1. Been excited about @JoeNBC's sustained convo today about @KBAndersen's new book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America which explains how the Republican Party radicalized OVER ECONOMICS over the past 30 years. It was launched w the radical tax cuts in Reagan's presidency, but

1. Yes, @FareedZakaria's new book, Ten lessons From a Post-Pandemic World argues we don't need a big or small gov- we need a GOOD one.

We don't have that now & that is bc for decades now, the GOP has intentionally hallowed it out. Stripping it of funding under the auspice that

2. the only goal should be small. And as it turns out- that was stupid. And now we have a dysfunctional, as @maddow says, "big, bad" gov. Something that has been "wasted, and rotted and ruined." And its been intentional. Its been murdered, with no thought for how people would

3. suffer for it. COVID just put that suffering in a streamlined spotlight. But as @FareedZakaria points out- its the cherry on top of a 40 year plan that Bannon termed the final "deconstruction of the administrative state." As with the decimation of the economic tools that had

4. allowed the world's 1st middle class to emerge & flourish before The Great Lie ushered in the greatest wealth transfer in history. Not only were Americans bamboozled into voting away their wage increases, their pensions, & their health care (at least till 2010)- they were also

5. tricked into pissing away their country's superiority- its claim to fame, its ability to puff its chest out & say "look over here, we have the best _____. " I had no idea when I was a kid that we were not, in fact, the greatest country on Earth- at least not if you care about

1. I am thankful that at 12pm 1/20 the powers of the prez will be removed from the most dangerous person who has ever held them. I am thankful for the many wonderful fellow Americans from across the spectrum that joined me to help get him out & save America from authoritarianism

2. I am thankful for each & every person that had to make a hard decision, stay silent & normalize this man & his party's actions- which mirror so closely actions taken by other leaders & parties as they moved to consolidate power at the expense of democracy (as documented so

3. clearly by @anneapplebaum's book Twilight of Democracy) bc their lock on power is threatened. Those of us that took a holistic look at events in the U.S., the scope of the Right's propaganda network, and the lengths to which GOP influencers (electeds & media) were willing to

4. go to manipulate public opinion and knew without a shadow of a doubt that we were facing a five alarm fire. Trump, as dumb & self-sabotaging as he is, does one thing perfectly well- manipulate public opinion. Trump fully understands that public opinion flows from the top-down,

5. and that when you control the information diet of a group of people, as the Right is controlled, that manipulation level reaches profound levels. By the time Trump came down the golden escalator in May of 2015- the Republican electorate was primed for someone like him to come

1. When I hear @clairecmc talk about Dems learning to talk to the Piggly Wiggly crowd, I hope she'll want to join/help w my moderate messaging electioneering overall for Ds effort. BC its CRUCIAL to understand- Ds & outside groups tried already to cater to these voters on the

2. persuasion. That in fact, this cycle was the product of a very concerted effort of that strategy driven by high profile data firms on the D side (many of which who've been critical of my work) & it was a complete and total failure for 2 reasons. The main 1 is that it wants

3. to ignore the effect that polarization is having on voter behavior & the limitations that is placing on certain electioneering techniques that USED TO BE EFFECTIVE and are now not. I want to make something really clear- it is only in places where at least 1 element of the D's

4. operation "went rogue" that Biden pulled out wins: GA, where Abrams made electioneering about turning out the new coalition, AZ, where the AZ state party did the same, but with Latino voters, MI & WI where the state parties put into effect base-centric voter turnout strategies

5. at odds w the party's conventional playbook to focus on turnout, and/or places where concentrations of the D's new coalition: college-educated whites + minority voters (and young voters) are so high (like NE 2) that sub-par strategy doesn't matter, turnout surges are naturally

1. What @WillieGeist is trying to get across to @NikemaWilliams on @Morning_Joe is that the GOP is nationalizing their message & making their message high stakes, tapping into voters anger at Trump's loss to get them to vote in a Jan. run-off & that Ds NEED TO DO THE SAME. Its

2. about giving Trump power- its about giving low-info voters, who are the bulk of the electorate motivation to cast ballots in the run-off. This is WHY turnout plummets in these things on the D side- the GOP keeps their messaging on stakes (control of the senate to fend off

3. socialism) while Ds go off into policy. That is a losing strategy. It just lost them nearly a dozen House seats & the chance to cut into partisan gerrymandering by flipping 4 state houses. They can't make that mistake here bc control of senate is everything here. If Ds have it

4. Biden can get some policy done- if Ds don't, the GOP will block everything. Biden will be a lame duck from day 1. So the message should be "hey voter, did you know you have a super vote? That's right, with your one vote, you can elect 2 senators that will give Ds control of

5. senate & with it REAL police reform. With it, Dreamers not getting deported to countries they've even been to- potentially to die from lack of insulin. With it, the power to save the pre-existing conditions coverage for millions of Americans, including Nicu babies who'd in

1/ In @RayDalio's perspective, we are at the very late stages of the long term debt cycle. These long term debt cycles typically take 50-75 years to play out. This cycle began in 1945 when World War II ended and we began the US dollar-dominated world order.

2/ In the words of @RayDalio, "Right now, the world’s major central banks have the least fuel in their tanks since the late 1930s so are now in the later stages of the long-term debt cycle. Because they come along about once in a lifetime most people aren’t aware of them."

3/ Central banks have spent the last decade in a race to see who could devalue their currency the fastest. Near 0% interest rates have meant increased printing of the dollar, euro, and yen. Central banks no longer have the ability to tighten credit so they print money.

4/ Being towards the later stages of the long-term debt cycle there is a global sovereign debt bubble similar to what we saw in the 20's & 30's. In 2019, global debt-to-gdp hit 322% with total debt reaching a new all-time high of $253 Trillion.

5/ The wealth gap has also expanded to levels last seen in the 30's. Historically, inequality and large wealth gaps have eventually led to dire consequences. Periods of conflict and social unrest often marked by taxes, revolutions, or wars.

I have read through the grooming report from the Home Office.

Here, in this thread, I will take you through the mathematical hoops they have jumped through in this deeply flawed analysis.

Thread 👇

It is, quite literally, a whitewash. It uses all the standard statistical tricks to avoid concluding a stark and glaring conclusion, which is otherwise plain to see. That there was a sustained, targeted and focussed attack by Pakistani men on white working class and Sikh girls.

**Choose limited data points**

One way to force a conclusion is to only range over a small and carefully chosen set of data points. In this case, the report used a limited number of use cases which largely ignored the high profile grooming gangs of Pakistani origin.

Only Rotherham was considered in earnest, as it could hardly be ignored as the start of it all.

A typical data trick is to only use one troublesome dataset - generally the most high profile one. This gives plausible denial on accusations of manipulation of source data.

_This is what we call “the domain trick”_

Until 2050 we'll likely see "a #supercycle in investments in 'clean' energy infrastructure, 'clean' transportation & everything that's required for the '#green' transition."

There's so much bullshit in here, I'll unpack some of it in a

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1st (cf. @MGSchmelzer): there is no reason to assume that a massive productivity- & hence production-boom will lead to reduced emissions, because it will increase production&growth, & it is those two variables that global greenhouse emissions track most closely. #Degrowth.

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Every time capitalism has made massive productivity gains (e.g. w/ the #steamengine; the taylorist #assemblyline; computers), that has led to a *radicalisation* of capitalism as a mass production system (as opposed to earlier versions, where luxury goods were for elites),...

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So there's no reason believe that a new round of capitalist accumulation (#accumulationbydispossession / #primitiveaccumulation) - in this case: some kind of "#greencapitalism - will in any way positively impact emissions rates, but every reason to believe the opposite...

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I would like to look into this, as it speaks to an often-overlooked issue: the relationship between different phases of capitalist development, such as imperialism, fordism, & post-fordism, connected to energy regimes (coal-based, oil-based, renewables-based capitalism)?

** MMT is the new supply-side economics
Forty years ago, some economists started from an uncontroversial (but important) result: a lower tax rate raises the tax base, so revenues won't fall as much. But then they ran with it, predicting tax rate cuts could raise revenues.

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The 80s supply-siders went to the limit and came up with a motto: lower taxes will lower deficits as a norm, not an exception. Many economists shouted this was backwards. It was an implausible limit case. Textbooks called them "charlatans and cranks" or "silly".
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In 80s debates, supply-siders would often fall back to "you don't understand me", repeating "Laffer curve!" endlessly, or stating vacuous accounting identities about how the government collect taxes. Their extreme prediction was repeatedly proven wrong by theory and data.
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But they had popular hero figures (Laffer, Moore), and an eager political audience that would use any argument to cut taxes. Eventually, they inspired new good research, and helped in swinging the pendulum of policy debates to include some valid supply considerations.
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Yet, supply-side economic ideas also contributed to a massive rise in US public debt in the last 40 years. Right-wing governments became as prone to have large public deficits as left-wing governments, in the pursuit of cuts in taxes.
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