Category: politics

Two Contradictory Arguments That Dodd-Frank is Crony Capitalism | Next New Deal

Two Contradictory Arguments That Dodd-Frank is Crony Capitalism | Next New Deal

I’m pretty convinced that the term “crony capitalism,” as deployed by the right, is useless as a political or analytical tool. I keep a close eye on how conservatives talk about financial reform, and according to the right, Dodd-Frank is crony capitalism. Oh noes! But what does that mean, and how can we stop it? Here’s a fascinating case in point: two AEI scholars with different publications argue that we need to stop Dodd-Frank from enabling crony capitalism, and then proceed to describe two opposite, mutually exclusive sets of problems and solutions.

I missed this the first time around, but I’m glad I got a chance to read it. This is worth a read. There are a few words that are now meaningless in political discussion because they are used to mean different things, even contradictory things. Crony Capitalism joins Socialism as a term that means something I don’t like and has lost all other meaning.

American transit activists need to speak up about exorbitant construction costs

American transit activists need to speak up about exorbitant construction costs

But the problem hits transit the hardest because the basic fact of the matter is that political and economic elites don’t rely on mass transit. The clearest case is the growing popularity of mixed-traffic streetcar projects. These are much cheaper than grade-separated light- or heavy-rail, but still far more expensive than a conventional bus without actually moving people any faster. In terms of offering a transportation service, spending money on a streetcar is much worse than spending the same amount of money on multiple new bus routes or upgrades to existing ones. Soon this bus will have a streetcar in its way | Elvert Barnes/Flickr Streetcars appeal, however, because those high costs create construction jobs and because the aura of classiness around them appeals to real estate developers and other would-be drivers of gentrification. So cities across America are opening stub streetcar lines rather than investing in improving the transit experience of bus riders.

Republicans Believe in the Power of the Free Market—Except in Cuba, Apparently

Republicans Believe in the Power of the Free Market—Except in Cuba, Apparently

There is no precedent for setting full democratic reform as a precondition to economic relations. Since 2011, Raul Castro has implemented 250 economic reforms modeled after the system in Communist China. In the 1970s, the U.S. normalized trade relations with China, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary after they took similar steps to implement preliminary economic reform. Even after economic normalization, the U.S. continued to pressure these countries to improve their human rights practices. As Obama said, “We know from hard-learned experience that it is better to encourage and support reform than to impose policies that will render a country a failed state.”

It seems foolish to think you can push for political or economic reforms in isolation. The two must go hand in hand if you want either reform to yield positive results.

Human experimentation was a core feature of the CIA’s torture program

Human experimentation was a core feature of the CIA’s torture program

Human experimentation was a core feature of the CIA’s torture program. The experimental nature of the interrogation and detention techniques is clearly evident in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary of its investigative report, despite redactions (insisted upon by the CIA) to obfuscate the locations of these laboratories of cruel science and the identities of perpetrators.

Wow.

Jeb Bush Wants a Tougher Cuban Embargo

Jeb Bush Wants a Tougher Cuban Embargo

the benefactors of President Obama’s ill-advised move will be the heinous Castro brothers who have oppressed the Cuban people for decades.

Or maybe the embargo was more beneficial to the Castro brothers. The fact that they held on to power for a half century while all the other communist nations, except for North Korea, either reformed or fell should tell us something.

Rand Paul’s “anti-torture” sham: Why his ignoring CIA scandal says so much – Salon.com

Rand Paul’s “anti-torture” sham: Why his ignoring CIA scandal says so much – Salon.com

Put simply, if Sen. Paul’s commitment to his small government vision extended beyond the GOP’s usual hatred of taxes, throwing himself into the CIA torture scandal by vocally and repeatedly demanding the summary’s release would be the perfect way to prove it. If Paul’s libertarian rhetoric is just a branding exercise to separate him from the rest of the 2016 presidential pack, however, then going after the “patriots” who tortured “evildoers” for George W. Bush is not in his best interest.

I predict that the 2016 GOP pack will come out strongly for the use of torture. I expect Rand Paul to take a lukewarm stance against

The Benghazi Report Truthers: Even The GOP Cant Get To The Bottom Of It

The Benghazi Report Truthers: Even The GOP Cant Get To The Bottom Of It

When in late November the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a report finding that there was no direct wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, it seemed like the case might finally be closed. After all, this was a panel controlled by a Republicans.

But that’s not quite what happened.

Some of the loudest torch-and-pitchfork wielding Benghazi investigation enthusiasts weren’t satisfied.

Expect more Benghazi on FOX. They are going to waste untold time and money until they find something. It’s whitewater all over again.

And this is a shame. There are dozens of actual things they could be investigating.