‘Crime Is a Construct': My Morning With the Park Slope Panthers

From Suzy Weiss, at her sister's Substack, Common Sense, "A Brooklyn man with politics ‘to the left of Lenin’ tries to organize a neighborhood watch. It didn’t go quite as planned":

In the last couple of months in Park Slope—the baby bjorn-wearing capital of bourgeois-bohemian New York—a thief absconded with $200,000 worth of jewelry in a smash and grab, three boys stole a bunch of iPhones off of subway riders, a ticked off customer attacked the owner of a bike store, $6,000 was stolen from an auto shop, and a beloved pet was catnapped from a bodega on Seventh Avenue.

But it was the death of a golden retriever mix named Moose that activated the residents of the South Brooklyn enclave.

Early in the morning on August 3, Moose and his owner—Jessica Chrustic, 41—were out on a walk when a homeless man who lives in the park gave chase. He hit them both with a large stick and threw a container of urine on Moose, while muttering about immigrants taking over the park. The dog died a few days later from internal injuries, after two emergency surgeries. The man who killed him is still at large.

A few weeks later, on August 20, Kristian Nammack issued a call to action on Nextdoor, a social media site for local organizing: “Do we want to organize a community safety patrol, and take our park back? Think what the Guardian Angels did to take back the subways in the 70s/early 80s. We may also get to wear cool berets. I’m being serious.”

Nammack, 59, had been part of the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, and his financial consultancy firm focuses on themes of “climate, renewable energy, gender lens, racial equity, economic advancement.” “How about PARK SLOPE PANTHERS as a group name?” he suggested. When I got to the inaugural Park Slope Panthers meeting—held last Saturday in Prospect Park, near where Chrustic was attacked—there were six people, including Nammack. We were overlooking a sloping meadow that was bathed in sunshine and filled with giggling kids and hipster couples on dates. It was one of those early fall days that reminds you why you’re willing to live in a city with more rats than human beings. Nammack was handing out pale yellow t-shirts that said “Park Slope Panthers” with a logo—two “P”s nested together—printed on the front.

Nammack explained that while we were all there because of Moose, there were other things to be concerned about. It seemed like there were more homeless people sleeping in the park, in the subway station, and on the trains and streets. There was more garbage everywhere in the neighborhood, more crappy vape shops and stores that sold Delta-8 weed, and more delivery guys on bikes blasting faster through crosswalks. Packages, bikes, and catalytic converters were getting stolen. Nammack told the group how he’d tried to help a local store owner while a group of 15-year-olds robbed his store. One of the teens had a knife.

The group—a few older, white women who love their pets; a young white man who said he was there for the sake of his younger sister’s safety; a forty-something Asian woman who wanted to “elevate Park Slope culture as a whole”—nodded along.

The Venn diagram for Park Slopers and Democratic voters is pretty much a circle. No one wanted to be labeled Park Karens. This made the whole crime-fighting thing a bit awkward: “It’s about finding a way that’s non-biased to report these things and have people feel like it’s safe here,” said Emily, one of the Panthers.“You don’t want to fall into that stereotype of privilege.”

A group of four who looked to be in their early twenties—three women and one man—rolled up about 15 minutes into the meeting. “Are y’all the Park Slope Panthers?” The one who asked was dragging a speaker on wheels and playing electronic music, presumably to drown out the meeting. “We are super not into you guys having your meeting or doing anything in the park.”

The young activist—who was white, wore glasses, grew up in Park Slope, and had a medical-grade face mask on, like his three comrades—was also super not into the cops, or anything resembling the cops. When Nammack told him we were taking turns introducing ourselves, the activist informed Nammack that he wasn’t “super into abiding by the structure that you’re setting up.”

Nammack asked them to just move along. When the glasses kid replied, “Yeah, we’re not going to do that,” Nammack invited them to sit, prompting the group of Conscientious Interrupters to decamp to a nearby tree to game plan. The park was filling. There were barbecues and birthday parties underway. Eventually the young activists decided to join the circle.

“What’s with you calling yourself the Panthers?” said another dude who had just appeared wearing a black hoodie and looking to be in his forties. He seemed more of a weathered activist, a bit more hardcore than the kids, and he didn’t want to wait his turn. He said his piece, followed by another newcomer named Damien, who wanted to join the group rather than protest it.

Nammack picked up the thread again. Back during the Occupy Wall Street days, he informed us, they took turns speaking. “I think it’s your turn, then your turn, then your turn, then your turn, then your turn,” he said. When it was his turn to introduce himself, Nammack said, “I have a non-profit and two companies. I’m too busy to run a neighborhood watch group, but I can’t help but be community-concerned.” He was from Long Island and had lived in Sweden, which he loved because it was “less hierarchical.” Nammack said he was “left of Lenin” when one of the activists accused him of being a vigilante. (When Tucker Carlson reached out to have Nammack on his show, he told Carlson to “fuck off.”)

As far as the name, and the fortysomething dude’s problem with it: “There’s two statues of panthers at an entrance to the park,” Nammack pointed out, gesturing toward the two limestone pedestals designed by Stanford White. The panthers had been sculpted by Alexander Phimister Proctor, and had been there since 1898.

Didn’t matter. “Using the Panthers as your group’s name is kind of abhorrent to me,” said one of the girls. She was white, wearing cut-off jean shorts, loafers with socks, and a Baggu purse. “It feels antithetical to what the Black Panthers would stand for.” The next girl to speak said her name was Sky. She, too, was white, and had also grown up in the neighborhood: “It’s easy to be wrong about who you’re going after, particularly when those are some of the few black people still living in the neighborhood, and they’ve been pushed out on the streets by all white, ultra-wealthy people.”

“We can be the tigers!” suggested Dionne, the middle-aged woman next to me. Sweet Dionne...

Keep reading.

U.S. Says Russian Invasion of Ukraine Could Be Imminent: Biden Administration Warns U.S. Citizens to Leave Country as 'Soon as Possible' (VIDEO)

I almost can't contemplate a major European land-war in Europe in 2022. It seems unreal, though I don't doubt the intelligence. It's weird because Russia's a weak mid-level power whose leader is not unlike Kim Jong Un --- one who bluffs, blusters, and bullies until any and all opposition to Moscow's aims melt aside amid craven national self-interests in the West. 

No, we don't have to send U.S. troops to Ukraine. 

We do need to do something, and not the continuation of Biden's weaselly warnings that Moscow will pay a "terrible price!" should Russian troops waltz right on in. Pfft. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Says Russia Could Invade Ukraine at Any Time":

WASHINGTON—The White House said Friday it believes Russia could invade Ukraine at any time with a major military action and urged Americans to leave the country as soon as possible.

In the White House briefing room Friday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. wouldn’t conduct a military evacuation of citizens from a war zone. He said Americans should leave Ukraine on their own in the next 24 to 48 hours while land, rail and air routes out of the country remain open, in the most pointed directive yet from the White House.

“We are in the window when an invasion could begin at any time should [Russian President] Vladimir Putin decide to order it.”

He added: “If a Russian attack on Ukraine proceeds it is likely to begin with aerial bombing and missile attacks that could obviously kill civilians without regard to their nationality. A subsequent ground invasion would involve the onslaught of a massive force. With virtually no notice, communications to arrange a departure could be severed and commercial transit halted.”

Mr. Sullivan said an invasion could occur during the Winter Olympics. Until Friday, many U.S. officials and outside analysts believed that if Mr. Putin were to order an invasion, he might await the conclusion of the Games on Feb. 20 out of deference to Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he would be disinclined to upstage with a military incursion.

The U.S. wasn’t closing the door on diplomacy, however, and President Biden, who is at the presidential retreat Camp David in rural Maryland this weekend, was expected to speak with Mr. Putin in coming days, Mr. Sullivan said.

While U.S. officials declined to detail the new intelligence, some of it appears to consist of fresh signs that Moscow is preparing a pretext to invade its neighbor. The intelligence, officials said, has pushed forward the Biden administration’s understanding of Mr. Putin’s timeline.

“The level of concern is increasing on the imminence” of an invasion, one official said.

Oil prices jumped to fresh eight-year highs Friday on fears of an invasion, while U.S. stocks and bond yields sank, with investors fleeing to safer assets. The S&P 500 had tumbled 1.9% as of the 4 p.m. ET close of trading. The Nasdaq Composite erased 2.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 504 points, or 1%.

Mr. Sullivan said the disposition of Russian forces around Ukraine’s borders showed Russia was positioned to mount a major military action in Ukraine any day now, but said the U.S. didn’t know whether Mr. Putin had made a “final decision.”

“Russia could choose in very short order to commence a major military action against Ukraine,” he said. “We are ready either way.”

Mr. Sullivan said the U.S. envisioned a large-scale incursion by Mr. Putin. U.S. officials have said that an invasion could result in 25,000 to 50,000 civilians killed or wounded if Russia mounted an all-out attack and sought to occupy the entire country.

“I can’t obviously predict what the exact shape or scope of the military action will be…but there are very real possibilities that it will involve the seizure of a significant amount of territory in Ukraine and the seizure of major cities including the capital,” Mr. Sullivan said.

Ukrainian and U.S. officials say Russian action could also take the form of cyberattacks on critical Ukrainian infrastructure, sabotage, or efforts to undermine the Ukrainian state.

U.S. officials estimate as many as 35,000 Americans were in Ukraine at the start of the year, although as few as 7,000 are registered with the State Department.

Mr. Sullivan’s comments echo a statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier Friday.

“As we’ve said before, we’re in a window when an invasion could begin at any time—and to be clear that includes during the Olympics,” Mr. Blinken said in Melbourne, Australia.

Also Friday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley spoke with his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the Pentagon said. The two generals “discussed several security-related issues of concern.” And President Biden discussed the Ukraine crisis with the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union allies.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said Friday that it would deploy an additional 3,000 troops to bolster the defenses of NATO allies that could house and support Americans evacuating from Ukraine. U.S. officials said earlier this week that hundreds of U.S. troops would be deployed inside Poland along its border with Ukraine to help facilitate the safe evacuation of Americans and others from inside Ukraine.

The U.S. troops aren’t authorized to enter Ukraine, nor will any evacuations involve U.S. aircraft, officials have said.

In warning of the Russian military buildup, Mr. Sullivan was referring to the deployment by Moscow of more than 100,000 troops to the border with Ukraine, the movement toward Ukraine of heavy weaponry from bases in the Russian Far East, and the movement of Russian troops and missile batteries into Belarus.

To bolster the military position of the Kyiv government against Russia’s overwhelming advantage in air, sea, artillery, missiles and manpower, the U.S. and NATO countries have been transporting defensive weaponry to Ukraine. Those include small-arms ammunition, mortar and artillery shells, antitank guided missiles, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, grenade launchers, explosive- ordnance disposal suits and Mossberg 500 pump-action shotguns, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. The shipments haven’t included advanced antiship missiles or sophisticated air-defense systems.

Russia has denied it intends to invade its neighbor. But Moscow says NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War poses a threat to its security and has demanded the alliance swear off ever adding Ukraine and pull back troops from its eastern flank.

While rejecting Moscow’s demands regarding the future of NATO’s security posture, the U.S. and NATO have offered Moscow a menu of reciprocal proposals that would provide for inspections of U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and Romania and curbs on military exercises. At the same time, the U.S. and Europe have threatened crippling sanctions aimed at Russian banks and industry and the nation’s economy in the event of an incursion.

 

Woke Trust Fund Millennials 'Work' to Destroy Capitalism

They don't work. They're as privileged as you can be, benefiting from an economic system that's made them (well, their families, really) among the most fortunate people in the world. Remember that. Remember these are the young idle rich. These are the same kinds of young people whom the Bolsheviks murdered in the revolution's obscene orgy of indiscriminate retributory violence ("Anastasia screamed in vain..."). These idiots, rather than be grateful... Rather than work to help those less well-off... Rather than just, say, work for charity and human emancipation through global poverty reduction (and through free markets)... Or, frankly, rather just work --- toil! --- and make their own damn money and mind their own damned business... They're guilt-ridden and mad. 

Remember, it's always the affluent intellectuals who form the "vanguard" of radical movements, waving the red flag at the head of the worldwide proletarian revolution. Che Guevara was trained as a physician. Ho Chi Minh was the son of Confucian scholar and teacher, and after literally traveling the world, he received his political education in Paris, that destitute human hellscape of haute couture, Impressionism, the Guide Michelin, and world-foundational enlightenment philosophy. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Comrade Lenin) actually enjoyed a comfortable petite middle-class status and studied physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University, one of the top technical institutes in Russia at the time. He was expelled for "revolutionary activities." Stalin was the son of Besarion Jughashvili, a shoemaker and successful small-business owner who ultimately cracked under pressure and descended into a long drunken vodka vacation. Son Joseph (Joseph Besarionis dzе Jughashvili a.k.a Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin) was a very promising student who attended the Orthodox Spiritual Seminary in Tbilisi, Georgia, on a generous scholarship. He'd been mentored by Father Christopher Charkviani into the Orthodox priest-pipeline, a promising career path to economic stability (if not wealth and prosperity). Mao Zedong, as a child, was raised in a wealthy family in Hunan Province. He attended the First Normal School of Changsha, one of the best educational institutions in regions --- and he then quickly absorbed himself in all kinds of anti-imperialist revolutionary agitprop, naturally. Béla Kun, the leader of the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, received an education at the "upper class" Silvania Főgimnázium (the Silvania National College), a prestigious bilingual high school in Zalău, Romania. It was Béla Kun who, in 1919, led the fight against counterrevolutionary troop units, crushing the incipient counter-rebellion, which resulted in 1,000s of dead and tortured over a two-year period (1919–1921) known as Hungary's "White Terror."

These people are not the product of the capitalist "lumpenproletariat," that most despised and downtrodden class in all of Marxist-Leninist theory.

And so it goes: For America's sheltered Millennial youth of today, as entitled as they are --- because of racism, sexism, microaggressions, homophobia, transphobia, settler colonialism, genocide of indigenous peoples, the "environment," and (of course) Israel --- the solution is the burn it all down in an apocalyptic ideological war against phantom "oppressors." 

Gird your loins, people. They're coming after you. Sooner or later, they'll have your name and number (listed in the new regime's social media social credit system database, built in collaboration with the recently nationalized ideological-purity industry firms of Silicon Valley, now elevated under the new Biden politburo as the Big Tech Komsomol Thought Crimes Sanitary Correction Unit). Get ready for Kamala's "Truth and Reconciliation Committee." Wealthy Ivy League and elite private college students will be the party's Red Guards in America's 2020 "Cultural Revolution." 

At the Walter Duranty Times, "The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism":

Lately, Sam Jacobs has been having a lot of conversations with his family’s lawyers. He’s trying to gain access to more of his $30 million trust fund. At 25, he’s hit the age when many heirs can blow their money on harebrained businesses or a stable of sports cars. He doesn’t want to do that, but by wealth management standards, his plan is just as bad. He wants to give it all away.

“I want to build a world where someone like me, a young person who controls tens of millions of dollars, is impossible,” he said.

A socialist since college, Mr. Jacobs sees his family’s “extreme, plutocratic wealth” as both a moral and economic failure. He wants to put his inheritance toward ending capitalism, and by that he means using his money to undo systems that accumulate money for those at the top, and that have played a large role in widening economic and racial inequality.

Millennials will be the recipients of the largest generational shift of assets in American history — the Great Wealth Transfer, as finance types call it. Tens of trillions of dollars are expected to pass between generations in just the next decade.

And that money, like all wealth in the United States, is extremely concentrated in the upper brackets. Mr. Jacobs, whose grandfather was a founder of Qualcomm, expects to receive up to $100 million over the course of his lifetime.

Most of his fellow millennials, however, are receiving a rotten inheritance — debt, dim job prospects and a figment of a social safety net. The youngest of them were 15 in 2011 when Occupy Wall Street drew a line between the have-a-lots and everyone else; the oldest, if they were lucky, were working in a post-recession economy even before the current recession. Class and inequality have been part of the political conversation for most of their adult lives.

In their time, the ever-widening gulf between the rich and poor has pushed left-wing politics back into the American political mainstream. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. trailed Senator Bernie Sanders, the socialist candidate, by 20 points among millennial voters in this year’s Democratic presidential primary. And over the last six years, millennials have taken the Democratic Socialists of America from a fringe organization with an average member age of 60 to a national force with chapters in every state and a membership of nearly 100,000, most of them under 35.

Mr. Jacobs, as both a trust-fund kid and an anticapitalist, is in a rare position among leftists fighting against economic inequality. But he isn’t alone in trying to figure out, as he put it, “what it means to be with the 99 percent, when you’re the 1 percent.”

Challenging the System

“I was always taught that this is just the way the world is, that my family has wealth while others don’t, and that because of that, I need to give some of it away, but not necessarily question why it was there,” said Rachel Gelman, a 30-year-old in Oakland, Calif., who describes her politics as “anticapitalist, anti-imperialist and abolitionist.”

Her family always gave generously to liberal causes and civil society groups. Ms. Gelman supports groups devoted to ending inequality, including the Movement for Black Lives, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and Critical Resistance, a leading prison abolition group.

“My money is mostly stocks, which means it comes from underpaying and undervaluing working-class people, and that’s impossible to disconnect from the economic legacies of Indigenous genocide and slavery,” Ms. Gelman said. “Once I realized that, I couldn’t imagine doing anything with my wealth besides redistribute it to these communities.”

According to the consulting firm Accenture, the Silent Generation and baby boomers will gift their heirs up to $30 trillion by 2030, and up to $75 trillion by 2060. These fortunes began to amass decades ago — in some cases centuries. But the concentration of wealth became stratospheric starting in the 1970s, when neoliberalism became the financial sector’s guiding economic philosophy and companies began to obsessively pursue higher returns for shareholders.

“The wealth millennials are inheriting came from a mammoth redistribution away from the working masses, creating a super-rich tiny minority at the expense of a fleeting American dream that is now out of reach to most people,” said Richard D. Wolff, a Marxist and an emeritus economics professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst who has published 12 books about class and inequality.

He said he has been professionally arguing against capitalism’s selling points since his teaching career began, in 1967, but that his millennial students “are more open to hearing that message than their parents ever were.”

Heirs whose wealth has come from a specific source sometimes use that history to guide their giving. Pierce Delahunt, a 32-year-old “socialist, anarchist, Marxist, communist or all of the above,” has a trust fund that was financed by their former stepfather’s outlet mall empire. (Mx. Delahunt takes nongendered pronouns.)

“When I think about outlet malls, I think about intersectional oppression,” Mx. Delahunt said. There’s the originally Indigenous land each mall was built on, plus the low wages paid to retail and food service workers, who are disproportionately people of color, and the carbon emissions of manufacturing and transporting the goods. With that on their mind, Mx. Delahunt gives away $10,000 a month, divided between 50 small organizations, most of which have an anticapitalist mission and in some way tackle the externalities of discount shopping.

If money is power, then true wealth redistribution also means redistributing authority. Margi Dashevsky, who is 33 and lives in Alaska, gets guidance on her charitable giving from an advisory team of three women activists from Indigenous and Black power movements. “The happenstance of me being born into this wealth doesn’t mean I’m somehow omniscient about how it should be used,” she said. “It actually gives me a lot of blind spots.”

She also donates to social justice funds like Third Wave Fund, where grant-making is guided by the communities receiving funding, instead of being decided by a board of wealthy individuals. The latter sort of nonprofit, Ms. Dashevsky said, “comes from a place of assuming incompetence, putting up all these hurdles for activists and wasting their time on things like impact reporting. I want to flip that on its head by stepping back, trusting and listening.”

Of course, an individual act of wealth redistribution does not, on its own, change a system. But these heirs see themselves as part of a bigger shift, and are dedicated to funding its momentum.

 Still more.

'I believe that in a modern, moral and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live...' (VIDEO)

This is apparently Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's canned line on what it means to be a democratic socialist. At WaPo, "'No person in America should be too poor to live': Ocasio-Cortez explains democratic socialism to Colbert."

She came up with the same line on the View, when asked by Meghan McCain. See Free Beacon, "Self-Described Democratic Socialist Ocasio-Cortez Struggles to Differentiate Between Socialism, Democratic Socialism."



She's just trying to make her socialism palatable, even for the so-called working class voters in her district, many of whom probably do wake up every morning saying they're "capitalists."

Here's the page for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) at Discover the Networks:

At the height of the Cold War and the Vietnam War era, the Socialist Party USA of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas split in two over the issue of whether or not to criticize the Soviet Union, its allies, and Communism: One faction rejected and denounced the USSR and its allies—including Castro's Cuba, the Sandinistas, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong—and supported Poland's Solidarity Movement, etc.  This anti-Communist faction took the name Social Democrats USA. (Many of its leaders—including Carl Gershman, who became Jeane Kirkpatrick's counselor of embassy at the United Nations—eventually grew more conservative and became Reagan Democrats.) The other faction, however, refused to reject Marxism, refused to criticize or denounce the USSR and its allies, and continued to support Soviet-backed policies—including the nuclear-freeze program that sought to consolidate Soviet nuclear superiority in Europe. This faction, whose leading figure was Michael Harrington, in 1973 took the name Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC); its membership included many former Students for a Democratic Society activists.

DSOC operated not as a separate political party but as an explicitly socialist force within the Democratic Party and the labor movement. As such, it attracted many young activists who sought to push the Democratic Party further leftward politically. Among the notables who joined DSOC were Machinists' Union leader William Winpisinger, feminist Gloria Steinem, gay rights activist Harry Britt, actor Ed Asner, and California Congressman (and avowed socialist) Ron Dellums.

By 1979 DSOC had made major inroads into the Democratic Party and claimed a national membership of some 3,000 people. In 1983 DSOC, under Michael Harrington's leadership, merged with the New American Movement to form the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Harrington’s strategy was to force a “realignment” of the two major political parties by pulling the Democrats emphatically to the left and polarizing the parties along class lines. He expected that this would drive business interests away from the Democrats and into the Republican Party, but that those losses would be more than offset by an influx of newly energized minority and union voters to the Democratic Party, and that over time the Democrats would embrace socialism as their preferred ideology.[1] Thus Harrington sought to establish DSA as a force that worked within, and not outside of, the existing American political system. Following Harrington's lead, most DSAers were committed to electoral politics within the Democratic Party.[2] They feared that if they were to openly move too far and too quickly to the left, they would run the risk of alienating moderate Democrats and thereby ensuring Ronald Reagan's reelection in 1984.[3]

Early in DSA's history, political organizer Harry Boyte, convinced that even Michael Harrington’s non-revolutionary form of socialism would be rejected by most Americans, formed a “communitarian caucus” within DSA. As author Stanley Kurtz explains:

“The communitarians wanted to use the language and ethos of traditional American communities—including religious language—to promote a 'populist' version of socialism. Portraying heartless corporations as enemies of traditional communities, thought Boyte, was the only way to build a quasi-socialist mass movement in the United States. Socialists could quietly help direct such a movement, Boyte believed, but openly highlighting socialist ideology would only drive converts away. In effect, Boyte was calling on DSA to drop its public professions of socialism and start referring to itself as 'communitarian' instead.”[4]
But DSA rejected this approach, worried that if it failed to publicly articulate its socialist ideals, genuine socialism itself would eventually wither and die. Boyte’s opponents stated: “We can call ourselves ‘communitarians,’ but the word will get out. Better to be out of the closet; humble, yet proud.”[5]

DSA helped establish the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) in 1991 and continues to work closely with the latter to this day. Virtually every CPC member also belongs to DSA.

In 1998, WorldNetDaily (WND) published a two-part series of articles titled “Congress’ Red Army Caucus” (here and here), which exposed the close association between DSA and CPC. At that time, DSA hosted the CPC website. Shortly after the WND revelations, CPC established its own website under the auspices of Congress. Meanwhile, DSA scrubbed its own website to remove evidence of its ties to CPC. Among the items removed from the site were the lyrics to such songs as the following:

* “The Internationale,” the worldwide anthem of Communism and socialism

* “Red Revolution,” sung to the tune of “Red Robin” (This song includes such lyrics as: “When the Red Revolution brings its solution along, along, there’ll be no more lootin’ when we start shootin’ that Wall Street throng.…”)

* “Are You Sleeping, Bourgeoisie?” (The lyrics of this song include: “Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie. And when the revolution comes, We’ll kill you all with knives and guns, Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie.”)

In 2000, DSA endorsed Pay Equity Now!—a petition jointly issued in 2000 by the National Organization for Women, the Philadelphia Coalition of Labor Union Women, and the International Wages for Housework Campaign. Together these organizations charged that “the U.S. government opposes pay equity—equal pay for work of equal value—in national policy and international agreements”; that “women are often segregated in caring and service work for low pay, much like the housework they are expected to do for no pay at home”; and that “underpaying women is a massive subsidy to employers that is both sexist and racist.”

In 2001, DSA characterized the 9/11 terror attacks as acts of retaliation for transgressions and injustices that America had previously perpetrated across the globe. “We live in a world,” said DSA, “organized so that the greatest benefits go to a small fraction of the world’s population while the vast majority experiences injustice, poverty, and often hopelessness. Only by eliminating the political, social, and economic conditions that lead people to these small extremist groups can we be truly secure.”

Strongly opposed to the U.S. war on terror and America's post-9/11 military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, DSA is a member organization of the United For Peace and Justice anti-war coalition.

DSA was a Co-sponsoring Organization of the April 25, 2004 “March for Women’s Lives” held in Washington, D.C., a rally that drew more than a million demonstrators advocating for the right to unrestricted, taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.

In 2007, DSA National Political Committee member David Green expressed support for the Employee Free Choice Act as a measure that could “limit the capitalist class’s prerogatives in the workplace”; “minimize the degree of exploitation of workers by capitalists”; and “provid[e] an excellent organizing tool (i.e., tactic) through which we can pursue our socialist strategy while simultaneously engaging the broader electorate on an issue of economic populism.”

In 2008, most DSA members actively supported Barack Obama for U.S. President. Saidthe organization: “DSA believes that the possible election of Senator Obama to the presidency in November represents a potential opening for social and labor movements to generate the critical political momentum necessary to implement a progressive political agenda.”

In October 2009, the Socialist Party of America announced that at least 70 Congressional Democrats were members of its Caucus at that time—i.e., members of DSA. Most of those individuals belonged to the Congressional Progressive Caucus and/or the Congressional Black Caucus. To view a list of their names, click here.

In the fall of 2011, DSA was a strong backer of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Said DSA:

"The Occupy Wall Street protests have invigorated the American Left in a way not seen in decades … So we have urged our members to take an active, supportive role in their local occupations, something many DSAers had already begun doing as individuals, because they believe that everyday people, the 99%, shouldn’t be made to pay for a crisis set off by an out-of-control financial sector and the ethically compromised politicians who have failed to rein it in."

On October 8, 2011, DSA co-sponsored a Midwest Regional March for Peace and Justice, a protest demonstration commemorating the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
 Click here for a list of additional co-sponsors.

DSA members today seek to build “progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics.” “We are socialists," reads the organization's boilerplate, "because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.” "To achieve a more just society," adds DSA, “many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed.” A major hallmark of such transformation would be an “equitable distribution of resources.”

DSA summarizes its philosophy as follows: "Today … [r]esources are used to make money for capitalists rather than to meet human needs. We believe that the workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own and control them. Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives."

True to its roots, DSA seeks to increase its political influence not by establishing its own political party but rather by working closely with the Democratic Party to promote leftist agendas. "Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party," says DSA. "We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s left wing, represented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.... Maybe sometime in the future ... an alternative national party will be viable. For now, we will continue to support progressives who have a real chance at winning elections, which usually means left-wing Democrats."

In a document titled “Where We Stand,” DSA outlines in detail its political perspectives. Key excerpts from this document include the following:

“Nearly three decades after the 'War on Poverty' was declared and then quickly abandoned, one-fifth of our society subsists in poverty, living in substandard housing, attending underfunded, overcrowded schools, and receiving inadequate health care.”

“In the global capitalist economy, these injustices are magnified a thousand fold. The poorest third of humanity earns two percent of the world's income, while the richest fifth receives two-thirds of global income.”

“We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.”

“We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources, meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.”

“A democratic socialist politics for the 21st century must promote an international solidarity dedicated to raising living standards across the globe, rather than 'leveling down' in the name of maximizing profits and economic efficiency.”

“Equality, solidarity, and democracy can only be achieved through international political and social cooperation aimed at ensuring that economic institutions benefit all people.”

“Democratic socialists are dedicated to building truly international social movements—of unionists, environmentalists, feminists, and people of color—that together can elevate global justice over brutalizing global competition.”

“To be genuinely multiracial, a socialist movement must respect the particular goals of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and other communities of color. It must place a high priority on economic justice to eradicate the sources of inequality; on affirmative action and other compensatory programs to overcome ongoing discrimination and the legacy of inequality; and on social justice to change the behavior, attitudes, and ideas that foster racism.”

“Free markets or private charity cannot provide adequate public goods and services.”

“The capitalist market economy not only suppresses global living standards, but also means chronic underfunding of socially necessary public goods,from research and development to preventive health care and job training.”

“U.S. dominance of the global economy is buttressed by its political power and military might. Indeed, the United States is engaged in a long-term policy of imperial overreach in a period in which global instability will probably increase.”

“Fifty years of world leadership have taken their toll on the U.S. The links among heavy military spending, fiscal imbalance, and a weakening economy are too clear to ignore. Domestically, the United States faces social and structural economic problems of a magnitude unknown to other advanced capitalist states. The resources needed to sustain U.S. dominance are a drain on the national economy, particularly the most neglected and underdeveloped sectors. Nowhere is a struggle against militarism more pressing than in the United States, where the military budget bleeds the public sector of much needed funds for social programs.”

“As inequalities of wealth and income increase and the wages and living standards of most are either stagnant or falling, social needs expand. Only a revitalized public sector can universally and democratically meet those needs.”

“Social redistribution—the shift of wealth and resources from the rich to the rest of society—will require: massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector, in order to provide the main source of new funds for social programs, income maintenance and infrastructure rehabilitation, and a massive shift of public resources from the military (the main user of existing discretionary funds) to civilian uses.”

“Over time, income redistribution and social programs will be critical not only to the poor but to the great majority of working people. The defense and expansion of government programs that promote social justice, equal education for all children, universal health care, environmental protection and guaranteed minimum income and social well-being is critical for the next Left.”

“The fundamental task of democratic socialists is to build anti-corporate social movements capable of winning reforms that empower people. Since such social movements seek to influence state policy, they will intervene in electoral politics, whether through Democratic primaries, non-partisan local elections, or third party efforts.”

“Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists; the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end.”

Expect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Be Among the Most Fanatical Israel-Bashers in Congress

This post assumes that Ocasio-Cortez wins her general election contest in November. New York's 14th congressional district is heavily progressive with minority-majority demographics. I haven't seen any serious commentary so far suggesting her Republican opponent, Anthony Pappas, is likely to win. As the New York Post reported, "Pappas’ bid is a long shot. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district by roughly 6-1, voter registration records show."

Okay, should Ocasio-Cortez take her seat in Congress next year, it's also safe to assume she's be one of the most fervently anti-Israel Democrats in the House.

I haven't seen the major newspapers, such as the New York Times, for example, pick up on this aspect of the Ocasio-Cortez story, but it's a big one. It's not just that the Democrats are openly embracing a Marxist ideological program, but also that virulent anti-Israel ideology has bubbled up into the mainstream. This is of course not new to conservative bloggers and top Twitter personalities, but a focus on Ocasio-Cortez's public comments will put the Democrats' oft-hidden anti-Israel animus in the spotlight.

Here's a roundup of commentary from conservative blogs and pro-Jewish outlets.

First is the big story from the other day, at the Daily Caller, "Socialist Darling Caught Celebrating, Campaigning With Known Anti-Semite and Racist":

Socialist Darling Caught Celebrating, Campaigning With Known Anti-Semite And Racist https://t.co/nB3lS47qRS pic.twitter.com/KfR0BYShOV

— The Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 27, 2018

Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stunned the political world and rank-in-file Democrats by defeating incumbent Joe Crowley in Tuesday’s New York primary. The Ocasio-Cortez win signaled the growing swing leftward for national Democrats, a party undergoing a power struggle and identity crisis after Trump’s election victory in 2016. The platform Ocasio-Cortez ran on was deeply progressive, calling on the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, nationalized health care, universal jobs guarantee and getting America to 100 percent green energy.

However, footage reveals that Ocasio-Cortez also has associates with regressive views.

One of Ocasio-Cortez’s most enthusiastic campaigners and a man who stood behind her at her victory party, Thomas Lopez-Pierre, is a known anti-Semite and racist. Lopez-Pierre has regularly used slurs against Jewish and black New Yorkers in public forums and while running for office himself.

While running for office in 2017, Lopez-Pierre specifically campaigned on “protecting tenants from greedy Jewish landlords.” Lopez-Pierre’s own campaign website shows his rantings agains “Greedy Jewish Landlords.” His campaign website applauds the arrest of “Greedy Jewish Landlords” and says that “Jewish Landlords” are “punishing” black and Hispanic families...

More.

(Ocasio-Perez issued a repudiation of Lopez-Pierre, claiming she has "No idea who this guy is...")

Okay, then, let's go to Joel Pollak, at Breitbart, "Pollak: New Democrat Heroine Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is an Anti-Israel Radical":

Again. As hysterical #NeverTrumper Jewish commentators attack the most pro-Israel president in history, their new party elects another Hamas supporter.
I dare you to attack this bigot and
her Jew hating voters on MSNBC. https://t.co/i1fveOl9GT

— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) June 27, 2018

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old democratic socialist who became an instant Democratic Party heroine by unseating party caucus chair Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) in Tuesday’s New York primary, is an anti-Israel radical.

Her victory is a further sign of the Democratic Party’s slide toward the extreme left — and toward the anti-Israel left in particular.

During her primary election, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted passionately about an alleged Israeli “massacre” of Palestinian “protesters” at the Gaza border, citing an Al Jazeera article.

Click the link to see anti-Israel tweets from Ocasio Cortez. Pollak continues:

The Jewish radicals of J Street will, no doubt, be thrilled to have another member of Congress who supports Hamas over Israel, and will rush to her defense. But for the few Democrats who still support Israel, her victory is worrying.

Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-Israel views are of a piece with her radical policies in general — such as government health care for all, free college tuition, guaranteed federal jobs, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). (At least she is consistent: she does not believe in a border fence with Gaza or a border wall with Mexico.) Her campaign even adopted the zombie-like “mic check” first seen at radical Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.

Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-Israel views, like her other socialist policies, are ill-informed and would have devastating consequences if enacted. She is not stupid: far from it, the Boston University graduate is whip-smart. But like other far-left millennials, she has mastered the finer details of a fictional universe.

These are positions she will not easily walk back. Her victory has thrilled the Democratic base, but it spells trouble for the party, and for the country.

Now, check out Pamela Geller, "New York's New Socialist Candidate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Tweets: Israel Guilty of 'Massacre' of 'Palestinians'":

New York’s New Socialist Candidate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Tweets: Israel Guilty of ‘Massacre’ of ‘Palestinians’: New York's new socialist candidate for Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just sent out a tweet that condemned Israel for its supposed… https://t.co/EfEAVUXNY4

— Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) June 29, 2018

And at the Forward, "What It Means For Israel If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Democrats’ Future":

What It Means For Israel If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Democrats’ Future https://t.co/JmVofz5NYm

— The Forward (@jdforward) June 27, 2018

Prominent progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders and activist Linda Sarsour are vying with each other to laud Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who notched a David-and-Goliath upset victory over 10-term Rep. Joe Crowley in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New York.

Her victory — with 57% of the vote — raises larger questions about the party’s direction, including whether she won despite or because of her stinging comments about Israel on the campaign trail. Could her upset win be another sign that Democratic voters want the party to be more critical of the Jewish state?

“We’re seeing a pattern where the activist core of the Democratic Party is becoming highly critical of Israel almost as a default position,” Brooklyn College history professor KC Johnson, who has written about this shift, told the Forward on Wednesday.

Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign in a fast-changing Queens district was almost solely focused on domestic causes like “Medicare-for-All” and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Her campaign website doesn’t mention anything about foreign affairs on its issues page.

But she did attract attention in May for calling the Israeli army’s killing of Palestinian protesters in Gaza a “massacre.”

More.

Also at the Times of Israel, "Progressive Democrat who upset NY incumbent accused Israel of ‘massacre’ in Gaza."

Progressive Democrat who upset NY incumbent accused Israel of ‘massacre’ in Gaza https://t.co/kCPrgpCk7t pic.twitter.com/2ye5WfDWYh

— The Times of Israel (@TimesofIsrael) June 27, 2018

And the Jerusalem Post, "WHAT DOES SURPRISE NYC PRIMARY RACE WINNER THINK ABOUT ISRAEL? 'This is a massacre', Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter of the IDF's killing of Palestinians at the Gaza border in May. 'Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore'."

Pro-Palestinian Bernie Sanders protege wins upset in NYC primary race https://t.co/VzImPGAk14 pic.twitter.com/0IN2R3oexW

— JPost Politics (@jpost_politics) June 27, 2018

And at Algemeiner, "Democratic Socialist Who Upset NY Rep. Joe Crowley Said Israel Committed a ‘Massacre’ in Gaza":

Democratic Socialist Who Upset NY Rep. Joe Crowley Said Israel Committed a ‘Massacre’ in Gaza https://t.co/3ySdgSq249 via @Algemeiner pic.twitter.com/CiVp3OzDxd

— Israel News Links (@IsraelNewsLinks) June 28, 2018

As noted, this radical anti-Israel sentiment isn't new. Back in 2012 I wrote about Democrat Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, who's now the frontrunner to replace retiring Republican Senator Jeff Flake in the upper chamber.

See my entry from six years ago. The more thing change, the more they stay the same: "Kyrsten Sinema, Bisexual Israel-Hating Antiwar Radical, is Face of Today's Democrat Party."

More later..

#Antifa is the Resurgence of Anti-War Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter

From Brandon Darby, at Breitbart.

That is it. That is exactly it.

Total Insanity at Evergreen State College (VIDEO)

There's still a couple of things reassuring about the whole mess at Evergreen: One, the leftist totalitarians are still outnumbered by people who oppose them (and who have powerful ways to get the opposition message out); and two, at some point, the Evergreen students will have to go out and make it in the real world. Most of these students will seek jobs at leftist non-profits and radical progressive interest groups and think tanks (if they indeed seek work at all). But if some of them want employment in regular corporate America, they'll find there's a limit at even the most tolerant and progressive firms to the obscenities of social justice extremism.

In any case, watch the video below, and read the commentary and analysis at the Other McCain, "The Catastrophe at Evergreen State":

As has been pointed out, Professor Weinstein “supported Bernie Sanders, admiringly retweets Glenn Greenwald and was an outspoken supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement” and calls himself “deeply progressive,” but that’s not enough for the thugs at Evergreen.

America's New Opposition: The Left Has Been Reborn

Well, I suppose there's something to the argument of a renewed left --- it makes sense with the Democrats out of power, and especially so in the aftermath of Donald Trump's crushing (extinction-level) defeat of Hillary Clinton. The collective left has gone insane. Our political system is in a constant state of partisan siege. It only makes sense that the most angry seeds of the leftist revolt will be found in the bilge of the progressive fever swamps.

From Jedediah Purdy, at the New Republic, "America’s New Opposition":

Mainstream Democrats will continue to denounce anyone to their left as naïve. But they're wrong to do so: https://t.co/eMnwY64Pk6 pic.twitter.com/L7WTqnPRjQ

— New Republic (@NewRepublic) February 2, 2017

In late October 2011, I was volunteering at the Occupy Wall Street library in lower Manhattan. Tucked into a corner of Zuccotti Park, the library was staffed mainly by anarchists of an exceedingly orderly bent. If society were suddenly freed from coercive institutions like libraries, these people would gladly spend the morning sorting donated books by Dewey decimal number—as they were doing in the mild fall weather. I was there for only a few days, but one conversation with a book borrower has stayed with me. He was having trouble understanding why he kept returning to the encampment. He wondered: Had anything like this happened before? Were there books that could tell him who had done it, and why? I felt I was meeting a victim of a political shipwreck. In my mind, he became emblematic of a left that felt itself so unmoored from any shared past that it was puzzled by its own existence.

Now that Donald Trump occupies the White House, it’s easy to feel that we are all castaways in historical time. There is talk in some quarters of leaving the country, of turning blue cities and states into sanctuaries, not just for the undocumented, but for disillusioned liberals—a response that amounts to giving up on creating a just and inclusive democracy in this divided land. But such feelings of despair miss the deeper and perhaps more lasting political transformation that has taken place in the five years since Zuccotti Park.

Indeed, the irruption of radicalism at Occupy turned out to be prophetic. For the first time in decades, the left regained its focus and put down new roots. Fight for $15, the campaign for a higher minimum wage led by fast-food workers, made gains in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco. Rolling Jubilee, founded in 2012, bought and canceled almost $32 million in medical and student debt. Black Lives Matter has forced America to reckon with police violence against black men and highlighted the economic isolation of many black communities. Last year, Bernie Sanders won more than 13 million votes. And recent polls show that a majority of Americans under the age of 30 now prefer socialism to capitalism. While it is unclear just what they mean by that, a renewed openness to radical ideas is unmistakable among young people. The mass protests in response to Trump’s policies, both at the women’s march and at airports around the country, in the last weeks show a sense of urgency and willingness to fight for robust legal equality and inclusiveness. At the very moment when establishment politics have been severely undermined—the GOP hijacked by Trump, the Democrats confounded by Hillary Clinton’s loss—the American left has been reborn.

For most of the 2016 election cycle, however, the left was told, implicitly or explicitly, that while they might be charming or admirable, they should leave real politics to the adults of the Democratic National Committee and the liberal commentariat. There was one candidate, we were assured, and one web of institutions and experts who understood how to get things done: They were battle-tested and ready to win, then to hit the ground governing. The rest of us had pretty sentiments; it was sweet that we thought the word democracy could refer to something larger in ambition and imagination than the current version of the Democratic Party; but politics means putting away childish things.

In the wake of Trump’s victory in November, the present leadership of the Democratic Party has failed to grasp the lessons of its own defeat. “I don’t think people want a new direction,” Nancy Pelosi insisted on Meet the Press just after the election. The DNC doubled down on that position in early January, announcing the creation of an anti-Trump “war room” staffed with Clinton operatives who will continue attacking Trump’s ethics, character, and speculative ties to Russia. This is the same strategy that failed to win the presidential election against a palpably flawed and eminently beatable candidate.

Though fragmented and incipient, this nascent left is now best placed to mount a convincing opposition to Trump, and to engage with the forces that brought him to power. With its focus on economic inequality and collective action, the left knows things that liberals have been reluctant to acknowledge, or in any event to say—knowledge that is necessary to embrace the populist moment, push back on its reactionary inclinations, and seize its progressive potential. The left is able to diagnose the malfunctioning of our democracy because, unlike the Democratic establishment, it starts from the premise that American democracy as it is currently constituted is profoundly insufficient...

An interesting, although profoundly mistaken analysis. Hillary Clinton ran far to the left, much farther than her 2008 campaign, and farther left than both of Barack Obama's campaigns.

The Democrats lost not just because Crooked Hillary was a disaster waiting to happen, it's simply that the electorate repudiated leftism. What we're seeing now, all across the board, especially with the increasing violence, is going to help the Republicans. For all of Donald Trump's flaws, and he's got many, he keeps winning. And it's so early. I do think we're in for perpetual outrage and the concomitant never-ending street protests. In the end what will matter is good governance. Democrats are making massive gambles at this very minute with literally unhinged obstructionism. The voters will see more of the same and punish the "establishment," which is best represented now by the progressive-collectivist elite.

But continue reading.

The Twilight of American Jewry

From Caroline Glick:

This week marked the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on America. Most of us didn’t realize it at the time, but those attacks also marked the beginning of the end of the golden age of American Jewry – on both sides of the ideological divide.

Most American Jews make their home on the political Left, and together with black Americans they comprise the most loyal Democratic voting bloc. American Jews have clung to the Democratic Party despite the fact that over the past decade and a half, their position in the party has become increasingly precarious.

After the September 11 attacks, the American anti-war movement rose as a force in the party. The movement was quick to conflate its anti-Americanism with hostility for Israel. Jewish anti-war activists were forced to choose between Zionism and pacifism.

And the situation has only grown worse over time.

As Gary Gambill of the Middle East Forum wrote this week in The National Interest, since the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel was founded in 2005, its members have gone from one leftist group to another and demanded that their members embrace the cause of Israel’s destruction.

Group after group – from the feminists, to the gay rights activists, to Occupy Wall Street, to Black Lives Matter – bowed to the BDS demand. Members who refused to condemn Israel and join the call for its destruction have been booted out.

As Prof. Alan Dershowitz wrote last month, this state of affairs has brought about a situation where progressive American Jews who support Israel – that is, the majority of American Jews – are increasingly finding themselves isolated, rejected by their fellow leftists.

In his words, “Over the past several years, progressive Jews and supporters of Israel have had to come to terms with the reality that those who do not reject Israel and accept the… BDS movement’s unique brand of bigotry are no longer welcome in some progressive circles. And while both the Democratic and Republican parties have embraced the importance of the US alliance with Israel, that dynamic is under threat more so than at any point in my lifetime.”

The radicalization of the American Left has caused a radicalization of the Democratic Party. This was made clear throughout this year’s Democratic primary season and during the party’s national convention. Today, the anti-Israel Left makes up not just the Democratic grassroots but also the major donors to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The significance of this development for American Jews cannot be overstated. Even if Clinton herself doesn’t share the positions of the Bernie Sanders wing of her party, she cannot govern in defiance of its will.

And if she is elected in November, she won’t...

Keep reading.

Federal Reserve's Missteps Fueled Populist Disillusion on the Economy and Political Class

I don't know? Seems like blaming the Fed is letting a lot of people off the hook.

Interesting, in any case.

At WSJ, "Years of Fed Missteps Fueled Disillusion With the Economy and Washington":

Once-revered central bank failed to foresee the crisis and has struggled in its aftermath, fostering the rise of populism and distrust of institutions.

In the past decade Federal Reserve officials have been flummoxed by a housing bubble that cratered the financial system, a long stretch of slow growth they failed to foresee and inflation persistently undershooting their goal. In response they engineered unpopular financial rescues, launched start-and-stop bond buying and delayed planned interest-rate boosts.

“There are a lot of things that we thought we knew that haven’t turned out quite as we expected,” said Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “The economy and financial markets are not as stable as we previously assumed.”

In the 1990s, a period known in economics as the “Great Moderation,” it seemed the Fed could do no wrong. Policy makers and voters saw it as a machine, with buttons officials could push to heat or cool the economy as needed. Now, after more than a decade of economic disappointment, the central bank confronts hardened public skepticism and growing self-doubt about its own understanding of how the U.S. economy works.

For anyone seeking to explain one of the most unpredictable political seasons in modern history, with the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, a prime suspect is public dismay in institutions guiding the economy and government. The Fed in particular is a case study in how the conventional wisdom of the late 1990s on a wide range of economic issues, including trade, technology and central banking, has since slowly unraveled.

Once admired globally for their command of the economic system, central bankers now are blamed by the left and right for bailouts during the financial crisis and for failing to foresee and manage forces suffocating the global economy in its aftermath.

Populist protest movements called “Fed Up,” “End the Fed” and “Occupy Wall Street” lashed out at the bank’s policies, and in the case of End the Fed, its very existence. Lawmakers of both parties want to subject it to more scrutiny or curb its powers.

David Einhorn, founder of the hedge fund Greenlight Capital, cites the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, in which a famished grasshopper begs a thrifty ant for help in wintertime after failing to stockpile food during warmer weather.

“We had the grasshoppers party from 2002 to 2007 and winter came and the Fed bailed them out,” said Mr. Einhorn, referring to financial firms and individuals who lived above their means. “Now the ants are pissed.”

The Fed’s struggles will be on display from Friday to Sunday when it gathers for an annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyo. On issues of growth, inflation, interest rates, unemployment and how to fight a recession, basic assumptions inside the central bank’s complex computer models have been upended.

“I certainly myself couldn’t have imagined six, seven years ago that we would be employing the policies we are now,” Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen said to a packed ballroom in New York earlier this year. She lamented the government has leaned so heavily on the Fed to stimulate the economy while tax and spending policies were stymied by disagreements between Congress and the White House.

Many Fed officials believe—and private economists agree—their responses to the crisis helped avert a second Depression, outweighing any unfairness in the bailout process. Fed leaders believe low rates helped, too. “Inflation would be lower and unemployment higher now by noticeable amounts had we not employed those policies,” Ms. Yellen said in March.

Regardless, confidence in the central bank’s leadership has dropped. An April Gallup poll found 38% of Americans had a great deal or fair amount of confidence in Ms. Yellen, while 35% had little or none. In the early 2000s, confidence in Chairman Alan Greenspan often exceeded 70%...

Keep reading.

 Is the American Party System About to Crack Up?

Here's Danielle Allen, at the Nation, "Communications Breakdown":

In 1999, the libertarian party helped transform American politics by launching a campaign that ultimately sent hundreds of thousands of e-mails to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to protest its proposed “know your customer” banking regulations. The FDIC withdrew the rules, and the era of digital politics was born. Roughly a decade later, social media propelled “birtherism” to the forefront of the national conversation, reinstating nativism as an active ideology in the United States. In 2009 came the Tea Party movement, followed by Occupy Wall Street in 2011, both of which drew on new online organizing mechanisms to build solidarity networks around a particular analysis of social reality. The question for students of American politics now is whether these changes can drive a fundamental realignment of our political parties.

Transformations in communications technology have made it more possible than ever before for dissenters from the Democratic and Republican parties to find one another and to form sizable communities of interest. The result is lowered barriers to entry for the work of political organization, with consequences announced daily in headlines about the 2016 presidential campaign. Insurgent candidates in both parties have drawn on the organizational power that has developed over the past decade within ideologically defined communities: Donald Trump has summoned the anger and xenophobia of the birthers, Bernie Sanders has channeled Occupy’s critique of rampant inequality, and Ted Cruz has marshaled the forces of the Tea Party universe. By attaching other groups of voters to their original, more ideologically concentrated constituencies, these candidates have achieved greater success in their respective primary campaigns than anyone thought possible just one year ago.

Regardless of whether they succeed in taking over their parties, these new coalitions have the potential to remake American politics if either the insurgents or the party faithful are driven to seek refuge in existing third parties or to create entirely new ones. For the 2016 campaign at least, that latter possibility is already foreclosed, so a takeover (hostile or otherwise) of a third party seems more likely—both the Libertarian Party and the Green Party can place candidates on the ballot in a significant number of states. Even so, our first-past-the-post electoral system makes it very hard for third parties to challenge the top two. Barring the emergence of new habits of collaboration and alliance formation among small parties, only a fundamental change to our system of voting—the introduction of proportional representation, for example—would allow for a more fluid political system to develop.

 Speculating on what the future holds for America’s political alignment requires thinking through a complex array of factors: voting rules, political egos, the time horizons of charismatic leaders, questions of succession, the intensity of various ideological commitments, and a famously mutable public opinion. What we are most likely to see is more of the new normal: incredibly bitter fights among plurality-sized groups for total—if temporary—control of one of the major parties. Will this also worsen gridlock at the national level, thereby exacerbating the intensity of those intraparty battles and further destabilizing our political system overall? If these dynamics play out simultaneously in both parties, the most unified side will triumph.

There's more, FWIW, from Rick Perlstein and Daniel Schlozman at the link.

The S-Word — Socialism — Frightens a Lot of Americans

Not the Democrats. They love socialism.

At USA Today:

If Bernie Sanders were to win the Democratic presidential nomination, his chances of actually making it to the White House are somewhere between zero and nothing.

That, at least, is the view of some political observers. One of the reasons for their pessimism is Sanders’ political ideology: He’s a self-described "Democratic Socialist."

And the S-word frightens a lot of Americans.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in December 2011, shortly after the Occupy Wall Street protests, which highlighted the growing wealth gap between the rich and the poor, found half of all Americans still had a positive view of capitalism, while 60% had a negative perception of socialism.

“Socialism is a far more divisive word (than capitalism), with wide differences of opinion along racial, generational, socioeconomic and political lines,” Pew said.

“Fully nine-in-ten conservative Republicans (90%) view socialism negatively, while nearly six-in-ten liberal Democrats (59%) react positively. Low-income Americans are twice as likely as higher-income Americans to offer a positive assessment of socialism (43% among those with incomes under $30,000, 22% among those earning $75,000 or more).”

A Gallup survey this summer found similar anti-socialist views among American voters, half of whom said they wouldn't vote for a socialist candidate.

It's not hard to see why this is. For many Americans the word "socialism" still carries the associations with authoritarianism that it acquired during the Cold War. That explains why some opponents of Obama's Affordable Care Act were calling it the same thing Ronald Reagan called Medicare in 1961: "socialized medicine." Combine those negative Cold War associations with the fact that a significant portion of the American electorate wants to shrink government, limit spending, and cut taxes, and you realize that Bernie Sanders has his work cut out for him if he's going to proudly wave the socialist flag...

Keep reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "Democrat Debate: America Now Has an Openly Socialist Party."

The #BlackLivesMatter Revolution Will Be Televised

From Matthew Vadum at FrontPage Magazine, "Reporters' lives don't matter to a double-minority shooter trying to foment racial violence":

Hoping to start a bloody "race war," a black, gay, in-your-face Obama-supporting former TV reporter horrified Southwest Virginia TV viewers yesterday when he stalked and coolly murdered two white former TV station colleagues and wounded a white interview subject during a live broadcast.

The shooter, Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, apparently a registered Democrat and former prostitute, said he attacked the three white people during the "standup" report about local tourism from the marina at Smith Mountain Lake as racial payback for white-supremacist Dylann Storm Roof's June 17 attack in Charleston, S.C. that left nine black churchgoers dead. Roof, who reportedly confessed, also said he wanted to start a race war by committing acts of violence.

Flanagan, who used the name Bryce Williams professionally, left behind a lengthy, rambling, written rant explaining his explicitly race-based motive for the murders. Although the full document was sent to ABC News, it has not yet found its way online. Media outlets have provided highlights. ABC News reports that "A man claiming to be Bryce Williams called ABC News over the last few weeks, saying he wanted to pitch a story and wanted to fax information. He never told ABC News what the story was."

Well, now we know.

Using online accounts created only recently, Flanagan promoted the political murders he committed as well as any team of seasoned, high-priced publicists could have. In the process he demonstrated his diabolical mastery of social media for the world to see. He shot his victims early in the morning and made the morning news. He sent out a horrifying video of the cold-blooded killings and caught the noonday news. He died in the afternoon in time to make the evening news. All the saturation coverage on cable TV news and news-on-dead-tree exposure is a bonus, a sort of contribution-in-kind that media outlets are providing to his cause.

Emulating the cost-conscious Muslim terrorists who flew airplanes into buildings on 9/11, Flanagan got perhaps tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in free media worldwide for his evil cause on what must have been a shoestring budget. Perhaps radical leftist public relations outfits Fenton Communications or SKDKnickerbocker of Anita Dunn fame will teach Flanagan's techniques to incoming employees.

In the empowering age of the Internet, fomenting civil unrest and violent revolution is becoming more affordable. Not that the George Soros-funded Black Lives Matter movement needs the money.

The black-nationalist mobs and leftover Occupy Wall Street goons wreaking havoc in Baltimore and other big cities with the encouragement of the Obama administration believe now is the time for decisive action against the country they hate. The desire to concoct a massive racial conflagration in America has been on the Left's laundry list for decades.

Starting a race war in which blacks violently rise up against whites has long been the goal of unrepentant terrorist and Obama pal Bill Ayers and was the reason mass-murderer Charles Manson and his followers went on a homicidal rampage in 1969. Leaders of the racist and increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement nowadays are also calling for "war." President Obama hasn't called for race-based hostilities specifically but he has helped to craft the Left's false narrative that racist whites kill innocent blacks all the time. Obama, a Marxist community organizer by profession, wants racial groups and everyone else to be at each other's throats because, as the familiar leftist adage goes, "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Flanagan can be seen in his own homemade video he later posted online holding a handgun in front of him as he walked unnoticed towards reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, and interviewee Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Ward's video camera recorded the 6:45 a.m. attack and captured the shooter's image after Ward dropped the still-functioning machine and the live feed from it made it to the airwaves. The perpetrator's hand can be seen in his own video as he takes his time aiming at Parker and then opening fire. Parker, who can be heard screaming in both videos, and Ward succumbed to their wounds at the site of the shooting. Ward was engaged to be married and yesterday was to be his final day at Roanoke-based WDBJ-7 before he started a new job in Charlotte, N.C. Parker had recently moved in with her boyfriend, an anchor at the station. Gardner was in stable condition in hospital at press time.

Flanagan fled the scene and shortly before 8:30 a.m. reportedly faxed a hateful 23-page manifesto to ABC News. He reportedly told ABC that the police are “after me” and “all over the place,” before hurriedly ending the telephone call. Tweeting as Bryce Williams, Flanagan complained "Adam went to hr [human resources] on me after working with me one time!!!" and "Alison made racist comments[.]" He also boasted "I filmed the shooting see Facebook[.]"

His rental vehicle was later spotted by Virginia State Police who gave chase. Flanagan's car ran off the road on Interstate 66 in Fauquier County and he shot himself at 11:30 a.m. He died in hospital about two hours later.

NBC-4 in the national's capital reports that employees of WDBJ-7 were cautioned about Flanagan two years ago when his employment was terminated. Management was so concerned about his behavior that employees were reportedly made to clear the room as he cleaned out his desk. After he left workers were instructed to "call 911 immediately" if they spotted the former employee on company property.

Flanagan, Parker, and Ward had worked together at the CBS affiliate "[b]ut when Flanagan was fired in February 2013, a 911 call summoned police to remove him from the premises." The report continues...

Keep reading.

Leftist Flag-Burner Dylann Roof's 'Last Rhodesian' Manifesto Rooted in Democrat Party Ku Klux Klan Racism

Well, one thing's for sure.

Dylann Roof hates the American flag like any classic leftist today.

On top of that, his manifesto is a throwback to the white supremacist racial segregation era of the Jim Crow Ku Klux Klan Democrat Party South. The kid confesses right off the bat that he wasn't raised in a racist home --- obviously because his family just doesn't fit the left's white supremacist stereotypes. As he writes at his racist left-wing screed:

Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back negroes. It existed to protect us from them. And I mean that in multiple ways. Not only did it protect us from having to interact with them, and from being physically harmed by them, but it protected us from being brought down to their level. Integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to level of brute animals. The best example of this is obviously our school system.

Interestingly, Roof combines his Democrat segregation-love with classic leftist BDS-style anti-Jewish hatred. He spews perfectly dead-on memes of the left's global anti-Semitic, anti-Israel annihilationist ideology:

Unlike many White naitonalists, I am of the opinion that the majority of American and European jews are White. In my opinion the issues with jews is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the jewish identity, then they wouldnt cause much of a problem. The problem is that Jews look White, and in many cases are White, yet they see themselves as minorities. Just like niggers, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The other issue is that they network. If we could somehow turn every jew blue for 24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able to see plainly what is going on.

And he's no anti-immigration "Minuteman," as he indicates that he likes Hispanics and Asians. And he just hates the American flag. He hates it with all the combustible disgust of America that you'd find in an Occupy Wall Street rape-infested protest camp. He's a perfect emo-prog flag-hating loser:

I hate the sight of the American flag. Modern American patriotism is an absolute joke. People pretending like they have something to be proud while White people are being murdered daily in the streets. Many veterans believe we owe them something for “protecting our way of life” or “protecting our freedom”. But im not sure what way of life they are talking about. How about we protect the White race and stop fighting for the jews. I will say this though, I myself would have rather lived in 1940's American than Nazi Germany, and no this is not ignorance speaking, it is just my opinion. So I dont blame the veterans of any wars up until after Vietnam, because at least they had an American to be proud of and fight for.

He's a sick, racist deluded lefty-prog who glommed onto sick anti-American, pro-Confederacy hate sites. A weird product of progressivism, Israel-hatred, and segregationist Democrat legacies.

He's a weirdo, frankly.

More at the the Telegraph UK, "Dylann Roof: The Charleston killer's racist manifesto."

And at the New York Times, "Website With Manifesto and Photos of Suspect Surfaces."

PREVIOUSLY: "Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative," and "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut."

The Moral Case for Capitalism

From James Otteson, at the Manhattan Institute, "An Audacious Promise: The Moral Case for Capitalism":

“The market will take care of everything,” they tell us…. But here’s the problem: it doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

—President Barack Obama, Osawatomie, Kansas, December 6, 2011

Milton Friedman once said that every time capitalism has been tried, it has succeeded; whereas every time socialism has been tried, it has failed. Yet President Obama has oddly claimed that we’ve tried free-market capitalism, and it “has never worked.” This is rather remarkable. Since 1800, the world’s population has increased sixfold; yet despite this enormous increase, real income per person has increased approximately 16-fold. That is a truly amazing achievement. In America, the increase is even more dramatic: in 1800, the total population in America was 5.3 million, life expectancy was 39, and the real gross domestic product per capita was $1,343 (in 2010 dollars); in 2011, our population was 308 million, our life expectancy was 78, and our GDP per capita was $48,800. Thus even while the population increased 58-fold, our life expectancy doubled, and our GDP per capita increased almost 36-fold. Such growth is unprecedented in the history of humankind. Considering that worldwide per-capita real income for the previous 99.9 percent of human existence averaged consistently around $1 per day, that is extraordinary.

What explains it? It would seem that it is due principally to the complex of institutions usually included under the term “capitalism,” since the main thing that changed between 200 years ago and the previous 100,000 years of human history was the introduction and embrace of so-called capitalist institutions—particularly, private property and markets. One central promise of capitalism has been that it will lead to increasing material prosperity. It seems fair to say that this promise, at least, has been fulfilled beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. Yet people remain suspicious of capitalism—and more than just suspicious: as the Occupy Wall Street movement is only the latest to have shown, we seem ready to indict capitalism for many of our social problems. Why?

A widespread consensus is that capitalism might be necessary to deliver the goods but fails to meet moral muster. By contrast, socialism, while perhaps not practical, is morally superior—if only we could live up to its ideals. Two main charges are typically marshaled against capitalism: it generates inequality by allowing some to become wealthier than others; and it threatens social solidarity by allowing individuals some priority over their communities. Other objections include: it encourages selfishness or greed; it “atomizes” individuals or “alienates” (Marx’s term) people from one another; it exploits natural resources or despoils nature; it impoverishes third-world countries; and it dehumanizes people because the continual search for profit reduces everything, including human beings, to odious dollar-and-cent calculations.

The list of charges against capitalism is long. But some of the charges are not as strong as might be supposed. Take community. Capitalism gives us incentives to trade and associate with people outside our local community, even complete strangers, not on the basis of our love or care for them but out of our own—and their—self-interest. So capitalism enables people to escape the strictures of their local communities. But is that bad? Capitalism creates opportunities for people to trade, exchange, partner, associate, collaborate, cooperate, and share with—as well as learn from—people not only from next door but from around the world—even people who speak different languages, wear different clothing, eat different foods, and worship different gods. The social characteristics that in other times and under different institutions would lead to conflict—even violent, bloody conflict—become, under capitalism, irrelevant—and thus no longer cause for discord. Capitalism encourages people to see those outside their communities not as threats but as opportunities. It gives us an incentive to look beyond our narrow parochialisms and form associations that would otherwise not be possible.

Capitalism therefore does not lead to no community but rather to differently configured ones...

More.

Otteson has a new book, The End of Socialism.

I came across it after reading the discussion at AEI, "‘Once you begin to see humans as the interchangeable members of a class, you begin to dehumanize them’..." (Via Instapudit.)

Far-Left Radicalism Goes Mainstream

From Michael Goodwin, at the New York Post, "Radicalism is going mainstream":

Something’s in the air, and it’s not just the normal spring rituals of protests, love and allergies. It’s the unsettling sound of radicalism tearing America apart.

Ideas that only recently were relegated to the fringes are now going mainstream. And policies that were settled, established norms are under vicious assault.

Here’s the real shocker: The radicals are not limited to Occupy Wall Street and other anarchists demonstrating against cops, capitalism and all authority. Instead, respected public figures and government officials who would normally defend the establishment are leading the charge against it.

Take the growing New York movement to opt out of standardized student tests. While unions are protesting the use of tests for teacher evaluations, many middle-class parents are joining them.

Indeed, the most prominent opt-out leader is Rob Astorino, the county executive of Westchester County and last year’s GOP gubernatorial nominee.

Astorino, who presides over a suburban bastion of orderly and manicured prosperity, wants to repeal the Common Core standards adopted by New York and more than 40 other states. He boasted that he and his wife, a special-ed teacher, withheld their children from the exams for the second year because the tests “are poorly and secretly devised, developmentally inappropriate, disruptive to wider learning, and federally rather than locally engineered, among other concerns.”

A Bronx middle-school principal went further down the rabbit hole, charging in a published letter that the tests come from “the same system that facilitated our current economic gap, redlining, crack ­cocaine, Jim Crow and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.”

The principal, Jamaal Bowman of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, insisted, “We should not trust the state” because it uses “testing as a smoke screen to destroy public education.”

Wow, imagine what his students are learning.

If that were all, it would be bad enough. But mainstream radicals also are assailing childhood vaccines as another government plot. California is the epicenter, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went off the deep end making the case...

Keep reading.

Armageddon times, on the firing line.

Ross Douthat on the Left's Post-Post Racial Political Correctness

Douthat's got some interesting and considerably astute observations on the left's recent blow-up over over Jonathan Chait's essay on regressive leftist P.C. culture.

See, "Does Political Correctness Work?", and "Our Loud, Proud Left":

FOR the last week, liberal journalists have been furiously debating whether a new political correctness has swept over the American left. The instigator of this argument was New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, normally a scourge of Republicans, whose essay on what he dubbed “the new P.C.” critiqued left-wing activists for their zeal to play language cop, shout down arguments and shut down debate outright.

It will surprise absolutely nobody that I think the phenomenon that Chait describes is real. But I come not to judge but to explain — because whether you like or loathe the “P.C.” label, the rise of a more assertive cultural left is clearly one of the defining features of the later Obama years. This assertiveness is palpable among younger activists, on campus and online; it’s visible in controversy after controversy, from Ferguson to campus rape. And it’s interesting to think about exactly where it’s coming from.

The first source, probably, is disappointment with other forms of left-wing politics. A decade ago, the left’s energy was focused on Iraq; in President Obama’s first term, it was divided between his quest for a new New Deal and Occupy Wall Street’s free-form radicalism. But now the antiwar movement is moribund, Occupy has gone the way of the Yippies and it’s been years since the White House proposed a new tax or spending plan that wasn’t D.O.A.

What’s more, despite all the books sold by Thomas Piketty, the paths forward for progressive economic policy are mostly blocked — and not only by a well-entrenched Republican Party, but by liberalism’s ongoing inability to raise the taxes required to pay for the welfare state we already have. Since a long, slow, grinding battle over how to pay for those commitments is unlikely to fire anyone’s imagination, it’s not surprising that cultural causes — race, sex, identity — suddenly seem vastly more appealing.

The second wellspring is a more specific sort of disillusionment. Call it post-post-racialism: a hangover after the heady experience of electing America’s first black president; a frustration with the persistence of racial divides, even in an age of elite African-American achievement; and a sense of outrage over particular tragedies (Trayvon Martin, Ferguson) that seem to lay injustice bare.

Post-post-racial sentiment is connected to economic disappointments, because minorities have fared particularly poorly in the Great Recession’s aftermath...