I’ll start with a Burt Bacharach song and bad Cal Dem Reps
80
Leave a Reply
Connect with
I allow to create an account
When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account.
DisagreeAgree
32Comment threads
48Thread replies
0Followers
Most reacted comment
Hottest comment thread
6Comment authors
Recent comment authors
Connect with
I allow to create an account
When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account.
California, the bluest of the blue, is anything but. Away from the coasts and outside of the major cities things get pretty red, and the drop off is fast. It’s a good thing that these areas are pretty much unpopulated. And even in the blue areas corporatism runs high. Remember the Democratic Primary, in 2016? I sure do.
T and R x 2, jcb!!🎼🙂☮️✊ I’ve been checking out Burt Bacharach’s oeuvre. 🎼Wow! He wrote “Anyone Who Had a Heart” which I was nutso over as a little kid. Just adds more to the fact that I was privileged to grow up during an actual Renaissance. Only this one was in popular music.🎼🎼🎼👏👏
Voters will head to the polls on Feb. 21 to determine the two candidates who will face off for an open seat on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court. The outcome of the general election for the seat in April will have sweeping consequences for abortion rights, voting rights, and whether Wisconsin will continue to have congressional and legislative district maps that disproportionately benefit Republicans.
Currently, conservatives have a 4-3 majority on the court. However, conservative Justice Patience Roggensack is retiring. If a liberal justice wins the seat she is vacating, it will shift the court’s balance of power to liberals for the first time since 2008.
Since the Supreme Court is likely to hear a case challenging a law enacted in 1849 that bans abortion in Wisconsin, the outcome of the election could determine whether it will remain illegal to perform an abortion in the state.
The two liberal justices running for the open seat, Everett Mitchell and Janet Protasiewicz, support abortion rights. The conservative justices running for the seat, Jennifer Dorow and Daniel Kelly, do not support abortion rights.
EMILY’s List, a group that works to elect pro-abortion rights Democratic women to all levels of government, has endorsed Protasiewicz.
“The rights and freedoms of millions of Wisconsinites hinge on a Wisconsin Supreme Court committed to reproductive freedom, democracy, and voting rights for all,” Emily’s List President Laphonza Butler said in the statement. “Protasiewicz has been a champion for Wisconsinites for over 35 years, and we have full confidence in her dedication to fairly interpreting the law and standing up to extremism. We are proud to support her in this race.”
Dorow told a right-wing radio host that she supported the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June that overturned the affirmation of a constitutional right to abortion in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, paving the way for states to ban abortions before fetal viability, which is considered to be around 24 weeks’ gestation. In a 2012 blog post, Kelly wrote that he believes abortion “involves taking the life of a human being” in order to “preserve sexual libertinism.”
Also at stake is whether Wisconsin will have fair state legislative and congressional district maps.
In the last round of redistricting, the already gerrymandered Republican state legislative majorities drew maps heavily skewed to benefit Republican candidates. In fact, the Princeton University Gerrymandering Project gave the state’s map an F grade for partisan fairness.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the maps, but in April 2022, the 4-3 conservative majority chose a map drawn by Republicans, which, University of Wisconsin–Madison law professor Robert Yablon said, means Democrats will in the next decade “have virtually no chance of taking control of the Legislature.”
If liberals win a majority on the court, the maps could once again be challenged.
Protasiewicz, who has raised the most money in the race, has called the maps rigged.
“My values are that I protect democracy, that I believe everybody’s vote should count, that currently I don’t think that the maps are fair — I actually think they’re outrageously unfair,” Protasiewicz told the Washington Post.
Voting rights are also at stake in the state Supreme Court race.
In 2022, the 4-3 conservative majority banned ballot drop boxes for mail-in ballots, ruling that they are “illegal under Wisconsin statutes.”
Republicans had challenged the use of ballot drop boxes in the 2020 election, after former President Donald Trump baselessly linked them to voter fraud. However, an Associated Press review of the 2020 election was among the studies that found drop boxes were not a part of the supposed widespread voter fraud that in fact did not exist.
A liberal majority on the court could overturn the ban on ballot boxes should voting rights advocates bring a challenge.
When Hubster was still working, one of the big Turkey Day deals down here was the Thanksgiving Day 🏈game between Florida A & M and Bethune-Cookman, two black colleges. The night before, their bands would do a live performance between them in the O-rena, an informal Battle of the Bands. 🎼🏈🙂 I never saw it but from all reports, it was a KILLER of a show!👏
Rolling Stone is one of the few I’ve seen that won’t allow even one access during any given month. Even Bloomberg will permit reading at least one article per month.
It’s the usual behind-a-paywall BS. I already know what the subject is so I skip it. They want my coin, they have to earn it, and my linguistical standards are pretty high.
Some times at Reddits R-politics someone will add a link to a site where they post that link that goes around the paywall. Its hit or miss during my lurking at thier site
How many of you are rooting for the Eagles tomorrow? I live in a KC household, so I’ll be rooting for them. Also, Mahomes is a “alum” (he didn’t finish, but he’s still considered one of theirs) of Texas Tech; I’m an alum of TTU too.
🙂 gettin old 🧓, had one of those and remember the SB as well for an important reason, Child hood sports idol Bart Starr, was lucky enough to meet him as a youngin and he didnt disappoint like so many stars do today.
I was going to skip the Stupid Bowl, but my sis has a former student who plays for the Eagles 🦅. So, sister solidarity. ✊🙂🏈 Plus, I’m curious about these idiot Christian ads on there.
This time of year there’s always rumblings from some craprate idiot that’s wants to PPV this game. That would be the end of the NFL as fans would organize some sort of boycott.
Meanwhile in WI the Foxxconned deal by Walker continues to keep on giving;
Federal class action lawsuit alleges Foxconn not fully paying Wisconsin employees
Corrinne Hess, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Fri, February 10, 2023 at 3:00 PM CST Foxconn employees working at the company’s Mount Pleasant facility filed a federal class action lawsuit alleging the company regularly shaved time off from their weekly timesheets and failed to pay them earned overtime.
The lawsuit, filed Feb. 7 in the U.S. Eastern District of Wisconsin, by Scotty Allen against FII USA, inc. doing business as Foxconn, alleges the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and Wisconsin’s Wage Payment and Collection Laws.
The lawsuit gives a small glimpse into what is happening at Foxconn where little is known, despite the company saying it employs about 1,000 people and receiving $37.4 million in state tax credits.
In a statement, Foxconn Technology Group said it would not comment on the specifics of the lawsuit.
“At this time, we are currently looking into the matter and have no comment regarding the allegation,” the statement said.
Hourly employees repeatedly not paid Allen was hired as an hourly employee in August 2022, the lawsuit says. He was fired by the company in January after complaining about his timecard being altered, according to the lawsuit.
Allen was an assembly operator. The class action lawsuit says it represents all “current and former hourly employees who perform similarly-titled positions.”
According to the lawsuit:
Foxconn does not fully compensate hourly employees, instead the time clock rounds to the closest hour, to the detriment of the employee.
Employees were not paid bonuses, overtime and other incentive awards.
On multiple occasions employees complained to supervisors about unlawful practices of changing or altering time clocks.
On Jan. 19, Allen complained to his supervisor about altering his “clock in” and/or “clock out” times during the workday. His supervisor allegedly did not respond and Allen was instead terminated on Jan. 30 because of his complaints.
The Bat-shit crazyness over the 2A has no limits, This outta workout great the inner-city drug areas
MISSOURI REPUBLICANS VOTE TO AFFIRM TODDLERS’ RIGHTS TO CARRY FIREARMS IN THE STREETS Yes, it’s exactly as crazy as it sounds.
BY BESS LEVIN
FEBRUARY 9, 2023 In the year 2023, no one expects Republicans to have a reasonable take on gun violence (like that it’s a problem), or to do something about it (like pass meaningful gun control legislation). Still, you might think that conservatives wouldn’t be so thoroughly detached from reality that they would approve of—nay, fight for the rights of—small children being able to openly carry firearms in public places. Because that would just be, to use an official legislative term, f–king insane. Can you guess where we’re going with this?
In a turn of events that absolutely defies logic, the Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to reject an amendment that would have banned minors from being allowed to openly carry guns on public land without adult supervision. Which, thanks to a 2017 law, they are currently free to do. (That law, which was vetoed by then governor Jay Nixon and overridden by the Missouri House, also allows Missouri residents to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, safety training, or criminal-background check. As Sgt. Charles Wall, spokesman for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “under current state law, there is no minimum age to lawfully possess a firearm.”) To be clear: The proposal rejected this week was not seeking to ban minors from openly carrying weapons on public land, period, but simply from doing so without an adult supervising them. But apparently even that was too much for the state’s conservatives, who quite literally believe it’s fine for actual kids to walk down the street carrying guns. The proposal was defeated by 104-39, with just a single Republican voting in favor of the ban.
State representative Donna Baringer, a Democrat who represents St. Louis, said she decided to sponsor the amendment after police in her district asked for stronger regulations to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.” With the proposal officially blocked, said 14-year-olds, and kids half their age and younger, “have been emboldened [to carry AR-15s], and they are walking around with them,” she said. Representative Lane Roberts, apparently the only Republican with any sense in the Missouri House of Representatives, had said prior to the vote: “This is about people who don’t have the life experience to make a decision about the consequences of having that gun in their possession. Why is an 8-year-old carrying a sidearm in the street?”
A great question! And one that his fellow GOP lawmakers obviously did not have any good answers for because if you’re a sane person, there is none. In a ridiculous attempt to justify that scenario, Republican state representative Bill Hardwick argued that he “just [has] a different approach for addressing public safety that doesn’t deprive people, who have done nothing to any other person, who will commit no violence, from their freedom.” As a reminder the people Hardwick is arguing must have the freedom to carry firearms on their person, are children, some of whom cannot even buy a ticket for a PG-13 movie.
In a bit of equally absurd “logic,” state representative Tony Lovasco told The Washington Post: “Government should prohibit acts that directly cause measurable harm to others, not activities we simply suspect might escalate. Few would support banning unaccompanied kids in public places, yet one could argue such a bad policy might be effective.” Right, yes, except one small thing: A kid hanging out in public without an adult is a much smaller risk to themself and others than a kid hanging out in public without an adult and carrying a gun. Someone—not us of course, definitely not us, but someone—might suggest this is the argument of a total moron.
Of course, all of this is happening less than a month after news of a Virginia six-year-old shooting their teacher and a viral surveillance video from Indiana that captured a diaper-wearing toddler carrying a handgun and firing it.
Meanwhile, as state representative Peter Merideth noted, conservative lawmakers in the state who think kids bearing arms is fine and dandy, are currently trying to pass a bill that would make drag performances on public property or seen by minors class A misdemeanors. “Kids carrying guns on the street or in a park is a matter of individual freedom and personal responsibility. Kids seeing a drag queen read a children’s book or sing a song is a danger the government must ban,” Merideth tweeted. “Do I have that right MO GOP?”https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/missouri-republicans-minors-open-carry
Word is out down here that the Tallahassee idiot squad is getting set to eventually approve OPEN carry with NO permit, period! Even the hardcore RWingers I know hate it.
In his State of the Union address, Joe Biden turned his back on Bill Clinton’s legacy, and got aggressive in focusing on monopolies. And then, the UK dented the Microsoft-Activision merger.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden delivered a State of the Union speech in which he centered the problem of monopoly, turning the Democrats against the legacy of Bill Clinton. On Wednesday, the UK competition authority declared officially that the Microsoft-Activision merger is in trouble. Today, Apple’s head of product design said the firm is redesigning its iPhone to make it repairable. Meanwhile, mergers and acquisitions activity in the U.S. this year is down by 76%.
It feels a bit like we are entering a time machine back to the pre-1980 model of politics, when it was a normal to disdain monopolies.
I Have A Bridge to the 21st Century To Sell You
When I was writing my book on the rise and fall of the anti-monopoly tradition in the 20th century, I spent roughly five years researching the life and times of Wright Patman, a member of Congress from northeast Texas who served in the House of Representatives from 1929-1976. The most telling document about politics I found in his archives was a campaign flyer Patman used in the 1950s to describe to his rural Southern constituents why they should vote for him, and for Democrats in general.
“Here is What Our Democratic Party Has Given Us,” it said. The idea was, Democrats deliver for you. Roads. Electricity, Telephone service. Unemployment insurance. Old Age Benefits. That’s what politics was about. In 1940, 35% of Americans did not have flush toilets, including 80% of residents of Mississippi. By 1970, nearly all of them did. That’s what politics meant. And this wasn’t just a Democratic Party frame, everyone believed it, Eisenhower and Nixon as much as LBJ. The basic notion was that we can come together and choose how we organize our society through politics, and politicians fight for votes over how best to do that.
But a new vision emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, peddled by economists, intellectuals and corporate consultants, an argument that certain inevitable economic rules dictate what is and isn’t possible. This philosophy came to be known as neoliberalism, and the premise is that “globalization and technology” were giant uncontrollable forces instead of a set of policy choices made by human beings.
Such a philosophy was cover for private financiers and monopolists gaining power over markets, but it seemed plausible at the time, when postwar abundance and public unions seemed to balance out any forms of corporate overreach. When UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher restructured Great Britain, she used the phrase, “There is no alternative” to describe why her policy victory was inevitable. And while the energy for this agenda came from the right, the left mostly agreed. Famous socialist John Kenneth Galbraith, for instance, wrote that “man’s area of decision-making is vanishingly small,” because once a society became industrialized, policy is irrelevant and all societies come to have a “broadly similar result” in how they are organized. Corporations just consolidate, and human agency is irrelevant to that inevitable fate.
This philosophy, in its right and left versions, guided the thinking of both parties in the 1980s, and a new generation of politicians emerged to redefine what politics was. No longer was it even conceivable that elected leaders might help address corporate power, that just wasn’t the job. By the 1990s Bill Clinton was centering his Presidency on bullshit themes like “Bridge to the 21st Century,” and millionaire political consultants were baffled as to why voters were apathetic and turning towards bitter cultural questions. Anyone sitting in a messaging meeting during a political campaign knows what I mean, there was just a detachment from real life.
When Joe Biden got elected, I was not expecting him to break from this tradition. Just before he won, I described Biden as a ‘mild populist’ who did not like elitism, but also as a man with no firm philosophy. So far, and to virtually everyone’s surprise, Biden has governed more like Harry Truman than Bill Clinton. Gone is the powerlessness in the face of titanic forces, and back is the core view that delivering for people is the point of politics.
This week, Biden gave a State of the Union making it clear that his populist policy choices are not an accident, but the centerpiece of what he’s trying to do. And his speech used a Patman-style tradition of having politicians discuss what normal people care about. I’ll go over some of the details in the speech, but just to give you a sense of what I mean, here’s Senator Chris Murphy, after the speech, noting that Biden essentially said “Ticketmaster sucks.”
Are crappy fees from Ticketmaster the most pressing problem in America? No. But they are actually a problem that most people know about, and these junk fees symbolize the out-of-control monopolies corrupting our society. Normal people get what Biden was discussing, just like in the 1950s they understood things like roads, electricity, and telephone service.
Now, does a speech by a politician really truly matter? The answer in this case is, yes, it does. The State of the Union isn’t just an hour on prime time where the networks show the President, it’s an entire production, a six-month project by every part of government to brag about what they’ve done, to seek more authority or funding, or to just be noticed. It’s a way for political advisors of the President to set an agenda, and for advocates and lobbyists to see who is up and who is down in the policy pecking order. Most importantly, it’s how the President tells the government and his party not just what his priorities are, but how he understands the point of politics.
And that’s why I was completely stunned at what Biden said, and how he said it. I knew there was going to be some monopoly-related stuff in the speech, there had been leaks that Biden would mention Big Tech and privacy, for instance. But what I didn’t realize is that the entire speech would be framed around the need to restore populist government, to place controls on powerful corporations, and to re-shore production.
To see if I was imagining things, I went back and read a few old State of the Union speeches by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. I chose the third year of the Presidency for each, to do an apples to apples comparison. And what I found was that Biden’s accomplishments and his rhetoric were wildly different from his predecessors. In 1995, Bill Clinton centered his speech on what he called a “New Covenant,” which largely meant cutting government. He bragged about eliminating $250 billion of spending, removing 100,000 jobs from the public sector, and making the Federal Government “the smallest it has been since John Kennedy was President.” He sought tax cuts, a bailout for American banks in Mexico, and an attack on “our failed welfare system.”
Obama, in 2011, echoed similar themes, focusing on the deficit and reducing the size of government. Like Clinton, he discussed how Americans were struggling, but gave as an antidote the notion that the government should help fund a bit more higher education, as part of out-competing the rest of the world and making “America the best place on Earth to do business.” There was some rhetoric around infrastructure spending in both speeches, but basically, the villain for both Clinton and Obama was slothful government, or vague bad values Americans expressed towards each other.
To say that Biden changed this framework is to dramatically understate the matter – his speech started with a discussion of the government bringing back semiconductor manufacturing to the U.S., and capping insulin prices charged by “Big Pharma” at $35/month for seniors. Banning non-competes got a shout-out, as did competition in hearing aids, unionization laws, domestic production subsidies, and bans on hidden fees charged by banks, hotels, airlines, and Ticketmaster. There was no apologia for government, and the villain was big business and monopoly, from nearly start to finish. He mentioned the need for stronger antitrust laws against big tech, the first time antitrust has been in a State of the Union speech since 1979.
The way to understand political arguments isn’t about who wins the debate. It’s about who gets to ask the question. If the President proposes something about flag burning, then politics becomes defined around what people think of flag burning. If he discusses big business, then big business becomes the realm of political activity. So what Biden said in his State of the Union mattered, because it told the Democratic Party establishment what to think about.
On CNN and MSNBC, for the first time, the Democratic establishment discussed market power as if it’s a normal part of politics. David Leonhardt at the New York Times wrote up the junk fee problem, and CNN’s Van Jones and journalist Carl Hulse discussed how annoying fees are that are being tacked onto everything. It was sort of remarkable that for the first time in my memory, the political people on TV actually sounded like normal human beings. No one was saying that globalization and technology meant Ticketmaster had to do what it was doing or that it was all inevitable, or trying to define “Bridge to the 21st Century,” as if that’s a thing. They were just annoyed at being nickel and dimed.
Another way to understand the speech is to see who was infuriated. CNBC types were outraged, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page writers predictably had their aneurysms. More specifically, Airlines for America, the airline lobbying group, got angry that the President cited airline fees as ‘junk.’ Similarly, the President & CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association, Lindsey Johnson, made a video attacking the notion of limiting bank overdraft and credit card late fees.
Wall Street Democrats were frustrated as well. Steve Rattner, an Obama administration official and the current manager of Michael Bloomberg’s $75 billion fortune, attacked Biden’s plan to tax stock buybacks as “the dumbest idea of the year,” as “buybacks are actually good — the $ shareholders receive gets recycled into other, potentially more productive investments.”
These are all the people you want to be mad, if the goal is to make the country work reasonably well again. We’ll see how far Biden takes his populism. There are reasons for skepticism, namely the entire government has been run for four decades as if being slightly disrespectful to a Wall Street banker will cause bridges to collapse everywhere. Civil servants, understandably, have been trained to be wary of restructuring markets. But it’s shocking that Biden has taken us where he has. It feels both radical, and strangely quite normal.
Is the Microsoft-Activision Merger Falling Apart? The morning after the State of the Union, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority told Microsoft that it has to either abandon or seriously rework its proposed $69 billion acquisition of gaming publisher Activision.
The CMA argued that Microsoft has an incentive to make games exclusive to its own platforms, and Activision – particularly because of its control of the Call of Duty franchise – is an important game publisher. More interestingly, this case seems to be less about consoles and more about cloud gaming services, which is how gaming will happen in the future. People will play games on whatever device they have, and the computing will happen elsewhere. Microsoft has 60-70% of the market in that area, and the CMA believes this acquisition will cement its dominance. Like the Meta-Within acquisition, this case is about preventing monopoly in a market that isn’t a big deal now, but is poised to become important.
The CMA’s move follows on the EU Competition Authority offering its own ‘Statement of Objections’ to the merger. Unlike in the U.S., courts in Europe and the UK play a much smaller role in merger challenges. Over the next few weeks, Microsoft will respond to regulatory concerns with proposed changes to the merger. If they don’t satisfy the CMA and EU, the merger will be blocked. There’s an appeal process, but it’s not easy.
So now, the American, European, and British enforcers have all said that this merger is highly problematic or should not go through. Just a few years ago, the near collapse of the biggest merger of the year would have been a massive story. But there’s an endless amount of populist policy coming from the Biden administration, so this kind of action has become normalized.
For instance, just this week, there was not only the State of the Union, but CFPB Director Rohit Chopra banned pay-to-play arrangements in digital comparison mortgage and finance websites, the Antitrust Division blocked a merger in the seamless tubing and production casing industry for oil pipelines, and enforcers withdrew three policy guides allowing health care middlemen to collude with one another.
Nevertheless, the coming apart of the Microsoft-Activision merger isn’t a small deal. Antitrust is impacting policy in unseen ways; the head of Apple’s product design team just let it slip that the iPhone is being redesigned to be more repairable. I doubt Apple would admit it’s because of American and global scrutiny around the ‘right to repair,’ but that’s clearly what’s happening. Similarly, the mergers and acquisitions game has changed, with dealmakers expecting “deep antitrust scrutiny because that’s just how things now work” on transactions that used to go through without a hitch. Maybe that’s one reason mergers in the U.S. are down 76% year to date. It’s not the only reason; financing arrangements have changed.
But the environment for monopolies, both domestically and abroad, is getting more and more inhospitable.
Aint Supposed to Die A Natural Death
Goodbye, Bill C. You look good gone. Ya got diamonds in ya back.
Gosh I hope so. But I would not be surprised if Chelsea runs for some public office in a year or two.
Aint Supposed to Die A Natural Death
Video Raises Questions About Tortuguita’s Death at “Cop City” Amid Permit Appeal The release of body camera footage and permit challenge come as one Atlanta Police Foundation board member steps down. …
Terán, whose chosen name was Tortuguita, was shot and killed by police on January 18 during a violent raid on a protest encampment in the South River Forest that has blockaded construction of what Atlanta-area activists have dubbed “Cop City,” an 85-acre, $90 million police militarization and training complex spearheaded by the Atlanta Police Foundation that, if built, would be one of the largest police training facilities in the country. The site would contain several shooting ranges, a helicopter landing base, an area for explosives training, police-horse stables and an entire mock city for officers to engage in role-playing activities.
The GBI initially said Tortuguita was shot and killed after allegedly firing a gun and injuring a Georgia state trooper during the raid, but APD’s newly released body camera video appears to show officers suggesting that the trooper was shot by friendly fire in the initial moments after the shooting. In one video, after gunshots ring out through the forest, an officer can be heard saying, “That sounded like suppressed gunfire,” implying the initial shots were consistent with the use of a law enforcement weapon, not the Smith & Wesson M&P Shield nine-millimeter the GBI alleges Tortuguita purchased and fired upon the trooper with, which did not have a suppressor.
Later, another officer can be heard muttering to himself, “You fucked your own officer up.” The officer walks up to two other officers and asks, “Did they shoot their own in there?” to which another officer replies, “We don’t know what he got shot by,” followed by inaudible dialogue. An officer responds and says, “The first one, they said, was suppressed.” At another point in the footage, a drone can be overheard, indicating that GBI may have more direct footage of Torguita’s shooting.
In a statement to the media on January 18, anonymous protesters and community activists dubbed “Forest Defenders” reported hearing “dozens” of gunshots around 9 am on January 18, indicating it wasn’t clear who fired the first shot, and alleging they had “reason to believe” Tortuguita was killed after a friendly fire incident. Police continued the raid after Tortuguita’s shooting, using tear gas and rubber bullets to remove protesters from tree houses and bulldozing forest around the camp.
Aint, has any kind of positive fallout happened from this yet?
Aint Supposed to Die A Natural Death
Love me some Bernie. Love me some Lula. Loved me some Brazil in 2002 but I could never take a non-stop, 15 hours in the air, flight again.
Here’s today’s email from Bernie –
Yesterday I had the honor of meeting one of the world’s greatest champions for working people, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula.
During our meeting Lula and I discussed the importance of defending democracy, advancing worker’s rights and increasing environmental and climate cooperation around the world.
Lula came to Washington to meet with President Biden, but what he did during the rest of his visit speaks loudly to who he is and has always represented. He spent time, not only with me, but also with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and with labor leaders at the AFL-CIO.
When world leaders visit our nation’s capital, almost all of them focus their attention on establishment figures: wealthy and powerful individuals, corporate CEOs or mainstream politicians. Lula did it differently. He met with progressive and labor leaders, because that is where he comes from and who he has represented throughout his entire life.
Lula, who left school after the second grade, was a metal worker who became president of Brazil’s steelworker’s union. At the time a CIA-backed military dictatorship ruled Brazil. Those who opposed them were jailed and often tortured. Lula risked his life leading strikes and protests against the undemocratic regime. In 1980 he founded the Workers Party. Remarkably he was elected president of Brazil in 2002. Because of the policies he put in place as president, 20 million Brazilians were able to rise out of poverty, while inequality, infant mortality, and illiteracy all declined. Lula demonstrated to the world the power and popularity of a government that stands for working people. When he left office in 2010 his approval rating was over 80%.
Lula was elected to a third term in October, defeating incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro, who was called the “Trump of the tropics.”
In July, several months before their election, a group of civil society leaders from Brazil visited my office and spoke with me about the threat to Brazilian democracy coming from Bolsonaro and his supporters. Just like Donald Trump, Bolsonaro was telling lies about the election being stolen months before anyone cast a ballot. They asked me to speak out, not in support of Lula, but in support of democracy.
That is why, along with Senator Tim Kaine, I introduced a Resolution in Support of Brazilian Democracy. This bill unanimously passed the Senate sending a clear message that the United States would stand with the people of Brazil and would not accept any attempts to undemocratically overturn the results of their election.
This threat turned out to be very real. On January 8, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed the buildings housing all three branches of government in Brazil calling for a military coup to bring Bolsonaro back to power. Since that day many questions have surfaced about the role of members of Bolsonaro’s government and of the military in these riots.
Lula and I spoke in our meeting about the need to work to stand up for democracy around the world. This means not only standing against those who would try to overturn the results of elections, but also against the oligarchs who only care about their ability to exploit working people for profit.
Progressives around the world need to work together and that is exactly what Lula and I will continue to do. Now more than ever we need international solidarity.
In two unsuccessful bids for the White House, Senator Bernie Sanders made no secret of his disdain for billionaires. Now, in what could be his final act in Washington, he has the power to summon them to testify before Congress — and he has a few corporate executives in his sights.
One is Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive of Moderna, who Mr. Sanders complains “has become a multibillionaire” by developing a coronavirus vaccine with government money. “I think Mr. Bancel should be talking to his advisers about what he might say to the United States Senate,” Mr. Sanders warned in an interview.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Howard Schultz, the on-and-off chief executive of Starbucks, are also on his list. He views them as union busters whose companies have resorted to “really vicious and illegal” tactics to keep workers from organizing. He has already demanded that Mr. Schultz testify at a hearing in March.
Mr. Sanders, independent of Vermont, can put these men on the spot because he is the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The job gives him sweeping jurisdiction over issues that have animated his rise in politics, such as access to health care, the high cost of prescription drugs and workers’ rights.
Mr. Sanders, 81, who identifies as a democratic socialist, has said he will not seek the Democratic nomination for president again if President Biden runs for re-election — a position he reiterated in a recent interview in his Senate office. He is himself up for re-election in 2024 and would not say whether he would run again, which raises the prospect that the next two years in Congress could be his last.
Mr. Sanders is clearly operating on two tracks. Last week, in a move that might surprise critics who view him as unbending, he partnered with a Republican, Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, to call on rail companies to offer seven days of paid sick leave to their workers — a provision that the Senate defeated last year when it passed legislation to avert a rail strike.
But he also sent a curt letter to Mr. Schultz, giving him until Tuesday to respond confirming his attendance at the hearing. That followed an earlier, angry letter in which Mr. Sanders urged the Starbucks chief to “immediately halt your aggressive and illegal union busting campaign.” A Starbucks spokesman said the company was considering the request for Mr. Schultz to testify and was working to “offer clarifying information” about its labor practices.
Former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, a Democrat who served as majority leader, said that Mr. Sanders could “bring a balance between the progressive and the pragmatic.”
“He will be progressive, he will be aspirational, he will continue to fight the fight,” Mr. Daschle said. “But at the same time, I believe Bernie Sanders wants to get things done.”
The chairmanship is the latest turn in Mr. Sanders’s long career in politics, a coda to his rise from a left-wing socialist curiosity to a national figure with respect, power and a devoted fan base. After three decades in Washington, he still manages to cast himself as an outsider. And while he may never ascend to the presidency, there is no question that he has left his mark on national politics, reviving and strengthening the American left.
But Mr. Sanders’s national following cuts both ways. He is both a darling of the progressive movement and fodder for conservatives, who are already gleefully caricaturing him.
“Medicare for all, baby!” crowed Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist, referring to Mr. Sanders’s signature legislative initiative, a government-run health care program for all Americans. “I guarantee you Bernie Sanders will provide a wonderful target for Republicans to shoot at.”
He already has. Mr. Sanders’s rise has put him in the ranks of the very wealthy Americans he criticizes, in part thanks to a book he wrote, “Our Revolution,” in the wake of his first bid for the presidency. (“If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too,” he said in 2019.)
He is about to go on tour to hawk a new book, “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism,” due out later this month and billed by its publisher as “a progressive takedown of the über-capitalist status quo.” Tickets for an upcoming book event at a concert venue in Washington are selling for up to $95 on Ticketmaster — a company that last month was accused of anti-competitive behavior by some of Mr. Sanders’s Senate colleagues. His Republican critics are having a field day with that.
“Anyone else see the ‘irony’ in Bernie Sanders selling tickets for his ‘It’s Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism’ book tour on Ticketmaster?” Representative Bill Huizenga, Republican of Michigan, wrote on Twitter. A spokesman for Mr. Sanders declined to comment on the book event.
With Republicans running the House and 60 votes needed to pass most bills in the Senate, Mr. Sanders has little hope of pushing major legislation through Congress. He intends to introduce a Medicare for all bill, as he has done in past Congresses, because he feels “it’s important to keep that issue out there,” as he put it. But he is well aware that it is going nowhere on Capitol Hill.
“We don’t have the votes,” he said matter-of-factly. “We have no Republican support for it. And I would guess, you know, we have maybe half of Democrats who might support it.”
That is Mr. Sanders the realist speaking, in a tone far more practical than the one he has used during his campaign rallies and familiar rants against millionaires and billionaires. But those who watch Mr. Sanders closely know that, while he has never been a master legislator in the mold of former Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a predecessor of his as the health committee chairman, he is able to work across the aisle.
In 2014, as the chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Mr. Sanders partnered with Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, on a major overhaul of the veterans’ health care system — a measure that the Vermont senator described then as “not the bill that I would have written,” but nonetheless “a significant step forward.”
A copy of the bill hangs on the wall of his office, alongside a photograph of President Barack Obama signing it, with Mr. Sanders looking over his shoulder and doing something he is not often seen doing in the Capitol: smiling.
Mr. Sanders’s activist roots run deep, but after arriving in Washington in 1991 as Vermont’s lone member of the House, he quickly learned that being an outsider would only get him so far; he would have to deal with Democrats if he wanted any power. In the Senate, which he joined in 2007, he has worked his way up the ranks. In addition to leading the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, he has also served as chairman of the Budget Committee.
No one — perhaps not even Mr. Sanders himself — could have predicted then that he would wage two credible runs for the Democratic nomination for president. In the interview, Mr. Sanders brushed aside questions of politics. He wanted to talk policy.
“We spend twice as much per capita on health care as the people of other industrialized nations, and yet we have 85 million who are uninsured or underinsured,” he said, adding, “So you have a system that is not working.”
“It’s propped up by the power of the insurance companies, some drug companies,” he continued, “and I will do my best to change it.”
Mr. Sanders wants to hear from Moderna, he said, about the company’s plan to sharply hike the price of its coronavirus vaccine. In a recent letter to Mr. Bancel, he assailed the vaccine maker for “unacceptable corporate greed” and urged the company to reconsider.
A spokesman for Moderna said the company had always “been willing to engage in conversation with government stakeholders” and would continue to do so.
At the hearing in March, Mr. Sanders wants Mr. Schultz to explain why Starbucks has drawn scrutiny from the National Labor Relations Board. The board has been investigating Starbucks for various allegations of misconduct, including that it had illegally denied raises to union employees and had fired seven workers at a store in Memphis for their union-organizing activity. A court later ordered Starbucks to reinstate those workers.
The health committee also has some must-pass legislation on its agenda, including the reauthorization of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, a 2006 law intended to improve public health and medical preparedness for emergencies, including acts of bioterrorism. The law was reauthorized in 2013 and must again be reauthorized this year.
Joel White, a Republican strategist who specializes in health policy, said Mr. Sanders might be more bipartisan than some of his critics expect, adding, “I think Bernie probably wouldn’t have become chair of the health committee just to throw bombs.”
Two Republicans on the panel, Mr. Braun and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, both said in interviews that they thought they might find common ground with Mr. Sanders on matters like lowering the cost of prescription drugs and supporting community health centers.
And Mr. Daschle said Mr. Sanders had a counterpart he could probably work with: Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the top Republican on the committee. A physician who helped found a community health clinic to treat the uninsured, Mr. Cassidy was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict former President Donald J. Trump at his second impeachment trial.
As committee chairman, Mr. Sanders said he intended to “take the show on the road” by having hearings in places other than Washington so he could hear from ordinary Americans, such as older people who have a hard time paying for prescription drugs, working families struggling to pay for child care and students who cannot afford to pay for college.
With the recent retirement of Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Democrat who served for 48 years, Mr. Sanders is finally the senior senator from Vermont. Asked how he felt, he said, “Pretty good.” Then, ever combative, he shot back, “How do you feel?”
He said people who wonder about whether he will run again — and by people, he meant reporters — should “keep wondering.”
Why? “Because I’ve just told you, and this is very serious,” he said, wearing his trademark scowl. “If you think about my record, I take this job seriously. The purpose of elections is to elect people to do work, not to keep talking about elections.”
I can’t see Bernie hanging it up in 2025 when there is still potential for the Dems to take back the House and gain one more senator who is mostly progressive. But maybe Bernie would prefer to enjoy his life in Vermont full time.
wpDiscuz
San Jose is divided among four! districts, two of which are represented by reps on the list below (Espoo and Panetta).
All four (including Khanna and Lofgren) voted for the horrors of socialism bill.
https://twitter.com/NickTagliaferro/status/1623743092347002887?s=20&t=tAQLQk8G2_b-MvJk5Q-VYw
Imperialists!
Bunch of overrated stupes. Signed, a DC native. 🙄🤮
California, the bluest of the blue, is anything but. Away from the coasts and outside of the major cities things get pretty red, and the drop off is fast. It’s a good thing that these areas are pretty much unpopulated. And even in the blue areas corporatism runs high. Remember the Democratic Primary, in 2016? I sure do.
Us old farts remember when California was deep red for Reagan
T and R x 2, jcb!!🎼🙂☮️✊ I’ve been checking out Burt Bacharach’s oeuvre. 🎼Wow! He wrote “Anyone Who Had a Heart” which I was nutso over as a little kid. Just adds more to the fact that I was privileged to grow up during an actual Renaissance. Only this one was in popular music.🎼🎼🎼👏👏
https://americanindependent.com/whats-at-stake-wisconsin-supreme-court-election/
The attack ads against Janet are well under way by the CFG and WMC-the usual Koch-Roachs political smear groups
What’s with the ‘liberal’ labeling? Just more FRightwing manipulation and destruction of our language. I really despise these MFers! 💩💩💩
😁😁😁😁
When Hubster was still working, one of the big Turkey Day deals down here was the Thanksgiving Day 🏈game between Florida A & M and Bethune-Cookman, two black colleges. The night before, their bands would do a live performance between them in the O-rena, an informal Battle of the Bands. 🎼🏈🙂 I never saw it but from all reports, it was a KILLER of a show!👏
There’s a good interview with Bernie at the link. It was difficult to copy for here and I got locked out as a nonsubscriber, but it’s worth reading
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bernie-sanders-big-pharma-drug-prices-1234678181/
Rolling Stone is one of the few I’ve seen that won’t allow even one access during any given month. Even Bloomberg will permit reading at least one article per month.
I actually got one in on both regular and incognito but the copying foiled me. Lots of annoying ads
Yea ita a pain in the ass to copy on some sites, lots of editing before i post a comment. To much unwanted content comes with the copying.
It’s the usual behind-a-paywall BS. I already know what the subject is so I skip it. They want my coin, they have to earn it, and my linguistical standards are pretty high.
Some times at Reddits R-politics someone will add a link to a site where they post that link that goes around the paywall. Its hit or miss during my lurking at thier site
How many of you are rooting for the Eagles tomorrow? I live in a KC household, so I’ll be rooting for them. Also, Mahomes is a “alum” (he didn’t finish, but he’s still considered one of theirs) of Texas Tech; I’m an alum of TTU too.
Probably the Eagles but no big whoop either way for me
🙂 gettin old 🧓, had one of those and remember the SB as well for an important reason, Child hood sports idol Bart Starr, was lucky enough to meet him as a youngin and he didnt disappoint like so many stars do today.
Packers are the only team owned by the fans. Bucs should have been but the NFL ownership screwed them.
Still BS. The original NFL Championship Game was light-years better and worth watching.🏈🏈👍
dont care either way, was going with the team that had ex Badgers on them but they both do so there goes that to decide
I was going to skip the Stupid Bowl, but my sis has a former student who plays for the Eagles 🦅. So, sister solidarity. ✊🙂🏈 Plus, I’m curious about these idiot Christian ads on there.
This time of year there’s always rumblings from some craprate idiot that’s wants to PPV this game. That would be the end of the NFL as fans would organize some sort of boycott.
Wouldn’t that 7 mil per ad they dropped best be served helping the poor with food and other necessity’s?
Meanwhile in WI the Foxxconned deal by Walker continues to keep on giving;
Federal class action lawsuit alleges Foxconn not fully paying Wisconsin employees
Corrinne Hess, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Fri, February 10, 2023 at 3:00 PM CST
Foxconn employees working at the company’s Mount Pleasant facility filed a federal class action lawsuit alleging the company regularly shaved time off from their weekly timesheets and failed to pay them earned overtime.
The lawsuit, filed Feb. 7 in the U.S. Eastern District of Wisconsin, by Scotty Allen against FII USA, inc. doing business as Foxconn, alleges the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and Wisconsin’s Wage Payment and Collection Laws.
The lawsuit gives a small glimpse into what is happening at Foxconn where little is known, despite the company saying it employs about 1,000 people and receiving $37.4 million in state tax credits.
In a statement, Foxconn Technology Group said it would not comment on the specifics of the lawsuit.
“At this time, we are currently looking into the matter and have no comment regarding the allegation,” the statement said.
Hourly employees repeatedly not paid
Allen was hired as an hourly employee in August 2022, the lawsuit says. He was fired by the company in January after complaining about his timecard being altered, according to the lawsuit.
Allen was an assembly operator. The class action lawsuit says it represents all “current and former hourly employees who perform similarly-titled positions.”
According to the lawsuit:
Foxconn does not fully compensate hourly employees, instead the time clock rounds to the closest hour, to the detriment of the employee.
Employees were not paid bonuses, overtime and other incentive awards.
On multiple occasions employees complained to supervisors about unlawful practices of changing or altering time clocks.
On Jan. 19, Allen complained to his supervisor about altering his “clock in” and/or “clock out” times during the workday. His supervisor allegedly did not respond and Allen was instead terminated on Jan. 30 because of his complaints.
The plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial.
The Bat-shit crazyness over the 2A has no limits, This outta workout great the inner-city drug areas
MISSOURI REPUBLICANS VOTE TO AFFIRM TODDLERS’ RIGHTS TO CARRY FIREARMS IN THE STREETS
Yes, it’s exactly as crazy as it sounds.
BY BESS LEVIN
FEBRUARY 9, 2023
In the year 2023, no one expects Republicans to have a reasonable take on gun violence (like that it’s a problem), or to do something about it (like pass meaningful gun control legislation). Still, you might think that conservatives wouldn’t be so thoroughly detached from reality that they would approve of—nay, fight for the rights of—small children being able to openly carry firearms in public places. Because that would just be, to use an official legislative term, f–king insane. Can you guess where we’re going with this?
In a turn of events that absolutely defies logic, the Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to reject an amendment that would have banned minors from being allowed to openly carry guns on public land without adult supervision. Which, thanks to a 2017 law, they are currently free to do. (That law, which was vetoed by then governor Jay Nixon and overridden by the Missouri House, also allows Missouri residents to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, safety training, or criminal-background check. As Sgt. Charles Wall, spokesman for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “under current state law, there is no minimum age to lawfully possess a firearm.”) To be clear: The proposal rejected this week was not seeking to ban minors from openly carrying weapons on public land, period, but simply from doing so without an adult supervising them. But apparently even that was too much for the state’s conservatives, who quite literally believe it’s fine for actual kids to walk down the street carrying guns. The proposal was defeated by 104-39, with just a single Republican voting in favor of the ban.
State representative Donna Baringer, a Democrat who represents St. Louis, said she decided to sponsor the amendment after police in her district asked for stronger regulations to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.” With the proposal officially blocked, said 14-year-olds, and kids half their age and younger, “have been emboldened [to carry AR-15s], and they are walking around with them,” she said. Representative Lane Roberts, apparently the only Republican with any sense in the Missouri House of Representatives, had said prior to the vote: “This is about people who don’t have the life experience to make a decision about the consequences of having that gun in their possession. Why is an 8-year-old carrying a sidearm in the street?”
A great question! And one that his fellow GOP lawmakers obviously did not have any good answers for because if you’re a sane person, there is none. In a ridiculous attempt to justify that scenario, Republican state representative Bill Hardwick argued that he “just [has] a different approach for addressing public safety that doesn’t deprive people, who have done nothing to any other person, who will commit no violence, from their freedom.” As a reminder the people Hardwick is arguing must have the freedom to carry firearms on their person, are children, some of whom cannot even buy a ticket for a PG-13 movie.
In a bit of equally absurd “logic,” state representative Tony Lovasco told The Washington Post: “Government should prohibit acts that directly cause measurable harm to others, not activities we simply suspect might escalate. Few would support banning unaccompanied kids in public places, yet one could argue such a bad policy might be effective.” Right, yes, except one small thing: A kid hanging out in public without an adult is a much smaller risk to themself and others than a kid hanging out in public without an adult and carrying a gun. Someone—not us of course, definitely not us, but someone—might suggest this is the argument of a total moron.
Of course, all of this is happening less than a month after news of a Virginia six-year-old shooting their teacher and a viral surveillance video from Indiana that captured a diaper-wearing toddler carrying a handgun and firing it.
Meanwhile, as state representative Peter Merideth noted, conservative lawmakers in the state who think kids bearing arms is fine and dandy, are currently trying to pass a bill that would make drag performances on public property or seen by minors class A misdemeanors. “Kids carrying guns on the street or in a park is a matter of individual freedom and personal responsibility. Kids seeing a drag queen read a children’s book or sing a song is a danger the government must ban,” Merideth tweeted. “Do I have that right MO GOP?”https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/missouri-republicans-minors-open-carry
smdh
Word is out down here that the Tallahassee idiot squad is getting set to eventually approve OPEN carry with NO permit, period! Even the hardcore RWingers I know hate it.
Oh oh. Santos (or whatever his name is) the second being exposed.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-new-alleged-liar-in-congress-just-dropped/ar-AA17lcd0?cvid=3fb098864ad848819f8a9ba29e207189&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover
Who votes for these 2-legged pieces of sh1t? And of course, she gets elected in my sh1t storm of a state.💩💩💩
Beautiful!
✊👏
Couldnt let this fly by😁😁
😂🥶
Have y’all seen this one?
She/It insults a great iconic painting. 🙁 Still it is clever in a negative way. 🙂
Now i have Thx Aint
The toonist needed to add; Remember Honey we STILL vote the R by the name!!!!
Samo old GQP today,Same old GQP back then sigh….
Matt Stoller
Bill Clinton Has Left the Building
part 2
Goodbye, Bill C. You look good gone. Ya got diamonds in ya back.
Gosh I hope so. But I would not be surprised if Chelsea runs for some public office in a year or two.
Video Raises Questions About Tortuguita’s Death at “Cop City” Amid Permit Appeal
The release of body camera footage and permit challenge come as one Atlanta Police Foundation board member steps down.
…
There’s more at Truthout –
https://truthout.org/articles/video-raises-questions-about-tortuguitas-death-at-cop-city-amid-permit-appeal/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=f5d37ca8-c79d-4d74-bff0-101aabaeae8a
Aint, has any kind of positive fallout happened from this yet?
Love me some Bernie. Love me some Lula. Loved me some Brazil in 2002 but I could never take a non-stop, 15 hours in the air, flight again.
Here’s today’s email from Bernie –
Got that, too, and read it. Don’t we wish we could vote for a Lula for POTUS? Sigh………
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/12/us/politics/bernie-sanders-help-committee.html
I can’t see Bernie hanging it up in 2025 when there is still potential for the Dems to take back the House and gain one more senator who is mostly progressive. But maybe Bernie would prefer to enjoy his life in Vermont full time.
I think he won’t hang it up if his health is still going strong but we will find out fairly soon.