Mike Norman Economics

Jimmy Dore says that the YouTube algorithms are making his show hard to find so he might need to find another platform. Well, when I put the internet address in Blogger to find this video it didn't come up so I had to put the title in to get it. This Jimmy Dore Show is a bit long at 45 minutes but it's a great look into the Russian hack conspiracy theory. The first ten minutes showing a clip of Rachael Maddow interviewing Richard Engel is definitely worth watching. [embedded content]

Wrong. Fake news has always been rampant in the media as propaganda. It even has a name. "Spin." And older than that is "yellow press."Take spin, for example. This occurs not only in the reporting of news but also in the commentary on. The distinction between actual news and commentary is also often blurred. Major media use selective reporting and spin to control the narrative. In many ways, this approach to subtle persuasion is more effective and insidious than obviously faked stories...

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog in Washington, on Friday called a Senate Republican tax plan a “fatally flawed budget buster,” likening it to Republican legislation in the House of Representatives that the House tax committee has approved.... The Tax Foundation, another nonpartisan group, said the Senate plan would add $1.78 trillion to the deficit over a decade. It estimated that over the same time frame lower taxes would expand the U.S....

Peter Dorman considers when liberalism needs to become illiberal, e.g., squelching dissent based on freedom of thought and expression, in order to protect itself. The question is where to draw boundaries and on what basis.EconospeakFreedom of Speech for Fascists?Peter Dorman | Professor of Political Economy, The Evergreen State College

Whitehead founded The Rutherford Institute to preserve and defend human rights and civil liberties in a non-partisan way. He issues a stark warning to Americans. Unless we can learn to live together as brothers and sisters and fellow citizens, we will perish as tools and prisoners of the American police state. CounterpunchAmerica Breaks Down: The Anatomy of a National Psychosis John W. Whitehead | President, The Rutherford Institute

There are two myths which are deeply imprinted in the minds of most US Americans which are extremely dangerous and which can result in a war with Russia.The first myth is the myth of the US military superiority. The second myth is the myth about the US invulnerability. I believe that it is therefore crucial to debunk these myths before they end up costing us millions of lives and untold suffering.… Military analysis follows. The video is interesting, too, about 8 minutes.The Unz...

Western liberalism was developed as a secular replacement for the Christian religion that forms one of the four pillars of Western civilization — 1) the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition, 2) , and 4) modern science and technology. Western liberalism is an attempt to bring the first three in line with modern science as the latest development.  Greek thought based on reason and Roman law and organization can be viewed as precursors to the development of modern science. But traditional...

We are just out of the field on a flash poll in the U.S. taken last week, with 1,000 members of the general population and an oversample of 113 Silicon Valley-based tech employees on the impact of fake news on trust in mainstream media. The sad conclusion that has been drawn by a majority of Americans is that fake news is created by the media with a motive, destruction of political opponents. The logical end point is establishment of echo chambers, in which one reads only that which one...

As the Trump administration mulls sending weapons to Ukraine, the question of far-right forces employed by the Kiev government has returned to the forefront. Some Western observers claim that there are no neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine, chalking the assertion up to propaganda from Moscow. Unfortunately, they are sadly mistaken.There are indeed neo-Nazi formations in Ukraine. This has been overwhelmingly confirmed by nearly every major Western outlet. The fact that analysts are able to dismiss...

I'm still reading The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, which is fun, well-written and in my view less controversial than what most reviews have suggested. Yes, inequality tends to fall mostly by violent means during periods of crisis. Note, also, that Walter Scheidel uses in this book the concept of surplus, and as noted earlier here (or hereand here) before is part of this broader group of social scientists that still use...