[Spectator] It was inevitable that the wave of destructive rioting and looting that has swept through cities that are almost all governed by progressive Democrats, triggered initially by outrage over the sickening death in police custody of George Floyd, would be compared to the American urban riots of earlier generations. But the parallels miss profound differences in the underlying economic and social dynamics.
The Detroit and Newark riots of 1967 and the Los Angeles riot of 1992, for example, took place in cities suffering from the effects of deindustrialization. Los Angeles is not often thought of as a major manufacturing center, but Southern California had a flourishing aerospace industry that went into decline following the Cold War. The children and grandchildren of prosperous industrial workers found themselves stranded in urban regions whose economies shriveled as manufacturing shut down or moved elsewhere.
The violent riots that have taken place in cities like New York are quite different. Most of the cities that are being trashed by opportunistic looters, leftist radicals and criminal gangs lost significant manufacturing long ago. Some of them, like Washington, DC, were never industrial centers. These post-industrial cities are centers of finance like New York, tech like San Francisco, or government like Washington, not centers of physical production, most of which in the 21st century takes place on cheap land on the outskirts of cities or in rural areas.
The economy of America’s major hub cities is based not on profits from the sale of manufactured goods, but on economic rents of various kinds. Interest payments flow to financiers on Wall Street. Royalties for the use of intellectual properties flow to Silicon Valley tech firms and individual tech tycoons. Similar royalties flow to the Hollywood-based entertainment industry. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and search engines like Google derive quasi-rents from their near-monopolies of online advertisements.
These three industries — Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood — provide the donor base for the Democratic party, a political machine that has virtually unchecked one-party control of most larger cities in the United States. Industries that make physical products and engage in physical services — national manufacturing, oil and gas, agribusiness, logistics — tend to contribute to the Republican party.
The political economy of America’s progressive Democratic cities is an extreme version of the very trickle-down economics that Democrats like to denounce. Financial rents and intellectual property payments flow from around the US and the world to billionaires and firms in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other ’blue’ cities. Some of the rents that go to the Democratic rich are then shared as payoffs to constituencies that get out the vote for Democratic machine politicians, of which the most important are the public-sector employee and teachers’ unions. Urban police unions, whose members are heavily working class and often conservative, sometimes have a tense relationship with left-liberal Democratic machines.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
06/25/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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#1
Someone else is realising that progressivism is a way to funnel money to the rentier establishment.
The MSM is just a way of keeping support for a rentierist economy rather than a capitalist one.
[Federalist] Senate Republicans voted on Wednesday to confirm Judge Cory Wilson, a Yale-educated Mississippi appellate judge with extensive state and federal government experience, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Judge Wilson is President Trump’s 200th Article III judicial appointment and 53rd federal circuit judge, filling 25% of the federal judiciary and previously shattering the all-time-record pace for appointments to the critically important federal courts of appeals — the last stop for more than 99% of all federal appeals.
To put this in perspective, President Obama appointed 55 circuit judges in 8 years; President Trump has appointed 53 in under 4. In doing this, President Trump has filled every federal circuit-court vacancy.
At 200 (and counting), President Trump is #2 of 45 for the pace of all Article III judges. And the only reason President Trump also did not shatter this record is because Congress created 152 new judgeships (25%) for President Carter to fill.
Despite the Senate Democrats’ and their leftwing allies’ rhetoric, President Trump’s judges are some of the most qualified in our nation’s history. Don’t simply take my word for it: Leftwing commentator Ian Millhiser wrote an extensive piece on this, summarized here.
#2
..when you are guaranteed life time appointment with no real possibility of removal, I'd give them hours.
Its a caste. Self selecting, right schools, right company of brothers and sisters, know the secret handshake. In 1800 about anyone who could be a senator, representative or president, could be appointed a federal judge. Today, its a lockout maintained by that caste.
[American Thinker] In the midst of a lot of disheartening news with rampaging mobs destroying displays of America's heritage, a point of light is standing out: South Dakota's governor, Kristi Noem.
Writer Ben Shapiro brought up that with Washington, Jefferson and other statues being toppled, maybe Mount Rushmore would be targeted next.
Which was like balm on a bleeding wound, given that these "trained Marxists" as they call themselves, have targeted Lincoln, Cervantes, the World War II monument, U.S. Grant, St. Junipero Serra, Mattis Baldwin, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt and other truly beloved and admirable figures in America's heritage, not because they have any serious reason, but because their aim is to humiliate America. That's why they don't target the Lenin statue in Seattle, to take but one example. They also know that with blue-city and blue-state officials at the helm, they will not only let them attack America's beloved symbols, they will take a knee to them for doing it. It's as vile a racket as any on earth.
Which explains why South Dakota's governor's response was so important. Build something in South Dakota for posterity, expect that posterity will actually be able to view it. Some things are stable. Some institutions are strong. Some ladies aren't for turning.
Noem stands as a rock in a sea of human jellyfish.
#3
At Mt. Rushmore, they need armed guards on top ready to stop any vandals trying to deface the monuments.
Same with down below. And stopping means stopping with armed force if necessary.
And countermeasures against drones.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/25/2020 16:02 Comments ||
Top||
#4
O.K. I have to ask the questions, "Where did these self-righteous pricks get the idea to think they have the moral superiority and right to tear down monuments placed by someone else? At the same why do these looney left politicians think they have the right to abet these mobs by doing nothing and encouraging it to happen?
[gab.com] Any chance of a Conservative Grifters category?
Meh. One wants one’s commentators to respond to the facts when they develop from initial impressions. The commenters at the gab.com link, on the other hand, are vile specimens of humanity, at least as far down the thread as I bothered to read.
#5
Is it two-faced to modify your position when new facts come out? That's not being two faced, that's being sane.
Is it two-faced to trust experts at the scene who that this is not a hoax (NASCAR immediately jumped in and said it was a noose) even if you suspect its a hoax because every other time has been a hoax? I don't think that is. In today's day and age I think that's just being prudent.
American Thinker
In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court ruling on gay rights in the workplace, Andrew Sullivan asked what sounded like a reasonable question -- when can proponents of a cause claim victory? This, of course, is a rhetorical question, as Sullivan himself later admits. The answer is "never," and it is as applicable to our current turmoil as to the Court decision. Victory means the game is over. That is not how activism works. Activism is an industry whose only goal is self-perpetuation. Activism provides livelihoods, social, and political power, and a sense of relevance. The refusal to take ’yes’ for an answer means debates continue long past their expiration dates:
When young, professional women are lamenting the lack of financially suitable men, the original feminists have won.
When environmentalists continue playing the same movie, no one believes the ending will be different this time.
When the new battleground for civil rights is ice cream, it may be time to lay down arms.
Like any industry, activism has a marketing wing to manufacture demand for outrage when none exists organically. Sometimes, it’s through a deep dive into someone’s past with the information presented as if it occurred this morning. And other times, it is by attacking a one-time ally who dares to challenge some aspect of the dogma. Either way, the offender is publicly browbeaten, perhaps fired from his/her job, and activists proclaim how "we’re not there yet." You’ll hear no mention of where "there" is or how it can be reached because it is a rhetorical unicorn. Even reasonable questions are treated as hostile acts. Heresy must be silenced.
#3
The permanent state creates problems and then poses expensive solutions to solve the defined so-called problem. In the process they create vast bureaucracies to address the designed problem. Age-old con game.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
