Six months earlier, two of Wood’s Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students had reported her to the school board for teaching about race. Wood had assigned her all-White class readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” a book that dissects what it means to be Black in America.
The students wrote in emails that the book — and accompanying videos that Wood, 47, played about systemic racism — made them ashamed to be White, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on account of their race.
Reading Coates’s book felt like “reading hate propaganda towards white people,” one student wrote.
At least two parents complained, too. Within days, school administrators ordered Wood to stop teaching the lesson. They placed a formal letter of reprimand in her file. It instructed her to keep teaching “without discussing this issue with your students.”
Wood finished out the spring semester feeling defeated and betrayed — not only by her students, but by the school system that raised her. The high school Wood teaches at is the same one she attended.
It had been a long summer since. Wood’s predicament, when it became public in a local newspaper, divided her town. At school board meetings, and in online Facebook groups, the citizens of wealthy, White and conservative Chapin debated whether Wood should be fired. Republican state representatives showed up to a June meeting to blast her as a lawbreaker. The next month, a county NAACP leader declared her an “advocate for the education of all students.” The county GOP party formally censured the school board chair for failing to discipline Wood.
Finally Friday Reads: Fuck Nebraska and Red States in General
Posted: September 22, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: Abortion Art, Abortion is Reproductive Healthcare, After Roe V. Wade, Bans off our bodies, Before Roe V. Wade 11 Comments
Juanita McNeely, “Is it Real? Yes It Is!” from 1969, a series of nine panels about the painter’s illegal abortion and medical emergency, It is displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
When my parents were trying to sell me in 4th grade on moving across the Missouri River, I clearly remember sitting in the back seat and telling them I didn’t like it here. I couldn’t really articulate how awful the boxy brick grade school looked compared to mine, which was built of granite by the WPA. Across the main road was a set of equally bricky and boxy stores in a shopping center.
All I could remember were the beautiful stores in the downtown area of Council Bluffs. There was the Hotel Ogden that looked straight out of a Western Movie, plus my Dad’s original dealership location, which was a typical auto dealership storefront straight out of the 1920s. I loved the old Victorian Houses nestled into the Bluffs and longed to own one when I grew up. I had dreams like that until we moved to Omaha. Then, my dreams were mostly of getting out of there as soon as possible. I could’ve graduated early and begged my parents to let me attend university and get out of here. My mother kept telling me these were the best days of my life. Then, I realized my mother was speaking for herself because I mostly remember her being as bored as I was. And we both hated football in a state where that’s about it for entertainment.
I can tell you that with certainty the best decades of my life came when I finally packed a car and headed out for good.
Barbara Kruger’s “Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground,” (1989).Credit…via Barbara Kruger, The Broad Art Foundation and Sprüth Magers
My daughter is 20 weeks pregnant, and her water broke last week at 19. The first question I get now is what state she is in. I don’t want to go into that, but you can google how exactly bad that is for a pregnancy. She was a high-risk pregnancy for me. I was placenta previa. I can tell you that my oldest daughter is an OB/GYN because of that pregnancy and the inoperable and incurable cancer that followed. I found out that the Insurance Company covering us and employing him wanted to send me to a Catholic Hospital. I said I’d pay to go to Methodist with my last dime if I had to. I badgered him to talk to the clerk, calling the shots on me and getting them to send me to Methodist. Luckily, Methodist Hospital had the only neontologist in my backward city. My husband worked for what I was told by my fifth-grade teacher was basically the employer of last resort. If we didn’t get grades, we would get stuck working in the land of endless file cabinets, evil bosses, and taxidermy animal decorations. I was due mid-December and drove myself to the hospital, bleeding profusely on Halloween.
The only good thing about that damned insurance company was it covered everything from the pre-birth trauma to the cancer treatment and surgery. It took my husband, a Vice President, to pressure them to let me go to Methodist Hospital with a good Jewish neonatologist(who later supervised Dr. Daughter’s Residency) that’s situated right across the street from Children’s Hospital’s Neonatology Unit. I gave my daughter a purple stethoscope when she entered Med school. I gave her an autographed copy of “This Common Secret ” when she graduated. My Journey as an Abortion Doctor.” She said, “But Mom, this won’t be my central practice.” She hadn’t read it when I last asked at the fall for Roe. I told her to just learn the procedure and ensure she could do it. One day, you may have to teach it secretly to save lives.
Yet in setting down her story, Wicklund has done something brave, not only by refusing to cower in the shadows but also by recounting experiences that don’t always fit the conventional pro-choice script. Before receiving her medical training, Wicklund had an abortion herself. She was asked no questions, offered no advice and left the clinic feeling violated. Years later, she terminated the pregnancy of a woman who’d been raped and wanted an abortion. Afterward, Wicklund examined the product of conception and discovered the pregnancy had occurred two weeks earlier, meaning it was not a consequence of the rape. Both she and the patient were horrified.
Opponents of abortion might view such episodes as proof that abortion is evil. For Wicklund, they are what drove and inspired her to help each woman she encountered make an informed, truly independent choice. At a clinic she ran in Montana, this meant placing the emphasis on counseling, which sometimes strengthened a patient’s resolve to terminate her pregnancy and other times led her to reconsider and bear the child instead. Wicklund may never convince the protesters who demonized her that women should be free to make such decisions on their own. But in sharing her secrets, she has shown why there is much honor in having spent a lifetime attempting to ensure they do.
Until now, very few can spend a lifetime ensuring they do. Count the states, remember the map, and be prepared to help someone you know. Be prepared for fines, jail, and neighbors reporting you.
I’ve always been a fighter, and fighting the patriarchy has been my thing ever since I found out I couldn’t play Little League baseball and was forced to wear a dress to school. One story that typifies the entire state came from one of the two Physicians performing abortions in Omaha. The biggest, most nasty of the protestors in front of his clinic was this woman and her daughter. One Sunday, he opened his clinic just for her so her daughter could have an abortion. The next day they both were out screaming crap that obviously they believed was for everyone else but them. Our bodies are in the hands of religious freaks, politicians, and insurance bureaucrats. This is not the world I planned for the girls and women coming after me.
I never thought we’d lose Roe completely. But we have. I live on an island at the edge of the rest of the state, which is primarily insane from too much religion and neo-Confederate rage. Almost all of us would love to be a city-state. But, since cancer took the one thing these nuts want to regulate the most, I don’t have to worry about the things I used to. It’s only for my daughters and now granddaughters. Location. Location. Location is everything if you have a functioning uterus. One is in Washington State. The other is in Colorado. Right now, they’re safe, but hopefully not in the way Anne Franck thought she would be in a hidey hole in the attic.
ILLUSTRATION BY VICTOR JUHASZ Rolling Stone, 2014
Here in Lousyana and up there in Nebraska, the state owns women’s bodies. We are chattel. The doctors, the parents, and confidants guiding such decisions in a free society no longer matter. This old, stale religion used to burn women and Jewish people at the stake and African-Americans on a cross wants its Dark Ages back. They’re in Africa trying out the death penalty for not loving and fucking their idea of the proper sex. Will we never be rid of these patriarchal missionaries who consider us chattel? I’ll shut up now. Just know that my child is safe and has her bills covered right now because she is not poor and is in Colorado. None of this makes it easier for me as I look at the faces of young women who walk my neighborhood streets, wondering if they’ll be able to make it to the Promised Land if need be.
So here’s the beef. This travesty of justice happened in Nebraska and is in The Guardian. “US mother sentenced to two years in prison for giving daughter abortion pills. Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty in July to providing an abortion after 20 weeks and tampering with human remains.” Remember, the earliest viability is not 20 weeks. It’s somewhere around 22-24 weeks and still at a point where life or health is not certain.
Jessica Burgess, a Nebraska mother accused of helping her teenage daughter use pills to end her pregnancy, was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison.
Burgess and her daughter, Celeste Burgess, stand accused of working together to end Celeste Burgess’s pregnancy in April 2022.
According to prosecutors, after the pair bought pills to end the pregnancy, Celeste Burgess gave birth to a stillborn fetus. At the time, Nebraska law banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Celeste Burgess’s pregnancy was well past that point, according to court records.
Police say that the Burgesses buried the fetal remains. An examination of the remains suggested they may have also been burned, according to court documents.
Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty in July to charges of false reporting, providing an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, and concealing, removing or abandoning a dead human body. She was sentenced to one year in prison each charge, but the sentences for false reporting and tampering with human remains will run concurrently, with the sentence for the illegal abortion to served consecutively with the sentences for the other charges, a spokesperson for the Madison county courthouse said.
Celeste Burgess also took a plea deal and was sentenced to 90 days for concealing or abandoning a dead body earlier this year.
Although the case occurred before the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, it has been seen as a harbinger of how law enforcement may prosecute people for ending their own pregnancies in a post-Roe era – and how giant tech companies could go along with it.
One of the worst states of the Union is Texas. You can tell precisely how Pro-life Governor Abbott is from this headline from ABC News yesterday. “3-year-old dies while crossing the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas. The family was attempting to cross the river near a floating marine barrier.
The fetish fetishists omit this once-breathing, speaking, and walking child in the same class as a fertilized egg. This child already had dreams.
The Texas Tribune examined the reality of Abbot’s reign of terror. One year before, Grand Inquisitor Alito followed a judge who liked Witch Burning to decide that women’s reproductive health should be criminal. “A year after the Dobbs decision, Texas has settled into a post-abortion reality. The impact of Texas’ near-total ban on abortion is coming into focus as patients and providers leave the state, legal challenges languish, and the state’s social safety net braces for a baby boom.: This is reported by Eleanor Klibanoff.
A year after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, an uneasy acceptance has settled over Texas, as even the most ardent abortion advocates acknowledge these new laws aren’t changing anytime soon.
“I don’t see the legal landscape of our state shifting in a major way, certainly not in the short-term future,” said Neesha Davé, executive director for the Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity, an Austin-based abortion fund. “And so, unfortunately, we have had to figure out how to navigate the current legal landscape, if for no other reason than there are people who need abortion care today, yesterday, tomorrow.”
There are ongoing court challenges to Texas’ laws, but they are narrow and could drag through the courts for years. There is still momentum around meaningful political change, but that is the work of decades and much of the focus has shifted to shoring up the social safety net as a stop-gap measure.
Meanwhile, despite exceptions to the law, the number of monthly abortions in Texas has dropped into the low single digits. Women are nearly dying from pregnancy complications, or actually dying after having to travel out-of-state for abortions, or facing million-dollar lawsuits for helping friends acquire abortion medication. An unknown number are having babies they never planned for.
A year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson that there is no constitutional right to abortion, some long-time advocates see hope in the hopelessness. They’ve been sounding the alarm about the overturn of Roe and its consequences for years, and finally, people are forced to pay attention.
“There are so many more conversations happening about abortion today than there were two years ago,” Davé said. “I do think a tide is turning. It just takes time.”
Two states are trying to come out of the Reproductive Health Care Dessert. The next battlefield is Pennsylvania
. This is one of the reasons you really have to watch your state legislature. Forced Birthers are learning the numbers are against them if voters get their way. They’re not for states making their own decision. Now, they’re going straight for a Federal law banning all abortions. Every vote counts for this. Lousyana will invariably get worse after our election. A lot of us will vote with our feet. Women and children are not safe in Red State America. Neither are members of the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, or people of color.
This is from The Hill. “Abortion battle to play out on multiple fronts in November.”
A battle over abortion rights is set to play out on multiple fronts this coming November with votes that could affect access to the procedure in several states.
Voters will go to the polls for key elections in half a dozen states this year, but abortion rights advocates in particular are looking at votes in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
A battle over abortion rights is set to play out on multiple fronts this coming November with votes that could affect access to the procedure in several states.
Voters will go to the polls for key elections in half a dozen states this year, but abortion rights advocates in particular are looking at votes in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
But the contests in Virginia and Pennsylvania will also be seen as proxy elections for the broader battle over abortion rights.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has devoted much of his time and energy to working to help elect Republicans in this November’s state legislative races. He received a political boost in June after the slate of candidates he endorsed for these seats won their primaries.
But Youngkin has been unable to achieve the 15-week abortion ban he has called for with Democrats controlling the state Senate and Republicans controlling the state House.
The art piece by Chicago-based artist Michelle Hartney is a recreation of a historical letter written to Margaret Sanger in the 1920s by a woman seeking birth control. The artist used the letter’s original text and added the trim of Yarrow flowers, a plant historically used to induce miscarriages. The letter was removed by Lewis-Clark State College from an exhibit at its Center for Arts and History.
The state of Idaho has a law that will not even allow an Art Exhibit of Abortion Art in its Universities and Colleges. This is dated from yesterday from the Democrat & Chronicle. Rochester gives haven to censored art, letting people see an abortion health exhibit. The exhibition entitled “Unconditional Care: Listening to People’s Health Needs” is on display through Sept. 21.
An art exhibit censored at an Idaho college because of references to abortion can be seen at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, known as RoCo.
The exhibition — “Unconditional Care: Listening to People’s Health Needs” — was originally meant to be shown at Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts and History.
But that school removed six pieces from it. The college cited a 2021 state law that bars public dollars from funding speech that would promote abortion rights, according to the Idaho Capital Sun.
RoCo stepped in to share the exhibition without censorship, and “Unconditional Care” is on display at the Rochester art center through Friday, Sept. 22.
“It’s one of the first examples of art censorship in the post-Rowe era,” said Bleu Cease, RoCo’s executive director. “The artworks are touching on abortion and abortion care, not advocating for it. We’re really proud to support the artist and the overall exhibition and the educational component.”
The show features 11 artists who address various health and medical issues through their lived experiences using diverse art and visual media.
“Unconditional Care” is curated by artist Katrina Majkut, who said she avoided including protest art in the exhibition to help people move past politics and into spaces of empathy and reflection.
“I wanted to make sure that whatever was shown was either rooted in medical accuracy or personal storytelling,” Majkut said during an online discussion hosted by RoCo.
Some of the themes explored in “Unconditional Care” include:
- Maternal mortality rates
- Racial disparity
- Chronic illness
- Body autonomy and safety
Cease said that once news of the censorship went national, he reached out to Majkut, eventually providing her the opportunity to curate an exhibit in Rochester that would give the pulled pieces a platform.
Among the works:
- Majkut’s piece titled “Medical Abortion” is a cross-stitch showing bottles of mifepristone and misoprostol, medicines that will yield a miscarriage.
- Lydia Nobles made three documentary videos from a series titled “As I Sit Waiting,” featuring women describing their abortion experiences.
- Michelle Hartney’s work showcases handwritten letters written in the 1920s by a woman seeking information about birth control from Planet Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
“The show is really not about abortion, but abortion gets all the attention because the issue is so divisive,” Cease said. “The common thread with all the artworks in the exhibition is that they relate to the human right to health wellness and body autonomy, especially in the U.S.”
We’re not well, America.
What’s on your reading and blogging post today?
(p.s. I’m sorry this took so long. It took a lot out of me today to write this. I’ve spent the week feeling unable to do any good for any life circumstances. Please keep my personal stories here, especially the current one.)
Mostly Monday Reads: Turning in Your Neighbor to the American Thought Police (2024 edition)
Posted: September 18, 2023 Filed under: Fascist Florida | Tags: big brother, Donald Trump Meet the Press, Ninety-Eight-Four, Orwellian, Privacy Rights, Red State Dystopia, Republican Snitches, Thought police 6 Comments
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I remember thinking how the Reagan years reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984 back before it was deeply embbeded in the Republican policies. We read it in school, along with Lord of the Flies and Brave New World. It’s on banned book lists in your fundamental Republican Dystopian Red State. Florida found it “pro-communist” and “sexually explicit.” I don’t remember being titillated or lustily singing the Internationale after my first read of the book or any of my rereads. I reread many of these classics during Republican Administrations, remembering I read about it first in any one of the dystopian novels I was assigned in literature classes.
“I read the News today; oh Boy.” A day in my life usually includes at least moving one of these books from my hallway library to the small bookshelf by my bed for easy reference. I may need a bigger shelf. Here’s an article from the Washington Post on scenic South Carolina. “Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?” This is reported by Hannah Natanson.
This is something I could never dream up. Someone’s point of view can be censored by an arm of the government because it hurts your feelings. I can only tell you how many times Algebra tests hurt my feelings, but sheesh, buckle up, chucko. Then, decide you’re not going to be like that because Coates’ book outlines actual harm done to people of color by the actions and attitudes of thoughtless white people and not some idle adventure into name-calling. We should be ashamed that one group controls everyone’s destiny and grants favor to their own. The country has run like that since the days of slavery and the mass slaughter and removal of indigenous nations from their property.
Things that some of us label Orwellian have become everyday events in totalitarian-tilting Red States that chase women who go to other states or who transport pregnant women to other states, then fine them and jail them or worse. Will we even find justice for this in the courts, given that the majority of the Supreme Court appears to be Theocratic Tolatarians?
“Doublespeak” and “groupthink” came straight from Orwell’s frightening vision of a totalitarian future in which children spy on their parents, and the ultimate punishment for independent thinking is to be confronted by the thing that frightens one most. Anyone who has ever read 1984 cannot possibly forget Winston Smith and the rats.
This is from NBC News. (Yes, the NBC News that gave Big Brother an interview on Meet the Press yesterday.) “Indiana attorney general sues hospital system over privacy of Ohio girl who traveled for abortion. The lawsuit, filed Friday in Indianapolis federal court, marked Attorney General Todd Rokita’s latest attempt to seek disciplinary legal action against Dr. Caitlin Bernard.”
Indiana’s attorney general has sued the state’s largest hospital system, claiming it violated patient privacy laws when a doctor publicly shared the story of an Ohio girl who traveled to Indiana for an abortion.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in Indianapolis federal court, marked Attorney General Todd Rokita’s latest attempt to seek disciplinary legal action against Dr. Caitlin Bernard. The doctor’s account of a 10-year-old rape victim traveling to Indiana to receive abortion drugs became a flashpoint in the abortion debate days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.
Rokita, a Republican, is stridently anti-abortion and Indiana was the first state to approve abortion restrictions after the court’s decision. The near-total abortion ban recently took effect after legal battles.
“Neither the 10-year-old nor her mother gave the doctor authorization to speak to the media about their case,” the lawsuit stated. “Rather than protecting the patient, the hospital chose to protect the doctor, and itself.”
The lawsuit named Indiana University Health and IU Healthcare Associates. It alleged the hospital system violated HIPAA, the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and a state law for not protecting the patient’s information.
Indiana’s medical licensing board reprimanded Bernard in May, saying she didn’t abide by privacy laws by talking publicly about the girl’s treatment. It was far short of the medical license suspension that Rokita’s office sought.
So the state is suing, but the girl and her mother aren’t part of any case? I’m confused. Plus, none of this would even be necessary if Ohio hadn’t turned a ten-year-old into state chattel and denied healthcare she desperately needed.
Hunter Biden has sued the IRS for their agents leaking his tax information. This is from CNN.
Hunter Biden sued the Internal Revenue Service on Monday, alleging its agents illegally released his tax information and that the agency failed to protect his private records.
President Joe Biden’s son alleges the IRS unlawfully disclosed his tax return information and did not establish safeguards to ensure the confidentiality of his records. He is seeking, among other things, all documents involving the disclosure of the tax information, $1,000 for each unauthorized disclosure and attorneys fees.
The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Washington, DC, does not name the two IRS agents turned whistleblowers as defendants. But the lawsuit is centered on disclosures made by the agents, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, and their lawyers in public statements, congressional testimony and interviews.
Judge Timothy Kelly, a Donald Trump appointee, has been assigned to the case.
It’s being filed amid a swirl of other legal issues facing Hunter Biden, who was indicted by special counsel David Weiss on three felony gun charges last week and is potentially facing additional tax charges by Weiss.
“Despite clear warnings from Congress that they were prohibited from disclosing the contents of their testimony to the public in another forum, Mr. Shapley and Mr. Ziegler’s testimony only emboldened their media campaign against Mr. Biden,” the lawsuit states. “And finally, since their public testimony before the House of Representatives on July 19, 2023, the agents have become regular guests on national media outlets and have made new allegations and public statements regarding Mr. Biden’s confidential tax return information that were not previously included in their transcripts before the Committee on Ways and Means.”
Specifically, Hunter Biden’s attorneys point to details Shapley shared in an interview with CBS News that aired in late June. During the interview, Shapley alleged that Biden took certain personal expenses as business expenses, including “prostitutes, sex club memberships, hotel rooms for purported drug dealers,” and that Biden owed $2.2 million in unpaid taxes, the lawsuit alleges.
Everyone is talking about Meet the Press and Kristen Welker’s first interview. She chose poorly. NBC characterized it this way. “Here are 11 top moments from Trump’s ‘Meet the Press’ interview. The former president tells Kristen Welker he’s not worried about going to prison, and he thinks he can broker peace on abortion, and he explains where he stands on shutting down the government.” CNN, however, characterizes it this way. “Fact check: 14 of Trump’s false claims on ‘Meet the Press.” I’ll just single out this horrifying moment.
Trump, attacking Democrats on abortion policy, claimed, “You have some states that are allowed to kill the child after birth.” He also said specifically, “You have New York state and other places that passed legislation where you’re allowed to kill the baby after birth.”
Facts First: This is false. Killing a child after birth is not allowed in any state, and New York did not pass legislation permitting infanticide.
A law New York approved in 2019 makes abortion illegal after 24 weeks with the exception of cases where the fetus is not viable or the abortion is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” The law does not legalize post-birth murder. Since its passage, however, it has been the subject of online misinformation falsely claiming it does.
There are some cases in which parents decide to choose palliative care for babies who are born with deadly conditions that give them just minutes, hours or days to live. That is simply not the same as killing the baby.
Let’s just change “online misinformation falsely claiming” to right-wing religious propaganda and leave it at that. Trump also gave the country’s Jewish population a special Rosh Hashanah Greeting. This is from The Guardian. “Trump marks Rosh Hashanah with antisemitic post claiming ‘liberal jews’ voted to ‘destroy America’, ‘Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward,’ New Year’s message from former president says.”
Donald Trump decided to mark the Jewish New Year by sharing an antisemitic message stating that “liberal Jews” voted to “destroy America and Israel” by supporting President Joe Biden.
The former president shared an image wishing Jewish Americans a happy new year on Rosh Hashanah on Truth Social on Sunday.
“Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed in false narratives!” the image said. “Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!”
The image posted by Mr Trump also included a flyer from JEXIT, a group based in Florida working to push the message to Jewish Americans “that the Democratic Party has abandoned them and Israel,” The Times of Israel has reported.
“Wake Up Sheep. What Natzi /Anti Semite ever did this for the Jewish people or Israel?” the flyer states.
So, this one is the strange one to me. I think he just admitted to a lot of felonies. This is from CNN again. “Trump acknowledges he was told 2020 election lies were false in wide-ranging interview.” It’s reported by Katie Sullivan. I wonder how Trump’s attorneys feel about this? Also, exactly who is under the bus here?
Former President Donald Trump acknowledged in a new interview that, despite receiving counsel from multiple people that the 2020 election was not stolen, he pushed ahead anyway with his false claims to try and overturn the results.
The comments to NBC’s “Meet the Press” directly address a central premise of special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results: that Trump knew the election claims he was making were false after being told by several close aides that he had lost.
“It was my decision, but I listened to some people,” Trump said.
In his first broadcast network interview since leaving office, the 2024 Republican front-runner also criticized members of his party over how they’ve approached abortion policy, discussed pardoning himself in the final days of his presidency and said he would testify under oath he did not direct an employee to delete security footage.
The former president said he didn’t listen to his attorneys who told him he had lost the election because he didn’t respect them and that he “respected many others that said the election was rigged.”
“I was listening to different people, and when I added it all up, the election was rigged,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker.
He added, “You know who I listen to? Myself. I saw what happened.”
In the indictment against Trump, prosecutors detailed the “prolific lies” Trump made in the wake of the 2020 election, including knowingly pushing false claims of voter fraud and voting machines switching votes despite state and federal officials telling him the claims were wrong.
Prosecutors put forward several examples of Trump being told by his aides that fraud claims he was promoting were false. The indictment cites instances where Trump was informed that his claims were false by then-Vice President Mike Pence, the director of national intelligence, senior members of the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, his own staffers, state lawmakers as well as state and federal courts.
“But the defendant disseminated them anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election,” the indictment reads.
So, what fools would want a President who takes lousy advice? Uh, that’s rhetorical.
So, let me quote directly from Nineteen Eighty-Four to address that.
“Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
Do your remember a time when pretty much all of us agreed that NAZIs and Fascists were terrible?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: Strike!
Posted: September 15, 2023 Filed under: Labor unions | Tags: Labor Unions, SAG/AFTRA, Solidarity forever, Strikes, United Auto Workers 3 Comments
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s been a while since the labor markets have aligned to empower workers to unionize and strike for better wages and benefits. A combination of more jobs than potential workers, years of stock buybacks, and considerable increases in upper management bonuses and salaries have created a perfect storm. The New York Times has characterized this as a “Summer of Strikes. Work stoppages in the United States this year are approaching heights rarely seen in recent decades.” (Be certain to check out the graphs on the various unions’ history of work stoppages.)
This year, workers across industries in the United States have increasingly walked off the job or threatened to do so. In July, tens of thousands of actors joined screenwriters on the picket line, bringing Hollywood to a halt. Meanwhile, a summertime strike of more than 300,000 United Parcel Service workers had seemed imminent before a deal was reached last month.
Now, another potentially large-scale strike has begun. After the United Auto Workers and the country’s largest carmakers were unable to agree on a new contract before Thursday night’s deadline, union members at General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis — which owns Chrysler, Jeep and Ram — have walked off the job.
About 12,700 workers began the strike on Friday, at plants in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio. That’s a small portion of the unionized factories of G.M., Ford and Stellantis across the United States. But the union hasn’t ruled out a full-scale strike.
If all 150,000 of the U.A.W. members go on strike, nearly 460,000 workers will have walked off the job at some point over the course of this year, the highest level since 2018, another notable year for work stoppages.
Strike activity increased slightly in 2021 and 2022 after a lull during the coronavirus pandemic. Much of this can be attributed to a historically strong economic recovery, which has strengthened workers’ bargaining power, said Ruth Milkman, a professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and School of Labor and Urban Studies. “The single most important factor is the tight labor market,” she said.
Despite the recent uptick, overall union activity has fallen since the 1970s and ’80s, when the number of workers on strike in a year regularly surpassed 400,000.
Today’s news is the”UAW strike 2023 against Detroit automakers: Live updates, news from the picket sites.” This is reported by the Detroit Free Press.
The UAW declared a strike against Detroit Three automakers Thursday as contract talks failed to secure new labor agreements before the current deals expired at 11:59 p.m.
UAW President Shawn Fain announced the first wave of plants the union would strike if a new labor agreement was not reached before midnight: Ford Michigan Assembly Plant (Final Assembly and Paint only) in Wayne, Stellantis Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio and General Motors Wentzville Assembly in Missouri.
The DFP has a number of exciting stories that analyze the impact of the strike on Michigan, the US, and the industry, including the many small suppliers to the Big 3 and the workers.
“Experts weigh implications of UAW strike strategy” is one such report.
The UAW’s targeted plan for a possible strike could mean that some workers are on the picket lines making $500 a week in strike pay while others are on the assembly lines making their full wages.
Whether such a situation would breed contempt among workers would depend on the messaging from the United Auto Workers union, said Brett Miller, a labor and employment attorney at Butzel law firm.
“There may be some comfort if the union plans to start small and escalate the strike involving more members or it is making representations that the final result of the strike would be worth the sacrifice,” he said.
As to whether the union strikes a plant that supplies parts to another plant, thereby halting the second, non-striking plant’s production, the automaker could shut down that non-striking plant and essentially it would be a lockout for those workers at the non-striking plant.
Miller said that under the UAW constitution, those on strike or locked out could get strike pay. Generally, unemployment will not cover employees who are on strike, but there are exceptions, such as in New York and New Jersey.
It is important to note that UAW members must wait about 8 days for strike pay, face challenges ahead: What to know.” This is also part of the DFP coverage. It is also interesting to note that a strike against all three simultaneously is unprecedented. This is from CNN.
The United Auto Workers union is on strike against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, the first time in its history that it has struck all three of America’s unionized automakers at the same time.
Workers on Friday walked out of three plants – one each from the Big Three automakers – in Missouri, Michigan and Ohio. Picketers were met with cheers from sign-waving union members.
The UAW referred to its targeted strike of three plants as a “Stand Up Strike,” which it called a strategic “new approach” to walking off the job.
“As time goes on, more locals may be called on to ‘Stand Up’ and join the strike,” the union told members. “This gives us maximum leverage and maximum flexibility in our fight to win a fair contract at each of the Big Three automakers.”
The UAW’s strikes began at GM’s Wentzville Missouri, which has 3,600 UAW members on its staff; Ford’s Michigan Truck plant in Wayne, Michigan, which will have 3,300 strikes; and Stellantis’ Toledo Assembly complex in Ohio, where 5,800 will be be on strike.
In all, fewer than 13,000 of the UAW’s 145,000 members walked off the job.
“These were chosen carefully by the UAW and reflect a strategy that will ensure a large number of suppliers and dealers are affected, while reducing the number of UAW workers that, at least initially, are on strike and receiving strike pay,” said Patrick Anderson. CEO of Anderson Economic Group.
A local L.A. ABC TV station reports that “Thousands of striking actors, writers swarm Hollywood in massive solidarity march.” The SAG/AFTRA strike continues.
Thousands of striking writers and actors staged a solidarity march through Hollywood Wednesday, culminating in a boisterous rally outside Paramount studios as the dual labor stoppages continue to halt movie and TV production.
The Writers Guild of America has been on strike since early May. The SAG-AFTRA actors’ union joined the writers on the picket lines in July. There have been some negotiations between the WGA and Hollywood studios in recent weeks, but still no indication a resolution is at hand. There has not been any word of talks between the studios and SAG-AFTRA.
On Wednesday morning, thousands of striking writers and actors gathered outside Netflix headquarters in Hollywood, then marched to Paramount studios on Melrose Avenue. Once there, a massive rally was held, featuring speeches and music performances — and forcing closures of streets surrounding the studio.
SAG-AFTRA billed the event as a solidarity march to send a message to studios that actors and writers are standing firm in their push for fair contracts.
“Thank you so much for showing up like this, this is an amazing turnout,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher told the crowd. “Your strength and your solidarity and your resolve is going to get us to the other side of this, and history is in the making right now. I know that this strike is not easy, in fact, it’s hard. It’s very hard. And with the passing of time its going to even get harder, but the reason why we had the largest strike authorization in our union history is because we stand at an inflection point.
My Granddad was around for the Great Railroad Strike of 1922 while he and Nana had two kids. My Dad was born the year after the strike.
Even though these unions do work in industries that could not be more different, it is important to remember the economic rationale for the strikes. These workers have more in common than you would think. An economist at Stanford answers the question “Why are workers striking now?” As I mentioned above, “falling wages and unequal earnings distribution are among the reasons workers are striking, says Stanford economics professor” Dr. John Pencavel. The gap between the earnings of senior management and the folks who actually do the work is at an all-time high.
According to Pencavel, many workers are feeling frustrated by seeing their wages suppressed in less competitive labor markets and by the loss of a voice (such as a trade union). Moreover, he argues, a low unemployment rate makes the timing right.
“Strikes tend to be more frequent and longer when workers have opportunities for other possibly temporary work, as indicated by a low unemployment rate,” Pencavel said.
…
Why are so many strikes happening now?
When it comes to measuring earnings inequality, economists tend to be relativists, that is, if all workers get the same x% increase in wages, economists usually conclude wage inequality has not changed. By contrast, many workers are absolutists and measure inequality in terms of absolute dollar differences in wages. This distinction helps to explain why economists are more inclined to accept certain earnings differences that workers do not. An example is provided by examining the U.S. household income and comparing the household whose income is near the top of the income distribution.
Specifically, the household whose income is at the 95th percentile with the household whose income is below the median (specifically at the 20th percentile). Approximately these two households experienced the same 9% increase in income between 2018 and 2019. Given the existing wide income distribution, this 9% increase in income constituted a $2,484 increase for the household at the 20th percentile and a $21,274 increase for the household at the 95th percentile. To the relativist, inequality has not changed; to the absolutist income inequality has increased.
Tending to be absolutists, workers are outraged at the earnings reported for certain managers and business owners. They see the system as basically unfair. Indeed, it is well documented that the share of the nation’s total income that is categorized as profits has risen and the share called wages has fallen.
Amazon workers strike to expose the horror behind ‘Black Friday’ sales
The workers in Amazon warehouses in Europe sought to highlight atrocious working conditions, including Injuries from accidents, overworked employees collapsing unconscious on the floor, constant robotic surveillance and workers having to skip toilet breaks to avoid missing the targets. (2018)
There have been work stoppages also for workers in search of Union protection recently. Amazon and Starbucks have experienced nascent unionization efforts. This is an article from VOX that was published in May. “Why unions are growing and shrinking at the same time. Joining the picket line like it’s 1939.” This report was written by Rani Molla.
Based on the news lately, it would seem like unions are growing.
Staffers at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced on Tuesday they had formed a union. This is after Starbucks workers last week reached 50 union wins across the country, and many more locations are slated to do so in the near future. According to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), about 250 total Starbucks stores, representing nearly 7,000 employees, have so far petitioned to unionize. And last month, workers at an Amazon warehouse in New York City defied all odds by winning their first union battle against the second-biggest employer in the United States. People are successfully unionizing across the economy, from retail to tech, and their wins are leading to even more union interest. Petitions for union representation in the first half of 2022 are up nearly 60 percent from last year.
This raft of union organizing, unthinkable just a few years ago, is happening against a very favorable backdrop, including a tight labor market, record inequality, and a pro-union administration, which extends to the leadership at the NLRB, the organization tasked with running union elections and enforcing labor law. Meanwhile, public approval of unions is at its highest level since 1965.
What we don’t know yet is whether these events are enough to meaningfully combat longstanding headwinds, from anti-union policy to the rise of gig work, that have caused union membership to decline for decades. Last year, amid a similar set of circumstances, the number of union members in the US went down by 240,000, leaving the rate of union membership at a low of 10 percent — half what it was in the 1980s. The pandemic has been a sort of double-edged sword for unions, giving people more reasons to organize and also causing union and non-union workers to lose their jobs.
It’s possible the psychic weight of union wins is bigger than their actual weight. A typical Starbucks only has 26 workers, and there hasn’t yet been public union activity at the vast majority of the company’s 9,000 corporate stores. After one Staten Island Amazon fulfillment center won its vote to unionize, a second sort center lost, and there are more than 800 Amazon warehouse facilities across the country.
It’s not clear where this will all net out. This year’s total union membership numbers won’t be available until the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases them early next year. Until then, we do know that a number of individual unions have been successfully bucking the trend in recent years by adding members. Labor organizers have done so by employing a variety of tactics, new and old, and could help other shops do the same. Labor experts laud unions’ efforts but say more is needed at a policy level to ensure these recent wins aren’t just a flash in the pan.
PBS has this analysis about what the UAW strikes to the campaigns of Republicans and Trump. Statistics show that many traditional members may have voted for Trump.” The PBS analysis suggests that “UAW strike puts Trump, GOP in political bind in key states.” However, many GOP think any negative impact will fall back on the Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmen. We shall see.
Democrats were quick to back working-class United Auto Workers in their strike against General Motors, delivering doughnuts and holding picket signs outside factories to show solidarity. It’s a union they long have aligned with politically.
There were no doughnuts from Republicans.
Led by President Donald Trump, GOP officials have largely avoided taking sides in the strike that threatens to upend the economy in Michigan, an election battleground, a year before the 2020 vote. Both here and nationally, most Republicans said little about the substance of the dispute beyond hope for a speedy resolution.
The muted response reflects the tricky politics of labor for Republicans.
Trump has made inroads with members of some unions, due partly to promises to get tough on trade and keep manufacturing jobs in the United States. The message pulled key voters away from their Democratic union bosses, who Trump argues are corrupt.
But a strike prompted in part over GM’s plan to close American plants highlights Trump’s unfulfilled promises on manufacturing and gives Democrats a chance to play up their union credentials.
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren planned to show up on the picket line in Michigan on Sunday, with rival Bernie Sanders expected this coming week. Nearly all the candidates have tweeted support for the workers.
“Proud to stand with @UAW to demand fair wages and benefits for their members. America’s workers deserve better,” Joe Biden tweeted.
Trump is in a bind.
Backing the union would undermine Trump’s message that labor does not advocate for its workers and give a powerful Democratic force a boost before an election.
Siding with GM would call into question his promises to defend workers and he would risk getting blamed for economic woes in Rust Belt states he needs to win reelection.
I may be a Financial economist, but anyone in the field has had a healthy dose of Labor Economics at some point in their training. Classical labor theory suggests that everyone will be paid based on their contribution (productivity). It fails to account for the differences in salaries for women and minorities. It also underestimated how much the capital side would be given tremendous tax benefits as well as the bonuses and stock plans that are supposed to align management with the stockholders. Labor became the redheaded stepchild and was frequently overlooked in the rise of the service industry. Additionally, the investment in technology to replace workers has been intense, even pushing shoppers to self-checkout when it used to be a radical idea that you would pump your own gas.
Anyway, my bottom line is it’s about time that every person who actually does the work gets the pay, recognition, and benefits they deserve. Hope I haven’t been too wonky or too much of a history nut for you on my wonky thread. All I can say is my life was a lot better when I had a union bargaining for my terms of employment. It hasn’t been the same since. But then, I first taught at a community college where many of the instructors were in trades. I still shudder at the thought that your fundamental English Professor is paid far less than anyone in my field. I was active in the bargaining unit of my Union and was fascinated by the process. Also, the Union does make us strong.
By the way, is it any surprise that icky Bill Maher is a scab?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: News of the Weird
Posted: September 11, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: 22nd Anniversary September 11th, Bond Villains, conspiracy theories, Go Ask Alice, Weird Tales 6 Comments
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Today’s news reflects the natural and manmade disasters lurking in today’s headlines. It’s difficult to know where to start, but I do want to recognize the 22nd Anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center Towers. This includes the news from The Hill that “Two new 9/11 victims identified by New York officials” and a Hindustan Times article on “5 bizarre 9/11 conspiracy theories that refuse to die out.” I hope the day is remembered for more than this from The Guardian. “How 9/11 influenced the way conspiracy theories spread today” by Andrew Griffin.
The theories themselves are so well-worn that they have progressed all the way to memes: the common refrain that “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams”, once an earnestly communicated part of conspiracy lore, has now become so hackneyed that it is almost meaningless. But there are many others, which either tend to suggest that the US could have intervened but decided not to, or that it actually orchestrated the attacks itself.
At the same time, however, they borrowed from tropes and ideas that had existed for centuries before, and which have continued to prove popular in the decades since. For the most part, 9/11 conspiracy theories are the same as those that went before, and those that followed, with the nouns swapped.
Perhaps the most distinct facet about the 9/11 conspiracy theories is the way they were pushed through formats that are familiar now in everything from advertising to the arts. In 2005, as the early viral internet we know today was finding its feet – it was the year of the first Pepe the Frog drawing, the beginnings of “Chuck Norris facts” and the “Million Dollar Homepage” – there appeared a video known as Loose Change, a documentary that presented the central ideas of the 9/11 conspiracy theory in a way that sent it swiftly across the internet.
Korey Rowe, the Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who made the film with friend Dylan Avery after returning from those wars confused and disillusioned, has drawn a straight line from the film to the various conspiracy theories that surround us today.
“Look at where it’s gone: you have people storming the Capitol because they believe the election was a fraud. You have people who won’t get vaccinated and they’re dying in hospitals,” he told the Associated Press. “We’ve gotten to the point where information is actually killing people.”
Today’s headlines also include a heavily armored train carrying the North Korean Dictator on its way to a meeting with Russia’s Putin. It’s like a 2fer day in Bond villains. This is from the AP. “North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will visit Russia, setting the stage for a meeting with Putin.” Putin needs ammunition. Un has a surplus. What does this mean for Ukraine? Will they be Comrades-in-Arms?
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will visit Russia, both countries said Monday, and he is expected to hold a highly anticipated meeting with President Vladimir Putin that has sparked Western concerns about a potential arms deal for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
A brief statement on the Kremlin’s website said the visit is at Putin’s invitation and would take place “in the coming days.” It also was reported by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, which said the leaders would meet — without specifying when and where.
“The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un will meet and have a talk with Comrade Putin during the visit,” it said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Putin and Kim will lead their delegations in talks and could also meet “one-on-one if necessary.”
Speaking of Bond Villians, CNN reports that the “Justice Department drops Mueller-era case against Michael Flynn ex-lobbying partner Bijan Kian.” Are they still after Flynn? This is reported by Katelyn Polantz.
The Justice Department is dropping its five-year-old criminal case against Bijan Kian, the former lobbying partner of Michael Flynn whom prosecutors had accused of illicit lobbying for Turkey during the 2016 US presidential election.
The move wraps up a long-running tangent of the Mueller-era Russia investigation that originally had been used as leverage to pressure Flynn. Investigators had looked into the Trump ally’s unregistered work for Turkey before becoming the US national security adviser, charged him with false statements and sought his testimony against Kian, then allowed his guilty plea and cooperation to unravel.
Kian’s case has wound through the courts for years. After his indictment in 2018, the Iranian-American businessman went to trial, with prosecutors planning on calling Flynn to testify against him to solidify their evidence of a connection between Flynn’s lobbying group and the government of Turkey.
But Flynn was already working on contesting own case with prosecutors—which he ultimately achieved with the agreement of then-Attorney General Bill Barr – and avoided being called to testify.
A jury in the Eastern District of Virginia voted to convict Kian on charges of conspiring to hide lobbying work for Turkey from the Justice Department and acting as an illegal foreign agent. Yet Judge Anthony Trenga threw out the verdict, citing insufficient evidence and other issues related to Flynn’s role in the lobbying effort. The judge found there wasn’t evidence that Kian agreed to act as a foreign agent for Turkey. The case then went into appeals, hanging in the criminal justice system for years.
In a court filing on Monday, the Justice Department told Trenga it sought to dismiss the charges against Kian, who is also known as Bijan Rafiekian.
“After carefully considering the Fourth Circuit’s recent decision in this case and the principles of federal prosecution, the United States believes it is not in the public interest to pursue the case against defendant Bijan Rafiekian further,” prosecutors wrote.
The judge hasn’t yet formally dismissed the case but is expected to.
Other Bond Villians in the news include the vile Ex-President Trump. Judd Legum from Popular Information writes this analysis. “The key to understanding Donald Trump’s enduring appeal is Vince McMahon.”
To better understand Trump’s enduring appeal, Popular Information spoke with Abraham Josephine Riesman, author of Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. Why talk to the biographer of a wrestling executive to understand Trump? McMahon is one of Trump’s closest associates and, Riesman reports, one of the few people whose calls Trump takes in private. McMahon, who inducted Trump into the WWE Hall of Fame, could be serving as something of a role model to Trump right now. How many other people beat federal felony charges in court, weathered multiple sex scandals (so far), and emerged wealthier and more powerful?
Perhaps more importantly, McMahon is the creator of neo-kayfabe, the blending of fact and fiction — and good and evil — until it is all impossible to distinguish. McMahon himself became the most popular character on WWE shows, assuming the character of the arch-villain Mr. McMahon. There is now little distinction between McMahon and his WWE persona.
In her book, Riesman makes the case that Trump’s political strategy is shaped directly and indirectly by McMahon. “For more than three decades, Trump has watched and admired Vince’s product,” Riesman writes. “He has been both host and performer at many of Vince’s wrestling extravaganzas, honing his abilities as a rabble-rouser. Through Trump, Vince’s wrestling-infused mentality has reached the highest levels of the American system.”
Popular Information spoke to Riesman about what McMahon and WWE wrestling can teach us about Trump’s continued popularity, Trump’s response to federal indictments, and whether Trump believes his lies about the 2020 election. The interview was edited for length and clarity.
On how some people on the left misunderstand Trump’s appeal:
What we have with Trump is a guy who a lot of people on the left misunderstand as being just loved by the people who vote for him. And I think the feeling is not just, “Oh, Trump is good and strong and loves people and is a good Christian.” Very often, people will approach Trump in the way that they approach what they call in wrestling a “tweener.” Somebody who’s not exactly good or not exactly evil, where they go, “Yeah, I don’t approve of all of his methods or the things he says, but he’s cool, and he gets the job done.” I think thinking in terms of face [a “good guy” in wrestling] and heel [a “bad guy” in wrestling] for Trump is too binary, because it’s too much in the old way of doing things. The old kayfabe, not the neo-kayfabe. Trump is not perceived just as a good guy or a bad guy.
On the wrestler who is most similar to Trump:
Stone Cold Steve Austin is the person who, more than anyone else, altered the way the wrestling public uses their protagonists. Because Steve Austin was billed as a heel. He was introduced as a bad guy. And they were pushing him hard as a bad guy. But the crowd was seeing all these evil acts and just eating them up. They were obsessed, and cheering for this horrible character who was doing awful things. And that’s a real sea change for wrestling that, and then it ends up being a sea change for the culture.
On how WWE primed a generation for Trump:
You can’t deny that millennial boys grew up watching Stone Cold Steve Austin, and then the Rock and Triple H, and all these other people in that mold. These are people who are not quite face, not quite heel, but beloved by the crowd, despite their evil acts. Millennial boys shaped their whole worldviews when they’re 11 to 15 around that sense of morality. Not: Is it good, or is it evil? Just: Is it exciting? Is it cool? That’s what the premium is placed on. And that’s true now in politics, too. Maybe it’s always been true in politics to a certain extent. But right now, the thing that grabs people to vote is very often just: Do I find this person entertaining, recognizable, iconic, or funny? As opposed to: Will this person do a good job in the elected office that I’m voting for them for? And wrestling turned that into a science.
Well, it’s one possible hypothesis. Trump has another extravaganza ready for your TV viewing. The Daily Beast Reports that “Donald Trump Challenges Rupert Murdoch to a Mental Acuity Test.” Please tell me all channels will be ignoring this. The fun news is that Trump’s trip to a classic Iowa match-up football game was met with the Middle Finger Salute. Ah, that’s the Iowa I grew up in! This is from HuffPo. “Some Football Fans Hit Trump With Harsh 1-Finger Salute During Iowa vs. Iowa State Game.”
Several college football fans flipped the bird to former President Donald Trump as he waved to a crowd from a private suite at the Iowa vs. Iowa State game on Saturday.
Trump, who received a sea of cheers during a visit to a fraternity house before the game, got the one-finger salute from a number of fans as he and other GOP presidential candidates were on hand to check out the state’s intense college football rivalry.
The real interesting news from HuffPo is this. “Jamie Raskin Says Republicans Have ‘Conclusively Disproven’ Their Own Biden Corruption Allegations. Republicans are acting out of “humiliating subservience” to Donald Trump, according to the Maryland Democrat. Who is James Bond in this scenario?
In his quest to uncover evidence of corruption by President Joe Biden, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has only managed to undermine his key allegations against the president, according to the committee’s top Democrat.
“Chairman Comer’s investigation has conclusively disproven the Republican allegations against President Biden,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said Monday in a statement accompanying a report summarizing the committee’s work so far this year.
It’s a scathing document that portrays the Republican investigation as a transparent effort to create a false equivalence between Biden and former President Donald Trump, who faces four criminal trials for conduct during and after his presidency.
The main corruption allegations against Biden are that he participated in his son’s business deals with foreign nationals and that as vice president he twisted U.S. foreign policy to benefit a Ukrainian gas company that employed his son as board member. House Republicans have said they may launch an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden based on the Oversight Committee’s material.
“Mounting evidence reveals that then-Vice President Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ that his family sold around the world to enrich the Bidens,” a spokesperson for Comer said Monday. “Then-Vice President Biden spoke over 20 times by speakerphone with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates, dined with corrupt oligarchs who funneled millions to Hunter Biden, had coffee with one of his son’s associates in Beijing, and may have engaged in a bribery scheme.”
Earlier this year, Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) uncovered an FBI file indicating that a trusted source spoke to a Ukrainian oligarch who claimed to have bribed Joe and Hunter Biden. The source said the claim was characteristic of braggadocio among post-Soviet businessmen; Raskin has said FBI officials told him they assessed the material and found it not credible enough for a full investigation. (The bureau has declined to publicize its assessment.)
Oooooo. Real Russians. Now, for real Communists? Alright, this is from Red State, so I doubt it, but sheesh. What is with these people? “Communists Burn Flags Outside Jason Aldean Concert, but the Response Shuts Them Down.”
Some don’t wish us well today. They would like to see us taken down and defeated as a nation. There are those who despise the very principles upon which this nation was built. Over the weekend, the Revolutionary Communists showed up outside a Jason Aldean concert in Tinley Park, a suburb of Chicago, not only to bash him over his viral hit song but to slam America, burn the flag, and call for a Communist revolution. You can see a video of them burning American flags here.
So, I see no evidence of anything other than folks burning the US Flag in protest. Again, these folks love an excellent Conspiracy Plotline.
Okay. One more for the road. “JFK assassination witness questions whether shooter acted alone. Paul Landis’s recollection of Kennedy’s slaying is bound to fuel those who believe multiple shooters killed the late president.” This is from The Guardian.
An ex-Secret Service agent who was feet away from John F Kennedy when the former president was shot dead has broken his decades-old silence to cast doubt on the single-bullet theory held by the commission which investigated the assassination.
In an interview published by the New York Times over the weekend, Paul Landis said that he long believed the official finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he killed Kennedy.
But, based on discrepancies between things he saw on the day of the assassination and the report from the commission, “I’m beginning to doubt myself,” Landis said. “Now I begin to wonder.”
Landis’s recollection of Kennedy’s death is bound to fuel those who believe multiple shooters killed the late president in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Yet his remarks – coming about a month before he releases a memoir – differ from two written statements which he turned in shortly after the assassination, surely keeping one of the darkest chapters in US history shrouded in mystery.
Landis was on the running board of a car trailing the open-top limousine that Kennedy was riding when – as he tells it – he heard a barrage of gunshots and a bullet struck the president from behind. The Warren commission, convened to examine the investigation, concluded that one bullet then continued forward, striking fellow passenger and Texas governor John Connally in his back, thigh, chest and wrist.
As the New York Times noted, the main reason for that conclusion was because the bullet was found on a stretcher used to move Connally around a hospital afterward.
Enter Landis’s new interview and his upcoming memoir, The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After 60 Years. Landis told the New York Times that he was the person who discovered that bullet, which he remembers being stuck in the limousine seat behind Kennedy’s seat after the president had been brought to the hospital.
Landis also said he did not think the bullet went too deeply into Kennedy’s back before “popping back out” prior to the president’s removal from the car he was in. Worried someone would try to pocket it as a souvenir, Landis said he took the bullet and placed it next to a stretchered Kennedy.
“It was a piece of evidence that I realized right away [was] very important,” Landis said. “And I didn’t want it to disappear or get lost. So it was, ‘Paul, you’ve got to make a decision’ – and I grabbed it.”
And they say yellow journalism is dead.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thoughtful Thursday Reads on America’s Threatened democracy
Posted: September 7, 2023 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, American Fascists | Tags: American democracy in crisis, RICO charges Georgia, Tear the Fascists Down 7 Comments
William Dexter Bramhall, ‘Big Sky American Landscape
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s really been a messy week for anyone trying to keep up with all the fallout from the Trump Crime Syndicate. The good news is that most of this is focused on the ability of the Justice System to do its job. It’s hard to look at the bigger picture when your down in the weeds watching Trump’s confederates face a judge. Today, I want to look at the bigger picture.
This headline from the AP grabbed my attention. “13 Presidential Libraries Issue Rare Joint Warning About U.S. Democracy. Their statement stopped short of slamming individuals as it called for a recommitment to the country’s bedrock principles.” This is reported by Gary Fields.
Ghost Ranch Landscape, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1936,
I’ve seen all the Presidential Birthplaces and libraries from Eisenhower on back. They’re really interesting if you ever get a chance to see them. For some reason, my family quit going out of the way to see them after Ike’s. They usually just keep on collecting things and doing research on that particular President. Generally, presidential records will be sent to the library from the Library of Congress as required by each library and what it displays. This joint statement is unique. The Libraries have generally been nonpolitical.
Concern for U.S. democracy amid deep national polarization has prompted the entities supporting 13 presidential libraries dating back to Herbert Hoover to call for a recommitment to the country’s bedrock principles, including the rule of law and respecting a diversity of beliefs.
The statement released Thursday, the first time the libraries have joined to make such a public declaration, said Americans have a strong interest in supporting democratic movements and human rights around the world because “free societies elsewhere contribute to our own security and prosperity here at home.”“But that interest,” it said, “is undermined when others see our own house in disarray.”
The joint message from presidential centers, foundations and institutes emphasized the need for compassion, tolerance and pluralism while urging Americans to respect democratic institutions and uphold secure and accessible elections.
The statement noted that “debate and disagreement” are central to democracy but also alluded to the coarsening of dialogue in the public arena during an era when officials and their families are receiving death threats.
“Civility and respect in political discourse, whether in an election year or otherwise, are essential,” it said.
Most of the living former presidents have been sparing in giving their public opinions about the state of the nation as polls show that large swaths of Republicans still believe the lies perpetuated by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
William Henry Bartlett (1809-1854) New York from Weehawken, New Jersey 1846
The Carnegie Endowment for Peace has this information analyzed in the research paper, “Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says. It’s written by Rachel Kleinfeld.
The United States feels roiled by polarization, and the philanthropic world is seized with debates about what to do. Some scholars claim that Americans are so polarized they are on the brink of civil war. Other polls suggest that voters agree on plenty of policies and that polarization is an illusion. Some philanthropists call for pluralism and civility, while others lean into activism, believing polarization is a byproduct of change toward a more just world. So, is the United States polarized or not? If it is, what is causing the polarization and what are its consequences? Should polarization be solved or tolerated?
This paper is intended to answer these questions. It opens with five facts about polarization in the United States today and what those imply for possible interventions. A literature review follows, organized chronologically to explain the scholarly shift from thinking of polarization as an ideological, policy-based phenomenon to an issue of emotion, as well as the emerging understanding of polarization as both a social phenomenon and a political strategy.
This section caught my eye.
American politicians are highly ideologically polarized. In other words, they believe in and vote for different sets of policies, with little overlap. This trend has grown in a steady, unpunctuated manner for decades.5 One reason that the most highly politically engaged Americans may misunderstand the other side is that they correctly estimate the extreme ideological polarization among politicians.
It is easy to assume that polarized voters are selecting more polarized leaders—and that theory may hold true for recent primary elections. However, that is not the main story. The process begins long before voters get a choice: more ideologically extreme politicians have been running for office since the 1980s.6 Among the pool of people wishing to run, party chairs more often select and support extreme candidates, especially on the right. (In 2013, Republican party chairs at the county level selected ten extreme candidates for every one moderate; the ratio was two to one for Democrats.) The increase in “safe” seats, in which one party is overwhelmingly likely to win, explains candidate and party preferences for more polarizing platforms, but it does not explain the depth of the Republican preference.7
Parties and candidates clearly believe that more polarizing candidates are more likely to win elections. This may be a self-fulfilling prophecy: voters exposed to more polarizing rhetoric from leaders who share their partisan identity are likely to alter their preferences based on their understanding of what their group believes and has normalized—particularly among primary voters whose identity is more tied to their party. 8 However, only about 20 percent of each party votes in primaries, and 41 percent of Americans are independents who may not have strong party identity and are barred from voting in some states’ primaries.9 That leaves the majority of voters with a relatively low ability to pick a less polarizing candidate of their party. Philanthropists and prodemocracy organizations attempting to reduce polarization often assume that the problem they must grapple with is polarized voters, but their interventions should also take into account the fact that that some of the ideological extremism and polarization since the 1980s is candidate- and party-driven. While at this point, candidates and parties may be responding to polarized primary voters, candidates and parties have been driving the polarization, and not all voters are ideologically polarized.
The disparity between where leaders are ideologically and where their voters are precludes legislative policy agreement on many issues. Average voters are not able to assert their (often weak) policy preferences because they do not have an effective way to vote out representatives who do not accurately represent their constituents’ views, particularly on the right where party chairs are likely to substitute one extreme candidate for another.
Thomas Moran, American Landscape Pennsylvania c. 1868
Think about that last sentence. Connecticut Public Radio analyzes a Quinnipiac poll. “Is American democracy in crisis?” The discussion and analysis is by Frankie Graziano and Meg Dalton. It’s about a 50-minute listen.
Eighty-three percent of American voters are either very worried or at least somewhat worried about the functioning of our democracy.So what does this recent Quinnipiac poll tell us? Why are people losing faith in our democracy?
This hour, we’re asking some big questions about the future of democracy in the U.S., covering everything from political violence to voter suppression.
The Poll is quite interesting and was taken in August. “Majority Of Americans Say Trump Should Be Prosecuted On Federal Criminal Charges Linked To 2020 Election, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; DeSantis Slips, Trump Widens Lead In GOP Primary.” This is the base poll of opinions prior to the court cases now getting closer to being held. Today, Mark Meadows is in court for his Contempt of Congress Charge. It is likely that the first of the Fulton County, Georgia, defendants’ trials kick off in October
In the wake of a federal indictment accusing former President Donald Trump of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Americans 54 – 42 percent think Trump should be prosecuted on criminal charges, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University national poll released today. Democrats (95 – 5 percent) and independents (57 – 37 percent) think the former president should be prosecuted on criminal charges for allegedly attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, while Republicans (85 – 12 percent) think Trump should not be prosecuted. The poll was conducted from August 10th through August 14th.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64 percent) think the federal criminal charges accusing former President Trump of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election are either very serious (52 percent) or somewhat serious (12 percent), while roughly one-third (32 percent) think they are either not too serious (11 percent) or not serious at all (21 percent).
There are wide gaps by political party.
Roughly 9 in 10 Democrats (89 percent) and 51 percent of independents think the federal criminal charges are very serious. Among Republicans, 18 percent think the federal criminal charges are very serious, while 48 percent say they are not serious at all.
Jennifer L. Mohr, Landscape Painting 4
Motions in the Georgia RICO case have started. This resulted in one decision already where the Judge did not sever two of the codefendents. While this case is vital to ensuring justice to us for the election-stealing attempts by Trump and his supporters, what I’d like to look at today is a RICO case filed by a Georgia Republican Attorney General that threatens the very heart of our right to free speech and assembly. This appears to be a tit-for-tat on a certain level. It’s certainly catching up protestors asserting their rights with activists who are actually using illegal actions to stop this project.
This is from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which I appear to be reading more than my own home city paper these days. “More than 60 Atlanta training center activists named in RICO Indictment.” Constitutional Rights Activists and Lawyers are alarmed
More than five dozen activists were indicted on RICO charges last week over the ongoing efforts to halt construction of the city of Atlanta’s planned public safety training center in DeKalb County.
The sweeping indictment, filed in Fulton County, is being prosecuted by the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.
A total of 61 protesters have been charged with violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act. Some face additional charges of domestic terrorism, arson and money laundering. Most are not from Georgia.
“Our job is to enforce the laws of this state. As you can tell in this indictment, this is about violent acts plain and simple,” Attorney General Chris Carr said in a press conference announcing the indictment.
The indictment mainly focuses on the Defend the Atlanta Forest group, describing it as an Atlanta-based organization that prosecutors say is an “anti-government, anti-police, and anti-corporate extremist organization.”
More than five dozen activists were indicted on RICO charges last week over the ongoing efforts to halt construction of the city of Atlanta’s planned public safety training center in DeKalb County.
The sweeping indictment, filed in Fulton County, is being prosecuted by the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.
Wayne Thiebaud, Green River Lands, 1998,
CNN has more analysis. “61 ‘Cop City’ protesters indicted on RICO charges. Opponents question the timeline and motivation.”
Debate over the public safety training facility has been brewing for years. The Atlanta Police Foundation, which is helping to fund the project, has said it’s needed to help boost morale and recruitment among police and firefighter ranks now using substandard or borrowed facilities. Protesters have decried its potential environmental impact and possible role in the further militarization of police, with some camping out at the site for months and clashing with police.
The Vote to Stop Cop City Coalition, which opposes the project, denounced the RICO indictment and questioned the motivation behind it.
“These charges, like the previous repressive prosecutions by the State of Georgia, seek to intimidate protestors, legal observers, and bail funds alike, and send the chilling message that any dissent to Cop City will be punished with the full power and violence of the government,” the coalition said.
“Further, the documents use the day George Floyd was murdered as the date the alleged criminal acts began. This is months before anyone was even aware of Cop City, and is a clear assault on the broader movement for racial justice and equity,” the group said.
The 109-page indictment indeed alleges criminal activity related to the training center site happened “on or between May 25, 2020 and August 25, 2023.” Floyd was killed May 25, 2020, by a Minneapolis police officer – tipping off a nationwide reckoning over police use of force against people of color – but the “Cop City” training center site wasn’t announced until 2021.
“Carr’s actions are a part of a retaliatory pattern of prosecutions against organizers nationwide that attack the right to protest and freedom of speech,” the Vote to Stop Cop City Coalition said.
Sunlight and Shadow: The Newbury Marshes (c. 1875) by Martin Johnson Heade
DA Willis has been seeking anonymity for the jurors because of ongoing threats from MAGA extremists. Another disturbing Republican extremist is trying to interfere with the Rico Charges against Trump and his Co-conspirators. “Willis blasts congressman’s ‘interference’ in Fulton Trump probe.” This is from the ACJ.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis Thursday blasted a congressman who has pledged to investigate her handling of an indictment of former President Donald Trump and others.
U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, recently demanded records of Willis’ communication with Justice Department officials who have also indicted Trump for his role in an alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Jordan suggested Willis is attempting to interfere with the 2024 election – Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination. And he said her investigation could infringe on the free speech and other rights of Trump and other defendants.
On Thursday, Willis fired back, saying Jordan’s Aug. 24 letter included “inaccurate information and misleading statements.” She accused Jodan of improperly interfering with a state criminal case and attempting to punish her for personal political gain.
“Its obvious purpose is to obstruct a Georgia criminal proceeding and to advance outrageous misrepresentations,” Willis wrote of Jordan letter. “As I make clear below, there is no justification in the Constitution for Congress to interfere with a state criminal matter, as you attempt to do.”
Which case is about Free Speech? Which case is about tampering with witnesses and dirtying jury pools?
Then there is this.
- Pennsylvania school district requires social studies classes to incorporate right-wing propaganda
- Miami school board again shuts down LGBTQ month recognition
- The Rise of Legislative Anti-Democracy
- State Legislatures Are Torching Democracy
- The Anti-Voting Bills Republicans Enacted This Legislative Season
It’s an easy GOOGLE search to find out why our democratic republic is threatened. Vote! Volunteer! Use your networks to GOTV!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
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dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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