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Tuesday, July 9, 2019

David Harvey: The Persistence of Neoliberalism Despite its Loss of Legitimacy (1/2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvPNOp97x-k

Why are we still pretending 'trickle-down' economics work?

Art Laffer, ‘godfather’ of supply-side economic theory, is going to be awarded a presidential medal. He doesn’t deserve it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/12/why-are-we-still-pretending-trickle-down-economics-work

Next Wednesday, Donald Trump will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the arch-conservative economist Art Laffer.

Sadly, Laffer’s career has been heavy on punditry, light in academic rigor, and absolutely destructive for the average American and the long-term health and sustainability of our economy.

A number of economists have already dismissed Laffer’s signature supply-side economics theory as pure nonsense. For his dubious role as the “godfather” of Reaganomics, Slate dubbed him World’s Worst Economist. He’s been called a key part of the “Intellectual Rot of the Republican Party”. Esquire suggested that Laffer’s turn as the architect of disastrous Brownback tax experiment in Kansas should hang “like a dead possum” around his neck for the rest of his days.

So why exactly is Trump awarding such a man with the nation’s highest civilian honor? Maybe it’s because he recently wrote a book, Trumponomics, praising the president’s economic agenda.

Most likely, it’s because Laffer’s theory just so happens to serve as the basis for every terrible tax cut that Trump and the Republican party have passed for decades.

It all began in 1974, when Laffer walked into a bar with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who were working for the Ford administration at the time. Out of it came the “Laffer curve,” a U-shaped graph illustrating the relationship between tax rates and revenue.

The ends of the curve are basic enough – at a tax rate of 0, the government will raise $0 in revenue, and at a tax rate of 100, the government will still raise $0 in revenue because people won’t work without take-home pay.

At the extremes, the Laffer curve is correct, but that doesn’t tell us anything about the points in the middle. Laffer’s idea, however, was that a “tipping point” existed on the continuum in between, where people’s incentives to work and invest decreased because tax rates were too onerous.

From Laffer’s graph, Republicans had the academic justification to justify slashing tax rates for corporations and the rich.

President Ronald Reagan adopted Laffer’s supply-side theory wholesale in his deregulatory and low-tax agenda. In the decades since, Laffer has clung to relevancy, appearing on cable news to vehemently defend the alleged benefits of slashing taxes, even when the evidence proved otherwise.

More recently, in Kansas, where an extreme version of Laffer’s theory was implemented and tax rates were cut by nearly a third, the state suffered one of the worst fiscal disasters in recent history.

The Laffer curve has done immense damage to the US economy in the 40 years since its inception. It also ignores a fundamental reality: tax cuts for the rich don’t work.

Each and every time state or federal governments have tested Laffer’s trickle-down theory, deficits balloon, rich folks hoard their wealth at the top, and average Americans suffer.

The greatest periods of growth in our country, such as the 1950s and 1990s, have coincided with decisions to raise taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations.

If we want to return to those periods of prosperity, instead of letting inequality continue to rise unchecked, we must demand our elected leaders acknowledge that trickle-down economic policies don’t work.

Modern-day Republicans seem to be hell-bent on perpetually ignoring basic economics in order to cut taxes for their rich friends, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to acquiesce.

Laffer is a man whose sole Medal of Freedom-worthy achievement appears to be uniting staunchly conservative and ardently progressive economists against him. It’s high time that we leave “Laffernomics”, and all the failed experiments it has inspired, to the footnotes of history books.

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F

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"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" (alternatively "How many angels can stand on the point of a pin?"[1]) is a reductio ad absurdum challenge to medieval scholasticism in general, and its angelology in particular, as represented by figures such as Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas.[2][3] It is first recorded in the 17th century, in the context of Protestant apologetics. It also has been linked to the fall of Constantinople, with the imagery of scholars debating while the Turks besieged the city.[4][5]

In modern usage, the term has lost its theological context and is used as a metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no practical value, or questions whose answers hold no intellectual consequence, while more urgent concerns accumulate.[1][4]

Contents

Origin[edit]

Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, written c. 1270, includes discussion of several questions regarding angels such as, "Can several angels be in the same place?"[2] However the idea that such questions had a prominent place in medieval scholarship has been debated, and it has not been proved that this particular question was ever disputed.[6] One theory is that it is an early modern fabrication,[a] used to discredit scholastic philosophy at a time when it still played a significant role in university education. James Franklin has raised the scholarly issue, and mentions that there is a 17th-century reference in William Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants (1637),[7] where he accuses unnamed scholastics of debating "whether a Million of Angels may not fit upon a Needle's point?" This is earlier than a reference in the 1678 The True Intellectual System Of The Universe by Ralph Cudworth. Helen S. Lang, author of Aristotle's Physics and its Medieval Varieties (1992), says (p. 284):

The question of how many angels can dance on the point of a needle, or the head of a pin, is often attributed to 'late medieval writers'... In point of fact, the question has never been found in this form…

Peter Harrison (2016) has suggested that the first reference to angels dancing on a needle's point occurs in an expository work by the English divine, William Sclater (1575-1626). In An exposition with notes upon the first Epistle to the Thessalonians (1619), Sclater claimed that scholastic philosophers occupied themselves with such pointless questions as whether angels "did occupie a place; and so, whether many might be in one place at one time; and how many might sit on a Needles point; and six hundred such like needlesse points." Harrison proposes that the reason an English writer first introduced the "needle’s point" into a critique of medieval angelology is that it makes for a clever pun on "needless point".[8]

A letter written to The Times in 1975[9] identified a close parallel in a 14th-century mystical text, the Swester Katrei:

[D]octors declare that in heaven a thousand angels can stand on the point of a needle. Now rede me the meaning of this.

Other possibilities are that it is a surviving parody or self-parody, or a training topic in debating.

In Italian,[10] Spanish and Portuguese, the conundrum of useless scholarly debates is linked to a similar question of whether angels are sexless or have a sex.[5]

Modern use[edit]

Comparing medieval superstition and modern science, George Bernard Shaw wrote in the introduction to the play Saint Joan that "The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimetre every movement and position in the dance of the electrons."[11]

One-quarter of Americans will never retire

https://www.oregonlive.com/nation/2019/07/poll-1-in-4-americans-dont-plan-to-retire-ever.html?cmpid=931116601

By The Associated Press

CHICAGO — Nearly one-quarter of Americans say they never plan to retire, according to a poll that suggests a disconnection between individuals’ retirement plans and the realities of aging in the workforce.

Experts say illness, injury, layoffs and caregiving responsibilities often force older workers to leave their jobs sooner than they'd like.

According to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 23% of workers, including nearly 2 in 10 of those over 50, don't expect to stop working. Roughly another quarter of Americans say they will continue working beyond their 65th birthday.

According to government data, about 1 in 5 people 65 and older was working or actively looking for a job in June.

For many, money has a lot to do with the decision to keep working.

"The average retirement age that we see in the data has gone up a little bit, but it hasn't gone up that much," says Anqi Chen, assistant director of savings research at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

"So people have to live in retirement much longer, and they may not have enough assets to support themselves in retirement."

When asked how financially comfortable they feel about retirement, 14% of Americans under the age of 50 and 29% over 50 say they feel extremely or very prepared, according to the poll. About another 4 in 10 older adults say they do feel somewhat prepared, while just about one-third feel unprepared. By comparison, 56% of younger adults say they don't feel prepared for retirement.

Among those who are fully retired, 38% said they felt very or extremely prepared when they retired, while 25% said they felt not very or not at all prepared.

"One of the things about thinking about never retiring is that you didn't save a whole lot of money," says Ronni Bennett, 78, who was pushed out of her job as a New York City-based website editor at 63.

She searched for work in the immediate aftermath of her layoff, a process she describes as akin to "banging my head against a wall." Finding Manhattan too expensive without a steady stream of income, she eventually moved to Portland, Maine. A few years later, she moved again, to Lake Oswego, Oregon.

"Sometimes I fantasize that if I win the lottery, I'd go back to New York," says Bennett, who has a blog called Time Goes By that chronicles her experiences aging, relocating and, during the past two years, living with a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

Meanwhile, Americans have mixed assessments of how the aging workforce affects workers: 39% think people staying in the workforce longer is mostly a good thing for American workers, while 29% think it's more a bad thing and 30% say it makes no difference.

A somewhat higher share, 45%, thinks it has a positive effect on the U.S. economy.

Working Americans who are 50 and older think the trend is more positive than negative for their own careers — 42% to 15%. Those younger than 50 are about as likely to say it's good for their careers as to say it's bad.

Just 6% of fully retired AP-NORC poll respondents said they left the labor market before turning 50.

But remaining in the workforce may be unrealistic for people dealing with unexpected illness or injuries. For them, high medical bills and a lack of savings loom large over day-to-day expenditures.

"People like me, who are average, everyday working people, can have something catastrophic happen, and we lose everything because of medical bills," says Larry Zarzecki, a former Maryland police officer who stopped working in his 40s after developing a resting tremor in his right hand and a series of cognitive and physical symptoms he at times found difficult to articulate.

At 47, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Now 57 and living in Baltimore, Zarzecki says he has learned "to take from Peter and give to Paul, per se, to help make ends meet."

Zarzecki has since helped found Movement Disorder Education and Exercise, a nonprofit organization that offers support and treatment programs to those with similar diseases and certain traumatic brain injuries. He has also helped lobby state and national lawmakers to address rising prescription drug prices.

He receives a pension and health insurance through the state, but he spends more than $3,000 each year out of pocket on medications.

“I can’t afford, nor will my insurance cover, the most modern medication there is for Parkinson’s,” he says. “Eat, heat or treat. These are decisions that people in my position have to make. When it’s cold out, or if it’s real hot out, do you eat, heat (your home) or treat (your ailment)?”

-- The Associated Press

Ex-Venezuela spy chief says Maduro ordered illegal arrests. AP

https://www.apnews.com/da51ee93141f485a9a92c58469eba328

Luis Alonso Lugo. AP. July 4, 2019

Cruising around Caracas in a convoy with five cellphones full of valuable contacts, Gen. Manuel Cristopher Figuera displayed trappings that befitted his reputation as a loyal soldier who rose from an upbringing in a dirt-floored hut to become Venezuela's spy chief.

But as President Nicolás Maduro began to lean on the brawny 55-year-old to do his dirty work - in Cristopher Figuera's telling, ordering him to jail opponents and victims of torture - the Cuban and Belarusian-trained intelligence officer gradually lost faith. In a show of nerve, he betrayed the leader he met with almost daily and secretly plotted to launch a military uprising that he said came close to ousting Maduro.

Now one of the most prominent defectors in two decades of socialist rule in Venezuela has come to Washington seeking revenge against his former boss. He is looking to help the same U.S. "empire" he was taught to hate investigate human-rights violations and corruption. On Tuesday, he met with the U.S. special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams.

It's unclear whether Cristopher Figuera still has influence inside the government and can collect evidence against his former comrades. But he's talking a big game.

"I'm like a soldier who raises the flag upside-down to signal distress," Cristopher Figuera told The Associated Press. "My mission is to seek help to free my country from disgrace."

In a daylong interview from the presidential suite of a Washington hotel, Cristopher Figuera for the first time provided details of what he said was Maduro's personal commissioning of abuses, including arbitrary detentions and the planting of evidence against opponents. The allegations, which the AP was unable to verify, come as scrutiny of the Maduro government's human rights record intensifies. A naval officer died in state custody last week with apparent signs of torture. His death came ahead of the release Friday of a report by a United Nations fact-finding mission.

As the deputy head of military counterintelligence and then director of the feared SEBIN intelligence police, Cristopher Figuera stood alongside Maduro as Venezuela was coming apart. During the freefall, he said, he witnessed and played a role in abuses, including not speaking out when confronted with evidence of torture by others and the arbitrary detention of a prominent journalist.

But he said Maduro's most-brazen order - and one of Cristopher Figuera's biggest regrets - was his role trying to break opposition leader Juan Guaidó's resolve by going after his inner circle.

Initially, he said, Maduro wanted to arrest Guaido's mother. When Cristopher Figuera pointed out that she was undergoing cancer treatment, the focus shifted to Roberto Marrero, Guaidó's chief of staff, who has been held since March on accusations of running a "terrorist cell" bent on carrying out assassinations.

Cristopher Figuera said he then told Maduro that he did not have legal cause.

"How can I jail him?" Cristopher Figuera recalled asking Maduro in a tense meeting with top officials at Fort Tiuna in Caracas less than 72 hours before a violent raid on Marrero's house. "He told me, 'That's not my problem. Plant some weapons on him. Do what you have to do.'"

Then followed a discussion on where to get the weapons. Cristopher Figuera suggested asking Gen. Vladimir Padrino, the defense minister, but Maduro told him to seek out another general, whose name he asked the AP not to disclose because of security concerns.

"And that's what we did," Cristopher Figuera said. "He planted the weapons, facilitating the operation, and from the SEBIN directorate I carried out the arrest."

Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez, a top Maduro aide, did not respond to a text message and email seeking comment.

For what he called his "co-responsibility" in Marrero's arrest and other arbitrary detentions, Cristopher Figuera expects one day to be called as a witness by the International Criminal Court, which is carrying out a preliminary investigation into the Maduro government at the request of several Latin American nations, France and Canada.

But he said he sleeps with a clear conscience because he never personally ordered or participated in acts of torture, even though he was sometimes asked by other security forces to take in high-profile detainees after severe beatings. During his six-month tenure at SEBIN, he said, conditions improved at the famed Helicoide prison, where key anti-government activists are held, with prisoners allowed more frequent access to their lawyers and doctors.

He said he also released dozens of prisoners who were being held by other authorities for huge sums of money, sometimes for more than a year, despite court orders for their release.

"This was a center of extortion and kidnapping," he said. "I tried to change things, but there's an entrenched culture."

Still, he acknowledges that he obediently carried out orders to spy on 40 or so of Maduro's top opponents, using wiretaps as well as electronic and on-the-streets surveillance, and reporting to his boss every two hours any noteworthy movements.

Cristopher Figuera still considers himself a Chavista - an admirer of the late Hugo Chávez - and his relationship with his newfound allies in the opposition can sometimes be rocky. For example, he still praises Cuba and rejects claims that there are 25,000 Cuban security forces in Venezuela. He puts the number at 15,000, the vast majority of them doctors sent in exchange for cheap oil.

While a coterie of about 15 Cubans make up Maduro's security detail, even serving as food tasters, he said their role inside the intelligence agencies was limited to planning and training agents, not participating in operations.

"The opposition doesn't have adequate information. They reject and stigmatize the Cubans," he said.

He claims to have tried to persuade Maduro to change course, sending him a two-page letter in early April that urged him to appoint a new electoral council and call early elections. He thought the move would have been a strategic retrenchment to regain the upper hand amid mounting international pressure.

"My commander in chief," the missive begins, "I respectfully recommend that you put the political agenda before the polarization between the government and the opposition." The letter, a copy of which he provided to the AP, references a battle from the mid-19th century civil war in which a popular general "ceded territory to the enemy to win time and then overcome his adversary."

His plea was ignored. Days later, with the help of a Miami-based Venezuelan businessman who wooed him to the opposition's side, Cristopher Figuera said he was riding around town trying to craft an elaborate exit plan for Maduro with Padrino and Maikel Moreno, the head of the supreme court. On April 30, Guaidó appeared before dawn on a highway overpass alongside dozens of troops and his mentor, Leopoldo Lopez, who SEBIN agents let walk from house arrest.

When the plan blew up - he said Moreno never issued a promised ruling recognizing Guaidó, and a broader barracks revolt never materialized - Cristopher Figuera fled to Colombia. Two weeks later, his top deputy, Maj. Jesus García, showed up dead in a rent-by-hour motel in what Cristopher Figuera believes was a retaliatory killing designed to keep him silent.

As someone who until recently was branded a torturer, he knows the road to redemption, like Venezuela's path to reconciliation, will be long. He hopes to begin by sharing with U.S. law enforcement all he knows about what he calls Maduro's "criminal enterprise." He also wants to be heard by Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, whose report on her recent visit to Venezuela will be closely watched.

"I am partly responsible," he said. "But I couldn't grab a gun and shoot him. I didn't want to make him a victim."

The U.S. in February added Cristopher Figuera to a list of more than 100 sanctioned Venezuela officials, accusing him of overseeing "mass torture, mass human rights violations and mass persecution against those who want democratic change in Venezuela."

But he was removed from the blacklist shortly after he defected and recognized Guaidó as Venezuela's rightful president in an effort by the Trump administration to spur other Maduro loyalists to flip. So far none has.

Meanwhile, Maduro has blasted Cristopher Figuera as a traitor who worked as a CIA mole for more than a year. He denies the allegations but said that at Maduro's orders he met with the CIA in the Dominican Republic in March 2018 on a mission to seek some sort of truce that would have involved the release of American citizen Joshua Holt, who had been held for nearly two years on what were seen as trumped-up weapons charges. The release would have been in exchange for shielding from oil sanctions.

"I went there afraid," he said of the meeting. "Perhaps because we're so influenced by so many Hollywood movies, but I thought maybe these guys will disappear me."

For the AP interview, he insisted on dressing in his olive-green uniform covered with medals - the first time he's worn the Prussian-styled attire since going into exile. With his deep baritone and gallows humor, he cuts an intimidating figure. Among his fellow plotters in the failed uprising, the Afro-Venezuelan was known by the code name Black Panther.

"Maduro arbitrarily degraded me and expelled me from the armed forces," he said with a stern brow. "But I'm still proud of what I am: a soldier and a patriot who is fighting for the freedom of my people."

He said he's in constant contact with high-level officials - generals, deputy ministers and heads of government institutions - all of whom despise Maduro and want to see him leave but are afraid to act. Guaidó's "Operation Liberty," which began with the April rebellion, is only beginning, he said, and Cristopher Figuera hopes to return home soon.

"In many ways," he added, "I'm still the counterintelligence director."

Venezuela releases 22 prisoners after UN report

BBC. July 5, 2019

Venezuela released 22 prisoners, including high-profile judge Maria Afiuni and journalist Braulio Jatar, on Thursday, according to the UN.

They were released on the same day the UN published a report by its human rights chief Michele Bachelet detailing alleged rights abuses in the country.

Ms Bachelet had separately asked President Nicolás Maduro to release the prisoners, her spokesperson said.

Venezuela said that Ms Bachelet's report was biased.

The 16-page document highlighted the arbitrary arrest, ill-treatment and torture of government critics. It also accused the state of removing numerous opponents by extrajudicial killings.

The UN said the prisoner releases may mark a new beginning for the Maduro government on human rights issues, but many were sceptical.

Venezuela remains gripped by a long-running and highly polarised crisis. Pro-government celebrations took place for independence day on Friday, while supporters of opposition leader Juan Guaidó rallied in the capital, Caracas.

Mr Guaidó called for citizens to march on the headquarters of secret services to protest against the brutal killing of a detained naval officer last month, but few joined the demonstration.

Who has been released?

Ms Afiuni, the newly-freed judge, told news site La Patilla that she was surprised by her release and looked forward to rebuilding her life after nine years in detention.

She was detained in 2010, when the country was ruled by President Hugo Chavez and his opposition considered her to be a major political prisoner.

Chávez objected to her releasing a businessman who was accused of corruption. She insisted he had been detained for too long without trial. Part of her time in detention was under house arrest after she claimed she was raped in prison. In March 2019, a court sentenced her to five years.

Mr Jatar was jailed in 2016, after reporting on a protest against President Maduro on Margarita Island. He was later accused of money-laundering. On Twitter on Friday, he said he had only been granted partial freedom, as he has been told to stay in his home state and report to authorities once a fortnight.

Twenty students were also among those said to have been freed on Thursday, and 62 prisoners were released last month.

Last week, a Venezuelan navy captain died in custody, amid allegations that he had been tortured. Rafael Acosta, 49, was arrested over an alleged plot to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro.

Two men, Lt Ascanio Tarascio and Sgt Estiben Zarate, have been charged with murder.

UN: 5,287 killings in Venezuela security operations in 2018

Jamey Keaten and Scott Smith. AP. July 4, 2019

Venezuela's government registered nearly 5,300 killings during security operations last year linked to cases of "resistance to authority," the U.N. human rights chief reported Thursday, denouncing a "shockingly high" number of extrajudicial killings.

Michelle Bachelet's report focusing on the last 18 months follows her trip to the troubled South American country last month and draws upon over 550 interviews conducted by her office with rights defenders, victims, witnesses of rights violations and other sources. She and her teams held nearly 160 meetings with state and other stakeholders. Bachelet, a former Socialist president of Chile, herself met with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last month.

Authorities in Maduro's government tallied 5,287 killings during security operations that were classified as cases of "resistance to authority," plus another 1,569 this year through May 19, the report said. It also cited separate figures by the Venezuelan Violence Observatory of at least 7,523 such killings of that type last year, plus at least 2,124 from January to May this year.

"The incidence of alleged extrajudicial killings by security forces, particularly the special forces (FAES), in the context of security operations has been shockingly high," Bachelet's office said.

Interviewees consistently referred to FAES as a "death squad" or "extermination group." NGOs say the FAES is responsible for hundreds of killings.

Among more than 20 recommendations on issues like ensuring media freedom and providing proper health care, she called for disarming and disbanding pro-government armed groups known as "collectivos."

The report from an ostensibly impartial observer like the United Nations comes as Venezuela's internal turmoil of recent years has divided the international community. Over 50 countries, including the United States, many South American neighbors of Venezuela and European nations, have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's legitimate leader, even though Maduro remains in power.

Maduro's government blasted an "openly biased" account that presented a "distorted version" of actual conditions.

"There are countless inaccuracies, errors, facts taken out of context and false assertions," it said.

Venezuelan officials insisted the report overlooked visits by U.N. observers in March to jails, hospitals, public housing programs and distribution centers for medicine and food, and said it "omits in its entirety the achievements and advances achieved" by the country in the field of human rights.

Maduro's government has been struggling to regain control of the international narrative about the oil-rich country, notably through its recent overtures to international groups like the Red Cross and U.N. agencies - many of which are trying to help beleaguered civilians. The U.N. says that more than 4 million people have left the country in recent years, putting strains in particular on neighbors Brazil and Colombia, as well as Peru.

Many findings of the report highlighted well-worn themes during Venezuela's continued economic and political crisis: the impact of international sanctions against Maduro's government, a wobbly health care system, rising disease, food shortages and the strains caused by runaway inflation. It cited repression of political opponents, arbitrary detentions and cases of torture and cruel treatment including electric shocks, suffocation with plastic bags, water boarding, and sexual violence.

"We have the government's commitment to work with us to resolve some of the thorniest issues - including the use of torture and access to justice - and to allow us full access to detention facilities," Bachelet said in a statement.

"We should all be able to agree that all Venezuelans deserve a better life, free from fear and with access to adequate food, water, health care, housing and all other basic human needs," she added.

Tamara Taraciuk Broner, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch, praised the report for exposing human rights violations like the excessive use of force, torture and extra-judicial killings. But she said it failed to call for a commission to investigate the violations and urged Bachelet to clearly lay out the government's responsibility for the deepening humanitarian crisis.

Bachelet was set to present her report Friday to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, where Venezuela will have a right of reply.

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

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