Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer takes $1,727,974 from AIPAC
Senator Susan Collins of Maine $646,758 she has received from AIPAC.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is still intensely focused on ousting Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, despite divisions in his caucus over her opponent, Graham Platner, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports off a new interview with Schumer. “We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the majority,” Schumer said, ticking off three reasons why he thinks Collins will lose: Medicaid cuts hitting Maine, her handling of President Donald Trump, and resentment over the end of Roe v. Wade. Collins told Semafor separately she’s seen this before — and won: “We heard the same song six years ago, exactly.” And she praised the Democrats who aren’t backing Platner: “That shows discernment, integrity, and wisdom on their part.” Schumer made sure to widen his path to the majority to six seats, and offered up a new catchphrase about Trump’s second midterm: “Costs, chaos and corruption.”
This reader can only marvel at the Chief Justice John Roberts daring to present himself as the ‘voice of reason’ in contradistinction to Trump’s Know-Nothingism. That the leader of the Neo-Confederate/Originalist coterie, that now dominates the Supreme Court, and the author of the opinion of that Court, in the matter of Shelby County v. Holder. With the aid of Judicial Troglodyte Antonin Scalia’s ‘red head’ , a dull-witted pseudo- argument, that passed for an adequate reply to Justice Ginsberg’s eviscerating dissent, demonstrates the desperation of the whole of America’s political class.
That both Scalia and Roberts were/are the front men for a Federalist Society’s blatant racism under the rubric, self-apologetic of ‘Originalism’. That Brown v. Board I and II, presented as ‘Sociology’ rather than ‘Law’ is about the recrudescence of the Dixiecrats in the garb of bourgeouise political respectability: The Federalist Society!
Such is the desperation, indeed the political malevolence of these civic actors, that they look to Learned Hand’s ‘evolution’ of the question of Brown I and II :
That practice exemplified the pursuit of justice within the bounds of the law. Hand was a lot more comfortable working within that firm constraint than in dealing with the very broad terms of the Constitution. He was intrepid about deciding what was properly before his court and scrupulous about refusing to make decisions about matters that were not—a version of judicial restraint far more realistic and less severe than what he vainly preached about restraint in applying the Constitution. It was this pragmatic, disciplined, and fair-minded approach and Hand’s trenchant, dignified, and urbane application of it that made him so admired by lawyers across the legal spectrum.
‘Judicial restraint’ is another name for rationalization of injustice, because state legislatures were never going to recognize, that the lives and the psychic and psychological health and well being of black children was a moral and civic imperative! Warren and eight other Justices made that commitment to those children, and the fate of the Nation ‘conceived in Liberty’ for some and not for others!
Protesters and tenants facing displacement hold placards as they attend a rally against private equity-backed firm Greenbrook Partners in Brooklyn, New York on October 15, 2021. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
After a long journey through the academy and into public discourse, neoliberalism has finally been widely accepted as a description of post-1970s economic reality. But recent political developments, especially since the pandemic, have generated discussion about the possibility that something new is emerging.
We asked three historians whether we are witnessing the end of neoliberalism. Amy C. Offner and Gary Gerstle also responded.
—Editors
In a January 2018 Dissent forum, I argued that neoliberalism is a useful term for identifying and conceptualizing a “multifaceted configuration of power against which a diverse, democratic left could and should unite.”
A lot has happened since then. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that our social safety net lay in tatters. Episodes of escalating climate crisis are unmistakable. Movements for black lives have identified racial capitalism—including neoliberal variety—as a root cause of racial injustice. The neoliberal order has been exposed as fraudulent, inefficient, and inequitable.
Yet despite some significant advances by the left, neoliberalism hardly lies in the dustbin of history. Here’s an update on the four core features of neoliberalism that I identified in 2018.
1) Neoliberalism refers to a set of coherent but flexible ideas centered on the belief that markets organize society best. Financial markets hold primary place in the neoliberal model of the market, where investment and investors play pivotal roles.
Despite the egregious failures and enduring crises of private-sector financial markets and institutions in recent years, neoliberal claims about their efficacy endure. The same goes for the neoliberal commitment to maximizing returns to shareholders.
The notion that we need what Mariana Mazzucato calls an “entrepreneurial state”—rather than laissez-faire financial markets—to fund large-scale, long-term investments for public purposes has gained traction during the Biden administration, influencing the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. Even so, the president has repeatedly genuflected to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and their financial backers. As long as they continue to wield power and influence within the White House, and as long as they keep up their campaign contributions to politicians of both parties, neoliberal dogma about private-sector financial markets will continue to inform economic policy. And it would seem that those financiers continue to dodge reputational damage.
None of this damaged the ability of VC, PE, and other managers of private market assets—that is, assets that are not listed on public exchanges—to raise money from investors. Fundraising soared to all-time highs in 2021 and 2022. These firms now sit on a stunning $3 trillion in “dry powder”—funds they haven’t bothered to invest (even as they collect management fees).
Meanwhile, corporations continue to prioritize stock buy-backs to boost the price of their shares, rather than making investments in research, development, production, or jobs. In 2022, S&P 500 corporations set a new record by repurchasing $1.26 trillion of their own stock. Pharmaceutical and biotech corporations’ buy-backsenriched executivesat the expense of research and development for new vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 and everything else. American chip-makers now need federal support because they squandered $168 billion on share repurchases between 2010 and 2021. The major airlines, meanwhile, spent a whopping 96 percent of their cash flows in the last decade to repurchase their own shares, resulting in billions in bailouts during the pandemic. Pressure from unions may have prevented the airlines from resuming buy-backs once federally mandated prohibitions expired; railroad unions have launched a similar campaign after the Norfolk Southern disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, in February.
Finally, it’s possible that new approaches to monetary policy helped repel another Volcker Shock in response to the recent rise in inflation. Even so, as soon as wages—especially for low-paid workers—began to reverse their forty-year decline relative to asset prices, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.
2) Neoliberalism is a range of policies and institutions that release markets from restraints that democracy might impose and that reconfigure the state and civil society in the image of the market. Neoliberal policy and institutions give priority to investment and investors.
Neoliberal tenets about financial markets, investment, and investors persist because these beliefs suffuse a century’s worth of economic policy.
Over the last forty years, U.S. households borrowed vast amounts of money to take advantage of these tax breaks to acquire homes, retirement portfolios, insurance policies, and savings accounts for healthcare and higher education. These leveraged, self-managed, individualized safety nets proved flimsy. When the inevitable financial crises hit in 2008 and 2020, the federal government chose to rescue corporations, not citizens. Pandemic-era assistance and income-support programs amounted to a mere fraction of the cost of bailouts and interventions by the Fed. When they expire this fall, Americans will face the full force of the deep, structural problems in our economy.
3) Neoliberalism identifies a specific moment in the history of capitalism. During the period of “financialization” that began in the 1970s, claims over wealth yet to be produced exploded, infiltrated the lives of people across the world, dominated corporate decision-making, and transformed international relations and global governance.
The term neoliberalism references a period since the 1970s in which the financial sector and financial activity have predominated. Mapping the precise contours of financialization helps us to identify points of pressure in our current moment, which is dominated by a specific set of players: asset managers.
U.S. households invest their savings in mutual and pension funds. Asset management companies, in turn, invest funds pooled from households in stocks, bonds, and riskier private-market assets managed by PE, VC, and hedge funds. At present, the industry holds $98 trillion in global assets under management. Private-market assets represent $20 trillion of that total and generate half the industry’s revenue. BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street together own an estimated 22 percent of the average S&P 500 company, up from 13.5 percent in 2008, according to Boston Consulting Group.
This matters tremendously for how power operates in and through financial markets. Asset managers’ voracious appetite for returns goads the share repurchases mentioned earlier. And collusion and monopolistic practices may occur when asset management firms hold seats on the boards of competing companies. As Americans’ entanglements with finance—as investors and as borrowers—intensified over the last four decades, it was asset managers who gained the upper hand within the corporations in which Americans invested, and the financial institutions that lent to them.
4) Neoliberalism is a disposition toward personal and social life.The neoliberal subject commits himself or herself to accumulating financial and “human capital” for the self and for future generations, always looking to maximize returns on investments of money, time, or emotion.
The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Biden’s plan for student loan forgiveness threatens to trap students’ dreams for the future in a cage of lifetime indebtedness. For now, we’ll face continued pressure to cultivate ourselves as bearers of human capital while surveillance capitalists enrich themselves by commodifying our personal information.
In 2018, I argued that the term neoliberalism “acknowledges the deep connections between a great many . . . of our most pressing challenges.” It “can help us explore those connections empirically, and to challenge outcomes that are often taken for granted or perceived as inevitable.”
I still believe this. But I wonder, now, how much is at stake in the use or abuse of the term neoliberalism? More pressing, I think, is the need to integrate into our work the concepts—including racial capitalism and the political philosophy of care—that connect best with the social movements of our day. Only on shared discursive terrain can we build a winning political coalition that will put neoliberalism in its grave.
So what would the death of neoliberalism look like?
Congress would abolish tax breaks for income from investment, inheritance, and fund managers’ compensation. The Securities and Exchange Commission would outlaw stock buy-backs (as it did before 1982), or Congress would snuff out the practice with taxation. Federal, state, and local governments would fund public projects for climate repair and resilience, care infrastructure, and reparative justice for African Americans. The Federal Reserve would target interest rates to suppress asset-price inflation and to sustain full employment.
When all Americans enjoy better, more secure public options to achieve well-being and security, when children’s life chances are not determined by the wealth of their parents or grandparents—only then might neoliberalism pass into history.
Julia Ott is an associate professor in the history of capitalism at the New School in New York City. She is the author of When Wall Street Met Main Street (Harvard, 2011) and the upcoming Why Wealth Is White.
Editor: These first paragarpghs of Stephens eviseration of Graham Platner porvides Stephens with an opportunity to sound the notes of Cotton Mather, of another time and place in American History? Reader do I exagerate? this self-serving apologist needs to deflect the from the crimes of the Gaza Genocide? And the crimes of agains Lebanon? Mr. Stephens finds Graham Platner as the perfect atitdote to the crimes of Netanyahu and his cadre? I quote Stephens paragraph as demonstrative of his ‘methology of deceit’ !
It isn’t clear what effect, if any, Graham Platner’s multiplying personal scandals will have on his chances in the Maine Democratic primary that’s occurring as I write this, to say nothing of November’s general election against Susan Collins, the incumbent Republican senator. But there are at least two good, if contradictory, possibilities.
The first is absolution — not only for Platner, but for every nominee or candidate, Republican or Democratic, with a blemished personal history — on the grounds that we elect or install people in high office to achieve the results we desire, not to serve as paragons of moral rectitude. If nothing else, this could make our politics less repellent to talented if imperfect people who now steer clear of public service because they don’t want to put themselves or their families through the inevitable media inquisition that comes with every campaign.
The second is consistent judgment of anyone, Democrat or Republican, who falls far short of clear and unyielding standards of moral conduct. Perhaps this will finally re-erect the political barriers that formerly prevented shameless people, our current president not least, from degrading our politics and setting a putrescent example of what is — and what isn’t — necessary to reach the high places of American life.
What ought to stop is what we have now: inconsistent standards selectively applied according to our political bias.
Lest you’ve been wintering in Antarctica, here’s what’s lately been learned about Platner, the 41-year-old combat veteran and oyster farmer:
That his wife had told a campaign aide that he had been trading sexually explicit messages with six women, and perhaps as many as a dozen, before the beginning of his political run. That a former girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, alleges that he lied when he claimed he did not know a chest tattoo he had gotten during his military service strongly resembled an official insignia of the Nazi SS, and that he had once referred to it as “my Totenkopf.” That Fifield also alleges that he had once “twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out” and that she later described him as “the most toxic literally abusive man on earth.” That she said he referred to women as “hatchet wounds,” using a crude word for female genitalia. That other women romantically connected to Platner also described unsettling behavior.
Good morning and welcome to White House Watch. Let’s dive into:
The tensions between Trump and Netanyahu
Trump booed at Madison Square Garden
The Maine primary looms
The relationship between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu has been as tight as it has been volatile — and reached a new inflection point early this month, as James Shotter, our Jerusalem correspondent, and I examine in this article.
Who calls the shots? Trump and Netanyahu clash over diverging goals in Middle East war
Editor: Under the rubric of Poltitcal Melodrama:
After a new cycle of escalation in the Middle East, the US president and the Israeli prime minister seem to be on diverging paths, with Trump looking for an elusive exit strategy and peace deal with Tehran and Netanyahu seemingly standing in the way.
“I call the shots. I call all the shots. [Netanyahu] doesn’t call the shots,” Trump said in an interview with the FT on Sunday. At the time, Iran was striking Israel for the first time since the early April ceasefire, in response to its attacks on Hizbollah in Lebanon.
Israel then retaliated by striking Iran over the ensuing hours, but the US did not participate in those attacks, only launching defensive interceptors to protect its own troops in Israel from Iranian fire in the exchange, a US defence official told the FT.
By Monday, after Trump called on Israel and Iran to “immediately stop shooting”, the escalation had stopped. Trump spoke to Netanyahu again. US officials insisted their relationship remained as strong as ever. But the tensions between Washington and Jerusalem were apparent, exposing the pressure Netanyahu is facing domestically not to be seen to be caving to Trump.
Editor: Under the rubric of ‘This dynamic bodes poorly…’
This dynamic bodes poorly not only for the negotiations between the US and Iran over a peace deal, but also signals that any agreement could still be exceedingly fragile and subject to Netanyahu potentially jeopardising it again with his actions against Iran and its proxies, especially Hizbollah.
“Trump is basically trying to show the American public that he’s trying to keep the war from re-escalating and he’s trying to keep America from getting involved again,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based pollster and political analyst. “And Netanyahu looks good to his domestic audience because he’s defying Trump.”
Editor: What James Politi’s misses by a mile, is the stark fact that neither Trump nor Netanyahu are in charge! Iran is in the drivers seat! James Politi and The Finacial Times political chatter failes to mention this inelutable fact. No form of the self-congratulation can mask James Politi’s stumblins in the dark! This is ‘The Financial Times’ much more to follow…
Her books, arranged in chronological order, include: [1, 2]
Pier Luigi Nervi (1960) – A monograph on the Italian structural engineer and architect.
Classic New York: Georgian Gentility to Greek Elegance (1964) – An architectural guide and historical study of New York’s classic buildings.
Kicked a Building Lately? (1976) – A compilation of her incisive critiques regarding architecture, urban planning, and historic preservation.
Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger: An Anthology of Architectural Delights and Disasters (1986) – A collection of essays celebrating great architecture while lamenting modern sprawl and poor preservation.
Architecture, Anyone? Cautionary Tales of the Building Art (1986) – Reflections and cautionary tales examining the state of modern and contemporary building.
Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard? (1989) – A curated selection of her journalism dealing with the urban landscape, construction, and planning in New York.
The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered: The History of a Skyscraper (1992/1993) – A detailed historical and critical analysis of the skyscraper.
The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion (1997) – A sharp critique of how modern American environments, from theme parks to historical facades, replaced reality with fake authenticity.
Frank Lloyd Wright (2004) – A celebrated short biography exploring the life and work of the legendary architect for the Penguin Lives series.
On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change (2008) – A sweeping anthology of her lifelong writings on building arts, preservation, and architectural trends. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
For more information on these publications or to read reviews, you can browse her catalog on Goodreads or find copies through ThriftBooks. [1, 2]
If you are looking to start reading her work, let me know:
Are you interested in skyscraper history or general city planning?
Do you prefer essay anthologies or biographies?
I can recommend the perfect book to start with!
11 sites
Books by Ada Louise Huxtable (Author of Frank Lloyd Wright)Frank Lloyd Wright (Penguin Lives) Ada Louise Huxtable. by Ada Louise Huxtable. 3.79 754 ratings 96 reviews. On Architecture: Coll…
Ada Louise Huxtable: books, biography, latest update – Amazon.comAda Louise Huxtable * Best Seller. Architecture Criticism. Quick look. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Life (Penguin Lives) Part of: Penguin…
Amazon.com
Ada Louise Huxtable, Architecture Critic | American Experience – PBS
Mar 18, 2019 — A pioneering architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable has written for the New York Timesand the Wall Street Journal. She was award…
