Economist Stephanie Kelton exposes the deficit myths. Rep. Brady (R-TX) called out for lying. Tom C, a PDR Posse member's insightful commentary. Supply chain truth.
Democrats/progressives/liberals, being aligned with being educated, keep thinking making logical arguments to change the minds of people somehow makes political sense. Sure sounds a lot like progressives standing on the sidelines in 1930s Germany saying the population is not stupid enough to be suckered in by that CLEARLY know-nothing Hitler.
The Republicans know better. Changing the greater population's mind about something is a propaganda/brainwashing effort, NOT a debate of logic and facts. The GOP recognized and began working on that philosophy a long time ago, but still within my lifetime.
FoxNews wasn't actually a new idea. People miss that. FoxNews was nothing more than bringing right wing propaganda AM radio to TV. Think like a businessman. Murdoch never would have gambled money on something as expensive as a TV station without already having a successful model (AM rant radio) to strongly suggest the investment would pay off and not flop.
How does this apply to today's postings? "Economist blows a hole into deficit myth". Ya, we progressives just LOVE all those nice educated factual arguments, don't we? Makes us feel great.
Before I go further, I should emphasize Ms. Kelton's work is great. I'm not attacking it. I'm only out to attack efforts to use it to win elections.
We keep getting to feel great about this kind of stuff while we watch the right wing propaganda machine laugh at us and continue making progress increasing right wing power. In other words, face REAL POLITICAL FACTS. Did all this feeling great about our being correct prevent a 6-3 activist right wing Supreme Court?
Here's the parallel from business. Business person #1 has totally convince him/herself s/he has exactly the product/service consumers need, and has all kinds of facts and figures to prove it. Yet a competitor is getting all the sales with a competing product/service. So person #1 gets the joy of going bankrupt being absolutely convinced they had the best product and the consumers were idiots. The competitor gets to enjoy being a billionaire totally not caring what person #1 thought.
Bottom line. We need to STOP trying to TELL the consumers (voters) they're fools for not buying our product while we happily go bankrupt "knowing" we knew what was best for the consumers. Face the fact if we want to be successful, supply the consumers (voters) with what they want to buy. THEN as we have power, we can do all the other things. For example, its only after having told the consumers (voters) that we're selling what they actually want to buy that we can then change the voting laws. After all, it's precisely what the Republicans have been doing for decades now. Tell the consumers (voters) we're selling one thing, and then after they give us their business use the power to Gerrymander and change the voting laws.
So... stop trying to tell the consumers they're wrong about the deficit. They don't "feel" it. It's a losing argument. It would take decades of persistent propaganda to move the needle on that. INSTEAD, blame the deficit on the Republicans.
This bring us back around to messaging. STOP playing defense on messaging. STOP running retreating into a defensive posture every time the Republican spin machine invents some new soundbite. Go on offense.
Not only slam the Republicans with soundbites, but disarm their soundbites and/or turn them around.
As just one example, we need to stop just running away and playing defensive in response to "tax and spend liberals". In fact, playing DEFENSIVE against that soundbite is PRECISELY what using this book POLITICALLY is trying to do. (The book is fine, but not all that useful in the greater political sphere.) Instead, we need to acknowledge the consumers (voters) are "buying" the "product" that says "deficits are bad" and rejecting the "product" that says "stop worrying about deficits".
So all this gets us to promoting a "borrow and spend Republicans" soundbite, combined with actually making an effort to campaign on the fact it's the REPUBLICANS who keep increasing the deficit and Democrats who keep lowering it.
If Republicans are being successful with their "deficits are bad" message, then GREAT. Leverage their success and turn it against them. Go on offense against the Republicans using their own messaging successes against them.
Unfortunately Pete failed to word one thing carefully enough, and while rushing to promote infrastructure missed an opportunity to point out the impact of the GOP War on Working Class Wages and Benefits.
#1. Just saying "ports" is now unfair to the "ports" themselves. The "ports" are unloading the ships but facing problems with businesses not moving their containers out of the ports fast enough. So the containers already on shore have been clogging up the process. Pete could have clarified that while also giving his department a pat on the back by mentioning their efforts to get those containers not being efficiently handled by businesses out of the ports themselves and into other longer term holding areas. The Ports of LA and Long Beach just recently had to impose a $100 per container per day fine on businesses for leaving their containers clogging up the ports.
#2. CEPR had a good paper on how its the collapse of trucking in America which is currently responsible for not getting the containers moved around the country. Average age of truckers has now risen to 55 due to the GOP attack on the Teamsters as part of their War on Working Classes Wages and Benefits. Thanks to this War on Working Class Wages and Benefits, it makes sense nobody wants to go into trucking as a career.
In other words, the free labor market judged a while ago the results of the GOP War on Working Class Wages and Benefits as it pertains to trucking and decided to not supply the market with truckers.
There is an attempt, which hasn't gained much steam yet, to try and shift blame away from the GOP War on Wages and Benefits and toward the lack of trucking schools. Here again, we see the GOP trying to mislead to avoid acknowledging free labor market economics.
Trucking schools are free market enterprises. If there was a demand by workers to learn trucking, trucking schools would pop up everywhere trying to make money teaching people trucking. It's only the lack of anyone wanting to learn to be a trucker because of the GOP War on Wages and Benefits having made trucking unattractive that causes nobody to want to invest in trucking schools.
Democrats/progressives/liberals, being aligned with being educated, keep thinking making logical arguments to change the minds of people somehow makes political sense. Sure sounds a lot like progressives standing on the sidelines in 1930s Germany saying the population is not stupid enough to be suckered in by that CLEARLY know-nothing Hitler.
The Republicans know better. Changing the greater population's mind about something is a propaganda/brainwashing effort, NOT a debate of logic and facts. The GOP recognized and began working on that philosophy a long time ago, but still within my lifetime.
FoxNews wasn't actually a new idea. People miss that. FoxNews was nothing more than bringing right wing propaganda AM radio to TV. Think like a businessman. Murdoch never would have gambled money on something as expensive as a TV station without already having a successful model (AM rant radio) to strongly suggest the investment would pay off and not flop.
How does this apply to today's postings? "Economist blows a hole into deficit myth". Ya, we progressives just LOVE all those nice educated factual arguments, don't we? Makes us feel great.
Before I go further, I should emphasize Ms. Kelton's work is great. I'm not attacking it. I'm only out to attack efforts to use it to win elections.
We keep getting to feel great about this kind of stuff while we watch the right wing propaganda machine laugh at us and continue making progress increasing right wing power. In other words, face REAL POLITICAL FACTS. Did all this feeling great about our being correct prevent a 6-3 activist right wing Supreme Court?
Here's the parallel from business. Business person #1 has totally convince him/herself s/he has exactly the product/service consumers need, and has all kinds of facts and figures to prove it. Yet a competitor is getting all the sales with a competing product/service. So person #1 gets the joy of going bankrupt being absolutely convinced they had the best product and the consumers were idiots. The competitor gets to enjoy being a billionaire totally not caring what person #1 thought.
Bottom line. We need to STOP trying to TELL the consumers (voters) they're fools for not buying our product while we happily go bankrupt "knowing" we knew what was best for the consumers. Face the fact if we want to be successful, supply the consumers (voters) with what they want to buy. THEN as we have power, we can do all the other things. For example, its only after having told the consumers (voters) that we're selling what they actually want to buy that we can then change the voting laws. After all, it's precisely what the Republicans have been doing for decades now. Tell the consumers (voters) we're selling one thing, and then after they give us their business use the power to Gerrymander and change the voting laws.
So... stop trying to tell the consumers they're wrong about the deficit. They don't "feel" it. It's a losing argument. It would take decades of persistent propaganda to move the needle on that. INSTEAD, blame the deficit on the Republicans.
This bring us back around to messaging. STOP playing defense on messaging. STOP running retreating into a defensive posture every time the Republican spin machine invents some new soundbite. Go on offense.
Not only slam the Republicans with soundbites, but disarm their soundbites and/or turn them around.
As just one example, we need to stop just running away and playing defensive in response to "tax and spend liberals". In fact, playing DEFENSIVE against that soundbite is PRECISELY what using this book POLITICALLY is trying to do. (The book is fine, but not all that useful in the greater political sphere.) Instead, we need to acknowledge the consumers (voters) are "buying" the "product" that says "deficits are bad" and rejecting the "product" that says "stop worrying about deficits".
So all this gets us to promoting a "borrow and spend Republicans" soundbite, combined with actually making an effort to campaign on the fact it's the REPUBLICANS who keep increasing the deficit and Democrats who keep lowering it.
If Republicans are being successful with their "deficits are bad" message, then GREAT. Leverage their success and turn it against them. Go on offense against the Republicans using their own messaging successes against them.
Unfortunately Pete failed to word one thing carefully enough, and while rushing to promote infrastructure missed an opportunity to point out the impact of the GOP War on Working Class Wages and Benefits.
#1. Just saying "ports" is now unfair to the "ports" themselves. The "ports" are unloading the ships but facing problems with businesses not moving their containers out of the ports fast enough. So the containers already on shore have been clogging up the process. Pete could have clarified that while also giving his department a pat on the back by mentioning their efforts to get those containers not being efficiently handled by businesses out of the ports themselves and into other longer term holding areas. The Ports of LA and Long Beach just recently had to impose a $100 per container per day fine on businesses for leaving their containers clogging up the ports.
#2. CEPR had a good paper on how its the collapse of trucking in America which is currently responsible for not getting the containers moved around the country. Average age of truckers has now risen to 55 due to the GOP attack on the Teamsters as part of their War on Working Classes Wages and Benefits. Thanks to this War on Working Class Wages and Benefits, it makes sense nobody wants to go into trucking as a career.
In other words, the free labor market judged a while ago the results of the GOP War on Working Class Wages and Benefits as it pertains to trucking and decided to not supply the market with truckers.
There is an attempt, which hasn't gained much steam yet, to try and shift blame away from the GOP War on Wages and Benefits and toward the lack of trucking schools. Here again, we see the GOP trying to mislead to avoid acknowledging free labor market economics.
Trucking schools are free market enterprises. If there was a demand by workers to learn trucking, trucking schools would pop up everywhere trying to make money teaching people trucking. It's only the lack of anyone wanting to learn to be a trucker because of the GOP War on Wages and Benefits having made trucking unattractive that causes nobody to want to invest in trucking schools.