Key features of Labour election manifesto

The Labour party has released a radical manifesto (what is called in the US a party platform) for the December 12th election and this article discusses its main features.

The Labour leader has launched the most radical and potentially transformative manifesto published by a mainstream party in decades in what is potentially a make-or-break moment for his party in the election campaign. The plans in the 105-page document (pdf) would fundamentally reset the relationship between the state, citizens and business, adding about £80bn to the amount government spends every year by the end of the next parliament, taking tax levels to their highest sustained numbers since the end of the second world war, unleashing a blizzard of investment and providing citizens with a plethora of attractive services, like free full-fibre broadband, free university tuition, free adult learning, free personal care, free prescriptions and free dental check-ups.

You can read the full manifesto here and a more detailed analysis of it here.

Here are the highlights from a speech given by Jeremy Corbyn when the manifesto was released.

The menace of private equity firms

Luke Darby explains how venture capital and private equity firms are responsible for destroying otherwise healthy companies, killing jobs, devastating communities, while reaping fat rewards for their investors. Once they take over a company, the private equity partners take out huge fees for themselves, burdening the company with large debts.

The quick and dirty explanation of private equity is that these are firms that buy other businesses. They restructure acquired companies in order to increase short-term profits or otherwise make them look more appealing to a buyer, and then sell them at a profit. While that means a nice chunk of cash for the investors who made the sale, it can be a chaotic and disastrous process for the employees of the companies being bought and sold, and they might get laid off or see their company broken up and sold out from under them.
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Ok, that does it. I’m done with Pete Buttigieg

I have been increasingly disillusioned with the candidacy of Pete Buttigieg who is revealing himself to be yet another standard-issue Democratic party establishment candidate, seeking money from big financial interests and sniping at the progressive policies of people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in favor of the ‘middle ground’ that is so favored by the oligarchy. He is increasingly becoming a smug defender of the status quo. But it was his statements about Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden that drove me over the edge. These comments were made back in March but I was not aware of them until yesterday.
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The making of a ‘best seller’

Reporter Nick Confessore has been digging into how Donald Trump Jr.’s book became a #1 non-fiction bestseller an it appears to be exactly as I suggested in a previous post, that the Republican National Committee purchased copies in bulk to the tune f $94,800. Confessore has the documentation to prove it.

See also the follow up tweets.

Books-a-Million is selling the book at a discounted price of $23 so the $94,800 would have purchased more that 4,000 books.

Scott Warren acquitted in second trial

It took the jury just a few hours to acquit the human rights activist who was charged with breaking the law because he provided food, water, clothing, and shelter, to weary immigrants crossing the desert regions on the US-Mexican border. The first trial had ended in a hung jury and the Customs and Border Protection agency decided to try him again and this time urged the judge to not allow Warren to bring up the cruel policies of Donald Trump as a defense.
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First they took from the poor, then the middle class, then the upper middle class, then …

Everyone knows the response that bank robber Willie Sutton supposedly gave when asked why he robbed banks. He is said to have replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Sutton denied he ever said it but that story has entered the folklore.

But that saying seems relevant when we see something similar happening with the way that the oligarchy increases its share of the wealth, by going where the money is. We know that the poor have been squeezed so that the wealthy get even wealthier. But as the money left among the poor dries up. the oligarchs started squeezing the middle class. Wolf Richter says that it now appears that the oligarchs are starting to put the squeeze on the upper middle class.
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Truly pathetic

Today photographers captured the notes in Donald Trump’s hand as he spoke to reporters. There is nothing scandalous in them. All it says is:

I WANT NOTHING
I WANT NOTHING
I WANT NO QUID PRO QUO
TELL ZELLINSKY TO DO THE RIGHT THING
THIS IS THE FINAL WORD FROM THE PRES. OF THE UNITED STATES

What is extraordinary is that he needs notes to say such ordinary things and even to repeat banalities like “I want nothing”.

On the one hand, we can be reassured that he knows how to read. On the other, it looks like he never learned to write in cursive script.

Bernie calls it as he sees it: What happened in Bolivia was a coup

Bolivia is in turmoill following the coup that ousted President Evo Morales who resigned and is now in Mexico. At least 20 people have been killed in clashes between the security forces and protestors. Morales’ political party the Movement for Socialism (Mas) has the majority in parliament and could vote to reject Morales’s resignation but have chosen not to, for fear of exacerbating the tensions.

Bernie Sanders was questioned about events in Bolivia and was unequivocal about calling it a coup.

So far, we have had two successful right wing takeovers of Latin American countries in Brazil and Bolivia and an as-yet unsuccessful ongoing attempt in Venezuela, with the US backing all three.