Just when you might have thought...

... that they might be pulling back from the warfare state:

Maybe Joe Biden will give Bernie Sanders' district some money or something and it will all "go away" -- except of course for the Yemenis, who will continue to die. The print article by the Intercept people lays out the details. The editors at Counterpunch aren't happy about this prospect, either. And here's Progressive Hub:


Sanders pledged to work with the Biden administration on compromise language, and bring the resolution back to the floor if talks failed.

So they're going to wait to act until the Democrats lose control of the House, so the Republicans can be the rotating villain. We could have predicted this sort of thing in December of 2020, when President-elect Biden stocked his cabinet with warmongers.

At any rate, see that box in the corner of the Progressive Hub webpage that says "Email Congress"? Yeah, please do that. Sure, what you'd like to say to them is something along the lines of "you assholes suck, for depriving us of a future." For now this will have to do.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

I'd rather Guy Fawkes their asses.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

soryang's picture

...pulling back from the warfare state but doubling down:

In An Age Of Innovation, Big Defense May Be The Closest Thing Washington Has To A Real Industrial Policy
Loren Thompson Forbes Nov 10

...The biggest tech companies in China are facing their own headwinds, thanks to the increasingly intrusive rule of Xi Jinping. But that doesn’t change the fact that America needs to stay ahead of China in the business of innovation.

Innovation, the process of transforming discoveries into useful products, is widely viewed as the key to military and economic supremacy. The question U.S. policymakers may need to face in the years ahead is how to preserve a robust rate of innovation if companies such as AppleAAPL -1.5% and Google falter.

Part of the answer may lie in the defense industry, especially among the biggest players. These companies are sometimes viewed as innovation laggards in popular culture, even though they lead the world in warfighting technology...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2022/11/10/in-an-age-of-innov...

When I first read the title of this Forbes article, for a moment I thought, is this an admission? Is it satire? No it's for real, demonstrating Wall Street's enthusiastic support of the warfare state. Like the German industrialists of the 1930s they're "all in."

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語必忠信 行必正直

@soryang for quite a while. Along the way I have read quite a bit about it, the different kinds of innovation and the impetus behind innovation. Which brings me to a pet peeve. Nobody should ever, ever have a sentence which equates Bill Gates with innovation. Innovation, new stuff, is driven by passion, not profit.

An oldy but a goody from 2013:

How Big Finance Crushes Innovation and Holds Back Our Economy
...
Financiers may appear to be simply “making money out of money,” but if you look closely, you can see that they are really getting rich on the backs of people producing useful things, like consumer electronics, and capital goods like factories and equipment. Good jobs, the health of the overall economy and society, growing incomes for the poor and middle class—all of these things have been put aside in the quest for more financial profits. The game is unsustainable. And it’s turning out badly.
..snip...
Think about it: what GE product did you recently purchase that enhanced your life? In the era of financialization, big companies like GE have turned their attention to making quick Wall Street profits instead of fabulous products. In the 1980s, for example, GE’s Jack Welch rapidly expanded the company’s business into issuing credit cards, mortgage lending and other financial activities. It wouldn’t be long before financial operations accounted for almost half of the company's profit.
...snip...

https://www.alternet.org/2013/07/economy-innovation

And then there's one a little older 2011:

A Dozen Economic Facts About Innovation

During the past century, innovation in mechanics, computing technology, medicine, and business practices has driven economic growth, raised wages, and helped Americans lead longer and healthier lives. The development of assembly line production, for example, and its application to the mass production of automobiles reduced the time to produce the Model T Ford by 68 percent over six years and reduced its cost by 62 percent, allowing middle-class families to afford what had once been a luxury (Williams, Haslam, and William 1992). The rapid pace of innovation and increases in productivity continued for most of the century, expanding the efficiency of American workers and providing more valuable goods and services at lower prices.

Since the 1970s, however, the pace of innovation has slowed, leading to lower overall wage growth for American workers. Moreover, those gains that have been made have not been shared equally across society. Although average wages have risen, buoyed by strong gains at the top of the distribution, the wages of many Americans have stagnated or fallen after adjusting for the cost of living over the past forty years. Reinvigorating the momentum of innovation that benefits all Americans is imperative to create broad-based economic growth and higher living standards.
...snip...
Since 1973 the pace of innovation, as measured by TFP growth, has slowed. Prior to 1973, TFP increased at an annual rate of 1.9 percent, but since then this growth rate has fallen to 0.7 percent. If TFP had continued growing at the pre-1973 trend and that productivity gain were reflected in workers’ compensation, compensation could be 51 percent higher, or about $18 per hour more than today’s average of $35.44 per hour. This calculation highlights that small changes in innovation and annual TFP growth lead to large differences in long-run standards of living.

https://www.hamiltonproject.org/papers/a_dozen_economic_facts_about_inno...

Somewhere in my electronic, unindexed literature I have a book written about the wonderful job Welch did to GM. It's around here somewhere...

Added: Loaned it to a friend:

The Man Who Broke Capitalism

How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy

By David Gelles
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May 31, 2022)
Length: 272 pages
ISBN13: 9781982176440

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soryang's picture

@exindy I had an acquaintance who was a regular customer at a pub we ran at the time. He was a former white collar manager at GM and he would rant about what a prick Welch was, how he lost his job because of Welch, and now had now had to work at at a nearby Home Depot as a consequence.

I read a book The Pentagon's Brain, (an oxymoron I think) that dwelt on the Pentagon's alleged connection to innovation. It was basically about DARPA. There is another book by William Arkin and Dana Priest, (Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State ) that I didn't have the perseverance to finish, that went into great depth on the proliferation of defense contractors in hundreds of offices and buildings in the greater DC region, with no posted names, no directories, surrounded by gates, fences and armed guards. The Pentagon's association with innovation is a special kind of boondoggle.

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語必忠信 行必正直

lotlizard's picture

@exindy  
GM = General Motors, who make Cadillacs and such — not that CEO Roger Smith, the subject of Michael Moore’s movie Roger and Me, wasn’t just as bad as GE CEO Jack Welch…

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soryang's picture

@lotlizard Memory fails again. Thanks for correcting me.

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語必忠信 行必正直

Pluto's Republic's picture

...committed by the State against humanity — and to campaign against the snowballing effects of wanton social and economic neglect that are based on perverted priorities that they (and their political parties and the voting public) enabled in the first place, using the so-called "democratic" process. The State is collapsing under the enormous weight of its own ignorance.

Political activism in a failed State is nothing more than a cynical cry for more of the same.

I wonder why this never gets old.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Creosote.'s picture

@Pluto's Republic

The State is collapsing under the enormous weight of its own ignorance.

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shaharazade's picture

politics. Regardless of where they originate. They all suck. The weight is a myth. The powers that be made it up. Forget it. It does not exist. Let it go. Instead live your life the best you can, considering the fuckatude your stuck with. It's not real. Find another path. Hard but worth it, I hope.

l

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@shaharazade

full sped ahead and f*ck the torpedos

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