Normally I’m not a big fan of protectionist tariffs since they often are just a way to allow uncompetitive domestic manufacture to stay afloat rather than adjusting to the market, it’s a different story when one state begins to intentionally price dump on the global market to push other countries manufacturers out of business.
A lot people are up in arms because they think cheap battery electric vehicles will help assist in the energy transition, and thus see this as a step back, but I’m a lot less bullish on BEVs than others are. I think they have a place but they’re not a panacea to decarbonization of transport, and often discussion of them seems to bury discussion of other arguably more important elements of transport decarbonization, such as rail transit or trams which we are way further behind on getting momentum behind than electric cars.
Daily reminder that the constitution does not explicitly give the Supreme Court the right of judicial review, they gave them selves the right to strike down laws as unconstitutional by “interpreting implied powers” from the constitution.
The case was about wether he could be removed from the ballot (having not actually been convicted for treason yet) but some of the judges used it as an opportunity to state that only congress could do that for federal elections. The case was pretty open and shut on the first part, not so much on the second.
Recommending that he be investigated for treason is not the same as him going to court and being convicted of it. That’s kind of the rub of the whole situation, removing a candidate from a ballot because they’ve been accused of treason is a really bad precedent to set.
Frankly I don’t like the “but we could be spending this better at home” argument because the people making that argument invariably would refuse to actually do so, and instead just give out another tax cut.
That money would never end up going in to a single payer healthcare system, SNAP, education or building out more sustainable infrastructure. We don’t do these things not because we don’t have the money for it, we don’t do these things because they would undermine the influence of large financial and corporate interests.
There is a much better argument to not fund Israel, and it is that they’re attempting to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, have flaunted all of the treaties and agreements they made for near on 20 years, and they’re current leadership was undemocratically put in power.
Because Ukraine is generally a fairly popular foreign ally with little mainstream controversy around supporting them. So if you wanted to undermine support for them, easier to knee cap support for the bill from the other direction.
The framing is a poor one, it is built on a fundamental lie about how money works in the US government. It’s a very weak framing that only ever convinces people who already wanted to defund a foreign effort. More importantly, most of this bill isn’t tied to Israel, it’s tied to other efforts like Ukraine, so really what this is arguing for is to stop supporting Ukraine. Most of the funding for Israel comes through other channels.
So to support this framing is to just undermine support for Ukraine and do little to stop Israel. Support for Ukraine is non-negotiable.
Private equity tends to fuck up otherwise successful or at least functional businesses or services, squeezing all the value out of them then selling them for parts. Vice may have been having financial trouble, but selling to private equity will probably result in the end of it.
The House Budget Committee did not take measures to protect systems like Medicare and Social Security on Thursday, despite advancing legislation to create a bipartisan fiscal commission designed to find a solution to the government’s budget....
The ongoing effort to privatize social security and Medicare, the most successful and popular welfare programs in US history continues. Neoliberal Regannomics marching on like an undead litch.
For non fiction I’d probably say Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt.
A history of the taiping rebellion, it takes a very close eye to some of the more prominent people of the conflict and examines the whole thing in much more detail than you can usually get from English language sources.
For fiction I’m split between The Free People’s Village by Sim Kern. A tragedy focusing on a fictional protest encampment in an alternate present where Al gore won in 2000 rather than bush, and instead of declaring war of terror declared war on climate change. ‘Green tech’ and carbon credits stand ascendent yet the oil refineries are still going strong, and the real cost being put on those least capable of handling it.
I forgot to mention what I was split with and that’s probably Light Bringer by Pierce Brown, the 6th book in the red rising series. A quintessential space opera with all the grand scale and melodrama that brings with it, while also defying many of the cliches of that genera with less one dimensional villains and more moral grey area, (and a heaping helping of edge). Not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoy it.
he’s being really shrewd here I think, he’s kind of closing the door on the most insane of the transphobe crowd and forcing them to justify their most outrageous and absurd claims if they want to criticize him for blocking this.
I imagine he’s also telling all his colleague in the party “ What the fuck are you thinking, in what world do you think this is an election winning issue to hang our hats on. We’re going to look like a bunch of freaks if we try and make this the next culture war issue!”
“Like President Biden said weeks ago memorializing the victims of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, the October 7 ‘devastating atrocity has brought to the surface painful memories left by millennia of Antisemitism;’ and under his presidency ‘we will continue to condemn Antisemitism at every turn’,” White House...
He’s successfully built a cult of personality, and is slowly consolidating that by alienating those who are willing to question him. We’re just lucky his mask off isn’t all that charismatic or convincing.
As the population ages, the younger generations get smaller and the older generations get proportionally larger. More and more money will need to go to paying for retirees life styles, and they expect retirement life styles like those of their parents who had the benefit of a working age population multiple times the size of the retired population.
In the quest for this, often times not are that this is the effect they are seeking, they have to take control of ever more of the most message resources to force younger generations to do more work for less pay to support them.
It’s gotten rather absurd. If my interaction is with a kiosk short of being handed something, it’s an insulting extra step. I’m already paying the price for my employer’s pay scale … I can’t take on someone else’s stinginess....
The new part is every card payment system having a tip option, where as tips used to be a thing you gave a server in cash on the table, then a optional fee addended to a bill at a sit down restaurant to compensate the server (since they were getting payed below minimum wage), this is different though.
Even food providers where there are no servers have “tips” now. Often times establishments do not even choose to have them, they’re just the default on the payment system.
The tip system was always kind of scummy as it was putting the onus of preventing the server from getting kicked out of their home on the customer. Now though, rather than costumers being put on the hook for paying exploited workers, the companies are weaponizing that guilt based system to pad profits even further. Often times those “tips” don’t even end up going to the workers at the restaurant, they go straight in to the companies revenues, and pad the incomes of the payment service companies that get a 1-3% cut of every transaction.
What used to be conceptualized as a way to reward hard work is now just another avenue to scam people out of money. It’s another crack in the wall of a system that is mindlessly sabotaging it’s own justifications. Creating further contradictions.
A year ago is still new. It’s been a creeping problem since well before covid even. Edging back in to the early days of tablet and phone based card readers.
It’s not that surprising, I think it shows the huge disconnect between what these institutions think the do for people and what they really do.
They assumed they were providing moral/spiritual guidance but in reality most people were coming to them because they were the only affordable source of community in the area. Another example of a point of community organizing would be something like a board game/table top store, but those are often expensive to participate in as they have a lot of over head that needs to be payed for. Churches of course were not free to run but they had a huge leg up by being tax exempt, not to mention had a lot of people willing to work for them for low wages out of passion for the topic. So they could get by on small volunteer donations.
So churches could survive in areas where something like a mall, or game store, a book shop or some other type of focused community couldn’t due to there not being enough people with the means to participate.
Now though, the effective monopoly that kept these churches popular has been broken, as anyone with a cellphone can go on to the internet and participate in community that way. Is it the same quality of experience? Is something being lost through purely digital community? Maybe, maybe not, but theses religious institutions have become so divorced from the interests and needs of their constituents that even a pale imitation has been able to absorb their audience in less than a couple decades.
The republicans looked at the polling numbers and writing on the wall and saw this was not going to win them any support from people they didn’t already have support from…
But there is a hard line group that is probably flipping their shit right now because they don’t care, they just want to burn everything down. I don’t suspect the republican’s current coalition can survive this kind of internal disagreement for long
Over 100,000 U.S. military emails have been misdirected to Mali this year due to a spelling mistake that sent emails to .ML instead of .MIL addresses. The emails contain sensitive information about personnel, travel plans, and financial records. While not classified, the data could provide intelligence value if exploited....
History says tariffs rarely work, but Biden’s 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs could defy the trend, researcher says ( theconversation.com )
By Tinglong Dai, Bernard T. Ferrari Professor of Business, Johns Hopkins University...
Supreme Court restores Trump to ballot, rejecting state attempts to ban him over Capitol attack ( apnews.com )
Biden Is Bankrolling Israel’s War Amid Growing Financial Hardship at Home ( theintercept.com )
Vice to lay off hundreds of staffers, stop publishing content on its website | CNN Business ( www.cnn.com )
Sorry! Didn’t know where else to post this! Anybody surprised by this one?
House panel advances debt commission without shields for Medicare, Social Security ( thehill.com )
The House Budget Committee did not take measures to protect systems like Medicare and Social Security on Thursday, despite advancing legislation to create a bipartisan fiscal commission designed to find a solution to the government’s budget....
What was your favorite read of 2023?
Any format counts (audiobook, physical book, ebook, graphic novel, article, essay, etc).
Ohio’s GOP governor vetoes ban on gender-affirming care, transgender athletes in girls’ sports ( www.wistv.com )
White House blasts Elon Musk’s ‘unacceptable’ antisemitic tweet ( thehill.com )
“Like President Biden said weeks ago memorializing the victims of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, the October 7 ‘devastating atrocity has brought to the surface painful memories left by millennia of Antisemitism;’ and under his presidency ‘we will continue to condemn Antisemitism at every turn’,” White House...
Baby boomers are buying up all the houses ( www.washingtonpost.com )
Archive link
Americans are confused, frustrated by new tipping culture, study finds ( www.washingtonpost.com )
It’s gotten rather absurd. If my interaction is with a kiosk short of being handed something, it’s an insulting extra step. I’m already paying the price for my employer’s pay scale … I can’t take on someone else’s stinginess....
America's nonreligious are a growing, diverse phenomenon. They really don't like organized religion ( apnorc.org )
US House passes bipartisan bill to avoid government shutdown ( www.reuters.com )
A Spelling Mistake Is Causing Thousands of Sensitive Pentagon Documents to Be Leaked to a Russian Ally ( themessenger.com )
Over 100,000 U.S. military emails have been misdirected to Mali this year due to a spelling mistake that sent emails to .ML instead of .MIL addresses. The emails contain sensitive information about personnel, travel plans, and financial records. While not classified, the data could provide intelligence value if exploited....