These Disunited States, Con't

Montana GOP Gov. Greg Gianforte has decided that federal gun laws simply don't apply to the state, and is prohibiting enforcement of any federal firearms limiting regulation, because apparently Montana is no longer part of the United States.

Gov. Greg Gianforte on Friday signed a bill that prohibits state and local law enforcement in Montana from enforcing federal bans on firearms, ammunition and magazines.

Supporters of the law have said it would protect the Second Amendment from stiffer gun control laws that could come from federal legislation or executive orders by President Joe Biden in the wake of several mass shootings that took place this year, including a recent shooting that killed eight people in Indianapolis.

Opponents of the bill have said it would make it difficult for local law enforcement to collaborate with federal authorities on issues beyond gun access when such collaboration is essential to protect public safety, including in cases of domestic violence and drug offenses.

Montana law would prohibit law enforcement officials and other state employees from enforcing, implementing or spending state funds to uphold federal bans on particular kinds of firearms, ammunition and magazines.

Biden announced this month several executive actions to address gun violence, including a move to crack down on "ghost guns," homemade firearms that lack serial numbers used to trace them and are often purchased without a background check. The U.S. Justice Department is expected to release new rules on ghost guns in coming weeks.

The president has also called for a ban on assault weapons, but such legislation will likely face an uphill climb.

Montana is one of at least a dozen states that has sought to nullify new gun restrictions this year. The state's Republican-controlled Legislature has attempted to pass similar measures into law for almost a decade. Such bills were vetoed by former Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock in 2013, 2015 and 2017.

 

I mean at this point with firearms, abortion, and trans kids, Republicans just don't care to be part of the US anymore unless they are in charge. The thing is, we had this fight 155 years ago and they lost, but they never recognized that either.

 

I'd say that this will only end in violence, except we're already well into the violence part.

 

Turkish De-Fight

President Joe Biden is taking step to do what decades of American presidents before him refused to do: recognize that Turkey's Ottoman Emprie assault on Armenians a century ago was in fact, genocide.

The United States is formally recognizing that the systematic killing and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 20th century was “genocide” as President Joe Biden used that precise word that the White House has avoided for decades for fear of alienating ally Turkey.

With the acknowledgement, Biden followed through on a campaign promise he made a year ago Saturday — the annual commemoration of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day — to recognize that the events that began in 1915 were a deliberate effort to wipe out Armenians.

While previous presidents have offered somber reflections of the dark moment in history via remembrance day proclamations, they have studiously avoided using the term genocide out of concern that it would complicate relations with Turkey — a NATO ally and important power in the Middle East.

But Biden campaigned on a promise to make human rights a central guidepost of his foreign policy. He argued when making the campaign pledge last year that failing to call the atrocities against the Armenian people a genocide would pave the way for future mass atrocities. An estimated 2 million Armenians were deported and 1.5 million were killed in the events known as Metz Yeghern.

“The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,” Biden said in a statement. “We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated.”

Turkish officials immediately criticized Biden’s statement, while Armenians praised Biden for making what they said was a principled move.

“Recognition of the Armenian Genocide is important not only in terms of respecting the memory of 1.5 million innocent victims, but also in preventing the repetition of such crimes,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a letter to Biden.

“We reject and denounce in the strongest terms the statement of the President of the US regarding the events of 1915 made under the pressure of radical Armenian circles and anti-Turkey groups,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted that “words cannot change history or rewrite it,” and that Turkey “completely rejected” Biden’s statement.

Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin suggested on Twitter than Biden was repeating “the slander of groups whose only agenda is being hostile to our country.” He added: “We recommend that the U.S. President takes a look at his own history and today.”

During a telephone call Friday, Biden informed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of his plan to issue the statement, said a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. and Turkish governments, in separate statements following Biden and Erdogan’s call, made no mention of the American plan to recognize the Armenian genocide. But the White House said Biden told Erdogan he wants to improve the two countries’ relationship and find “effective management of disagreements.” The two also agreed to hold a bilateral meeting at the NATO summit in Brussels in June.

 

So Biden not only did the right thing here -- and I know it's easy to say "words don't matter in human rights, actions do" here and shit all over Biden -- but the point is the US has even refused the words step until now. Biden stood up when it counted.

 

And guess what? The realpolitik is that Turkey is a NATO ally and important Middle East player, and Biden and Erdogan are going to meet in six weeks or so. Still.

 

Biden so far this week has stood up to Putin's military exercises in Ukraine and Erdogan on Armenian genocide.

 

The guy's not Trump, that's for damned sure.

The Big Lie Forever

They can't go after Biden's birth certificate I guess, so we're stuck with state Republican parties constantly auditing Biden's wins in red states like Arizona forever and ever.

A Maricopa County judge on Friday temporarily halted a Republican-led effort in Arizona to recount ballots from the 2020 presidential election, after Democrats filed a lawsuit arguing that the audit violated state election security laws.

But the judge, Christopher Coury of Maricopa County Superior Court, said the pause would go into effect only if the state Democratic Party posted a $1 million bond to compensate a private company — Cyber Ninjas, a cybersecurity firm based in Florida — that Republicans have hired to review the ballots. In a statement on Friday afternoon, Democratic officials said they would not do so, but they vowed to continue the fight in court. 

Another hearing was set for Monday morning, and the judge emphasized that he expected the audit to move forward.Republican State Senate officials hired Cyber Ninjas to review nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa, the state’s largest county, though there is no substantiated evidence of significant fraud or errors. 

Election officials and local courts have found no merit in the allegations, and the Republican-controlled county board of supervisors has also objected to the recount.

The lawsuit, brought by the state Democratic Party and Maricopa County’s only Democratic supervisor, argues that the State Senate is violating Arizona laws and regulations over the confidentiality and handling of election materials, and questions whether Senate officials can contract audit-related activities to private third-party vendors.

 

And remember, Arizona Republican passed a law earlier this year to specifically make these garbage audits easier to conduct and impossible to fight.

The Arizona Senate passed a bill allowing the Arizona legislature to subpoena election records, which means they can now check tabulating equipment and ballots for any evidence of tampering.

Under this bill, county election equipment, records, systems and other information that are under control of the county personnel will no longer be considered confidential. The bill also opens these records for subpoena and the legislature has the right to conduct any investigation into these items without infringement from any law.

State Sen. Warren Petersen helped introduce the bill. The GOP has been trying to investigate any tampering during the 2020 presidential election and they targeted Maricopa County but the latter voted against any subpoenas. The Maricopa County Board of supervisors sought judgment from a court to clarify if they are mandated to release those records or not.

Senators from Arizona filed a countersuit asking the court to enforce their subpoenas and help release the records they are asking for. The court decided against it and dismissed the case.

The bill would give the state legislature the authority to issue subpoenas for election records and equipment.

 

They're doing it on purpose. The Big Lie is there to make it easier to steal the election next time.

Never forget that.

Last Call For No Good Republicans Left

I'm in complete agreement with Steve M. here. There are no good Republicans left, and it's years past the time that we need to accept that, but nobody cares, least of all our broken Village press.

Bush, Boehner, Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney still consider themselves Republicans in good standing. Donors who said they'd withhold money from pro-insurrection GOP officeholders are giving to those officeholders again, as Glasser notes.

No one ever asks Republican critics of the party how they can remain members in good conscience. We know the answer: It's because what's happening now is an evolution, not a break with the past. Boehner, Bush, and others engaged in or enabled right-wing radicalism until it went too far for them.

But if it really has gone too far and some of them think we're in a crisis, they have to make a clean break, or they're still enablers. The press has to ask every Republican who claims to be appalled by Trumpism and January 6: So shouldn't you quit the party? Do you see any evidence that the party will abandon the Big Lie of Democratic election theft, that it will abandon the extremism Trump embodied (but didn't create), that it will abandon nativism and white nationalism? And if you think you this is a temporary crisis, what are you doing to bring it to an end, and why isn't it working? Why does it seem to be getting worse?

But that won't happen. These people will still win praise from the mainstream media and from moderates (and some liberals) for, in effect, doing nothing. They'll never be questioned this way.

 

And the best part is if anyone in our press does ask the question, the answer will be "You should be asking after (Insert Democratic bogeyman of the moment here, which currently is Maxine Waters) why anyone can remain a Democrat in good conscience."  

 

The level of false equivalence to Trump inciting a seditionist white supremacist terrorist attack on the US Capitol with the intent of a coup is staggering, but will 100% play out as "both sides!" because that's how the game works. Village reporters get cut off otherwise, or worse, targeted as "FAKE NEWS" by the Trump cultists.

This gulf of false equivalencies has grown exponentially since the days of the Clintons. It's a no-win situation, and we're all losing as a result.

 

Vaccination Nation, Con't

Red states are starting to turn down more vaccine doses from the Biden administration, because they have no takers left. Nearly the half the country plans to remain unvaccinated, and that will make herd immunity impossible without hundreds of thousands more deaths.

Louisiana has stopped asking the federal government for its full allotment of COVID-19 vaccine. About three-quarters of Kansas counties have turned down new shipments of the vaccine at least once over the past month. And in Mississippi, officials asked the federal government to ship vials in smaller packages so they don’t go to waste.

As the supply of coronavirus vaccine doses in the U.S. outpaces demand, some places around the country are finding there’s such little interest in the shots, they need to turn down shipments.

“It is kind of stalling. Some people just don’t want it,” said Stacey Hileman, a nurse with the health department in rural Kansas’ Decatur County, where less than a third of the county’s 2,900 residents have received at least one vaccine dose.

The dwindling demand for vaccines illustrates the challenge that the U.S. faces in trying to conquer the pandemic while at the same time dealing with the optics of tens of thousands of doses sitting on shelves when countries like India and Brazil are in the midst of full-blown medical emergencies.

More than half of American adults have received at least one vaccine dose, and President Joe Biden this week celebrated eclipsing 200 million doses administered in his first 100 days in office. He also acknowledged entering a new phase to bolster outreach and overcome hesitancy.

Across the country, pharmacists and public health officials seeing the demand wane and supplies build up. About half of Iowa’s counties have stopped asking for new doses from the state, and Louisiana didn’t seek shipment of some vaccine doses over the past week.

In Mississippi, small-town pharmacist Robin Jackson has been practically begging anyone in the community to show up and get shots after she received her first shipment of vaccine earlier this month and demand was weak, despite placing yard signs outside her storefront celebrating the shipment’s arrival. She was wasting more vaccine than she was giving out and started coaxing family members into the pharmacy for shots.

“Nobody was coming,” she said. “And I mean no one.”

In Barber County, Kansas, which has turned down vaccine doses from the state for two of the past four weeks, Danielle Farr said she has no plans to be vaccinated. The 32-year-old said she got COVID-19 last year, along with her 5- and 12-year-old sons and her husband.

Blood tests detected antibodies for the virus in all four of them, so she figures they’re already protected.

“I believe in vaccines that have eradicated terrible diseases for the past 60, 70 years. I totally and fully believe in that,” said Farr, who works at an accounting firm. “Now a vaccine that was rushed in six, seven months, I’m just going to be a little bit more cautious about what I choose to put into my body.”

Barbara Gennaro, a stay-at-home mother of two small children in Yazoo City, Mississippi, said everybody in her homeschooling community is against getting the vaccine. Gennaro said she generally avoids vaccinations for her family in general, and the coronavirus vaccine is no different.

“All of the strong Christians that I associate with are against it,” she said. “Fear is what drives people to get the vaccine — plain and simple. The stronger someone’s trust is in the Lord, the least likely they are to want the vaccine or feel that it’s necessary.”

Another challenge for vaccinations in a rural state like Mississippi is that in many cases, doses are being shipped in large packages with one vial containing at least 10 doses.

During a news conference in early April, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said Mississippi officials have requested that the federal government send the vaccines in smaller packaging so it’s not going to waste.

“If you’re in New York City, and you’re sending a package to one of the large pharmacies in downtown Manhattan, there are literally millions and millions of people within walking distance most likely of that particular pharmacy,” Reeves said. “Well, if you’re in rural Itta Bena, Mississippi, that’s just not the case.”

 

Until we have the political will to make this mandatory, we've basically reached the end of the vaccine rollout phase here in the US. May will be cleanup and second shots for people getting the vaccine in April, but after that, by June 1, I expect we're going to be reaching a hard limit. Some 40%-50% of American adults will never take the vaccine unless forced, and frankly, that may be too many to force.

 

The rest of 2021 is not going to be a fun time.

Retribution Execution, Con't

In order for Donald Trump to continue his rule of the GOP, he has to not just stop the opposition to him among Republicans, has has to burn it to the ground and salt the ashes. The top targets are the handful of House Republicans who voted for his impeachment, apparently starting with Ohio GOP Rep. Anthony Gonzalez.

The crowd crammed into an indoor-outdoor bar at a sprawling mall in this teeming suburb south of Cleveland. The head of the local Republican club took to the mic on a small stage—and pledged vengeance.

“Sign the petition to ask Congressman Anthony Gonzalez to resign,” Shannon Burns said to a burst of cheers. “If you’re looking at your neighbor right now and saying, ‘What’s he talking about?’ … get with it!”

The second-term representative “betrayed his constituents,” in Burns’ assessment, when he voted in January with nine other House Republicans and every Democrat to impeach Donald Trump.

“He thinks a year from now when it’s election time for the primary you’re all going to forget and he’s going to get reelected,” Burns went on, eliciting snickers and jeers. “And I’m telling you right now: We’re going to make sure you don’t forget.”

In a normal political world and in a normal political time, a second-generation Cuban-American former NFL player from the Rust Belt with an MBA from Stanford would be considered practically by definition a rising GOP star. But Gonzalez’s impeachment decision made him a traitor in the eyes of the man who is manifestly the unofficial leader of the party. It’s the reason Trump wasted no time endorsing Max Miller—a former aide with next to no name ID plus an arrest record—to try to take out Gonzalez. And it’s why the 16th District of Ohio is now a singular early battlefield in the former president’s intensifying intraparty war.

“Anthony Gonzalez should not be representing the people of the 16th District because he does not represent their interest or their heart,” Trump said in a statement barely more than a month after he left office. “Max Miller has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”

A 32-year-old Cleveland native, Miller has been endorsed, too, by the Club for Growth, which commissioned a poll that suggests he has a wide lead at this early stage. “If the election was today, Anthony Gonzalez would lose,” Jim Renacci, the pre-Gonzalez Republican congressman here, told me last month. “He’s done,” said Harlan Hill, a Trump-aligned consultant who’s done work in the district. “Max is going to beat the hell out of Anthony.”

 

I'm actually looking forward to this fight on one level, but at this point it's clear that Gonzales is going to be obliterated. There's not going to be a lot of soul-searching either for Ohio Republicans, who are most likely going to eliminate three of the four remaining Democratic House members in the state through gerrymandering and the loss of a House seat through the Census.

By the time 2023 rolls around, Ohio will be as red as Indiana or Kentucky, and it will be as Trumpy. No dissent will be tolerated in red states.

It's not going to be a fun time around here.

Last Call For Eat The Rich, Con't

GOP (and more than a few Democratic) governors across the nation have declared restaurants and hotels open for business again, and want to get tourist and diner dollars back into the economy.  Only one problem: nobody wants to work for crap wages and COVID-19 for a tip.

"After a whole year of waiting, guests are clamoring to come back. And restaurants have invested in these expanded outdoor areas, and they need people right now," says Alice Cheng, founder of Culinary Agents, a hospitality job search site. "But they’re not finding them."

Charlotte, North Carolina restauranteur Jon Dressler remembers being short one part-time dishwasher before the pandemic, and now he's looking for four kitchen workers and 10 servers, Axios Charlotte's Katie Peralta Soloff reports.

As travel starts up again, advance vacation bookings are spiking on Martha's Vineyard, but restaurant and hotel owners are struggling to hire enough employees, per the Martha's Vineyard Times.

One McDonald's in Tampa Bay, Florida is offering applicants $50 just to show up for an interview, Business Insider reports. In fact, according to a recent survey of employers by Culinary Agents, the top reason roles aren't getting filled is no-shows at interviews.

What's happening: The hospitality industry was among the hardest hit during the pandemic, and that's making its recovery even tougher. "Everybody is reopening at the same time" and that means everybody is hiring at the same time, which makes it harder to find workers, says Cheng. 

On top of that, restaurant work — especially customer-facing roles like server and host — is still seen as hazardous. "Some people are still concerned about getting the virus at an in-person job," says Jed Kolko, chief economist at the jobs site Indeed. And many Americans who worked in hospitality have simply left the industry amid the pandemic. Anecdotally, there are plenty of servers and bartenders joining training programs to get new jobs in tech or finance. 

There's also a shortage of foreign workers, due to former President Donald Trump's ban on temporary foreign workers and pandemic travel restrictions. The Trump ban lapsed on March 31, but employers fear there's not enough time to fill jobs by the busy summer. Some employers are saying they can't compete with unemployment insurance checks and that workers would rather collect benefits than go back to work. But a 2020 study by Yale economists found that unemployment benefits don't create a disincentive for job seekers.

 

Only at the end do we arrive at the "free market" solution: A labor shortage means pay workers more.

Silver linings: Service employees have long been treated as disposable workers. Now, with restaurants desperate to hire, the power is finally in the hands of workers — and that's a good thing, Cheng says. Restaurants are already starting to offer referral and retention bonuses to attract talent. And workers can be pickier and seek out more pay or robust health benefits, she says.

What to watch: The latest COVID-19 relief package includes a $28.6 billion fund to help restaurants get back up and running. And congressional Democrats' proposed legislation to raise the federal minimum wage would also help restaurant workers by boosting the minimum tipped wage, which currently sits at $2.13 an hour, to $4.95 an hour.

 

Nobody wants to work bonkers hours for $2.13 an hour plus tips from maskless, grouchy wingnut Trump voters who are already terrible tippers. Trust me, I've been in food service and the wages haven't changed since I was slinging pizzas in college 25 years ago. No way I'd go back to it.

If these are "essential workers" then you'd better start paying them like it.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The message from police, from the right, and even from some Democrats is the same: Ma'Khia Bryant had a knife, and so she had to be executed.

 

An Ohio criminal-justice professor who studies the fatal use of force by law-enforcement officers didn't hesitate to render an opinion after watching body-camera video of a Columbus police officer fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl Tuesday afternoon on the city's Southeast Side.

"My first impression is that the officer was legally justified in using deadly force," said Philip Stinson, a Bowling Green State University professor who has compiled nationwide statistics on fatal shootings that have led to criminal charges against officers.

"It's a terribly tragic situation, and my heart goes out to the girl and her family and friends," he told The Dispatch Wednesday. "But from looking at the video, it appears to me that a reasonable police officer would have had a reasonable apprehension of an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death being imposed against an officer or someone else. That's the legal standard."

The body-camera video, which the city first showed during a news conference late Tuesday night, captured the perspective of Officer Nicholas Reardon, who shot Ma’Khia Bryant seconds after he arrived outside a home on the 3100 block of Legion Lane on a report of an attempted stabbing.

The video shows Bryant, who is holding a knife, push a female who is falling down backwards at the officer's feet, then turn and charge at another female dressed in a pink outfit. The female in pink is pinned against a car in the driveway while Bryant appears to swing the knife at her, prompting Reardon to fire what sounds like four shots.

James Scanlon, a retired Columbus Division of Police SWAT officer who spent 33 years with the division, has since trained officers, and served as an expert witness at trials in use-of-force cases, agreed with Stinson's assessment of the video.

"An officer is justified in using deadly force if his life or the life of someone else is at risk," Scanlon said Wednesday. "Few would argue that there weren't at least two lives there that were at serious risk."

In this case, Scanlon said, Reardon wasn't trying to protect himself, "but to save the life of someone he doesn't even know. ... It's a shame that no one has recognized that that officer, in all likelihood, saved one or more lives."

 

No attempt made to deescalate. Just summary execution of a 15-year -old Black girl.

Four bullets in the chest and dead.

 

Due process isn't for us, you see. We're not human. The penalty for having a knife and being Black is death, and then, later, America justifies it.

Just another dead Black girl.

 

But her life mattered.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

The Return Of Austerity Hysteria, Con't

 The national debt and debt ceiling are back, because they only matter if the President is a Democrat.

Senate Republicans on Wednesday signaled they might oppose any future increase to the debt ceiling unless Congress also couples it with comparable federal spending cuts, raising the specter of a political showdown between GOP leaders and the White House this summer.

Republican lawmakers staked their position after a private gathering to consider the conference’s operating rules this session, issuing what GOP leaders described later as an important yet symbolic statement in response to the large-scale spending increases proposed by President Biden in recent months.

“I think that is a step in the right direction in terms of reining in out-of-control spending,” Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) told reporters after the meeting.

The debt ceiling is the maximum amount the U.S. government is allowed borrow to meet its financial obligations. Congress previously agreed to suspend the limit through July 2021, at which point the Treasury Department has only a few months of “extraordinary measures” it can take before lawmakers must either raise the amount — or face the unprecedented consequences of default.

Republicans raised hardly any complaints about the debt ceiling during the Trump administration, voting frequently to increase it without requiring any spending cuts in return. Over that period, the federal debt increased by roughly $7 trillion as Trump pushed for large levels of military spending and slashed taxes for U.S. corporations.

But Republicans quickly revived their calls for austerity once Biden entered the White House, much as they had done in the past when Democrats took control in Washington. The spending concerns also contributed to GOP lawmakers’ unanimous opposition to Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan earlier this year, on top of the party’s more recent apprehension about the White House’s roughly $2 trillion stimulus package.

On Wednesday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) on Wednesday put forward the initial proposal targeting the debt ceiling, which his office described as an attempt to battle back Democrats who have sought to “spend recklessly, driving up inflation,” in recent months. It finds the conference should consider either budget cuts or “meaningful structural reform” to spending in exchange for the debt ceiling increase.

It is not clear how the policy might apply in the event Democrats seek to suspend the debt limit, rather than raise the amount. It also is not binding on the party, in keeping with the Republican conference’s other rules. Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.) later described it as “aspirational,” and Sen. Mike Rounds (S.D.) acknowledged that all of the resolutions party leaders considered Wednesday are “just resolutions,” adding: “The rules themselves are something we strive to follow.”

 

Republicans are betting that Democrats won't or can't use reconciliation on the debt ceiling bill this summer, and will be forced to come to the table and make trillions in immediate austerity cuts or face default, which would in fact crater the economy. Either way, Senate Republicans are hoping voters blame Biden and the Dems and give them the Senate back.

The solution of course is to scrap the filibuster and raise the debt ceiling, but that's not an option it seems thanks to Sinema and Manchin.

So we'll see.

Last Call For The Foxconn Flees The Chicken Coop

The biggest "deal" of Tangerine Tyrant's unfortunate era was the $10 billion Foxconn electronics plant in Wisconsin that was supposed to generate thousands of jobs, and prove that Republican economic policies were the key to American competitiveness in a global future. Instead, as I pointed out in October, the plant was all but abandoned before Trump lost the 2020 election, and now that Joe Biden is President, the massive tax boondoggle legacy of Gov. Scott Walker is a complete bust now, and Wisconsin taxpayers are stuck with billions in bills and a handful of jobs.

Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn is drastically scaling back a planned $10 billion factory in Wisconsin, confirming its retreat from a project that former U.S. President Donald Trump once called “the eighth wonder of the world.”

Under a deal with the state of Wisconsin announced on Tuesday, Foxconn will reduce its planned investment to $672 million from $10 billion and cut the number of new jobs to 1,454 from 13,000.

The Foxconn-Wisconsin deal was first announced to great fanfare at the White House in July 2017, with Trump boasting of it as an example of how his “America first” agenda could revive U.S. tech manufacturing.

For Foxconn, the investment promise was an opportunity for its charismatic founder and then-chairman, Terry Gou, to build goodwill at a moment when Trump’s trade policies threatened the company’s cash cow: building Apple Inc’s iPhones in China for export to America.

Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronic devices, proposed a 20-million-square-foot manufacturing campus in Wisconsin that would have been the largest investment in U.S. history for a new location by a foreign-based company.

It was supposed to build cutting-edge flat-panel display screens for TVs and other devices and instantly establish Wisconsin as a destination for tech firms.

But industry executives, including some at Foxconn, were highly skeptical of the plan from the start, pointing out that none of the crucial suppliers needed for flat-panel display production were located anywhere near Wisconsin.

The plan faced local opposition too, with critics denouncing a taxpayer giveaway to a foreign company and provisions of the deal that granted extensive water rights and allowed for the acquisition and demolition of houses through eminent domain.

As of 2019, the village where the plant is located had paid just over $152 million for 132 properties to make way for Foxconn, plus $7.9 million in relocation costs, according to village records obtained by Wisconsin Public Radio and analyzed by Wisconsin Watch.

Foxconn, formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, said the new agreement gives it “flexibility to pursue business opportunities in response to changing global market conditions.” The company said “original projections used during negotiations in 2017 have at this time changed due to unanticipated market fluctuations.”

After abandoning its plans for advanced displays, Foxconn later said it would build smaller, earlier-generation displays in Wisconsin, but that plan never came to fruition either.

Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, Foxconn Chairman Liu Young-way told reporters in Taipei that the company currently makes servers, communications technology products and medical devices in Wisconsin, adding that electric vehicles (EVs) have a “promising future” there. He did not elaborate.

Liu had previously said the infrastructure was there in Wisconsin to make EVs because of its proximity to the traditional heartland of U.S. automaking, but the company could also could decide on Mexico.

Hon Hai shares fell as much as 1.6% on Wednesday morning, underperforming the broader Taiwan market which was down 0.7%.

 

So the Foxconn failure will at most produce 10% of the promised jobs, and still end up costing the state billions in tax incentives.

Hoocoodanode?!?

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

As the verdict in the Derek Chauvin murder trial was being announced, another Black girl was being shot to death by police in Columbus.

In an unprecedented move, Columbus police showed body camera footage of the shooting of a 16-year-old girl by a Columbus police officer just hours after the incident on the Southeast Side.

The shooting, which happened about 20 minutes before a guilty verdict was announced in the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd, prompted hundreds to protest at the shooting site and Downtown.

Ma’Khia Bryant: What we know about the 16-year-old girl fatally shot by Columbus police

The video shows an officer approaching a driveway with a group of young people standing there. In the video, it appears that the 16-year-old, identified now as Ma’Khia Bryant, who was moments later shot by police, pushes or swings at a person, who falls to the ground.

Bryant then appears to swing a knife at a girl who is on the hood of a car, and the officer fires his weapon what sounds like four times, striking Bryant, who died a short time later.

"It's a tragic day in the city of Columbus. It's a horrible, heartbreaking situation," Mayor Andrew J. Ginther. "We felt transparency in sharing this footage, as incomplete as it is at this time" was critical.

 

Ma'Khia Bryant called the police for protection, because girls were fighting outside her house. When they showed up, the girls were still fighting, she got involved, and the police made no effort to deescalate the situation, they just put four bullets in her chest and executed her. 

The officers at the scene then chanted "Blue Lives Matter" as they walked away from the slaughter.

One guilty verdict won't change the system. It will take thousands of cops imprisoned for murder to do so. And that means thousands of more deaths like George Floyd and Ma'Khia Bryant before America does anything about it.

But Black Lives Still Matter.

 

Steny Hoyer Versus The Stupid

House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is finally laying down the law when it comes to dealing with endless House GOP sedition caucus idiocy.

 

House Democratic leaders believe they've found a workaround to defuse weeks of delay tactics used by hard-line Republicans that have irked lawmakers in both parties and brought much of the chamber's floor action to a halt. At least temporarily.

The conservative firebrands have sought to make life difficult for Democrats in protest against what they say are efforts to shut out the minority party. But their tactics have made it virtually impossible for Democrats and Republicans to fast-track so-called suspension bills — noncontroversial measures that are critical to running the House — and instead created a legislative slog.

Under the response shaped by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, leaders of the far-right Freedom Caucus would no longer be able to effectively seize control of the floor by demanding individual votes on dozens of suspension bills and forcing members to vote late into the night, at least for the rest of this week.

Instead, Hoyer plans to package much of that broadly palatable suspension legislation into a single block on the floor, which he said would “save us somewhere in the neighborhood of seven-and-a-half hours” of voting time.

“What we have seen in the past few weeks has been an unfortunate example of extreme partisanship getting in the way of even the most bipartisan legislation there is," Hoyer said in a statement, confirming POLITICO’s reporting on the planning.

In total, Hoyer said, the conservatives' tactics have cost at least 15 hours of votes on bills that otherwise could have been approved with little fanfare in a voice vote.

"There are Democrats and Republicans who want to get things done, and we will work around those who do not,” added House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern.

The Freedom Caucus has wrestled over how far to push its rebellion. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stopped by the group’s weekly meeting on Monday evening, where he encouraged members to fine-tune their strategy and focus on achievable goals. McCarthy also warned Freedom Caucus members that they could face potential consequences from Democratic leaders if they keep disrupting the floor.

One of the ultimate goals driving the Freedom Caucus' floor tactics is getting controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) back on her committees after a bipartisan vote to strip her of those assignments. But Democrats are ruling out that demand.

“I’ve been meeting with Steny and I went to the Freedom Caucus last night. We had a good discussion,” McCarthy told POLITICO in a brief interview. “They want to fight. They’re frustrated with everything that’s happening, and I get all that. But my point is: What’s the goal, what’s the strategy?”

 

Even Kevin McCarthy is tired of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her merry band of neo-Nazis. Hoyer reining them in gives McCarthy more juice too, so he'll play along.

Of course, the House GOP sedition caucus will only resort to more extreme measures in the future...

StupidiNews!

• Vice President Kamala Harris says that the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial was "but a piece" of the healing necessary to resolve "generations of trauma" suffered by Black America.
• After months of being declared free of the COVID-19 virus, a New Zealand airport worker has tested positive for the disease, prompting New Zealand to reconsider opening its air borders.
• Chad President Idriss Deby was killed on the front lines in the country's battle with Islamist militants, after 30 years of rule, Deby's son Mahamat Kaka has been named interim president.
• House Democrats in New York and New Jersey could sink President Biden's infrastructure bill if the legislation doesn't include a repeal of the Trump-era SALT cap on state tax deductions.
• Apple is allowing social platform Parler back into the App Store after the network known for white supremacist Trump supporters agreed to new moderation standards.
  

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The jury in the trial of the former police officer who killed George Floyd came to a verdict on all three counts in roughly 24 hours, and Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three.

Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin has been convicted on all charges by a jury in the Hennepin County court.

The 12 jurors found him guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in George Floyd's death in May 2020.

The maximum sentence for second-degree unintentional murder is imprisonment of not more than 40 years. The maximum sentence for third-degree murder is imprisonment of not more than 25 years. The maximum sentence for second-degree manslaughter is 10 years and/or $20,000.

 

Chauvin was handcuffed and remanded into custody.

Like the convicted murderer he is. 

Black Lives Still Matter.

25,000 Posts And Counting

The Big Blogger Machine here informs me that this this Post number #25000 on ZVTS, and again I wanted to say that none of this would be possible without the readers and commenters that interact with the blog daily.

 

Thanks again for keeping me motivated and shouting into the abyss. It needs to be shouted at.