For nearly a half a century, from 1947 to 1996, real GDP and real Net Worth of Households and Non-profit Organizations (in 2009 dollars) both increased at a compound annual rate of a bit over 3.5%. GDP growth, in fact, was just a smidgen faster — 0.016% — than  growth of Net Household Worth. From […]

Recall of elected officials is both the essence of Populism, the “imperative mandate” and consistent with good business principles. “You’re fired!, the voters’ version of “The Apprentice”: An analysis of local recall elections in California.” Rachel Weinstein, Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, Vol , 15. 2005-2006. The title of this 2005 article contains the delicious irony of […]

Why, oh why is there not an effective opposition party in the U.S. Congress? The last time “voter fraud” was as high on the GOP’s agenda as it now is on Trump’s, it led to the politically-motivated firing of nine U.S. Attorneys, which caused a scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto […]

“We’re gonna launch an investigation to find out. And then the next time, and I will say this: Of those votes cast, none of ’em come to me, none of ’em come to me. They would all be for the other side. None of ’em come to me. But when you look at the people […]

Dave Moss: What’s your name?  Blake: Fuck you. That’s my name. You know why, mister? ‘Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an $80,000 BMW. THAT’s my name. Long before Alec Baldwin did his Saturday Night Live impression of Donald J. Trump, Trump appropriated Baldwin’s sadistic “motivational” character, Blake, from Glengarry […]

Global warming? “It’s an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions.” According to Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of State, adapting to climate change is an engineering problem that has an engineering solution. A soundbite from a Council on Foreign Relations presentation by Tillerson has been widely reported. But it is worthwhile to […]

In his neo-Confederate “Mein Kampf,” Whither Solid South, Charles Wallace Collins quoted a full paragraph from Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom regarding the emptying out of the meaning of words. My instinct would be not to condemn Hayek for the politics of those who quote him. Even the Devil quotes Shakespeare. But after taking another look at the Look magazine comic book edition […]

This is the third of three posts on full employment. The unifying thread is that “full employment” has always been a political and not an economic problem. The first two posts were The Electoral College, White Supremacy and Full Employment as “Reign of Terror” and Full Employment and the Myth of the General Strike. Employing Sorel’s distinction […]

Georges Sorel thought he had made a ‘happy choice’ with his use of the term ‘myth.’ But he soon was disabused of that illusion by critics who dismissed the anachronism of myths and others who accused him of falsifying “the real opinions of revolutionaries.” In his essay, “Myths of the Twentieth Century” published three decades […]

Published in September 1947, Whither Solid South? A Study in Politics and Race Relations, by Charles Wallace Collins, “became both manifesto and blueprint” for the 1948 “Dixiecrat” campaign of Strom Thurmond and — over the longer term — the strategy whereby Southern white supremacists engineered a balance of power “lock” on the electoral college and […]