Dude: Grand Dude
Yr editor has a new title
Links are at the end.
I’m now a grandfather, after a couple days of no effort on my part. Well, a couple days and nine-ish months, and I suppose some while before that too. You might think this means I’m old, but however old I am is the new 30, or some multiple of it.
Elon does an anti-Semitism—accusing the ADL of lopping 50% off his company’s value—and his crack(head?) marketing team includes a screenshot of it in a new marketing video for advertisers. Twitter is an ex-parrot.1
Ian Milheiser, Vox’s Supreme Corpse correspondent, has a story about a bunch of alleged judges infesting the Fifth Circuit who devised what he calls a “verkakte legal theory” that would shut down huge chunks of annual federal spending if validated by the Supremes, who are scheduled to hear the case in two weeks.
The case is Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association, and it is distinguished, says Milheiser, by what are “simultaneously some of the silliest and some of the most dangerous ideas ever presented to the Supreme Court of the United States.”
He doesn’t believe the Supremes will rule against the CFPB, but he also thinks a bad outcome can’t be ruled out.2
Also on the reactionary front, this time in academe rather than the courts, the Texas Tribune has a long piece based on the recent travails of journalism professional and professor Kathleen McElroy, who was offered the job of resuscitating Texas A&M’s journalism program, which died about 20 years ago.
McElroy is an A&M graduate who teaches at the University of Texas in Austin. She’s also Black, a New York Times veteran, and a champion of diversity in journalism, all of which outraged the racist reactionaries on the A&M board of regents, along with the Texas legislators who promptly outlawed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs statewide.
The regents prevailed on the A&M president, who proved herself a prodigious liar, to water down the original offer—which McElroy had already signed—from a tenured head of department position to a one-year, non-tenured at will one, which ultimately resulted in a million-dollar payout to McElroy, who instead remains at UT-Austin.3
Tens of millions of Americans are a few paychecks or less from disaster, despite the rosy economic statistics touted by the administration. Unemployment is low, inflation is down, earnings are (sort of, sometimes) up but, as followed the economic meltdown in 2008, it’s something of a Potemkin recovery for a lot of people.
The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity calculates unemployment, earnings and inflation (as it impacts wage earners) a bit differently than the labor department and financial institutions.
LISEP’s TRU, a measure of the“functionally unemployed” — defined as the jobless, plus those seeking, but unable to find, full-time employment paying above the poverty line after adjusting for inflation — increased 0.1 percentage points, from 22.9% to 23%. While the increase might seem small, that increase — combined with a 0.2 percentage point increase in the labor force participation rate — indicates that even though more Americans are working, many are unable to find jobs paying over the poverty line. Similarly, the official U.S. unemployment rate issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics also increased, from 3.5% to 3.8%.
It’s not a radical standard, and it perhaps explains why some people outside the usual reactionary suspects aren’t wild about the economy.
Which brings us to this articulation from Mark Harris at Common Dreams about why the U.S needs and doesn’t have an effective socialist movement, a circumstance which is not at all limited to the machinations of right-wing crazies.
Tellingly, earlier this year the House of Representatives passed a resolution sponsored by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), a supporter of the far-right “Freedom Force” caucus, denouncing “the horrors of socialism.” The resolution passed only thanks to the support of 109 Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and other party leaders. House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) took the nuanced position of voting for the anti-socialism resolution while also denouncing it as “phony, fake, and fraudulent.”
I would not have thought Jeffries so radical.4
Sometimes local journalism is really good at identifying what readers want and need to know. That’s obviously the case with Casper, Wyoming’s County 17, which thoughtfully provides a video telling readers (viewers? reaviewers?) how to recognize when cops are running a game on you, and short-circuit them.5 Having recently got briefly addicted to the daily crime reports in the area6, I can see why this would be a priority.
Giant corporations are getting squeezed on health care benefits by other giant corporations, and they’re fighting back, which will probably provoke the other giant corporations to fight back against the back-fighters.
The obvious solution is for the giant corporations of the first instance to back a universal health care plan which isn’t employer-based, but if employees weren’t dependent upon the corporation for health care insurance, the corporations would lose a possible competitive advantage over other corporations and, more importantly, they’d lose a powerful advantage over employees who would no longer be dependent on the corporation for health care.
So fuck that.
Let them fight, I guess.7
And speaking of health care, don’t let the revived program for mailing free Covid tests to consumers get you thinking that the pandemic is not, contrary to the Bidennaires, over. One can sign up for the tests beginning September 25 at www.covidtests.gov.
Sugarthief, “I Before E(P);8” The Chatham Singers, “Kings of the Medway Delta;9” Smertz, “Believer.10” All new to me, and weird in their own ways.
That, Comrades, is all I got. Share if you like, consider subscribing if you’ve not—it’s free unless you want to pay—and go do something socialist.
Take care, be well.
Hey old guy . . . good news to hear! Congrats . . .
Congrats, Gramps. Probably one of the best things that ever happened to you!