The End of Schengen + Hodeidah & Janus Updates

The new Italian government, by promising to block all regular business at the EU summit, managed to achieve a new resolution on migration. Sputnik summarizes the agreement as follows:

According to a final statement made after 9 hours of talks, the leaders agreed to enhance screening migrants for asylum eligibility and set up "disembarkation platforms” in North Africa to discourage those fleeing to Europe from boarding smuggling boats.

The plan also stipulates the establishment of joint processing camps within the bloc and to restrict their movement across member-states.

The second part of the last sentence should placate Merkel's coalition partner, the Bavarian CSU.

It brings an end to the Schengen Area of free travel because some form of border will have to be erected to keep registered migrants from moving between countries.

In the latest issue of New Left Review Stathis Kouvelakis argues in "Borderland" that it is the de facto system already in place. There are already detention centers in Africa and refugees are already barred from free travel within Europe. The new Brussel's deal is merely an official acknowledgement.

And it's not going to placate the ascendant ethno-nationalist parties, as Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold report in "E.U. Reaches Deal on Migration at Summit, but Details Sketchy":

Ms. Merkel’s pro-European stance and her decision to open Germany’s borders to more than 1.4 million migrants since 2015 have earned her a reputation as a defender of liberal values, while also making her the main target of far-right and populist forces across the Continent.

Her address in Parliament on Thursday was unusually combative, and it was frequently interrupted by heckling from representatives of Alternative for Germany. The noise level was so high at one point that Ms. Merkel stopped and said: “My God. Really?” 

In Brussels, the Hungarian prime minister, Victor Orban, was characteristically harsh.

“I think the people really request two things: First is, no more migrants in,” he said. The second, he said, would be the deportation of those who are already in Europe but do not qualify as refugees.

“So that’s what the people want,” Mr. Orban said. “So I think in order to restore the European democracy, we have to move to that direction.”

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Hodeidah Update: There is no deal for the UN to take over control of the seaport because the Saudi-puppet president of Yemen Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi won't allow any Houthi militia to remain in the city.

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Janus Update: Calls are starting to come in from our public sector employers asking if any of our members are fee payers. These are people known as Beck Objectors, individuals who have resigned their union membership but continue to pay fees that amount to the cost of representing them. Now post-Janus, they won't have to pay anything.

There is a complex accounting that goes into determining what a union local can charge for representation. At our local because we only have one staff organizer and the political action committee is completely fire-walled from all other aspects of the union the chargeable rate is high, usually around 95%

Fortunately we have very few fee payers. I had the satisfaction of telling the county and the ferry system that we had no fee payers there. I asked the person from the ferries if she was experiencing any blow back from Janus. She said so far, no. But she still had to call the inlandboat union and the sheet metal workers.

My assessment is that there is no strong anti-union current of the Zeitgeist. If one surfaces then it will have to have been generated externally.

Waiting for Janus

UPDATE: First day after the Janus ruling wasn't too bad at the local. I'm anticipating it will be different in the coming weeks as right-wing groups roll out whatever mobilization plan they have.

Here's a good bit of analysis pulled from the comments section of the main NYT story by Adam Liptak devoted to the ruling:

Sean
New Haven, Connecticut June 27

This decision is outrageous, and Justices Kagan and Sotomayor rightly call it out for the naked partisan ruling it is.

Justice Kagan especially cites the cynical way in which the Republican justices cite themselves from over the past few years in order to overturn a law for no other reason than because they just don't like it.

Even more sinister, she and Justice Sotomayor note, is how they have clearly weaponized the First Amendment to prevent democratic governance in this country. They are paving the way for a libertarian dystopia in which any attempt by citizens in a system of self-governance to install necessary and logical regulations is crushed by a reflexive and meaningless complaint of infringement upon an individual's free speech.

Today's decision makes it abundantly clear that compromise with the radical right-wing GOP is no longer possible. They have only one goal: the complete dismantling of a democratic government in which individuals negotiate their own self-interest with the need to create a stable and functioning society as a whole. And they continue to demonstrate that there is no new low to which they will stoop to achieve that.

It becomes harder and harder to see how we are not barreling towards another civil war, in which once again nothing less than the soul of the Union is at stake.

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The Janus decision will be announced by the Supreme Court at some point this morning. The local where I work has been preparing for it for months. Everyone thinks it's a foregone conclusion that Abood will be overturned, the 1977 decision which upheld the legality of the union shop and fair share fees in the public sector. The court was split 4-4 on Friedrichs, a similar case having to do with union shop in the public sector, because Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly.

What does it mean? If Wisconsin is any indication, public sector unions will bleed out quickly nationwide. I'm not sure that Janus will be as draconian as Scott Walker's Act 10. It could be. Some say the court is moving in the direction to outlaw all unions.

It's not good. Once the decision is announced, right-wing groups will contact public sector union members and ask them to opt out. Disgruntled and misinformed union members will then demand to be free of their local union.

It's an attack. Unions will have to marshal resources to respond. Our local is 20% public sector. Financially we can probably weather a worst-case scenario. But there are ripple effects. So much energy is going to be required to respond to a presumably significant number of workers wanting to opt out that other things will fall through the cracks.

I have worked for various union locals, central labor councils and Taft-Hartley trusts for nearly 20 years. During that time there always been some form of crisis. It has never been easy. I figured that I worked in a dying industry. But what industry isn't dying at this point?

"What Mueller won't find"

Bob in Portland explicated Robert Mueller's deep state bona fides earlier this month in "What Mueller won't find" posted on caucus99percent:

I suppose my introduction to the corruption of those in power, at thirteen, was the assassination of JFK. Not actually the assassination, but the murder of Oswald two days later, in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters. I had slept overnight at a friend's and we came back from shooting basketballs to watch the transfer of Oswald to another facility. That was the moment that I realized all wasn't what it seemed. But, like most kids my age, the Beatles came along in a month or so and I was swept into the world of rock and roll, which kept me occupied until I began noticing girls. Until 1968. I was still noticing girls and rock and roll, but I was also noticing the number of progressives being gunned down by "lone nuts". And I was noticing Vietnam.

Continue reading: "What Mueller won't find."

Hodeidah Headed for Destruction

The Saudi-UAE coalition claims capture of the airport in Hodeidah. But even if true it's a hollow victory, according to Middle East Eye's "In Yemen’s Hodeidah, Houthis dig in for protracted street fighting":

Since announcing the offensive on 13 June, the coalition has made progress by capturing the sprawling airport compound, which served as a Houthi military base rather than as an airstrip in recent years, after one week’s fighting

Yet Ibrahim al-Siragi, a pro-Houthi political analyst, sees no real value in the airport’s capture.

"There is no strategic importance to the airport and only the aggressor [the Saudi-led coalition] is talking about the importance of the airport, to tell its supporters that it was able to achieve a major advance,” he told MEE.

The battle now shifts to the port, which is the real prize. Houthi fighters are digging in and establishing sniper nests. All indications are they are willing to fight to the finish to maintain control of the port:

Just 8km from the airport, Hodiedah’s port is the main conduit for food, medical and commercial supplies coming into the country and a site of key strategic importance.

Not only a lifeline for a country suffering from what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis – 22 million people require food aid – the facility is a major resource for the Houthi rebels.

The Saudi-led coalition accuses the Houthis of smuggling Iranian weapons, including rockets that are occasionally fired into Saudi Arabia, through the port.

Though this is an accusation the Houthis deny, losing the port would mean losing other kinds of supplies too, such as the revenues it gains through duties.

Fadhl al-Robie, the head of Madar Strategic Studies Center, a think tank based in Aden, believes that the Houthis will exert all efforts to stop the pro-Hadi forces from taking it.

"Hodeidah seaport is the main port for the Houthis and they are not willing to withdraw peacefully, so they will resort to any kind of fighting to defend Hodeidah, even street battles," he told MEE.

On the other side, the Saudi-UAE coalition says the the objective remains Hodeidah's port. So it appears the city and seaport will be destroyed by fighting, which is what happened in Aden in 2015.

Erdogan Greater Than Nasser?

Reporting in the Western press (NYT, Reuters) leading up to yesterday's elections in Turkey said a runoff was likely. But that's not the way it turned out. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan glided to reelection. BBC summarizes:

Mr Erdogan got nearly 53% with almost all votes counted. His closest rival Muharrem Ince was on 31%. 

He will now assume sweeping new powers, won in a controversial referendum last year. The post of PM will be abolished. 

Mr Ince accepted the result on the basis of poll figures - but said that everything about the vote was unfair. 

Final results will be announced on Friday.

Erdogan's Justice and Development Party along with the ultra-nationalist National Movement Party won 53% of the parliamentary vote:

Mr Erdogan said the governing alliance led by his AK Party (AKP) had secured a majority, in a separate vote for the 600-member chamber.

State news agency Anadolu said the AKP itself had 42% of the votes for parliament with 99% counted, giving it a projected 293 seats. Its partner, the MHP, had 11% and 50 seats.

The opposition CHP won only 23% (146 seats) despite Mr Ince's popularity in the presidential vote, while its nationalist ally the Iyi (Good) party won 10% (44 seats).

In a development that will please Kurdish voters, the pro-Kurdish HDP exceeded the 10% threshold needed to enter parliament. With 67 seats, it will form the chamber's second-largest opposition faction.

The HDP results are a bright spot given that the party was virtually banned during Erdogan's Kurdish crackdown and then the post-coup state of emergency.

Turkey is now a version of a police state, not as bad as Sisi's Egypt, but something akin to it. Erdogan has maintained the state of emergency for two years. He has reportedly jailed as many as 100,000, and blacklisted more than that. Newspaper, television and radio station closures number more than 100. The government has the ability to unilaterally freeze Twitter and YouTube.

But for all this that is reprehensible, it cannot be denied that Erdogan has achieved a lot. Read Ella George's excellent "Purges and Paranoia" and it's hard not to come away with the impression that Erdogan is the Nasser of our time.

Erdogan has picked fights with Russia, the United States and Europe, and he hasn't lost yet; in fact, he has quite a bit of leverage over each. He has successfully revised Turkey's constitution more than once. He has built up the country's infrastructure.

If Nasser's claim to fame was standing up to the great powers while developing Egypt, Erdogan has even more to boast of because Turkey has never suffered the humiliating military defeats that Egypt endured under Nasser's leadership.

July 1 Mexican Elections a Plebiscite on Neoliberalism

There are reports of assassination in Mexico in the run up to the July 1 election. Polls show Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) with an insurmountable lead. AMLO will be Mexico's next president.

Yesterday Yves Smith, "Mexican Business Elite, US Government, Brace for Likely Win by Leftist Obrador as Mexico’s President," turned her gimlet eye to AMLO, and she concluded that while AMLO might not be a revolutionary Marxist, neither is he a neoliberal, which nowadays in the reign of the zombie is radical indeed:

Even in his measured way, Amlo intends to turn Mexico away from neoliberalism, which is enough to make heads explode. The US press either ignores or considerably downplays how poorly Mexico has fared under its tender ministrations. Again from In Defense of Marxism:

Mexico has been immersed in neoliberalism for 32 years and the results are overwhelming: “Under Porfirio Diaz [Mexican general who served as president in the late-19th, early-20th century], 95 percent of the population was poor. In 1981 it had fallen to just over 40 percent. Now it is actually 85 percent”, said Dr. José Luis Calva Téllez, a member of the Institute of Legal Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in an interview with Contralínea. (Contralínea 2015)

In addition, the purchasing power of wages dropped by 71.5 percent. It is practically impossible to live on the minimum wage…

The driving priority was “macroeconomic management above everything else. More than 1,000 state-owned companies were privatized to stop state intervention in the economy. Foreign trade was liberalized by drastically reducing all taxes or tariffs on foreign products; the Mexican financial system was privatized.”….

In the three neoliberal decades, GDP per capita has grown at a rate of 0.6 percent per year; that is, an aggregate growth of 21 percent. That is not to mention the millions of Mexicans who emigrated in search of jobs they do not find in our country. “Counting the emigrants, the growth of GDP per inhabitant is scarcely 0.3 percent per year, or an aggregate growth of 10 percent in 32 years.” (José Luis Calva, Mexico Beyond Neoliberalism: Options Within The Global Change)

Trump's Border Flip-Flop

Trump's about-face on separating children from parents caught illegally entering the United States is proof that he knew he was backing a loser. It might have been good for his base -- there is a seething mass of opinion that wants to kill, crush, destroy -- but as senior Capitol Hill scribe Carl Hulse relates below in "G.O.P. Lawmakers Hope Trump’s Border Action Heads Off Political Threat" the battleground this November will be in districts held by the GOP but won by Hillary:

But the president’s quick reversal after multiple definitive declarations that his hands were tied — combined with the palpable Republican relief at the policy change — made it very clear that the party knew it was on the wrong side of the debate. Now the question is whether the president’s action will be enough to quiet the public clamor over the decision to tear children from their families.

[snip]

The politics were clearly bad for Republicans, particularly those most at risk in November. Mr. Trump’s tough talk on immigration might rally his most devoted followers and be a good platform for 2020, but this is 2018.

The Republicans most in danger of losing in November are in swing and suburban districts — many carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016 — and those photographs from the border were not playing well. Republicans were already struggling with female voters, and the separation policy was definitely not going to build support with that core voting group.

The DNC, in all its ineptitude, is repeating its 2006 blue dog strategy to take back the House -- white, centrist, pro-gun, anti-single-payer. Bob Moser sketches the contours in "Will Democrats Fumble the 2018 Midterm Elections?":

Democrats have everything going for them in 2018. Here is a party that gets to run against an historically unpopular and palpably dangerous Republican president – Donald F-ing Trump, everybody! – with an equally historic explosion of progressive energy and organizing behind it. At the very least, the Democrats should be able to secure a House majority in November that would give the party a small purchase on power – and a serious way to throw tacks in Trump's road to tyranny. On an average mid-term year since the Civil War, the party out of power has won 32 new seats—and the Democrats, with every conceivable political wind at their back, need only 24. Still, no matter what new daily atrocities belch up from the White House, the party's chances grow more remote all the time – since almost every day also seems to bring a fresh new insult to grassroots Democrats and left-leaning independents.

It started with electing Perez, the choice of the Clintonites, as party chair in the wake of 2016. The former labor secretary began with talk of unity, then immediately axed senior party officials who'd backed Sanders in what progressives called a "purge." Then the DCCC began "shaping" its field of candidates for 2018, following a centrist "Blue Dog" model that Rahm Emanuel, then DNC chair, used to great controversy in 2006—the midterm election that sent a bunch of gun-toting, budget-slashing, Jesus-talking conservative Democrats to Washington. Twelve years later, and a political world removed, the party's idea of a "winning" candidate would be the same: Someone who's well-off enough to "self-fund" in the millions, or well-connected enough to raise big money from others, and who's also willing to follow the Washington consultants' advice about strategy and "messaging."

But a story in Vox -- Dylan Scott, "Charts: Trump is the target of historic voter backlash ahead of the 2018 midterms" -- casts doubt on the Dems ability to repeat a 2006 blue dog wave in 2018. Why? Because in 2006 W. didn't have his base firmly beneath him as Trump does now:

The most recent midterm election to be defined to this degree by opposition to the president, according to Pew, is 2006. That year, during the height of the backlash to the Iraq War and after a failed GOP run at privatizing Social Security, 65 percent of Democratic voters said their vote would be against George W. Bush. The result was that Democrats won 31 seats in the House and retook control of the chamber.

If there is any hope for Republicans, it’s that their voters are still mostly united behind Trump, even as the president galvanizes his opposition. A majority of Republicans say they will be voting for Trump in 2018, a much higher share than said they were voting for Bush in 2006 and even outpacing the share of Democrats who said they would be voting for Obama in 2010 and 2014.

And while Democrats are celebrating Trump's flip-flop, Caitlin Johnstone reminds us, "Democrats Finally Deviate From 'Let’s Start World War 3' Midterm Platform," that the policy of  separation was bipartisan:

Last night Rachel Maddow finally took a break from her relentless warmongering toward Russia, Syria and North Korea to have a pretend cry about the plight of immigrant children on her hit MSNBC show. It was arguably the climax of a loud nationwide outcry against a federal policy of separating parents from their children when they are arrested for illegally crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, and the following day President Trump signed an executive order suspending that policy while congress comes up with some less draconian legislation.

And of course the entire thing was phony from top to bottom. The policy Trump’s political opponents have been blaming on the current administration was actually bipartisan and several administrations in the making, and as with many US policies simply grew progressively more depraved with each new president. The executive order leaves the debate over many, many immigration issues still unresolved, including the fact that it just means families will now be imprisoned together under Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ new “zero tolerance policy”, and the fact that thousands of families will still remain separated. And of course the entire furor only became a mainstream issue because midterm elections are coming up and the “Russia, Russia, Russia” platform of the last year and a half hasn’t exactly energized the Democratic party’s base. And of course that soulless bitch Maddow, who will cheerfully help inflame tensions between nuclear powers in order to give her ratings a bump, was 100 percent acting throughout the entire scene.

But you know what? I’ll take it.

Billionaire centrist Mike Bloomberg plans to plunk down $80 million towards blue dog victory. But he will demand a litmus test on gun control, I would imagine, and most blue dogs, like Conor Lamb, are blue dogs because they are pro-life and pro-gun.

And let's not forget Democrats scandalously backtracked on threats to halt the government early in the year in support of the Dreamers. So immigration isn't necessarily a golden ticket.

Hodeidah Update, Rape Rooms, Macron Skewered -- and More!

Hodeidah
Reuters says that the Saudi-UAE led coalition has captured the airport in Hodeidah. But the reporting is sketchy. The coalition is said to be using air power to bomb Houthi positions surrounding the airport. The water supply system is failing. "U.N. officials estimate that in a worst-case scenario the fighting could cost up to 250,000 lives, especially if a cholera epidemic occurs in the widely impoverished region."

Rape Rooms Run by U.S. Allies
AP is reporting that the UAE has erected a network of detention sites in southern Yemen specializing in anal rape. The irony here is that "rape rooms" were a propaganda staple in toppling Libya's Gaddafi. Now it appears that Western allies -- the U.S. is aware of these detention centers -- are actually operating the rape rooms.

The End of the European Union is Nigh
Free transit of the Schengen Zone at least. Angela Merkel's coalition government partner, Bavaria's Christian Social Union, has given the chancellor ten days to get EU nations to sign off on an overhaul of  how it handles asylum seekers. Her chances appear slim.

Macron Skewered
It is unusual to read such a pointed critique of zombie neoliberalism's golden child in the pages of The New York Times. But Alissa Rubin, capable of excellence, which she provides regularly, delivers.

Murray is Back
After an extended break Craig Murray is back in fighting trim. He manages to sum up our current Zeitgeist in "A Longer View":

Meantime the rich get richer at an unprecedented rate. The concentration of wealth is mirrored by a concentration of the ownership of housing. Media ownership concentration into an ever-tightening circle continues to exert social control, while the gatekeeper role of the big new media corporations of twitter, facebook, google and wikipedia is now being very openly abused to maintain the Establishment narrative.

Corporate Wasteland

A particularly good column, "The Charts That Show How Big Business Is Winning," by David Leonhardt, appeared in yesterday's paper.  More people now are employed by large corporations than small companies:

In the late 1980s, small companies were still a lot bigger, combined, than big companies. In 1989, firms with fewer than 50 workers employed about one-third of American workers — accounting for millions more jobs than companies with at least 10,000 employees.

Since then, though, many small businesses have struggled to keep up with the new corporate giants and with foreign competition. You can probably see a version of the story in your community. The hardware store has given way to The Home Depot. The local hospital and bank are owned by a chain. The supermarket is Whole Foods, which is now owned by Amazon. The family-owned manufacturer may simply be out of business.

The share of Americans working for small companies fell to 27.4 percent in 2014, the most recent year for which data exists, down from 32.4 in 1989. And big companies have grown by almost an identical amount. Today, companies with at least 10,000 workers employ more people than companies with fewer than 50 workers.

Of course it's noticeable in my own neighborhood (see my account from five years ago), but it also struck me when I was down in the Bay Area several years ago to run the Bay To Breakers with my father. We parked his car in a Berkeley fee lot with the intention of taking BART to San Francisco. But it was so early that weekend morning that BART wasn't running. We ended up taking a bus through Oakland surface streets, hooking up with the Bay Bridge, before being disgorged at the Embarcadero.

I had gone to school in the Bay Area in the 1980s, moving to the East Coast in 1988. When I lived in the Bay Area, Oakland and San Francisco were chock full of little mom & pop shops, artisanal bakeries, taquerias, record stores, fabric emporiums, you name it. Corporate entities like McDonalds or Sears were outliers in the city.

What I saw from the bus window that May morning was nothing but storefronts of national chains: Qdoba, Starbucks, Verizon. It was shocking. From the small-business rainbow of the 1980s to a colorless, desiccated corporate wasteland in 2015.

The Siege of Hodeidah Compared to Afrin City

UPDATE: The latest from Hodeidah is that the Saudi-UAE coalition has successfully wrested portions of the airport from the Houthis. This is denied by the Houthis, a spokesman for which said the coalition forces are in retreat. The airport is destroyed and civilian casualties are growing. The seaport is still operating. UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, left Sanaa without any agreement. The battle for Hodeidah grinds on with no end in sight.

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If looked at through the prism of the Kurdish failure in March to hold Afrin City against the Turks, it's hard to imagine a more hopeful outcome for the Houthis in Hodeidah. The stakes are different as is the terrain. Afrin is a river city in Syria near the Turkish border that is the production center for olive growing. Hodeidah is the principal port -- both air and sea -- on the Red Sea; it is Yemen's fourth largest city with a population of 400,000. Hodeidah falls to the UAE-Saudi coalition and Sanaa the capital starves.

It took the Turks and their Free Syrian Army proxies less than a week to conquer Afrin City, sending the Kurds of the YPG and YPJ retreating into the surrounding hills. The siege of Hodeidah is already into its sixth day.

At first there were breathless reports that the UAE-Saudi coalition was proceeding methodically and with little trouble to control both air and sea ports. The story this morning is not so sanguine. Houthi fighters are stubbornly resisting; the coalition has responded with shelling, which is impacting neighborhoods surrounding the airport. There are civilian casualties.

My assessment back in March was that the if YPG/YPJ failed to hold Afrin City, they would prove themselves merely a U.S. proxy, unable to achieve their objective of an independent Rojava. With the news that Turkish forces are entering the outskirts of Manbij, this assessment has proven accurate.

We'll soon find out if the Houthis are nothing more than Iranian proxies -- which has been the prevailing mainstream wisdom, with an occasional caveat, since the Yemeni Civil War began three years ago.

The Houthis are not Iranian proxies. My guess is that they will put up more of a fight than the Kurds. Moon of Alabama notes reports that French special forces are part of the coalition attacking Hodeidah. What we're looking at is another inconclusive Western-backed military campaign. Plenty of death and destruction, but not much of anything else.

To Keep China from Global Dominance Neoliberalism will have to be Destroyed

Based on the initial announcement (see Ana Swanson's "U.S. to Put Tariffs on $50 Billion in Chinese Goods as Trade Fight Widens") it appears that Trump has decided on a battle royale with China. Made in China 2025, the Chinese effort to become a global leader in high-tech manufacturing, will not be tolerated:

In a statement Friday morning, President Trump said the United States would levy the tariffs on goods that contain “industrially significant technologies,” including those that relate to the country’s Made in China 2025 plan for dominating high-tech industries, and that the United States would pursue additional tariffs if China retaliates.

The Chinese will respond with tariffs of their own, most likely on agriculture from the rural states that are Trump's base (see last week's "Why Trump Might Cave to China: Iowa Soybean Farmers").

Then at the end of the month the other shoe will drop when the Trump administration announces restrictions on high-tech exports to China, as well as limits on Chinese investment in the U.S. According to Swanson,

Tensions could escalate further in the coming weeks. The White House is currently formulating a plan for restricting Chinese investments in the United States and putting stricter limitations on the types of advanced technology that can be exported to the country. It has said those restrictions will go into effect shortly after they are announced by June 30.

If a full blown trade war is about to kick off I say fine. We need change, and I am willing to take any kind if only to get the dialectic of history motoring again.

Neoliberalism didn't bring peace and plenty, as Francis Fukuyama predicted, but he was right in the sense that it did freeze history. I'm not a student of the colonial period of capitalism. So I'm not sure how long that lasted -- the 1880s until the beginning of World War One? -- but that's still a decade shorter than our neoliberal paradigm.

The Dragon is the spawn of neoliberalism. To prevent the Dragon from reaching its zenith, neoliberalism will have to be destroyed.

Zombie Neoliberalism Racking Up Victories

With the U.S. Supreme Court set to roll back public sector unions any day now, it never ceases to amaze me how a zombie paradigm, neoliberalism, can keep on racking up victories absent any mass base of public support.

The latest example is the privatization of the French national railway, SNCF, by the government of Emmanuel Macron. The French National Assembly voted for privatization and the reduction of rail-worker benefits yesterday; the Senate will approve the legislation today.

Alissa Rubin's elegy, "Can Strikes in France Still Make a Difference?," for strike-based egalitarian French culture is worth reading. What we are losing as zombie neoliberalism plods on is hard to fathom, but it is enormous.

On most Wednesdays I treat myself to takeout from my local Thai restaurant. While I am waiting for my order I'll sample from the always numerous selection of pamphlets from the Atammayatarama Buddhist Monastery near the front counter.

Last night this paragraph from page 13 of Food for Thought caught my eye:

One day, people will not be able to muster inspiration nor recall the way to seek spiritual sustenance. In the end, the minds of human beings will be empty except for thoughts of sensuality and selfishness. This is when fire will wash the face of the earth.

Notable

Yesterday in an abysmal display of cowardice the Seattle City Council rescinded its brand new tax on large corporate employers, a law meant to address the homeless state of emergency.

Steven Hsieh's "Watch a 'Father, Anarchist, Veteran' Address the Seattle City Council as 'Bootlickers' While Quoting Marx" provides some balm:

All right, I don’t got long. I’m a dad, so I have kids to take care of. What’s up, bootlickers? I haven’t seen ya’ll since the campout. I’ve got something to say. I’m tired of this fucking shit. I’m a father, I’m a veteran and I’m an anarchist. Those are three people you don’t want to piss off. I’m tired of children getting attacked in the streets, I’m tired of them sleeping in the streets. I’m tired of the very people I swore to defend get attacked by the state. So like I said out there, ya’ll need to close your fucking beaks, take resources and put them in the hands of people who need them. Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with ya’ll? Who the fuck are ya’ll to justify letting people die in the streets with your policies, your laws and your legislation. How do you justify that, killing people. I swore to give my life to defend the people from all forms of oppression. Eventually, all this shit is going to stop. Because when it’s our time, we won’t make excuses for the terror. Marx.

#MeToo vs. Mein Kampf

Primary elections yesterday in Nevada, Maine, North Carolina and Virginia, summarized below by Nate Silver, were pretty much a status quo affair. Women national security state/corporate Democrats won in key races in Virginia, while on the Republican side a white supremacist triumphed in the state's gubernatorial U.S. senate primary. The overall Democrat vs. Republican theme for this election cycle is shaping up to be "#MeToo vs. Mein Kampf."

In contrast to last week’s results — which were pretty good for the GOP “establishment” — the two most interesting outcomes of the evening featured problems for traditional Republicans and underscored the degree to which the GOP has become Trump’s party. Those results were:

• Corey Stewart’s win in the Virginia Senate primary — Stewart defended the white nationalist marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year and other Republicans in the state are already distancing themselves from him.

• And Mark Sanford’s loss in the GOP Congressional primary in South Carolina’s 1st District after Trump endorsed his opponent, Katie Arrington. (Sanford has an outside chance of holding Arrington to under 50 percent of the vote and advancing to a runoff, but it’s looking unlikely.)

When combined with the North Korea summit and the quelling of a discharge petition led by GOP moderates to potentially force an immigration vote in the House, it’s a pretty good day for Trump — but not necessarily a good one for the GOP’s long-term electoral prospects.

Great Satan Reigns in the Emerald City

To sample abject capitulation in the face of money power the two stories to read this morning are by Heidi Groover and Steven Hsieh, "Seattle City Council Will Vote on a Head Tax Repeal" and "5 Takeaways From the City Council's Impending Head Tax Repeal."

Before seeing if the paid signature-gatherers hired with money from Amazon and Starbucks had accumulated enough valid signatures to place on the ballot in November a repeal of a head tax on large employers to fund homeless services and housing, which the city council passed last month, the council is scheduled to repeal its own handiwork today. Groover and Hsieh set the mood:

Less than a month after passing a head tax to fund housing and homelessness services, the Seattle City Council looks poised to repeal it tomorrow.

"It is clear that the ordinance will lead to a prolonged, expensive political fight over the next five months that will do nothing to tackle our urgent housing and homelessness crisis,” wrote seven city council members and Mayor Jenny Durkan in a statement.

The announcement caps off what has become one of the ugliest political debates in recent Seattle history, handing a victory to big businesses who opposed the head tax every step of the way.

If the council axes the head tax tomorrow—and it seems almost certain that they will—we’ll be feeling the ripple effects of the move for a long time.

While this might seem of merely local importance, it's actually a significant "canary in the coal mine" moment in the global Zeitgeist. If one of the most progressive cities in the nation, a city with the one of the worst homelessness problems in the U.S. (Seattle is behind New York and Los Angeles, significantly larger cities), a city that recently led the way with a $15-an-hour minimum wage, cannot address a state of emergency then we must accept the fact that government can do only that which the wealthy allow.

It's a bitter realization, one we intellectually understand, but hard to swallow. The election of Obamaite Durkan last year as a mayor was a clear indication that the moneybags would no longer allow Seattle's progressive proclivities to go unchecked. Too much money was coming into the city. The city had to be governed like every other large polity. Ruthlessly and with eye only toward mammon.

In the big picture, if U.S. leadership decides to wage war on Iran there will be barely a peep of protest from voters. That was my takeaway last month when I spied nary a single Democrat at a rally and march for the head tax.

Liberals don't care. They only care to have a reputation for caring. It's a society absent soul, and one in need of a radical makeover post-haste.

Is Peace Breaking Out in Afghanistan?

Thursday Afghan president Ashraf Ghani announced a unilateral ceasefire. Saturday the Taliban reciprocated. According to The Long War Journal, "Whereas the government announced that its unilateral ceasefire will last until June 20, the Taliban’s order covers just 'the first, second and third day of Eid' — meaning a shorter timeframe."

Reading Mujib Mashal's "Afghan Leader Declares Brief, Unilateral Cease-Fire in Taliban Fight," published Thursday, one can't help but come away with the opinion that what Ghani is doing is calling a timeout to give his winded team a breather and prevent the opposition from running up the score:

Some analysts feared that not enough thought had gone into how a cease-fire might play out at a time when the war has spread to nearly half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. The presence of many militant groups makes the task much harder for a force stretched by daily fighting.

“Fighting is ongoing in 15 provinces, and the Afghan president announces the cease-fire,” said Atiqullah Amarkhel, a retired Afghan general and military analyst.

“Unilateral cease-fires are not helpful,” Mr. Amarkhel said. “Don’t forget that already the Afghan Army isn’t attacking — it is defending. It will confuse the Afghan forces, the Taliban will attack and gain more, and it will affect the morale of the Afghan forces.”

But Borhan Osman, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Afghanistan, said a cease-fire might be an effective countermove at a time when “more than 90 percent of the attacks in Afghanistan are initiated by the insurgency.”

With the government already on the defensive, Mr. Osman said, it might as well use a cease-fire to build trust with the Taliban and test their seriousness about negotiating peace. The Taliban have yet to offer a clear response to the peace plan that Mr. Ghani offered months ago.

“The Taliban have always expressed concern that the government is not serious about peace, and not coherent enough to be a reliable partner for talks,” Mr. Osman said. “Today’s announcement could be a step toward addressing those worries, showing that Mr. Ghani as commander in chief has the power to halt offensives by all pro-government forces.”

Mushal's story from Saturday, "Taliban Announce Brief Cease-Fire, Offering Afghans Hope for Lull in War," convincingly places the Trump administration firmly behind the peace process:

Increasingly, senior Afghan officials and Western diplomats in Kabul believe the United States is willing to take a direct role in peace talks with the Taliban. Pakistan remains a key component of that.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke by phone with Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, a day before the cease-fire was announced. Gen. Bajwa is set to visit Kabul soon.

“We have asked for Pakistan’s assistance in facilitating a peace process, and we have sought to understand Pakistan’s own core security concerns and ensure that its interests are taken into account in any peace process,” said Lisa Curtis, who is in charge of Afghanistan and South Asia policy at the National Security Council. “The United States is ready to participate in the discussion, but we cannot serve as a substitute for the Afghan government and the Afghan people.”

Many saw the strong American role in the Afghan government’s cease-fire announcement as an indication of a more hands-on approach. Senior members of the Afghan government did not know of plans for a cease-fire until a couple days before they were announced.

Mr. Blanc, the former diplomat, said the urgency to show Mr. Trump some progress is palpable.

“There is a deep concern amongst the Americans who want to see the American commitment to Afghanistan remain, that Trump is going to pull the plug,” Mr. Blanc said. “The idea that potentially someone is working to do something dramatic — no question about it. I would be shocked if that wasn’t somebody’s calculation, whoever is in the driver’s seat here.”

It could be that the reason Afghan commanders had no clue about Ghani's ceasefire is that it was a last second diktat from Washington. It makes sense and is consistent with Trump's focus on 2020. If he can broker an end to the frozen conflict on the Korean Peninsula, as well as bring an end to the 17-year war in Afghanistan, it will be a potent argument for his reelection.

What is the Ghani peace plan on the table? It was something that came out of the Kabul Process in February. An opinion piece written by Hekmat Khalil Karzai vaguely describes some of its features:

The Afghan government is firmly committed to addressing the core concerns and demands of the Taliban, including the future presence of the international military forces, amendments to our constitution and the release of Taliban prisoners.

The initiative also offers removal of the names of Taliban commanders from the sanctions lists maintained by the United Nations and others, which limit their movements and hinder their inclusion into mainstream Afghan society and polity.

Throughout the peace process and after the end of hostilities, the Afghan government will ensure the security of the Taliban and their families and help resettle former combatants as part of an agreement.

The Taliban won't accept the presence of any foreign troops stationed on Afghan soil. A complete withdrawal is not something the U.S. military will abide. So the war will likely continue.

A Message from the Mayor

A friend contacted me, a friend who I just discovered is mayor of his town, and told me that he has run into difficulty posting comments to this page. Fortunately he saved his last comment, which you will find below, before Google Blogger sucked it into its ether:

There's a lot of brow-furrowing going on among the press regarding what on earth is causing so many people to kill themselves, either deliberately or through over-doing various means of escape. I keep thinking, maybe it's that life for huge numbers of people is simply not worth living any more. Why is that possibility never considered? I agree with you about the fractured horizon. There's no horizon left because we have trained ourselves to see only money, money and its absence, in a sweeping plain that has no focal points left. Every last thing has either been reified or obliterated. Public spaces, where convivial but random social encounters might occur, have been made unpleasant or have become overcome by the pleasures of virtual space via cell phones. We are taught in every imaginable way, subtle and direct, that money and its lack really is everything, and the degree to which you don't have it is the degree to which you must register shame. What you said in another post about the futility of re-creating rock and roll is part of this: that music was of a time when there was hope and opportunity to be found in rejecting the status quo, and that hope and opportunity transcended gender and race in the countries where rock and roll thrived. What is there now? Recreating Rock is like trying to recreate epic poetry. It's not that the audience is gone, it's that the entire set of preconditions, the whole environment, has been obliterated. You can't grow tigers and rainforests on Baffin Island. But we too have been ripped from that environment and thrust into a new one, this one, and frankly it sucks, and it doesn't surprise me at all that so many people choose to leave it.

A Big, Big Problem

UPDATE: It wasn't included in Significant Digits, but it should have been:

"Defying Prevention Efforts, Suicide Rates Are Climbing Across the Nation"

Suicide rates rose steadily in nearly every state from 1999 to 2016, increasing 25 percent nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday. In 2016, there were more than twice as many suicides as homicides.

[snip]

The C.D.C. found that men accounted for three-quarters of all suicides, and women one-quarter. The numbers were highest among non-Hispanic whites, and among those aged 45 to 65 years old.

Previous C.D.C. reports have found rate increases of 80 percent among white, middle-aged women since 1999, and of 89 percent among Native Americans. The rates declined slightly among black men and people over age 75 during that time.

Suicide rates have waxed and waned over the country’s history and tend to reach highs in hard times. In 1932, during the Great Depression, the rate was 22 per 100,000, among the highest in modern history. The rate in the new C.D.C. data was 15.4 per 100,000.

The past three decades have presented a morbid puzzle. Rates have risen steadily in most age and ethnic groups, even as rates of psychiatric treatment and diagnosis have also greatly increased.

****

Here's something noteworthy from today's Significant Digits:

1.5 percent of all American deaths
A new study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association attributes 1.5 percent of all American deaths in 2016 to opioids. This staggering figure, which given the data used may be an underestimate of the true total, eclipses the deadliness of the Vietnam War during its bloodiest year. One in five deaths of young Americans, ages 25 to 34, are attributed to opioids. [The Washington Post]

In a post from March of 2016 devoted to the Beatle's Sgt. Pepper's I said, "I have my own hypothesis about this pervasive atmosphere of pain and hopelessness we find ourselves in today; it is highly speculative, to the point of being located solidly on the lunatic fringe."

I never got around to saying what this hypothesis is. At least I can't remember if I did. It has to do with the proliferation of electronic pollution, but also with our frozen political paradigm.

We are the body electric. Hold a Gaussmeter up to your head and you'll get a reading.

But we are also creatures who possess self-consciousness. Being human has a lot to do with our ability to think about our own cognition. We can conceive of a horizon, in the hemeneutic sense,

The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point... A person who has no horizon is a man who does not see far enough and hence overvalues what is nearest to him. On the other hand, "to have an horizon" means not being limited to what is nearby, but to being able to see beyond it.

What I'm saying is that through a marriage of technology and decades-long political stasis our sense of a horizon has been obliterated. Since this horizon is key to our humanity, the fact that it is gone or radically truncated is a big, big problem.

Iraq Recount: Muqtada Should Remain on Top

It's hard to limn the politics of Iraq's simmering constitutional crisis. On Wednesday parliament amended Iraq's election law, clearing the way for a total manual recount of the May 12 vote and sidelining the High Electoral Commission of Iraq.

It appears, based on "Iraqi Council to Oversee Manual Recount Amid Post-Election Chaos" by Falih Hassan and Margaret Coker, that the fraud is centered in Kurdistan and parts of the former caliphate:

Controversy increased again this week, when the electoral body announced that it had voided votes from 1,021 ballot boxes around the country, as well as ballots cast by Iraqi citizens overseas. It did not say which electoral districts the boxes came from, why the ballots were voided or what criteria it used in taking that action. 

The majority of fraud complaints have come from Kurdish regions in northern Iraq, and from some of the areas still struggling with security after the defeat of the Islamic State.

The story doesn't say which party ended up on top in that turf, but it wasn't Muqtada al-Sadr's Sairoon alliance. So Sairoon should remain on top after the national recount. Unless the recount is completely hijacked by corrupt forces seeking to maintain their sinecures. But that seems unlikely to me.

Our Dystopia

UPDATE: I meant to reference the cover story in June's Atlantic, "The Birth of New American Aristocracy." It's long, but it's worth it. I didn't want to spend all the time required to read it staring at a monitor so I spent eight or nine dollars for the actual newsstand edition of the magazine. The guy who wrote the essay, Matthew Stewart, does an excellent job from a mainstream perspective of arguing that a revolution is inevitable. The question is what kind. He holds onto the magical hope that the revolution will be led by the upper-middle class.

****

It is hard not to be despondent these days. Everywhere -- international, national, local -- one casts a glance putrefaction stares back. Each morning out the door I go and down the hill to work. I pass squalid bodies huddled in doorways and squats built into abandoned storefronts. With me are other pedestrian commuters dressed for work and headed downtown. We see the homeless, but they have been integrated into our conception of the normal. So on we trod. Now and then I'll feel a pang of conscience, like, "Maybe I should stop and ask if that guy is okay?" But I walk on.

It is troubling, but not nearly as troubling as the 5 o'clock vision that confronts me on my homeward bound commute through the heart of Amazonia. People line the sidewalk waiting for the #8 bus to move them up the hill. Nine out ten are staring at their smartphones. Unconscious a few yards away is a homeless person. The energy is horrible. We have arrived at Dystopia, and it's Stanford University married with Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. 

To encapsulate this Dystopia there is the latest news of an initiative campaign to repeal the very modest tax-and-spend legislation passed last month by the city council to address the homeless state of emergency. Paid signature-gatherers are lying to voters in a frantic attempt to place the head-tax repeal on the November ballot. As Steven Hsieh reported at the end of May, "Several companies are funding the effort, including Amazon, Starbucks, Vulcan, and a trade group representing grocery stores. Businesses have pledged more than $350,000 to the campaign, according to a disclosure report."

I'm not sure that they will succeed. Seventeen-thousand-plus valid signatures is a lot to gather by June 15. Placing repeal before the voters was attempted by business when the city council passed a $15 minimum wage several years ago. It failed. Nonetheless, it is the unbridled greed of the corporate kingpins -- the head tax that passed was cut in half from the original proposal, a proposal that still fell far short of what was called for in the Chamber of Commerce's own study of homelessness -- that bodes ill in the big picture. The wealthy are not willing to change in order to address a state of emergency. This means the emergency will grow larger.

Possibly related was a moment I experienced yesterday afternoon. Toiling away at my desk, my window open to 1st Avenue Belltown three floors below, I heard hip hop -- maybe Meek Mill, maybe something from Atlanta -- blaring on top of a Harley engine. We have come to expect classic rock on top of a Harley, ZZ Top or Steppenwolf. So I stuck my head out the window. Sure enough, it was a white guy, middle age, in a leather vest, astride a Harley Davidson, blasting contemporary hip hop from the bike's sound system.

Rock'n'roll is dead. What does it mean? I walked over to the next office and asked a coworker who likes classic rock (she has "More Than a Feeling" as her ringtone). I offered, "I think it must have something to do with the end of postwar, post-scarcity society. Our culture of abundance has failed. I don't know. I'm working on it."

She looked at me as if she would prefer not to be bothered.

Interestingly, a critic at the one of the local weekly newspapers posted something yesterday on the same topic (see David Segal's "A Modest Proposal to Make Rock Music More Interesting"):

Rock music, generally speaking, is not in good shape. It hasn't been in sound condition—at least artistically—for about a quarter century; some observers might go back even further in time to pinpoint when rock last was in rude health. As a force in the charts, rock has been mostly waning since the Bill Clinton era. It doesn't speak well for a genre when your biggest-selling acts are Imagine Dragons, Twenty One Pilots, and Portugal. The Man, with Metallica and the Beatles still outselling much younger acts by a large margin.

As someone who's been listening to rock daily for more than 50 years and who's been going to rock shows since 1979, I think I can speak with a smidgen of authority about what I perceive to be rock's moribund state. To be sure, good-to-great rock music is still being created—albeit in diminishing quantities since its peak years of creativity (1965-1981). However, in recent decades, it has become increasingly harder to find artists doing innovative—let alone revolutionary—things within the genre. I would like to propose one way to reanimate rock, to shake it out of its stagnant period... perhaps!

He suggests inventing new instruments. It won't work. Rock'n'roll is a manifestation of a society that no longer exists.

California Primary Offers No Evidence of Blue Wave + Sy Hersh "The Unabomber was Right!"

The wrap up on yesterday's primary in California is provided by FiveThirtyEight's Nathaniel Rakich:

The world appears safe from top-two mischief in California. Although it’s still possible for two Republicans to finish in the top two in California’s 10th and 48th congressional districts, the smart money is on the Democratic candidates gaining votes from here on out. And while it looks like Dianne Feinstein will face fellow Democrat Kevin de León in the U.S. Senate race, the races the 39th District and the 49th District are going to be regular Democrat-on-Republican contests, as will the race for governor, where Democrat Gavin Newsom and Republican John Cox advance to the runoff. The presence of a Republican in the governor’s runoff avoids the worst-case scenario for the GOP: getting shut out of both top-of-the-ticket races in California, which could depress Republican turnout in competitive House races statewide.

But if you look at the vote totals in the seven Republican-held congressional districts that Democrats hope to flip in a Blue Wave there's not much fuel there for Democratic sanguinity. There is maybe one race, the 49th CD, that's looking bad for the GOP. Every other district looks like a Republican majority. Republicans got their standard bearer at the top of the ticket, Trump coattailer John Cox. So Dems can't be pinning their hopes on depressed turnout come November.

I waffle back and forth between viewing Democrats as irretrievably lost down the Trump rabbit hole of century 21 McCarthyism and seeing the suburbs as going blue dog (Conor Lamb) out of exhaustion with Trump tomfoolery.

In regards to the former, there was a wonderful quote from Seymour Hersh hidden away on the bottom of Monday's business page (see Michael Grynbaum's "I, Sy: Seymour Hersh’s Memoir of a Life Making the Mighty Sweat"):

I was expecting Mr. Hersh to have a lot to say about the Trump presidency, but he often changed the subject. He eventually allowed that the narrative of Russian meddling struck him as incomplete. “Do you have any evidence that these 13 guys really were trolls and changed the election?” he asked, referring to the 13 Russians indicted by the Justice Department in February on charges they tried to subvert the election and support Mr. Trump.

“There have been social science studies of the impact of any particular thing on Facebook, and it’s, like, zippo!” Mr. Hersh went on. “We have a divided America, a really bitterly divided America. Do we really need the Russians to tell us we’re a troubled country?”

Continued Democratic allegiance to the Trump-Russia "stab in the back" appears to be a vulnerability.

But the Hersh interview gets even more interesting from there:

He called the president an unserious man surrounded by “terrible people.” But he has reported on unscrupulous leaders before. “We will survive Trump,” he said. “America will go on.”

These days, his main concern is the 24-hour, Twitter-driven news cycle, which he denounces in his memoir as “sodden with fake news, hyped-up and incomplete information.” In his office, he brought up unprompted the manifesto of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

“I hate to say it — if he hadn’t killed people, if he hadn’t been a psychotic who thought it was O.K. to mail bombs to people, if you went and reread it, he’s talking about machines taking over our life,” Mr. Hersh said. “We’re all going to be beholden to machines, and here we are, you know: Facebook and Instagram. I mean — it’s happened!”

M5S-League Policy Priorities + California Primary Today

UPDATE: There is a good rundown on the California primary by FiveThirtyEight's Nathaniel Rakich, "California’s Jungle Primary Might Screw Over Both Parties." It goes into some depth about the congressional districts in play. In several of the races the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has actually made things worse by backing the moneybags candidate over the favorite or the choice of the state party.

One vital point made is that if the GOP is locked out in the big races -- governor, U.S. senate -- at the top of the ticket, it is going to depress conservative turnout come November:

Both California’s senatorial and gubernatorial races were always going to be safely Democratic in this D+26 state, so it may seem like no big deal if Republicans fail to advance in them. It’s even happened before: Democrats Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez were the top two vote-getters in the 2016 Senate primary before facing off in the general election. But this year, without a presidential race on the ballot, the races for Senate and governor matter more than just for their own sake. As the two races headlining California’s 2018 ballot, they have the power to drive turnout across this state of 40 million — and all 53 of its congressional races.

A Republican shutout at the top of the ticket could depress conservative turnout statewide, perhaps nudging districts where the Republican is currently favored, like the 4th and 21st, more toward the toss-up column. That could damage the party’s chances in a dozen swing districts, not just in one, like a shutout in an individual House race would. In 2014, poor turnout in “orphan states” — those without competitive races for governor or Senate — cost Democrats House seats that they didn’t even know were in danger. The biggest consequence of the jungle primary could be that California becomes 2018’s version of an orphan state — for Republicans.

**** 

Today and tomorrow the Five Star Movement (M5S)-League government is seeking approval from parliament. Every indication is that the Italian senate will provide its backing today with the lower house following along tomorrow.

Now is a good time to list some of the main policy objectives of the anti-establishment government because the only one you are going to be reminded of is the League's hostility to immigrants. The list is provided by AFP's The Local, "Here are the key proposals from the M5S-League government programme":

On Italy's debt
Italy is battling a public debt of €2.3 trillion, 132 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – the second highest ratio in the EU behind Greece. The M5S-League coalition promises to stimulate the economy through more spending.

"The government's actions will target a programme of public debt reduction not through revenue based on taxes and austerity, policies that have not achieved their goal, but rather through increased GDP by the revival of internal demand," the document says.
Just four sentences of the document dealt with the public debt and deficit.

On the EU
The eurosceptic coalition promises a series of measures to reign in the EU including renegotiation of EU treaties and a review of the bloc's economic governance on issues such as the single currency.

On tax and 'basic income'
The League has inserted its flat tax policy into the programme, adding a 20 percent rate to the 15 percent proposed before the election. Also included is Five Star's flagship basic income plan, which sees €780 a month paid to those with no revenue, while those earning less than the basic will see their income topped up. It will be revoked from anyone who refuses three job offers within two years.

On immigration
The parties pledge to stop "the business" of migration, cracking down on smuggling networks and cooperatives that manage asylum centres. They also want to speed up expulsions of illegal immigrants.

They demand Italy have "a decisive role" in European negotiations on migration and want to accelerate the examination of asylum applications and systematic repatriation of rejected applicants, who can be held up to 18 months in detention centres.

On Islam
Also mooted are a registry of imams, immediate closure of unauthorized mosques and the inclusion of "community involvement" into a new law on the building of mosques.

On southern Italy
The parties decided not to outline specific measures targeting the south of the country, which has historically had a higher level of unemployment and poverty and a lower level of public services. This decision was taken "in the knowledge that all the political choices in this contract... are oriented towards a homogeneous economic development for the country".

On pensions
A gradual roll back of a retirement that is due to reach 67 in 2019, instead enabling retirement when the sum of a person's age and years of social security contributions reach 100.

On security
In the name of self-defence individuals would be allowed to shoot anyone who enters their home, even in the absence of a clear physical threat. This is something Salvini's League has campaigned for after several high-profile cases in which people have faced charges for shooting burglars.

New prisons would be constructed, "as many foreign prisoners as possible" sent to serve sentences in their home country and large numbers of police officers -- all equipped with a video camera -- and carabinieri military police recruited. The parties also want tougher sentences for sexual crimes and under-age offenders.

On Russia

The "contract" underlines Italy's place in the Atlantic alliance "with the United States as a privileged partner", but asks for the immediate removal of sanctions against Russia "which should not be perceived as a threat but as an economic and commercial partner". Both parties have courted Russia in recent years.

On institutional reforms
Among the more drastic proposals is slashing the number of parliamentarians to 400 MPs (from 630) and 200 senators (from 318). All would be banned from changing political parties during the legislature. They also want to beef up the use of popular referenda in law-making and grant more power to the regions.

On corruption
A "severe and incisive anti-corruption law" is planned to recover resources and boost competitiveness. The parties propose increased penalties, life-time banishment from public office and the introduction of "agents provocateurs" to test the honesty of officials.

On the economy
Setting up an unspecified legal minimum wage, blocking the sale of the Alitalia airline and completely re-negotiating the controversial Turin-Lyon high-speed railway are all in the plan, which also sets out measures to increase savings protection and the accountability of both the management and supervisory authorities of banks. 

The development of the "green-economy" and use of electric cars is also a priority.

On politics and society
The document proposes that no-one convicted of corruption, being investigated for serious crimes or Freemasons can become ministers, while conflict of interest criteria for parliamentarians will be beefed up. 

Italy's commitments to international military missions would be reassessed. 

To shore up Italy's collapsing birthrate, the state would offer free nursery schooling for children of "Italian families" (whether this would in fact include all families resident in Italy is unclear) and not apply VAT on early childhood products. All illegal Roma camps to be closed and Roma children who don't attend school removed from their families. 

More stringent regulations on the gambling industry are mooted, including a complete ban on advertising and sponsorship.

If the new government can deliver on pension reform, a basic income,thereby stimulating growth, it can expect to be in power for a long time. That's why the stakes are high. The neoliberals will do everything they can to hamper the implementation of these proposals.

****

Today is the primary election in California. There are a number of congressional districts (seven or eight) in the southern part of the state that have been deemed to be in play because Hillary out-preformed Trump there in 2016. (See Adam Nagourney's "California Midterm Elections: What to Expect From the June 5 Primaries.")

If the Democrats have any chance of reclaiming the House of Representatives this fall it is going to be based on their performance in California. After today's primary we should have a better idea of the size of the often discussed "Blue Wave."

My sense -- after several months of skepticism -- is that there will be a Blue Wave. Democrats are more motivated than Republicans by a sizable margin. Motivation is what matters in elections. 

Big Change Coming to Mexico

Despite employing more journalists to cover Mexico than almost any other country The New York Times has woefully under-reported the presidential election that will take place there on July 1.

That's what got me thinking that something important for regular people might be about to happen. The front-runner is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) of the National Regeneration Movement Party (MORENA); he is 20 points ahead of his closest competitor. Large corporate employers are holding captive audience meetings with their workers warning them not to vote for AMLO. Vote-rigging is unlikely with such a substantial lead, but assassination can't be ruled out, as Jacobin's Dan La Botz explains in "The Plot Against López Obrador."

The NYT's  Kirk Semple published a story yesterday on the presidential election, "Why Is Trump ‘Not Important’ in Mexico Election? All Candidates Are Against Him," which looked at the campaign through the prism of Mexican reaction to Trump. It was light on the candidates and their respective campaigns, but it did include this:

Rather, the issues that seem to be animating the electorate are immediate problems that directly affect Mexicans’ quality of life, including historically high rates of violence; poverty and inequality; and intractable corruption and impunity.

“No Mexican voter is going to expect any candidate to talk about Trump,” said José Merino, a political analyst who is advising the Mexico City mayoral candidate from Mr. López Obrador’s party, Morena, the Spanish-language acronym for the National Regeneration Movement.

Mexico's election, like the one this year in Italy, is about voter rebellion against the exhausted neoliberal consensus.

AMLO is shrewd in that, as Foreign Policy's Richard Miles pointed out this past February in "Is Mexico Ready for a Populist President?," he is not jousting directly against neoliberal orthodoxy; he is using the same code words "corruption" and "transparency" that Western governments often use to promote color revolutions in other countries:

Sensitive to criticism that he is a radical in waiting, he has highlighted policy proposals of austerity, low taxes, transparency, and nonintervention. The ruling party has done its best to depict him as sympathetic to, and longing for, authoritarian government, but there is little evidence that this strategy is working.

If elected, López Obrador is likely to change Mexican policy towards the United States in at least three areas: energy exploration, security cooperation, and support for democratic norms in the region. On energy, he said he would review existing contracts, and continues to view the opening of Mexico’s oil industry to foreign investment as treasonous. A López Obrador administration could slow down or halt bidding on new oil and gas finds in the Gulf of Mexico and refuse to approve new cross-border natural gas pipelines.

Similarly, he could freeze existing security cooperation with U.S. agencies to fight heroin production in Mexico and capture cartel leaders. “Problems of an economic and social nature cannot be solved with coercive measures,” he wrote last year. “It’s not military assistance, or intelligence work, or deliveries of helicopters and arms, that will solve the problems of insecurity and violence in our country.” 

Finally, López Obrador, who has never uttered an unkind word about the Castro brothers, Chávez, or Nicolás Maduro (but named a son after Che Guevara), would be likely to withdraw Mexican diplomats from the mediating role they have played in the region on Venezuela, and refuse to participate in international resolutions concerning Iran, North Korea, or Syria.

That last paragraph is one to savor.  

The Takeaway from Italy: A Big Loss for the Neoliberal Consensus

The cabinet of the new M5S-League government was accepted by president Mattarella. Paolo Savona, the economist whose rejection as finance minister set off the political crisis, was merely shuffled to the minister for EU affairs. As Yves Smith notes,

It is far from clear how much the coalition retreated. Savona, the proposed firebrand economy minister, is the Minister for EU affairs, and chose another Eurozone doubter, Giiovanni Tria, as finance minister. Given that it is the Finance minister that is a member of the Eurogroup, and members of the European Parliament that have some sway with the European Commission, this posting in and of itself looks like a way for Savona to poke a stick in the eye of European officials. His bully pulpit may be more important than his formal influence. But he could also influence other Cabinet members.

Jason Horowitz is up to his usual tricks. Rather than acknowledge the obvious -- that it's a big win for M5S and the League; that the neoliberals seriously erred in their attempt to block the new government; that and Mattarella's appointment of an IMF bureaucrat as prime minister was such an obvious farce it had to be immediately excused -- Horowitz disingenuously summarizes,

An inconclusive election led to months of stalemate. Mr. Mattarella threatened to form a caretaker government, which triggered the formation of an alliance between the Five Star and League parties. After weeks of intense negotiations, they presented a prime minister and a cabinet that Mr. Mattarella rejected.

The president was about to exercise his authority to create a caretaker government but held off, as the populist parties struggled to give it another shot.

Mr. Di Maio, 31, triumphant after his party claimed a third of the March vote, was this week reduced to imploring Mr. Salvini to abandon his calls for another election. With grumbling growing inside his own party, Mr. Di Maio needed help forming a government.

This is not what happened at all. What happened is that the neoliberal center collapsed literally overnight when its god the market rejected Mattarella's move. There was zero chance of the Cottarelli technocratic government surviving a confidence vote. It's a huge loss for the neoliberal governing consensus. That's the takeaway.