While multiple formal investigations against the Trump family and administration continue to unfold, and Drumpf supporters weirdly deny the probable cause for concern, Putin’s troll army continues to operate out in the open on Twitter, Facebook, Medium, and other social media networks. The sheer scale of this operation started to become clear to me in the months leading up to Election 2016, having both spent a lot of time on social media both professionally and personally for over a decade as well as a hefty amount of time on political investigation during this presidential cycle: bots on Twitter had taken over.

Whatever your thoughts on the #RussiaGate corruption scandal may be, it should concern any citizen that an enormous group of bad actors is working together to infiltrate American social media, with a specific intent to sway politics. Media literacy is one part of the answer, but we’re going to need new tools to help us identify accounts that are only present in bad faith to political discourse: they are not who they claim to be, and their real goals are kept carefully opaque.

Cold War 2.0

We should consider our nation embroiled in a large international game of psychological warfare, or PsyOps as it is referred to in intelligence circles. The goal is to sow disinformation as widely as possible, such that it becomes very difficult to discern what separates truth from propaganda. A secondary goal is to sow dissent among the citizenry, particularly to rile up the extremist factions within America’s two dominant political parties in an attempt to pull the political sphere apart from the center. 

We didn’t really need much help in that department as it is, with deep partisan fault lines having been open as gaping wounds on the American political landscape for some decades now — so the dramatically escalated troll army operation has acted as an intense catalyst for further igniting the power kegs being stored up between conservatives and progressives in this country.

Luckily there are some ways to help defray the opposition’s ability to distract and spread disinfo by identifying the signatures given off by suspicious accounts. I’ve developed a few ways to evaluate whether a given account may be a participant in paid propaganda, or at least is likely to be misrepresenting who they say they are, and what their agenda is. 

Sometimes it’s fun to get embroiled in a heated “tweetoff,” but I’ve noticed how easy it is to feel “triggered” by something someone says online and how the opposition is effectively “hacking” that tendency to drag well-meaning people into pointless back-and-forths designed not to defend a point of view, but simply to waste an activist’s time, demoralize them, and occupy the focus — a focus that could be better spent elsewhere on Real Politics with real citizens who in some way care about their country and their lives.

Bots on Twitter have “Tells”

1) Hyper-patriotism

– Conspicuously hyper-patriotic bio (and often, name)  – Posts predominantly anti-Democrat, anti-liberal/libtard, anti-Clinton, anti-Sanders, anti-antifa etc. memes:

2) Hyper-Christianity

– Conspicuously hyper-Christian in bio and/or name of bots on Twitter: 

3) Abnormally high tweet volume

Seems to tweet &/or RT constantly without breaks — supporting evidence of use of a scheduler tool at minimum, and displaying obviously automated responses from some accounts. The above account, for example, started less than 2 years ago, has tweeted 15,000 more times than I have in over 10 years of frequent use (28K). Most normal people don’t schedule their tweets — but marketers and PR people do.

4) Posts only about politics and one other thing (usually a sport)

– Posts exclusively about politics and potentially one other primary “normie” topic, which is often a sport – May proclaim to be staunchly not “politically correct”:

5) Hates Twitter Lists

– Bots on Twitter have a strange aversion to being added to Lists, or making Lists of their own:

6) Overuse of hashtags 

– Uses hashtags more than normal, non-marketing people usually do:

7) Pushes a one-dimensional message

– Seems ultimately too one-dimensional and predictable to reflect a real personality, and/or too vaguely similar to the formula:

8) Redundant tweets

– Most obviously of all, it retweets the same thing over and over again:

9) Rehashes a familiar set of memes

– Tweets predominantly about a predictable set of memes:

Mismatched location and time zone is another “tell” — and although you can’t get the second piece of data from the public profile, it is available from the Twitter API. If you know Python and/or feel adventurous, I’m sharing an earlier version of the above tool on Github (and need to get around to pushing the latest version…) — and if you know of any other “tells” please share by commenting or tweeting at me. Next bits I want to work on include:

  • Examining follower & followed networks against a matchlist of usual suspect accounts
  • Looking at percentage of Cyrillic characters in use
  • Graphing tweet volume over time to identify “bot” and “cyborg” periods
  • Looking at “burst velocity” of opposition tweets as bot networks are engaged to boost messages
  • Digging deeper into the overlap between the far-right and far-left as similar memes are implanted and travel through both “sides” of the networks
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“The most dangerous ‘enemy of the people’ is presidential lying–always. Attacks on press by @realDonaldTrump more treacherous than Nixon’s”
— Carl Bernstein, journalist who broke the Watergate scandal  

“These systematic attacks on the media accomplish two things. First, they fire up the base, which believe that traditional media do not represent their interests or concerns. Second, they provoke the media itself, which feeling threatened, adopts a more oppositional posture. This in turn further fuels the polarization on which the leaders depend and paves the way for the government to introduce legal restrictions.

The most dramatic example was in Venezuela, where elements in the media embarked on a campaign of open warfare, engaging in overtly partisan coverage intended to undermine Chávez’s rule. Some media owners were alleged to have conspired in a 2002 coup that briefly ousted the president. Once Chavez returned to power, he rallied his supporters behind a new law imposing broad restrictions on what the media could and could not cover under the guise of “ensuring the right to truthful information.” Across the hemisphere, other restrictive legal measures were adopted, including Ecuador’s notorious 2013 Communications Law, which criminalizes the failure to cover events of public interest, as defined by the government. In the first year, approximately 100 lawsuits were filed under the law, stifling critical reporting.”
— Columbia Journalism Review

“Brian Stelter, in his Reliable Sources newsletter, rounds up elite-media Twitter reaction:

  • NPR’s Steve Inskeep: “A journalist is a citizen. Who informs other citizens, as free citizens need. Some are killed doing it …” NYT’s Maggie Haberman: “He is fighting very low approval ratings. Gonna be interesting to see how congressional Rs respond to this tweet”
  • Joe Scarborough: “Conservatives, feel free to speak up for the Constitution anytime the mood strikes. It is time”
  • NBC’s Chuck Todd: “I would hope that our leaders would never believe that any American desires to make another American an enemy. Let’s dial it back.”

At the same time, understand that this is partly a game to Trump. His confidants tell us he intentionally exploits the media’s inclination to take the bait and chase our tails.”
— Axios

John McCain:
“… slammed President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media this week by noting dictators “get started by suppressing free press.”
It was a startling observation from a sitting member of Congress against the President of the United States, especially considering McCain is a member of Trump’s party.

“I hate the press,” the Arizona Republican sarcastically told NBC News’ Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.” “I hate you especially. But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital.”

But he continued, “If you want to preserve — I’m very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press,” McCain said in the interview. “And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.”

Evan McMullin:
“Authoritarians routinely attack checks on their power and sources… Donald Trump does exactly that.”
http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2017/02/05/are-trumps-attacks-on-media-authoritarian.cnn

“The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.”

— The Virginia Declaration of Rights

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Before we dive into the perils of issue policing, I have to say that it’s heartening to see so many new faces and hear many new voices who may in the past have not explicitly considered themselves “activists,” or who have felt a greater call to stand up against a political administration whose ideologies show every indication of running counter to a constitutional democratic framework. 

If that describes you: THANK YOU! You are awesome. And if you’re an Old Hat at this sort of thing, this post is for you too — by way of initiating a civil dialogue with some of the fresh faces you see in your timeline or in your local community who may be exhibiting the following behavior:

Making claims that issue X, Y, or Z is “not important” or “not as important” as issue A, B, or C — which is what we should really be discussing right now.

Here’s why this behavior tends to do more harm than good:

Continue reading Activists: How (and why) to avoid issue policing (especially on Twitter)
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There’s something those of us in marginalized groups know instinctively, having lived lives long in opposition to a dizzying continuum of Absurd Moral Authority: from outright violence, to secretive “technical” manipulations of statutes designed to erode or remove rights, to vague and carefully unstated “wink wink nudge nudge” moments from individuals of authority who had some power to constrain us — whether it’s a boss (or potential boss), a teacher, a community figure, and/or perhaps most guttingly a family member.

We know the sting of being scolded for even daring an attempt at upsetting the Tautological Supremacist Meritocracy: “If you weren’t worthless, you’d already be here by now!”

The British thought we would just roll over too

But we should remember one of the primary reasons that we as a nation even won our independence in the first place:

We were underestimated.

Lord North offered tax relief to the colonies that would help “defend the motherland” in February, 1775 — none took him up on it. And in fact, the Conciliatory Resolution only deepened the growing sense of unity emerging against what increasingly became perceived as a Common Enemy. The attempt to divide and conquer not only failed, but backfired.

The British Parliament thought the colonists full of hot air — that a few shows of military force would quickly crumble the upstart radicals in their quest for representation and rights. But battles at Lexington and Concord only fueled further the sentiment that the colonies were inhabited by an occupying force that must be resisted.

It was widely thought to be insane to stand against the world-renowned military force of the British Empire — but the Continental Army under George Washington doggedly turned the fact of underestimation to their advantage via innovative battlefield strategy. The motherland, finding it difficult to raise sufficient troops to fight against their own former countrymen, hired German mercenaries to fight against the colonists — further deepening the resolve of the Americans to throw off an oppressor willing to bring foreign assassins to bear in a dispute formerly perceived as a conciliatory process of achieving the basic rights of citizenship that colonists’ forbears once enjoyed in England. The British overestimation of Loyalist support — combined with the general mistreatment of those who did cross the “revolutionary picket line” — only added to the troubles faced by a predominantly naval power slogging through a lengthy land war over vast territory.

Diversity does not preclude uniting to face a Common Enemy

In so many ways we’ve become more fragmented; more balkanized; more atomized in modern society. We’ve self-selected into our communities of shared values and our social media bubbles. In many ways this is the paradox of prosperity, and the Catch-22 of progress.

We may feel stronger in our own foxholes, but there comes a time when the whole choir must sing together. Now is that time.

And perhaps it is dangerous to use the language of war, and of conflict — or perhaps it may help us to better identify where our Common Enemy lies. Our Common Enemy is not the down at heel rural Trump supporter who lashes out at us in fear, and in retaliation — though their words are often hateful, these people have been misled.

It’s a very old story — older than Trump; older than George W. Bush; older than Reagan or Nixon or Coolidge or Jackson or Johnson. The wealthy white elite has a centuries’ old playbook of dangling so-called Christian morality in front of those whites left most destitute by the former’s economic policies — and winning.

We are watching reruns.

This time, fascism and foreign influence have been added to up the ante — keeping even the most blasé among us glued to our seats.

Stand up

The framers of our Constitution deliberated, debated, and agonized over the most ideal structure to support a broad pluralist power, in concerted opposition to the monarchies and aristocracies of the past. Many were shocked by — and fought bitterly against — the unprecedented act of beginning such a governing document with the words, “We the people.”
But 85 Federalist Papers later, our sovereign power was enshrined in the document that still governs our ambitions today — and acts as a backstop against those who would wield tyrannical power in our name. 

Our Common Enemy is tyranny, and we must learn to recognize where it lives, and how it acts. Even — perhaps especially — when that domicile is the White House, and that act an act of Congress.

Our Common Enemy is those who would deny the power of the people to govern themselves: through the silencing of debate in a once great forum; through casual disregard of the judiciary branch; through an endless parade of troglodyte efforts at voter suppression.

Our Common Enemy is the long litany of elected officials who act in their own best interests at the expense of We the People. It is the slew of slick sycophants currying political favor with the powerful, who continually rewrite the rules of the game the Winners have already Won many times over, to accelerate the gaping gulf of inequality that threatens democracy, liberty, justice, and most certainly peace.

Without Justice there can be no Peace.

And those who wield injustice have vastly underestimated the swaths of citizenry who can see through the ruse; who have heard the old story and seen its outcomes; who are tired of having to wage the same struggles for rights and respect over, and over, and over again.

But the tired gain strength through camaraderie in adversity; through simple acts of kindness; through humor, and through love.

These are tools the tyrannical cannot access.
Stand, and wield them, in the name of We the People.

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But we will grow from it, and they will not — over the long run, at least.

Things we need to improve upon and/or rebuild:

  • media literacy
  • civic literacy
  • financial literacy
  • data literacy
  • tech literacy — especially security and privacy
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Republicans do not like to elect women in Congress. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Stats of note:

  • GOP women make up only 4% of the current Congress.
  • 12% are female Congressional Democrats — for a total of 16.5% vs. 83.5% male legislators.
  • As a percentage of the historical collection of Congress members over all time, women have comprised only 1.7% of the total. 

Women need more representation across the board! Let’s do this, America.
P.S. If you have any need for a Slack bot that returns data on sitting Congresspeople, look no further! You can install this bot in Slack easily; you’ll just need to set up a Fieldbook account.

Women in the 114th Congress

(As of 1/6/2015) 

SeniorityMemberParty & StateStart of Service
 (in desc order)Marcy Kaptur (D), OH01-03-1983
 Louise Slaughter(D), NY01-03-1987
 Nancy Pelosi(D), CA06-02-1987
 Nita Lowey(D), NY01-03-1989
 Ileana Ros-Lehtinen(R), FL08-29-1989
 Rosa DeLauro(D), CT01-03-1991
 Eleanor Holmes-Norton (delegate)(D), DC01-03-1991
 Maxine Waters(D), CA01-03-1991
 Corrine Brown(D), FL01-03-1993
 Anna Eshoo(D), CA01-03-1993
 Eddie Bernice-Johnson(D), TX01-03-1993
 Carolyn Maloney(D), NY01-03-1993
 Lucille Roybal-Allard(D), CA01-03-1993
 Nydia Velazquez(D), NY01-03-1993
 Sheila Jackson Lee(D), TX01-03-1995
 Zoe Lofgren(D), CA01-03-1995
 Diana DeGette(D), CO01-03-1997
 Kay Granger(R), TX01-03-1997
 Loretta Sanchez(D), CA01-03-1997
 Lois Capps(D), CA03-10-1998
 Barbara Lee(D), CA04-07-1998
 Grace Napolitano(D), CA01-03-1999
 Jan Schakowsky(D), IL01-03-1999
 Susan Davis(D), CA01-03-2001
 Betty McCollum(D), MN01-03-2001
 Marsha Blackburn(R), TN01-03-2003
 Madeleine Bordallo (delegate)(D), GU01-03-2003
 Candice Miller(R), MI01-03-2003
 Linda Sanchez(D), CA01-03-2003
 Virginia Foxx(R), NC01-03-2005
 Cathy McMorris-Rodgers(R), WA01-03-2005
 Gwen Moore(D), WI01-03-2005
 Debbie Wasserman-Schultz(D), FL01-03-2005
 Doris Matsui(D), CA03-08-2005
 Kathy Castor(D), FL01-04-2007
 Yvette Clarke(D), NY01-04-2007
 Niki Tsongas(D), MA10-18-2007
 Jackie Speier(D), CA04-10-2008
 Donna Edwards(D), MD06-19-2008
 Marcia Fudge(D), OH11-19-2008
 Lynn Jenkins(R), KS01-06-2009
 Cynthia Lummis(R), WY01-06-2009
 Chellie Pingree(D), ME01-06-2009
 Judy Chu(D), CA07-16-2009
 Karen Bass(D), CA01-05-2011
 Diane Black(R), TN01-05-2011
 Renee Ellmers(R), NC01-05-2011
 Vicky Hartzler(R), MO01-05-2011
 Jaime Herrera-Beutler(R), WA01-05-2011
 Kristi Noem(R), SD01-05-2011
 Martha Roby(R), AL01-05-2011
 Terri Sewell(D), AL01-05-2011
 Frederica Wilson(D), FL01-05-2011
 Janice Hahn(D), CA07-19-2011
 Suzanne Bonamici(D), OR02-07-2012
 Suzan DelBene(D), WA11-13-2012
 Joyce Beatty(D), OH01-03-2013
 Susan Brooks(R), IN01-03-2013
 Julia Brownley(D), CA01-03-2013
 Cheri Bustos(D), IL01-03-2013
 Tammy Duckworth(D), IL01-03-2013
 Elizabeth Esty(D), CT01-03-2013
 Lois Frankel(D), FL01-03-2013
 Tulsi Gabbard(D), HI01-03-2013
 Michelle Lujan Grisham(D), NM01-03-2013
 Ann Kirkpatrick(D), AZ01-03-2013
 Ann McLane Kuster(D), NH01-03-2013
 Grace Meng(D), NY01-03-2013
 Kyrsten Sinema(D), AZ01-03-2013
 Dina Titus(D), NV01-03-2013
 Ann Wagner(R), MO01-03-2013
 Jackie Walorski(R), IN01-03-2013
 Robin Kelly(D), IL04-11-2013
 Katherine Clark(D), MA12-12-2013
 Alma Adams(D), NC11-12-2014
 Bonnie Watson Coleman(D), NJ01-06-2015
 Barbara Comstock(R), VA01-06-2015
 Debbie Dingell(D), MI01-06-2015
 Gwen Graham(D), FL01-06-2015
 Brenda Lawrence(D), MI01-06-2015
 Mia Love(R), UT01-06-2015
 Martha McSally(R), AZ01-06-2015
 Stacey Plaskett (delegate)(D), VI01-06-2015
 Aumua Amata Radewagen (delegate)(R), AS01-06-2015
 Kathleen Rice(D), NY01-06-2015
 Elise Stefanik(R), NY01-06-2015
 Norma Torres(D), CA01-06-2015
 Mimi Walters(R), CA01-06-2015
Total Women: 88 Democrats: 65
Republicans: 23

https://www.govtrack.us/data/congress-legislators/

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Much has been said regarding the so-called laziness of the poor. Hands have been wrung, glasses have been drained, Davos hotel rooms have been trashed year after year in elite consternation over The Perennially Perplexing Plight of the Poor.

Meanwhile in the American political landscape, the answer is already clear:

THEY’RE NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH!!!!

But perhaps there’s some confusion over what is meant by the term “hard work” — certainly it’s ambiguous, and no one takes a pause in the middle of a vigorous, breathy debate to define their terms, curiously. So, for the barely literate cretins out there who can barely manage to hold down a job much less participate in the ever-prosperous U.S. economy — a visual guide:

Working hard vs. hardly working: An Illustrated Guide to Hard Work

Working hard

(direct link: https://tpc.quip.com/00POAlXJ6I8Y)

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are not merely empowered to separate us from discerning fact and fiction.
They separate us from debate; civic discourse; meaningful conflict;
From coalition-building; compromise; concession.
They separate us from each other.

Communities seem quaint
Common ground, a shifting place
Quicksand beneath one’s feet
We are all swamp things now
The eyes ogle, waiting for us to falter — for sport

Our shelf lives grow ever shorter
While billionaires transfuse the blood of the young
The youth don’t want my mid-life crisis
It bores them so
My tone grates on America’s next greats

Ideologies wage the fifth world war out on the vast placeless social media savannah 
Faux fantastical beasts feast upon felled paper tigers
One can only hope the most outsized egos
Are the biggest dinosaurs
When the meteor comes

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Without the doing of some thing brand inappropriate 
Something unmonetizable 
Unclickable 
Untraceable 
Untradeable   
| 
If i don't rend the cloth of this Culture Fit soon 
i will die 
Like the coral 
Like two-thirds of the wild 
Like the humans on the edge of a rising shoreline 
In a ceaseless world 
With iceless poles 
And icy proles   
| 
As the planet heats, 
Civilization chills; 
Swallowing our red or our blue pills; 
Interned into camps of grievers and shills 
| 
Grieve i do and for the West 
Our president the Bigly Best! 
We'll come and go at his behest 
Put down your Freedom of Info Requests 
Baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet 
| 
Joe Walsh got his balls out, and his musket too 
The Lefties dream of Saskatoon 
We're all gonna get that Change real soon 
You'll see when fascism hits High Noon 
| 
We'll finish tearing ourselves apart 
In the streets and in the dark 
Can no longer recreate in this park 
Leslie Knope didn't fit the part 
| 
She had the mighty audacity 
To take purview over Benghazi 
Once Bush and Blair left Qaddafi 
Those GOP goons would never get off me 
| 
My God, all the emails 
The Chaffetz' anemic security details 
At least we're swaddled by all this retail 
Black Friday's never been so beyond the pale 
| 
Pale as a ghost 
White as a sheet 
Our New Balance host 
Circle jerks its meat 
| 
Of all the PUAs and all the Teas 
Even the most mundane of these 
See the female as a tease 
Hang the browns up in the trees 
We're all strange fruit upon our knees 
| 
Ain't no more reason to appease 
Already done killed off all them bees 
Turnt up the thermostat a few degrees 
TVs blaring back our postmodern sleaze 
| 
Found ourselves a favorite scapegoat 
And a good long length of real strong rope 
The corruption will be all excised 
By the 'tubes chock full of Russian spies 
This revolution will be televised 
As America just dies and dies
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The creator of the also excellent Century of the Self film series released his latest film in October, 2016. Dubbed HyperNormalisation, it offers both a history lesson of the complicated relationship between the West, the Middle East, and Russia, as well as an unflinching look at the roles played by technology, surveillance, and the media on our modern condition of general confusion, destabilization, and surrealism.

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Russian aggression is mercurial — it’s getting harder to tell anymore who is being paid to push pro-Russian messages, and who has just been sadly taken in by them. For all this braggadocio (braggadocious, even!) about “building a wall” to keep supposed Mexican rapists out (although net migration has been falling with our southern neighbor for some time and is now net negative), no matter what the outcome of next Tuesday’s election, the “borders” around the internet will remain difficult — if not impossible — to police for the foreseeable future.

This all makes our breathless, behind-closed-doors hand-wringing over Soviet Communist influence over the population in the 1960s seem like child’s play. No need to train up a double agent over a lifetime and infiltrate the corridors of state power anymore — just fire up Twitter (or Medium).

The Cold War is thawing

It thus probably shouldn’t be as shocking as it has been to find the pro-Russian lovefest coming just as hard from the far-left as it has from the far-right. It stems from a good place (for the most part): a heartfelt desire for peace and the youthful misunderstanding of how difficult (read: impossible) that has been to achieve throughout history. Still, we always want to believe we’ve cracked the nut — that Mutually Assured Destruction now keeps us safe from all the power-hungry demons of the world.

Unfortunately, the Cold War is thawing. With the Russian economy reportedly in dire straits thanks to fragile over-reliance on oil and gas production combined with the precipitous drop in oil prices over the past 18 months, Putin is in a state. A state of keeping the angry ailing Russian classes distracted by the drums of war, while aiming to keep the pampered, self-absorbed American classes distracted from the drums of war. So far to great success — at least on the latter front. It’s hard to speak to the former, although all the paid trolls do seem mighty angry.

Since we can barely pull our heads out of our navels in the U.S. to remember there’s a whole other world outside of our Big Orange Terror Bubble (which is by turns understandable and deeply concerning), I wanted to record here a timeline of Russian aggression events in the lead-up to where we are today (re-purposed from this post with some additional backstory on the Green Party candidate’s Jill Stein involvement with Putin):

This doesn’t include any of the Russian aggression “soft” lobs like the cheeky offers to monitor our elections, or the material connections to the alt-right movement here as well as the swell of right-wing political insurgencies around the world.

Perhaps history will one day show that the deepest destruction wrought by globalization was not the disintegration of America’s manufacturing sector, nor its incentivization of capital flight, but its damage to the last pillars of an aging democratic architecture slowly corroded by neoliberal economic policies in fashion since the Reagan years.

If any history still remains.

See also

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  • a. The Alfa Bank pinging server
  • b. Connections in the Trump campaign      
    • 1. Paul Manafort — former campaign manager who helped rig elections for Ukrainian pro-Moscow former president Viktor Yanukovich      
    • 2. Sergei Millian — head of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce in the US      
    • 3. Ivanka’s friendship with Putin’s girlfriend
  • c. Russian hacking of the DNC emails
  • d. Russian attempted hacks on state vote registration rolls
  • e. Russian bots and paid disinformation operatives influencing public opinion in the US presidential election
    • 1. Twitter      
    • 2. Medium      
    • 3. Facebook (?)      
    • 4. Darkweb
  • f. High probability of significant Russian investment in the Trump Organization, its subsidiaries, shell companies, or off-shore protectorates
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Regardless of whether or not you agree that slashing spending, fiscal austerity, balanced budgets, and a low federal deficit are good ideas, the fact remains that the Republican Party does not generally live up to its aims of expense reduction and small government.

As hard as it is to believe, there are still some people who think that Reagan cut the size of government, although Reagan was a big spender and laid the groundwork for the immense national debt we live with today.

(even the Austrian School agrees) 

Note: Full historical budget tables, FY 2015

Then there was Ol’ Dubya with his two disgraceful wars, TARP bailout, auto bailouts, fiscal stimulus, and tax cuts. Not to mention yanking the election out from under Al Gore’s popular win via a leg up from Florida governor brother Jeb.

Turns out, not even gridlock is a decent strategy for preventing escalating expenditures, under the theory that not getting anything done would prevent the government from growing. Apparently not:

“Gridlock” in DC Does Little to Stymie Government Spending

Total gridlock is the worst outcome, where impact to the budget is concerned. Total Democratic control of the White House and Congress is the most fiscally responsible since the presidency of Richard Nixon.
So the idea of Republican leanness is a fallacy whether you believe that’s a worthy goal or not — and there’s a lot of evidence to suggest the tide is turning toward a wider appreciation of John Maynard Keynes’ approach to sensible fiscal spending when there is unemployment (puts idle resources to work and reduces government welfare expense; gives people a sense of purpose; builds community), if it is accomplished by debt financing (i.e., issuing Treasury Bonds — allowing individuals, pension funds, and so on to invest in the United States as sort of national asset class) and is used to build goods and structures that benefit the public at large: infrastructure, research and development, public resources, public health services, job training, paid volunteer work, parks and public spaces, etc.

Keynesian and Classical theory have oft been at odds, but are better understood now as complements: in a healthy, roaring economy, government should take its boots off the throttle and avoid tipping over into the kind of speculatory gamesmanship that got us into hot water in 2007-8. But in a depression or recession, or when the economy is recovering sluggishly, it should be a goto solution to start thinking about where to apply government funds (i.e. our money!) to things that need doing anyway; services that invest in our economy’s greatest resource: its citizens; programs that position us for the future by having the luxury to think ahead boldly.

NYTimes: Real income gains are brief and hard to find

Although the economy has recovered nicely for some — especially those in higher tax brackets — it has clearly left a number of Americans behind. It’s only added to a trend that had already started in the 70s, when inequality began widening in the U.S. The populist white nationalist ire unleashed in the 2016 presidential election was something perhaps few saw coming, even though in hindsight the far right has been whipping their base into a frenzy for years — arguably since Reagan, if not with Nixon. That means there’s still a healthy place for government spending, especially in areas we already know we’re in sore need of a boost: roads and bridges, a public health care option, basic research, advanced manufacturing, the pivot to a renewable energy economy, to name a few.
Luckily, that’s what Hillary Clinton wants to do:

  • Use the revenue from closing corporate loopholes and cracking down on tax inversions to invest in small business, long-term growth, R&D, advanced manufacturing, and job training
  • Manufacturing Renaissance Tax Credit: to help revitalize communities hit hardest by the collapse of manufacturing
  • Paid family and medical leave in the workplace
  • Fundamentally reform veterans’ health care and build a 21st-century Department of Veterans Affairs to deliver world-class medical care
  • Close oil and gas loopholes, using the proceeds to pay for the transition to a renewable energy economy
  • Close loopholes and raise tax brackets for the very wealthy, using the funds to invest in youth services and infrastructure
  • Modernize America’s energy infrastructure, address the growing threat of cyberattack, and support clean energy job creation and innovation in the process
  • Create a Clean Power Market across the North American continent
  • Offer competitive grants for phasing out old, polluting energy infrastructure (fuel oil, propane, coal)
  • Reduce air pollution by converting / deploying high-efficiency trucks, buses, ships, and trains in the transportation sector
  • Increase public R&D in renewable natural gas, low-carbon gas, and carbon dioxide sequestration
  • Offer apprenticeship programs in high-skilled jobs in the new energy economy and construction
  • Modernize housing policy, curb skyrockeeting rents in major cities, reforge a path to homeownership for middle America
  • Create a public health care option to incentivize competition in the ACA exchanges
  • Launch a national campaign to modernize and elevate the teaching profession
  • Provide school district funding to develop computer science curriculum
  • New municipal school bonds program to help finance repairs and re-investment in unsafe and unhealthy schools
  • Offer free community college tuition and debt-free public college tuition for families who make up to $125,000/year
  • Allow student loans to be refinanced at current low interest rates; forgive any debt remaining after 20 years
  • 3-year student debt deferment for social entrepreneurs and eligibility for up to $17,500 in debt forgiveness
  • Institute a 3-month moratorium on student loan payments to allow borrowers to consolidate and refinance 
  • Make preschool universal for every 4-year old in America; double investment in Early Head Start
  • Increase child care investment significantly to ensure to family pays more than 10% of their income
  • Double the size of the outdoor economy within 10 years, adding $700 billion in new annual economic activity
  • Create an American Parks Trust Fund to invest in the country’s natural preserves
  • Restore and refresh more than 3000 city parks within 10 years
  • Create a new Water Innovation Lab and a Western Water Partnership to help manage our water challenges over the coming decades
  • Become the world’s clean energy superpower: install more than half a billion solar panels by the end of term 1; generate enough renewable energy to power every home in American within 10 years; create a grant and award-based Clean Energy Challenge with states, cities, and rural communities; Solar X-Prize; tax incentives for renewables; foster energy innovation
  • Help build the new tech economy on Main Street: create a lifelong learning system more geared towards 21st-century jobs; invest in STEM education; invest in science and tech R&D; help ensure benefits are flexible and travel with workers, not their employers; commit to 100% of households with broadband access by 2020; deploying the 5G wireless network; building free wi-fi infrastructure in punlic places and transport hubs; launch digital community projects to improve connectivity more affordably
  • Offer tax credits to companies who hire apprentices
  • Offer tax credits to companies who offer profit sharing programs to their employees
  • Public health initiatives: substance abuse treatment and prevention; expand mental health services; services for autism spectrum disorder; reduction of co-pays and deductibles; reduce the cost of prescription drugs; double funding for community health centers
  • Expand the role of national service, both paid and volunteer, with expansions of programs like the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, and the creation of a National Service Reserve for millions of Americans to contribute volunteer time to local challenges in their own communities

#ImWithHer
by the way: Her plan plans to finance itself by making wealthy individuals and corporations pay their fair share in taxes, and would not appreciably add to the deficit beyond any existing projections from the OMB;but here’s the best explainer I have found about why we should seriously loosen our collars over the national debt. There is no reason to pay it down; and indeed, it would be dangerous and deleterious to even try to, because we’d be starving the economy of the circulation it needs to keep operating and growing:💰money💰.

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