JHK’s Three-Act Play
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Dr. Jack Rasmus is the author of the recently published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump, Clarity Press, January 1, 2020.
Dr. Rasmus currently teaches economics at St. Marys College in Moraga, California, on subjects of US economic policy, US political change, financial business cycles, history of economic thought, American Labor and unions, and US Economic History. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (BA Economics) and University of Toronto, Canada (MA, Ph.D Political Economy).
Dr. Rasmus is author of several prior books on the USA and global economy, including Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of the Fed, Lexington Books, March 2019; Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes, Clarity Press, August 2017; Looting Greece: A New Financial Imperialism Emerges, Clarity Press, September 2016; Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy, Clarity Press, January 2016; Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression, Pluto Books, 2010; Obama’s Economy: Recovery for the Few, Pluto Books, 2012; and The War At Home: The Corporate Offensive From Reagan to George W. Bush, Kyklos Books, 2006.
His stage plays include ‘1934’, ‘Fire on Pier 32’, and ‘Hold the Light’.
Prior to teaching and publishing, Dr. Rasmus was formerly an Economist and strategic market analyst for various global tech & market research companies for twenty years. Before that, for more than a decade, he was a local union president, contract negotiator, strike coordinator, and organizer for various unions, including the National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981, CWA Locals 9455 & 9415, Hotel & Restaurant Local 19, and Service Employees International Union Local 715.
Dr. Rasmus blogs at jackrasmus.com. His website is http://kyklosproductions.com & his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. He hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio Network (podcasts available at http://alternativevisions.podbean.com)
Contact him at: rasmus@kyklos.com, drjackrasmus@gmail.com .
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Great Interview!!!! The difference between United States now and the United States in December of 1941, is back then we had a gold standard. We believed in American Exceptionalism. There were only two sexes. Morality wasn’t just about being nice it was about survival. The Great Depression forged the teenagers and young men that would hit the beach on D-Day. We had competent scientists that weren’t guzzling soy lates, and actually figured out how to put theory into practice.
Then:
We built a lot of airplanes. We built a lot of fine propeller driven aircraft, that we knew would work. Sure we could have made jets. But jets couldn’t be built in the numbers needed to win the war. (There are many stories of the P-51 going up against the jet fighter ME 262 and coming out on top.)
Now:
Could we build an F-35 without a global supply chain….. If you can get twenty F-16s for the price of one F-35, get the F-16s. I doubt you’re putting twenty missiles something like the F-35. How many missiles can you put on twenty F-16s??? Would the lone 5th generation fighter stand a chance?
Then:
We had a New Deal that knee capped the Monopoly Man, still lamenting the loss of his Uncle on the Titanic, and his Czar Pen Pal in Moscow.
Now:
We have no banking regulations, corporations are people that probably can mail votes in….
Then:
We had a population that worked and saved what they had.
Now:
Spend. Spend. Spend.
I’m sorry James but this guy has lost the thread and is living in la la land. His brain has atrophied from his over payed “job”. He is essentially advocating for state capitalism or communism. Every issue you raised he just said “dah government will do it”.
As well he dismisses the riots?! Right wingers in Chiraq!?! Yeah….those nazis regularly goose step through blood and crip territory. Its 2020 you old liberal fool! The people lynching Americans in the streets are Black Fascists and Antifa. Geezus. A Russiagater!?!?
Fuck me.
Furthermore, I grew up in government housing, I had friends die from heroin, I went to University for a shitty degree, I paid off my student loans, I went to trade school, and now I have a trades job, and I can tell you that free money is not helping. We have completely lost touch with reality and are living in a world of absurd abstractions. The people who are rioting are not starving, oppressed, or desperate people. They destroyed their lives by listening to the sweet lies of victimhood and hedonism. If these miscreants had any brains left they would burn down their universities and big tech but instead they indulge in the sweet lie that some random white guy is their enemy. Pathetic. Life is tragic and their is no do overs. The best you can do is try and salvage your life. My life is a salvage heap.
Why don’t you interview Mark Crispin Miller about voter fraud? He wrote extensively on the subject in Fooled Again. He was attacked as a conspiracy theorist by Democrats in the 2000s over it.
https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/mark-crispin-miller
This is why H.R.C. ‘lost’?
“And it’s deadly. Doubtless, Crosscheck delivered Michigan to Trump who supposedly “won” the state by 10,700 votes. The Secretary of State’s office proudly told me that they were “very aggressive” in removing listed voters before the 2016 election. Kobach, who created the lists for his fellow GOP officials, tagged a whopping 417,147 in Michigan as potential double voters.”
http://www.gregpalast.com/trump-picks-al-capone-vote-rigging-investigate-federal-voter-fraud/
https://www.gregpalast.com/t-r-u-t-h-o-u-ts-marc-ash-interviews-greg-palast/
“In 2016, no fewer than 5,872,857 ballots were cast—and never counted.
Does it matter? In Detroit, 75,355 ballots were never counted because of 87 broken scanning machines. And Trump supposedly won Michigan by 10,700 votes — really?
And, no fewer than 1,982,071 legal voters were denied the right to vote. Told to get the hell out of the polling station. Can you guess their color?
Add it up. That’s at least 7,854,928 legitimate votes and voters tossed out of the count.
So God Bless America. By the way, these numbers are from the raw data supplied to me by the US Elections Assistance Commission.
https://www.gregpalast.com/how-trump-stole-2020-2/
“The ‘smoking gun’ proving North Carolina Republicans tried to disenfranchise black voters”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/?fbclid=IwAR2gjBAUBf5v1LmWkJuIBpvPOqNg5pZmjYEjnBt03rgWyn0UvBpNovtQxUE
“Officially, 1,913,369 ballots were challenged and thrown away in 2016—that’s how Trump stole the last election and how he will steal 2020…they will question your mail-in ballot signature, the color of your ink—and if you put an “X” instead of filling in the little bubble—they’ll junk your ballot. Yes, Donald, “The 2020 election will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT election in history” — because your crew is defrauding voters out of their ballots.
According to the US Civil Rights Commission which investigated in Florida, the chance of your ballot being challenged and uncounted is 900% higher if you’re Black than if you’re white.
That’s if you get your ballot at all. According to an MIT study, one in ten voters who request a mail in ballot don’t get one at all, or get it too late to count. We saw the test run in Georgia in March where the GOP state government delayed the ballot send-out, meaning thousands of African-Americans never received their ballot.
Even the husband of the Executive Director of the ACLU of Georgia got his ballot the day after the election. (But yes, he was guilty of attempted VWB—Voting While Black.)
Don’t cry; don’t whine: you can, you must, steal back your vote: that is, protect it. We can expose the steal and reverse it. That’s why I wrote, How Trump Stole 2020—it’s not a prediction, it’s a warning.
I’m watching CNN right now and they’re telling me that Trump doesn’t have the authority to delay the election.
They are missing the f**king point.
Trump doesn’t have to delay the vote. In America, elections aren’t stolen like they’re stolen in some right-wing fever dream of a movie. There’s no military junta marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, no back alley assassinations like in an episode of House of Cards, no Russians needed.
They’re stolen in the back rooms of power by men in Brooks Brother suits, they’re stolen using Excel spreadsheets, they’re stolen by votes simply not being counted.”
https://www.gregpalast.com/the-secret-purpose-of-trumps-threat-to-delay-the-vote/
This man is so deluded it’s scary. Right wing protestors?!
Trump plot? He saw stories???!
What a phony. Totally out of touch with reality. Back to his ivory veneer second floor at some second rate school.
Could barely listen to Jeffrey Lebowski’s screeds. Every time he blabbered on I only heard:
https://youtu.be/xJjCnWm5cvE
The sad thing is that these are the types of champagne liberals that have destroyed California and are now leaving and moving to red states like mine, bringing their “good intentions” with them.
Just past the 49 minute mark:
“… Democrats have not shown a kind of toughness in the past and willingness to street fight over these elections.”
Um…. seen the news lately?
Yes, I fully realize that he is referring to Gore and other Democrats’ unwillingness to contest close elections to the last gasp. I do not expect to literally see Nancy Pelosi out throwing bricks on any given Tuesday night. No, no, that’s what their minions are for. And they are.
53 minute mark, re Antifa and BLM urban rioting:
“Where else other than Portland is this happening?”
*facepalm*
59 minutes in:
Opposes injecting liquidity into the US economy, yet just a few tens of minutes earlier he was advocating for an 40% of GDP (8 trillion dollars!) stimulus package. This is not a matter of Congress subtly specifying where the money goes to keep it out of the hands of speculators. With this level of money, he’s advocating for threading that needle with a fire truck.
For all that, it was an interesting and spicy podcast with a guest who was probably reasonably bright at some time in the recent past. Good contrast, keep’em coming.
A trillion dollars is more than 100 million dollars a day, every day for 27 years. Where did all this money come from to loan corporations in exchange for their IOU’s? They have cash hoards? Did they get it from Daddy Big Bucks in the sky? Withholding dividends? Isn’t the corporate debt in America the highest it has ever been? Aside from tech bubbles, and financial frauds from the financial sector that has no industries to finance other than illusions that produce nothing of value other than illusions of value. Giving away our personal data we are told was like Native Americans trading valuable land for trinkets and beads. How about maybe it isn’t really worth much of anything except to bad actors like government intruders and cheating insurance providers, and is just another Tulip speculation? GDP, Unemployment, blah blah blah. Calculations based on fruadulent statistics is garbage in garbage out. Are politicians so dumb that they don’t remember or understand that FDR was the most popular and loved President ever? Banks and businesses don’t get big infrastructure projects? The Pharaohs knew the value of creating enormous piles of rocks in the desert didn’t they? The greatest misallocation of wealth in history ring any bells? Kunstler’s guest is a fool. No energy no work. The resources are not available to build another economy, and the sick care racket is designed to vanish claims on what are believed to be future resources that don’t exist by wiping out years of savings in days while under duress and conditions of extortion. Student loans are a means of psychologically handicapping the young with an obligation that they don’t understand is a conspiracy to keep them subservient rather than enraged because their future has been swindled. Who are the soldiers, the warriors? Who have the passion for justice, not to exclude self interest and self satisfaction, but also the age for the strongest bonds of friendship and unity, and the most willing to execute and sustain violence when they know they’re fucked? Foolers run the world. They live and breath conspiracy, and to paraphrase an old adage, the greatest trick the Foolers ever pulled, was to convince their fools that Foolers don’t exist and they aren’t controlled. Bankruptcy protection coincidently revoked just prior to the accidental empires miraculous Machiavellian good luck, a manmade disease that seemed made to evade personal consequences for engineering an economic charade that was on the brink of collapse. Wasn’t it either Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns that was regularly doing some kind of “borrowing” overnight to make it look like funds were on the ledger, but only long enough to pass “inspection” and then nobody was the wiser? The Repo harbinger wasn’t just in Sept. like Rasmus inferred but the temporary turned permanent, by or in January to April at minimum I think it was. Greg Palast is the most convincing investigative reporter and/or expert on vote crimes that I’m aware of, and he has plenty to say right now. Rasmus should know that his opinions on the coming election voting issues are no better than any other intelligent guesser.
First half wasn’t bad…some things to think about with a sprinkling of Trump Derangement Syndrome. The second half was pure TDS. Wasn’t even aware of our cities burning, and who was burning them? Real shame.
This guy epitomizes the downfall of higher education. He’s a blithering idiot with a stage 4 case of TDS.
I thought it was interesting, the inability to see the Right Wing confrontations.
There is a difference between Right and Left public reactions and how the government and police deal with them. If we look, the Right has had many public gatherings, generally including open carry weapons and flags. Left wing protests show up with banners and bottles of water.
The big difference is the reaction of police groups. Living in Portland and Seattle, I have seen many of these, on both sides, and the police reaction is polarized. Rioters marching through traffic, chanting, and carrying slogans are faced down, corralled. Tear gas is brought out, and sometimes flash bangs and rubber bullets.
Right wing protesters show up with guns, and the police don’t show up with riot gear. They are polite, dressed in normal uniforms, and provide escorts to clear traffic.
Even when there is violence, the Right wing tends to be given a lot of respect. They were allowed into the capitol houses of different states- and these were people with guns and flags, technically trespassing.
So it’s no surprise that the Left looks like it’s rioting. The response to being tear gassed is vastly different from being allowed in, especially when there is no significant difference in what they are doing. Both groups are disrupting traffic and the process of work, but one is attacked. This works well to continue attacking them as then you get the bully response- “I was just walking and he kept getting in my way, and then hit my fist with his face.”
It’s specious to ignore things like the Bundy standoff, and the other significant marches by the Right wing groups, as well as their attacks on Left wing marches (shootings, driving vehicles through marchers, rocks, etc.) and focusing on the Left as though they are the only ones marching and protesting and rioting. The Left has just been doing it for a few months.
Hell, look at the Right wing reaction to one football player kneeling. That was dangerous, ugly, often violent.
My dad was Antifa. He was disabled after stepping on a Nazi landmine in WW2 while opposing fascism. He’s spinning in his grave at all the evidently pro-fascism folks blaming Antifa (not an organization as (Individual 1 would like his death-cult followers to believe, but in reality simply a word describing anyone who is literally “anti-fascist”) for riots being demonstrably spurred by militant police and their nutjob Proud Boy/American Taliban allies.
It was refreshing to hear someone saying true things in one of these podcasts, that’s been increasingly rare since Duncan bolted for the door.
The latter half of this interview was painful to listen to, and I’m glad to see that the other members here feel the same way.
This guy is part of the cult. He should be deemed unfit to vote as long as he harbors such delusions. Like the rest of the left, he’s indulging heavily in Jungian “psychological projection,” where all the evils of the far left are projected upon Trump, his cohort and this mythical “far right.”
This guy and people of his stripe are what Yuri Bezmenov was talking about in his 1984 interview with G. Edward Griffin when he said:
“What demoralization/ideological subversion means is: to change the perception of reality, of every American, to such an extent that despite an abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions about reality in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country. It’s a great brainwashing process…..As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell him nothing, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures. …he will refuse to believe it… That’s the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.”
KunstlerCast 333 – Confab with Political Economist Dr. Jack Rasmus
Outstanding! Thank you
One of the best interviews here in a long time, without question he has the coming financial debacle correctly pegged. Of course the foaming at the mouth Trump supporters overlook that part in their typical rush to label him a socialist pinko commie. Give me a break.
As he states, there’s clearly been right wing agitation and confrontation, as well as the misplaced and non-constructive actions of a tiny sub-set of bored or angry BLM actors. The Trumpists are hoping for more of it to stir things up as part of their desperate, and failing, according to polls, “strategy”.