Posts
$1,400,000,000,000: Oxfam Exposes the Great Offshore Tax Scam of US Companies
“A Crisis Point in Our Democracy:” Why Progressive Leaders and Thousands of Others Will Risk Arrest This Week
Clinton and Goldman: Why It Matters
The Fed Sends a Frightening Letter to JPMorgan and Corporate Media Yawns
The Cruz strategy has been gamed by the Don's.
And when you compare them, the Don wins.
The educated populace recoils in horror. But they are a minor nuisance to the players at present.
The Cruz play is a never-ending Christian pilgrimage ending in Jesus togs (shades of John Bunyan). His father's marital failings provide the ideal campaign ploy for the all agog unwashed masses.
Probably one of the most unlikely scandalettes of the 2016 primary has to be the National Enquirer “exposé ” of Senator Ted Cruz’s alleged serial infidelity. Nobody knows to this day where the story originated, although some reporters suggested after it was run that the Rubio campaign had shopped it to them earlier in the cycle. But Donald Trump is known to be quite close to the publisher of the Enquirer (a man aptly named David Pecker) so it’s always possible the story was run for his benefit. Cruz denied it and it faded in the excitement of the campaign, at least for now.
But whatever its provenance, the story was interesting not so much because it’s unbelievable that any politician might have a zipper problem (it’s almost a requirement for office) but because it was the very pious Cruz being accused. This is the man, after all, whose first victory speech began with “God bless the great state of Iowa, let me first of all say, to God be the glory.”
Cruz announced his candidacy at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University where he laid out his vision for the country.
And he told a story that he tells on the trail all the time:
. . . It may seem odd that his “testimony” is his father’s story but it makes sense. Cruz himself was a very smart kid who grew up in Texas and went to Princeton and then Harvard Law which doesn’t provide quite the same pathos as his daddy’s tale of sin and redemption. And his dad is definitely important to his career — he’s a genuine evangelical preacher and wingnut firebrand, well known on the conservative speaking circuit. He brings with him all the authentic street cred his son could possibly need in this crowd.
Cruz’s campaign strategy was built on the foundation of support from the ultra-conservative evangelical base of the Republican party; this recent Pew Poll shows that nearly half of his total voters are white observant evangelical Christians, most of whom attend Church at least weekly. By contrast Trump gets a share of evangelicals but more mainline protestants and Catholics who attend church less than once a week. (This article by Jeff Sharlet in the New York Times Magazine about Trump and prosperity gospel types is fascinating. I’m not even sure they’re really social conservatives.)
I wrote about Cruz’s original strategy (based upon Carter’s peanut brigade) a while back, in which he had planned to sweep the southern states and build up a big lead, just as Hillary Clinton has done on the Democratic side. It didn’t work out for him because it turns out that a lot of the southern conservatives he was counting on were mesmerized by a decadent, thrice married New Yorker. Who would have ever guessed? But he has shown tremendous tenacity, hanging on long after all the Big Boys of the Deep Bench fell by the wayside and it’s now a two-man race to the finish.
. . . He’s all in on the “religious liberty” legal theory as defined by the Manhattan Declaration and enjoys keeping company with some of the most radical dominionists in the nation, including David Barton, the junk historian who also runs Cruz’s number one super PAC, Keep the Promise.
That super PAC is funded by a couple of Cruz’s megabucks donors, Texas energy barons Farris and Dan Wilks, both of whom are ultra conservative Christians. He’s even tight with the bigots who spearheaded the recent sweeping anti-LGBT legislation in North Carolina, congressional candidate and evangelical pastor Mark Harris and the former HGTV twins the Benham brothers, whose show was cancelled over their anti-gay activities.
And then there is his father Rafael Cruz, who is counted among the most militant extremist preachers in the country and who believes his son was sent by God to turn America into a theocracy.
Max and Stacy explain the mountain of frauds and laud Bill Black (my hero)'s getting on the Bernie Bus.
Schroedinger's cat is meowing loudly.
Or not. (No TV show does metaphors better.)
[KR901] Keiser Report: Most Destructive Force in the Universe
We take a physicist’s view on global financial and economic news as central bankers play dice with the financial universe and Schroedinger’s bank has assets, both there and not there, living and dead at the same time, depending on who (if any) is observing said ‘asset’.
In the second half, Max interviews Michael Krieger of LibertyBlitzkrieg.com about the significance of Bill Black joining the Bernie Sanders campaign. They also discuss insane central bank policies driving a rush into derivatives.The very intelligent (and cute!) Michael Krieger.
The IMF and the Panama Papers
Friday, 15 April 2016
By Richard D. Wolff
Truthout | Audio Segment
This episode provides updates on the IMF, the Panama Papers, corporate tax evasion and the workers who are fighting back. We also discuss how worker co-ops might have changed the USSR and China.
Visit Professor Wolff's social movement project, democracyatwork.info.
Richard D. Wolff
Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a visiting professor of economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne). His work is available at rdwolff.com and at democracyatwork.info.
To see more stories like this, visit Economic Update: Your Weekly Dose of Revolutionary Economics
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