Daily Archives: August 9, 2016

Three Tales of Rigged Elections: The Narratives of The Political Revolutionary, The Billionaire, the Ballot Bandit, and the Corporate Media

By Payam Sharifi

An oft repeated phrase you hear every election cycle is that “this is (one of) the most important elections in our lifetime”.  This is usually said within the context of competing and (supposedly) incommensurable policy positions, during a (supposedly) rare moment of crisis that will transform American policy at home and abroad for at least four years.  Yet this phrase has, much to my surprise, not been said once by anyone in the media or among the social media groups that celebrate either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.  Instead, it is characterized as a historical moment where the threat of a neo-fascism in the form of Donald J. Trump must be stopped.

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Thomas Friedman Wants A “Center-Left” Democratic Party Based on Austrian Economic Myths

(2d column in my series on Friedman advising Hillary to Move Hard Right)

William K. Black
August 7, 2016     Bloomington, MN

Thomas Friedman has written two columns advising Hillary Clinton to renounce her campaign promises and the Democratic Party’s platform and move to the right of the Republican Party on economic issues.  My first column in this series critiqued the centerpiece of his plea to her – deregulate banking.

This column discusses Friedman’s economic assumption, which he probably does not understand he was making, that is (a) false and (b) dangerous.  Friedman doesn’t cite it as an economic assumption.  Instead, he makes a systems theory assertion without even trying to explain why it would be applicable to his proposed sharp move to the right on economic policies.

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Why Don’t Giuliani’s Critics Attack Him For What He Actually Said?

Part 6 of my series on Race, Crime, and Policing

William K. Black
August 7, 2016     Bloomington, MN

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani made a series of comments on race, crime, and policing on when he was interviewed recently on “Face the Nation.”  I am a strong critic of Giuliani’s approach to the intersection of race, crime, and policing.  Giuliani said several objectionable things in his interview that he could not defend.  The mystery is why his critics keep ignoring those comments and attacking other comments me made in that interview that are essentially correct.  In the course of their efforts to bash Giuliani his critics are repeatedly misstating what he said in the passages they seek to ridicule and demonstrating such fundamental analytical errors that they must be allowing their eagerness to hurt Giuliani shut down their critical faculties.

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