Green background graphic branded “Bradford District Green Party” showing Keir Starmer and Zack Polanski headshots facing each other. A speech bubble says “Getting worried, Sir Keir?”. Below is a mock HuffPost-style headline reading “Exclusive: Keir Starmer Orders Labour To Ramp Up Attacks On Green Party”, with smaller text underneath. A banner at the bottom reads “join.greenparty.org.uk” alongside the Green Party Bradford District logo.

"Beyond the social media soundbites there are some scary policies that need to be exposed." 🤔

✅️Lower bills
✅️Tax the rich
✅️Liveable planet
✅️NHS free from privatisation
✅️Sewage free rivers

👻 If you like the sound of our 'scary' policies: Join.greenparty.org.uk

The Illusion of Explanatory Depth: Why Our Mental Models of the State are Broken There is a common cognitive trap: you feel you understand how something works, until you are asked to explain it. Psychologists call this the illusion of explanatory depth (Rozenblit & Keil, 2002)…

Here’s a post I wrote about The Illusion of Explanatory Depth drbenvincent.medium.com/the-illusion... (but also sneaks in some #mmt)

And to add insult to injury, the inflation target has been missed 50% of the time since the GFC.

It's expensive, regressive, blunt, laggy, works by causing unemployment, and operates with impunity, but the public have to be distracted with household budget fairytales so they don't consider it.

Monetary policy (because it - alone - necessitates government interest payments) is the 4th largest government department by expenditure. Yet this expenditure (invariably to the wealthy) cannot be scrutinised because "independence".

I don't see how we'd be fucked. QE is a case in point.

The broader point is that there may be ways to manage the economy that doesn't involve regressive transfer payments to the wealthy and maintaining a stock of unemployed persons. At least the public should be allowed to debate this.

Thread

Check out this week’s 1000 episode all about MMT and be even more pissed off about the govt shutdown pod.link/1707027844 @mmtpodcast.bsky.social

This week's 1000 guest is @mmtpodcast.bsky.social ! Christian Reilly is a musical comedian, and upon discovering #MMT, needed to make it part of his creative output. What is Modern Monetary Theory? Basically, we were all lied to about money, this clears it up. pod.link/1707027844

🚨SPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENT

We are delighted to announce Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, economist Stephanie Kelton and author Gabor Maté will join our founder Jeremy Corbyn at our first annual conference.

🎟️Join us in London on 20 & 21 September 2025 for #PJPconf25: bit.ly/PJPconf25

Thanks for listening, James! Cheers!

@mmtpodcast.bsky.social your intro to MMT at the start of the latest episode was excellent. Such a good distillation. 👏

*Yes, I’m presuming these donors exist, they may not!

Serious Q: what should ultra-rich donors who want to shift the Overton window to the left* do with their money instead of giving it to the Democrats?

News Brief: Media Continues Painting Musk's Far Right Coup as Good Faith In this News Brief we detail how The New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN take a pathological liar with a clear ideological agenda at his word he's worried about

In this News Brief, "Media Continues Painting Musk's Far Right Coup as Good Faith 'Cost-Cutting Effort,'" we detail how NYT, WaPo, CNN and others continue to treat Musk's 'DOGE' committee as an aw shucks effort to "reduce waste" and "find savings" in our government.

Notes on the Crises Until Further Notice, Comprehensive coverage of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025

Take out a paid subscription to support my ongoing coverage of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025. www.crisesnotes.com#/portal/signup

Day Eleven of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: Marko Elez’s Resignation, Return and Irrelevance Notes on the Crises pivoted on February 1st into around the clock coverage of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025 Read Part 0, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 & Part 6 If you are ...

ICYMI I covered Marko Elez's strange sojourn out of, & back into, government & why the 19 state Attorney General lawsuit lowers the stakes of Elez's movements (at least as far as we can tell right now). Speaking of, the lawsuit cites Notes on the Crises!

www.crisesnotes.com/day-eleven-o...

The reality is MAGA and Musk are now Too Big To Fail. Certainly a Nazi cannot be this close to power, but he also did a clear-as-day Nazi salute on live tv so the defense is going for manslaughter. “Ok fine he is a Nazi but only as a gag” becomes the compromise take to manage cognitive dissonance

A marker of our uniquely cowardly times, the rise of Placebo Populism. a responsibility-evasion tactic popular with everyone from Joe Scarborough to Mark Zuckerberg to justify MAGA-lite. No one wants to own the evil shit they support so they launder their position as the alleged Voice of The People

House votes 263-156 to pass the Laken Riley Act—which will enable Trump’s ICE to put migrants in detention without due process & empower states to block visa programs & federal immigration policy.

46 Democrats voted with Republicans.
12 Senate Democrats did the same.
Will be first bill Trump signs.

Are people allowed to use their brains and connect dots or is it important everyone write each media story like they just woke up in a new scene in Memento and the overt Nazi guy is just worried about “finding savings” in govt spending

Pardoning Jan 6 rioters was key because now when the courts invariably throw out 70% of Trump’s power grabs and he tweets an angry rant naming the judge there’s open season to enact extrajudicial violence on said judge and, for all intents and purposes, no mechanism to curb this intimidation regime

Now that the Trump admin has tried to gut the bulk of the liberal state in under 48 hours and Musk did a sieg heil on live TV can our media stop acting like DOGE is concerned with “cutting govt waste” and insisting Dems should try and “work with Elon”. idk maybe we can start using some context clues

Post-growth: the science of wellbeing within planetary boundaries There are increasing concerns that continued economic growth in high-income countries might not be environmentally sustainable, socially beneficial, or economically achievable. In this Review, we expl...

A very accessible paper, by a who's who of ecological economics.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

What’s behind the uneven exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners?

You read this and it’s clear, on a basic editorial level, NYT doesn’t consider Palestinians fully human. Every Palestinian is presumed a cartoon terrorist, every Israeli a smol civilian. If you’re Arab, show trials by occupying armies and “admin detention” magically turn a hostage into a “prisoner”

When you’re doing “populism”

wait you’re telling me rightwing populism is a contradiction in terms??

Oh man he’s on the brink of a revelation

“Why would Musk do a Nazi salute?” Well aside from the fact he agrees with a lot of Nazi ideology he’s a heartless troll who knows he can get away with it then giggle about it with his gamer friends later. Because he knows he’s Too Big To Fail. Because he knows the ADL, media, etc will brush it off.

this is why I’m not a fan of the “bend the knee,” “obey in advance” framing. In a subtle, but dangerous way it separates Trump from the 1%, it implies they are compelled to team up with him for survival or minor venal rewards. It flattens class, when all of this is very much about class solidarity

Hey Media, We Don’t Need Another Glossy Profile on That Nazi Dork The balance between covering hate and promoting it is a difficult one, and one that we shouldn’t dismiss out of hand. But after a week of wall-to-wall coverage, most of which one could imagine the Naz...

From the archives.