The Masquerade Ball

 It’s hard to not a get a healthy dose of the hipster-vibe as one skims the articles found uploaded to the Jacobin Magazine website.  The authors usually declare with vociferous rhetoric worthy of the ancient acropolis of Athens: denunciations, repudiations, or exclamations of this or that policy; sometimes it is focused on an idealist fight, or even a person masquerading to be on the left or a new hero of the Acropolis.  I was skimming through some back issues of the Jacobin when I happened to land upon a catchy little article titled: “Krystal Ball Is the Anti-Rachel Maddow Bernie Fans Have Been Waiting For” by Connor Kilpatrick (2019).  What does it even mean to be the anti-Rachel Maddow person in the first place I first considered? Then I read more and more.  One of the more banal concepts found in this article Kilpatrick pushes is the notion that “Rising” isn’t a homegrown insurgency against the media or as Kilpatrick explains it: “ The studio is sleek and modern in that Star Trek–bridge sort of way with impeccably designed graphics easily up to CNN’s standards. The music is bright and upbeat, as if threatening to break into a Mighty Mighty Bosstones cover. Both Ball and Enjeti are always smartly dressed, gleaming smiles all around, with Ball’s colorful wardrobe crushing the competition”[I guess this is really important when one is attacking the pillars of socioeconomic orthodoxy?](Jacobin Magazine, 2019). This seems to be very important to Kilpatrick that the show looks and feels just like a major main stream media production and not out of the basement of some random youtuber’s house with a DIY craft store looking set.  

 However, Kilpatrick fails to mention that Rising is a product of a mainstream media company just using the Internet as a means for a nontraditional distribution system. So, of course the Hill’s production values are high they want to be the go-to mainstream media source on Youtube. Kilpatrick especially appreciates the fact that the “Rising” program is helmed by these two young vibrant meritocracy approved individuals—its not so clear that Kilpatrick really does a have a firm grasp on his subject matter of Krystal Ball’s rising star in so-called “Alternative Media Circles”.

Or as Kilpatrick describes the viewing experience: “watching Rising is like you just woke up a decade into some mass political realignment, in which the Bloombergians, the Paul Ryans, the Clintonites, and even the Obamicans have all been swept into the dustbin of history, leaving only two poles standing: Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon”(Jacobin Magazine). A large part of this realignment for Kilpatrick is directly linked to the shinny veneer of Rising’s expertly crafted digital effects, professional camera operators, and professional wardrobe and make-up— and thus an integral part of how Rising is changing the discourse of online political commentary in Kilpatrick’s view. Kilpatrick also seems to find this stagecraft as a critical element in Ball’s newly found leftist credentials.  And no doubt that Krystal Ball has outwardly made a shift in perspective from her days at The Cycle on. In this fluff piece from Kilpatrick the reader must be forgiven if they get the impression that Krystal Ball is some form of radical anti-establishment pundit waging a war against the media systems that once so embraced her. It’s hard to take Kilpatrick seriously in some of this interview when it is abundantly clear Kilpatrick has failed to ask any questions about Ball’s positions between 2015-2019. Kilpatrick stays away from the dangerous topics: the questionable funding of The People’s House Project Super Pac, the troubling anti-populist, anti-Bernie, Pro-Biden content of her first book Reversing The Apocalypse: Hijacking The Democratic Party To Save The World, any of Ball’s conversations with S.E. Cupp for the 51 Million Glamour articles on the 2016 election where Ball falls all over Biden, and so on.  However, Kilpatrick reminds us that it was the successful prognostication of the skilled political pundit Krystal Ball that pleaded with Hillary Clinton to not run in 2014.  This one event is essentially the start of Ball’s media trajectory from mainstream pundit to revolutionary anti-establishment pundit and alternative left media darling. And with this one monologue Kilpatrick describes how Ball turned a blind eye to the mainstream media and found herself headed towards canonization as the patron saint of Bernie Supporters on Youtube.  But, is that story really what happened or did Ball just put her finger into the wind after the election of 2016 and felt a change in the collective direction of modern political thought in the coveted demographic of 18-49 year olds. And thus Ball found way to tap into the angst of the demographic group that was completely discontent with the last 8 years of Obama’s administration?  Perhaps, Ball’s transformation form MSM to Alternative Media Darling is far less radically ideologically driven and far more monetarily driven?

“Fighting Against Obsolescence ”

Krystal Ball has spent the better part of the last six years since her Mainstream Media [MSM] days on MSNBC’s  The Cycle was cancelled in 2015,  spreading the gospel of her very real “LEFTIST HETERODOX PUNDITRY” as some authentic form of revolt against the system.  Ball likes to regal the story of how her now infamous “Don’t Run Hillary“ monologue in 2014 put her at loggerheads with the management of MSNBC.[And so do all of the people that want to paint Ball to be an outsider as well—I wonder how this myth got started anyway?] Let’s be honest it wasn’t much of a repudiation of Hillary Clinton.  It was more of a polite request to Hillary Clinton to not run. Ball didn’t outline with any vigor or rigorous documentation that Hillary Clinton was a devise figure in all the wrong ways for a post-Obama era candidate. Nor did Ball note that Clinton was a continuation of failed policies that left the Obama era Democratic Party in total shambles.  Ball didn’t castigate Clinton’s overt war monger in Libya—remember the classic interview where Clinton literally said to Leslie Stall of 60 minutes: “We came, we saw, he died [Gaddafi]” and then laughed uncontrollably in 2011? Nor, did Ball call out Clinton’s use of racially charged ads during her 2008 campaign against Obama; or, her other famous musing in 2008, that perhaps some one would assassinate Obama like RFK was in 1968 before going into the California Primary.  Nor, did Ball outline the myriad of problematic votes Clinton made as Senator of NY—instead Ball merely demurred to the fact that the country had moved past Clintonian Democracy!

As the years passed by from 2014 to 2019 Ball of course managed to use her built-up media presence to change as Kilpatrick quotes Ball’s own description of herself as “a Rule Worshipper, Pleaser…” into a radical leftist Berner!  But, is this change authentic? That is the question.  If it is great! If not what are the true leftists to do?

My quest to discover the real Krystal Ball started with her first self-published book: Reversing The Apocalypse: Hijacking The Democratic Party To Save The World(2017) (It’s an absurdly long title for a rather lousy book by the way and self-published). When I was reading this book I was expecting to find chapters about how she moved from milquetoast MSM figurehead pundit to radical leftist ready to burn down the Democratic Party and all of its norms.  Instead I found a rather confused lackluster ideologically free work that’s title implied a far more interesting read than the chapters revealed themselves to be.  It’s a book that focuses more on the soft issues of “Political Niceties and Norms” with your neighbor who might be a Trump sycophant; but, you should reach out to them and try to bridge the ideological gap with them.  This love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek attitude is weirdly juxtaposed against passages of sincere terror of Donald Trump becoming the next Franco or Pinochet. It’s bizarre to read Ball trash Populism with such absolutist terms as “democracy and populism cannot coexist” , “populist isn’t a compliment” or that “populists are narcissists” when talking about Trump but tacitly as well the heterodoxy of Bernie’s 2016 campaign as well.  In the 264 pages of the book Ball has basically two prescriptions for the Democratic Party:  1) Adopt a candidate that can play the role of being the caring, sympathetic, and understanding figure to the nation; in this case Ball picks none other than Joe Biden; And 2) Capitalism is here to stay, so deal with it; but, that doesn’t mean we have to be brutish monsters; we can have a kinder and gentler capitalism with a nice UBI to create a floor for all.  As laughable as it might sound considering that Ball’s 2017 hijacking program turns out to be basically Andrew Yang’s entire concept for “Human Centered Capitalism”(2019-present) this is probably less coincidence really than it has do to with the fact that Ball probably does hold these values. And given the fact that Ball often still reflects on her positive feelings towards UBI-it would seem she still holds this belief.   But, what about Ball and her transformation to a True-Berner is it real?

 Ball manages to mention Bernie Sanders all of 4 times in the entire book. Ball’s most positive statement about Bernie Sanders is about his use of crowdfunding to support his insurgent campaign in 2016.  It’s really not clear in the book that Ball is overly fond of publicly funded institution policies like “Free Public College”,  “Medicare For All”, or “ A Jobs Guarantee on The Federal Level”—but, what is perfectly clear is that Ball is totally enamored with the UBI concept for all and Ball really “Frickin’ Loves Joe”[that is a true quote by the way]. Yes, Ball does mention that fact that FDR did amazing public works projects with the New Deal. Ball even declares: “I love this idea. I’m all for this idea.  But a big infrastructure spend fails our test of sustainability”(pg161).  It seems that Ball isn’t concerned with the stability of the nation’s roads, bridges, railways, ect and so on. Instead she seems to believe that while yes, these investments are large but ultimately short term in nature and it isn’t hard to see how Ball would attempt to use this sustainability argument against other Progressive planks like “the Green-New Deal” or “Medicare for All” both of which have large initial investments, but if done correctly will have lower costs over decades and thus lower profitability and growth to a true capitalist!

However, the fact is infrastructure if you want to maintain it—that takes people too and continual investments. So, perhaps, the problem isn’t that infrastructure in general is short term, but the specific type of infrastructure the US plans to invest in? Perhaps, the answer to Ball’s sustainability question is developing infrastructure and its support systems that will maximize our potential workforce without a strain on the environment and grow at rates that represent the population.  This thought seems to never dawn on Ball in her analysis of the infrastructure issue. Ball does however feel that the panacea to the Nation’s Malaise that will reunite the Democratic Party with the working class, appease the middle class, and of course give the creative class and investor class the needed perpetual revenue and heart they need to keep their empires of imaginary money awash in real cash is the UBI and a Joe Biden like candidate.

Is this really the source material for a person that Jacobin would later call the Anit-Rachel Maddow?  I didn’t think so I dug further and in the next  two dozen or so pages I will outline all the detail of Ball’s career from as the Washington Post called her in 2011 “Scandal Star to Pundit”, to PAC director and finally back to the warm embrace of the public eye as the Anti-Maddow!

“When I’m Good, I’m Very, Very Good, But When I’m Bad, I’m Better.”

Mae West

 Krystal Ball was catapulted into the media world in 2010 not with her mediocre campaign to unseat the still reigning House of Representative incumbent Republican Robert Wittman. The Republicans’ thought that Ball’s scandalous XXX-Christmas Party photos leaked to online bloggers would get rid of this upstart forever—Wrong! The scandal is the important part of the story since Ball’s milquetoast campaign was never going to be a winner.  A young attractive candidate mired in the unsavory business of a XXX-Christmas Party Scandal was great for news networks ratings looking for a new face of the Democratic Party. Once this scandal hit Ball was on television more for her scandal than her candidate status and soon Ball parlayed this into a nice position with MSNBC as one of the network’s paid contributors by 2011. So instead of removing Ball and sending her packing to the dustbin of History the scandal made Ball the star we have today. So, in some very real way the left has the Republicans to blame for Ball’s rise to fame. Certainly if Ball had not had this scandal her lackluster campaign would have imploded the same but without the tedious press about her scandalous pictures from a XXX Christmas Party she would be not be a media figure.  And perhaps all we know of her would be “Oh, wasn’t she that person that ran against a Republican once in Virgina and lost?”  Or At best she might have become a double Jeopardy trivia question instead of a media figure.  But the story of her past managerial class credentials starts earlier in the 2000’s and this sets into motion they entire cycle of Ball’s career from candidate to alternative media darling.   

Prior to Ball’s days on the air she was working for CGI, the IT giant from Montreal, Canada developing software for accounting systems.  The story Ball tells is that upset with the dull-drums of the corporate world and the unexciting world of accountant systems software she happens to meet her husband one Jonathan Dariyanani  a venture capitalist and lawyer that just happens to specialize in creating educational software.  In fact by 2009 Dariyanani and Ball were married and living in Ohio designing software for what would become the largest online-charter school in America Cyber PA now with more than 10,000 students. The Private Sector to the rescue or perhaps not—I will let you decide?

“Capitalism Is Here To Stay”

 In Ball’s book Reversing The Apocalypse: How To Hijack The Democratic Party And Save The World (Pelican Media, 2017)[Reversing The Apocalypse] Ball describes her then Ohio town of East Liverpool as being a once great center of manufacturing power in the United States, with it being called the Pottery Capital Of The World before the 1950’s.  In the 1950’s the first wave of jobs in America started to be outsourced to Japan and other developing or rebuilding nations after WWII.  After all Japan was so hungry for work that they would make plates, cheap toys, and other such things for well below the cost of US domestic products.  Thus the first salvo was fired against the post-WWII American Workers in the new Globalized Economy. But, unlike today they could easily move into other industries like the Steel Mills across the border in Beaver County, PA. 

But, then the 1960’s came and the cheap steel from Japan and South Korea started to chip away at the domestic market.  By the 1980’s investment bankers like Carl Ichan who owned most of The US Steel Company, felt that steel was dead in America so Ichan and the rest of the economic elites turned the remaining steel companies into something else—something that didn’t need people in mills. Remember this is the tough transition from the classes of production to the dominance of the classes that are creative.  So, it is was not surprising that by the 2000’s with a Neoliberal like G.W. Bush in office that the “US Steel Industry” was allowed to basically be killed off by the cheap Chinese Steel and with it so was the last hope for East Liver Pool.   A once proud town of producers was deemed financially unsustainable in a new Tech economy that ironically still manages to require raw-materials to be extracted from the crust of this planet and turned into the items we in America purchase so voraciously!  That irony is purely one noted in academia since our government and it’s managerial class has totally bought into the calculus of David Ricardo’s “Competitive Advantages In Trade” and the math must be obeyed at all costs—even if the math doesn’t show any competitive advantage really exists beyond that of the destruction of labor’s will to fight, it is worth it.  Something, Ball herself doesn’t admit she will soon become part of in the educational world at this time in the town of Midland, PA.  Soon Ball and the town of Midland will have a future that looks suspiciously like so many parts of the American Landscape both physically and politically speaking.

Luckily for the town of Midland, PA they had a creative person to save them in the form of Dr. Nick Trombetta, former Superintendent of Midland Public School District, PA.  Trombetta looking at the hulking disaster Midland, PA had become felt that the solution was simple--Charter School—after all the state public institution of High School was closed down.  So, now it was time to let the private sector do its magic. We all must remember Milton Friedman’s dicta “the Government Is The Problem”; thus if this dicta is to be true then the answer is to add more private education. And well that means a profit motive and of course that brings in the consultant class—so Ball and her husband were right there to get inline and make sure they too would benefit from this change economics of education. And since the State of Pennsylvania would give Dr. Trombretta nearly the same amount of money in aid for his school even though it had no buildings—one can see how the allure of the extra Profits by just pushing the boundaries of acceptable accounting methods a little here or there!  So, Dr. Trombretta decided to make a little extra profit on his school and as CEO siphoned off $8 million dollars to his own bank account. In 2013 he was arrested and by 2014 he was serving a 20-month sentence for tax fraud. Ironically, Trombretta was described on his linked in page by Dr. Michael Conti (also a former CEO of Cyber PA) as “… a true advocate for students and pioneer in the business of education” (Trombetta, Linked In Page).  It’s that last part that I’m sure just makes the inner Milton Friedman of everyone tear up a bit.  The Business Of Education! Exactly, what we really need is more for profit Educational Systems!

But, the school survives—however, like all charter schools the question is how good is the education?  And the answer is in study after study the same as the public institutions they displace. Even Ball in her book questions the validity of the quality of the education being delivered by Cyber PA—which is highly ironic because both Ball and her husband clearly designed software for this school’s cyber curriculum. So, was it that the software designed doesn’t teach your kids too well or is it the for-profit school model doesn’t work when it comes to education? Either way the result is the same a bunch of students with substandard education. And a bunch of self-satisfied members of the managerial class getting the opportunity to tell the world how they’ve disrupted the standard model of the current educational system and now through the power of the free market, choice has once again been restored to the people and their futures are brighter because of it.  Something the data doesn’t seem to play out—but who is going to say that to Silicon Valley when they have the money to both pay for the propaganda on television via ads and buy off the politicians too?   The big question is why you don’t see too many super elites kids going to Cyber schools with a profit motive?

 It seems the elites of our world still rely on ancient techniques of pedagogy to ensure that their most special offspring are given the best one on one tutoring in addition to elite educational facilities with many well trained teachers so they will matriculate from one elite educational experience to the next.  So, call me a bit skeptical when I read about the disruptors in education from Silicon Valley peddling their brand of snake-oil heuristic systems to the masses in the hopes of cashing in on the multi billion-dollar industry of Education that is funded by our Federal and State Governments. If there is one thing that never changes is that vast sums of money flowing from the government with little oversight will always bring out the worst in humanity. And it will always be called progress when it is happening.  Especially, when you exalt the so-called Creative Class as the pinnacle of human meritocracy in society.

So given these facts it is not surprising to me that in 2017 Ball’s statement about capitalism in her book Reversing The Apocalypse was this:  “Now I hate to spoil the surprise, but I am not a Marxist.  It probably feels like I’ve done a lot of capitalism bashing, but in reality, there is simply no system of economic organization that comes close to the constant churning and innovation and problem solving of Capitalism (p159)”. Now, of course you don’t have to be a Marxist to be a progressive. That is true. But, if you believe that capitalism is the only system that really works you have already accepted far too many conditions as being acceptable:  mass consumerism, mass production, monopolistic tendencies of corporations,  and of course the exploitative profit motive.  In Ball’s defense the book repeatedly and clearly states that all Ball really wants is a foundation to be built into the system that supports a floor—aka “A Freedom From Want” to quote FDR, and so Ball does very liberally.  Which is a lovely idea; but, does it really stop the inequality, or, does it merely create a class of people who are the unfortunate “Lost Proletariat of This Brave New World”?  I will let you the reader-mull that over for awhile—but, whatever you decide is the outcome it will make you see Ball’s statements in a different light I predict.

“To Create An Economic And Governmental System That Is Both Sustainable And Dynamic”. 

Krystal Ball, Reversing The Apocalypse: Hijacking The Democratic Party And Save The World p159

Of course you can guess my position is that to be truly on the left you have to support far more radical economic models other than just Capitalism with a Safety Net or Floor. We need to pull down the entire edifice of Capitalism’s False Idols and destroy the very fabric of the system itself.  A bigger question is if Ball is such a fan of Piketty – then why wouldn’t you also want to see a ceiling as well for the Master’s of the Economy? Is it enough to believe in just a floor to keep the Proles standing upright to really end economic inequality and the power of the wealthy to control governments?  Ball is silent on this part of the equation. Ball is vague on the real benefits for the Proletariat as well as can be seen in Ball’s limited vision of the UBI  I  will outline in the next few paragraphs.

However, Ball does delve deep into Charles Murray’s work to support her own UBI with this statement:

“So, human beings seem reasonable capable of handling themselves—can we afford it though? The short answer is yes. The aforementioned Charles Murray has done the math and found that savings from eliminating the existing safety net programs alone would be enough to provide every adult over twenty-one years old an annual basic income of $13,000, with the benefit being partially phased out for those earning over $30,000. We can quibble with the details of whether or not this structure or dollar amount, but Murray’s calculations answer the basic question of current affordability” [p173, Ball]. 

Of course the devil is in the details of this quote.  The big details are three things: 1) Murray’s calculations are based on eliminating all government benefits other than his replacement UBI program [very similar to Yang’s UBI program as described on the Dave Rubin Show 2019]; and, 2) Murray’s description of the UBI or as he referrers to it as “the Plan” [Murray really taxed his cognitive abilities with that name] is that the $13,000 is the top amount anyone could receive and actually this is a false statement since Murray envisions people taking out at least $3,000 off the top for a retirement savings account and healthcare program. So in reality Murray only sees $10,000 being directly deposited yearly to each person after the retirement and healthcare plans are taken out. 3) Murray’s reduction in benefits for salaries starts at $30,000 with a 10% excise tax and increases—this tax literally claws back the program as people climb the economic ladder effectively zeroing out the program around $130,000 gross salary. So Murray’s program is not universal in nature it is merely a way for Libertarians and Extreme Conservatives to cover their disdain for government safety nets and the working poor.  I will discuss some of my greater concerns with wage issues a little later on—but keep that in your mind as I work through more of Ball’s thoughts on UBI.

What is funny is that Ball who calls for Universal programs routinely summons the support for her plan from the likes of Murray, Friedman,  Hayek and so on to support the idea of UBI. Conservative thinkers that all used the UBI or Negative Income Tax as a means to destabilize and eliminate the actual safety nets provided by the state for the people of the nation. I will also state that Ball does say she wants to make it truly universal in nature as to who is eligible for the UBI. That is a positive point but only in that it stops the issue of the wealthy attacking the program—an extra $13,000 or more per year is nice no matter how wealthy you are—especially, if the overall cost saves you money every April 15th.  The problem is that Ball never describes exactly how her plan for the UBI will fit into the bigger social safety net in the US. In fact Ball seems to like the idea of putting the choice of things back into the hands of people. Which is fine. The problem is that you actually need to create a system that allows people to make good choices and not just locking them into a selection of bad choices and then blaming them for not succeeding.  This is the danger that Ball’s thinking in her first book can lead too.  Also Ball never really does discuss how the system will work in her mind—so a reader is left piecing together the idea from fragments of conservative thinkers.  These issues of how the program actually works are more than things to quibble over in my opinion.

It isn’t clear at all that Ball believes that the UBI will replace the entire social safety net like Murray proposes in his book In Our Hands: A Plan To Replace The Welfare State.   Ball is completely silent on this part of her plan for funding a UBI.  Ball is unclear if the UBI will be clawed back through increased taxes for the wealthier members of the society or will it be a tax-free universal grant for all? Ball never states what are the eligibility requirements for this program i.e. do children get a grant too? This would be a boon for working class families for sure.  Ball is silent on this part.  Ball is also silent on how exactly the program would deal with those that are retiring?  Do you get a Social Security Payment increase after 65 years of age because you’re now considered elderly and out of the job-market?

At this point in Ball’s career it seems that Ball really does fully believe in Murray’s claims.  Ball, does seem to think that UBI will cure many issues with the continued trend towards automation and the issues with the unemployment that will create.  And here are Ball’s continued thoughts on UBI and Automation  and Unemployment.

 Ball’s does take a softer stance with unemployment at least rhetorically speaking: “… we are ready to stop saying to the worker their unemployment is their own fault. (p.175)”. However Ball is far from a bleeding heart as she chooses to quote Charles Murray’s “Income for Every American” op-ed passage from the WSJ: ”Everybody will know that everybody else has an income stream [UBI]. It will be possible to say to the irresponsible what we can’t say now: ‘We won’t let you starve before you get your next deposit, but it is time you get your act together. Don’t try to tell us you’re helpless, we know you aren’t.’” [WJS].  It is ironic that Ball would choose to quote Murray’s take on UBI as the great social equalizer that is also a puritanical cudgel for the irresponsible members of our society to be bludgeoned with by the morally superior members of Society i.e those that are Productive and Self-Sustaining you know the High I.Q members.   It seems that on the issue of unemployment Ball’s magical UBI does two things: one, it gives the libertarians of the world a pleasant cover for their winner-take all socioeconomic positions; and two, it gives the otherwise villainous members of the corporate elites from any party the sort of moral bedrock from which they can attack any leftist position. Even Ball herself in this quote: “Given that Bernie Sanders wasn’t lefty enough to campaign on ‘Social Security For All”, you may be thinking that this whole idea was a left-wing fantasy dreamed up by George Soros while high on Marx and Piketty”[pg168]— pretends that some how by not being totally enamored with the concept of the UBI that you aren’t truly as radical as Ball’s proposal demands you to be.  In fact it is the other way around. 

The present proposals from Ball to Yang do only one thing with UBI—take the responsibility of Corporations democratizing their workplaces and working for community sustainability economic systems and force this weight back upon the community’s weakest members to try and lift themselves up—and yet it is this class of people the working and lower-middle classes who are being eliminated from society’s levers of power.  Instead of empowering these classes as their sources of income are eliminated from the economy the UBI that Ball and Yang taut as the solution only empowers the already Dickensian philosophies in America about the negative stereotypes of the working class and the poor that are straight out of the 19th century. The working classes and the poor exist because of their own failings and the UBI is a charity given from the Government to protect the economic elitists from the pangs of guilt as they continually crush this class. And when this class is still present as Murray (favorite Author of Joe Biden by the way) happily declares that we can castigate these people as being no longer “helpless” it becomes possible to exploit them even more efficiently with a clear conscience. After all they have the UBI to fall back on and if they cannot succeed in society that is their problem not ours as a society.  And who doesn’t love an idea that is also popular in Silicon Valley—and Silicon Valley loves this idea. 

Ball goes as far as to quote Sam Altman then President of Y-Combinator, LLC[Sam Altman also shows up again in Ball’s future]—as the cool-kids call it a “Start Up Accelerator” designed to marry the funds of the ultra wealthy with the business acumen and the vision of the next generation of the creative class: “It’s actually healthy for a society if some people get incredibly rich. But there should be a floor below, which we as a society don’t all people to fall.”[p174]. I guess Altman missed a lot courses about the issues with economic inequalities before he dropped out of Stanford University, to start a social media service that tanked. Well, that is after Altman was given by venture capitalists $30 million dollars in seed money.  So, you can see why Altman might be all for this floor as well—it is good for Silicon Valley to represent this sort of benevolent master approach to the paradigm of economic inequality as a necessity—yes, Ball agrees that Altman and his ilk are not only destine to get rich, but some form of economic inequality is part of a healthy of economic system. It drives the system itself. And just so long as the losers aren’t dying on the streets or wasting away in neo-19th century poor houses, nothing should really fundamentally change. Remember GROWTH, INNOVATION, WEALTH and PROSPERITY FOR ALL!

Sounds great until you realize that Ball has just gifted the Silicon Valley company that turned your once good paying job into robo-work with a clear conscience in the form a UBI.  What did Ball’s much vaunted “Working Class American Get”? Well he or she of the working class got for their trouble the happy reward of getting to keep their UBI!  Sounds fair right? Sounds Progressive Right?  Remember, if a Company knows that the Government will give the employee $13,000 or even $25,000 in money each year what is the incentive for a Big-Company to pay people $30,000 or $50,000 on top of this? That would set off the Neo-liberal warning bells for the dreaded “hyper-inflation scenario” and we know that means that Companies will do two things: 1) cut salaries so company’s x salary + government benefit z  = standard of living y and 2) they will raise their prices while also attempting to outsource, automate, and otherwise reduce their liabilities. So while the UBI sounds great on paper and in reality has little effect on employment other than large companies would love to off-load their employees to the Government at least when it comes to some of the pay.  At best it is a nice fantasy if you believe in the never-ending growth myth of Capitalism but sooner or later the planet just runs out of places to exploit and raw materials from which to use in this process of exploitation. It should be very clear that Ball hasn’t really done much research into the UBI proposition and instead believes in it because many members of her social group were supporting it and still do.  Won’t it be a shame when her social group is soon replaced by the technology they admire so much?

Ball doesn’t seem to realize that very soon the AI software will come for her class too. What is to stop AI once we’ve unlocked its potential? I’m not one to cry out that Robot-Massacre is around the corner but it is coming and faster than most think.  Imagine a world dominated by deep pattern recognition, hyper-speed trading, mass data collection; all of this analysis being taking over by IBM and Amazon’s clouding computing or Google’s Quantum Computing projects, one must ask when will the day come we just ask Alexa, Google, or Siri who will win the Presidential Election? And soon Alexa (Siri, Google, or whatever is next on the horizon) will spew out Candidate X and why doubt Alexa—she can scan every poll, every metric, every meme on social media, and finally every purchasing trend to analyze and thus create the reality Jeff Bezos and the other Creative Class Titans want it to be. And who’s to question this reality?  Not, Krystal Ball—she believes in Capitalism and so what if political punditry is no harder to model than any other complex system is? They too shall fall to the hand of automation.  This is the class of persons Ball’s book tells us are the future people that will lift all up economically speaking--the people innovating CAPTIALISM!

 This future class of persons Ball by the way just congratulates as being the creative and economic motivators, which are also the same people that are the most hostile to democracy in the workplace. It’s laughable when Ball congratulates “Google teams working on AI” or “The Elon Musks of the world” as the very people that will  elevate all in the economy—no, seriously Ball does make the tired old “Trickle Down Economics” argument in her book Reversing The Apocalypse with just the wage floor addendum added. What else is odd about this stance is that Ball doesn’t once question the monopolistic nature of these tech-giants she sees as the economic engines of progress.  Progress that Ball not only doesn’t question but also applauds and even believes given the creation of a national UBI will be a good thing for all.   It is odd to see that Ball in 2017 believes that if a member of the working class looses his or her job to “Jerry The Robo-Worker “ that somehow it might actually free them up to do what they are truly meant to do.  And to question this almost divine destiny of the producing classes slowly and completely being consumed by the technocratic wonders of the next the generation of Silicon Valley’s Creative Wizards is tantamount to a kind of Neo-Ludditism or worse yet perhaps Populism is vaguely hinted at in Ball’s book.

“To wonder what was so radical about a movement [Luddites] which seemed to demand "only" the cessation of fraudulent work, is to fail to perceive the inner truth of the valid assumption, made on every side, of the connection between frame-breaking and sedition. As if the fight by the producer for the integrity of his work-life can be made without calling the whole of capitalism into question. The demand for the cessation of fraudulent work necessarily becomes a cataclysm, an all-or-nothing battle insofar as it is pursued; it leads directly to the heart of the capitalist relationship and its dynamic.”

John Zerzan,  Elements of Refusal (1999), pp. 108-109

I have a different perspective that when we remove tasks from our populations we actually loose important parts of our own humanity.  It’s not a question of making what Ball might consider menial or mundane work the domain of a future robotic workforce—its about the dignity of having the person working and having an education matter for all. Why shouldn’t plumbers’ quote Socrates or Plato as easily as they reference the sizes of Pipe on a Gauge Chart?  Humans need to do things.  All things are important to our society.  Now, I will say this Ball does accurately declare that not all work can be described as being dignified with a paycheck.  The problem with the UBI scheme is that it essentially sets up an entire mindset of “Takers” v. “Makers” and without a complete shift in our socioeconomic and political mindsets it will only further drive a wedge to divide the beleaguered working class and the poor. And the working class will feel their limited resources are being spent on the underserving poor!  Remember capitalism isn’t a system of plenty but one of finite amounts that generate wealth!

Speaking of finite amounts, Ball makes no claims about the issues of resource inequality or the basic lack of natural resources in the future. Ball doesn’t talk about the issue of common or public ownership of natural resources, public goods, or public digital space. So, I can only guess that in an Ayn Randian like fantasy world Ball sees humans running out of iron ore, titanium, cobalt and so on and ect—no, problem with privatized and commercialized space flight we will just mine the Asteroid Belt in the solar system. The only problem is that we might not have a planet to live on before we have the technology to make Asteroid Mining anything but a fantasy of Roddenberry, Asimov, or Bradbury!  What happens when all the mines run dry and all the Earth is laid waste to? Who’s going to be paying this UBI in a crumbling society?  Who will be satisfied with living in the ruins of this technocracy gone wrong? And who is eager to enter a workforce  when they know that lurking around every corner a robot or AI software is being designed to replace a human ? Ball isn’t clear on that front at all.  After all Ball manages to only write one 30-page chapter on this topic of UBI! So, you might forgive the author if the ideas are vague and sound a bit disjointed.

“Peace And Love To All But The Populists”

Instead Ball spends more time reassuring you that, yes, Trump is truly a terrible person clearly in bed with Vladimir Putin and fantasizing about his new job as Fuhrer.  Ball loves to spend pages on telling the reader that yes, Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate, but Trump is truly the next Populist Fascist in the making.  It is hard to see the Ball of 2019 in this incarnation of her work. And I personally want to know what happened between 2017 and 2019?

On Rising and later republished in the sham of a book entitled The Populist’s Guide To 2020: A new Right and New Left are Rising by Krystal Ball and Saagar Engjeti [Strong Arm Press, 2020] (The Populist’s Guide To 2020) is a monologue from 2019: “Why Democrats Cling To Their Russian Obsession”, where Ball makes the case that the Democratic Elite Obsession with the Russian Interference with the 2016 election has become a litmus test for the media system itself.  However, buried within her anti-MSM monologue is this telling sentence in the first paragraph: “Essentially they took a story that has real merit, Russian manipulation of social media in an effort to sway our election and the clear openness of the current President’s campaign in receiving help, and have turned into pure insanity.”[p49 Ball & Enjeti]  And with that sentence we see a continuity from Ball’s earlier stances now moderated a bit from their rabid anti-Trump Russian Agent statements, but still very open to the fact that Ball still has one foot in this worldview.  The problem with the MSM for Ball is that it has become all encompassing this Trump hysteria. But, Ball is still concerned that Trump might be a real threat—she just doesn’t see Russian influence in all of his actions but there still is this hint of possible Russian Influence. However, not too long ago Ball too was writing as if Trump was a puppet of Putin.    Ball writes the following in Reversing The Apocalypse: “What we never could have imagined, though, is that Putin would find in America herself a willing partner [Trump] to undermine America values”[p148].  Clearly, a sign that in 2017 Ball was a true believer of the Trump-Putin Cabal that was so feverishly spouted on Ball’s old network MSNBC nightly—but wait there is even more.

It seems to me Ball was using Reversing The Apocalypse as sort of an audition piece for the other networks to read and say to themselves perhaps we can build Krystal Ball into our very own Rachel Maddow—look as this passage and ask yourself if it couldn’t be written by Maddow’s team in early 2017:  “[In reference to Trump] Populism has taken on a somewhat positive connotation in American political discourse as someone who’s fighting for the people and taking on the powers that be. In Muller’s definition, however, there is no silver lining.  Populists and real democracy cannot coexist. [Ball, p142.]” Sounds a bit different than the Ball of 2020 that authored the Populist’s Guide To 2020 in the hopes to take a big bite out of the discontent that was forming on the left and portrays “Leftist Populist” Bernie Sanders in a glowing light.  Sander’s is a topic that Ball leaves virtually untouched and his brand of “Leftist Populism” is not even given a second thought.  Populism is dangerous.

In 2017 when Ball published her first book: Reversing The Apocalypse populism is all bad including Bernie Sander’s Leftist Populism.  This Development of Ball’s beliefs can be attributed to I believe one source:  Dr. Jan-Werner Muller professor of political science at Princeton University and specially his book What Is Populism (Penn St. Press 2016).  The 135 page volume by Professor Muller takes a dim view of Populism to say the least and since this is the only material that Ball references in her views on Populism it stands to reason that this volume would be the source of Ball’s views on the movement.  Muller views “Populism” as a fight against the “holistic view of the producing class [working class + middle class/lower-middle class]  and elite class [ technocratic + creative + meritocratic members that create the upper class of our society] [pg 29].  Which is why even as Ball attempts to create a vision for reaching out to the producing class she fails.  Ball offers up half-hearted solutions from the Libertarian and Social Conservatives realm as a means to quell real economic and social anxieties in the producing class.  The magic wave of the UBI wand coupled to the right candidate makes all of Ball’s anxieties about real change for her own class to disappear.

 Ball is terrified of the idea that some major change for the economic elite class will occur in her book: Reversing the Apocalypse.  The very idea that a true popular movement capable of putting forth real solutions for the producing class frightens’ the hell out of Ball in 2017 as the creation of a real TRUMPISM.  Ball loves FDR in the Reversing the Apocalypse—but Ball conveniently leaves out the fact that FDR in 1932 wasn’t much of Political Fire Brand. FDR ran a campaign in 1932 that looked and felt like Biden 2020—heavy on his predecessor’s failures and light on policy specifics from FDR [Biden].  Which is why by 1934 many felt that FDR needed a push to embrace more radical reforms.  One such person was Huey Long from Louisiana. Prior to 1934 FDR and Long were political allies—but after the economy in 1934 was still sluggish and it seemed to many that the FDR admin was unwilling to push for harder reforms so Long created his push “Share the Wealth” in 1934 to combat FDR.   The “Share the Wealth” program was designed to up-lift all members of society (white society that is) sounds oddly similar to Bernie Sanders in 2016 (2020):  Free Higher Education , Vocational Training, elder and veteran pensions,  healthcare programs, and even an early form of UBI (a stipend for families making less than 1/3rd of the national average , sounds like something Ball would be in favor of right?).   Long was clearly challenging FDR and by 1935 created a 7 million plus mailing list that made Long a real contender to challenge FDR in the 1936 election. FDR being a political animal from a long and illustrious line NYS old money knew how to counter politically. FDR started the second round of the New Deal Program to directly counter Long’s program that was resonating with the general population so well.

 Ball triumphantly declares that Huey Long was a Trump like figure when compared to the saintly FDR in Reversing The Apocalypse.  Which isn’t exactly true.  The fact that Ball compares Long to Trump is just another example of Ball’s eagerness to confirm her conclusions about Populism and especially Trump in 2016-17.  And further more it shows that Ball seems to treat her audience with an almost laughable contempt when it comes to doing her research. Ball sloppily lumps concepts and praticoneers together in a way that makes her audience feel good about Ball’s tenuous connections.   Which is why Ball demonizes Long in the same breadth as Trump.  It is also why FDR who also leaned into many Populist troupes of the day is not treated like Trump or Long—instead FDR is like Biden a harbinger of connection between the classes. Oddly, Bernie Sanders’ policies don’t even get mentioned in this section of the book.

Further more Bernie’s brand of Political Populism really doesn’t even seem to make a dent in Ball’s politics of the time.  Bernie is basically lumped into the bigger category of things know as a populist and that group is not to be trusted. Remember Ball believes that “Populism and Democracy Cannot Co-Exist” and there is no nuance in Ball’s Populism for Left or Right versions it is all basically bad and that means it must be isolated and allowed to wither on the vine.   A direct contradiction to Ball’s statements in 2020 in her book co-authored with Saagar Enjeti: Populist’s Guide To 2020:  “He [Sanders] believers, just as he did in Burlington [VT], the only way to break the back of congressional gridlock and inertia and neoliberal entrachment is putting faith in people.  In serving as the Organizer-In-Chief”[p145].  This praise of Sanders is a far-far cry from 2017 where Sanders’ was tacitly linked to the dangerous Trump in Ball’s view in Reversing The Apocalypse but was all in for a centrist-opposing Trump.  In fact Ball supported the anti-Trump Centrist GOP movement  just like all of her former co-workers at MSNBC did as well.

 Ball does love a good centrist of any party when it comes to fighting Populism and especially Trump. Ball actually makes this claim in defense of right-thinking centrists in the GOP: “I will say that a few senators like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Susan Collins of Maine showed courage in the election against Trump.  We must pray these few souls will prove themselves true patriots in standing up to his divisive excesses [p49]”.  Ah, remember those heady days when all of MSNBC and CNN thought that a mean tweet from Jeff Flake actually constituted a real rebuke to Trump’s plans—but remember that Flake voted 84% of the time with Trump’s plans according to FivethirtyEight.com’s analysis.  Lindsay Graham bested Flake’s record by 2% and voted 86% of the time for Trump’s agenda in the congress [FivethirtyEight.com].  Oh, wait perhaps Susan Collins is the answer to our malaise? She was better but only because she tried to keep her agreement with Trump’s agenda to a modest 65.1% of the time [FiveThirtyEight.com].  Which when compared to Graham’s and Flake’s record Collin’s 65.1% record looks downright obstreperous in nature.  The best is yet to come.

We Call It Riding The Gravy Train—I Mean Book Tour

In 2017 Krystal Ball started to sell herself in earnest as the new “voice of the Democratic Party”—so, of course she went to the old stalwarts of the anti-Democratic Party Establishment Reporting The Young Turks channel on Youtube.  It is rather fitting that Ball would seek an interview with Cenk Uygur—he himself is a rather nebulous figure on the Left.  Uygur clearly isn’t afraid to get in bed with the Mainstream Media— for a short period of time in 2011 Uygur was a fixture on MSNBC and from December, 2011 to August, 2013 Uygur was on Current TV.  So, Uygur knows the allure of Corporate Media and Corporate Money.  Uygur currently has issues with his unique stance on the Unionization of his own workforce [something he is still trying to shape in the media presently] and of course his $20+ million dollar cash infusion from David Katzenberg doesn’t exactly scream PROGRESSIVE LEADER! But, in 2017 Uygur was rallying the troops around the call to find new Progressive Leaders both intellectually and physically speaking to bring the Democrats out of their loosing streak.

This is where Ball comes into play. Ball having just authored her first book Reversing The Apocalypse is ready to get out on the road and sell this rather anemic thought project of hers to a ravenous group of liberals and progressives just seething with the injustices of the Trump Administration and the outrage of the Democratic Party’s underhanded tricks in the 2016 Primary.  It’s the perfect time to channel this discontent in the party and to sell a bunch of books. The only problem is that Ball clearly states in her book that her big answer to Trump was not supporting Bernie Sanders or his ideas but, to go straight over to Biden-World and find her self a cushy consultant job.  That is essentially the last half of the first chapter entitled “Run, Joe, Run”.   That sounds like something that might derail the entire project before it gets off the ground doesn’t it? I mean how could one be a progressive warrior for Bernie with a book that basically tells the world that your biggest ambition was running cover for Joe Biden as a potential press sectary? Don’t worry the Alternative-Left Media will be sure to throw you a life line and help you white wash this fact all while selling your book too.  It turns out everyone is riding the gravy train of discontent to monetary success!

And so the white wash began.  As you can see if your use the embedded video above to watch the interview Uygur’s total lack of familiarity with Ball’s book forces him to become a willing participant in the creation of the Krystal Ball “Berner Anti-Establishment myth process”. Right before your very eyes you hear Ball claim that she was against the Clintonian Democracy model and all for the Bernie Democracy Model.  I must confess when I first watched this clip I nearly spit my coffee all over my tablet. I was just that in shock that Ball had the audacity to basically claim that she was always a staunch Bernie or Die supporter.  But without even a flinch Uygur agrees and presses more and so Ball talks about how popular Bernie Sanders is at that moment in time (2017) and how he scrambled from a 60 point deficit in the polls to being within a hairs breath of winning the primary.  Ball goes as far as to say that Democrats in the Democratic Party could learn a lot form Bernie and how his message and policies resonated with the Americans in 2016.  This is all true.  The only problem not one mention of these facts are made in Ball’s book Reversing the Apocalypse.  Do you want to know what she does say? Well I will tell you.

“I frickin’ love Joe Biden.  I love the way he is willing to resurface his grief over this own personal loss if it can help a room full of Gold Star mothers begin to heal. I love that even after forty years in Washington, he still manages to connect to that uniquely American visceral pain over losing the family home. And I love that he and President Obama clearly love each so much. I thought and still believe that in all the ways that Hillary Clinton was a poor fit for a moment of economic fear and an anxiety, Biden was a great choice. [p39]”

Yes, Ball was in fact completely won over by the greatness of Biden’s personality. Ball felt that no one in the potential field of Democratic candidates could compare to the compassion of Biden. After all Biden could easily lament about the loss of the family home with the best of them. Biden was an expert in selling the public on his persona of being the truly tragic Senator: a car crash killed his wife and daughter before his first inauguration; and this was the man that just lost his oldest son to brain cancer. Biden knew personal loss and pain. Ironically, during Biden’s senate days he was also the very same person that made sure Credit Card Debit was nearly impossible for the middle class family to discharge in bankruptcy thus creating the loss of homes. Biden was the man that fought busing of students in an attempt to equalize educational opportunities in public schools. Biden was also the man that created the highly racist and classist “1994 Crime Bill”.  Biden and Obama also did very little to help with the housing crisis of 2008 as VP and President.  And Biden and Obama did very little to support the cries of the 99% in the Occupy Wall St. Movement that started in 2011—instead Obama and Biden heard only the cries of fear from their much vaunted economic elitist friends in the 1% and crushed the movement with force! Tell me again how Biden was the empathetic, compassionate, voice of the people that encompassed the intuitive nature to quell the economic anxieties of 2016 after failing to do so for the last eight years in office?

Speaking of Joe Biden and his influence on Ball it would appear that it was during Ball’s rush to enter the world of Biden’s inner-circle she was first introduced to Charles Murray.  For those unfamiliar with Charles Murray, he is the F. A. Hayek Emeritus Chair in Cultural Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. Murray was formally the W.H Bradley Senior Fellow at the institute at the time of publication of these books. The American Enterprise Institute is a think tank founded in 1938 to promote the values of Free Market and Competition in US Economy in an attempt to reduce the sting of the New Deal. Of course most businesses despise both the free market and competition—capitalism prefers the ability to control a market completely and limit competition to the barest of minimum. According to Ball her indoctrination into the Biden World included reading Biden’s favorite book Murray’s Coming Apart (2012).  Murray’s primary thesis in the book is that America is becoming a more classist nation with stratification of the classes becoming more prevalent since 1960. Now, of course I believe in reading the books of opposing ideological schools—I’ve read Milton, Ricardo, Smith and more. Like most of Murray’s work Coming Apart  the book makes the same claims that intelligence is the supreme arbitrator of success in life. The new classes of meritocracy are nearly inevitable given their concentration of intellect that will ultimately lead this class of people to their rightful place of leading the economy.  And from what I’ve read I think both Ball and Biden have essentially bought into the general premise of Murray’s thesis that stratification isn’t just inevitable but also in some ways very beneficial to the society based on intellect.

It is odd that throughout Ball’s Reversing the Apocalypse and her supposed journey to the left that she never actually questions why Biden would be so impressed with Murray’s elitist attitudes towards intelligence and formal education.  Ball in passing mentions that Murray is controversial for the book entitled The Bell Curve (1994) he co-authored with a Harvard Psychologist Richard J.  Herrnstein. The primary thesis of this book was that 60% of intelligence could be directly linked to genetics. Furthermore, Murray and Herrnstein purposed that due to this fact of intelligence being directly related to heredity that racial differences of intellect were in fact true!  And this fits nicely into many of the statements Biden made in the 1970’ and 1980’s.

For example in 1970’s Biden spent a lot of energy and political influence on stopping “Busing”—today we fight about Critical Race Theory in the past it was Busing.  The goal was the same to discuss, educate, and promote a more equal educational system in a nation that was only desegregated in name only in many parts of the country.  Biden sent this memo 1977 to fellow members of congress that the following would occur only if we had and I quote a method to “‘insure we do have orderly integration of society,’ adding he was "not just talking about education but all of society’”[Business Insider, 2019].  These statements compounded by Biden’s almost pathological need to lie about his claimed activism during the civil-rights movement that he has renounced publically in 1987 and after does little to bolster Ball’s theory that Biden represented something radically different from a Trump like Populist—other than his 40 years of being the Federal Government as the Senator from MNBA.

Yet, Ball loves Biden.  But some how on during this interview Biden was cast a side and Bernie was the object of Ball’s praise. In fact through out the interview with Uygur Ball sings the praises of Bernie Sanders and his campaign of 2016 in complete contradiction of Ball’s stated views of Biden being the best choice in 2016. Uygur and Ball then spend a significant part of the interview talking about how the media missed Bernie Sanders’ ascendency in the public’s mind during his campaign. How important Bernie Sanders’ economic positions were in 2016. Uygur takes the time to castigate Erin Burnett of CNN and her anti-99% reporting due potentially to Burnett’s husband being a banker. Something Ball agrees with—but Uygur fails to mention Ball’s ties to Silicon Valley through her husband. Both Uygur and Ball agree that MSNBC is a for profit company that doesn’t push a political stance that will affect this bottom line. But, you know what Uygur never asks her? Well I’ll I will outline a few things that Uygur never asks and Ball certainly never offers up her real opinions of the 2016 election that is in the Book! The ones that Uygur doesn’t know because he didn’t even do the most cursory look at the contents of this book. Here some of those questions.

If you are like myself you just want to scream at your computer screen for Uygur to ask this: “In your book Joe Biden seems to be in your view Krystal the answer to hijacking the Democratic Party?  You want a Joe Biden figure that loves UBI and quotes FDR and tells America “A Chicken In Every Pot” and don’t worry I’ve got your Back as he sells them out with the TPP part IV?  I’m sorry Krystal but Biden isn’t a Progressive and how can you claim that pushing a Biden like figure in 2016 would have worked?“  Or, perhaps you wanted Uygur to ask this question: “While your book clearly outlines that Clinton[HRC] was a bad candidate in the face of her perceived corruption due to her relationship to the very banks that crashed the economy in 2008. You seem to be rather blasé about the fact that Joe Biden voted for the end of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, or how Biden being a primary architect of the Bankruptcy Reform Bill of 2005 created much of the 2008 crash, and how Biden’s history of attempting to destroy the very limited nature of our social safety net is in direct opposition to your thesis of winning over and understanding the lower-middle class and working class of America?”  Nor did Uygur have the guts to ask “What exactly were your thoughts behind running to Biden-World for a job in the first place? And how can Progressives now take your so-called change of heart Krystal as a progressive warrior seriously when you have no policies in this book that are representative of the Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party currently”? But clearly Uygur was not the man to ask these questions so Ball was never called to task about her Biden love.  Nor, was Ball asked any hard questions about her desire to become part of the Biden-World technocracy.  But what makes Uygur even more complicit in this obfuscation of the actual content of Ball’s book is that he clearly never even looked at the table of contents of the book—the BIG RED FLAG WAS THE “RUN, JOE, RUN” section of chapter one.  Speaking of that let’s delve a bit further into Ball’s fawning over Biden.

I think the first sign of Ball’s less than stellar “Progressive Credentials” comes in the chapter 1 section titled simply: “Run, Joe, Run”.  One might hope this was just a snarky statement against Biden by using the classic phrase from the film Forest Gump—“Run, Forest, Run”—but, sadly no it was not a dig at Biden, it was in fact an earnest plea by Ball for Biden to run.  After reading this section of Ball’s book any progressive worth their salt would have noticed that Ball only makes one weak statement about Biden’s troubled voting past in the last 40 years—“Yes, he had some votes as a Delaware senator that helped out credit card companies in his state and yes, he’d been right their championing for the TPP trade deal that was becoming a real problem spot, but he has the gift of connection that said ‘I said I get your struggle, I know you’.  He had raw authenticity that means so much more than any vote or policy paper.”(p41). [Joe’s votes for Corporations also seemed to have helped out Ball as well; the media company setup by Ball’s husband to publish her first book was incorporated in Delaware for the sweet, sweet tax breaks of course!] Of course Ball conveniently left out his 40+ plus years of racism, attempted budget cutting, lying, and double crossing the Unions—but, sure Joe Biden connects to the people.  The very fact that Biden is that antithesis of FDR and the entire project to reconnect to the working and lower middle class members that the Democratic Party has left for the more cosmopolitan members of the intelligentsia spearheaded in some ways by Biden should be a cause for concern to Ball—sadly it is not.  Instead Ball decides that the real issue is creating a UBI and getting a nice status quo figure to run like Joe Biden for elections.  For Ball success is more in the illusion of connecting to a demographic base than actually achieving real results.

Now, are any of these troubling facts in Ball’s thesis for “Hijacking” the Democratic Party part of the Interview? No. Instead in an attempt to sell the book to an audience far more enamored with Bernie than Biden; Ball does a 180 degree turn and focuses the interview unto a newly created fictional belief that Bernie Sanders is a brave figure for standing up to Clintonian dominance in the Democratic Party and Ball was all for it.  One would think if Ball was truly sincere about Sander’s as not only a candidate; but also as potentially being the vehicle of change in the Democratic Party, Ball just might have written a chapter titled  “Bernie Sanders Fightin’ The Good Fight” or some other such thing.  Instead Bernie gets compared to Trump the Populist and by association labeled a threat to democracy. Ball however does write in May , 2017 a blog for Huffington Post entitled “Why Bernie Sanders Is Our Best Chance To Beat Donald Trump”, it’s a bland read that basically claims that Clinton isn’t popular. I am sure that is a big surprise to any reader. Of course any reader  that watched HRC in 2008 would not be surprised 2017 that Clinton was not a winner. The article lacks any ringing endorsement of Bernie’s goals or Presidential ideals. There’s no section that tells us how we need to change the political economy into something new like Bernie Sanders advocated in 2017 and 2020.  It just repeats the wisdom of the soft-left at the time that Bernie Sanders was leading in national polls and would have beaten Trump if he won the nomination. Beyond that it has nothing else to say about Sander’s  message that really motivated his supporters in 2017[and again 2020]. So, you can see how it is hard to swallow the Ball “Bernie or Bust” pundit speak of this interview.   And yet strangely, you have to admire the fact that Ball and Uygur seem to sincerely believe that that Ball can basically attempt to sell herself as a Bernie Supporter while attempting to sell a book that literally praises Joe Biden and the orthodoxy of the status quo when it comes to political policies and economic realities!

We all know that the reason Ball did this interview with Uygur was not because she expected deep questions about her book.  No, Ball expected to be given softball questions that only vaguely or tangentially covered the broad themes of the book.   The type of questions so vague and useless that even a media person like Ball with  average rhetorical skills could easily twist them into the most palatable content for the desired audience of the interview in this case: Progressives! You know the sort of questions that Ball now routinely calls “CORRUPTION” when it happens on CNN with the Cuomo brothers to name one example of the last 18 months. But when it happens to benefit yourself I guess you’re a little more charitable with the people involved.  

This is the reason Uygur’s willingness to go along with Ball’s frankly blatant obfuscation of the thesis of the book is so dangerous for real left causes.  The fact Ball has bad ideas sometimes—isn’t the issue here.  The problem is that Ball and Uygur actively covered up the true message of the book with the more appealing Bernie supporting message during the interview.  This appeal to Bernie was a cynical way for Ball to sell her book as being from a Progressive Thought Leader and not just a pundit for hire.  The real tragedy isn’t that Ball wrote a rather orthodox political screed with weak ideas and little vision.  No, that is just a sign of Ball’s real politics.  The tragedy is that Uygur in his rush to legitimize Ball as a defector from the MSM to the Alternative-Left allowed her to basically sell her book on the tacit belief that Ball was in fact a true Bernie Sanders supporter.  That is the crime and the creation of the myth that Ball is a Radical Leftist! This book shows Ball to be nothing more than a standard MSNBC Rachel Maddow Watching Kinda Neoliberal.  This crime of complicity on the part of the Left-Media to coopt Krystal Ball into the fold is the real problem. As you will see Ball loves being in the thick of things in Washington, D.C. and the Alternative Left Media loves to deflect for her.

“Krystal Ball Goes To Washington And Decides To Stay And Create A PAC”

Ball states in 2015 that she actively goes to Washington, D.C. to get herself a job in “Biden-World” and become part of the mainstream technocratic machinery like she is auditioning for a part on the West Wing series! All that is missing is Ball meeting with Alan Sorkin.  Ball went as far as to find an apartment in D.C. and describes her position as one of the outer-ring staffers in an unpaid position at the time that But wait you’re saying to yourself I bet “Isn’t this against the basic thesis of Ball’s program”? Yes, it is.  Does Ball go out and build these grass-roots “ground breaking coalitions’ she tells us in her Huffington Post article that are so vital to victory in 2018 and beyond for the Democratic Party? NO! Does Ball attempt to really change the political zero-sum game she claims is destine to devolving into political maleficence?   NO! Ball doesn’t go out into the communities struggling since 2008 and do direct mutual aid, coalition building, and creating grass-roots political systems to push progressive causes forwards. Instead Ball states in her book Reversing The Apocalypse 2016 would be the year that she joined forces with Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) in his ill fated attempt to unseat Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) from her anointed position as minority whip in the first and only term of the Trump admin. 

Ball was brought on Congressman’s Ryan’s ill-fated campaign for minority whip as the media consultant [a reoccurring theme in Ball’s career] to do things like ensure that Congressman Ryan made the right talking points to the friendly reporters while avoiding the pitfalls of going into the lions den of hostile reporters.  Ballotpedia.com ranks Congressman Ryan as being a middle of the road sort of Democrat.  Meaning in short a 1950’s era Eisenhower Republican—making him exactly like Obama and oddly enough Rachel Maddow agrees too; since Maddow feels being a liberal and being in total agreement with Eisenhower’s platform circa 1953-1961 is perfectly logically congruent for a Democratic Liberal in 2008-2016.  And Ball was perfectly in synch with Congressman Ryan at this time so then by extension Maddow as well.  

Ball then adroitly constructed a political allegiance between Rep. Ryan from Ohio and Rep. Yarmuth from Kentucky to give her fledging PAC: “The People’s House Project” the extra political cache it needed to bridge the gap between political outsiders and the insiders.  But, how can one be an insider and outsider at the same time?  That is a contradiction that Ball never quite reconciled and her candidates seemed to have gotten not much out of her sage wisdom as a political consultant and PAC runner since all but one lost her race. That winner being Jahana Hayes [CT-5 Democrat]—and how much did the PHP donate to her campaign you might ask? How does the amazing amount of $6,196.00 sound to you? Sounds a bit poultry given the fact the goal of the PAC was to get outsiders to win. But, remember the PHP is more than just a money PAC—it’s political booster! I can see how one might question the PAC’s philosophy given the big goals it reported to have?  Perhaps these goals could have been successful too if the organization did more- like spending on these candidates and their media messages?

The core thesis Ball states as a means to radically hijack the Democratic Party Campaigning is to change the fund raising methods. In fact Ball states in her book that “Rather than setting these candidates up for the same corrupting circuit of NYC and Silicon Valley fundraising that current House members are subject to, we as citizens make a commitment to this project, crowdfunding the People’s candidates in the same way people stepped up to chip in for Barack Obama,  Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump “[p.203].   This is Ball’s solution to financing campaigns and in conjunction with picking representatives directly from the community in question itself. Ball envisioned a crop of new representatives not with pedigrees from Harvard and Yale but from their own Main Streets.  That sounds great.  It looks great too on a poster.  And considering the  Bernie Sanders Campaign success in fund raising over a $100 million in 2016 at the meager average of $27.00 per donation it was totally doable. (One of the few times that Ball actually mentions Bernie’s candidacy in a positive light in her book.)  The people in America were in flux again and it wasn’t exactly clear that being an outsider was enough?  The outsider needed money certainly to back them and the candidates needed a message that was going to be more than just the repudiation of Trump.  They needed a real message of change—like AOC had in 2018. Many of the PHP candidates didn’t have those messages and worse, yet they clearly didn’t have the cash to make the make waves in the alternative media world. Oddly, the PHP did have the cash but it didn’t seem to be using it for that at least.

Ball succumbed to allure of the easy money of the big donors and quickly adapted the “PHP” to become a Carey Committee or Hybrid Pac meaning that with two simple bank accounts Ball could now fill one with unlimited funds from mega donors and in the other fill it with small donors and do direct candidate action. And collect from Mega Donors Ball did.  This wasn’t exactly a new trend in Ball’s career. Here is how Ball describes her campaigning in 2010 when she herself was a candidate for Virginia’s District 1 House of Representatives:

“ In my own campaign, it was impossible to deny the cost-benefit analysis. I could either spend an hour of my time meeting with voters where, if it was an extraordinarily productive hour, I could probably meet 50 voters. Or I could spend an hour on the phone talking to large donors nationwide in order to fund mail or TV advertisements that would reach tens or hundreds of thousands of voters. It wasn't hard to figure out the most efficient use of my time”[ Huffington Post,  2011 “Why Union].

Once again Ball while running the PHP returned to those fertile grounds of accessing big dollars. Remember for Ball it is merely a matter of cost-benefit analysis: if you can make $250,000 from one donor in 20 minutes do it because trying to achieve the same goals at $15 or $25 dollars per donor will take literally 16,666.67 to 10,000 donors. That represents literally thousands of hours calling and looking for donors. [Of course it does mean you that you have betray the entire concept of removing access of large donors form your so-called Independent candidates—but that is a small price to pay for the cost-benefit analysis of the projected donations. It drips with the logic of a person that is a professional consultant that doesn’t have a strong ideological background in anything but her own success.] So, clearly it is completely understandable why a quick look of the OpenSecrets.Com  report  on the PHP[2017-2018]shows how Ball leaned hard into Big Tech, Ventura Capital,  Legal Firms, and Congressional Insiders  to fund the PHP with a majority of its money and here they are:

·      Ried Hoffman founder of linkedIn social media  and Geylock Management net worth around $2 billion dollars.  Noted for supporting false news stories in 2018 against Roy Moore (R-AL).  Donated $250,000.00 in 2018

·      Daniel V. Tierney KCG Holdings Venture Capitalist Donated $178,500.00 in 2018

·      Stephen G. Shuler KCG Holdings Venture Capitalist   Donated $71,500 in 2018

·      Christopher Hughes  Founder of Facebook and Venture Capitalist donated $50,000.00  in 2018

·      Sam Altman  President of Y-Combinator Seeding Company (aka Venture Capitalist with cooler name) Donated $10,000 in 2018

·       Jonathan Dariyanani, Cognotion, Inc   Interactive Learning Company Donated $2,700.00 in 2018.

·      John A. Yarmuth (D-KY)  House of Representatives  Donated $5,000.00 in 2018

·      Sean Rice   APEX  Clean Energy donated $5,000.00 in 2018

Now, that is not exactly the list of people you want to see as being the top donors out of the 120 total donations given to the PHP for the 2018 election year. The question becomes what exactly was Ball selling these multibillionaires and millionaires on to get them to donate to a motley crew of middle-class and blue-collar people seeking election? Even if these long shot Democrats get into office its unclear they will a) have any strength once in office to do much, b) outsider Democrats will definitely not have the committee seats to challenge or develop ideas outside of the floor, and c) finally outsider Democrats will have too few numbers to routinely fight the will of the establishment.  So, yes, it has to start somewhere but why would billionaires and millionaires be tempted to fund such long shot candidates?

Well, these Democratic Party Donors were hedging their bets when it comes to the Democratic Party as a whole. It is far better to get in on the ground floor with a very small investment into these candidates if in fact Ball is right and the candidates running can win.   This puts billionaire and millionaire cash right in the mix but without the overt control you see today like in the cases of Kristen Sinema [D-AZ] , Joe Manchin [D-WV],  or Mark Warren [D-V].  It’s a great way to make sure you have a string to pull in the form of the conduit that Ball was setting herself up as in the 2018 cycle for the PHP candidates.  If these candidates won Ball would be the direct link between their money and messaging they would further need to maintain their seats in office.  It was rather beautiful—so what happened?  Good Question.

I really don’t know why Ball decided to only do the PHP for one cycle.  Perhaps, it had to do with Alex Roarty’s McClatchy article published in May of 2018 “Is Krystal Ball’s PAC a fresh new approach or a get rich scheme?” the author noted that it was rather odd for a PAC that promoted itself as the answer to traditional candidates that it didn’t actually seem to benefit them as much with the most important part of running a campaign--money. The article notes that of the $445,000 then raised by the PAC at the article’s time of publishing in May 2018 $174,000.00 of it was paid out to Krystal Ball.   And that at time of the article’s publishing the PAC had only paid out a miserly $22,000.00 to the candidates it claimed to be helping.  According to OpenSecrets.com the final numbers for Ball would be $279, 333.00.  This amount would make Ball the biggest recipient of cash from the PAC.  In fact according to OpenSecrets.com only $95,685.00 would be donated to candidates. Fun Fact Ball’s payout of $279,333.00 is more than 2.91 times that of the amount of the money the PAC donated to the Candidates than running for the House the PAC endorsed.  Ball was quite incensed by this article and even declared the author’s questioning of her salary as being sexist and recorded his phone call.  But you will see in the interview that I’ve embed that her response is to go to friendly media and plead her case.  See, she is an expert in using the media to her own advantages. Now she calls doing such a thing is a sign of media corruption—but back in May of 2018—it was just setting the record straight with a friendly face! After all Ball was much maligned by this dastardly Alex Roarty…  Won’t someone come to Ball’s aid?  

“I’ll Save You Nell “

Dudley-Do Right or The Young Turks?

Ryan Grim of The Young Turks (TYT) released this interview on May 20th of 2018 ten days after the McClatchy article dropped to defend Ball. What is very fascinating is that Grim was the TYT’s investigative reporter at the time. One can be easily perplexed at Grim’s lack of actual investigative reporting in this interview.  It is hard to watch an interview by an Investigative Reporter that doesn’t ask one hard question and not feel that perhaps this is a white washing of the topic at hand.  It is also hard to really not question Grim’s credentials as an investigative reporter after watching this video.

During the extended interview Ball describes herself as being “extremely grateful” for having the ability to work with the candidates. Ball also claims that this is “the most rewarding thing she has done” in her professional life.   But, the really interesting part is when Ball goes on to claim that because she has floated the organization for months it is only fair that she gets paid—welcome to business Ball, start-ups often get floated for years before showing a profit or the principles getting paid handsomely.  Instead, Ball decided that she needed a pay that was commensurate with the status of being a PAC director. Even if the PAC was about getting underdogs into office. And in theory that would mean potentially the cause was greater than the personal benefit—again in theory one might be excused for thinking that.  However, Ball made sure that she could hold her head up high in the company of other PAC directors—after all it would be unseemly to be a charity case in the world of PAC’s since they are swimming in CASH!

Furthermore, Ball even makes a claim that money isn’t the key to victory always— Not to mention Ball announces that she is doing more than raising cash she is the booster for political power behind the scenes and not just a conduit for direct cash payments.  Ironically, Ball even goes as far to say that and I quote” …this is not for the donor class or the political establishment”—obvious follow up question by Grim should have been: “but, wait you have donors like Reid Hoffman and Daniel Tierney giving you not just hundreds of dollars but hundreds of thousands of dollars I am confused Krystal as to how this doesn’t constitute operating in the donor class”? But, it never came. Instead they talked about how Ball uses the metric of: “ask the candidates” and “they didn’t complain so I must be doing something right”?  Well, I can think of two people that were Unhappy: Tim Ryan (D-OH) very quickly disavowed his support of the PAC and Clay Akkien of North Carolina star of American Idol Fame and one time congressional candidate wanted his money refunded.  So much for the perfect YELP review for the PHP only 4.5 stars! 

But, Ball’s answer of ask the candidates if they have any complaints sounds ,well,  trite doesn’t it? And certainly it is odd that an investigative reporter didn’t investigate into why  Rep. Ryan disavowed his connection to the PHP? Why is that? I’ve not been able to find a reason—nor could McClatchy reporter Roratry get a straight answer from Rep. Ryan either at the time article.  But, that doesn’t mean Grim shouldn’t have asked.  Most certainly Grim should have been asking why did a once major supporter of Ball’s quickly with draw support and run for cover? Clearly, Rep. Ryan was not eager to support the PHP or even answer any questions about it. That is odd.   It is a turn of events that might cause an investigative reporter to I don’t know ask more questions, to seek out more answers, and even question the validate of PHP as a program for change?  But, that would be asking way too much from TYT.  This is just another case of Ball getting an easy pass and the ability to further craft her narrative of being a major Leftist Heterodox Pundit.

“Hogan, I Think You’re Up To Something…. No , Why Would You Say That Schultzy?”

However, this shows another important thing the alternative-left media has wanted and that is Krystal Ball [or some one like her] and her cache as a former MSNBC Host to legitimize their own standing in the online community.  As Kilpatrick from Jacobin Magazine wrote in his article “Krystal Ball The Anti-Rachel Maddow For The Bernie Audience”: “It’s as if she’s defected from the enemy, ready to spill all their secrets”; perfectly describes the allure of Ball’s cache to the rest of the Alternative-Left Media. Otherwise why else would people year after year just blatantly ignore these giant holes in her leftist-CV?  Why else would Reporters and Commentators such as:  Ryan Grim,  David Sirota,  Brihana Joy Grey ,   Cenk Uygur , Ana Kaspainarian, and Kylie Kulinski to name a few— just avoid Krystal Ball’s own admissions and glaring conflicts of interests? It has to be this defector status that Kilpatrick states in his 2019 Jacobin Magazine article as to why the Alternative-Left Media has so openly greeted Ball.  Ball represents the promise of a defector that will tell the inside scoop on the awful mainstream media and justify all the beliefs of the viewers that the Mainstream Media is out to get them.  And Ball plays this card extremely well—her new show “Breaking Points” uses the slogan “Screw The Mainstream Media” as means to generate monetary donations.  While also promoting endlessly how corrupt and dishonest the mainstream media itself is full of internal contradictions that lead to reporting that is compromised and slanted towards the money elites of our society.  All true—but Ball wasn’t above taking their money once upon a time too.  

Ball is a figurehead for the self-anointed leftist-intelligentsia on Youtube.  Ball has become the siren call for the masses that draws them into the realm of the alternative Youtube, Podcast, and Substack realms. Ball represents a sort of heroic persona to an otherwise mundane group of Internet personalities—Ball has true star power and the cache of being a national pundit turned rogue!  But what exactly is Ball an expert of?  Ball like the Kardashians used a sex scandal to propel herself into the media landscape in 2011. It is rather certain that if Ball didn’t have this scandal while running as a Candidate in 2010 Ball’s media career wouldn’t have been as successful [Possibly not existing at all]. The Washington Post article “Krystal Ball: from Scandal Star to Washington Pundit” makes the case that without the attention from the scandal the once little known Ball wouldn’t haven’t been considered a media sweetheart in 2011 by MSNBC.  Ball wouldn’t have become a paid contributor in 2011 to MSNBC as a so-called “Democratic Strategist” (2011). The article goes on to explain that even Ball herself has recognized that the scandal and its media attention is a critical element to her rise in the political punditry class from the ranks of the mere mortals. But, what the Washington Post doesn’t explain nor does any of Ball’s past really does either is her Political Expertise beyond that of reading articles from other people and quoting a few polls?

Ball as I’ve stated the ideas found in her articles from Glamour Magazine, Huffington Post, the Atlantic all spew forth the same tired rote wisdom of being a part of the mainstream punditry class of the second decade of the 21st century.  Ball was reduced to self-publishing her first book: Reversing The Apocalypse [2017] this is odd considering that she was a former media figure on a major news outlet.  Ball should have been easily able to sell a book like this to some publisher given pervious media success and built in audience.  But, that didn’t happen. And let’s face it you only self-publish when you cannot inspire a major Publisher to take your work on.  Ball’s husband Jonathan Dariyanani who founded her self-publishing company in Louisville, KY and Delaware [Sweet, Sweet Biden Tax Breaks In Action]  and even called the company Pelican Media, Inc. A nice way to try to glam onto the well know major publisher Pelican Books.  All seems a bit like a person trying desperately to get back into big-leagues!  All of this screams to me a person that is scrambling hard to find that niche again in the media elites.  And soon niche opened up again with The Hill’s online tv-show Rising.  And it would seem that Ball would once again get to play the role she likes best “Leftist Heterodox Pundit”.

So, this brings us back again to the fact is Ball a fighter for the Middle Class and Working Class of America or just a pundit for hirer?  And the answer is I really don’t know because no one dares to question her past remarks about her Biden-Love or the fact that she feels Capitalism is the best economic system.  Ball is given great latitude in her past contradictory positions and conflicts of interests that ironically she herself doesn’t offer to other people in the media, especially the mainstream, but alternative as well.  For example during the October 4th, 2021 “Breaking Points “ episode Ball has a segment entitled “Dem Corruption” where Ball highlights that the CNN reporter is married to a major Wall-Street Hedge Fund Operator (also a former DNC Finance Director) to highlight the reporters’ conflict of interest when dealing with the subject of big money donors lobbying to change provisions within the $3.5 trillion dollar Build Back Better Agenda—here watch the clip it is most amusing due to the fact it show’s Ball has a stunning lack of self-realization given the fact she ran the People’s House Project and became the handmaiden to  Silicon Valley Billionaires:

Remember, that TYT Investigates interview to Ball in 2017 where she was accused of running the People’s House Project for her own well being? Well, remember the fact that the reporter Ryan Grim for TYT Investigates didn’t ask one question to Ball about why did multi-billionaires donate cash to these outside candidates in the first place?  Remember this is a simple world-view Krystall Ball is now on the Alternative Media team. This means that Ball is off limits to hard questions now or in the future.   Ball has passed the litmus test of being outside of the mainstream media clique and now Ball is a high-profile member of the Alternative Media Elites.   So, that affords Ball the sort of latitude in her past that other members of the Main Stream Media or even lesser members of the alternative media landscape will not be afforded by her contemporaries.  In this case familiarity doesn’t breed contempt—it breeds an unhealthy allegiance.   But let’s take a few moments to look at her overall reporting style and content.

“The atmosphere of hatred between the classes has to be seen to be believed.  Since The Republic came in , man landlords have been afraid to visit their estates. And the Labourers are all anarchists what else can you expect under such conditions—miserable pay, idleness for half of the year and semi-starvation for all of it? “

(Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth , 1943)

Kilpatrick quotes Ball as saying this “I would do these MSNBC pieces on inequality, or the plutonomy, or Piketty, or how I thought Hillary Clinton was going to lose, and it felt very lonely. Honestly, it has felt very lonely until basically this moment” (Jacobin Magazine, 2019).  This is one of those really ironic quotes form Ball trying to paint herself as some sort of major class-warfare pundit.  The reality is that yes, Ball might give some passing lip service to inequality in most cases. It is just that lip service. Ball doesn’t really see the need to fundamentally alter Capitalism—remember she her self declares “I’m Not A Marxist” so real anti-capitalist critiques aren’t going to be Ball’s focus. So that means only superficial changes to the capitalist system in America. And that is why Ball’s first book: Reversing The Apocalypse is totally devoid of any real economic prescription for the world.  Does it discuss the issue of monopolistic power of the economy—NO.  Does it take on the ways in which grassroots movements can change people’s lives right now in many ways with the development of cooperatives—No. Does it talk about democracy in the workplace and creating dignity in the workplace for all no matter their profession—No. Instead, Ball’s great vision in the book is to attack Trump as an evil Populist controlled by the Putin Regime in Moscow,  fawn all over the greatness of Biden’s personality and his ability to connect with people, and to taut radical right-wing theories about UBI.  Not exactly a stunning piece of work to be honest.  Furthermore, Ball doesn’t even really mention any great long term plans for the Democratic Party other than pretending that embracing the working class is a necessary element to victory.  Which is is true—but Ball, doesn’t have a coherent plan to do so. Nor, does Ball really ever really each out to these communities in a meaningful way with real action—like a member of the professional managerial class she prefers to write op-eds, treatises, and stay as far away from the real class struggle as possible. Preferably in the confines of an air-conditioned set with other professional members of managerial class engaged in faux-erudite conversation over a select set of safe topics.  The type of topics that are just edgy enough to make people think you’re a leftist but not edgy enough to completely alienate you from another crack at the big money from a major news outlet. Viva La Revolution—unless, MSNBC comes knocking on the door. 

“In the long run the practice of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the species than the development of individuals endowed with predatory inclinations.”

Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor In Evolution , 1902.

One thing that is perfectly clear in Ball’s reporting that seems to be a spill over from her first book is the disdain for Mutual Aid in society.  While Ball now seems to be all for things like: “Medicare For All”,  “Free Public Colleges”,  “Green New Deal” and so on.  There is distinct lack of discussions about the mutual aid movement occurring right now in the United States in the face of the “Looming Eviction Crisis” that will most certainly become as bitter as the 2008 housing debacle that lead to 5.5 million foreclosures in this nation.  Ball is oddly at the epicenter of the movement in D.C. with the sleek new studio for “Breaking Points” being located somewhere in the city.  And while Ball loves to ramble on the injustices of the “Eviction Crisis” and how congress people like AOC, Cori Booker, and the Squad in general have used it to create political capital with their constituents through brazen acts of political theater—Ball is oddly completely silent on the Mutual Aid Movement.  Why is that? Could it because Mutual Aid is a direct action politics more inline the Anarchists of Andalusia , SP? 

Another odd thing is that Ball loves to talk about a “Working Class “ hijacking of the government.  Well why hasn’t Ball ever tried to do a story on the Spanish town of Marinaleda? Marinaleda and its Communtarian government headed by Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo is the “PHP” actually working successfully in a democratic government setting at the local level.  Now, I know Marinaleda is often not spoken of in  Western Media—because it essentially is the  Paris Commune of 1871 and the St. Louis  (Missouri) Commune of 1877 actually succeeding—which would essentially mean that radical leftist politic revolts can work after all.  Marinaleda has been a Commune for the past 40 plus years! Imagine starting a commune in Spain literally just after the death of Franco—the fascist!  But, you have to wonder why Ball the champion of taking the working class into politics hasn’t looked to this small Andalusia town for potential ideas? Is it because the Mayor is an avowed Communist ? Is it because Ball herself is still basically a Capitalist?  Is it because Ball just happened to miss the 2012 Guardian article about Mayor Gordillo when he raided shopping markets to appropriate food for food banks during the Spanish Debit Crisis? Was that just a bridge too far for the “rule worshipper “ Ball to endorse such a radical departure from traditional political protests? I think it is simpler—Gordillo and his little town in Andalusia is the antithesis of Ball’s humanist-technocratic capitalist belief system that is nothing more than Yang’s “Humanist Capital” grift at heart.  I think just like Yang, Ball sees the working class almost needing a paternalistic overseer in the form of an advanced creative class that will push the economy higher and higher and ultimately through their innovations create a system that benefits all.  Of course we can see that in reality this is never the case.  But, it would explain why Ball seems to almost have a visceral hostility for the Mutual Aid Movement.

Why is Ball afraid to talk to people in practicing worker cooperatives?  Why is it that Ball’s commentary is essentially nothing more than the scolding of one pundit to another pundit? The answer is simple—safety!  This is where Ball is safe.   Ball is not a revolutionary nor is Ball a fighter for the producing classes (lower middle class and working class that I like to call the producing class) instead Ball is an apparatchik of the professional punditry class par excellence. Ball has adapted her style and approach to the rules of the alternative left media. That means calling out the gravy train that once sustained her career from 2011 to 2015.  The rules of the game also mean that Ball has to play up the role of a rogue pundit—ready at any moment to uncover the MSM’s corruption and conflicts!

That’s really what I feel this entire game is about.  If Ball had stayed on MSNBC to present Ball would have crafted her show into an early daytime Rachel Maddow show complete with Russiagate Outrage! And so when Ball’s days at MSNBC were cut short in 2015, did Ball look to find a place in Bernie Sander’s Campaign? According to her book Reversing The Apocalypse, no, instead she attempted to parlay her built up media credentials into a position in the Biden-World as a type of professional consultant.  When this failed too, Ball moved on to the next group of millennial consultants—the New Leaders Council where she was the Media Fellow for some period of time. The dates are a bit murky as to when Ball started and left but the results are the same Ball was once again back in her preferred environment with other professional people.  Then when that seemed to come to an end Ball moved on to create her People’s House Project which in the end fizzled out long before the November, 2018 elections—Alex Rorarty of McClatchy reported in his critical article of Ball in May, 2018 that Ball had already moved on to the Hill Tv’s Rising where once again Ball would be part of the Professional Punditry Class. 

I’m As Mad As Hell And I’m Not Gonna To Take This Anymore…”

Network News , 1976

Now, I know that many people have probably haven’t read The Jacobin article “Krystal Ball Is the Anti–Rachel Maddow Bernie Fans Have Been Waiting For” December, 2019 by Connor Kilpatrick. Nor have many people decided to research the  interviews of Krystal Ball of this period in time (or anyone in the Alternative Media Ecosystem for that matter).  However, this is why you should be “Mad As Hell” the alternative media ecosystem is rife with conflicts of interest and a general lack of good journalistic practices.  The very people that claim to be watchdogs of the MSM are in fact every bit as rotten as their MSM counterparts—the only real difference is that most of the online hosts don’t have the prestige or book deals that their MSM counterparts get.  But, the corruption exists all the same in both groups of media. The only difference is that unlike with the MSM the viewer can really make a difference you can just defund these charlatans that aren’t living up to their stated values. You the viewer can end your subscriptions and monthly contributions and put that money towards things that will actually make you both better informed and active in your community!  These faux-revolutionary political commentators are only in this for the money.

As I’ve outlined Krystal Ball (and others in the Alternative Left Meda that I’ve only tangentially mentioned) are essentially playing revolutionary pundit[s]—always on the sidelines and never in the thick of things where the change really happens—always looking for the next PR opportunity and always ready to cash in on the next wave of discontent in the political theater of the Media.  Ball’s career has been one calculated shift from one professional managerial career position to the next.  Ball has always been more concerned with her own career over that of large-scale movement ideological concerns if you ask me.  To mention the fact that Ball has never stuck with any real career path for very long other than that of a consultant I think is telling of Ball’s true ideology.  Ball turned the PHP into a well-crafted consultant group instead of a real group pushing for change in congress. When the well dried up—Ball moved back into the lucrative waters of punditry.  And magazines like Jacobin writing articles about Ball’s revolutionary punditry only serve to further muddy the waters of what Ball is really doing.  By pretending that Ball has gone rogue from her MSM roots! No, Ball is just tapping into the lucrative alternative media scene crafting content for the Pod-Cast Left that is nothing more than the safe fare for Coffee Table Socialists sipping down free trade fat-free soy milk [possibly oat-milk] mocca lattes in recycled cups pretending that they are powerless in the world unless a DSA landslide happens in Washington while they discuss the need for the Green New Deal and Democracy in the workplace. 

Sorry, People—I’m not Buying This Story Because Real Socialism Isn’t Won By Pundits—it is won by the people in the streets willing to fight for it.  It is won by the people willing to change the way they interact with each other at the most basic level.  It is not a t-shirt slogan or viral video.  It is not a struggle of just placards and sit-ins.  It is a struggle of changing the very way people view their own position in the world and how they wish to change things.   This is why Ball will never talk about actual functioning socialism today—it would only serve to show that punditry is both meaningless and inept unless it is backed up by actual empirical operations of the theories in real world settings! Not just the musing of well paid professional managers in Star Trekesque studios making content for profit!