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And yet most voters say they think that corrupt, orange, imbecile, con artist is the better choice to run it If that freak wins I don’t want to hear another word about economic determinism, “deliverism” or “fundamentals.” It will have been proven to be utter nonsense.
It’s true: In 1980, under pressure to begin construction on what would become his signature project, Donald J. Trump employed a crew of 200 undocumented Polish workers who worked in 12-hour shifts, without gloves, hard hats or masks, to demolish the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue, where the 58-story, golden-hued Trump Tower now stands. The workers were paid as little as $4 an hour for their dangerous labor, less than half the union wage, if they got paid at all. Their treatment led to years of litigation over Mr. Trump’s labor practices, and in 1998, despite frequent claims that he never settles lawsuits, Mr. Trump quietly reached an agreement to end a class-action suit over the Bonwit Teller demolition in which he was a defendant. For almost 20 years, the terms of that settlement have remained a secret. But last week, the settlement documents were unsealed by Loretta A. Preska, a United States District Court judge for the Southern District, in response to a 2016 motion filed by Time Inc. and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The divestment campaigns launched last spring by students protesting Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza brought the issue of the militarization of American higher education back into the spotlight. Of course, financial ties between the Pentagon and American universities are nothing new. As Stuart Leslie has pointed out in his seminal book on the topic, The Cold War and American Science, “In the decade following World War II, the Department of Defense (DOD) became the biggest patron of American science.” Admittedly, as civilian institutions like the National Institutes of Health grew larger, the Pentagon’s share of federal research and development did decline, but it still remained a source of billions of dollars in funding for university research. And now, Pentagon-funded research... Read more
I don’t know if this guy is on the level but if so, this is pretty damning: Kyle Rittenhouse’s former bodyguard and spokesperson feels the 17-year-old might never have been acquitted of killing two people and seriously injuring another if the jury knew then what he knows now. “When the world finds out everything that happened in this case and with Kyle, it’ll be shocking. It’s breathtaking,” Dave Hancock said in an interview for a documentary that sheds new light on what happened that fateful night in August 2020, on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Hancock said that he learned during the trial that Rittenhouse had allegedly used racial slurs in messages sent to his friends and appeared to be looking for an opportunity to use a weapon. “There was a history of things he was doing prior to Kenosha, specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a gunfight,” Hancock claimed. “I believed things he told me that I now understand to be one of his many lies. And that hurts.
The man who runs our judicial system has devised yet another depraved plot to destroy the planet: A rightwing organization is attacking efforts to educate judges about the climate crisis. The group appears to be connected to Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightwing takeover of the American judiciary who helped select Trump’s supreme court nominees, the Guardian has learned. The Washington DC-based non-profit Environmental Law Institute (Eli)’s Climate Judiciary Project holds seminars for lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. It aims to “provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation”, according to Eli’s website. The American Energy Institute (AEI), a rightwing, pro-fossil fuel thinktank, has been attacking Eli and their climate trainings in recent months. In August, the organization published a report saying Eli was “corruptly influencing the courts and destroying the rule of law to promote questionable climate science”.
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 29 2024
by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America — EXCERPTS
Mehrsa Baradaran (New York, W.W. Norton, 2024)
Introduction
I heard from Tom Sullivan and it is a real mess in Asheville, NC. No power, lines for water, grocery stores all closed. I thought I’d put up some links to places to donate if you are of a mind to help out: The full picture of devastation is emerging from Hurricane Helene’s disastrous path through Western North Carolina. Homes, businesses, roads, infrastructure, cell towers, and anything else in Helene’s path were washed away or severely damaged by raging flood waters and strong winds. For so many of the nearly 1 million residents in Western North Carolina’s beautiful mountains, the recovery process has barely begun. Neighbors are trying to help one another and relief programs, both national and local, are mobilizing. To assist the public in looking for ways to contribute, volunteer, or donate, BPR has compiled the list of resources below. We’ll keep this updated. For local listeners and readers, the BPR News team has worked nearly around the clock since the start of the storm to provide critical information and updates. More information specific to local resources (such as shelters and supplies) is available on our website.
JD Vance is on quite the weirdo extremist tour right now. I honestly won’t be surprised to see him appear before a legit Nazi rally replete with swastikas at this point JD Vance will speak at an event on Saturday hosted by the self-styled prophet and political extremist Lance Wallnau, who has claimed Kamala Harris practices witchcraft and has written that the US is headed toward bloody internal conflict. The campaign announced earlier this week that the Republican vice-presidential candidate will participate in a “town hall” as part of the Courage tour, a traveling pro-Trump tent revival, during a stop in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Wallnau, who hosts the tour and broadcasts its speakers on his online show – drawing hundreds in-person and sometimes tens of thousands virtually – is a proponent of the “seven mountains” mandate, which commands Christians to seek leadership in seven key areas of society – the church, the education system, the family, the media, the arts, business and government.
The New Yorker endorsement of Harris is really great. Read it if you can. They lay out the full indictment of Trump and the full case for Harris. This is the conclusion: Four years ago, in our endorsement of Joe Biden, we said that, while he was leading in the polls, we hoped he would displace Trump “by a margin that prevents prolonged dispute or the kind of civil unrest that Trump appears to relish.” We know what happened: the margins, in four decisive states, were extremely narrow, and Trump refused to concede. Instead, he levelled wild accusations and filed dozens of lawsuits. When those failed, he called on his MAGA believers to march on the Capitol. This time around, the Trump campaign and various right-wing groups have already deployed deny-the-vote efforts around the country, particularly in swing states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona. There is every likelihood that, if Trump loses, the drama could go on for weeks or months after Election Day. He has made no secret of the fact that he is willing to use every lever, deploy every dirty trick, political and rhetorical, to bring the country to the brink once more.
You’re going to be hearing a lot about this from Trump and his minions. They’ll be lying through their teeth, of course: Former President Donald Trump is wildly distorting new statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump falsely claimed Friday and Saturday that the statistics are specifically about criminal offenders who entered the US during the Biden-Harris administration; in reality, the figures are about offenders who entered the US over multiple decades, including during the Trump administration. And Trump falsely claimed that the statistics are specifically about people who are now living freely in the US; the figures actually include people who are currently in jails and prisons serving criminal sentences. “Kamala should immediately cancel her News Conference because it was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during her three and a half year period as Border Czar,” Trump wrote in one post on Friday, the day Harris visited the southern border in Arizona.
Wall Street wants to regulate itself, and more from The Lever this week.
Sharing Kushner’s tweet in full because it has to be seen in toto to be believed and it’s important to remember he will no doubt once again be the architect of Trump’s ME policy should Trump retake office.
And also because of this observation from Mohammad Alsaafin of AJ+:
It’s darkly funny that every stupid thing Kushner is saying here reflects the actual strategy and position of the Biden administration.
Ok, here’s Kushner’s victory lap:
Citizens’ assemblies are a hot topic these days in democratic theory. Hélène Landemore gave her Tanner Lecture at University of Michigan last semester, describing her experience on the governance committee of the French Citizens’ Convention on the End of Life. Her account of how ordinary citizens could not only deliberate seriously about a contentious issue, […]
I thought I’d paw through the “sci-fi” section of my collection and share 25 of my favorites. Keep in mind that these are personal favorites; I was careful not to title the post “Top 25 Sci-fi Movies of All Time” (there is no more surefire way to spark a virtual bare-knuckled fracas). Anyway, here are 25 off-world adventures awaiting you now… Alien – Ridley Scott’s first (and best) entry in what has become a never-ending (albeit lucrative) franchise is the least bombastic and most character-driven of the series. This 1979 sci-fi thriller concerns the workaday crew of a space merchant vessel who are forced to deal with the, erm, complications that ensue after the discovery of an otherworldly stowaway on board. It’s a taut, nail-biting affair from start to finish, with outstanding production design. A top-notch cast helps: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerrit, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Veronica Cartwright, and Harry Dean Stanton.
Trump is getting angrier and angrier on the stump (in addition to his depraved lies and idiocy.) Lindbergh landed in Paris. But Donald Trump is historically illiterate so he doesn’t know that. But then he thinks his followers are idiots too: And no there are not 50,000 outside and they aren’t inside because Harris won’t give them protection. Trump’s a billionaire. Why doesn’t he hire thousands of bodyguards to protect him? And WTF is this? I guess this is supposed to be funny? And then there’s this: He’s one rally away from calling Harris a dumb bitch in public: This is just creepy: He’s very, very pissed. Why???
Peter Wehner at The Atlantic (gift link) gives the full rundown on North Carolina Governor Mark Robinson and it’s just so … much. As he points out, most of this was known before he became Lt Gov., so apparently the Republicans of North Carolina think it’s all just fine: Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, has described himself as a “devout Christian.” But a recent CNN story reported that several years ago, he was a porn-site user who enjoyed watching transgender pornography (despite a history of an anti-transgender rhetoric), referred to himself as a “Black Nazi,” and supported the return of slavery. According to CNN, commenters on the website discussed whether to believe the story of a woman who said she was raped by her taxi driver while intoxicated. Robinson wrote in response, “And the moral of this story….. Don’t f**k a white b*tch!” Politico reports that Robinson’s email address was also registered on Ashley Madison, a website for married people seeking affairs.
Tom lives in Asheville, North Carolina which is currently under water from Hurricane Helene. He told me yesterday that he didn’t have power or wifi and cell service was spotty so I assume that he will be out of commission for a while. Keep a good thought for him and his neighbors. Asheville is a lovely city full of very cool people. This is a major disaster and it’s going to take a huge effort to recover.
I’m sure Tucker thinks he’s being funny. But I would guess that a good number of his audience, people who look up to him, think he’s endorsing this lunacy. Why else would he have her on his roadshow? The Washington Post reported on the spectacle: If you think Tucker Carlson’s political relevance has slipped since he was booted from Fox News last spring, then listen to the people who have lined up to see his live shows this month. Ask those in Phoenix who braved 108 degrees to see him banter with Russell Brand,the comic actor turned podcaster who says he’s found Jesus. Or the people in Hershey, Pa., who got drenched by rain whilewaiting to get into Carlson’s event with vice-presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio). If anything, they say, Tucker has gotten stronger now that he’s on his own, loosed from the strictures (and paycheck) of corporate media and now sovereign of his own digital channel.
Nasrallah is dead, assassinated by the Israelis.