The Brown And The Union Crown

The Teamsters Union, representing hundreds of thousands of UPS workers, has reached a tentative five-year deal with the logistics carrier and for now has averted an economy-crippling strike.

United Parcel Service announced Tuesday that it had reached a tentative deal on a five-year contract with the union representing more than 325,000 of its U.S. workers, a key step in averting a potential strike.

The union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, reported in June that its UPS members had voted to authorize a walkout after the expiration of the current agreement on Aug. 1, with 97 percent of those who took part in the vote endorsing the move.

UPS handles about one-quarter of the tens of millions of packages that are shipped daily in the United States, and the strike prospect has threatened to dent economic activity, particularly the e-commerce industry.

Representatives from more than 150 Teamster locals will meet on Monday to review the agreement, and rank-and-file members will vote on it from Aug. 3 to Aug. 22, according to the union.

Negotiations had broken down in early July, largely over the issue of part-time pay, before resuming Tuesday morning.

“We demanded the best contract in the history of UPS, and we got it,” the Teamsters president, Sean M. O’Brien, said in a statement. “UPS has put $30 billion in new money on the table as a direct result of these negotiations.”

The company said it could not comment on the dollar value of the deal ahead of its second-quarter earnings call in early August.

The Teamsters said that under the tentative agreement, current full- and part-time UPS employees represented by the union would receive a $2.75-an-hour raise this year, and $7.50 an hour in raises over the course of the contract.

The minimum pay for part-timers will rise to $21 an hour — far above the current minimum starting pay of $16.20 — and the top rate for full-time delivery drivers will rise to $49 an hour. Full-time drivers currently make $42 an hour on average after four years.

The company has also pledged to create 7,500 new full-time union jobs and to fill 22,500 open positions, for which part-time workers will be eligible. The company has said that part-time workers are essential to navigating bursts of activity over the course of a day and during busy months, and that many part-timers graduate to full-time jobs.

“Together we reached a win-win-win agreement on the issues that are important to Teamsters leadership, our employees and to UPS and our customers,” Carol Tomé, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “This agreement continues to reward UPS’s full- and part-time employees with industry-leading pay and benefits while retaining the flexibility we need to stay competitive.”

The union had cited the company’s strong pandemic-era performance, with net adjusted income up more than 70 percent last year from 2019, as a reason that workers deserved substantial raises.

It had especially emphasized the need to improve pay for part-timers, who account for more than half the U.S. employees represented by the Teamsters, and who the union said earn “near-minimum wage” in many areas.

The path to the agreement appeared to be paved weeks ago after the two sides resolved what was arguably their most contentious issue, a new class of worker created under the previous contract.

We'll of course see if the rank and file UPS employees sign on to the deal. It looks like a pretty good one. I know being a driver is a hard job. I applied for it some 20 years ago and they told me no.

 

Good for the drivers. I wish we all had a union 300,000 strong.

Last Call For An Education In Fascism

If you want to know what fascism in America looks like, visit a red state public university's purge of faculty over thought crimes.

 

Joy Alonzo, a respected opioid expert, was in a panic.

The Texas A&M University professor had just returned home from giving a routine lecture on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch when she learned a student had accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during the talk.

In the few hours it took to drive from Galveston, the complaint had made its way to her supervisors, and Alonzo’s job was suddenly at risk.

“I am in a ton of trouble. Please call me!” she wrote to Chandler Self, the UTMB professor who invited her to speak.

Alonzo was right to be afraid. Not only were her supervisors involved, but so was Chancellor John Sharp, a former state comptroller who now holds the highest-ranking position in the Texas A&M University System, which includes 11 public universities and 153,000 students. And Sharp was communicating directly with the lieutenant governor’s office about the incident, promising swift action.

Less than two hours after the lecture ended, Patrick’s chief of staff had sent Sharp a link to Alonzo’s professional bio.

Shortly after, Sharp sent a text directly to the lieutenant governor: “Joy Alonzo has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation re firing her. shud [sic] be finished by end of week.”

The text message was signed “jsharp.”

 

Now, Joy Alonzo got to keep her job after the school's investigation found that she did nothing wrong, but the bigger issue is that what college students are being taught is that learning something that they don't agree with is wrong, being exposed to those ideas is actually making them victims, and that they have the power to remove that thought from the school so that they never have to deal with it.

 

They will expect to be able to do that going forward in life. The removal of people unlike them, not the thinking part, that is.

 

In the America that Republicans are setting up, where everything is a culture war battle and fighting that battle so that your side is the only one left standing in the battle of "ideas", that will be the new norm. 

Welcome to the GOP "education initiative".

Where On Earth Is Qin Gang?

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang has been AWOL for the last month or so, and now he's officially been replaced in the post by his predecessor, Wang Yi.

 

China’s foreign minister Qin Gang was dramatically ousted on Tuesday after a prolonged absence from public view and replaced by his predecessor in a surprising and highly unusual shake-up of the country’s foreign policy leadership.

The sudden move, approved by the top decision-making body of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, comes as mystery has swirled around the fate of Qin, who has not been seen in public for a month.

Qin, 57, a career diplomat and trusted aide of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, had only been appointed foreign minister in December after serving as China’s ambassador to Washington.

No reason has yet been given for Qin’s departure but his predecessor Wang Yi will now step back into the role, authorities confirmed.

Wang, who was foreign minister from 2013 to 2022, now serves as director of the foreign affairs arm of the ruling Communist Party, a position which makes him China’s top diplomat.

The appointment of the new foreign minister occurred during a meeting of the China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee meeting on Tuesday. The meeting was abruptly announced on Monday in a deviation from usual precedent.

The sudden move comes in the middle of a busy and important diplomatic period for China following its emergence from its pandemic isolation earlier this year and as Beijing tries to mend strained relationships with international partners.

The high-profile diplomat has not been seen in public since June 25, after he met with officials from Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Russia in Beijing.

In his last public appearance, a smiling Qin was seen walking side by side with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko, who flew to Beijing to meet with Chinese officials after a short-lived insurrection by the Wagner mercenary group in Russia.

 

That last paragraph is the real story, "Chinese Foreign Minister Goes Missing After Meeting With Russians." Whatever Qin's fate actually was, the Chinese aren't saying and neither are the Russians.

Just another reminder that for all the fiction about BRICS taking over as the new economic and military supergroup, the reality is that both China and Russia are in economic tatters right now, and the rest of BRICS is in even worse shape.

That of course includes their diplomatic corps.

The House GOP Circus Of The Damned, Con't

House GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy has to get the Village from Trump's growing list of criminal indictments by impeaching Joe Biden, no matter what it takes.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that he expects the House GOP’s investigations into the foreign business activities of President Biden’s family to rise to the level of an impeachment inquiry

“When Biden was running for office, he told the public he has never talked about business. He said his family has never received a dollar from China, which we prove is not true,” McCarthy told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, referencing Biden’s previous statements that he did not talk to his son Hunter Biden about his foreign business activities.

McCarthy also mentioned two IRS whistleblowers who alleged that prosecutors slow-walked an investigation into Hunter Biden tax crimes, and House GOP investigations finding that millions of foreign funds traveled through shell companies to Biden family members and associates.

“We’ve only followed where the information has taken us. But Hannity, this is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed,” McCarthy told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night.

“Because this president has also used something we have not seen since Richard Nixon: Use the weaponization of government to benefit his family and deny Congress the ability to have the oversight,” McCarthy said.

There's enough projection, gaslighting, and historical revanchism there to make me wonder if McCarthy is writing terrible steampunk-era America fiction the way Newt Gingrich has. Seriously, has anyone actually heard of Donald Trump? Does McCarthy carry a grounded lightning rod with him at all times to prevent getting struck by a bolt every time he says crap like this?

Christ on a triscuit.

Last Call For The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

One of the actually correct, legal, and constitutional Supreme Court decisions handed down last month was the determination that Alabama's gerrymander was so racist that it actually violated the Voting Rights Act that Chief Justice Roberts has spent more than a decade gutting. Alabama Republicans of course don't give a damn, and are simply submitting a 99% as racist gerrymander eliminating Black voting power in the state and daring anyone to do anything about it.

 

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, seemed to defend the legislature’s insolence in the face of the federal courts’ orders when it approved the new map Friday.

“The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups,” she said in a statement.

CNN’s Dianne Gallagher noted in her report that the old congressional map was invalidated by a three-judge federal district court panel that included two judges nominated to the bench by former President Donald Trump.

They concluded the plan by which Alabamians selected their congressional delegation in 2022 likely violated the Voting Rights Act because Black voters have “less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress.”

Before the 2022 midterm election, the US Supreme Court had tabled action on Alabama’s map, which helped Republicans win the barely there four-seat House majority they currently hold.

Gallagher and CNN’s Tierney Sneed wrote last month that the Allen v. Milligan decision could have consequences for other states and reignite a series of lawsuits in multiple states.

“Outright defiance of the Supreme Court’s order,” is how Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, described the new map to CNN’s Dana Bash Monday.

In this moment, it is up to our federal courts to protect Black voters and also to protect their own authority here,” she later added.

The background here is that Alabama’s population is about 27% Black, but the Black population in the state is focused on a number of counties that are overwhelmingly African American – an area known as the state’s Black Belt, although it is named for the area’s fertile soil. The interest of giving the voters of the Black Belt, many of whom are Black, representation in Congress, is all over the Supreme Court’s decision.

Coincidentally, earlier this year, President Joe Biden named Alabama’s Black Belt, site of many key moments in the Civil Rights Movement, as a National Heritage Area.

o Nelson, the math suggests that since Black Alabamians represent about a quarter of the state’s population, they should get representation from more than one of the seven lawmakers representing Alabama in Congress.

But the issue is larger than simple math since Alabama, both historically and currently, is marked by polarized voting conditions.

“This is a mandate by civil rights laws to make sure that there’s fairness in our systems, that Black voters and other voters who have been historically discriminated against have an opportunity to have representatives who will speak to their interests and give voice to their concerns,” she said.

 

Alabama's solution is a near majority Black congressional district that Republicans will win by just 20 points instead of 40. The state will still have six Republicans in the US House and one Democrat, but of course now it's more fair! 

Like Ohio Republicans, who ran out the clock on gerrymandering until a federal judge ordered the state to allow voting with districts that are unconstitutional under state law, Alabama will just do the same. Republicans don't care. They will control the state forever and will change the rules to assure they always will.

No matter how many Black voters they have to permanently disenfranchise.

 

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Beshear Audacity Of It All

Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear continues to be broadly popular in 2023 heading into his reelection race against GOP Attorney General Daniel Cameron later this year. 

 

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear — a Democrat running for re-election this year in a deep-red state — remains among America’s most popular governors ahead of the November contest. His approval rating among GOP voters is stronger than any other Democratic governor, resisting drag from President Joe Biden’s poor standing in the Bluegrass State and setting up a formidable challenge for Republicans hoping to unseat him.

The other incumbent governor up for re-election this fall, Republican Tate Reeves of Mississippi, is among the country’s least popular, according to our latest quarterly data. His state’s partisan bent and the power of incumbency are likely to be enough to push him across the finish line in November, though strengthened antipathy from the state’s large share of Black voters could make him sweat.

A strong 64% majority of Kentucky voters approve of Beshear’s job performance, while 32% disapprove, according to our second quarter surveys conducted April 1-June 30. This marks Beshear’s highest approval rating since Biden took office in January 2021.

Along with receiving solid marks from Kentucky Democrats and independents, Beshear wins approval from roughly half of the state’s Republicans, making him the country’s most popular Democratic governor with GOP voters.

Even with his father’s esteemed name in state politics, Beshear’s current standing is remarkable given Kentucky’s partisan bent. While he defeated Republican Gov. Matt Bevin in 2019 by a razor-thin margin due largely to the incumbent’s deep unpopularity, Trump would go on to win the state by 26 percentage points in 2020.

Despite that wide presidential margin, Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball have rated the race as leaning Democratic, with Cook citing Beshear’s approval rating in Morning Consult surveys, buoyed by his handling of natural disasters and Kentucky’s economic performance. (Another race-rater, Inside Elections, currently sees the contest as a toss-up.)

Beshear is entering the heat of the campaign with strong popularity despite voters’ deep dislike of Biden in his state. Kentucky voters are 37 points more likely to disapprove than approve of Biden’s job performance (30% to 67%). But to Beshear’s credit, even those who dislike the president more often than not give the governor positive marks.

 

Cameron keeps attacking Beshear as a liberal, but even half of Republicans here say he's doing a good job. We'll see what polling looks like after Labor Day, but Beshear has a really good shot.

Trump Cards, Con't

Congrats to Team WIN THE MORNING who have finally figured out what any ZVTS reader could have told you a decade ago: the only thing that matters to Republican voters is owning the libs.

 

The mesh trucker hats, “Bud Right” koozies and “Abolish the FBI” yard signs Republican presidential candidates are feverishly hawking are, on the surface, all about amassing enough small-dollar donors to qualify for the first debate.

But there’s something else revealing about the candidates’ emporiums of red meat. In the modern GOP, owning the libs is what sells.

“Forty years ago, it would’ve been ‘Free Ukraine,’ next to Reagan’s picture,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist. “Freedom and liberty for all is not … the incentive structure in our politics, unfortunately.”

In the merchandising arms race of today, it’s not the economy, stupid. It’s Ron DeSantis’ $37.47 “Build the Wall” trucker hat, Nikki Haley’s “Strong & Proud, Not Weak & Woke” t-shirt or a Perry Johnson “I identify as non-Bidenary” sticker.

Once the “party of new ideas,” the culture wars are the new platform, not simply a plank.

“We’re kind of anti-woke,” said Johnson, the businessperson and longshot presidential contender from Michigan who is selling a mug with the promise to “keep kids off socialism.” “In fact, I think the whole party is pretty much anti-woke.”

It’s not hard to understand why Republicans are emphasizing cultural issues — not Reagan’s image — in their sales. They’re following the example of a more recent president, who seven years ago turned his red MAGA hat into a ubiquitous symbol of the right. Whole wardrobes materialized in homage to his Hillary Clinton-inspired chants of “Lock her up!”

 

The difference as to why Trump is winning by 20 points in Florida over DeSantis in Florida, 30 points in South Carolina over Nikki Haley and Tim Scott and 30 points in Iowa is very simple. Trump's the guy who won't just own the libs, he'll destroy them using the power of the US government.

Trump voters want "those people" destroyed to the point where the Obama/Biden coalition never dares to lift a voice to speak, a hand to vote, or eyes to see. They're voting for Trump so that happens. They want revenge, retaliation, and revanchism. and Trump will give it to them. A war is coming and they want to be on the winning side.

Politico seems to think it's just about merchandising.

It is not.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Ukraine forces have now retaken half of the territory claimed by Russia as the counteroffensive continues.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that Ukraine has already retaken about 50 percent of the territory seized by Russia and that the counteroffensive is still in its “relatively early days.”

“In terms of what Russia sought to achieve, what Putin sought to achieve, they’ve already failed. They’ve already lost. The objective was to erase Ukraine from the map, to eliminate its independence, its sovereignty, to subsume it into Russia. That failed a long time ago,” Blinken told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview on “GPS.”

“Now Ukraine is in a battle to get back more of the land that Russia seized from it. It’s already taken back about 50 percent of what was initially seized. Now they’re in a very hard fight to take back more,” Blinken said. “These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough.”

Blinken projected optimism about Ukraine’s prospects in the counteroffensive attack, which it launched after months of preparation to retake land that Russia seized. 

 

There's still a long way to go however.

 

While the counteroffensive started off strong, Ukraine’s progress has slowed as it has quickly gone through its munitions and has had to navigate Russian minefields.

“The Russians have put in place strong defenses, but I’m convinced that with the equipment and support they’ve received now from more than 50 countries, with the training that their forces have gotten, and many of the forces who’ve gotten that training have not yet been put fully into this fight — and maybe more than anything else, with the fact that unlike the Russians, Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their future, for their country, for their freedom. I think that is the decisive element, and that’s going to play out,” Blinken said.

“But it will not play out over the next week or two. We’re still looking, I think, at several months,” he added. 

 

Remember that the EU has basically given Ukraine until September to show progress. This is definitely progress if Kyiv can keep and hold it. Besides, the EU has no choice if Moscow is blocking grain shipments out of Ukraine, and Putin this weekend all but threatened to invade Poland next.

President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused NATO member Poland of having territorial ambitions in the former Soviet Union, and said any aggression against Russia's neighbour and close ally Belarus would be considered an attack on Russia.

Moscow would react to any aggression against Belarus, which forms a loose "Union State" with Russia, "with all the means at our disposal", Putin told a meeting of his Security Council in televised remarks.

Warsaw's Security Committee decided on Wednesday to move military units to eastern Poland after members of the Russian Wagner mercenary force arrived in Belarus, the state-run news agency PAP quoted its secretary as saying on Friday.

Poland denies any territorial ambitions in Belarus.

In his remarks Putin had also stated that the western part of Poland was a gift from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to the country and that Russia would remind Poles about it.

In apparent reference to that, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted on Friday evening that "Stalin was a war criminal, guilty of the death of hundreds of thousands of Poles. Historical truth is not debatable."

"The ambassador of the Russian Federation will be summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs", he said.

On Thursday, Belarus said Wagner mercenaries had started to train Belarusian special forces at a military range just a few miles from the Polish border.

 

No wonder Putin is trying to distract everyone from how bad he's losing in Ukraine this summer.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

President Biden will announce the designation of three historical sites as part of the Emmett Till National Monument this week, marking what would have been Till's 82nd birthday on Tuesday.

 

The new monument will be established across three locations in Illinois and Mississippi in an effort to protect places that tell Till's story, as well as reflect the activism of his mother, who was instrumental in keeping the story of Till's murder alive.

In August 1955, two white men abducted, tortured and killed Till, a 14-year-old Black boy, after he whistled at a white shopkeeper's wife in a grocery store in Mississippi. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were acquitted but later confessed to the killing in a magazine. Fifty years after the crime, the shopkeeper's wife, Carolyn Bryant Donham, also admitted to lying about Till touching her.

Among the sites that will be honored is Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, where Till's funeral service was held in September 1955.

About 1,700 people filled the church to its capacity, while 10,000 more stood outside and listened to the service over loudspeakers. The ceremony was also remembered for Till-Mobley's brave decision to keep the casket open, showing Till's mutilated body.

In Mississippi, Graball Landing will become a monument. Locals believe it is the spot where Till's body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River. In 2008, a memorial sign dedicated to Till was installed near the site.

But over the years, the sign was routinely stolen, vandalized or shot at and forced to be replaced. A fourth edition now stands at the site — this time bulletproof and details the history of vandalism.

The third monument location will be the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, also in Mississippi, where Till's killers were acquitted by an all-white jury. In October 2007, Till's family visited the courthouse to receive an apology from the town's leaders.

 

The million-dollar question in a country where one party is dedicated to erasing the entire civil rights era of the last 60-plus years: Will the existence of this monument, the history of the events being marked, and the reasons why the monument is being created be taught in states like Florida at all, or is that illegal? 

Someone in our national media should ask Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, and the rest of the GOP field if they agree with the national monument designation and if it's appropriate to teach this history in schools.

 

Even ten years ago this wouldn't have been controversial at all. Teaching that a Black man was lynched by white folk on the word of a white girl in the lifetimes of even some of you reading this right now should absolutely be taught as a lesson, and a national monument marking this tragedy, serving as a solemn reminder of America's dark past, would be universally agreed upon as necessary to prevent it from ever happening again.

But of course one political party doesn't see it that way, and the people running for president in that party should be made to answer about why that is, and why that history is being erased under penalty of law.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

Sunday Long Read: Chip, Shot

Brexit has been a catastrophic economic disaster for the UK, and things have gotten so bad in the last few years with price spikes in food, energy, and housing that even Scotland's most famous fish and chips shops are facing what one British economist calls "an extinction event." The Guardian's Tom Lamont has our Sunday Long Read:

One summer ago, before the region’s fish and chip industry was shaken by closures, before a death that was hard for people to bear, a lorry heaped with the first fresh potatoes of the season drove along the east coast of Scotland. This lorry wound its way along the East Neuk of Fife, dodging washing lines, mooring bollards and seagulls, parking with impunity to make deliveries. There was an understanding in the East Neuk that nobody would ever get angry and honk at the inbound “tattie” lorry, fish and chips being a staple meal, vital to the region’s economy. Tourists come shocking distances to sit on old harbour walls and stab around in takeaway trays with wooden forks. The fish and chips sold in the East Neuk might be the best in the British Isles and because of that (it follows) the best on the planet. Even so, by July 2022, local friers were finding it harder and harder to balance their books.

The driver of the tattie lorry, a red-cheeked Scotsman named Richard Murray, carried keys for most of the businesses on his route, to save from waking any tired friers who’d been up late the night before, poring anxiously over their sums. War in Ukraine coupled with ongoing complications from Brexit had driven up prices of almost all the goods that fish and chip shops depended on, from live ingredients to oil and salt to packaging. More distressing was the problem of rising energy costs. This meal is prepared using a great guzzler of a range cooker that must be kept on and roiling at all hours of a trading day. As the price of gas and electricity threatened to double, then triple, through 2022, friers were opening their energy bills with gritted teeth. A trade association called the National Federation of Fish Friers said that as many as a third of the UK’s 10,500 shops might go dark, warning of a potential “extinction event”.

It was about 8am when Murray drove his tattie lorry into a village called Pittenweem. He was met on the road by Alec Wyse, a skilled frier, 59 years old and known as Eck, who ran a takeaway called the Pittenweem Fish Bar. The tiny shop had been bought by Wyse’s father using money from the sale of a family fishing boat. There were nautical portraits on the walls. A peg-letter menu listed eight unchanging menu items, one of which was described in its entirety as “FISH”. Working together, Wyse and Murray unloaded sacks of potatoes from the lorry, carrying them inside on their shoulders.

A mile along the shore from Pittenweem, in the smarter harbour town of Anstruther, Murray parked his lorry outside a fish and chip shop called the Wee Chippy. Founded by Ian Fleming, a 64-year-old seafood trader with a tattoo of a shark on his forearm, the Wee Chippy stood across from a seaweed-covered strip of beach and a cobbled jetty. Fleming later told me it ruined his marriage, this fish and chip shop. “The hours,” he growled in explanation. Daily operations had long since passed to his business partner, a chef in his 40s called Chris Lewis. But Fleming kept a close eye on the Wee Chippy, which had absorbed such a big part of his life.

Leaving Anstruther behind, the tattie round almost done, Murray swung his lorry inland, in the rough direction of Dundee and a fish and chip shop called the Popular. Bright and cramped, the Popular had an eye-catching facade that was painted brown and baize green, making it resemble a snooker table turned on one side. A family concern, the Popular was staffed six days a week by a man called Graham Forbes, his wife Angela, and their two adult children. Though Forbes was in his mid-70s, he was the one who rose early to let the tattie man in. He liked to get started at about the same time the sun came up, feeding potatoes into the Popular’s rumbling peeler.

These three businesses – the Pittenweem Fish Bar in Pittenweem, the Wee Chippy in Anstruther, the Popular in Dundee – shared not only a potato supplier but the near-religious devotion of the communities they serviced. They were run by men and women who had thick skins, literally so when it came to their fingertips, which had become so desensitised to heat that they could be brushed against boiling oil to better position a fillet of frying fish or test the readiness of chopped potatoes as they fizzed and crisped. But these people were not invulnerable to strain. By the following summer, two of the three businesses would be gone, forced to close against their owner’s will.

I visited the East Neuk several times during that difficult year: in high tourist season, in the eerie quiet of winter, in the limbo between. As a national industry foundered, I wanted to document what it was like for a group of friers as they were brought to the brink, competing against each other even as they helped each other out, always prepping for tomorrow, cooking for today, running their numbers at night, trying not to become yet another fish and chip shop that disappeared. Between July 2022 and July 2023, things got tougher and sadder in the East Neuk than anybody predicted they would. By the time I made my last visit, people were in mourning, having said goodbye to a beloved local figure who gave their all to a cherished, suddenly endangered trade; and it was no longer so difficult to imagine a world without fish and chips.

A perfect storm of Brexit, Ukraine's invasion by Russia causing massive food shortages and price spikes, ocean acidification wrecking the fish population, and energy prices out of control means that the venerable chippie doesn't have much time left, and that an internationally famous fast food staple is now on the edge of extinction. 

Here in the land of burgers and fries there's a lesson to be learned about sustainable food in the coming decades as the global population heads for ten billion and climate change makes feeding that population less and less viable. Imagine an America without burgers, steak and fries, and the realization is that we need to face that reality as well. Millenials will have to, and Gen Z will absolutely need to face it, even as the newest generation is being born into a world that will be far different than even ten years ago.

Food for thought. 

Last Call For Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

More performative nonsense here from Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis as he's suggesting he wants the state to sue Anheuser-Busch parent company InBev over shareholder stock losses for the state's pension fund due to the stupid controversy over Dylan Mulvaney's TikTok ad for Bud Light, but it's also an open threat against Fortune 100 companies that's working.

 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is hinting at legal action against Bud Light's parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, for the beer brand's promotion earlier this year with TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney.

Bud Light's March Madness promotion with Mulvaney, a transgender actress and activist, sparked an uproar among some conservatives, including singers Kid Rock and Travis Tritt, who called for a boycott of the popular beer. An ongoing sales slump for Bud Light has been attributed to backlash from both conservatives and the LGBTPQ community over the marketing campaign.

In an interview Thursday with Fox News, DeSantis said that Florida's pension fund contained over $50 million worth of Anheuser-Busch shares. Bud Light's decision to team with Mulvaney was followed by a sales slump, and as a result the state's pension fund has suffered collateral damage, according to the 2024 presidential candidate.

"When you start pursuing a political agenda at the expense of your shareholders, that's not just impacting very wealthy people, it impacts hardworking people who were firefighters, police officers and teachers," DeSantis told Fox News.

"And it could be something that leads to a derivative lawsuit filed on behalf of the shareholders of the Florida pension fund," he added. "Because, at the end of the day, there's got to be penalties for when you put business aside to focus on your social agenda at the expense of hardworking people."

In the letter, DeSantis said AB InBev has struggled recently because the company decided "to associate its Bud Light brand with radical social ideologies."

"It appears to me that AB InBev may have breached legal duties owed to its shareholders and that a shareholder action may be both appropriate and necessary," DeSantis wrote.

 

Steve M does the math on how much Florida taxpayers have been "harmed" by a trans woman drinking watery beer online:

Let's break that down.

The pension fund is $180 billion. Florida held $46 million in AB InBev stock, which means it constituted approximately .026% of the fund. The stock lost $8 a share; $8/share times 682,000 shares = a $5,456,000 loss. That's something like .0028% of the fund. You're going to sue over that? How much would it cost the state to try to recoup that tiny amount, which is a relatively normal stock loss?

Oh and let's look at that decline in context:

The company’s stock price has fallen since then from $66 a share to $58, though it’s still higher than its 52-week low of $44 from September 2022, which was well before the company’s recent controversies.

So the stock has gained 31% over the last eleven months.

This seems like an empty threat. But I think lawsuits of this kind are coming.

 

He's right. The real target isn't Mulvaney herself or even InBev, it's your employer's diversity, equality and inclusiveness initiatives.

Two years ago chief diversity officers were some of the hottest hires into executive ranks. Now, they increasingly feel left out in the cold.

Companies including Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have recently said that high-profile diversity, equity and inclusion executives will be leaving their jobs. Thousands of diversity-focused workers have been laid off since last year, and some companies are scaling back racial justice commitments.

Diversity, equity and inclusion—or DEI—jobs were put in the crosshairs after many companies started re-examining their executive ranks during the tech sector’s shake out last fall. Some chief diversity officers say their work is facing additional scrutiny since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions and companies brace for potential legal challenges. DEI work has also become a political target.

“There’s a combination of grief, being very tired, and being, in some cases, overwhelmed,” says Miriam Warren, chief diversity officer for Yelp, of the challenges facing executives in the field. Warren says the fear that company commitments are imperiled fuel her and others to feel “more committed to the work than ever.” Yelp’s DEI budget has grown for the past five years.

In interviews, current and former chief diversity officers said company executives at times didn’t want to change hiring or promotion processes, despite initially telling CDOs they were hired to improve the talent pipeline. The quick about-face shows company enthusiasm for diversity initiatives hasn’t always proved durable, leaving some diversity officers now questioning their career path.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in police custody in May 2020, companies scrambled to hire chief diversity officers, changing the face of the C-suite. In 2018, less than half the companies in the S&P 500 employed someone in the role, and by 2022 three out four companies had created a position, according to a study from Russell Reynolds, an executive search firm.

Once mostly tasked with HR matters, today’s diversity leaders are expected to weigh in on new product development, marketing efforts and current events that have an impact on how workers and consumers are feeling. Warren and other CDOs said the expanded remit is playing out in a politically divided environment where corporate diversity efforts are the subject of frequent social-media firestorms.

New analysis from employment data provider Live Data Technologies shows that chief diversity officers have been more vulnerable to layoffs than their human resources counterparts, experiencing 40% higher turnover. Their job searches are also taking longer.

“I got to 300 applications and then I stopped tracking,” says Stephanie Lubin, who was laid off from her role as diversity head at Drizly, an online alcohol marketplace, in May following the company’s acquisition by Uber. In one case, Lubin says she went through 16 rounds of interviews for a role she didn’t get, and says she is now planning to pivot out of DEI work.

 

The goal here, as I have said on numerous occasions, is the roll the country back to before the civil rights era.  It's to make America's largest employers limit their hiring of non-white, non-straight, non-male and non-Christian employees, lest they be attacked for discrimination and right-wing boycotts, which affect the stock price, which allows red states to sue as pension shareholders. which leaves the company open to attacks that they discriminate against white, straight Christian males and lowers the stock price, and so on.

The goal is to make the act of hiring someone who isn't a white straight Christian male subject to penalties, so that companies just stop doing it.  It's performative now, but it's having its intended effect. The right is celebrating this, and have every reason to push harder on this, and imply to white voters that they will directly benefit from total Republican rule.

Believe me, multi-billion and multi-trillion dollar corporations will abandon every pretense of diversity, equality and inclusiveness if red states make it prohibitively unprofitable to do so in order to operate in their states. It's already happening.

It'll carry the penalty of law soon, and that's when the employment picture changes dramatically across the country, rolling back decades of improvements, out of fear of shareholder lawsuits and civil action.

More of this is absolutely coming.

Trump Cards, Con't

Trump gets the federal documents trial delay he was looking for, from the judge he appointed.

 

 

A federal judge ordered Friday that the trial in the classified documents case that special counsel Jack Smith brought against former President Donald Trump begin in May 2024.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon said that the trial could begin as early as May 20. A pretrial hearing in the case will be held on May 14.

If that timeline holds, then the trial would fall deep in the 2024 race for the White House, coming amid multiple GOP presidential primaries. It would be a rebuke to Trump and his legal team, who wanted to postpone the trial until after the general election takes place in November 2024.

However, Cannon’s order also means that the case will unfold at a far slower speed than what Smith’s team was proposing, when it recommended a fast-paced timeline that would start the trial in mid-December of this year. Such a schedule would have a trial wrap up before primary voting gets underway in the 2024 election, where Trump is the leading GOP candidate.

The vast majority of state primaries will be finished by mid-May, although Nebraska, Maryland and West Virginia are set to hold their primary elections on May 14. Oregon votes the following week and a handful of states, including New Jersey, are now scheduled to vote on June 4. During his first presidential run, Trump effectively clinched the nomination at the end of May 2016 – before formally becoming the party’s nominee in July at the GOP convention in Cleveland.

While it’s likely the nominating process will be essentially decided by May, recent history has plenty examples of the race remaining a delegate fight until early summer.

 

It's within Judge Cannon's purview to delay the trial until next May, but the issue is she's personally responsible for delaying the proceedings for several months before we even got to this. 

Otherwise, she literally split the difference. How Solomonic. Marcy Wheeler explains it all:

Her order is not, on its face, unreasonable. It sets a CIPA trial for 49 weeks after it was charged, which is solidly within the scope of what it normally takes to bring these cases to trial. She has made this a complex case which is similarly not unreasonable.

The most unreasonable part of her order, thus far, is that she set the trial to be held in her tiny courtroom in Fort Pierce, making it utterly unworkable for the press.

The second most unreasonable part of her order is that she has treated the classified protective order as a month-long fully briefed affair, effectively absolving Trump and his co-defendant of conferring like grown-ups, such that classified discovery might not begin until after August 25, two months of delay she is adding to this timeline on top of the three months of delay she created last year.

Finally, she deferred on the question of whether the election will make jury selection next May impossible.

Again, this is not unreasonable, at least thus far. But she is letting Trump and Walt Nauta stall by obstructing from the outset.

 

Cannon has learned the difference between putting a thumb on the scale of justice instead of 318 metric tons of concrete.  Progress!

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Hugo Lowell has been covering the Trump crime beat for The Guardian for years now, and his reporting has been indispensable as much as it has been accurate, so when he reports that Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis is preparing RICO indictments for Trump as myself and others have predicted, I believe it.

The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia has developed evidence to charge a sprawling racketeering indictment next month, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The racketeering statute in Georgia requires prosecutors to show the existence of an “enterprise” – and a pattern of racketeering activity that is predicated on at least two “qualifying” crimes.

In the Trump investigation, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has evidence to pursue a racketeering indictment predicated on statutes related to influencing witnesses and computer trespass, the people said.

Willis had previously said she was weighing racketeering charges in her criminal investigation, but the new details about the direction and scope of the case come as prosecutors are expected to seek indictments starting in the first two weeks of August.

The racketeering statute in Georgia is more expansive than its federal counterpart, notably because any attempts to solicit or coerce the qualifying crimes can be included as predicate acts of racketeering activity, even when those crimes cannot be indicted separately.

The specific evidence was not clear, though the charge regarding influencing witnesses could include Trump’s conversations with Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which he asked Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, the people said – and thereby implicate Trump.

For the computer trespass charge, where prosecutors would have to show that defendants used a computer or network without authority to interfere with a program or data, that would include the breach of voting machines in Coffee county, the two people said.

The breach of voting machines involved a group of Trump operatives – paid by the then Trump lawyer Sidney Powell – accessing the voting machines at the county’s election office and copying sensitive voting system data.

The copied data from the Dominion Voting Systems machines, which are used statewide in Georgia, was then uploaded to a password-protected site from where election deniers could download the materials as part of a misguided effort to prove the 2020 election had been rigged.

Though Coffee county is outside the usual jurisdiction of the Fulton county district attorney’s office, the racketeering statute would allow prosecutors to also charge what the Trump operatives did there by showing it was all aimed towards the goal of corruptly keeping Trump in office.

A spokesperson for Willis did not respond to requests for comment. 

 

The outline of a broad racketeering trial is here, and it's something that Lowell's sources say is coming in the next couple of weeks. We'll see if he's right, but the evidence at hand is strongly pointing in more indictments in the next 2-3 weeks.

Hopefully these racketeering charges will apply to multiple Georgia GOP officials as well. And let's not forget, Jack Smith is taking a look at these false electors too at the federal level, and that includes Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.

It's going to be a hot summer for the GOP.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead, Con't

A Nebraska teenager was sentenced this week for violating the state's abortion ban after Facebook turned over her private messages between herself and her mother, taking a plea deal for 90 days in jail, and if this isn't exactly what reproductive rights advocates have been warning about for years now, it's definitely the new reality of how having a womb of child-bearing age is now probable cause for law enforcement.

Police in Norfolk, Nebraska went to great lengths to build a case against the teen and her mother, seeking both her medical records — to determine how far along her pregnancy was — and private Facebook messages exchanged between the two.

Nebraska currently bans abortion at 12 weeks gestation; at the time, in April 2022, Nebraska law prohibited abortions after 20 weeks. Telemedicine abortions are also prohibited by Nebraska law. (The FDA has approved Mifepristone and Misoprostol to end pregnancies up to 10 weeks.)

According to messages that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, turned over to police in Nebraska, the teenager spoke about being anxious to end the pregnancy and worried about “evidence” of her illegal abortion being discovered. Burgess admitted to police that she miscarried after taking the pills and, with the help of her mother and a third person, burned and buried the remains.

At the sentencing hearing on Thursday, Burgess told the judge that her family would not have been able to afford a proper cremation or burial, “financial-wise.”

“I wanted to do the right thing, but I didn’t know if what I was doing at the time was the right thing,” the 19-year-old said. “I do regret my decisions very much.”

In addition to 90 days in jail — she had faced up to two years — Celeste Burgess was sentenced to two years probation.

 

The teenager's mother is facing years in jail after pleading guilty earlier this year in helping her daughter.

Jessica Burgess has pleaded guilty to three charges: Providing an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, false reporting and tampering with human skeletal remains. It is the first time that anyone has been charged with illegally performing an abortion after 20 weeks in Nebraska, the county prosecutor said. She is scheduled to be sentenced in September.

 

Putting thousands in jail is the point, folks. They want people to see having a womb means reproduction, and never sex for any other reason, something that has to be controlled and regulated under pain of the carceral state. The message is "If you have sex for any reason other than to reproduce along with a male, there are consequences up to and including prison time."

And sometimes, that choice is made by others. That's the real message. You don't own your own body. Men do. "Maybe you should settle, ladies."

Again, the GOP plan to end of the civil rights era doesn't mean we're going back to the 1950's just on issues of race, folks.

AI, Oh You, And Sometimes Why, Con't

Google wants to "help" major newspapers with its Genesis AI bot technology to "help" write news articles, which is not at all a ploy to put the final nail in print journalism in America so that Google can take over that sector too.

 

Google is testing a product that uses artificial intelligence technology to produce news stories, pitching it to news organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal’s owner, News Corp, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The tool, known internally by the working title Genesis, can take in information — details of current events, for example — and generate news content, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the product.

One of the three people familiar with the product said that Google believed it could serve as a kind of personal assistant for journalists, automating some tasks to free up time for others, and that the company saw it as responsible technology that could help steer the publishing industry away from the pitfalls of generative A.I.

Some executives who saw Google’s pitch described it as unsettling, asking not to be identified discussing a confidential matter. Two people said it seemed to take for granted the effort that went into producing accurate and artful news stories.

Jenn Crider, a Google spokeswoman, said in a statement that “in partnership with news publishers, especially smaller publishers, we’re in the earliest stages of exploring ideas to potentially provide A.I.-enabled tools to help their journalists with their work.”

“Quite simply, these tools are not intended to, and cannot, replace the essential role journalists have in reporting, creating and fact-checking their articles,” she added. Instead, they could provide options for headlines and other writing styles.

A News Corp spokesman said in a statement, “We have an excellent relationship with Google, and we appreciate Sundar Pichai’s long-term commitment to journalism.”

The Times and The Post declined to comment.

Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor and media commentator, said Google’s new tool, as described, had potential upsides and downsides.

“If this technology can deliver factual information reliably, journalists should use the tool,” said Mr. Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

“If, on the other hand, it is misused by journalists and news organizations on topics that require nuance and cultural understanding,” he continued, “then it could damage the credibility not only of the tool, but of the news organizations that use it.”

Media outlets misusing technology to abuse the public trust and to spread disinformation and propaganda in order to make gobs of cash and to control the country?

 

Hell, we don't need media bots for that, it just means whatever Steve Bannon/Stephen Miller/Yevgeny Prigozhin op to control the 2024 election narrative can be highly automated and that there will be 90% fewer journalists around in any effort to combat it.

Should be fun when your "local newspaper" is managed from a server farm in Wyoming...or Novosibirsk.