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Back in the day, presidential campaigns started on Labor Day — in the election year! And it wasn’t that long ago. I remember George Bush Sr saying, “I’ll get into on labor day” when asked when he was going to hit the trail in 1988. Sure, you have the conventions in the summer but the barnstorming and advertising didn’t really kick in until then. I’m not nostalgic about much but that’s one thing that was better in the good old days. The permanent campaign is exhausting. Well, it looks as though Joe Biden is keeping with the tradition, sort of. he appears to have kicked off his presidential campaign in earnest today. He went after Trump directly: Maybe it’s just that everyone has accepted the fact that barring some unusual circumstance that knocks him out, Trump is the nominee and he has a record that needs to be attacked since he’s been out there saying his term was heaven on earth and people are starting to believe it. Good. As much as I wish we could ignore all this for a while, it’s time to engage and engage seriously.

Outside the California State Capitol last month, a fitness trainer turned school board president fired up the crowd at a parental rights rally, telling them they were all fighters in “a spiritual battle” for their kids and must answer the call from God. Sonja Shaw, who was elected to the Chino Valley Unified School District board of education last November with an assist from a local megachurch and its Christian nationalist pastor, didn’t equivocate in naming the enemy: state Democratic officials who are challenging her right-leaning policies—and drafting laws that hinder book bans and protect teachers from harassment. “Today we stand here and declare in his almighty name that it’s only a matter of time before we take your seats and we be a God-fearing example to the nation, how God is using California to lead the way,” Shaw crowed, adding, “We already know who has won this battle. You will be removed in Jesus’s name!

Nowadays there is almost no place whatsoever in economics education for courses in the history of economic thought and economic methodology. The standard view among mainstream economists is that students shouldn’t think about what they are doing, but just do it. This is deeply worrying. A science that doesn’t self-reflect and asks important methodological and […]

On this Labor day it seems like a good time to discuss what labor in general and unions in specific have to look forward to.

There’s been some very good labor news recently, for example, the UPS strike:

UPS Teamsters have won their biggest wage boost in decades: at least $7.50 an hour over five years for every current UPSer, and more for the lowest-paid. Even the 1997 strike only boosted part-time wages 50 cents (equivalent to 95 cents today) over five years.

The agreement would also end the forced sixth workday for drivers, create seventy-five hundred new full-time inside jobs, and eliminate the second tier of drivers — reversing the infamous concession in the 2018 contract.

Why are adverts so loud?

Nor their cultural blemishes Predictions of calamity always attend change, be it cultural, economic or political. Preachers love to associate natural catastrophes with God’s judgement against unbelievers (until the storms and floods strike their own communities). Somehow, change always seems to bring out the doomsayer in us. So, it’s interesting that as church attendance declines, former churchgoers still maintain their sense of morality despite theocrats’ claims that that’s not possible. Daniel K. Williams writes in The Atlantic that, if nothing else, people shedding their churchgoing identities does not means losing their moral and political ones: So, as church attendance declines even in the southern Bible Belt and the rural Midwest, history might seem to suggest that those regions will become more secular, more supportive of abortion and LGBTQ rights, and more liberal in their voting patterns. But that is not what is happening. Declines in church attendance have made the rural Republican regions of the country even more Republican and—perhaps most surprising—more stridently Christian nationalist.

“There are a small number of people who believe that Covid is no big deal anymore. That’s wrong," Doctors in Unite Covid lead Dr Jonathan Fluxman tells Byline Times

Under new age verification rules in the UK’s massive Online Safety Bill, all internet platforms with UK users will have to stop minors from accessing ‘harmful’ content, as defined by the UK Parliament. This will affect adult websites, but also user-to-user services – basically any site, platform, or app that allows user-generated content that could […]

“The user is never wrong” means, when a user snags on a part of your UX that doesn’t work for her, she’s not making a mistake, she’s doing you a favor. To benefit from this favor, you must pay vigilant attention, prioritize the discovery, dig deeply enough to understand the problem, and then actually solve […]

The post A faster horse appeared first on Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design.

Of loss and Labor day and cultural shifts On Labor Day 2023, I’m thinking about the town of Canton, NC, just west of here. Their 100-plus year-old paper mill abruptly closed this year throwing over 1,000 workers out of their jobs. The mill was the town’s life’s blood. Now it’s gone. The city obtained the shift whistle from the mill as a reminder of the sounds that marked the days there for decades. People gathered downtown earlier this year to shed tears as the whistle blew for the last time. “This is not just 1,300 jobs; this is our blue-collar identity,” said Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers. Gov. Roy Cooper has pledged millions in support for the region’s displaced workers. Canton was also one of the few outposts of labor unions in the region. In March, Smathers told the Carolina Journal: “We’ve had a death in the family,” he said. “I had a mill worker tell me that. That’s exactly what it is and exactly what it feels like. Like a death, you just experience the numbness and shock of a sudden loss and that’s what happened out of the blue. I had to call the governor’s office and let them know.

Stand up for truth. Stand up against war. Today, we invite you to join us in empowering MintPress News, the vanguard of fearless investigative journalism that unearths the hidden web of the military industrial complex.

The post MintPress News Is Being Targeted: Join Us in Standing up to the War Machine appeared first on MintPress News.

At the start of the year, the Prime Minister set out his five key priorities for 2023 as he sought to steady a sinking Tory ship. One key pledge was to bring down NHS waiting lists. ‘Judge us on the effort we put in and the results we achieve,’ said a self-assured Sunak.  Eight months […]

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Doctor Who, AEW All Out, WandaVision/Elizabeth Olsen, Rick and Morty, CM Punk, Daredevil/Punisher, and more!

Novels, nonfiction, podcasts, and more, recommended by Intercept staffers.

The post What We’re Reading and Streaming appeared first on The Intercept.

Russell T. Davies has a new Doctor Who character coming up who is a nod to an influential EastEnders character. Maybe... same universe?

David Sirota speaks with the economist who first was among the first to call out the link between inflation and corporate profiteering.

The heavily-publicised protests were not quite the grassroots movement the right-wing press made them out to be

Federal Prison Industries dangles the promise of workforce readiness as it exploits incarcerated workers like me.

The post I Worked in Federal Prison Sweatshops for 23 Cents an Hour appeared first on The Intercept.

Our thoughts on Doom's Day, an ambitious, elaborate, Sooz Kempner-starring multimedia event celebrating the Doctor Who 60th anniversary.

Gunaikurnai and Wotjobaluk writer Ben Abbatangelo spoke to Solidarity on the Voice to Parliament.

The post Ben Abbatangelo: Labor promotes the Voice but ignores Indigenous demands on housing, poverty, imprisonment first appeared on Solidarity Online.