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Peter Daou, a former aide to Hillary Clinton, recently announced that he had become the campaign manager for Cornel West, the radical socialist professor and public intellectual, who is seeking the Presidential nomination from the Green Party. It was the culmination of a fascinating arc for Daou, who was a legendary figure in the early liberal blogosphere, where he became known for his criticisms of the Bush Administration before joining John Kerrys 2004 Presidential campaign. Four years later, he ran Clintons digital operation, and became known as one of her most high-profile and vocal online supporters. Then, in 2016, for Clintons second Presidential run, Daou ran the platform Shareblue, a partisan news site that attacked mainstream coverage of the race and fanatically defended Clinton. By 2020, he had endorsed Bernie Sanders; he subsequently left the Democratic Party. (Before joining Wests campaign, he briefly ran Marianne Williamsons.) Daou now says his career as a fanatical Democratic partisan was misguided, and that the entire political system needs to be uprooted; he believes Wests campaign is the best vehicle for such a change.

I recently spoke by phone with Daou. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how his political outlook shifted, his feelings about Donald Trump, and why he believes the Democratic Party also engages in election interference.

Who has changed: You or the Democratic Party?

I think I have changed more than the Democratic Party has changed. Ive evolved and grown and thought through my role in the Party.

Most people would say that Joe Biden is to the left of where Hillary Clinton was in 2008, or indeed where Joe Biden was in 2008. Do you think thats an accurate diagnosis?

I dont think so. Having done more research and digging, thinking about leftism, liberalism, progressivism, neoliberalism, getting a little bit deeper into how this terminology is used, I just think back to the support from the Democratic Party for George W. Bushs war in Iraq and war on terror, which are based on lies. I dont really see it in terms of movement to the left or to the right. Honestly, Isaac, I look at it systemically. I always looked at it as red and blue, and finally when I quit the Party, in 2020, I started looking at it as the system, and the Democratic Party comprises half of that system. Or maybe more, you know what Im saying?

This is what made me quit the Party. I thought, O.K., Peter, its twenty-two years of your life, and the same problems, the same pain, the same misery, the same suffering is out there. Theres got to be something deeper than the binary, the binary box.

Would the Iraq War and the war on terror be a good example of what I meant? You have a President now whos pulled us out of the war in Afghanistan, whos drastically reduced drone strikes, whos tried to tamp down the war on terror, whereas, in the Bush era, even if the majority of congressional Democrats voted against the Iraq War, many voted for it, and both parties supported the war on terror.

I dont see it that way, but I know a lot of Democrats do. I see Joe Biden and the people around him, some of the neocons hes getting advice from, as sabre-rattling warmongers who are actually making the world a more dangerous place. Now, Ive always said that I dont support, as a leftist myself, any imperialist invasion, and that includes the invasion of Ukraine. I believe the war is a criminal imperial invasion of another country. However, having said that, this Administration has rattled and provoked and escalated the rhetoric from Day One. From my standpoint, I look at this Administration as bigger warmongers than what youre talking about in the period prior to 2008.

I see. So even compared with Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who supported the Iraq War and a huge range of American military interventions, you think that the Biden Administration is more warmongering?

Well, I just gave you an example. More or less, its difficult to assess. This is why I keep coming back to Dr. Wests position of dismantling the empire.

As recently as 2020, you were opposed to a third-party candidate because of the urgent need to beat Donald Trump. What changed between early 2020 and now?

Yeah, its a very fundamental change in perspective. Its almost like I took a different set of glasses or lenses and I put them on, and that lens is the systemic lens. During the years I worked as a Democrat, I bought into the general thinking that Democrats are better and therefore we need Democrats to stop the fascist domination of Republicans. If you go back ten, twenty, thirty, forty years, its the same argument: Oh, my God, if you let them get elected, the worlds going to end. This is a very standard duopoly technique.

Now when I finally took off that lens, the binary red-blue, blue-is-better-than-red lens, and I took responsibility for wearing that lens or looking through that lens, then my lens became, O.K., look at the entire system. Lets say this cycle we also say the same thing, which is, Oh, my God, we have to stop Donald Trump or we have to stop whoever the Republican might be. And this happens the next cycle and the next cycle and the next cycle. Where is the so-called democracy that were supposedly protecting or saving? What were doing is were crushing third parties.

We are stifling democracy itself, Isaac. This is the problem. From my standpoint, there are things that Biden has done that made the world more dangerous than Trump, and there are things Trump did that made the world more dangerous than Biden, and both of them go back and forth. You see what Im saying?

I maybe need a different pair of lenses to totally see it.

You have to look at it through a systemic lensthe entire system, the structure of the system itself versus a binary view of which party is better and which one is going to be more dangerous. Its a completely different way of looking at the picture.

Its almost like The Matrix, where youre either in it or youre not, you know?

Correct. No, thats a great way of looking at it. Exactly. When youre inside the matrix, you go along with whatever structure is built around you, and you just see things that way. You remember the scene where its all the bodies being fed through their neck to their brain, and you suddenly are like, Wait a minute.Thats what this election is about. This election is about how were just not going to buy this framing anymore.

When it came to the idea of John McCain or Mitt Romney being elected President, in 2008 and 2012, I certainly remember Democrats saying, Oh, this would be bad. And maybe the extreme partisans would say, If Mitt Romney gets elected, the worlds going to end. But I dont think that was the overwhelming idea. With Trump, its a little different, in part because he actually tried to steal a democratic election.

I have been one of the most vocal opponents of Donald Trump. In 2020, I was creating so many anti-Trump viral hashtags and videos. I was out there fighting this guy from Day One.

You recently wrote that Trumps two impeachments and four indictments are largely smokescreens, correct?

Yeah. Well, the reason I say that is because he wasnt impeached or indicted on the worst things hes done, because the worst things hes done, Democrats do, too.

January 6th? That seems high up there.

January 6th, that, too. But take a look at what Democrats are currently doing. See, this is when you start comparing good and bad.

You said he was indicted and impeached for things that Democrats did. He was impeached for two things: soliciting a foreign power to harm the candidacy of his opponent in the 2020 Presidential election and incitement of insurrection against the United States on January 6th. I dont think Democrats have really done those things, no?

Let me just clarify. What I said is that he was impeached. I pushed very hard when Nancy Pelosi said hes not worth impeaching. I was out there vocally with a lot of leftist activists saying, you have to impeach him, and she refused.

But then she did impeach him, twice, and now you seem grumpy that she did so. No?

No. What I complained about is that she impeached him for maybe five per cent of his most egregious offenses.

Link:
Peter Daou's Theory of Election Interferenceby Democrats - The New Yorker

Centralized finance (CeFi) services such as crypto exchanges have accelerated the adoption of digital assets and blockchain solutions. Despite this, while retail traders can still use them for convenient crypto transactions and day-to-day operations, institutional investors can thrive long-term if they limit their exposure to CeFi risks and move to decentralized finance (DeFi) instead. With ambitious new projects coming to the table, the next leg of innovation will be pioneered by platforms offering the necessary infrastructure to bring institutional funds on chain.

The history of CeFi platforms is fraught with catastrophic failures, from Mt. Gox to more recent examples like FTX and BlockFi. CeFi platforms have demonstrated serious vulnerabilities, suffering from issues ranging from hacking to bankruptcy and causing significant losses to both retail and institutional investors. It seems that, unlike the traditional banking system, the crypto industry doesnt have too big to fail services. The surprising collapses of Mt. Gox and FTX have revealed the weaknesses of the CeFi structure.

The same risks persist even today, as the CeFi industry hasnt been able to upgrade its underlying infrastructure despite new security measures.

2022 was a challenging year for the crypto industry, and it proved once again that CeFi couldnt provide transparent and secure investment management capabilities, with the platforms often co-mingling customer funds, engaging in extreme rehypothecation and lacking solid risk management practices. Moreover, centralized exchanges and platforms have too much control over user funds.

Although CeFi has been the go-to ecosystem for crypto asset management for years due to its liquidity and convenience, the risks are too significant to ignore.

The emerging DeFi sector offers some great alternatives that give institutional investors more control over their funds while taking security into their own hands.

DeFi platforms offer higher transparency and security, building on the promise of decentralization. All transactions on DeFi protocols are recorded on-chain, providing real-time visibility into assets and enabling asset managers to monitor their positions at any time.

Importantly, DeFi platforms allow investors to retain custody of their digital assets, mitigating risks associated with third-party custodians, which is typical for CeFi services. A case in point is the loss incurred by investors when Prime Trust, a third-party custodian, lost the keys to one of its wallets, leading to mass withdrawals. The firm recently filed for bankruptcy.

DeFi can change the game for crypto asset managers, but it also needs to address several challenges. To begin with, DeFi is highly fragmented, which makes it difficult to build well-rounded investment strategies across multiple chains. Ethereum still dominates the sector, but efficient networks like Avalanche and BNB Chain as well as layer-2 solutions like Arbitrum, Polygon and Optimism are also gaining traction.

For institutional investors, combining the convenience of CeFi with the transparency and security of DeFi would be the best-case scenario.

To combine DeFi advantages with TradFi-like convenience, the decentralized management platform Velvet Capital offers various benefits to institutional investors, leveraging a cross-chain operating system and providing an easy-to-use interface and tools.

Backed by Binance Labs, Velvet Capital enables the exploration of DeFi opportunities across multiple chains, which unlocks liquidity, eliminates fragmentation and helps crypto hedge funds, family offices and asset managers build diversified DeFi portfolios.

This cross-chain infrastructure and intuitive interface allow institutional investors to easily launch and manage tokenized funds, portfolios, yield-farming strategies and other structured products.

Source: Velvet Capital

As a DeFi protocol, Velvet Capital helps investors build portfolios and strategies that are fully on-chain, allowing investors to see their assets in real-time. DeFi is about trustless interactions with transparency as the central pillar, and investors using Velvet Capitals platform know exactly which assets theyre holding in custody.

Velvet Capital never takes custody of client assets and enables investors to hold their digital assets in a noncustodial wallet or multisignature vault.

The app makes it simple to create and manage crypto financial products by providing the back-end infrastructure as well as an intuitive experience to let users focus on finding the best assets and strategies across multiple chains.

Velvet Capital is the first DeFi protocol that provides omnichain asset management capabilities so that portfolio managers are not limited to a single chain and can execute complex strategies across several ecosystems, including Ethereum and BNB Chain.

Source: Velvet Capital

Investors who need additional advice can benefit from Velvets marketplace feature, which enables users to get exposure to the crypto market alongside the best hedge funds and asset managers. Its marketplace has index funds built by the community, funds run by institutional investors and funds run by advanced crypto traders.

While Velvet has an experienced team, it plans to adopt decentralization by letting the community participate in governance through its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), and its Founders Club NFT collection acts as a gateway to the DAO.

Moreover, Velvet Capital will launch its institutional-grade, omnichain DeFi operating system in October, and interested parties can book a demo through their website.

Projects like Velvet Capital are at the forefront of a financial revolution, using DeFi infrastructure to democratize asset management. In an era dominated by centralized financial institutions, this approach offers a safer and more inclusive way for investors to expose the crypto space while mitigating CeFi risks.

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you with all important information that we could obtain in this sponsored article, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor can this article be considered as investment advice.

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From CeFi to DeFi: How investors can redefine their asset ... - Cointelegraph

In 1932, economist Clark Warburton published an article through The American Academy of Political and Social Science analyzing the economic impacts of the American Prohibition Era. Contrary to popular belief, he argued that the nationwide ban on the sale of alcohol had limited economic practicality people would continue businesses as usual so long as they could access alcohol on their own. In other words, the economic effects were generally overestimated insofar as the efficacy of the Prohibition was also overestimated.

In the most rudimentary sense, this logic is just as applicable to the social economics of Hamilton, N.Y.s Old Stone Jug.

Most sophomores and upperclassmen of Colgate University understand the importance of the Jug within the Hamiltonian social scene. For years, it has provided students with an accessible and reliable outlet as the primary social space in town. But current first-years largely only understand the Jug via stories, rumors and word of mouth. Since the beginning of the new academic year, the Jug has remained closed. Beyond speculation, there have been no concrete answers as to why.

While the reasons for the closure are presently unknowable, the social impacts of this change are not. The elimination of Hamiltons 18+ dance club is sure to have a major effect on the party scene. One may be inclined to believe that the practical effects are obvious a decrease in social options necessitates a decrease in the social life itself. Partying and late-night excursions would presumably decrease. But, as Warburton explained, we must remind ourselves that a limit on an economic want is only strong if the people cannot access it on their own.

To understand the Jug as an economic actor, one must frame it vis--vis the social paradigm of Colgate. This is to say Colgate students create a particular type of demand for outlets such as the Jug. It is no secret that the Universitys social life can be, at times, restrictive. Greek Life Organizations (GLOs) remain a dominant force in this sense and are, by definition, exclusive. Colgates Panhellenic Council estimates that there are roughly 600 students involved in sororities alone this year, which amounts to nearly 20 percent of the entire student body. With limited exceptions, the remaining students face difficulties accessing this side of campus life. In these ways, the impermeability of Greek life acts as an amplifier to a Jug-prompted shortage of social options on campus.

So, what happens when there is a surplus of restrictions on campus social life? It is a decentralization of campus social outlets. As opposed to a centralized location the Jug for after-hours activities, students now gather late at night in smaller pockets across campus. These include residence hall study areas, the outer vicinity of the 113 Broad Street Complex and other localized hotspots likely unbeknownst to the general student body.

This trend of decentralization has serious implications as late-night social activities now occur with no regulation. Property damage correlated to these mini-gatherings is more likely to occur. Curtis Hall residents are familiar with the consistent damage charges that result from uncontrolled activity late at night.

The residence hall at 113 Broad Street is a particularly interesting case study. Any residents of 113 or the surrounding area have likely noticed the loud and wild gatherings taking place there on weekends. One can find boomboxes at maximum volume playing club-style music and swaths of first-years dancing fanatically. Perhaps the most conspicuous detail is the number of students openly carrying the infamous red college party cups. This is categorically bolder and more risky than previous decentralized attempts at party life, endemic to the strong desire by first-years to reclaim it. It is as if the Jug was never closed, but simply relocated.

My argument is that the Jug was necessary in controlling this type of chaos. The Jug, if nothing else, was a united hub for nightly activity. It ensured consistency, routine and as a consequence some degree of order. At the very least, after-hours activities were concentrated on a particular schedule and location. This, I believe, has two important implications for safety.

Firstly, by virtue of routine, it enables students to adapt to consistent expectations: individuals know exactly how wild the party scene will get, they know where their friends are if they get lost and will not find themselves in a new environment. It is common knowledge that new environments are most dangerous for students who are not in the right state of mind. The decentralization of social life likely proliferates this danger.

Secondly, there was some level of tacit authority implicit in the Jug. There are adults who, by owning a social space, have some degree of liability for the safety of customers. Furthermore, Campus Safety officers know exactly where students will gravitate at night, adding an extra safety net in the case of a medical emergency.

There were inherent problems with the Old Stone Jug as a function of student social life. This is no secret; there will always be a degree of uncertainty in the context of these settings. But, if the student population is a polity, the Jug was Hobbes Leviathan a de facto system of regulation that became central in an environment of limited alternatives. Without it, we observe an unregulated, anarchic state of decentralized social uncertainty.

Continued here:

The Social Economics of the Old Stone Jug - The Colgate Maroon-News

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The Washington Posts Jennifer Rubin published a piece not that long ago arguing that Democrats have an opportunity on K-12 issues:

Democrats would be wise to reclaim the issue of K-12 education, starting with a recognition that the United States has long been falling behind international competitors and suffered another blow with COVID. They might consider a multipronged approach at both the state and federal levels.

Rubins argument is intuitive: theres ample evidence that the pandemic left U.S. kids academically and socially reeling. Theres also proof that American families are worried about their kids well-being and academic progress.

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As kids struggle, as parents and caregivers fret, some prominent conservatives are currently exploring whether public schools can be meaningfully improved if we give enough families public vouchers for private schools and/or if we can figure out precisely which books to ban. These are not serious responses to the problems and anxieties most American families face. Democrats would benefit if they offered something more substantive than this low bar.

But what? Rubin suggests a three-pronged framework. Democrats should:

Its a reasonable starting point. Education funding increases improve public schools. Teacher pay is low, relative to other professions requiring extensive credentialing, and it hasnt increased enough to keep pace with inflation. U.S. teacher training programs are not particularly effective, particularly when it comes to preparing candidates to teach students to read.

The educational benefits of decentralization are less obvious: U.S. history is pretty clear that local control of schools often sustains inequities and fosters civil rights abuses. Absent top-down pressure to focus on equity, local (and state) decisionmakers regularly default to decisions that are convenient, comfortable and bad for historically marginalized communities.

Funding inequities generally thrive under decentralization. The erosion of federal pressure to integrate schools gave local authorities room to resegregate schools through housing policies, gerrymandered enrollment zones and other surreptitious changes. Combine these trends, and its easy to see how funding inequities are systemically racializedits easier to underfund children of colors educational opportunities when Black and brown children have been concentrated into segregated campuses.

Still, theres some promise in a governance approach along the lines that Rubin suggests: giving local authorities more room to innovate on process while holding them accountable for showing evidence of academic improvement.

But wait. Does that idea sound familiar? It should. Arne Duncan, President Obamas first secretary of education, famously described his reform strategy as tight on goals, loose on means. This tight-loose approach is also a key facet of the public charter school model and its delivered some real improvements for kids.

This is the trouble with the opportunity that Rubin outlines: her new education platform for Democrats sounds an awful lot like the (again, constantly dying) education reform movement. The playbook sounds a whole lot like Duncans old reform one: more funding with tighter goals and more flexibility for how schools and districts reach them.

Same goes for Rubins push to raise teacher pay and standardsthats an echo of core reform initiatives like former DC Public Schools chancellor Michelle Rhees effort to reshape the capitals teaching force. And the reformers over at the National Council on Teacher Quality have been pushing to improve teacher preparation programs for years.

Say it plain: thats why Democrats will struggle to retake command of K12 education as a political issue. Even though education reform is politically stalled after a decade of criticism and the utterly toxic embrace of Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump theres no alternative, actionable progressive slate of ideas to improve schools.

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Its true that Democratic policymakers have some education policy ideas. California and other blue places have launched models for community schools offering wraparound social services like health, nutrition, dental and career-training services. Early education investments like universal pre-K remain popular with progressives (and several conservatives).

But none of these progressive ideas provide a theory of action to address unfairness and dysfunction in K12 schools. Theyre all Very Good Things with solid evidentiary support from prior studies (and support from reformers like Duncan and Rhee, incidentally). They just dont address the core challenge of improving you might even say, reforming the foundations of elementary and secondary education in the United States.

Why is this so difficult? Its partly because reforms ideas arent as substantively useless as their political unpopularity suggests. For all the angry discourse about standardized tests, for instance, they generate data that protect students civil rights and provide key proof points for lawsuits identifying how states or districts school funding choices harm families of color.

The real reason that progressives cant quit reform, though, is that we havent yet figured out how to dissolve a core tension in our public education thinking. On the one hand, progressives have grown correctly suspicious of the structural biases built into public systems. On the other hand, progressives are prone to waxing nostalgic about the fragile, diminishing greatness of American public schools. Many of us tend to imagine that this system was, at some point before No Child Left Behind or Teach For America or the Reagan administration, etc., a shining exemplar of democratic investment in fairness and social mobility.

This tension makes progressives stalwart defenders of public education as a concept, so much so that we generally resist efforts to substantially overhaul its governance as attacks on public education. But its also clear that the long history of American public education is saturated with examples of schools replicating and amplifying social inequities. Some of the most sacred elements of American public education have reliably served as toxic firewalls against progress towards racial justice in the United States.

To move beyond education reform, progressives need to face this uncomfortable incoherence in our thinking. Our post-reform public education platform cant just be about adding grades in the early years and enveloping K12 schools with more social services. Sure, public schools could use deeper resources and broader systems of support. But many of the central mechanisms of the K12 system are themselves unfair against communities of color, low-income families, linguistically diverse childrenand other historically marginalized groups. Schools wont serve those students better without being made to do so.

If Democrats want the political benefits of credibility on public education, they need to center, and solve for, those inequities. And if their best proposals for doing so keep circling back to education reform ideas, perhaps thats a hint that they abandoned that movement too early.

Dr. Conor P. Williams is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and a partner at the Childrens Equity Project. He is also a working father with three kids. These views are his alone, and are not necessarily shared by his employersor his kids.

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Wait. Did Education Reform Just Become Inescapable? - The 74

In poll after poll, the majority of Democratic voters say they do not want Joe Biden to run for reelection next year. And his age, the data shows, is by far the biggest snag. At 80, Biden is already the oldest president in US history and would be 86 by the end of a second term.

And yet, despite such polling, those close to Biden have contrived an entirely different explanation for why his candidacy might fail. Whether its left-wing academic Cornel West, a presidential candidate running for the Green Party nomination, or a pending moderate candidate, third-party challengers have become the main source of worry in Bidenworld, according to an NBC News report Monday. Its pretty fucking concerning, a person familiar with White House discussions about the matter told the outlet.

According to two sources, the president even discussed the matter during a recent White House visit from Hillary Clinton. As NBC notes, many of Clintons allies have spent the past six years blaming the Green Partys Jill Stein for her loss to Donald Trump in 2016. Of course, Clintons defeat was likely caused by numerous factors, including her high disapproval marks among voters and a wildly dysfunctional campaign that failed to contend with the changing political wind in Rust Belt states that had previously voted for Barack Obama.

No matter. Clinton, per NBC, spent her conference with Biden this month urging him to prioritize third-party threats and combat them. She shared the same warning ahead of the 2020 race, accusing Republicans of grooming an unnamed candidate favored by the Kremlinlikely an allusion to former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbardto run as a third-party choice, thereby hurting Democratic odds in the general election.

A recent poll from NBC News does suggest that third-party options could hamper Bidens reelection efforts. When the outlet asked respondents to choose between Biden and Trump, the result was a 46-46 tie. And when presented with additional options for three notable alternative partiesthe Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and the moderate No Labels groupa plurality of respondents, 39%, backed Trump, giving him a three-point lead over the president.

Other recent head-to-head polls have put Trump and Biden at a deadlock; a CBS News poll last week even had Trump leading Biden by one point. If that data is borne out in a handful of key states, the minuscule percentage of voters who back third-party candidates could be enough to tilt the election. With a tight election, every vote counts, a Biden ally told NBC News. Is it in the back of many peoples brains? Absolutely. Do we have to be careful as we move out? Yes, we do.

Compounding these pressures is the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently running for the Democratic nomination but has not ruled out a third-party bid. Over the summer, Kennedy, an anti-vaxxer and all-around crackpot conspiracist, even began courting the Libertarian Party, according to The New York Times. He emphasized that he was committed to running as a Democrat but said that he considered himself very libertarian, Angela McArdle, Libertarian Party chair, told the Times when asked about her July meeting with Kennedy.

Biden, meanwhile, could also face a primary challenger from within his own party. For example: Congressman Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, revealed recently that he is weighing a presidential bid. Im concerned that there is no alternative, Phillips told political strategist and pundit Steve Schmidt. Possibly alluding to Bidens unprecedented age, the lawmaker added that something could happen between now and next November that would make the Democratic Convention in Chicago an unmitigated disaster.

More here:
Hillary Clinton Urges Joe Biden Not to Sleep on Third-Party Spoilers ... - Vanity Fair