas where both sides, both views actually agree, like Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader on trade as an example.
From 1974-1982 the Western world experienced a series of economic contractions which were the most severe since the Great Depression. . . Looking back, it can be seen that workers in the developed world never really recovered their previous position. Real wages swooned during the 1980-1982 recessionary period, and have remained flat since then. . . .
The present economic crisis threatens, as many of us have predicted, to be, like 1975, a severe recession which downshifts the level of economic activity for a generation. Economists will talk about "persistent output gaps" and "a productivity depression." People on the street will feel that in not being able to get their lives going again. There is a combination of concrete shock to the real economy, collapse of financial and political arrangements, and existential angst. How things are supposed to work has changed, how to deal with problems doesn't seem to work, and there seems to be no map forward.
In Washington, the "Reagan Paradigm" of crisis management is still fully in force: have a moment of national unity, put aside ordinary squabbles over smaller issues, pass whatever package will address the moment of crisis, and "stand tall.". . . .
The solution to falling real wages, and a virtual end to the upward escalator of the Post-War era, was to bolster consumption by a reverse robin-hood dynamic of cutting progressive income taxes, and then raising regressive taxes, such as payroll taxes and flat state income taxes, to pay for this. Those who had, got, those who did not, fell farther behind. But they didn't see this as much in their material standard of living, but in the amount of risk that they lived under. The losses were losses of things they didn't have yet: universal health care never materialized, pensions were no longer offered. Instead, people were expected to play the casino of stocks and houses. Opportunities disappeared, because old manufacturing jobs were sent overseas, and new ones simply were not created. America manufactures more than ever before, but less of a percentage of the total.
[Obama] is also a believer in Reaganism: that old liberalism "failed" and that the solution is the one Reagan outlined: cut taxes, spend money, and stand tall. This is what is in his economic program: spend money, cut taxes, repeat two mantras: there is a crisis that requires action, and that we will make it through with his actions. However, like a Reaganite, facts and numbers mean nothing, except their place in the power discourse. Obama's report this morning means that he has lost his "cooking the books" virginity. Initially billed as 2.5 million jobs, then 3.5 million, and then jiggered by smoke and mirrors and faulty assumptions to 3.75 million jobs, and rounded up from there to 4 million jobs - it is a sorry example of a species that runs back to Pericles lying to the Athenians about the costs of his civic improvements. . . .
Over at 538, Nate Silver is convinced that Obama wants liberals to march forward and push for more spending. This isn't what the report says, because Obama has already taken off the table many of the things that liberals would want to spend on. Most specifically he has taken health care off the table, and he has taken demobilization from Iraq and Afghanistan off the table. Since these are two projects which will shave as much as 7% of GDP off of misdirected effort, Obama is basically asking anyone who has any good ideas for more fat to come forward, because the food value has been limited.
This is exactly the strategy he employed with the TARP bail out: first make a deal with the right, then find out how much opposition he has from the left, and offer up small concessions to get the left, not the right, to get on board. The right has gotten a tax cut package which is far larger than they could have proposed on their own. Obama will get his 80 votes. And liberals? Some rural clinics, small projects and pork. It's Deep Dish Chicago style politics: what does it take to buy off the people who you need.
and now I have a much better idea of what you're about.
But, please, I'm too tired to browse for it right now: explain what a "paleo-conservative" is.
Also, does the readership of EP regularly read the Instapopulist section also?
And you're correct about getting some gruff - there are some times I despair of how much influence the Chicago School still has among so-called progressives.
Newberry still bligs occasionally on The Agonist, but it appears he has settled in at FireDogLake for now. I just read his blistering critique of the Obama stimulus plan, which I will post below.
It's a good overview post on the latest criticisms and analysis on Obama's plan is here
At least he has Romer on video admitting the creating jobs, like infrastructure jobs.....uh, creates jobs and helps stimulates the economy.
They still are not dealing with globalization of course, which actually does give more credibility to a corporate tax cut for creating a job. the problem with that is are they creating a job in the United States and hiring a U.S. citizen/perm resident? One could easily import more guest workers and claim one "created jobs" when those jobs will not go to Americans.
Why I'm here, resurrection against the Corportist state but more blogs are really self-publishing and to bring attention to better economists, studies, papers, stories and yes, increase economic literacy.
I'm sure you got a lot of crap for pointing to these facts and one of the reasons EP exists is to avoid the screamocracy, to reach out to more people and have sane discussion and #1 is to have a community blog, devoted exclusively to all things $$. We're the only one out there of the economics blogs. All other blogs are either one author or a group of people, but do not allow anyone to just write a blog post on their sites.
As far as reach, sure post on DK, but post in a lot of places as well. DK is just one site, and in terms of trade, economic policy, federal reserve, global labor issues and so on, well, if you get these things on the front page, there too a "select" group only has access to the front page.
DK also generates a lot of hits from the "Kossacks" who spend hours and hours commenting, reading everything, think TR status is something important in their lives and so on.
That doesn't necessarily mean you are reaching to other people who can truly enact change or influence policy.
Because of the fast moving nature of DK, a lot of great posts get buried, roll off into oblivion.
On EP, literally if you want to revise an older post, update it, get so more reads, you can change the time stamp.
Cross link, invite over, cross post (see the cross posting link in the user guide) for the truth is the blogosphere is not DK or even the Netroots and each site has it's own readers.
I'm always looking for more ways to improve the cross connections to other blogs to increase cross traffic, cross readers, cross participation. I could add open ID but it really hasn't taken off from what I can see and most blogs don't use it.
I can see from who picks up the posts on EP, the links, we have a diverse group of readers that probably do not read DK much. A lot more pure economics readers, finance people and we're clearly read by reporters.
Also, sites like the Huffington Post have linked over here extensively and that's also good because they have way more readers than DK. So, it appears we're getting a mix of political, economics and finance readers as well as a mix of political persuasions.
You can tell from the paleo-conservatives they were outraged by Republicans as badly as we're outraged by DLC Democrats and they are also reading this site.
The big problem with Obama is the same problem Hillary has: his economic advisers are Democratic versions of "neo-liberal" radical free marketeers, so it is going to be the major intellectual breakthrough of their lives to have to admit that most of what they know and believe about economics is wrong. Obama’s most notable economic adviser is Austan Goolsbee, from the University of Chicago – which by itself should be setting off alarm bells since that is the bastion of Milton Friedman’s radical free market economics. In fact, Goolsbee wrote a little homage to Friedman in the New York Times when the latter finally relieved the world of his mortal presence in November 2006.
More recently, Goolsbee told George Will that the threat of free trade and globalization is overblown, because 60 to 70 percent of the economy -- auto mechanics, dentists, doctors, lawyers – do not have to contend with international competition. So, obviously, Goolsbee is overlooking the massive downward pressure on American’s aggregate demand generation (buying power), which is rather surprising, because he has made something of a specialty in studying the distribution of income, especially at the very top. Just take a look through the list of reports and studies he has made available online. Even more surprising, given his research, Goolsbee believes that most of the income inequality results from "radically increased returns to skill" which is the standard movement conservatism excuse for widening income inequality. This completely ignores the unbelievable distribution you find when you focus on just the top ten percent of income earners, which is almost as badly skewed as the national picture – most of the gains have gone to the top one tenth of one percent.
By the way, Newberry abandoned blogging on DailyKos nearly two years ago (except for one or two posts he did the week Wall Street collapsed in September), observing as he parted that DailyKos had become "the screamocracy." I do not disagree with him, but I have always felt that much of what is wrong with the country would not have been permitted if citizens knew real economics, not merely monetary, financial, and price behavior theory, which is what passes for economics these past few decades. And given the huge number of readers at DailyKos, well, that's the place to change and shape minds. As I've written at least twice before, I view blogging as a form of insurrection aganst the corporatist state.
but focused in on economic policy, advisers, agenda, money behind the scenes You can see in the Vox Populi column a couple of these posts are there. Vox Populi is the blog posts with the top number of reads of all time.
When Durbin had sponsored a major bill, S.1035 to reform the H-1B, L-1 Visa program and Obama literally insulted his constituents in the response to the stories of being displaced that they wrote to him about and he refused to co-sponsor S.1035. Many groups, grassroots lobbyists and even Durbin himself tried to get him to support the reforms. If the powerful Durbin cannot get his junior state colleague to support a common sense, labor endorsed bill, you know something isn't right.
You mentioned why I wasn't on DK so much. Well, #1 is I'm the site designer, admin, plus a blogger so I really want to see EP grow and am working a lot of that. (putting a cross link helps, so do blog rolls and outright invites to anyone with a brain who is obviously focused heavily on all things econ/trade/labor).
I think we're doing ok on that score, we haven't been around for even a year yet and some of our writers are now getting picked up by some fairly "big boys" in economics. CNN and CBS News have picked up some posts on EP as well.
But the other reason I'm not on DK so much is that herd behavior which blasted anyone, especially during the primaries and I was saying people needed to hold out and demand actual policy positions.
I mean if Hillary Clinton has more Progressive policy positions that Obama, you know something is wrong with this picture and in my view the Netroots should use their power to demand real policy change instead of just electing "Democrats" per say.
Good for Newberry, he was dead on and glad someone is looking at the facts, votes, money, policy, machine behind the man.
However it was Reagan who governed by cult of personality in America, and since then to be President was to have a cult of personality to stand by a leader regardless of failings and foibles. In the end impeachment of Bill Clinton was about destroying his cult of personality, more than even his Presidency. . . .
Obama is as much a creature of the representative plutocracy, if not more so, as Hillary Clinton. . . Obama is an old politics creature: he creates public approval, and sells this to those who need public approval to get what they want.
Obama is, by all of his promises, a neo-liberal and neo-classical president. He's going to make you, the poor, pay for the problems. That's what neo-classical economic prescriptions say, if there is inflation, then something is either regulated, allowing little people to buy too much of it, and that means the solution is to deregulate, privatize, desubsidize, or pass a regressive tax, that will force the small people to make hard choices.
Everyone is eager to get back to the game of knocking down trees to put up houses. Both parties have promised another round of subsides for this process. In fact, Obama's campaign is publishing articles and op-eds crowing about how their plan is more Reaganite than McCain's plans.
Barak Obama, for his part, is proposing that we do less of the same: TAX CUTS! TAX CUTS! TAX CUTS!
Which, let me translate it for you from the econospeak:
"Reaganomics, now with more smoke and mirrors!"
The Obama economic plan is the product of the same Chicago School failures as Bush, merely not amped up as far. The falling into line of Democratic congressional candidates indicates that we will get yet more national debt, in a world that is already soaking up huge amounts of dollars, and is cluttered with central banks that have no more flexibility to take on bad paper. Barak Obama's economics, are George W. Bush's economics, minus the give aways to the very wealthy, which have already happened, and will largely continue on his watch.
Can you hear me now?
Demoralizing, I know - and I could find more. But then, I publicly called for Newberry to be Treasury Secretary, which gave some withered old prick from the LSE a good case of the hoots. Anyway, if you have not read Newberry regularly, it is worth the time to find his blogs and read it. He's mostly on firedoglake now, but many of his briliant expositions of the financial crises being fundamentally the collapse of the paper for oil carbon economy are on Agonist.org.
I agree that we need to stop offshoring our work!! Im sick of it. I still have friends "with" jobs that are having to outsource their own jobs! Bush didnt get it. I dont think Hilda Solis gets it either. She's just a big union/immigrant supporter and we're headed for more trouble with her. She doesnt want to be labor secretary, she wants to make things easier for illegal immigrants who, by the way, lower our standard of living just by working for such a low wage! Is that supposed to be okay??? What do I do with my house? My two cars? Will my kids ever really be able to go to college? I hope Obama gets it.
I am glad to see the change in the wording for TRADE POLICIES. What we need is BALANCED trade, not FREE, not FAIR but rather BALANCED. The unbalanced trade policies we have allowed to occur has brought down the US economy. By balancing our Trade Policies, Americans will be back to work, doing what they do best, innovate and create. Balancing will NOT require obscene spending. Nor, should it overburden the overburdened taxpayer.
Even worse, I caught a blurb on FAUX news claiming Christina Romer, the chief of Obama's economic advisers, believes that stimulus packages do not create jobs and only monetary/fed policy does!
So, that ignores all Keynesian results from the 1930-1960s!
We have a "Milton Friedman" believer running the economic council?? I have not read previous research, papers, studies from her but that was incredible disturbing for that philosophy is straight from the privatization/"free" markets/trickle upon/Hayek mentality.
That reads like power to hide! I wonder what the British citizens are going to do and react to this one!
Seems like the only country who really gets in the streets and expresses their right to free speech and outrage these days is France.
A comment like that one is going to make all conspiracy theories on the federal reserve, banking system feel validated.
"Hidden from voters influence".
In my view, the Presidency is also hidden from voters influence. Sorry but in spite of the massive amount of candidates who started out in the primaries, the only one who has some real change positions is Kucinich and then on some other things, he is out of his head. But of course they marginalize him, probably because he speaks truth. They marginalized Ron Paul too.
Nader? He was lucky to get on CSPAN.
Here is his article, Fiscal Therapy.
That would be awesome to simply invade the Caymans and if Obama is more like Reagan than even Clinton, maybe he would consider that one!
It's amazing how many DoD contractors are incorporated offshore to avoid corporate taxes. Sen. Byron Dorgan has given flood speeches on the Caymans as well.
David Cay Johnston has an article in the current Mother Jones. He lists a number of fiscal remedies including:
Invade the Caymans
In 1983 just 10 percent of America's corporate profits were funneled through places that charge little or no corporate income tax; today more than 25 percent of profits go through tax havens. The Obama administration could tell the Caymans—now fifth in the world in bank deposits—to repeal its bank secrecy laws or be invaded; since the island nation's total armed forces consists of about 300 police officers, it shouldn't be hard for technicians and auditors, accompanied by a few Marines, to fly in and seize all the records. Bermuda, which relies on the Royal Navy for its military, could be next, and so on. Long before we get to Switzerland and Luxembourg, their governments should have gotten the message.
Barring gunboat diplomacy (tempting as it is), there is no reason we cannot pass laws to block financial transactions with tax havens or even, Cuba-style, make it a crime for Americans to visit or do business with them without special permission. Congress could declare the hiding of funds a threat to national security and require that anyone with offshore assets disclose them to the IRS within 30 days and pay taxes, interest, and penalties within 180 days. For the holdouts, temporary special teams in the IRS and Justice Department could speedily pursue civil or criminal charges
Ripped from a post on yahoo's programmer's guild group:
---
In light of the present financial crisis, it's interesting to read what Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
---
well, you can see the poll I put over on the right hand corner but well, I agree with Newberry on this one. That's some excellent writing. I could never understand how it was managed to spin Reagan into a great President. Economically he really started the disaster rolling and the real accomplishment I feel he did was destroy the Soviet Union/stop the cold war.
They do read it. Problem is (and this is true of many blogs) they are readers and they do not even register.
I was thinking of maybe doing another series blog post that lists the best comments of the week in it, along with links summaries of outstanding writings out on the "Internets" thinking that may encourage more to register and write comments.
This is true about most blogs, unlike the "Netroots" blogs. On the established netroots blogs people will sign up and use the comments to have a discussion whereas the regular blogs people are more lurkers and then believe this or not, a lot of people don't understand how to write a comment at all.
I check our rankings periodically and we're now about 82k in Technorati and about 30 to 20 or so of the economics blog rankings.
So, it's a matter of inviting people, getting the world out, we're really still getting established, less than 1 year old but at least the readership, rankings, etc. is overall increasing! ;)
For less than 1 year old we're doing good. We're typically ranked even with RGE monitor (Dr. Doom Roubini) and Bonddad right now.
So, yes and if you cross link, eventually people start checking out a blog more. They won't if the writings are not updated daily though.
As an example, Technorati ranks about 8 million or more blogs so it shows you just how many blogs are out there and go unread and unloved.
I wish more people would use this feature, but if you see an Instapopulist where it's either good writing or a truly shocking quick story or whatever, just click the up arrow on the bottom left.
I have it set at just two to promote an Instapopulist to the front page and if I see someone wants to promote one, I'll probably give the second click.
I don't think people realize those little arrow buttons are way beyond voting for a post, they literally control the content on the site, move it around. It's the promotion/demotion system I mention so registered users control the site content.
Paleoconservatives are more the original conservatives, before the religious radical right took over the party. So, Barry Goldwater, the John Birch Society, Pat Buchanan (minus the religious radicalism), etc. Unfortunately the religious radicalism is now mixed together but originally Goldwater for example, was Pro Choice and it makes more sense because it would be separation of church and state as well as personal freedom of choice.
Probably Ross Perot is also around this category.
So, they were outraged over bad trade deals, not really supply-siders either, huge on national security, national sovereignty and severe budget hawks. Also want those more classic things like smaller, limited government but well, the trade agreements are not in the national interest, so one can believe in free trade theory yet know the trade agreements are not as such.
They kind of got their party taken over between the radical religious right plus corporatism. I'd say Andrew Sullivan is more of a paleo-conservative and that makes more sense as well because a true conservative/libertarian would never try to impose a social/religious moral view on gay rights and see that as social engineering, an obtrusion of government.
So, it's kind of interesting and there are a host of economic areas where both sides, both views actually agree, like Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader on trade as an example.
Obama’s Economic Plan Starts from the Right
and now I have a much better idea of what you're about.
But, please, I'm too tired to browse for it right now: explain what a "paleo-conservative" is.
Also, does the readership of EP regularly read the Instapopulist section also?
And you're correct about getting some gruff - there are some times I despair of how much influence the Chicago School still has among so-called progressives.
Newberry still bligs occasionally on The Agonist, but it appears he has settled in at FireDogLake for now. I just read his blistering critique of the Obama stimulus plan, which I will post below.
It's a good overview post on the latest criticisms and analysis on Obama's plan is here
At least he has Romer on video admitting the creating jobs, like infrastructure jobs.....uh, creates jobs and helps stimulates the economy.
They still are not dealing with globalization of course, which actually does give more credibility to a corporate tax cut for creating a job. the problem with that is are they creating a job in the United States and hiring a U.S. citizen/perm resident? One could easily import more guest workers and claim one "created jobs" when those jobs will not go to Americans.
I thought he had his own blog but didn't see it.
Why I'm here, resurrection against the Corportist state but more blogs are really self-publishing and to bring attention to better economists, studies, papers, stories and yes, increase economic literacy.
I'm sure you got a lot of crap for pointing to these facts and one of the reasons EP exists is to avoid the screamocracy, to reach out to more people and have sane discussion and #1 is to have a community blog, devoted exclusively to all things $$. We're the only one out there of the economics blogs. All other blogs are either one author or a group of people, but do not allow anyone to just write a blog post on their sites.
As far as reach, sure post on DK, but post in a lot of places as well. DK is just one site, and in terms of trade, economic policy, federal reserve, global labor issues and so on, well, if you get these things on the front page, there too a "select" group only has access to the front page.
DK also generates a lot of hits from the "Kossacks" who spend hours and hours commenting, reading everything, think TR status is something important in their lives and so on.
That doesn't necessarily mean you are reaching to other people who can truly enact change or influence policy.
Because of the fast moving nature of DK, a lot of great posts get buried, roll off into oblivion.
On EP, literally if you want to revise an older post, update it, get so more reads, you can change the time stamp.
Cross link, invite over, cross post (see the cross posting link in the user guide) for the truth is the blogosphere is not DK or even the Netroots and each site has it's own readers.
I'm always looking for more ways to improve the cross connections to other blogs to increase cross traffic, cross readers, cross participation. I could add open ID but it really hasn't taken off from what I can see and most blogs don't use it.
I can see from who picks up the posts on EP, the links, we have a diverse group of readers that probably do not read DK much. A lot more pure economics readers, finance people and we're clearly read by reporters.
Also, sites like the Huffington Post have linked over here extensively and that's also good because they have way more readers than DK. So, it appears we're getting a mix of political, economics and finance readers as well as a mix of political persuasions.
You can tell from the paleo-conservatives they were outraged by Republicans as badly as we're outraged by DLC Democrats and they are also reading this site.
PEBO Wants AEI Libertarian Opposed to Product Bans Deciding OMB’s Health and Enviro Rules By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D. Saturday January 10, 2009 6:00 p. Obama wants co-chair of the American Enterprise Institute Center for Regulatory and Market Studies advisory board, Cass Sunstei, to head the OMB's review of FDA.
As for me, on Janaury 7, 2008, I reviewed the economics advisers of the major candidates in a piece I entitled, Who will tell Wall Street to shove it?
By the way, Newberry abandoned blogging on DailyKos nearly two years ago (except for one or two posts he did the week Wall Street collapsed in September), observing as he parted that DailyKos had become "the screamocracy." I do not disagree with him, but I have always felt that much of what is wrong with the country would not have been permitted if citizens knew real economics, not merely monetary, financial, and price behavior theory, which is what passes for economics these past few decades. And given the huge number of readers at DailyKos, well, that's the place to change and shape minds. As I've written at least twice before, I view blogging as a form of insurrection aganst the corporatist state.
but focused in on economic policy, advisers, agenda, money behind the scenes You can see in the Vox Populi column a couple of these posts are there. Vox Populi is the blog posts with the top number of reads of all time.
When Durbin had sponsored a major bill, S.1035 to reform the H-1B, L-1 Visa program and Obama literally insulted his constituents in the response to the stories of being displaced that they wrote to him about and he refused to co-sponsor S.1035. Many groups, grassroots lobbyists and even Durbin himself tried to get him to support the reforms. If the powerful Durbin cannot get his junior state colleague to support a common sense, labor endorsed bill, you know something isn't right.
You mentioned why I wasn't on DK so much. Well, #1 is I'm the site designer, admin, plus a blogger so I really want to see EP grow and am working a lot of that. (putting a cross link helps, so do blog rolls and outright invites to anyone with a brain who is obviously focused heavily on all things econ/trade/labor).
I think we're doing ok on that score, we haven't been around for even a year yet and some of our writers are now getting picked up by some fairly "big boys" in economics. CNN and CBS News have picked up some posts on EP as well.
But the other reason I'm not on DK so much is that herd behavior which blasted anyone, especially during the primaries and I was saying people needed to hold out and demand actual policy positions.
I mean if Hillary Clinton has more Progressive policy positions that Obama, you know something is wrong with this picture and in my view the Netroots should use their power to demand real policy change instead of just electing "Democrats" per say.
Good for Newberry, he was dead on and glad someone is looking at the facts, votes, money, policy, machine behind the man.
a number of times last year, long before the election. Not many wanted to listen.
From February 11, 2008
From January 14, 2008
From May 20, 2008
From September 17, 2008
From September 5, 2008
Can you hear me now?
Demoralizing, I know - and I could find more. But then, I publicly called for Newberry to be Treasury Secretary, which gave some withered old prick from the LSE a good case of the hoots. Anyway, if you have not read Newberry regularly, it is worth the time to find his blogs and read it. He's mostly on firedoglake now, but many of his briliant expositions of the financial crises being fundamentally the collapse of the paper for oil carbon economy are on Agonist.org.
I agree that we need to stop offshoring our work!! Im sick of it. I still have friends "with" jobs that are having to outsource their own jobs! Bush didnt get it. I dont think Hilda Solis gets it either. She's just a big union/immigrant supporter and we're headed for more trouble with her. She doesnt want to be labor secretary, she wants to make things easier for illegal immigrants who, by the way, lower our standard of living just by working for such a low wage! Is that supposed to be okay??? What do I do with my house? My two cars? Will my kids ever really be able to go to college? I hope Obama gets it.
The rallying cry against the power elites for 21st century America will be:
You want us to beg for a job, we'll make you beg for your lives.
I am glad to see the change in the wording for TRADE POLICIES. What we need is BALANCED trade, not FREE, not FAIR but rather BALANCED. The unbalanced trade policies we have allowed to occur has brought down the US economy. By balancing our Trade Policies, Americans will be back to work, doing what they do best, innovate and create. Balancing will NOT require obscene spending. Nor, should it overburden the overburdened taxpayer.
Even worse, I caught a blurb on FAUX news claiming Christina Romer, the chief of Obama's economic advisers, believes that stimulus packages do not create jobs and only monetary/fed policy does!
So, that ignores all Keynesian results from the 1930-1960s!
We have a "Milton Friedman" believer running the economic council?? I have not read previous research, papers, studies from her but that was incredible disturbing for that philosophy is straight from the privatization/"free" markets/trickle upon/Hayek mentality.
from the Clinton cabinet? They are going to spend all that money when all they have to do is bring our jobs home.
They're asking for another four years -- in a just world, they'd get 10 to 20 ~~ Dennis Kucinich
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