Mostly Monday Reads: Party Time!

“Come on, Mr. President. Just do it!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The DNC begins today in Chicago. It’s a busy schedule of what’s ahead for the future, but tonight’s focus will be on President Joe Biden’s long record of public service.  Here’s the line-up of events and speakers.

This is from Axios. “DNC lineup: Who’s speaking and what to expect.”

The Democratic National Convention will open in Chicago on Monday, with President Biden speaking in prime time as he passes the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Driving the news: Convention organizers released night-by-night themes and speaker details on Sunday morning. One speaker who’s not on the official agenda but Axios has confirmed will take the stage on Tuesday: former First Lady Michelle Obama.

• Monday, “For the People”: Biden and Dr. Jill Biden speak, along with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a welcome from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
• Tuesday, “A Bold Vision for America’s Future”: Former President Obama plus second gentleman Doug Emhoff, with a welcome from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
• Wednesday, “A Fight for Our Freedoms”: Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz delivers his acceptance speech, preceded by former President Clinton, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (per CNN).
• Thursday, “For Our Future”: Harris accepts the convention’s nomination for president.

Other speakers include Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

• Former President Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter, is expected to speak on behalf of his grandfather, who has said he hopes to stay alive long enough to vote for Harris.

Sneak peek: The stairs at the delegate entrance will say “History Is In Your Hands” — a quote from Biden’s Oval Office address on July 24.

• As delegates arrive on Monday ahead of Biden’s speech, digital signage in the United Center will say: “History is in your hands” and “Spread the faith.”

Robert Reich sums up what I feel about Biden’s four years.  I was beginning my career as an economist when Ronald Reagan took over. I was working in a highly regulated banking industry about to be turned loose.  Eventually, my first home had a fixed rate of 16.7%, which my employment turned into 12%. That’s just one of the nightmare stories I have to tell students.

I attended schools that produced ‘freshwater’ economists, which is a term that basically describes us as not coming from either coast, likely public university educated, and by no means radical.  During that time, I lived through two recessions that took out my nascent savings and investment portfolio. I realized that the radical policy was not coming from the Democratic Party.

By the time I found out about the Iran-Contra affair, I was ready to vote for Bill Clinton.  I didn’t lose much in the “Great Recession” because I knew another Republican meant another economic roller-coaster ride. The last Reagan recession took out most of my parents’ retirement savings, but they didn’t want to discuss why. If you know how to use derivatives, and that’s where hedge fund managers come in, you can make money in any economy.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t been very accessible to regular folks until recently.

My oldest Kansas City Cousin and her husband graduated from Ivy League Schools, Princeton and Vassar. One time, when I was in high school, they drove to buy a car from Dad’s Ford Dealership in Iowa. My dad gave them the usual family price.  I was their flower girl at their wedding and spent much of my young life with my Kansas City family. I adored them.

Her lawyer husband told me that the only way to grow an economy was to give massive tax cuts to the wealthy to start businesses, which would create jobs. I can’t remember exactly what started that conversation.  Although, I must have said something outside of the orthodox Republican Policy Bible at the time.  It sounded logical but seemed too good to be true when I started thinking about it.  I’ve never gotten the chance to tell him that it doesn’t work, will never work, and actually works worse than anyone ever thought now that I’ve got my doctorate in Financial Economics, worked at the Fed, and taught and researched economics and finance since 1980.  I now have the chops and the proof of why all that does is create chaos in the overall economy and siphon public funds to people who don’t need any more wealth.

I’m not sure why people fondly remember the Reagan years, but they were not economic good times.  Also, I found out the Republicans will run up huge deficits as long as the rich or defense contractors get the results of whatever happened to create them.  Trickle-down economics is even more of a failure with all the incentives now of not taxing capital gains and giving tax breaks for basically stock market gambling. The rich do not put their gains into actual industry anymore. They keep rolling it into the stock market, and then they’re great consumers of things like gigantic German Yachts and all kinds of goodies that mess up our trade balance.  I voted for Bill Clinton because his policy came from economists and worked.  Reagan was the one who put taxes on tips, unemployment, and Social Security.  He had to make huge tax increases to compensate for the huge deficit with the 1981 tax cuts. So, from 1982 to 1993, there were huge tax cuts, including some from “Read My Lips” by HW Bush.  Weirdly, undoing the taxes on tips and Social Security that Trump is high on is basically removing Reagan’s economic legacy.

But enough of that rant … on to the Reich commentary.

Tonight’s opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago will be an opportunity for the Democratic Party and the nation to take stock of Joe Biden’s term of office and thank him for his service.

He still has five months to go as president, of course, but the baton has been passed.

Biden’s singular achievement has been to change the economic paradigm that reigned since Reagan and return to one that dominated public life between 1933 and 1980 — and is far superior to the one that has prevailed since.

Biden’s democratic capitalism is neither socialism nor “big government.” It is, rather, a return to an era when government organized the market for the greater good.

The Great Crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression taught the nation a crucial lesson that we forgot after Reagan’s presidency: markets are human creations. The economy that collapsed in 1929 was the consequence of allowing nearly unlimited borrowing, encouraging people to gamble on Wall Street, and permitting the Street to take huge risks with other people’s money.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration reversed this. They stopped the looting of America. They also gave Americans a modicum of economic security. During World War II, they put almost every American to work.

Subsequent Democratic and Republican administrations enlarged and extended democratic capitalism. Wall Street was regulated, as were television networks, airlines, railroads, and other common carriers. CEO pay was modest. Taxes on the highest earners financed public investments in infrastructure (such as the national highway system) and higher education.

America’s postwar industrial policy spurred innovation. The Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration developed satellite communications, container ships, and the internet. The National Institutes of Health did trailblazing basic research in biochemistry, DNA, and infectious diseases.

Public spending rose during economic downturns to encourage hiring. Antitrust enforcers broke up AT&T and other monopolies. Small businesses were protected from giant chain stores. Labor unions thrived. By the 1960s, a third of all private-sector workers were unionized. Large corporations sought to be responsive to all their stakeholders.

But then America took a giant U-turn. The OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s brought double-digit inflation followed by Fed Chair Paul Volcker’s effort to “break the back” of it by raising interest rates so high that the economy fell into deep recession.

All of which prepared the ground for Reagan’s war on democratic capitalism. From 1981 onward, a new bipartisan orthodoxy emerged that markets functioned well only if the government got out of the way.

The goal of economic policy thereby shifted from the common good to economic growth, even though Americans already well-off gained most from that growth. And the means shifted from public oversight of the market to deregulation, free trade, privatization, “trickle-down” tax cuts, and deficit reduction — all of which helped the monied interests make even more money.

If you notice the last two Republican administrations with the emphasis on the last one, there were very few real economists who advised the President.  Trump only had one with the creds but was considered insane by his peers because he fitted his papers to a political take rather than data analysis and the usual scientific method.

No matter what party you’re in, and I know Bernanke, Mankiw, Greenspan, and Krugman feel this way, the facts are the facts.  Concentrating fiscal policy on Main Street and the middle and working classes is the best use of tax dollars to keep the engine of economic growth steadily growing.  Biden’s stewardship of the economy has proved this.  He also provided input on the Obama administration’s cleanup of the huge mess called “The Great Recession,” which was completely on the back of bad policy and lack of oversight regarding the financial economy.  I am a Financial Economist. We know enough to know that these things should not happen if it wasn’t the habit of Pols to go after Dark Money and then vote to install bad policy into law.  It’s also disheartening to see it on the Supreme Court, where Dark Money has completely corrupted at least two Judges.

And the crazy thing is we’re back to being called Communists again which, like capitalism, is a Marxist theoretical abstract that cannot work, has never worked, and has never actually been implemented anywhere. We live in mixed market economies, and their characteristics determine what kind of oversight they require.  You cannot compare a market where there are only two providers, like airplane manufacturing and Boeing and Airbus, with the market for apples. There have never been any economies where the government owns all the production factors. The Soviet Style system was called a command economy. Even the Chinese have given up on the planned command economy and the Cubans have many markets based on private ownership. It’s not just the major ones. I can’t believe we’re back to red-baiting.

The most interesting trivia I have for you today is that Donald J. Harris, Kamala’s father, is a bona fide Emeritus Economics Professor at Stanford. His research is primarily in developing economies. He published a book in 1978, “Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution,” which relies heavily on the new statistical methods that were developing at the time and takes the field from political philosophy to using scientific methods and data to see what works!  That’s my kind of pragmatism.  You wonder what kind of talk the Harris family had at the dinner table.

So, while this shindig in Chicago gets going, watch the week for Trump’s further insane adventures for attention. Unfortunately, he usually succeeds at getting press attention even when it’s not newsworthy or basically a rant of a senile old man stuck in the 1980s.  People need to know how bad it was 4 years ago with COVID-19 unassailed by policy and treated with denial. We are the strongest economy in the world with the strongest growth.  Economists were prepared to see China become the number one economy shortly, but it’s not because of this administration’s policy. Inflation is back within normal parameters.  That’s not to say there are not people who still aren’t seeing the benefits. But Kamala’s policy announcement last Friday was full of suggestions to get everyone back on track. The answer to folks left behind is not in the Project 2025 Playbook. (See BB’s post on Saturday for coverage of the Harris/Walz economic priorities in her Caturday Post.)

David R Lurie, who is writing for Public Notice, writes, “Trump’s carny act isn’t working anymore. His Folgers Coffee™ Conference showed a candidate in decline.  I’m sure the DNC productions will have much better production chops, pithy content, and actual policy presentation.

Last Thursday, Donald Trump held a “press conference” outside a building in his Bedminster country club in New Jersey, done up with many American flags so as to vaguely resemble the White House.

Trump rambled on astride a tableau of groceries, ranging from brightly toned condiments and a Wheaties™ box (bearing the image of Billie Jean King) to tubs of Folgers Coffee™ (caff and decaf) and packages of sausage and bacon that lay roasting in the midsummer heat.

Trump’s team also assembled a chorus, apparently composed of club visitors, that cheered and jeered during the “news conference” when needed.

Simply put, it was quite a weird scene.

The event was all the more bizarre because Trump hardly referred to (or even acknowledged) the cornucopia of processed food arrayed around him during his typically lengthy and meandering rant before the assembled press corps.

Presumably, the food had been intended to serve as a prop for a “policy” discussion of inflation. Trump, however, spent most of his time in front of the cameras deriding Kamala Harris’s intelligence and appearance, and insisting that he’s “entitled” to “personally attack” her, because, as Trump explained, she unfairly labeled him “weird.”

To borrow an old ad meme, where’s the beef? Well, it was sitting on the table at that presser, rotting in the sun.  That’s quite a metaphor for what’s happening with the DonOld/JD show.  JD’s rallies look like the Time Out Room for bad behavior.  And no one can take 90 minutes of Trump’s senile ramblings on sharks, batteries, and how much better he looks than Harris.

The topic that I’m looking forward to hearing about at the DNC is the presentation on how Trump proposes an existential threat to democracy. Will we see a lot of Project 2025?  How do they make it not look like a school assembly event? This is from CNN. “Democrats to highlight threat to democracy they say Trump poses, giving speaking roles to January 6 committee lawmakers.”

Democrats gathered in Chicago this week for their national convention will highlight the threat to democracy that they say former President Donald Trump poses, giving prominent speaking roles to lawmakers, as well as to a Capitol Police officer injured during the January 6, 2021, riots.

An official with Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign told CNN that among those speakers are Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who both served on the House select committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection. That committee ultimately recommended in its 2022 report that Trump be barred from holding office again.

Retired St. Aquilino Gonell, one of the Capitol Police officers injured during the January 6 attack, will also address the convention. Since responding to the attack on the US Capitol over three years ago, Gonell has become a public face of the insurrection’s toll and a vocal critic of Trump and the Republicans who continue to defend him.

“Donald Trump’s failure to denounce the violence on January 6, 2021 is a betrayal to every officer who put their life on the line that day — and to every veteran who risked everything to defend our country,” Gonell, who is supporting Harris, said in a statement provided to CNN. “You cannot say you back the police or the Constitution if you’re offering pardons to criminals who tried to destroy our democracy, hurt our leaders and attack law enforcement.”

Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who also served on the January 6 committee, is scheduled to address the convention Thursday, CNN previously reported. Kinzinger, who is now a CNN political commentator, was one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment for “incitement of an insurrection” in relation to his role during the attack on the Capitol.

The so-called Tennessee Three — state Reps. Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson — are also expected to speak at the convention. Jones and Pearson were expelled from the Tennessee House last year after the three lawmakers led a gun control protest on the chamber floor. They have since won reelection.

Also scheduled to speak during the week, according to the campaign official, are Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who served in the state Legislature in 2021 when Democrats sought to block restrictive voting legislation in the state, and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who serves as pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. served.

Before dropping out of the 2024 race, President Joe Biden made the argument that Trump posed a threat to democracy a driving feature of his candidacy.

“Anita Dunn says Joe Biden’s speech is about looking forward, not back. “This is not a time for legacy,” the longtime Biden aide said on CNN.”  This analysis can be found at Politico. It’s written by Irrie Sentner.

Anita Dunn is looking to the future — and says President Joe Biden is, too.

The former senior Biden adviser, who left the White House last month to work with the Future Forward super PAC supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, said on CNN today that Biden in his speech will make a “resounding argument for why Kamala Harris should be elected president in 2024.” She joked that he is now Harris’ “volunteer in chief.”

Tonight’s speech will cap off a half-century political career for the president. But, Dunn said, it won’t be about looking back.

“This is not a time for legacy,” Dunn said. “This is a time for arguing why Kamala Harris is the best candidate.”

Biden will be speaking to a party that pushed him to drop his reelection bid — and endorsing a candidate the party has since rallied around. Those intraparty tensions are still playing out at the DNC.

Well, it’s bound to be much better than whatever the Republicans put on.  I remember turning off Pat Buchanan’s racist rant in his Culture Wars speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention and was glad I didn’t attend in person.  The state convention was weird enough and overrun with what we now call White Christian Nationalists. Because even though I  was running as a Republican at the time, it was another one of those things that made me vote for Clinton. I could tell then that there was no saving the Republican Party. I was an Independent for a long time.

So, I’m certain there will be a lot going on that won’t include all that anger and bigotry of the other!  Stay tuned! You may exit the Rabbit Hole now!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

One of my other cousins performed at the White House as Martha Jefferson in 1776 when Nixon was President in 1970 as part of the Broadway Cast.  She fell asleep on a settee to the chagrin of some tourists who probably thought they’d seen a ghost. Her mother was a descendant of Hamilton.  Ever so often, a glimpse at the founding fathers singing is fun. So, it seems appropriate that we watch Obama and Biden watching “One Last Time.” I’m waiting to see if this show song is played at the DNC for the President.