|[ Der Oberst hat niemand, der ihm schreibt ]|

In life, Dennis Hof claimed many titles: “America’s pimp” and “the P.T. Barnum of Booty,” based on his notoriety as an outspoken brothel owner in Nevada. He called himself the “Trump of Pahrump,” nodding to his political style and the town he called home.

In death, Mr. Hof earned a new title: Nevada state assemblyman.

On Tuesday, in one of the more unusual developments of the midterm elections, Nevada voters resoundingly elected Mr. Hof, a Republican, to represent the state’s 36th Assembly District just weeks after he was found dead in a brothel he owned in Crystal, Nev., at the age of 72.

His election means that county commissioners from his district will pick a replacement, who must be a Republican and live there. That will most likely play out in the coming weeks after the election results are confirmed on Friday, said Arnold Knightly, a spokesman for Nye County, the main county in Mr. Hof’s district.

Mr. Hof’s victory seemed inevitable in the heavily conservative region. President Trump carried Nye County with nearly 68 percent of the vote.

After 18 months of Trump in the White House, American politics finds itself at a crossroads. The United States has moved unmistakably toward a novel form of fascism that serves corporate interests and the military, while promoting at the same time a highly reactionary social agenda infused with religious and crude nationalistic overtones, all with an uncanny touch of political showmanship. In this exclusive Truthout interview, world-renowned linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky analyzes some of the latest developments in Trumpland and their consequences for democracy and world order.

C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, I want to start by asking for your reading of what took place at the Singapore summit, and the way this event was covered in the US media.

Noam Chomsky: It’s reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark. What was important was what didn’t happen. Unlike his predecessors, Trump did not undermine the prospects for moving forward. Specifically, he did not disrupt the process initiated by the two Koreas in their historic April 27 [Panmunjom] Declaration, in which they “affirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord” (repeat: on their own accord), and for the first time presented a detailed program as to how to proceed. It is to Trump’s credit that he did not undermine these efforts, and in fact made a move toward facilitating them by cancelling the US-South Korean war games, which, as he correctly said, are “very provocative.” We would certainly not tolerate anything of the sort on our borders – or anywhere on the planet – even if they were not run by a superpower which not long before had utterly devastated our country with the flimsiest of pretexts after the war was effectively over, glorying in the major war crimes it had committed, like bombing major dams, after there was nothing else to bomb.

Beyond the achievement of letting matters proceed, which was not slight, no “diplomatic skills” were involved in Trump’s triumph.

The coverage has been quite instructive, in part because of the efforts of the Democrats to outflank Trump from the right. Beyond that, the coverage across the spectrum illustrates quite well two distinct kinds of deceit: lying and not telling relevant truths. Each merits comment.

Trump is famous for the former, and his echo chamber is as well. Liberal commentators exult in totting up and refuting Trump’s innumerable lies and distortions, much to his satisfaction since it provides the opportunity for him to fire up his loyal — by now almost worshipful — base with more evidence of how the hated “Establishment” is using every possible underhanded means to prevent their heroic leader from working tirelessly to defend them from a host of enemies.

A canny politician, Trump surely understands well that the base on which he relies, by now almost the entire Republican Party, has drifted to a surreal world, in part under his influence. Take the major Trump-Ryan legislative achievement, the tax scam — “The US Donor Relief Act of 2017,” as Joseph Stiglitz termed it. It had two transparent aims: to enrich the very wealthy and the corporate sector while slamming everyone else, and to create a huge deficit. The latter achievement — as the main architect of the scam Paul Ryan helpfully explained — provides the opportunity to realize the cherished goal of reducing benefits that serve the general population, already very weak by comparative standards, but still an unacceptable infringement on the prerogatives of the 1%. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the law will add $1 trillion to deficits over the next decade. Virtually every economist generally agrees. But not 80 percent of Republican voters, of whom half believe that the deficit will be reduced by the gift their leader has lavished upon them.

Министр обороны Сергей Шойгу назначил своим личным пресс-секретарем Россияну Марковскую, которая работала корреспондентом и ведущей на ГТРК «Владивосток», телеканалах «Звезда» и РЕН ТВ. Об этом Марковская рассказала ТАСС.

По ее словам, приказ о ее назначении датирован 15 ноября.

Она родилась 6 января 1991 года, передает агентство. Марковская окончила факультет журналистики Дальневосточного федерального университета.

В конце 2012 года Сергей Шойгу, ставший министром обороны, назначил своим пресс-секретарем Дарью Затулину — она была его представителем, когда Шойгу занимал пост губернатора Московской области (май—ноябрь 2012 год). По словам источника РБК в Минобороны, Затулина ушла в декрет, и ее должность заняла Марковская.

В пресс-службе Минобороны в ответ на звонок РБК не смогли ни подтвердить, ни опровергнуть информацию о назначении Марковской. РБК направил письменный запрос в Минобороны России.

Позднее страница с краткой биографией Марковской появилась на официальном сайте министерства.

На телеканале «Звезда» Марковская в сентябре 2015 года сделала репортаж о «российском ховерборде», а также взяла интервью у боксера Роя Джонса, пообещав научить его русскому языку. Работая на РЕН ТВ, пообщалась с музыкантами из группы «Рондо», которые пришли на шоу к Захару Прилепину.

Спикер Совета Федерации Валентина Матвиенко предложила отказаться как от государственных, так и от частных студенческих общежитий. По её мнению, их нужно заменить молодёжными кооперативами или домами с квартирами-студиями для молодых семей и студентов.

Само слово «общежитие» дискредитировало себя за годы советской власти, и до сих пор это наследие в виде общежитий очень редко разрешается, потому что их нельзя приватизировать. В общежитии человек становится «рабом ситуации» — он не может его продать, взять ипотеку, купить себе квартиру.

Валентина Матвиенко

Проекты по обеспечению молодежи жильём нужно реализовывать при участии местных властей, а саму жилплощадь следует передавать в собственность за небольшую плату, считает Валентина Матвиенко.

Чтобы человек, который недорого заплатил за такую квартиру, мог понимать, что это уже его собственность. Пусть это 50 квадратных метров, но для начала и это неплохо. Потом он заработает, эти метры продаст или вложит и улучшит свои жилищные условия.

Валентина Матвиенко

Российский студенческий союз призвал провести публичную дискуссию по данному вопросу: «Многие общежития находятся в ужасном состоянии. В них происходят периодически пожары, царит антисанитария и т. д. Но строятся также современные общежития квартирного типа, которые позволяют студентам за небольшую плату снимать комфортные апартаменты. Поэтому важно, чтобы государство продолжало финансировать строительство новых общежитий, которое было сокращено в текущем году практически на 20%». В студсоюзе предложили создать программу предоставления льготного жилья для студентов.

Yet Mr McDonnell is right: there is an enormous amount to learn from Marx. Indeed, much of what Marx said seems to become more relevant by the day. The essence of his argument is that the capitalist class consists not of wealth creators but of rent seekers—people who are skilled at expropriating other people’s work and presenting it as their own. Marx was blind to the importance of entrepreneurs in creating something from nothing. He ignored the role of managers in improving productivity. But a glance at British business confirms that there is a lot of rent seeking going on. In 1980 the bosses of the 100 biggest listed firms earned 25 times more than a typical employee. In 2016 they earned 130 times more. Their swollen salaries come with fat pensions, private health-care and golden hellos and goodbyes.

The justification for this bonanza is that you get what you pay for: companies claim they hire chief executives on the open market and pay them according to their performance. But the evidence is brutal. Most CEOs are company men, who work their way up through the ranks, rather than free agents. In 2000-08 the FTSE all-share index fell by 30% but the pay for the bosses running those firms rose 80%. J.K. Galbraith once said that “the salary of the chief executive officer of the large corporation is not market reward for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.” Corporate Britain is more subtle: CEOs sit on each other’s boards and engage in an elaborate exchange of such gestures.