Yes, and those exploitative labor relationships so popular in the South serve to reproduce an embedded social structure that favors the usual suspects. Pic stolen from an excellent piece in the NYT yesterday from Jamelle Bouie.

Such a great development. We can talk all we want, but votes like this one are where the rubber actually hits the road in terms of shifting power from capital to labor.

A viable Trump candidacy courts controversy and sells subscriptions. End of democracy? We will worry about that later.

“My husband, Wesley, and I join hands in prayer around our kitchen table. Then we worry about the Mexicans.”

The problem as I see it is not that they have been critical of Biden, but that they are not ringing the alarm bells loudly enough over some of the batshit garbage Trump has been spewing recently. “Dictator on day one”, cutting off funding for schools that require vaccinations, etc.

It is reminiscent of the “both sides” criticism moderates get — in an effort to provide even coverage, they are functionally giving the crazy and the corrupt a free pass.

This inevitably happens in states and in industries with low or no union participation. Reason number 1,000 why workers have to stick together. Unionize … and strike.

Add the Carroll verdict and we are North of $440 million in about 3 weeks.

Edit: Also need to calculate statutory interest on top of this. Appeal bond is going to be brutal.

Yes, judging by the tenor or the questions it probably won’t even be close. They may end up ruling that Section 5 requires enabling legislatIon to be passed before state enforcement of Section 3 can proceed, but who knows. I think the fix is in on this one, regardless of the actual merits of the legal theories.

I’ll also go out on a limb and say that even though I am viscerally with Colorado here, a victory could easily turn into chaos once GOP-controlled courts in battleground states start engaging in a tit-for-tat. I can already hear the MTG-caliber arguments about humane border policy equating to insurrection.

The upcoming immunity case is going to be way more problematic for Trump, I think.

This one was always going to be a long shot. The real story here (or one real story, I guess) is why nobody had the guts to ask Thomas to recuse himself.

Rolling Stone following a rich tradition started by the late, great Hunter Thompson. His obit for Nixon is an absolute classic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/

Our distinguished House Speaker voted against expulsion.

This is frightening stuff. I feel like it should be at the top of every newscast, every conversation, but somehow we seem to be sleepwalking into the end of democracy. A “nah, can’t happen here” attitude, coupled with Trump fatigue, social media distractions, struggling to make ends meet, and good old fashioned apathy, are going to get people killed.

It is one thing to hop on the internet and complain about the system (like we are doing now), but another to actually do something about it.

Unionizing - and then actually striking for better pay and conditions - are the most immediate ways to move the ball. As he says, workers have not historically improved their conditions by working harder, but by refusing to work en masse.

As pointed out time and time again, the MAGA caucus is interested in maximum chaos for social media clout, not governing. It will be interesting to see how much of the ‘mainstream’ GOP goes along with this idiocy.

I get the sense they are pretty spineless, because after all, who wants to anger the base and have to give up the fancy Washington restaurants to return to the sticks and live among the rubes once the inevitable MAGA primary challenger takes you out?

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Viewers get a throw-away line about Big Three’s “record profits” but no sense of what those profits have been: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis made a combined $21 billion in profits in just the first six months of this year. According to the UAW, they’ve earned a quarter trillion dollars in profit since 2013.

This right here. There is a staggering lack of understanding about just how money is circulated in the economy. The assumption is that if you let billionaires and corporations concentrate capital it will be good for the rest of us because they will create jobs. That is true at the margin when capital is at a premium, but in an era easy money, investment isn’t the problem. You can also rest assured that without unions corporations will cut every job they can to boost the bottom line.

Conversely, there is this puritanical sense among some that if you pay workers more, then they will get lazy … or something … and that is bad for the economy. This is bullshit. Billionaires hoard capital. Workers, because they have to, spend their paychecks (lower marginal propensity to save) and keep money circulating. Paying people decently is good for the economy.

Here is a perspective from within the belly of the beast in case it is interesting to someone: state legislatures starving higher ed for funding is a story that goes back over 30 years. It is responsible to a significant degree for the tuition hikes that have made a college education too costly for many students. In effect, this funding cut and resulting tuition hike has shifted costs of an educated workforce from wealthy taxpayers to young people. https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/state-funding-higher-education-still-lagging

Administrative bloat is also a problem, and falls into a couple of categories. You have the university presidents and coaches, on one hand, where the appointments are themselves a political plum in some states and game day is an excuse for rich alumni to drive $300,000 RVs to sit in corporate skyboxes. (State legislatures don’t seem to have issues with that spending, for some reason).

Then there is the multiplication of various vice-provosts, directors, department heads, etc. Some of that is legitimate administrative bloat, but it tends to gets pared back fairly regularly when a recession hits or enrollment drops. In many institutions a lot of the remaining bloat is administrative infrastructure built up around competition for students, compliance with Federal mandates, and research efforts to make up for that lost state funding. You have student life. Dining services. Residence life. Disability services. Equal opportunity offices. Financial aid offices. Faculty affairs offices. Institutional research. Institutional support. HR operations. State mandated procurement and budgeting units. Huge staffing structures around the research enterprise. Units dedicated to service and outreach. And the list goes on, and on, and on.

The point is not that all of these these activities are good and have to be preserved, or that they are bad and have to be axed. The point is that a lot of university activity that at first blush looks like cancerous growth is a response to the need to compete for tuition paying students, to keep the feds and state legislatures happy, and to land that the next big grant. A good bit of THAT can in turn be traced back to the aforesaid budget cuts and rising expectations about the sort of support that institutions of higher education are expected to supply.

Wow, that ended up longer than I intended, but I’ll leave it for the 1 or 2 of you who care about this stuff.

Difference between most most Dems and most MAGA types is that we are perfectly willing to hold our guy accountable. Show us actual proof of Biden peddling influence illegally, and we’ll be right there calling for criminal proceedings.

Yet, somehow (a) I doubt that such evidence actually exists here, and (b) I am astounded at the lengths to which the exact same human beings will go to paint Hunter Biden’s dealings as murky and suspicious while waving away any questions around $2 Billion in Saudi investment through Trump’s son in law. It breaks your brain.

Suggest substituting this one: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/16/abortion-pill-restrictions-00111499#

I can not imagine how difficult it must be as a lawyer to represent Trump. I don’t feel sorry for them, mind you, but damn this clown will work overtime to convict himself.