Hillary against incrementalism

With incrementalism all the rage among non-Bernie Dems—like Sorta Medicare for Some—it’s worth recalling this passage, about the only honest and interesting one amidst endless tedious self-exculpations, from Hillary Clinton’s What Happened, her story of her shameful loss to Trump: Democrats should reevaluate a lot of our assumptions about which policies are politically viable. These trends make universal programs even more appealing than we previously thought. I mean programs like Social Security and Medicare, which benefit every American, as opposed to Medicaid, food stamps, and other initiatives targeted to the poor. Targeted… Read More

Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 28, 2019 Jessie Sage, writer, podcaster, and sex worker, on sex work and myths around “trafficking” • Jenny Brown, author of Birth Strike, on efforts to control women’s reproductive powers

Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 21, 2019 Tony Smith, author of Russia Without Putin, on those topics

Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 14, 2019 Cinzia Arruzza and Tithi Bhattacharya, authors (along with Nancy Fraser) of Feminism for the 99%, on a truly transformative feminism • Sam Stein, author of Capital City, on bourgeois urban planning, with an emphasis on NYC

Making capital pay for the GND

Christian Parenti has an excellent piece up at Jacobin arguing that Corporate America could pay for a lot of the Green New Deal. They’re rolling in cash, and through a combination of regulation, taxation, coercion, and incentives, all that surplus capital could be steered into environmentally beneficial investment. I endorse this completely. I’m just here to underscore how much cash they have and show what they’re now doing with it. According to the latest edition of the Federal Reserve’s financial accounts*, as of the end of 2018, nonfinancial corporations had $4.4 trillion… Read More

Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 7, 2019 Richard Walker, geographer and director of the Living New Deal project, on what the original can teach the Green one • Aziz Rana, author of this article, on the need for a left internationalism