Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/op eds.

Professor Lawrence Tribe outlines several actions the Attorney General could take to counter the Texas anti- abortion law, among them:

The attorney general should announce, as swiftly as possible, that he will use federal law to the extent possible to deter and prevent bounty hunters from employing the Texas law. If Texas wants to empower private vigilantes to intimidate abortion providers from serving women, why not make bounty hunters think twice before engaging in that intimidation?

For example, Section 242 of the federal criminal code makes it a crime for those who, “under color of law,” willfully deprive individuals “of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

This statute — originally designed to go after the Ku Klux Klan — fits the Texas situation perfectly: The bounty seekers, entitled under the Texas law to collect penalties of at least $10,000, have been made, in effect, private attorneys general of Texas. They act “under color of state law,” and unless and until Roe v. Wade is overruled, they unmistakably intend to prevent the exercise of a constitutional right.

In addition, Section 241 of the federal criminal code makes it an even more serious crime for “two or more persons” to agree to “oppress, threaten, or intimidate” anyone “in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same.” This crime may be committed even by individuals not found to be acting “under color of law” but as purely private vigilantes, as long as they’re acting in concert with others.

Get moving, AG Garland!

James Downie sends a message to elected Democrats:

In short, one party has maximized the power it does have, and is still aiming so high that even the “compromise” version is still a major win. The other has fiddled away its years in power, yet once again is settling for less than half a loaf. This is not a recent phenomenon. The very foundation for Republicans’ looming “success” on abortion is that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — both as majority and minority leader — has squeezed Democrats repeatedly on the judiciary, culminating in the theft of a Supreme Court seat in 2016. While the Manchins of the world whine about decency and decorum, McConnell and company played hardball — and won.

To be sure, Democrats’ current caution might make some sense if Republicans’ priorities were more popular. But the opposite is true. The new Washington Post-ABC poll, for example, found Americans support the reconciliation package by 53 to 41 percent, with an similarly wide gap of 13 percent among independents and a 32 percent gap among self-identified moderates. By contrast, an AP poll found that almost 60 percent believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And yet, maddeningly, Democrats act like they’re the ones on the back foot with the public.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that voters reward action and punish parties that stray too far from the middle. The first part is true, but as the past decade has shown, the latter is misleading at best. Republicans certainly haven’t paid any price for taking the Supreme Court from delicately balanced to decidedly conservative, nor for making the county’s tax system as unequal as possible. And when Democrats have faced rebuke at the polls, they’ve been hurt more by blunting the effectiveness of their best ideas — the stimulus, the ACA, etc. — rather than doubling down on them.

Stop fretting, Democrats, and use the power you have.

We're proud to be members of the only party supporting democracy in America, but damn, it's  so frustrating, too.

Ed Kilgore has constructed a historical timeline tracing the roots of the January 6 insurrection and the malignant loser's long campaign to stay in office. Here's his intro:

The House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol Riot and the various media ticktocks explaining what Donald Trump and his allies were doing in the days immediately leading up to it are casting new light on an important threat to American democracy. But the intense focus on a few wild days in Washington can be misleading as well. Trump’s campaign to steal the 2020 presidential election began shortly after the 2016 election, and arguably the moment of peak peril for Joe Biden’s inauguration had already passed by the time Trump addressed the Stop the Steal rally on January 6.

A full timeline of the attempted insurrection is helpful in putting Trump’s frantic, last-minute schemes into the proper context and countering the false impression that January 6 was an improvised, impossible-to-replicate event, rather than one part of an ongoing campaign. If Congress fails to seize its brief opportunity to reform our electoral system, the danger could recur in future elections — perhaps with a different, catastrophic outcome.

We have confidence that the select committee will provide a rigorous examination of the machinations of the malignant loser and his Christo-fascist toadies in Congress who attempted to overthrow the results of the election -- and are still at it.  Stay tuned.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., writes about how "freedom" is a purpose of organized labor:

Lane Windham, the author of “Knocking on Labor’s Door,” a history of labor organizing in the 1970s, says that’s precisely the point of the union movement: Without countervailing power to the authority of employers, workers have remarkably few, if any, rights in their workplaces.

In an interview, she argued that in the coming debate over President Biden’s Build Back Better program, one focus of the conversation should be on how assisting workers by providing government help for child care and elder care advances “the freedom that comes from security and peace of mind.”

“We continue to rely on women who are in the workplace to take on the task of unpaid child care,” she said. “They need that infrastructure, they need that support, if we want them to work in the economy. We’ve been patching it together for 40 years.”

One of the contributions of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign was his insistence that progressives must no longer cede to the political right rhetorical control over the word and the idea of “freedom.” Noting the role legal recognition of same-sex marriage played in his life as a gay man, he argued that “the chance to live a life of your choosing” is “freedom in its richest sense.”

His point applies to the world of work as well. Labor Day honors the struggles of American workers to live lives of their own choosing with a degree of prosperity and security. No less than July 4, this September day is a celebration of freedom.

Balloon Juice's Mistermix counters the "don't make fun of the covidiots" argument made by people like writer Elizabeth Bruenig:

I see variants of Bruenig’s “stop making fun” argument all the time. The issue is that many of the vaccine “hesitant” don’t want rational colloquy — they want engagement with their stupidity, so they can trot out their dumb Facebook-inspired ideas. They are thirsty for attention, not for a free, easily obtainable vaccine.

In contrast to Bruenig’s unicorn and rainbows outlook on humanity, let me share two vaccine success stories. One is from a young man that I know who has two elderly grandparents who weren’t vaccinated. They live in NYC. What got them to get their first shots a couple of days ago was the new requirement that you must be vaccinated to dine indoors. There wasn’t a rational conversation. To be fair, these people weren’t nutty Trumpers — in fact, they’re very sweet people. Still, their kids and grandkids trotted out all the usual arguments, and the only thing that moved them was inability to get dinner in places they liked to visit.

So, that’s one approach. Another was related in a comment on the Herman Cain subreddit that I can’t find right now. The gist of it was that a woman was concerned about her friend, an unvaccinated single mom with 5 kids. She began sending her friend instructions on how to claim the burial reimbursement for death from COVID, instructions on how to apply for life insurance, and other useful advice for the vaccine “hesitant”. Her friend texted her a picture of her vaccine card shortly thereafter.

Unlike scaring your friends with almost-certain death, vaccine mandates are scalable. I also think that vaccine mandates and proof of vaccination to travel will work with a good number of these stubborn assholes, no matter how loudly they squeal. Unfortunately, the combination of their loud noisemaking, the unfairness of making essential workers enforce these mandates, and the fact that a lot of the loudest anti-vaxxers are cops who won’t enforce the mandate has slowed us down.

To which we offer a secular "amen."

Finally, you're encouraged to visit Infidel 753's link round-up for a comprehensive digest of links to posts of interest from around the Internet.  He also posts stimulating essays on a variety of topics, so maybe you should bookmark his blog if you haven't already done so?

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

More Labor Day reading from E.J. Dionne, Jr., on Cadet Bone Spurs' broken promise to the "forgotten men and women" he's suckered:

Recall how Trump apologists insisted after the 2016 election that racial animus did not explain Trump’s victory. What mattered, they said, was that “coastal elites” (their synonym for “liberals”) had ignored the interests of hard-working people in “the heartland” battered by economic change.

So how is the heartland doing? How much has Trump done for the working people whose votes he needed to carry states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio?

Precious little. Even before the economic downturn induced by the pandemic, the areas that were crucial to Trump’s electoral college victory lagged behind the rest of the country.

A Wall Street Journal study published last September found that in 77 “blue-collar and manufacturing-reliant counties across the Midwest and Northeast” that swing heavily to Trump, employment “grew by 0.5% in 2017 and 0.6% in 2018, lower than the 1% job growth in the prior two years, before Mr. Trump took office.” The counties also trailed the national growth rate of 1.5 percent in 2017 and 1.3 percent in 2018. [snip]

Did the pay of the forgotten men and women improve relative to CEOs? No. Again, even before the economic collapse, the relationship worsened from the worker’s perspective during the Trump years, according to a study by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra for the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Mishel and Kandra found that the ratio of CEO compensation to worker compensation — which was “only” 21 to 1 in 1965 — has continued to rise. The ratio was 293 to 1 in 2018. It was 320 to 1 in 2019. Happy Labor Day!

Nor has Trump helped workers trying to bargain their way toward improved wages and working conditions. On the contrary, an EPI study published last fall — appropriately titled “Unprecedented” — showed in great detail how Trump appointees on the National Labor Relations Board “systematically rolled back workers’ rights to form unions and engage in collective bargaining with their employers.” In many cases, Trump’s anti-worker NLRB broke with long-standing precedent to weaken workers’ rights.  [snip]

Yes, the forgotten men and women are still forgotten, and the forgetter in chief is the man in the White House.

Sadly, there are far too many suckered Trump voters who'll abide "economic anxiety" if they have permission to hate the same people he hates.

Speaking of suckers, here's a tease for you:

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, said his magazine's story about Trump calling Americans who died in battle "losers" and "suckers," was just the tip of the iceberg.

"I would fully expect more reporting to come out about this and more confirmation and new pieces of information in the coming days and weeks," Goldberg told CNN's Chief Media Correspondent Brian Stelter on "Reliable Sources" Sunday. "We have a responsibility and we're going to do it regardless of what he says."

Give us what we want, Mr. Goldberg!

The putrid malignancy is broad and deep in Cadet Bone Spurs' party:

President Donald Trump’s campaign is coming under criticism after one of its senior staffers on Sunday mocked Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for “meandering” through a cemetery. Biden was visiting the graves of his late son, Beau Biden, and his first wife, Neilia Biden, and daughter, Naomi Biden. 

Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015; Neilia and Naomi Biden were killed in a car accident in 1972.

The former vice president had just come from St. Joseph on the Brandywine church in Wilmington, Delaware, and was walking on a path through the cemetery. Trump was playing golf at roughly the same time. 

The incident came days after it was reported that Trump didn’t want to visit the graves of fallen U.S. soldiers in France, calling them “losers” and “suckers.”

We're not showing the offensive tweet from Republican bottom feeding hack Francis Brennan, but you can see it and the blistering responses at the link above.

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has a reality check on COVID Donnie's cynical talk about having a vaccine available by the end of the year:

Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told "Face the Nation" on Sunday that it's unlikely a coronavirus vaccine will be available in the U.S. by the end of 2020.

"I think the likelihood that we're going to have a vaccine for widespread use in 2020 is extremely low, I think we need to think of that as largely a 2021 event," Gottlieb said. "And if we do have a vaccine available in 2020, it's likely to be used in a much more targeted fashion."

According to Gottlieb, if the vaccine is produced before next year, it would be distributed through a "staged introduction" that prioritizes high-risk groups, like nursing home residents and health care workers.

 We also want to note the passing of legendary baseball player Lou Brock:

Hall of Famer Lou Brock, one of baseball's signature leadoff hitters and base stealers who helped the St. Louis Cardinals win three pennants and two World Series titles in the 1960s, died Sunday at 81.

The Cardinals and Chicago Cubs observed a moment of silence in the former outfielder's memory before their game at Wrigley Field.

"Lou Brock was one of the most revered members of the St. Louis Cardinals organization and one of the very best to ever wear the Birds on the Bat,'' Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said in a news release.

"He will be deeply missed and forever remembered.''

Brock retired in 1979 as the single-season and all-time leader in stolen bases -- marks since surpassed by Rickey Henderson. Brock was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1985.

Your task now is to complete your essential reading by heading over to Infidel 753's unsurpassed link round- up and enjoy browsing the wide range of topics he's assembled once again.  You should bookmark his blog, if you haven't already done so.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

We have several reads on Labor Day, beginning with Helaine Olen's discussion of the erosion of workers' rights:

President Trump frequently complements himself on the American employment picture. “Best economy & jobs EVER,” he tweeted this past June on his 500th day in office. No doubt he’ll say something similar as he makes note of Labor Day. He’ll probably boast about bringing back coal and steel jobs, too. But one thing Trump almost certainly won’t mention: His administration is presiding over the biggest decline in worker rights most of us have seen in our lifetimes. 

Whenever there is a choice to be made, Trump favors the perceived needs of the plutocratic class at the expense of almost anyone who earns a paycheck. Trump claims he’s eliminating “job killing regulations,” but, in fact, he’s simply lining the pockets of the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the health and wealth of everyone else.

The Economic Policy Institute has a progressive 15- point agenda to address the assault on workers' rights -- called "First Day Fairness":

This agenda outlines a series of initial reforms focused on labor and employment policies, one of EPI’s core areas of focus for generating a fairer economy. These policies would ensure that the protections promised in our basic labor laws decades ago have been updated to meet the needs of workers in a modern context. 

The best guarantee for a fair first day for workers is union representation and a collective bargaining agreement; consequently, much of what we advocate for in this agenda is designed to reverse decades of legal hostility aimed at unions and to boost union coverage. As a complement to these policies, we also propose a series of employment law reforms that will restore at least some of the lost bargaining power of workers. 

Together these policies will help to unrig the system and ensure a fair first day for working people.

Paul Krugman discusses the particular animus involved in the decision (now "under review") by nitwit narcissist Donald "Rump" Trump to cancel a cost of living adjustment to federal workers:

... Giving government workers the shaft is long-term G.O.P. policy, but even so I suspect that Congressional Republicans would have preferred that Trump not make this announcement two months before the midterm elections. The timing, as opposed to the general hostility to public servants, is probably personal to Trump.

Two things in particular seem relevant here. First, Trump has always chiseled and cheated those who work for him: his business career is littered with tales of unpaid workers and contractors. Since he makes no distinction between personal business and being president, squeezing a few bucks out of the federal workforce just comes naturally.
Beyond that, Trump is feeling under siege from the “deep state,” which to him means any part of the government that answers to rule of law as opposed to being personally loyal to him. His wage chiseling may in part represent a way of lashing out at everyone in government: these days they all look like Robert Mueller to him. 

To get an idea of what the right really thinks of working people, take the example of Geoffrey Owens, who played Elvin Tibideaux on "The Cosby Show," and how he was treated by the "trash" (Justine Bateman's word) at the Daily Mail and Fox News dumpsters:

... Owens is what we think of as a successful working actor: known but not a “celebrity,” with an IMDb page that rarely skips a year. Apparently, that’s why a woman shopping at Trader Joe’s last week, in Clifton, New Jersey, was so jarred to see Owens bagging groceries that she snapped his photo and sent it to the Daily Mail, which ran the headline, “From learning lines to serving the long line!” Fox News picked up the story, and on Saturday a Twitter storm erupted—most of it shaming Fox News for shaming Owens for working for a living.

On the Trump- Russia scandal and the Special Counsel's ultimate report, b.s. purveying loon Rudy "Ghouliani" Giuliani says the White (Supremacist) House is prepared to obstruct justice all the way:

Rudy Giuliani says the White House would likely attempt to block a full public release of Robert Mueller’s anticipated final report about the Russia investigation ― bolstering long-held fears that the special counsel’s ultimate findings may never see the light of day.  

Giuliani’s startling admission was tucked inside an expansive New Yorker profile of the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney, published online Monday. 

Giuliani, who like the president has repeatedly described the Russia probe as a “witch hunt,” told journalist Jeffrey Toobin that Trump’s original legal team had struck a deal with Mueller about his expected final report that would allow the White House to “object to the public disclosure of information that might be covered by executive privilege.”  

“I asked Giuliani if he thought the White House would raise objections,” wrote Toobin in the profile. 

“I’m sure we will,” Giuliana responded, noting that it would be the president who “would make the final call.”

A Democratic House will have something to say about that.

Finally, we again recommend you take a spin over to Infidel 753's wonderful link round-up for a collection of  "various interesting stuff" he's come across recently.

Helping America's Working Families

Many of the things we take for granted on Labor Day -- the forty hour work week, minimum wage laws, and regulations governing safe working conditions, civil rights and voting rights, for example -- are the direct result of action by organized labor.  Concerted efforts by corporate and industrial powers over the last 50 years, working through their wholly-owned Republican Party, have had a negative effect on union membership and on organized labor's ability to act as a countervailing force against corporate greed.  Income inequality that has grown over that same 50 years directly correlates to declining union membership.

There was hope in the aftermath of the Dems control of the White House and Congress following the  2008 elections that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would be enacted and make it simpler for workers to unionize.  In the summer of 2009, several Conserva-Dems turned their backs on labor and joined with Senate Rethuglicans to block consideration of the bill, and, facing Rethuglican obstruction, the bill has remained in limbo ever since.

Now that there is renewed public concern about income inequality, it's more important than ever that key issues be addressed: increase in the living wage to $15/hr., paid family leave (the U.S. is last in the industrialized world), and ensuring that free trade is fair trade, where U.S. workers have a level playing field with foreign workers.  These and other kitchen table concerns are at the core of what organized labor is fighting for, facing unrelenting push-back from corporate America and the right wing.  We have to fight along with them.

Reflections On Labor Day 2013

From Paul Krugman:

... the fact is that economic inequality has soared over the past few decades, and while a handful of people have stratospheric incomes, a far larger number of Americans find that no matter how hard they work, they can’t afford the basics of a middle-class existence — health insurance in particular, but even putting food on the table can be a problem. Saying that they can use some help shouldn’t make us think any less of them, and it certainly shouldn’t reduce the respect we grant to anyone who works hard and plays by the rules.

But obviously that’s not the way everyone sees it. In particular, there are evidently a lot of wealthy people in America who consider anyone who isn’t wealthy a loser — an attitude that has clearly gotten stronger as the gap between the 1 percent and everyone else has widened. And such people have a lot of friends in Washington.

From Christine Owens:

For millions of workers, ground down by the daily grind, work takes more than it gives. One in four workers toils at wages too low to lift their families from poverty. Forty million get no paid leave. The share of workers with job-based health and retirement benefits declined 12.9 and 7.0 percentage points, respectively, between 1979 and 2010, while wage growth for the bottom 60 percent resulted roughly as much from increased hours as from higher pay.

Workers have had more than enough of far too little for way too long. That's why, across America, in cities large and small and states of every hue, workers are demanding the most basic workplace bargain -- the right to economic opportunity and security through their labor.

And from David Sirota (who provides 5 things Labor Day is really about - read them):

Though we all know when this holiday is and often use it to structure our yearly calendars, the modern version of this occasion has been almost completely divorced from its official meaning. Indeed, the most prominent and pervasive Labor Day iconography usually has nothing to do with the holiday’s actual point and everything to do with discount sales events, the beginning of big-time sports seasons and the last hurrah of summer. Even in the political sphere, much of the rhetoric around this day ends up being generalized platitudes about the economy and jobs, not specific discussions about the importance of organized labor. This, despite the fact that, as the Los Angeles Times notes, “The holiday is the creation of the labor movement, which wanted a holiday to honor workers — and highlight the need for labor reform laws.”

Above all, remember they built it.

On The Eve Of Labor Day

Tomorrow is Labor Day in the U.S., which makes it an appropriate time to reflect on the American workforce, income inequality and the resulting erosion of the middle class.  The New York Times editorial this morning is worth a read.  Here's a snippet:

On its own, however, growth will not raise wages. What’s missing are policies to ensure that a large and growing share of rising labor productivity flows to workers in the form of wages and salaries, rather than to executives and shareholders. Start with an adequate minimum wage. Provide increased protections for workers to unionize, in order to strengthen their bargaining power. Provide protections for undocumented workers that would limit exploitation. Add to the mix regulations to prevent financial bubbles, thereby protecting jobs and wages from ruinous busts. Adopt expansionary fiscal and monetary policies in troubled times to sustain jobs and wages.

Or, put in simpler, visual form (click to enlarge):

 (Signe Wilkinson, via gocomics.com)

Twerp Twitter of the Week

Rep. Eric "Cancer" Cantor, Rethuglican Twerp:

No, son, it's called "Labor Day," not entitled, Randian, "Job Creator" Day for a reason, but you wouldn't understand because You Built It, all by yourself with your tiny little hands.

Happy Labor Day

There was a time in America when the labor of working people was held up as an example of American values, as opposed to the social Darwinism of some of today's so-called "job creators." Hedrick Smith writes about it in today's New York Times, and it's worth reading.

May we always honor the work of America's wage earners, and safeguard the gains they've made over the past century.

A Labor Day Thought

“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

Any guesses about who this quote is from? A right winger would assume it came from President Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders, or some socialist/communist/Muslim free loader, correct? It's a quote from Abraham Lincoln in 1861, and as E.J. Dionne writes in today's Kaplan Daily, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone in public office expressing those sentiments. Today, the cult of the super wealthy plutocrat trumps (pun intended) the working people who are the foundation of wealth in this country. Their condition and issues have virtually disappeared from discussion and view, except for Labor Day. The other days are devoted to lionizing the "entrepreneurs" and young millionaires.

Hopefully, we'll turn the corner soon, and regain the respect we once had for working Americans.

Weekend Fanfare

Monday is Labor Day in America, a holiday established in 1894 by President Cleveland following the end of the bloody Pullman strike. It's worth noting that, over the years, this holiday has morphed from a celebration of labor (i.e., organized labor) into a "last weekend the pool is open"/ "summer's over!" kind of celebration. In these days of Rethuglican/ oligarch-funded assaults on organized labor, let's remember a few of the things we owe organized labor:
-- the 8-hour workday/ 40-hour workweek (a.k.a., your weekend);
-- minimum wage;
-- workplace health and safety standards;
-- child labor prohibition;
-- civil rights (the UAW under Walter Reuther shone); and
-- what's left of the American middle class.
So we think it fitting to offer Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" as our weekend starter. Have a safe and enjoyable weekend!