The United States of #Shitholes

or: Welcome aboard the USS Amerikan Inverted Totalitarianism Banana Republic

Counterpunchers and others have a bit of fun turning the tables on His Nibs, Orange Julius Cheeser:

Paul Street: (Citing an in-depth study by British health researchers Pickett and Wilkinson):

“The United States was the least equal and the least healthy nation among the world’s richest states under Bill Clinton, under Barack Obama, and under George W. Bush.

Trump can’t turn the United States into the biggest “shithole” among the world’s rich nations. It was already there.

In his conservative 2006 campaign book The Audacity of Hope, the neoliberal Wall Street Democrat Barack Obama lauded the virtues of American capitalism (source of what the future president called “a prosperity that’s unmatched in human history”) by holding up U.S. living standards positively against those in Third World nations like Kenya and Nigeria. It was a revealingly inappropriate comparison.”

He then writes a long section referencing Obama’ ‘alleged hero’ Martin Luther King, Jr.’s understandings of the ‘perverted national priorities’ including in Haiti, then:

“Donald Trump is a vicious and racist moron who should be removed from the White House and sent to a solar panel-manufacturing penal camp as soon as possible.  But the U.S. capitalism-imperialism that has made the U.S. into a “shithole” for many of its own citizens (there are neighborhoods in Obama’s own “home town” of Chicago where more than half the children are growing up at less than half the federal government’s notoriously inadequate poverty level) while spreading blood and shit the world over is a longstanding and richly bipartisan affair. The Democrats, it should be noted, have signed on fully to Trump’s increase in U.S. military spending.”

John Whitehead:

“The United States of America is run by a cabal of racist, classist, sexist, militaristic, misogynistic, greedy, heartless thugs who are obviously satisfied that their latest CEO—Donald Trump—is doing such a great job of keeping the nation polarized and pole-axed by his reality show antics.

After all, why hire a statesman when you can hire a buffoon who will entertain, enrage and incite a nation to the brink of madness.

They—the powers-that-be, the Deep State, the controllers, the financiers, the war hawks—want us at the brink of madness. They want us in a state of civil unrest. They want the riots and the mob violence and the political discord and the state of panic. They want us to fight each other and be incapable of taking a united stand against tyranny.

They want us silent and subservient.”

Ah, the Sounds of Silence >>> unenlightened subservience: Andre Damon’s title tells one what’s inside: ‘Facebook and Google outline unprecedented mass censorship at US Senate hearing’, but okay, a smidgen of it:

“The hearing also featured the testimony of Clint Watts, a former FBI official, former US Army officer, fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and a leading promoter of social media censorship.

Watts presented the hearing with an unhinged justification for what these massive powers might be used for, in a hypothetical scenario he dubbed “Anwar Awlaki meets PizzaGate.”

“The greatest concern moving forward,” he said, “might likely be a foreign intelligence service, posing as Americans on social media, infiltrating one or both political extremes in the US and then recruiting unwitting Americans to undertake violence against a target of the foreign power’s choosing.”

Watts expressed extreme fear over the widespread growth of opposition to the policies of US imperialism. He arrogantly decried, “Lesser-educated populations around the world predominately arriving in cyberspace via mobile phones will be particularly vulnerable to social media manipulation.”

The content of Thursday’s testimony points the far-advanced preparations for the establishment of police state forms of rule.”

Next up we might call #Assholes against #Shitholes, as in the Blue Team Punditry and Political class.  A Ship of Fools, or just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

:

“As the news broke on Thursday that Donald “Dingleberry” Trump called Haiti, African Nations, and El Salvador “shithole nations“, I couldn’t help but think “the liberals are coming, the liberals are coming, the liberals are coming”.

Sounding their trumpets for battle, their SWAT teams of political correctness (PC) would disseminate all over media and cultural landscapes of the United States. The battle they would be taking up would be about none other than themselves. Always remember this about bourgeois liberals. Saying what feels right is a completely different concept for them than doing the right thing. Actions always speak louder than words, and they, my friends, are full of words backed up with inaction.”

I started to feel their PC SWAT teams advance into the media when I read a commentary from none other then Russiagate pusher and liberal champion Dan Rather. For Dan Rather this is the moment in history where America will be remembered as not so exceptional.

Rather commented, “Make no mistake, America is diminished today in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of history.”

America has been diminished and continues to be diminished not because it’s leaders call countries “shit”, it’s because they turn countries into shit. Like when liberal President, Barack Obama, dropped 26,171 bombs in the Middle East in 2016. This equates to dropping a bomb every 15 minutes for 24 hours a day.

This is the perfect example of the liberal words are more important than actions context.

Dan Rather’s response was the probable cause statement the liberal PC swat team needed to execute their search and seizure of the media landscape.

If liberals took Trump’s comment as an opportunity to reflect on what is happening in America they would realize what a shithead, Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post is.

Bezos, also owner of Amazon, just got done firing a bunch of seasonal employees now that the holidays are over. These seasonal employees are American nomads traveling from place to place to find temporary work. Many of them are in their sixth or seventh decade of life. And one of the many reasons for their seasonal labor intensive work was so Americans can get their new Amazon Alexa with prime (two day) shipping. It’s sad that many of the people that purchased “Alexa” will have more mindless conversations with her than an actual human being.”

Quoting Counterpunch contributor Vince Emanuele:

Speaking of shithole countries:

Among industrialized nations, the United States enjoys the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children; the greatest inequality of incomes; the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP on social programs for the disadvantaged; lowest number of days of paid holiday, annual leaves, and maternity leaves; second lowest social mobility rate; highest infant mortality rate; highest prevalence of mental-health problems; highest obesity rate; and the highest consumption of anti-depressants per capita. The U.S. has the third-shortest life expectancy at birth; the largest international arms sales; largest military budget; third-lowest scores for student performance in math and science; second highest high school drop out rate; highest homicide rate; and the largest prison population in the world.”

Never mind militarized police, and that the po-po killed 1188 citizens in 2017, another 60 since Jan. 1 this year according to KilledbyPolice.net, crumbling infrastructure, an all but disappeared social safety net, legions of homeless, and tens of millions of USians living at or below the poverty level.  Yeah, a banana republic?

Re: Haiti as a #Shithole: Café Babylon: ‘’F*cking the Haitian 99%: Another Clinton Family Project’

Ah, a bit of low comedy re: #Assholes on #Shitholes:

But seriously:

And holy Haitian hell, this just in: ‘UN-Backed Police Massacred Haitians With Impunity’, Jake Johnston, Blackagendareport.com, 17 Jan 2018

‘All of the Western nations have been caught in a lie: a lie of their pretended humanism. History has no moral justification and the west has no moral authority. For a very long time America prospered; this prosperity cost millions of people their lives. Now, not even those who are the most spectacular beneficiaries of this prosperity, are able to endure these benefits. They can neither enjoy, nor do without these benefits. Above all, imagine the price paid the victims or subjects for this way of life and so they cannot afford to know why the victims are revolting. This is the formula for a nation declined, for the nation does not work in the way it’s advocates think in fact it does. It does not, for example, reveal to the victim the strength of the adversary. On the contrary, it reveals the weakness, even the panic, of the adversary and this invests the victim with passion.’

~ James Baldwin


(the lyrics)  Smile

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Song of the lark's picture

All you need is guns gold and God.... You can fake the god part if you are like me a lapsed Buddhist.

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wendy davis's picture

@Song of the lark
whazza 'lapsed buddhist'? in LDS lexicon, a lapsed mormon is a 'jack mormon'. so...'jack buddhist', perhaps?

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Big Al's picture

"The United States of America is run by a cabal of racist, classist, sexist, militaristic, misogynistic, greedy, heartless thugs."

I don't see many of these writers of doom and gloom positing any solutions. I remember reading a Paul Craig Roberts essay not long ago and he said maybe there's not a damn thing we can do.

I continue to believe the problem is our political system which keeps that cabal in power.

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@Big Al
until enough people wake the fuck up. Whether the problem is our political system which keeps that cabal in power, or the oligarchy, or the TV tube, or lizard people from another planet. It will not change until enough people want it to change.

We gotta' keep chooglin' along, brother, try to wake their asses up. The Vietnam War woke me up, that was some big time gloom and doom right there, but it forced its truth on me. What truth woke you up?

Speak the truth and hope it sinks in, one person at a time. If it's a war for minds, that's how you fight it. Do we have enough time? Hell I don't know. At least it's something, until the whole shebang collapses anyway.

Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.

-Jerry Garcia-
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Big Al's picture

@JtC I keep saying I know too much to give up now. I've always been a hippie, at least at heart, but honestly, after I retired in 2007 I started seriously reading political blogs, essays, history, etc. and soon learned the real truth about a lot of things.
Keep hope alive brother.

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@Big Al
we accomplish a little of that here:

I've always been a hippie, at least at heart, but honestly, after I retired in 2007 I started seriously reading political blogs, essays, history, etc. and soon learned the real truth about a lot of things.

That's what keeps me chooglin', like I said before, it's either that or close up shop and go to the local pool hall and play some snooker. Or the mountaintop.

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wendy davis's picture

@JtC
a revolution of higher consciousness...then, perhaps. but what are the geezers, geezerettes, and disabled to do? try to bring the truth, or others' truths and polemics, as i so often need to do. can't all be james baldwin, can we?

another quote, perhaps longer in his book and 'i am not your negro' was this heady and only to relevant today one:

""I have always been struck in America by an emotional poverty so bottomless and a terror of human life, human touch, so deep that virtually no American appears able to achieve an organic connection between public stance and private life." whoooosh.

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@wendy davis
we bloggers are shaking our fists into the ether, like we are preaching to the choir, bouncing our words off the wall and each other. But I get frequent emails from folks using our "Contact Us" link, lurkers, for whatever reasons that don't register, stating how much they enjoy reading the site, how much it means to them, the little bit of sanity it provides in a world of propaganda and censorship. They ask that we please keep speaking the truth.

People are listening and searching. Sometimes, within our virtual boundaries, we lose sight of that.

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wendy davis's picture

@JtC

especially given the google news analytics blockades of leftist, anti-war, anti-imperialist sites as per wsws.org. there are others with graphs, but i'm quite sure you're not on it, nor of course, is the café (smile). i'm tempted to say that if blogging changed anything, as emma goldman famously said about voting, it would be illegal.

but the iron fists are coming down with google and facebook reps at the senate hearing, google blocking 'radical content' from youtube (i hadn't known they'd bought it until a couple days ago), and twitter bans at will. the internet and social networking were gonna be the Great Equalizers, remember? and some said 'twitter will bring the revolution' (and did in the middle east, quite laughably: it was otpor, soros, the CIA, as i understand it.

i've had the blues the past couple weeks cuz the café commentariat has disappeared, and while i know why that is for some, certainly not all. i get notifications of 'follows', but they must be lurkers, as few ever surface to comment, and no registration is required.

but for me, blogging is more a case of: what else can i do by now, besides that, tithe lots of food into our community, garden a bit, and keep a sluttish house (smile)...now that i can't get out in the world no mo'. but i am glad for you that those emails keep you keepin' on here; wrangling this place must be no mean feat.

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@wendy davis
happens about this time every year. It's slower here too. Something big is in the air though, things might get very interesting for 2018.

I'm hip to the gatekeeper's trip, we are hoping to fly under the radar for the most part, but who knows? Time will tell. We started as a tiny little site and may end up that way again, but we'll keep on keepin' on.

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wendy davis's picture

@JtC @JtC

i suspect that what we'll see in before 2018 are simply ads for empty suit candidates in the midterms. one thing we've learned is that no matter the color of skin nor the ethnic origin of a candidate prevents on from acting as a comprador (foreign agent willing to profits off the backs and labor of one's brethren).

i'm reminded of all that obomba failed to do, but so magnificently di w/ grace and style to fuck over black and brown people, while saying "I am not a president for black people" or some excuse or other. subprime mortgage fraud, for starters. who went to jail? a few low-level underlings. eep, cynical? yes, i think we all have a right to be, whether we are or not. (paraphrasing james baldwin)

but oy and veh: i downloaded and installed what's said to be firefox 32 bit for windows, and yep, it has easy copy capabilities, but i tried to use it in a sample café diary, the tweeties wouldn't copy, and i can't get it to stop being my default browser, which is also problematic for me, multiple tab-wise. i'll keep fiddling w/ it, but my frustration by now knows no bounds at the moment. i swear i used to use it to cross-post here, though...

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wendy davis's picture

@JtC @JtC
i'm blushing now as i consider that by '2018' you may not have meant the midterm elections, but had been pinging nostradamus's 2018 predictions like WWIII, animals and humans talking to one another, mt. vesuvius erupting again...massive deaths due to climate change, yanno, other interesting things.

or sensing that the proof that 'we are not alone' is about to show itself, whether friend or foe, lol. a major gamechanger. would technically advanced visitors suck all the co2 out of the upper atmosphere, for instance? or be the scary and malevolent Independence Day beasts that stephen hawking predicts?

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@wendy davis
any of the above, too many to just pick one though. It just feels like something big is going to blow, and soon.

I used EasyCopy to transfer this essay and it picked up everything including the tweets. I start at the bottom of the essay and highlight everything, text, videos, images and tweets. Then you have to be sure to select "HTML Source" from the menu when you copy it.

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wendy davis's picture

@JtC @JtC
i can't highlight from the bottom up, only the reverse. no tweets, but all else. so i thought maybe i'd try a test run on your software of a dec. 2017 'a NATO Space Command plus ‘The Nuclearization of Space’, as i had tweets. no tweets came in. maybe i got the wrong windows32 bit exe.? gads, i hate to go thru the lists of 54s again to see.

but as for aliens, lol, i clicked into CP and found r. hunziker's 'will aliens save humanity?' only it's about claims that close encounters w/ aliens on earth have shut down nuclear silo operative abilities at times around the earth. declassified stuff, i guess. interesting, but the film he says is...believable...is 48 minutes, arggh. Not Soon Enuff, i reckon.

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@wendy davis
If you highlight from the top or bottom as long as you get it all. I do it from the bottom up cause it seems easier for me. Are you running any extensions in your FireFox browser that may be blocking the tweets? I use NoScript and have to allow twitter or tweets wont display. Other extensions could possible do the same. EasyCopy definitely picks up tweets so something is blocking them in your browser.

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wendy davis's picture

@JtC

but i've checked all the Firefox options including security, privacy, nothing about Tweets, just some tracker blocking things that never reference Tweeties. i don't have add-ons, but do have adblocker. so i am buffaloed. but if i build a storifh here, do i need to click the 'embed tweet' thingie to do that, or is that just for commenting, and in a diary i just lay in the twit url? sorry to dash off, but mr. wd is back w/ the groceries, and my chore list groweth largeth. back as i can.

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Daenerys's picture

@wendy davis

claims that close encounters w/ aliens on earth have shut down nuclear silo operative abilities at times around the earth.

When I was in college a guy came and gave a talk on this subject; I don't remember his name though. Maybe it was the same guy. It was very interesting.

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This shit is bananas.

@Daenerys

I believe the explanation I read for the weapons being shut down was that it was most likely self-protective, should this story be true. Aliens probably wouldn't be stupid enough to actually trust TPTB and their political/military lackeys.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

wendy davis's picture

@Daenerys

i just could sit thru the 48 min video, or whatever it was.

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wendy davis's picture

@Big Al
what you mean by 'political system'; that's a very broad term. citizens united, a failed duopoly system that the ruling class is fine with, ever-decreasing consolidated media w/ no blocks by justice dept. antitrust laws (monsanto/bayer impending), PropOrNot lists of 'untrustworthy' news such as...the usual suspects, prosecution or intentions to prosecute or drone kill whistleblowers like assange...well, the list goes on. but as far as john whitehead's lengthy essay, its title was ‘Silence Is Betrayal: Get Up, Stand Up, Speak Up for Your Rights', containing this (and a hella lot more):

"“The next time you hear any government shill talk about the need to keep America safe, remember that the people of the United States continue to be robbed, cheated, tasered, stripped, searched, bullied, threatened, jailed, shot and killed by the very government agents entrusted with protecting their rights. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.

So enough with the lies. Enough with the fast-talking, foul-mouthed, slick politicians. Enough with the silence.

The time has come for truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
As George Orwell noted, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

now saying the truth is even harder than ever, but that's what made andre damon's reporting on facebook and google at the senate hearing even more key, imo. the social network sites are of course in thrall to the Empire, as evidenced by this: "Watts expressed extreme fear over the widespread growth of opposition to the policies of US imperialism"

i also got to musing about obomba's rule and his DHS's brutal attacks on occupy camps, and the massive coordination among acronym agencies, in particular. but that shit scared the fuck outta the ruling class.

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Big Al's picture

@wendy davis electing 537 politicians from two political parties to make all of the important decisions for 330 million people. Very few are challenging that system of government.

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wendy davis's picture

@Big Al

i plead guilty to over-thinking it, big al. side note: dust off your expose on tulsi gabbard; lots of 'progressives' are beginning to like her for Prez. ptui. of course, Oprah for prez! as well, how not-thinking 'outside the box'.

yeah, i dunno the answer to your essential question, but some make mention of the idea of regional balkanization of amerika, no prez or rotating ones, instant run-off voting, changing the voting commission's $ math on who can get into debates, but dayum, has there ever been a prez candidate you voted for except for 'lesser evil'? or a somewhat populist senate, house candidate you voted for with some hope, that didn't turn comprador once in office?

me, i like the zapatista way of governance, myself: from the people's 'five snails' upward, then down to the people again to approve, reject, etc. but it's very small community in chiapas, so there's that.

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Big Al's picture

@wendy davis There's always a democratic party politician that sounds better than the rest and becomes a savior of sorts.
The most peculiar thing about Gabbard is her membership in one of the most evil organizations on the planet, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
I've got a bunch of links I saved that I'll pull out some time.

Relative to this political system, one question I have (not to you but generally) which I was going to turn into an essay is, "do you think the United States should always and forever maintain the representative political system, including the office of president, it currently uses or change to something different?"

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wendy davis's picture

@Big Al @Big Al

Syria, Tulsi Gabbard, Progressives, and U.S. Imperialism

of course now she's being extraordinarily lauded for saying that it's the fault of the US that north korea wants nukes. thus: Tulsi for Prez! running mate Oprah? but her close alliance w/ the thug narenda modi also sincerely disqualifies her as being 'moral'.

on your question, i see you have a diary up on it; if i have anything constructive to add, i will.

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Meteor Man's picture

John Whitehead nails it as usual and I loved the James Baldwin quote. A few snippits from the Haiti massacre story:

The raid of the school, according to the U.N. statement, was done without authorization, without alerting the police hierarchy, and outside of the operational plan.

Well as long as the massacre wasn't planned I guess it's just an oopsie.

U.N. units composed of police from Jordan and Senegal responded to reports of shots fired and arrived at the school. According to the U.N., they administered first aid to the injured police officers and secured the perimeter.

But on campus grounds, Haitian police proceeded to punish the bystanders caught up in the violence.

"Punish the bystanders"?

Nearly two months after the massacre, no one has been publicly held responsible.

Yep. Just like the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and the thousands of Americans gunned down by cops. No accountability. America is an embarrassment to Banana Republics.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

wendy davis's picture

@Meteor Man @Meteor Man

but thank you. and yes: an embarrassment to banana republics everywhere! for the Rabble, that is...but srsly, i hadn't even known there was still a concentrated UN mission there. if you peek into the aforementioned café babylon piece, you'll see some stark imgages: the tent cities 5 yrs. after the quake contrasted with the new clinton marriott, w/ iirc toffs like sean penn at the grand opening. loads of clinton quotes, including this:

“When pressed about the lack of progress made in the (housing) rebuilding efforts, including inabilities to provide shelter, Secretary of State Clinton said “Those who expect progress immediately are unrealistic and doing a disservice to the many people who are working so hard.”

Bill Clinton, UN Special Envoy to Haiti, has been equally optimistic about Haiti’s cheap labor prospects, especially since the passing of the Haitian Economic Lift Program (HELP) in May. The bill would increase the amount of Haitian assembled goods that could be imported into the United States duty free. “This important step,” Clinton said, “responds to the needs of the Haitian people for more tools to lift themselves from poverty, while standing to benefit U.S. consumers.”

#assholes for profits, #assoles of the great white savior complex.

but yeppers to 'no accountability'. the baldwin quote is one of a zillion soul-stirring, gut-wrenching ones from 'i am not your negro'. the whole things on youtube, but we found it on independent lens on pbs stations we get, and watched it twice so far. simply staggering, relevant today, and simply...the best thing i've ever watched.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNUYdgIyaPM]

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snoopydawg's picture

Merkly (D) has created a bill that will block the net neutrality legislation and he only needs one more republican to get it passed in the senate. Then it goes to the house where it will need a lot of republicans to vote for it. Then Trump has to sign it. With this going on today, what are the chances of it passing? This is just more play acting by the democrats and when this doesn't pass people will blame the republicans for it. Just like they blame them for their tax bill. Anyone think that the democrats wouldn't have voted for it if they had the chance?

The hearing was called to review what technology companies are doing to shut down the communications of oppositional political organizations. It represented a significant escalation of the campaign, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, to establish unprecedented levels of censorship and control over the Internet.

Unconstitutional? You betcha, but the constitution has been dead to this country for some time.

Facebook has partnered with over a dozen other companies to maintain a blacklist of content, based on “unique digital fingerprints.” This means that if a piece of content, whether a video, image, or written statement, is flagged by any one of these companies, it will be banned from all social media. This database now includes some 50,000 pieces of content and is constantly growing, officials said.

Oh look, another entity that wasn't elected, but will have great power to decide what should be censored.

Downs declared that since June YouTube has “removed 160,000 videos and terminated 30,000 channels for violent extremism.” The company has “reviewed over two million videos” in its collaboration with “law enforcement, government,” and “NGOs.”

Her's response to Trump's statement

Brilliant essay, Wendy!

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

wendy davis's picture

@snoopydawg
that must have been the senate hearing andre damon at wsws in the OP had been talking about!
but oh, those Ds are The Peoples Party, aren't they? one of their authors had talked about the bern's (MLK day, i assume) op ed in the guardian: not one mention of socialism, even the DSA kind, militarism, or tra la la.

and double OMG on 'the anointed one's' tweetie. #Asshole for #Resistance. nice to see some truth came w/ it.

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snoopydawg's picture

Trump is not to be trusted the democrats voted to give him more power to spy on us. The House has passed a spending bill to avoid the government shutdown, but the democrats are not on board yet because DACA and other things aren't included in it. So what else have they been busy with you ask?

The weeks-old standoff on immigration and spending only grew more charged last week after Mr. Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries.” By Thursday, budget negotiations were making little progress even as prominent House Democrats were introducing a resolution to censure the president for his words.

sigh

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

wendy davis's picture

@snoopydawg

but de-funding CHIP is an abysmal step for the chirren of amerika. but it's hard to say what the blue team ISN'T willing to bargain away as per their Grand Bargain TINA history for however long, isn't it?

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wendy davis's picture

@snoopydawg
‘Senate Passes FISA Reauthorization Act, With Help of Democrats, truthdig; the author has the dems outlined in yellow boxes in the roll call ves votes.

well, well, snowden always said that he’d just wanted to start a conversation, and to the NYT: “So long as there’s broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there’s a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program, as it was an informed and willing decision,” he said.” god's blood, what shitty politics the man has; GG in many ways as well, as far as i'm concerned. but i'm the minority vote.

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Pricknick's picture

Shithole is now an accepted word in media. And there is no proof a president said it.
Look it up.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

wendy davis's picture

@Pricknick

oddly enough, because i never watch news on the teevee, i'd just cued up pbs ahead of a drama i wanted to see, and there was judy woodruff-ruff interviewing durbin. he said yes, he sure did say it. she asked if the conversation had been recorded. dunno he said, but i sure as hell hope it was! hadn't any idea what the 'it' was, turns out it was #shithole nations in a compromise meeting on immigration. ye gods and little fishes, though.

guess i gotta go w/ durbin, and not just cuz it sounds exactly like trump. i did see a tweet by the tweeter-in-chief saying what he HAD said though.

ah, but that sure does remind me of a great tune!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzMKTZdkaU4]

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Think so?

“The United States of America is run by a cabal of racist, classist, sexist, militaristic, misogynistic, greedy, heartless thugs ...

They—the powers-that-be, the Deep State, the controllers, the financiers, the war hawks—want us at the brink of madness.

One thing about Russiagate is that it has given the media and the democrats a new cosmology of power. After following Russiagate and reading tweets and comments by the faithful, Russiagate has redefined who is in power. This is rather a recurring theme--that the Russians in many and various ways have taken control of government and society. Russians have become for a good part of the population what the Jews were to the Nazis.

No longer are American oligarchs, billionaires, deep state actors, lobbyists, oil money, big Pharma money, MIC, etc in control. Rather they never really existed and were replaced by a pristine system soiled and now controlled by the Russians. Particularly on TOP there are front pagers and others who post diaries that create a complex, Rube Goldberg inspired connections of guilt by association which show for example, that Putin was responsible for what happened at Charlotsville. Is it any wonder that the media and democrats have openly embraced the worst sort of mouthpieces for corporate America and the war machine so long as they fit the new cosmology.

And now if you want to fix stuff, you first have to fix the Russia/Putin problem. Using an old cliche, don't worry about who is behind the curtain little Dorthy.

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@MrWebster

We have always been at war with Eastasia. Also Westasia, Northasia and Southasia, and rather a lot of ourselves as well. So much simpler than The Psychopaths That Be realizing that they're billionaires well past retirement age and should simply take the money and run, leaving the rest of us to start patching up what we can of the damage they've done, while there's anything still left to salvage. But they can't even leave us the wreckage...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@Ellen North When asked about where the WMDs were located in Iraq he said something like "areas North, South, East, West of Titrick. Yup, enemies and weapons everywhere.

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snoopydawg's picture

@MrWebster

This is becoming more dangerous with each new charge against

This started out with just the people who were involved with the Trump campaign and now there are more and more allegations against people who had any type connection to him. What does the German bank have to do with the election? Or someone giving funds to the NRA? This is the new accusation on the front page of ToP. One writer there picks up information from anywhere and then he ties it to the Mueller investigation.

Apparently now most of the GOP are Putin's puppets and they are traitors because they want to find what the actions of the Obama justice department were. Even when he admits what the intelligence agencies have done, he dismisses it as truth. Susan Rice was involved in finding the identities of the people on the NSA wiretap, but hey that's okay for reasons.

If congress decides that Russia needs to be punished for the election tampering, how many people are going to cheer the action? Especially if it's a military one that includes the use of nukes? The reusable ones? Democrats have taken the propaganda and turned it into hysteria.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

wendy davis's picture

@MrWebster
i ♥ the dickens outta it. yes, roosian chaos, the red white house on Time magazine, chelsea manning and julian assange are putin's stooges, and now the guardian's reporting that it was nigel farage
who brought some thumb drive (the steele dossier; i'm way behind) to assange at the ecudorian embassy. purdy crazy out there. prof. stephen cohen just did an interview in which he said that all this russia-gate rubbish directly shows disrespect for FDR having made détente with the Bear in 1933, i think was the date.

thanks for the chuckles.

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earthling1's picture

The internet has been tamed.
The online community has been infiltrated.
The MSM has been bought up.
How do we proceed from here? The more online commentary of rebellion, the tighter the restrictions, the more censorship.
Many of us here are retired, older, past our prime. But so are the current blackhearts of the Oligarchy. Their time on this planet is no longer than ours. They will pass their wealth and power on to their heirs, who will then attempt to continue their reign.
But they can never stop us from communicating face to face. And although it is to late for us, who are older, we can talk to the younger generations face to face. The Gen Xers, the Millennials, and whatever comes after them must be inoculated with our rage against the system. They must be told how it used to be in America.
Many of them are already becoming "awakened". It is their fight now.
Reach out, to your children and granchildren. And your nephews and nieces.
Coach them. Help them. Educate them.
Face to face. It is all we have left that they cannot take away from us.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Big Al's picture

@earthling1 "Reach out, to your children and granchildren. And your nephews and nieces. Coach them. Help them. Educate them."

Throughout history, humans have used the "wise elder" approach because naturally we gain experience and knowledge as we age. I don't know about you, but I didn't know shit when I was in my twenties compared to what I know now. I didn't have nearly the grasp on the truth, the way things work and what possible solutions are out there back then as I do now. Now, maybe there are those who did, like Meteor Blades on Daily Kos, who evidently already knew it all and was the most fantastic activist on the planet when he was young, but then turned into an establishment gatekeeper. But for most of us, it took years and years to come to the knowledge and awareness point we're at now.
The millenials simply don't have the knowledge or experience.
To not put that to use in LEADING a revolution would be a shame. I referred to an essay I drafted a few days ago about the Baby Boomer generation. In it I lambasted the boomers for letting the world get to the way it was, but also for wanting to quit because they're too fucking old. I don't think that's the way it should be.
A lot of older folks are relying on Bernie Sanders, a 76 year old man. Hell, I'm a spring chicken compared to him.

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wendy davis's picture

@Big Al @Big Al

i was trying to remember a xavier rudd song w/ a similar message, but...couldn't.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkaKwXddT_I]

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earthling1's picture

@Big Al
with the Warren Commission report. At 13 years old, I knew then and there to never trust what I'm told as truth.
That Commission create far, far more suspicion then they ever could possibly imagined, in tens of millions of people, worldwide. To be assumed that stupid set the stage for what followed, the civil rights movement, anti-war protests, and the womens liberation movement.
I hope and believe the Millennials are having that "we are not that stupid" moment and rebel en mass.
Rage against the Machine, Big Al
Thanks for the support.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

wendy davis's picture

@earthling1
it's what i loved best about Occupying mancos, co back in the day. we were only two, mr. wd and i, but so often people would get out of their cars or trucks to talk. we found listening was best, then asking them questions, offering new ways to imagine things, etc. so many times those who'd been shaking their heads No approaching us would leave with somewhat baffled Nods Yes.

in the wayback machine was also Samizdat, or 'the clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state, especially formerly in the communist countries of eastern Europe.' but srsly, as the hammer comes down on social media, especially, we may see that come again.

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Next excuse: we can't stand the suffering of the people of Haiti and are putting them out of their misery wherever possible.

The very concepts of justice, democracy and humanity are being killed off.

Followed another link from that horror to this:

https://blackagendareport.com/us-supreme-court-about-pass-21st-century-d...

US Supreme Court About To Pass A 21st Century Dred Scott Decision
Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
18 Jan 2018

...In the next few weeks the US Supreme Court is expected to hand down what amounts to a 21st century Dred Scott decision. The case is National Labor Relations Board vs Murphy Oil USA . The universally expected ruling of the court will be that no workers on any job possess any legal right whatsoever to collude or combine against their employers for any purpose, period exclamation point.

There are details and fine points as there always are with the law, but that’s the gist of it . What there isn’t, is any shadow or prospect of relief anyplace in the US Constitution. The 19th century Dred Scott Supreme Court said black people had no Constitutional rights, and its 21st century counterpart says pretty much the same for workers on the job not already represented by a union, a mere five or six percent of the US workforce.

Employers went into this case claiming no worker on any job possessed any right to sue or take any sort of collective action at all against an employer, that any rights workers might have were strictly limited to individual “arbitration,” their appropriate name for arbitrary kangaroo courts set up by offending employers themselves. No rights means no rights. None. No letters, no phone calls, no public or private meetings, conversations, web sites, no joint activity of any kind. None of this, the court is expected to rule, is or may be protected by any law under the US Constitution.

In the spirit of activist judges making the law from the bench, this will pretty much erase the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board which since the 1930s has specifically recognized a right of workers to collectively address and seek redress from employers. But no more. That’s about to be over. ...

...The 19th century’s Dred Scott decision meant that those who would see their own rights or those of their black neighbors upheld had to grow a pair and step outside the nominal “protection” of the law. The US left, if there is such a thing is about to enter a similar place. Employers of every kind will be entitled to persecute and prosecute workers for accessing a web site, for signing a petition or letter, for attending a meeting or taking part in conversations about collective uplift. Those activities will be by definition outside the law. ...

So much for equal rights, treatment and opportunity for all under a government of, by and for the people - and they haven't even re-written the US Constitution yet, as far as we know.

Although this sounds also like an attempt to get the public to support the Trilateral Commission's/ALEC's long-running push to get that Constitutional Convention going so that they can get that 'uncontrollable' 'Runaway' Constitutional Convention that's been mentioned as 'a concern of some' - once the billionaires/corporate interests get their pathologically greedy and psychopathic little paws in it.

Equal-opportunity slavery for all!

They're really pushing for riots as an excuse for martial law, aren't they? And calling the UN in doesn't sound like an option, either, unless people want their schools shot down by armed, uniformed thugs, whether paid by their own public funding to protect them or not.

All that NRA fuss about 'protecting gun rights' while the complete lack of official enforcement of all American's Constitutional rights has never been massively and consistently demanded by The People set the stage for this. Can't fight armies with hand-guns when they have a multiple-agency spy system into everyone's daily lives, drones, bombs and satellites, among many other things. And fighting the armies doesn't remove the illicit plotters behind the scenes; it's the source that must be hit, economically and with strikes, and for the latter, financial support for strikers is required.

We need pacific, globally co-ordinated action against all such co-opted gone-rogue governments/legal systems, even if they do shut down the internet, as they can and will during any 'emergency', evidently to limit people to the corporate media propaganda stations, as well as to maximize the damage done to make it worse, where desired, to better weaken and isolate The People with fear and helplessness, so that they can't unite to help each other.

How do we do this? Will we bother, or just accept this as a 'done deal'? I know that I don't know what to do; I can't even rely on my computer functioning and am not up to anything physical, like pacific marches...

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0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

snoopydawg's picture

@Ellen North

All that NRA fuss about 'protecting gun rights' while the complete lack of official enforcement of all American's Constitutional rights has never been massively and consistently demanded by The People set the stage for this.

Yes we did. We watched silently while they kept taking our rights away from us. Oh there was backlash when Bush passed the Patriot and Military commission acts, yet there was no backlash when the Obama administration renewed them. And now the democrats helped give more power to Trump and not many people have said anything about it.

Martial law? You betcha it's coming. The police have been practicing for it on the various protests. Sure looks like they are ready to install it.

And we just watched or in some cases people cheered it.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

wendy davis's picture

@Ellen North
"Employers of every kind will be entitled to persecute and prosecute workers for accessing a web site, for signing a petition or letter, for attending a meeting or taking part in conversations about collective uplift. Those activities will be by definition outside the law. ..." the rest i can easily believe, but i hadn't checked in w/ Labor Notes for a coon's age.

yes, we're so often back to the 'What then, shall be done' point, aren't we. me, i'm lame south of the lame in two legs' (mancos), so i dunno what i can do outside of this homestead. but i've always supposed that if there's ever a successful revolution, first the global slaves wake up, and say Enough! but i feel so much less sure that it's n its way (as per the Maya) than i did a few years ago. tragically, i'll add.

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wendy davis's picture

@wendy davis
and now understand that this wasn't part of the scotus case, but of a future to to come soon:

“The US left, if there is such a thing is about to enter a similar place. Employers of every kind will be entitled to persecute and prosecute workers for accessing a web site, for signing a petition or letter, for attending a meeting or taking part in conversations about collective uplift. Those activities will be by definition outside the law.”

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@wendy davis

I'm so sorry about your legs, makes everything a major pain in the ass, so to speak, when those can't get you around well, doesn't it?

Let's hope the various billionaires/corporate interests involved in all this kill each other off in their various Battles of the Billionaires for Personal Global Supremacy - or pass away from their generally advanced old age - before they take the rest of us with them... not much time remaining...

I'm afraid that in too-many cases, corporate interests will engage in as many abuses as they can either get away with, or consider worth-while, despite the odd wrist-slap, since - like The Right Politicians - they are, so very oddly and illegally, claimed to be somehow considered 'above the law' and, by imposed 'law', corporations are permitted only to consider maximized profits, despite the appalling harm and destruction resulting, (as do too many politicians).

But who has any 'right' to grant anyone/anything else a 'right' to sicken/harm/defraud/control/kill/destroy their fellow-citizens or other people/their country/countries/the environment, even the entire global life-support system, to sacrifice the existence and future of life itself to suit their own personal desires?

From 2011:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2068494/Facebook-Employer...

Employers already snoop on Facebook accounts during job applications - but could they DEMAND passwords as well?

Application form asked for Facebook passwords
Job was for clerical position with American police
Would allow employer access to private messages
Even 'private' albums would be open for inspection

By Rob Waugh
Updated: 10:22 EST, 1 December 2011

Could employers demand your Facebook password as part of a job application?

One American was shocked to find a section in an application form that demanded not only his user names - but also passwords that would give his employers full access to his account, including private messages to other people.

Employers using Google - or 'people search' engines such as 123People - has become a standard part of job applications, and employers also check Facebook.

But asking for passwords that allow access to private communications is a worrying new precedent. ...

... A recent survey by Telstra revealed that 20 per cent of bosses also check employees' Facebook accounts while at the company.

One picture, purportedly of a job application for a clerical position with the police in North Carolina, shows a demand for passwords for 'accounts such as Facebook, Myspace, etc'. ...

...After a recent scandal about Australian bosses rejecting applicants because of Facebook posts, Mark Bowles, Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief economist said, 'We're starting to see a trend towards people setting up two Facebook accounts so they can still have an account to share photos with friends and when it comes to befriending workmates and bosses they have a separate account, which they can keep a bit more sterile.'

This type of demand was made illegal in various US States over the following few years - but if the Supreme Court declares that workers have no rights and that employers effectively own them during the period of their employment, will those making employees pee in a cup, apparently simply to exert power over anyone vulnerable whom they can humiliate, draw the line anywhere short of Russia-gate level? If you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about? You have no rights, this is a security issue! I am your employer!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/01/10/facebook-passwo...

Will employers still ask for Facebook passwords in 2014?
Jonathan Dame, USA TODAY College Published 12:32 p.m. ET Jan. 5, 2014 | Updated 2:03 a.m. ET Jan. 10, 2014
Oregon joined 11 other states in banning such practices this week, when a law passed last May went into effect.

Imagine you're a motivated college senior interviewing for your dream job. Your resume is plump, your answers are impressive and your interviewer seems engaged.

Then you're asked to hand over your Facebook username and password.

Oregon joined 11 other states in banning such practices this week, when a law passed last May went into effect.

But without federal legislation, employers — as well as colleges and universities — are continuing to pry into the personal lives of their employees and students through the sparsely legislated realm of the Internet. ...

...Social media monitoring is more widespread than people understand, Shear says. But since most affected by it would rather stay quiet than miss out on employment or educational opportunities, privacy advocates struggle to sustain the attention needed to impart change.

"If we don't stand up and say, 'this is not how we want our society to be' … then it is going to continue and get worse," he says.

Jonathan Dame is a senior at Boston College.

https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/risk-management/Pages/M...

Monitoring Employees: How Far Can You Go?

By Michael Abcarian Jan 27, 2015

As shifting privacy lines allow employers to reach further and further into employee conduct, it’s increasingly important that you know the legal limits. Many employees will question the legality of increased employer monitoring of offsite conduct, especially when employees are off-duty.

Such monitoring may include the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking and video surveillance. It could include reprimanding employees for things like speeding tickets. These practices are usually within an employer’s legal rights, but managers need to be aware of what is and is not permissible from a legal perspective. ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/do-companies-have-a-right-to-track-employee...

By Aimee Picchi MoneyWatch May 14, 2015, 10:02 AM
​Do companies have a right to watch employees 24/7?

Some employers may be making it impossible to get away from the job.

That's what one California worker is alleging in a lawsuit, claiming that her former employer, a money transfer service called Intermex, installed an app that ran constantly on her company-issued iPhone and tracked her 24/7. After voicing her objections and disabling the app, she claims she was fired from the company, according to the lawsuit, which was obtained by Ars Technica.

The lawsuit highlights how corporations are increasingly using technology to track and monitor employees, which is raising concerns about worker privacy. Given that employees often work at home in the evenings or weekends -- checking email or finishing projects -- the line between work and home life can easily become blurred. ...

... The boundaries between the workplace and individual privacy are "being lost for a lot of Americans, and it's devastating to those of us who believe in individual rights," Glick added. She noted that a company has "no legitimate interest in knowing where your employee is off the clock, even during lunch."

Meanwhile, tracking employees is itself an emerging business, with more than 20 companies now selling software tools for analyzing and monitoring employee behavior, according to Bloomberg News. ...

... Many software products that track employees are designed to catch hackers and corporate spies. Technology has made such behavior easier, given that an employee can email confidential information to rivals simply by pressing "send."

Some software programs used to monitor workers search their computers for sensitive words that could signal an employee is in financial distress, and more likely to present a risk, such as references to "medical bills" or "late rent," according to Bloomberg. Another company called Securonix uses algorithms to create profiles of normal behavior for each employee, such as when he or she logs in and out, which then alerts bosses when behavior deviates from the norm. ...

This following regards behaviour within the workplace, but with workers declared to have no rights I can see this type of intensive surveillance potentially being abused in being applied to workers off-duty, (as it already is by some, even while there is still legal recourse,) either by people at the company hired to surveil employees or by employers:

http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/the-latest-on-workplace-monitori...

The Latest on Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance

From e-mail monitoring and Website blocking to phone tapping and GPS tracking, employers increasingly combine technology with policy to manage productivity and minimize litigation, security, and other risks. More than one fourth of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail and nearly one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet, according to the “2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey” from American Management Association (AMA) and The ePolicy Institute. ...

... Computer monitoring takes many forms:
—45% of employers tracking content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard
—43% store and review computer files
—12% monitor the blogosphere to see what is being written about the company
—10% monitor social networking sites

Of the 43% of companies that monitor e-mail, 73% use technology tools to automatically monitor e-mail and 40% assign an individual to manually read and review e-mail.

“Concern over litigation and the role electronic evidence plays in lawsuits and regulatory investigations has spurred more employers to monitor online activity. Data security and employee productivity concerns also motivate employers to monitor Web and e-mail use and content,” said Nancy Flynn, executive director of The ePolicy Institute and author of The ePolicy Handbook, 2nd Edition (AMACOM, 2008), E-Mail Rules (AMACOM 2003), Instant Messaging Rules (AMACOM 2004), Blog Rules (AMACOM 2006), and other books related to workplace computer use.

“Workers’ e-mails and other electronically stored information create written business records that are the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence,” said Flynn, noting that 24% of employers have had e-mail subpoenaed by courts and regulators and another 15% have battled workplace lawsuits triggered by employee e-mail, according to 2006 AMA/ ePolicy research. “To help control the risk of litigation, security breaches and other electronic disasters, employers should take advantage of monitoring and blocking technology to battle people problems—including the accidental and intentional misuse of computer systems and other electronic resources,” Flynn said. ...

It would appear that a number of these companies are already concerned with various of their abuses/illegalities - against which laws still exist - being revealed by employees, which doesn't inspire much trust in their ethics...

http://ncjolt.org/employee-supervision-off-the-clock-the-use-of-mobile-a...

Employee Supervision Off The Clock: The Use of Mobile Apps with GPS Functioning to Monitor Employee’s Whereabouts On and Off The Clock

Caline Hou, 18 May 2015

... A few courts, though not the Supreme Court, have weighed in on the legality of employers tracking their employees’ locations through GPS. The landmark Supreme Court case remarking on the constitutionality of GPS tracking by state actors is United States v. Jones. In Jones, the United States Supreme Court held that when police place a GPS tracking device on an individual’s car, this constitutes a Fourth Amendment search, and is unconstitutional without a valid search warrant or other exigent circumstance. However, the Jones ruling may not directly apply in the context of employers tracking employees if the employers are private companies. Rather, the Jones ruling only applies in the context of state actors. ...

... As GPS technology advances, it will become increasingly easier for individuals to track third parties. This technology could be easily subject to abuse.

Without proper state intervention, employees of private companies, such as Myrna Arias, could continue to suffer severe invasions of privacy.

From 2010:
https://www.alternet.org/story/149338/wage_theft_is_rampant_in_america_-...

Wage Theft Is Rampant in America -- Is Your Boss Ripping You off?
U.S. employers are stealing millions of dollars from their own employees -- often right out in the open, unchallenged.
By Dick Meister / AlterNet
December 27, 2010, 9:00 PM GMT

There are lots of thieves in this country, as in any country. But no thieves anywhere are more blatant than the U.S. employers who steal millions of dollars from their own employees -- often right out in the open, unchallenged. It's called "wage theft," and it happens everywhere.

The cheating bosses don't take the money directly from their employees. No, nothing as obvious as that. The employers practice their thievery by underpaying workers, sometimes by paying them less than the legal minimum wage. Or they fail to pay employees extra for overtime work, or even force them to work for nothing before or after their regular work shifts or at other times. Some employers make illegal deductions from employee wages. And some withhold the final paycheck due employees who quit.

Such employer cheating is rampant in restaurant, retail and construction businesses, where undocumented workers make up much of the workforce. The undocumented are so vulnerable, given their illegal status, that they're particularly easy pickings for unscrupulous bosses.

The full extent of employer cheating is not known. But one study shows that in New York City alone, workers are cheated out of more than $18 million a week. ...

They have no legal protections for unscrupulous employers to worry about, and so abuses are blatant, because what are those deemed to have no rights going to do about it?

http://www.epi.org/press/proposed-rule-would-protect-employers-who-steal...

News from EPI Proposed rule would protect employers who steal workers’ hard-earned tips

Statement • By Heidi Shierholz • December 4, 2017

Today the Trump administration took their first major step towards allowing employers to legally take tips earned by the workers they employ. The Department of Labor released a proposed rule rescinding portions of its tip regulations, including current restrictions on “tip pooling”—which would mean that, for example, restaurants would be able to pool the tips servers receive and share them with untipped employees such as cooks and dishwashers. But, crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute pooled tips to workers. Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as the tipped workers earn minimum wage, the employer can legally pocket those tips.

And what we know for sure is that, often, they will do just that. Recent research suggests that the total wages stolen from workers due to minimum wage violations exceeds $15 billion each year, and workers in restaurants and bars are much more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than workers in other industries. With that much illegal wage theft currently taking place, it seems obvious that when employers can legally pocket the tips earned by their employees, many will do so.

It is worth noting how deeply unusual it is that there are no actual estimates in the proposal of the amount of money that would be shifted from workers to employers as a result of the rule, even though data that researchers use all the time are available to produce them. The requirements that agencies must follow during the rulemaking process are very clear, and among them is that agencies must assess all quantifiable costs and benefits “to the fullest extent that these can be usefully estimated.” When there is uncertainty about a quantifiable cost or benefit, agencies typically do something like provide a range—they don’t forgo providing an estimate altogether. It is obvious why the department left out the required estimate: this rule is bad for workers, and any estimate would have made that crystal clear. ...

This following appears to be somewhat slanted toward the employers, (in example: COLA creates an inflationary spiral = but, but, The People are supposed to suffer to keep inflation low!!! the economy doesn't involve The People and country except as exploitable resources, for Petes sake!!!) but makes the points below - regarding the fall of unions in the US and the loss of rights/protections for workers falling with them.

(Note: am absorbing life-giving caffeine while prying my eyelids open and have not read the entire lengthy paper giving an overview of the history within the period stated, just looking for points regarding the stripping of worker rights and the lengths gone to to do so for extra profits for those already having most.)

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/history_of_labor_unions.html

The Rise and Fall of Labor Unions In The U.S.
From the 1830s until 2012 (but mostly the 1930s-1980s)
by G. William Domhoff

...Whatever the NLRA's shortcomings and long-term failures, it changed the American power structure for the next 50 years. In telling this story, the document shows that corporate moderates had more of a role in creating the legislation than is usually understood, even though they fiercely opposed its final form. Then the document goes on to explain how and why the act was all but dead by 1978 due to an all-out and unrelenting battle against it by the entire corporate community from the day it was passed, and then finally killed in the 1980s. The account ends in 2012 through a quick overview of a failed legislative issue initiative in 2009 and information on the declining figures on "union density" (the percentage of wage and salary workers in unions). By then the figure was as low as it was in 1916.

But why do workers want unions in the first place, and why do business owners resist them so mightily? Workers originally want unions primarily for defensive purposes -- to protect against what they see as arbitrary decisions, such as sudden wage cuts, lay-offs, or firings. They also want a way to force management to change what they see as dangerous working conditions or overly long hours. More generally, they want more certainty, which eventually means a contract that lasts for a specified period of time. In the United States, as we will see, the early trade unionists also wanted the same kind of rights at work that they already had as independent citizens. And if unions grow strong, then, well, they try to go on the offensive, by asking for higher wages.

Business owners, on the other hand, don't like unions for a variety of reasons. If they are going to compete successfully in an economy that can go boom or bust, then they need a great deal of flexibility in cutting wages, hiring and firing, and adding extra hours of work or trimming back work hours when need be. In fact, wages and salaries are a very big part of their overall costs, maybe as much as 80% in many industries in the past, and still above 50% in most industries today, although there is variation. And even when business is good, small wage cuts, or holding the line on wages, can lead to higher profits. More generally, business owners are used to being in charge, and they don't want to be hassled by people they have come to think of as mere employees, not as breadwinners for their families or citizens of the same city and country. ...

... the government usually doesn't side with the workers if the workers don't have some political power through their involvement in a political party. ...

...Posted February 2013

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws

Food libel laws, also known as food disparagement laws and informally as veggie libel laws, are laws passed in thirteen U.S. states that make it easier for food producers to sue their critics for libel. These thirteen states are Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas.[citation needed][1] Many of the food-disparagement laws establish a lower standard for civil liability and allow for punitive damages and attorney's fees for plaintiffs alone, regardless of the case's outcome.[2]

These laws vary significantly from state to state, but food libel laws typically allow a food manufacturer or processor to sue a person or group who makes disparaging comments about their food products. In some states these laws also establish different standards of proof than are used in traditional American libel lawsuits, including the practice of placing the burden of proof on the party being sued.[2]

Notable cases

In 1998, television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and one of her guests, Howard Lyman, were involved in a lawsuit, commonly referred to as the Amarillo Texas beef trial, surrounding the Texas version of a food libel law known as the False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act of 1995, for a 1996 episode of her show in which the two made disparaging comments about beef in relation to mad cow disease. Although they were not the first people to be sued using this type of legal action, this case created a media sensation.

In a normal U.S. libel suit, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant is deliberately and knowingly spreading false information. Under the Texas food disparagement law under which Winfrey and Lyman were sued, the plaintiffs — in this case, beef feedlot operator Paul Engler and the company Cactus Feeders — had to convince the jury that Lyman's statements on Winfrey's show were not "based on reasonable and reliable scientific inquiry, facts, or data."[3] As a basis for the damages sought in the lawsuit, the plaintiffs noted that cattle futures dropped 10 percent the day after the episode, and that beef prices fell from 62 cents to 55 cents per pound.[4] Engler's attorneys argued that the rancher lost $6.7 million, and the plaintiffs sought to recoup total losses of more than $12 million.[5]

The jury in the case found that the statements by Winfrey and Lyman did not constitute libel against the cattlemen.[6] However, Winfrey no longer speaks publicly on the issue, going so far as to decline to make videotapes of the original interview available to enquiring journalists.[7]
McLibel case

A long-running legal case in Britain is an example of the application of food libel principles to existing law. McDonald's Restaurants versus Morris & Steel (also known as the "McLibel case") was an English lawsuit filed by McDonald's Corporation against environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris (often referred to as "The McLibel Two") over a pamphlet critical of the company. The original case lasted ten years, making it the longest-running court action in English history.[8] A feature-length documentary film, McLibel, was created about the case by filmmaker Franny Armstrong.

Although McDonald's won two hearings of the case in English court, the partial nature of the victory, the David-vs-Goliath nature of the case, and the drawn-out litigation embarrassed the company. McDonald's announced that it did not plan to collect the £40,000[9] that it was awarded by the courts. Since then, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that the trial violated Articles 6 (right to a fair trial) because the defendants had been refused legal aid and had only been represented by volunteer lawyers, and Article 10 (right to freedom of expression) of the Convention on Human Rights, again because the defendants had been refused legal aid, and awarded a judgment of £57,000 against the UK government.[10] (McDonald's itself was not a defendant in this appeal.) On February 15, 2005, the pair's 20-year battle with McDonald's came to an end with this judgment. ...

https://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/9/undercover_activist_details_secret...

Undercover Activist Details Secret Filming of Animal Abuse & Why “Ag-Gag” Laws May Force Him to Stop
StoryApril 09, 2013

An animal rights investigator details how he has spent over a decade secretly filming animal abuse and why that work is now imperiled by a wave of laws sweeping the country. Speaking on the condition we conceal his identity, “Pete” has secretly captured animal abuse on farms and slaughterhouses after applying to work at the location. He has released video footage to law enforcement and activist groups such as Mercy for Animals, helping spark national outcry and charges against the abusers. His investigations and footage have led to at least 15 criminal cases and have been used in several documentaries. But now Pete’s work is under threat. A dozen or so state legislatures have introduced bills that target people who covertly expose farm animal abuse. Nicknamed “ag-gag” laws, they would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms or apply for a job at one without disclosing affiliations with animal rights groups. They also require activists to hand over undercover videos within 24 hours, preventing them from amassing a trove of material and publicizing their findings on their own. [includes rush transcript] ...

When psychopathic billionaires and corporations are creating the laws, the laws will be psychopathic in protecting abusers against those they abuse, to protect their most destructive profiteering at all cost to their victims.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

wendy davis's picture

@Ellen North
but...considering the various cultural forms of 'the sorrow tree', there ain't a person on the planet i'd trade whole lives with. but jezum crow, woman; you did a hella lot of binging as you sucked in your caffeine!

i'd add that amazon spying and snooping is epic, and screwing their emplyees by wage theft *and* their failures to make their workplaces safe, and what sort of theft is that walmart keeps many wage slave workers under 40 hrs. to avoid benefits, and that even their hourly wages for 40 hours keep their families available for public assistance.

but those were chilling cases; thank you for rockin' and rollin' with it. oh, and as far as unions, the other scotus decision to come soon is another 'right to work' case. as in 'why should we be forced to pay union dues when we don't join the union?' answer: cuz you get the benefits the union might get you! but sadly the Big Union bosses have for too long worked hand in hand w/ management to fuck members over, most memoraby trumka and the afl-cio.

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@wendy davis @wendy davis

Lol, started it the night before, but was too tired to see straight so left the rest until morning, in the hope I'd be a little more functional. I livz in my dreamz, generally while 'awake' since I have trouble sleeping. But it does (depending on mood) raise the fighting spirit when you look at the accumulation of abuses in any given area. Sometimes outrage is all that keeps us going, lol.

Glad you're keeping cheerful! Gotta enjoy what we've got while we've got it, despite whatever bits we'd rather do without - or whatever bits we'd rather not have to do without - don't we?

It really amazes me that brainwashing works so well, especially when against unity, including that formed by (good) unions, but the buggers doing it have had a lot of practice over the past few decades... somebody should tell the filly sucks that disemboweling the Golden Geese means they don't get a flock and will have to get by on their measly hundreds of billions in what should already be their retirement years, with none left to drain but each other.

Edited to remove a vagrant 'a'.

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0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

wendy davis's picture

@Ellen North
so i was picturing you guzzling your liquid-awake for a few hours, grin. i hear ya on trouble sleeping, but even when i do, i'm havin' a hella time remembering my dreams lately, which is another form of crippling for me. some say even unremembered dreams serve a purpose, and no doubt they do, but in the Know Thyself arena...i'd rather remember them past a few still photographs of them.

yeah, outrage helps keep us alive, as does being able to feel the pain of those who are even more oppressed, with fewer resources, to provoke more outrage and even sometimes, activism beyond 'keyboard warrioring'. (smile) best to you, ellen north.

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@wendy davis

If you can't recall dreaming at all, that is. Obviously, nutrient levels will vary with whatever you've eaten on any particular day, and B vitamins are transient; seem to recall may stay in your system for about 8 hours, whether used or eliminated.

This is just the first pertinent example on the top on of my search page, but will do. Especially as those of us with a better idea of what's going on need to keep depression over current reality at bay, lol.

http://www.rebuild-from-depression.com/blog/2007/07/vitamin_b6_deficienc...

Vitamin B-6 Deficiency Sign: No Dream Recall
Written on July 16, 2007 by Amanda Rose

...Your regular doctor will not have this information but pioneer in mental health and food nutrients, Carl Pfieffer, describes in his book Nutrition and Mental Illness that in the presence of a B-6 deficiency you do not recall your dreams at night. ...

...I did have a dream last night. I don’t remember it now, but I do remember this morning upon waking that I had some knowledge of some sort of dream. That counts. No dream whatsoever for many nights running may mean you have poor B-6 status.
Your doctor can test your B-6 level but some will start with a more general plasma homocysteine that is associated with poor folate, B-12, and/or B-6. If it is elevated you can investigate further why it is elevated (when it should be lower). If you do not remember your dreams, you can be fairly confident that B-6 is part of the picture.
B-6, by the way, is critical in converting your proteins such as tryptophan into key neurotransmitters such as serotonin. It certainly may aggravate your depression if you are low.
So when you wake up tomorrow morning, note whether you remember a dream. ...

I dunno if you have to get up at 4 AM or just wake up, but if you have trouble sleeping and can manage it, taking Melatonin helps replenish some of what our bodies begin to produce less of after childhood, helping to make you mildly drowsy after ingestion and which, especially over time, does help you sleep longer and better. The more pain you're in/stress you're under, the more help you may need sleeping. And this is gentle, can be supplied in vegetarian form, and doesn't cause any toxicity/damage.

Personally, I'm a big believer in trying to provide nutrition/aid to help the body heal over taking (criminal org.) pharma drugs to change the way your body works on order to ideally mask/avoid symptoms, while potentially causing other signs of resulting biological disruptions - and which purportedly thereby-avoided symptoms are often listed as side-effects of whatever drug may be given to avoid them. But nowadays, only the affluent can afford a decent, healthy diet and adequate supplementation of whatever may be necessary. Not many affluent left, overall...

Oh, definitely, the more vulnerable the victimized, the more powerful the outrage - but without an outlet forming some hope of positive action, it's hard to avoid burn-out and despair. Fear is not the only mind-killer... 'here', and people like you, like all those here, help provide hope as well as information and insight.

The best to you - and I hope that one day soon those legs of yours will be dancing on the grave of American fascism.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

wendy davis's picture

@Ellen North
yes to b vitamins but we eat lots and lots of large flake nutritional yeast, including frying tofu planks in it w/ cornstarch and flour. we also both swallow caps of high cbd cannabis, and at night use thc cannabis; i put our homegrown in an alligator clip, light it, and breathe it in thru my nose (i hate pipes); mr. wd eats cannabrownie pieces i make him after cooking roasted cannabis in a crockpot in butter, which equals cannabutter.

we use spices as medicines as well, which i'd brought to c99 some months ago; if you'd like the list, go to the café and read the 'contact me' in the categories list on the right sidebar, and just ask; i'll send it.

in my dreams, i used to dream of flying (lucid dreaming), running. playing ball, even traveling on a body-sized skateboard on the highway east of here to the top of the mountain above durango, co. but my dreams are blocked from me now. thanks for better wishes, but for various reasons, this is how i'll live out my life...until they carry me out in a box. i'll never ever go to a doctor or hospital again. luckily, mr wd understands this. (smile)

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bookmarked for future discovery Smile

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wendy davis's picture

@QMS

and yep, plenty of good info and stats, to boot.

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@wendy davis makes more sense than right side up.

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wendy davis's picture

@QMS

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