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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 24, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

 

USA Government Shutdown

The Looming Government Shutdown Is Not the Fault of Dysfunction

Jason Linkins, September 22, 2023 [The New Republic]

Sick, sick, sick More evidence of the war on science gaining ground: For years, groups at the vanguard of the anti-vaccine movement had been operating with relatively small budgets and only a handful of staff. Now, they’re awash in cash. The Covid-19 pandemic has produced a remarkable financial windfall for anti-vaccine nonprofits. Revenue more than doubled for the Informed Consent Action Network and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense in 2021 compared to the year prior, according to a POLITICO analysis of tax filings. The nonprofits that survived on operating budgets of around a few million dollars just a few years prior are now raking in more than $10 million each. “Covid vaccines have been the foot in the door for the more general anti-vaccine movement. And unfortunately, that door is open pretty wide now,” said Dr. Dave Gorski, a Michigan-based oncologist who has been tracking anti-vaccine efforts for two decades. The funding spike reflects a sea change for once-fringe entities. The anti-vaccine movement has now emerged as a modern political force.

Some Republicans think that McCarthy spent too much time on investigations and not enough on dealing with actual governing. Haha. Ya think? House Republicans have vowed to take a long, methodical approach to investigating President Biden over potential wrongdoing. “I want this to take a long time. I really do,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said in a recent interview. “We’re just going to keep plowing ahead, doing our work,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told reporters Thursday. But there are whispers from some rank-and-file Republicans that their leadership got too fixated on these investigations, losing focus on processing the government funding bills from the House Appropriations Committee. That’s now left the House GOP certain to face the blame if there’s a shutdown of the federal government starting next Sunday — unless they can pull off a fast legislative trick.

More on Sideshow Bob Menenedez and his gold bars and stacks of bills (U.S. News): It was the second time Menendez has faced serious legal trouble. He avoided conviction on different federal bribery charges when a jury deadlocked in 2017, and he successfully ran for reelection in 2018. But this time, Democrats – who are demanding accountability for former President Donald Trump and who are battling GOP claims that the Department of Justice has been “weaponized” against Republicans under President Joe Biden’s administration – are not rallying around Menendez. In a stunning rebuke of a member of his own party and state delegation, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy Friday afternoon called on Menendez to resign from office, saying the “deeply disturbing” allegations “are so serious that they compromise the ability of Senator Menendez to effectively represent the people of our state.” “Therefore, I am calling for his immediate resignation,” Murphy said in a statement. As the day went on after the bombshell indictment, Democrats began bailing on their legally troubled colleague.

From missing inflation data to online mass surveillance, here’s a roundup of our reporting from the past week.

It’s not even Thanksgiving before 2024 Bill Scher on formerly Twitter calls the Washington Post-ABC News poll “obviously ridiculous.“ How ridiculous? This ridiculous: Among voters under age 35, Trump leads Biden in the new Post-ABC poll by 20 points. Some other recent public polls show Biden winning this group by between six and 18 points. In 2020, Biden won voters under age 35 by double digits. Among non-White voters, the poll findsBiden leads by nine points. In four other public polls, Biden’s lead among non-White voters ranges from 12 points to 24 points. Higher up in the story (emphasis mine): The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: WGA/AMPTP, Howard Stern/Bill Maher/Donald Trump, Doctor Who, AHS: Delicate, Daryl Dixon, Wonder Woman & more!

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

By Chip Gibbons: The Dissenter Americans have repeatedly been told to keep the United States safe they must surrender their core civil liberties to a vast national security apparatus. Yet when this apparatus fails at this supposed objective, the response is to further expand its surveillance powers. Rarely is the exercise of these powers seriously explored. Instead, the national discussion centers on a baseless notion that a shortage of surveillance powers is the root cause of intelligence failures.

by Aaron Major* I was first introduced to Richard Lachmann’s work as a graduate student and then had the privilege of calling him a colleague when I joined the faculty at the University at Albany in 2008. His sudden passing two years ago, on 19th September 2021, was a great personal loss to me and […]

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

I just posted this on the echo chamber that is FB,

Hey Australia, at the very least read the Uluru Statement before the 14th of October.

Before you …

By Daniel Hurst in Canberra: The Guardian More than 60 Australian federal politicians have explicitly called on the US to drop the prosecution of Julian Assange, warning of “a sharp and sustained outcry in Australia” if the WikiLeaks founder is extradited. With a small cross-party delegation due to fly to Washington next week, the Guardian can reveal the lobbying trip has won the open support of 63 members of Australia’s House of Representatives and Senate.

Trump has been systematically ensuring that the GOP delegate rules benefit him in the primaries. I’m not saying it’s cheating exactly. But he’s using every lever of his power to make sure nobody else can come even close to him. It’s shady to say the least: Massachusetts Republicans just handed Donald Trump another win in his quest to tilt state delegate-selection rules in his favor. Republican state committee members in this Super Tuesday state voted unanimously on Thursday night to pass a primary delegate plan that keeps a winner-take-all threshold likely to benefit Trump. “It’s obviously a good thing,” Tom Hodgson, a former county sheriff running Trump’s campaign in Massachusetts, said in an interview. Trump, he said, “is in a very good position” here. The vote on the delegate plan comes as Trump’s campaign has aggressively worked to overhaul state party rules to benefit the former president’s bid for the White House. Their behind-the-scenes work so far has paid off, with states across the country revising state delegate selection rules.

Defend science There was nobody to defend Galileo back in the day. There’s no excuse for that sort of thing now. Dr. Peter Hotez wrote this: Nearly a century ago, when global dominance in scientific research began shifting to the United States from Europe, our nation built an empire firmly grounded in the natural sciences. America’s research universities and institutes flourished and provided the discoveries leading to the Manhattan Project, Silicon Valley’s tech industry, NASA and space exploration, vaccines to fight polio and other global infections, and new treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes and depression. As a science envoy for the State Department, I saw first-hand how global leaders and technocrats admired the U.S. for its higher education system of scientific training and support. They spoke to me with pride about their time spent at U.S. universities or their hopes and aspirations that one day their sons and daughters might study here. I have devoted my life to vaccine science.

It’s unprecedented: His decision to stand alongside the striking workers represents perhaps the most significant display of union solidarity ever by a sitting president. Biden’s announcement comes a week after he expressed solidarity with the UAW and said he “understand[s] the workers’ frustration.” The announcement of his trip was seen as a seismic moment within certain segments of the labor community. “Pretty hard-core,” said one union adviser, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Biden had earlier attempted to send acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and senior adviser Gene Sperling, who has been the White House’s point person throughout the negotiations, to Detroit to assist with negotiations. However, the administration subsequently stood down following conversations with the union. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier Friday it was a “mutually agreed upon decision.” The president’s plans come as some Democrats have begun to question his response to the strike, recognizing that he needs the full backing of union workers in his presidential reelection bid.

African leaders and communities call for action to tackle the social and economic damage done by climate change. Warmer oceans lead to warmer conditions over land. UNESCO still looking for more government action to protect the Great Barrier Reef. African leaders call for phase down of coal In early September, leaders of African nations gathered Continue reading »

Strategic ambiguity is the greatest oral weapon of mass destruction that the Western world has ever invented. The Cambridge Dictionary defines “ambiguity” as “…the fact of something having more than one possible meaning and therefore possibly causing confusion…” The fact that the West’s strategic ambiguity has such a large following among its members is that, Continue reading »

The official position of the church on the Voice referendum is curious, because, despite overwhelming support for a YES vote from an extraordinary range of Catholic agencies, religious orders and congregations, and voluntary Catholic organisations, the highest national church authority, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, has not followed suit. This is surprising because the whole Continue reading »