#Washington minimum wage

[nando161mando]

Over 1 million hourly workers make minimum wage in the United States. Everyone agrees it's unlivable.

[ambienthousewife]

Sometimes I'm like "eh I hate America but I'm not sure if I'd ever leave because I wanna stay and fight for good things here plus Europe is starting to get more right wing" but I'm having to navigate healthcare bureaucracy once again since my mom is quitting her job and retiring and I'm like man still might be worth leaving then having to navigate a system this intense for the rest of my life

[fabiansociety]

there's a ballot initiative in california this year that would raise the state minimum wage to $17/hour, which sounds like a lot if you don't work minimum wage or live in california, but every time we talk about the minimum wage i got and check what the march on washington for jobs and freedom — the one where MLK gave the I Have A Dream speech in 1963 — was demanding, and we *still* haven't hit that mark.

they were demanding a $2/hour national minimum wage, which was the equivalent of *$20/hour in 2024 dollars.*

fuck, man, the california minimum wage peaked in 1968 at 1.65/hour, the equivalent of $14.82/hour today. this bump, please god it passes, would be the first *actual improvement* in california's minimum wage since *1968.*

[evilroachindustrial]

Minimum wage is going up next year so I wonder if my boss might bump our pay a touch.

[iww-gnv]

California fast-food workers are forming a unique kind of union

Lizzet Aguilar has worked at a McDonald’s in Los Angeles for 17 years. She’s never once been given a paid day off. She’s never taken a vacation. When her husband or nine-year-old son get sick and need her to care for them—or if she gets sick herself—she has to call out and lose a day’s pay. “Es difícil,” she says: It’s difficult. Her wages are already low. She makes $16.78 per hour. “Estamos luchando día a día. Es difícil vivir en California,” says Aguilar: We live day to day. It’s difficult to live in California. But for many years she was afraid to speak up and join the Fight for 15, a national movement to raise the minimum wage that started with fast-food workers and has since seen 14 states and Washington, D.C., raise their minimum wages to $15 an hour, increasing pay for 26 million workers.   Then the pandemic hit and Aguilar’s boss didn’t give workers any hand sanitizer, gloves, or even masks. Six coworkers got COVID-19. “Ese me puso a decir, ‘Basta,’” she recalls: It pushed her to say, Enough. She got involved to protect herself and her family.  Now Aguilar will be part of the next evolution in the Fight for 15 movement: She and her coworkers will announce on February 9 that they are forming the California Fast Food Workers Union, which will be part of SEIU. Hundreds of workers from different fast-food companies will gather in Los Angeles to sign union cards. It’s time, Aguilar and her coworkers decided, to become more formal members of a union and pay dues. It’s a fresh start, she says, on the road toward securing bigger gains.

Read the rest here.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Antitrust is a labor issue

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

This is huge: yesterday, the FTC finalized a rule banning noncompete agreements for every American worker. That means that the person working the register at a Wendy's can switch to the fry-trap at McD's for an extra $0.25/hour, without their boss suing them:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes

The median worker laboring under a noncompete is a fast-food worker making close to minimum wage. You know who doesn't have to worry about noncompetes? High tech workers in Silicon Valley, because California already banned noncompetes, as did Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington.

The fact that the country's largest economies, encompassing the most "knowledge-intensive" industries, could operate without shitty bosses being able to shackle their best workers to their stupid workplaces for years after those workers told them to shove it shows you what a goddamned lie noncompetes are based on. The idea that companies can't raise capital or thrive if their know-how can walk out the door, secreted away in the skulls of their ungrateful workers, is bullshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

Remember when OpenAI's board briefly fired founder Sam Altman and Microsoft offered to hire him and 700 of his techies? If "noncompetes block investments" was true, you'd think they'd have a hard time raising money, but no, they're still pulling in billions in investor capital (primarily from Microsoft itself!). This is likewise true of Anthropic, the company's major rival, which was founded by (wait for it), two former OpenAI employees.

Indeed, Silicon Valley couldn't have come into existence without California's ban on noncompetes – the first silicon company, Shockley Semiconductors, was founded by a malignant, delusional eugenicist who also couldn't manage a lemonade stand. His eight most senior employees (the "Traitorous Eight") quit his shitty company to found Fairchild Semiconductor, a rather successful chip shop – but not nearly so successful as the company that two of Fairchild's top employees founded after they quit: Intel:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/the-traitorous-eight-and-the-battle-of-germanium-valley/

Likewise a lie: the tale that noncompetes raise wages. This theory – beloved of people whose skulls are so filled with Efficient Market Hypothesis Brain-Worms that they've got worms dangling out of their nostrils and eye-sockets – holds that the right to sign a noncompete is an asset that workers can trade to their employers in exchange for better pay. This is absolutely true, provided you ignore reality.

Remember: the median noncompete-bound worker is a fast food employee making near minimum wage. The major application of noncompetes is preventing that worker from getting a raise from a rival fast-food franchisee. Those workers are losing wages due to noncompetes. Meanwhile, the highest paid workers in the country are all clustered in a a couple of cities in northern California, pulling down sky-high salaries in a state where noncompetes have been illegal since the gold rush.

If a capitalist wants to retain their workers, they can compete. Offer your workers get better treatment and better wages. That's how capitalism's alchemy is supposed to work: competition transmogrifies the base metal of a capitalist's greed into the noble gold of public benefit by making success contingent on offering better products to your customers than your rivals – and better jobs to your workers than those rivals are willing to pay. However, capitalists hate capitalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/18/in-extremis-veritas/#the-winnah

Capitalists hate capitalism so much that they're suing the FTC, in MAGA's beloved Fifth Circuit, before a Trump-appointed judge. The case was brought by Trump's financial advisors, Ryan LLC, who are using it to drum up business from corporations that hate Biden's new taxes on the wealthy and stepped up IRS enforcement on rich tax-cheats.

Will they win? It's hard to say. Despite what you may have heard, the case against the FTC order is very weak, as Matt Stoller explains here:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/ftc-enrages-corporate-america-by

The FTC's statutory authority to block noncompetes comes from Section 5 of the FTC Act, which bans "unfair methods of competition" (hard to imagine a less fair method than indenturing your workers). Section 6(g) of the Act lets the FTC make rules to enforce Section 5's ban on unfairness. Both are good law – 6(g) has been used many times (26 times in the five years from 1968-73 alone!).

The DC Circuit court upheld the FTC's right to "promulgate rules defining the meaning of the statutory standards of the illegality the Commission is empowered to prevent" in 1973, and in 1974, Congress changed the FTC Act, but left this rulemaking power intact.

The lawyer suing the FTC – Anton Scalia's larvum, a pismire named Eugene Scalia – has some wild theories as to why none of this matters. He says that because the law hasn't been enforced since the ancient days of the (checks notes) 1970s, it no longer applies. He says that the mountain of precedent supporting the FTC's authority "hasn't aged well." He says that other antitrust statutes don't work the same as the FTC Act. Finally, he says that this rule is a big economic move and that it should be up to Congress to make it.

Stoller makes short work of these arguments. The thing that tells you whether a law is good is its text and precedent, "not whether a lawyer thinks a precedent is old and bad." Likewise, the fact that other antitrust laws is irrelevant "because, well, they are other antitrust laws, not this antitrust law." And as to whether this is Congress's job because it's economically significant, "so what?" Congress gave the FTC this power.

Now, none of this matters if the Supreme Court strikes down the rule, and what's more, if they do, they might also neuter the FTC's rulemaking power in the bargain. But again: so what? How is it better for the FTC to do nothing, and preserve a power that it never uses, than it is for the Commission to free the 35-40 million American workers whose bosses get to use the US court system to force them to do a job they hate?

The FTC's rule doesn't just ban noncompetes – it also bans TRAPs ("training repayment agreement provisions"), which require employees to pay their bosses thousands of dollars if they quit, get laid off, or are fired:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

The FTC's job is to protect Americans from businesses that cheat. This is them, doing their job. If the Supreme Court strikes this down, it further delegitimizes the court, and spells out exactly who the GOP works for.

This is part of the long history of antitrust and labor. From its earliest days, antitrust law was "aimed at dollars, not men" – in other words, antitrust law was always designed to smash corporate power in order to protect workers. But over and over again, the courts refused to believe that Congress truly wanted American workers to get legal protection from the wealthy predators who had fastened their mouth-parts on those workers' throats. So over and over – and over and over – Congress passed new antitrust laws that clarified the purpose of antitrust, using words so small that even federal judges could understand them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

After decades of comatose inaction, Biden's FTC has restored its role as a protector of labor, explicitly tackling competition through a worker protection lens. This week, the Commission blocked the merger of Capri Holdings and Tapestry Inc, a pair of giant conglomerates that have, between them, bought up nearly every "affordable luxury" brand (Versace, Jimmy Choo, Michael Kors, Kate Spade, Coach, Stuart Weitzman, etc).

You may not care about "affordable luxury" handbags, but you should care about the basis on which the FTC blocked this merger. As David Dayen explains for The American Prospect: 33,000 workers employed by these two companies would lose the wage-competition that drives them to pay skilled sales-clerks more to cross the mall floor and switch stores:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-04-24-challenge-fashion-merger-new-antitrust-philosophy/

In other words, the FTC is blocking a $8.5b merger that would turn an oligopoly into a monopoly explicitly to protect workers from the power of bosses to suppress their wages. What's more, the vote was unanimous, include the Commission's freshly appointed (and frankly, pretty terrible) Republican commissioners:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-moves-block-tapestrys-acquisition-capri

A lot of people are (understandably) worried that if Biden doesn't survive the coming election that the raft of excellent rules enacted by his agencies will die along with his presidency. Here we have evidence that the Biden administration's anti-corporate agenda has become institutionalized, acquiring a bipartisan durability.

And while there hasn't been a lot of press about that anti-corporate agenda, it's pretty goddamned huge. Back in 2021, Tim Wu (then working in the White wrote an executive order on competition that identified 72 actions the agencies could take to blunt the power of corporations to harm everyday Americans:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Biden's agency heads took that plan and ran with it, demonstrating the revolutionary power of technical administrative competence and proving that being good at your job is praxis:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

In just the past week, there's been a storm of astoundingly good new rules finalized by the agencies:

A minimum staffing ratio for nursing homes;

The founding of the American Climate Corps;

A guarantee of overtime benefits;

A ban on financial advisors cheating retirement savers;

Medical privacy rules that protect out-of-state abortions;

A ban on junk fees in mortgage servicing;

Conservation for 13m Arctic acres in Alaska;

Classifying "forever chemicals" as hazardous substances;

A requirement for federal agencies to buy sustainable products;

Closing the gun-show loophole.

That's just a partial list, and it's only Thursday.

Why the rush? As Gerard Edic writes for The American Prospect, finalizing these rules now protects them from the Congressional Review Act, a gimmick created by Newt Gingrich in 1996 that lets the next Senate wipe out administrative rules created in the months before a federal election:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-23-biden-administration-regulations-congressional-review-act/

In other words, this is more dazzling administrative competence from the technically brilliant agencies that have labored quietly and effectively since 2020. Even laggards like Pete Buttigieg have gotten in on the act, despite a very poor showing in the early years of the Biden administration:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

Despite those unpromising beginnings, the DOT has gotten onboard the trains it regulates, and passed a great rule that forces airlines to refund your money if they charge you for services they don't deliver:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/24/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-rules-to-deliver-automatic-refunds-and-protect-consumers-from-surprise-junk-fees-in-air-travel/

The rule also bans junk fees and forces airlines to compensate you for late flights, finally giving American travelers the same rights their European cousins have enjoyed for two decades.

It's the latest in a string of muscular actions taken by the DOT, a period that coincides with the transfer of Jen Howard from her role as chief of staff to FTC chair Lina Khan to a new gig as the DOT's chief of competition enforcement:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-25-transportation-departments-new-path/

Under Howard's stewardship, the DOT blocked the merger of Spirit and Jetblue, and presided over the lowest flight cancellation rate in more than decade:

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/2023-numbers-more-flights-fewer-cancellations-more-consumer-protections

All that, along with a suite of protections for fliers, mark a huge turning point in the US aviation industry's long and worsening abusive relationship with the American public. There's more in the offing, too including a ban on charging families extra for adjacent seats, rules to make flying with wheelchairs easier, and a ban on airlines selling passenger's private information to data brokers.

There's plenty going on in the world – and in the Biden administration – that you have every right to be furious and/or depressed about. But these expert agencies, staffed by experts, have brought on a tsunami of rules that will make every working American better off in a myriad of ways. Those material improvements in our lives will, in turn, free us up to fight the bigger, existential fights for a livable planet, free from genocide.

It may not be a good time to be alive, but it's a much better time than it was just last week.

And it's only Thursday.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

[macgyvermedical]

Transgender Friendly States

This is a map made by journalist Erin Reed (https://www.erininthemorning.com/). It shows the legislative risk to trans people by state. It's been going around tumblr recently, and for good reason.

I wanted to make a post comparing the type of information you might need if you're considering making a move following the election. The following includes the cost of living index, the climate risk, the median rent, the minimum wage, and the shift in voting pattern between the 2020 and 2024 election for each "Safest States with Strong Protections" (dark blue on map above).

State: California

*Cost of Living: 134.5% of US average

Climate Risk: Moderate

Median Rent: $1,856

Minimum Wage: $16/hr (116 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 8 points redder

State: Colorado

*Cost of Living: 105.5% of US average

Climate Risk: Low

Median Rent: $1,594

Minimum Wage: $14.42/hr (110.5 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 2 points redder

State: Connecticut

*Cost of Living: 113.1% of US average

Climate Risk: Low

Median Rent: $1,374

Minimum Wage: $15.69 (87.5 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 5 points redder

State: Illinois

*Cost of Living: 90.8% of US average

Climate Risk: Moderate

Median Rent: $1,179

Minimum Wage: $14/hr (84 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 7 points redder

State: Hawaii

*Cost of Living: 179% of US average

Climate Risk: Low

Median Rent: $1,868

Minimum Wage: $14/hr (133 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 6 points redder

State: Maine

*Cost of Living: 111.5% of US average

Climate Risk: Low

Median Rent: $1,009

Minimum Wage: $14.15/hr (71 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 2 points redder

State: Maryland

*Cost of Living: 119.5% of US average

Climate Risk: Low

Median Rent: $1,598

Minimum Wage: $15/hr (106 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 6 points redder

State: Massachusetts

*Cost of Living: 148.4% of US average

Climate Risk: Moderate

Median Rent: $1,588

Minimum Wage: $15/hr (106 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 8 points redder

State: Minnesota

*Cost of Living: 94.1% of US average

Climate Risk: Low

Median Rent: $1,178

Minimum Wage: $10.85/hr (108 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 3 points redder

State: New Jersey

*Cost of Living: 114.1% of US average

Climate Risk: Moderate

Median Rent: $1,577

Minimum Wage: $15.13/hr (104 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 10 points redder

State: New Mexico

*Cost of Living: 94.2% of US average

Climate Risk: High

Median Rent: $966

Minimum Wage: $12/hr (80.5 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 5 points redder

State: New York

*Cost of Living: 125.1% of US average

Climate Risk: Moderate

Median Rent: $1,507

Minimum Wage: $15/hr (16/hr for NYC, Long Island, and Westchester), (100.5 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 11 points redder

State: Oregon

*Cost of Living: 115.1% of US average

Climate Risk: Low

Median Rent: $1,373

Minimum Wage: $16.70/hr (but it's complicated) (82 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 2 points redder

State: Rhode Island

*Cost of Living: 110.5% of US average

Climate Risk: Moderate

Median Rent: $1,195

Minimum Wage: $14/hr (85 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 7 points redder

State: Vermont

*Cost of Living: 114.9% of US average

Climate Risk: Low

Median Rent: $1,149

Minimum Wage: $13.67 (84 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 3 points redder

State: Washington

*Cost of Living: 115.1% of US average

Climate Risk: Low

Median Rent: $1,592

Minimum Wage: $16.28 (97 hours to make rent)

2020vs2024 Politics: Blue, went 0 points redder

*On this scale, 100% is the average COL across the USA. Numbers above 100% mean the state is more expensive than average. Numbers below 100% mean the state is less expensive to live in than average. Pennsylvania, Utah, and Nevada are the states closest to average. Hawaii, at 179% is the most expensive state. Mississippi, at 85.3% is the least expensive state to live in.

References: COL CR MR MW POL

[luxthestrange]

BNHA Incorrect quotes#40 New tip jar

Raggedy Hipster: Oh good, you're still open.

Co-Worker: Yes we are what can I get you?

Raggedy Hipster: Everything in the register.

Co-Worker: Oh my God, it's a hipster holdup-

Raggedy Hipster: Hand it over, I have a gun~

Convenience!Y/n: Well I have a death wish so that's not gonna work, LOOK pal, we work at this store from two to four, six nights a week and that is after eight hours of slinging hash at the diner next door for lousy minimum wage which a bunch of rich politicians out in help me out-

You point at the blonde man who as usual is eating in the sitting area, watching the situation,he blushes at you paying attention to him and he answers fast-

Jin: W-Washington!

Convenience!Y/n: What he said, don't want a raise!?-Then we walk home to our illegal one-bedroom apartment, get three hours of NyQuil endued sleep before we have to get back up, and share a bowl of Spanish language Cheerios-

Co-Worker: It's the same thing but the C wears a sombrero...

Convenience!Y/n: So no. I am not about to give you our hard-earned money. And if you're gonna shoot me, better aim good cause if you miss I will climb over this counter, tear off your head and it'll be our new tip jar.

Raggedy Hipster: Yeah, I just robbed Pizza Pizza. Here's the $20. Have a good night-

Jin*Chin resting on his palm watching you with puppy love eyes*...they have such a way with people~

Part 3 of:

[fixing-bad-posts]

Assumption: you don’t like pineapple on pizza

three hours soul-dead into my shift; i would’ve swallowed plaster if it meant i could leave. droning phones—sales script, etc. etc. (who here hasn’t been dehumanized by minimum wage?) my manager came in to send us all home. we’re closing early today because of the coup. the coup? the fucking coup? what fucking coup? born-again-nazis-illusioned-for-justice climbing the walls, apparently. brought ladders and guns, apparently. to washington, apparently. sir, we live in canada?? doesn’t really matter. we close (no, we’re not getting compensated, but it doesn’t really matter because see aforementioned statement re: plaster). at home (thrilled and confused) i find my sister cutting fresh pineapple on the laminate countertop, and take a big bowl as a reward for not eating plaster. i sit on the rug. i prop up my laptop and watch the news from five thousand kilometers away. the president tells his thugs that they’re “special people”. fun times. fun times. around then, swallowing (something i have historically been very good at) becomes as insurmountable as the american capitol building (a-fucking-pparently). pineapple is my forbidden fruit—because that was the day i finally realized i was allergic to pineapple :(

[nando161mando]

$3 burgers with $25/hr minimum wage for janitorial staff. So it CAN be done…

[barnxsromanxff]

!!! Chris Hartley x Camgirl crush? !!!

maybe Chris has a crush on a reader who outwardly talks about her online anonymous camgirl job? some smutty feels with this request.

I feel like Chris would be kinda into it, maybe even volunteering his hands as props as a joke and reader agrees and it ends up being s p i c y

Cam girl | Chris Hartley x f!reader

| Do not repost any of my writes without credit to me

Request: yes / no

Prompt: Your best friend Chris jokes turn into a fun night

Pairing: no prank au, Chris hartley x f! reader

Warnings: mdni ! 18+ only, this is sexually explicit content. underage (over 18) alcohol and marijuana consumption, p in v, oral male receiving, sort of exhibitionist, sort of voueryism, dry humling, fingering, mentions of pornography and bodily fluids.

A/N: this is like straight up porn! i loved this request and hope i did good by it! I was struggling a little bit with the ending so I hope this is what you meant!! if you haven’t already i’d recommend looking at my masterlist and seeing my previous fic with chris and josh x reader! I hope you all enjoy this one

° 𐐪𐑂 ♡ 𐐪𐑂 ₒ 𐐪𐑂 ♡ 𐐪𐑂

Your friend group was chaotic by all means, and very dysfunctional… but they were like family. For you growing up with people you could rely on was serious fun, and it gave you confidence to be who you wanted to be without any hesitation or embarrassment.

You were who you are and weren’t shy about it at all,

“Beth, Hannah!”

You squeal as you run towards the twins embracing them. It was the yearly Washington lodge party, where the whole group gets together with no adults and no rules. It’s been a few years and even though you’re all adults it still carries on.

“We’re so glad you could make it! Come join the rest of us.”

Beth and Hannah both grab your hand and lead you to the livingroom. There everyone is, you see Chris and Ashley sitting close with Sam and Josh near them. Then Emily and Mike cuddling close near the fire laughing with Jess and Matt. You smiled taking it all in, although it’s been a while since you’ve all been together you were so happy to see everyone getting along.

Sam gets up to hug you which makes everyone turn to see you your eyes fall on Chris.

Chris gives you a smile and small wave, his excitement growing seeing you finally show up. Chris and you have always been close, having a friendship that was a bit more personal than you were with everyone else in the group.

He was there for you in tough times and was very supportive when you told him about what you’ve been doing for work. As a cam girl you do face backlash and judgement but Chris was the one who told you to ignore all of that and do what you want. It warmed your heart and your affection grew from there. It was obvious to everyone except for you and Chris that your feelings were mutual.

Chris stands and makes his way over to greet you, pulling you into a warm embrace.

Josh yells out,

“Hey party girl! Bring anything crazy?”

You laughed and hit his shoulder knowing he’s referencing some weed.

“Well yeah… who do you think I am?”

Chris laughs as he slowly pulls away from you, his hand lingering a little too long on your lower back and mumbles a ‘hell yeah’ to your answer.

Through out the night, the drinks continued and joints were smoked, finally the topic of work came up. Mentions of minimum wage jobs and blogs were spread around until everyone looked at you.

“What? Yes, everyone knows I make videos. Hey i’m not ashamed, I guarantee my bank account looks better than most of yours.”

You laugh and answer some of the questions the girls had. The boys kept mostly quiet besides a few jokes here and there. The only person that was silent was Chris, he watched you intently as you went on about what you do and how much you make, giggling at a few jokes said. His mind wandered to the types of videos you make and a blush subtly crept up onto his face his pajama pants starting to get a bit tighter.

He mentally curses himself for not wearing boxers with his pants.

“So tell me, what’s your favorite part?”

“I mean it’s basically what you think it is, i’m a cam girl and get paid to do stuff. It’s not always sexual, sometimes it’s just small stuff y’know?”

Eventually the conversation turns, and the night begins to slow down. The split drinks left for tomorrow’s problem.

Eventually it was just you and Chris passing the last of your joint, you laughed at his jokes trying to not be obnoxiously loud.

“How did you get into it, the videos I mean.”

You were surprised at his sudden question but answered him nevertheless

“Well it just happened, it just seemed fun. It’s anonymous so no one knows it’s me, that’s the fun part and I love it.”

He nodded at your sincerity, a smile creeping onto his face.

“Okay, okay hear me out…”

You rolled your eyes and listened in waiting for his next joke, waiting for the punchline.

“I’ll be your assistant in your next video.”

Your assistant? You couldn’t believe his offer even if he’s joking. Intrigued, you scooted a little closer to him and laughed,

“Oh really?”

Chris nodded and tried painting the scene for you, using his hands as gesture.

“Just set that camera up and I’ll be there as a help to you, anything you need.”

You hummed and looked at him, his dorky smile plastered on his face

“Anything?”

Your heart skipped a beat at the idea, shamelessly letting it warm your core. Using Chris in all the ways you have imagined, he nodded still laughing until he noticed your shift in mood,

“I’m sorry, did I push it too far?”

You shook your head and picked at the skin on your cuticles, avoiding his eye contact but continued with your teasing.

“Don’t back down now, Chrissy.”

This caught Chris off guard, he swallowed hard and scratched the back of his neck. You grabbed his hand examining his calloused knuckles, your mind replaying dirty thoughts over on how you’d use them.

Chris stayed quiet as your eyes traced him, his bulge reappearing just like earlier. This time it was more prominent, and you noticed immediately.

“Cat got your tongue?”

Your hand traced all the lines and rough spots of his hand, slowly massaging them. You chewed on your lip before finally meeting his gaze. He looked enamored, and was speechless.

“Well I said I would help you didn’t I? Use my hands, or whatever you’d like.”

You could tell his words were still laced with humor but this time he seemed more sincere, waiting patiently for your response.

You moved closer and straddled his lap. You kept his hands in yours and looked him in the eyes.

“Too much?”

He shook his head immediately, desperation in his eyes. He pulled his hands from yours and rested them on your body

“How about we take this upstairs?”

He suggests as his glasses slip a little, he looked obsessed.

You hummed and started to shift off but he held you down, instead he stood up with your legs still hooked around him. He held you all the way up to the room you were staying in, you giggled and kissed his face and neck all the way up.

As you both entered the room he immediately noticed the camera and supplies thrown across the vanity, like you had planned to film later in the night. You blushed forgetting you had set up.

“Planned on getting me naked huh?”

You giggled at his suggestion and purred as he nipped your neck. He laid you on the bed and admired your beauty, even in a loose shirt and shorts he still felt himself getting lost in your look.

“Did you really wanna film?”

He looked up at your face at the suggestion, his mind thinking of all the ways he would make you come undone. Finally with a nod you get up and make your way to the vanity. There’s an array of outfits and a few toys, the camera sitting facing the bed.

“If you’re gonna play with me you gotta mask up.”

You showed him several different ones, both settling on a ghost face one. You humored him as he put it on and tried scaring you,

“Oh, okay nice one bud.”

You adjust the camera on the vanity to face the edge of the bed, then dim the lights so it’s just the lamps on. The lighting and scene setting the mood.

You pat his back before sitting on the bed looking up at him through your lashes, finally putting on your bunny mask that covers only your upper face.

“You ready Chris?”

He nods now being silent, he puts his hand to cup your cheek and you notice his hands shaking a little.

“Come here handsome.”

Switching places now letting Chris sit at the edge of the bed. You stand and dance a little feeling your liquid courage hit your blood stream. Slowly you peel off the baggy tee leaving your upper body exposed.

Chris groaned at the sight and rubs the bulge now poking prominently against his pajama pants for the third time this night, all because of you.

You moved his hands and put them on your waist before leaning in and grabbing the hair at the nape of his neck. You kissed his adam’s apple then his ear, whispering instructions.

“Take my shorts off”

He immediately went to pull them down, eager to see what was under.

“Good job, assistant”

He hums at the sight of you just in your underwear and the bunny mask. You moved your hips and gave him and the camera show, his eyes milking every second of the exposed skin. You make your way to the vanity and start touching yourself sensually for the video, masked Chris in the background palming himself with your every movement.

Slowly you move back over to him and sit on his lap, unbuttoning his shirt to expose his chest. You whimper at the sight and started kissing his neck and shoulders.

Even if Chris wasn’t the most athletically fit man your mouth still watered at his body, you rarely ever saw him shirtless.

His hands trail over yours and cup your breasts, massaging them earning soft whines from your lips.

You move your hips and rub your core on his clothed thigh desperate for some friction, you beg for more.

“Tell me what you want.”

You are surprised at his sudden confidence and it sends shivers down your spine.

“Your fingers.”

He hums in approval and rubs his hand to your ass giving it a squeeze. He moves your underwear to the side and rubs your folds earning a cry from you.

He plays with you with expertise which makes you wonder how much he has done this, mentally you snicker since just a few moments earlier he seemed very nervous, finally he begins slipping in a finger.

You roll your hips riding his hand and begin moaning with ever thrust of his fingers.

Your noises give him confidence, he continues his playful movements on your slit. Your face turns to the camera and you exaggerate your moans making your mouth into an O shape.

Chris helps you slip off your underwear leaving you almost fully exposed for him, if it wasn’t for his mask he would’ve loved to get a taste of your sweetness. He took a mental note to save that for later.

“Let me taste… please?”

You put on your best puppy dog eyes and stick your bottom lip out as show, you want him to feel in control, even if you both know who really is.

You two readjust and suddenly you realize just how big Chris is, you haven’t even seen his cock yet and you know just by looking at him you’ll be overwhelmed,

You grab the waistband of his pajamas and slowly start pulling down revealing he wasn’t wearing any underwear. His cock springs up and slaps his lower stomach, precum dripping down to the base and his tip looking agitated, just ready to be played with.

“So big, isn’t he so big?”

You spit onto your palm and take him in your hands, sensually start jerking him off. Your spit coating his cock ready for your mouth.

Chris grunts and automatically thrusts your way, he wants to apologize but he sees the look in your eyes. He grabs the base of your hair and wraps it around his knuckles balling it up, using it as leverage to push your mouth deeper onto his cock.

He continues his abuse onto your mouth, your eyes watering and noises vibrating against his length as additional pleasure for you.

You eventually move your mouth off and look back up to him, you give him a soft smile before giving more instructions,

“Wanna ride you…”

Your request is a whisper but was loud and clear for him, he helped you up before sitting back down to his previous position. This time you both are naked.

You purr into his ear and tangle your fingers into his hair, setting yourself up onto him. Your chest presses flush against his, feeling his warmth against your own. Finally you sink down, his hands shaking as he grabs onto your hips to stable both of you.

“You’re doing good Chris”

You could tell he had that dorky smile on his face even if you couldn’t see it.

You two continued on like that, but something about this felt different for you than anything else you had filmed before.

Mostly you recorded yourself, with toys or just videos of your body as content. It was amazing, but with Chris it felt so personal and intimate.

Your eyes gloss over as you continue your thoughts, realizing you’re sleeping with your best friend and you’re loving it.

Your bodies mold together with every thrust, and your moans grow louder and louder. You knew everyone might hear but you didn’t mind, you’d prepare for any teasing tomorrow morning.

“Oh Chris, yes!”

Chris is holding onto your ass helping you bounce up and down, his hips thrusting and meeting you at every one.

His whines only motivated you more wanting to help him reach his finish,

“Wanna finish for me?”

As you whisper you kiss his ear lobe and push his chest down, falling down with him. You use the bed to stabilize your arms before continuing your movements. His hands trailed over your body, touching all your most sensitive spots.

Both of your moans bounced off the walls as you contribute to get closer to your climaxes, desperate for it.

Chris rubbed your clit and held you down onto his chest with his other hand, rutting into you.

With a scream of his name you finally feel yourself coming undone, white flashes spreading through your mind as pleasure rips through your body. You continue heavy breathing and Chris chases his own finish.

“M’close…”

He huffed out as he continued his thrusts, pulling you closer with his arms.

You kissed his neck but needed more, you pulled up his mask just enough to see his lips and kissed them. His lips felt so soft against yours, his needy noises coming out as he quickly pulled out.

His warm white cum coated your inner thigh, leaving you slick.

With one last kiss you pulled his mask back down to fully cover his face, and began getting off of him.

You walked over to the camera and blew a kiss, saying your goodbye and clicking off to save the video. You definitely were gonna click back to edit and watch it, your stomach getting butterflies just thinking about it.

“Wow.”

Chris let out a shaky laugh as he tossed the mask onto the bed, his glasses covered in condensation. You laughed as he wiped it off and readjusted them. You slipped off your mask and suddenly felt more exposed than you had all night.

“Was that okay?”

He nodded and rose off the bed walking over to you,

“Was I a good enough assistant?”

You scoffed and hit his arm softly,

“Uh yeah, might need to keep you around.”

He pulled you into a hug and kissed the top of your head. You closed your eyes listening to his steady heart beat. After some comfortable silence you part away and start changing into some pajamas, throwing his pants at him.

“Wanna stay in here tonight?”

It was back to your best friend banter, like nothing had happened.

[phoenixyfriend]

I've been thinking about how it might be useful, if not necessarily entirely fulfilling for whatever it is that I need out of them, to ask politicians how they would define a healthy economy, as opposed to just asking them how they would try to ensure a healthy economy.

President Joe Biden took to the White House lectern Friday to tout the healthy economy – strong job creation, lowering inflation and increased workforce participation and job satisfaction. - US News, Sep. 1, 2023

And

"I think we will see a big pickup in growth. We may not see it in the winter quarter...but I’m hopeful that we’ll see it in the spring,” Larry Kudlow, head of the National Economic Council, said on Fox Business. “It’s a fundamentally healthy economy,” he said, touting the 3.5 percent unemployment rate and “tremendous wage gains.” - The Washington Post, Jan. 30, 2020

In both cases they are offering a few signs of a healthy economy, the things that are quantified and measured as indicators, like unemployment, inflation, and wages.

But... wouldn't 'the ability to buy or rent a living space, and food security, for as many people as possible' make more sense?

Yeah, low inflation is the sign of a good economy, but what is the healthy economy actually doing? The jobs being created, are they actually full time and paying a living wage?

Fuck knows how many times a person at the podium has referenced the stock market as a signifier of the economy's health, and we all know that's barely relevant to the lives of us normal people.

I guess the question I'd want to ask politicians is "if the economy's health were measured in percentage of people who are able to afford housing, food, and other essentials on a full-time job with no government assistance, is the economy actually healthy?"

Low inflation means jackshit if the minimum wage is still no inflation. Job creation means something, but not if it's so far from your home that you spend most of your paycheck commuting. 'Tremendous wage gains' don't mean much if you're looking at an average that includes the CEOs and allows their paychecks to skew the data upwards.

How many of your citizens can afford housing, groceries, and medical care on a full-time wage, without government assistance?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

de Adder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 8, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 09, 2024

Social media has been flooded today with stories of Trump voters who are shocked to learn that tariffs will raise consumer prices as reporters are covering that information. Daniel Laguna of LevelUp warned that Trump’s proposed 60% tariff on Chinese imports could raise the costs of gaming consoles by 40%, so that a PS5 Pro gaming system would cost up to $1,000. One of the old justifications for tariffs was that they would bring factories home, but when the $3 billion shoe company Steve Madden announced yesterday it would reduce its imports from China by half to avoid Trump-promised tariffs, it said it will shift production not to the U.S., but to Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Brazil. 

There are also stories that voters who chose Trump to lower household expenses are unhappy to discover that their undocumented relatives are in danger of deportation. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked Indiana Republican senator-elect Jim Banks if undocumented immigrants who had been here for a long time and integrated into the community would be deported, Banks answered that deportation should include “every illegal in this country that we can find.” Yesterday a Trump-appointed federal judge struck down a policy established by the Biden administration that was designed to create an easier path to citizenship for about half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s advisors told Jim VandeHei and MIke Allen of Axios that Trump wasted valuable time at the beginning of his first term and that they will not make that mistake again. They plan to hit the ground running with tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, deregulation, and increased gas and oil production. Trump is looking to fill the top ranks of the government with “billionaires, former CEOs, tech leaders and loyalists.” 

After the election, the wealth of Trump-backer Elon Musk jumped about $13 billion, making him worth $300 billion. Musk, who has been in frequent contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin, joined a phone call today between President-elect Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky. 

In Salon today, Amanda Marcotte noted that in states all across the country where voters backed Trump, they also voted for abortion rights, higher minimum wage, paid sick and family leave, and even to ban employers from forcing their employees to sit through right-wing or anti-union meetings. She points out that 12% of voters in Missouri voted both for abortion rights and for Trump.

Marcotte recalled that Catherine Rampell and Youyou Zhou of the Washington Post showed before the election that voters overwhelmingly preferred Harris’s policies to Trump’s if they didn’t know which candidate proposed them.  An Ipsos/Reuters poll from October showed that voters who were misinformed about immigration, crime, and the economy tended to vote Republican, while those who knew the facts preferred Democrats. Many Americans turn for information to social media or to friends and family who traffic in conspiracy theories. As Angelo Carusone of Media Matters put it: “We have a country that is pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.” 

In The New Republic today, Michael Tomasky reinforced that voters chose Trump in 2024 not because of the economy or inflation, or anything else, but because of how they perceived those issues—which is not the same thing. Right-wing media “fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win,” Tomasky wrote. Right-wing media has overtaken legacy media to set the country’s political agenda not only because it’s bigger, but because it speaks with one voice, “and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.”

Tomasky noted how the work of Matthew Gertz of Media Matters shows that nearly all the crazy memes that became central campaign issues—the pet-eating story, for example, or the idea that the booming economy was terrible—came from right-wing media. In those circles, Vice President Kamala Harris was a stupid, crazed extremist who orchestrated a coup against President Joe Biden and doesn’t care about ordinary Americans, while Trump is under assault and has been for years, and he’s “doing it all for you.”

Investigative reporter Miranda Green outlined how “pink slime” newspapers, which are AI generated from right-wing sites, turned voters to Trump in key swing state counties. Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, who studies focus groups, told NPR, “When I ask voters in focus groups if they think Donald Trump is an authoritarian, the #1 response by far is, ‘What is an authoritarian?’” 

In a social media post, Marcotte wrote: “A lot of voters are profoundly ignorant. More so than in the past.” That jumped out to me because there was, indeed, an earlier period in our history when voters were “pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.”

In the 1850s, white southern leaders made sure that voters did not have access to news that came from outside the American South, and instead steeped them in white supremacist information. They stopped the mail from carrying abolitionist pamphlets, destroyed presses of antislavery newspapers, and drove antislavery southerners out of their region.

Elite enslavers had reason to be concerned about the survival of their system of human enslavement. The land boom of the 1840s, when removal of Indigenous peoples had opened up rich new lands for settlement, had priced many white men out of the market. They had become economically unstable, roving around the country working for wages or stealing to survive. And they deeply resented the fabulously wealthy enslavers who they knew looked down on them. 

In 1857, North Carolinian Hinton Rowan Helper wrote a book attacking enslavement. No friend to his Black neighbors, Helper was a virulent white supremacist. But in The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, he used modern statistics to prove that slavery destroyed economic opportunity for white men, and assailed “the illbreeding and ruffianism of the slaveholding officials.” He noted that voters in the South who did not own slaves outnumbered by far those who did. "Give us fair play, secure to us the right of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the difficulty at the ballot-box,” he wrote.

In the North the book sold like hotcakes—142,000 copies by fall 1860. But southern leaders banned the book, and burned it, too. They arrested men for selling it and accused northerners of making war on the South. Politicians, newspaper editors, and ministers reinforced white supremacy, warned that the end of slavery would mean race war, and preached that enslavement was God’s law.

When northern voters elected Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 on a platform of containing enslavement in the South, where the sapped soil would soon cut into production, southern leaders decided—usually without the input of voters—to secede from the Union. As leaders promised either that there wouldn’t be a fight, or that if a fight happened it would be quick and painless, poor southern whites rallied to the cause of creating a nation based on white supremacy, reassured by South Carolina senator James Chesnut’s vow that he would personally drink all the blood shed in any threatened civil war. 

When Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, poor white men set out for what they had come to believe was an imperative cause to protect their families and their way of life. By 1862 their enthusiasm had waned, and leaders passed a conscription law. That law permitted wealthy men to hire a substitute and exempted one man to oversee every 20 enslaved men, providing another way for rich men to keep their sons out of danger. Soldiers complained it was a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” 

By 1865 the Civil War had killed or wounded 483,026 men out of a southern white population of about five and a half million people. U.S. armies had pushed families off their lands, and wartime inflation drove ordinary people to starvation. By 1865, wives wrote to their soldier husbands to come home or there would be no one left to come home to. 

Even those poor white men who survived the war could not rebuild into prosperity. The war took from the South its monopoly of global cotton production, locking poor southerners into profound poverty from which they would not begin to recover until the 1930s, when the New Deal began to pour federal money into the region.

Today, when I received a slew of messages gloating that Trump had won the election and that Republican voters had owned the libs, I could not help but think of that earlier era when ordinary white men sold generations of economic aspirations for white supremacy and bragging rights. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[incorrect-maraudersaandco-quotes]

Pandora walks to Slythrins' room (how does she know a password, who knows) and make a B-line straight to Regulus: Here’s the plan. You. Me. We move to Washington DC. We work a minimum wage job, we live in a one bedroom apartment, we make ends meet but it’s okay. We’re happy. You fall in love with a law student, I fall in live with a bartender with daddy issues and a heart of gold. One night we’re out late, we’re at a monument, maybe we’re a little high. We see a carving in the back of the statue. We decide to look into it, why not. The law student gets us into a secret section of the library of congress (he’s doing a report on it). Who bursts in? THE FBI! We’ve uncovered something, we’re scared, we’re confused, we’re in the holding cell and who busts us out through the air vents? The bartender with daddy issues and a heart of gold. We come up with a plan. What do we steal? Not the declaration of independence, the articles of confederation. We take it to the statue and the carving. It’s a cipher, what’s it say? Ben Franklin was homosexual but that’s ok. We been knew.

[reasonsforhope]

Non-paywalled version here.

"Tens of thousands of workers at Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics across the country will soon vote on whether to authorize a strike, union officials announced Thursday.

The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which includes a dozen local unions with members in seven states and the District of Columbia, said voting would begin Saturday [August 26] and extend into the middle of September. Any strike would start no earlier than Oct. 1.

More than 80,000 employees are represented by the coalition, which counts among its members a wide range of hospital and clinic workers including nursing assistants, phlebotomists, pharmacy technicians and housekeepers. The coalition said that it represents roughly 40% of the overall Kaiser Permanente workforce.

Union leaders said that if a strike moves forward, it would be the largest strike of healthcare workers in the history of the country. They faulted Kaiser for inadequate and unsafe staffing and said the healthcare giant had failed to bargain with them in good faith by refusing to provide them with crucial information during negotiations, among other unfair labor practices.

“Patient care is in crisis at Kaiser Permanente,” said Linda Bridges, president of one of the unions in the coalition, OPEIU Local 2in Silver Spring, Md. “Staffing was decimated during the pandemic and it has not gotten any better. The problem we’re dealing with is Kaiser is not hearing us.

“Kaiser can and must do better. ... They need to stop the unfair labor practices and address the healthcare staffing needs now.”

Regan, the SEIU-UHW president, said the coalition has proposed a $25 hourly minimum wage for its members across the Kaiser Permanente system, saying that “you cannot take care of a family in Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Honolulu” on $19 to $21 an hour. He said Kaiser had recently proposed a much lower minimum — $21 an hour — in 2026."

-via Los Angeles Times, August 24, 2023

Note: Also, if you have Kaiser and you've been putting off any doctors appointments, uh...you might want to make those asap.

[darkmaga-returns]

ollowing this month’s elections, most observers have focused on the political comeback that saw Donald Trump win re-election and Republicans capture control of the House and Senate in Washington. But outside the Beltway, another trend emerged that conservatives must heed: Thanks to direct democracy, their agenda won support in locations people might not expect.

Sources as varied as Politico and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal have noted the phenomenon of conservative outcomes in ballot referenda across the country. While by no means uniform, the results point to a key way in which conservatives can advance their agenda, even in the bluest of locales.

Favorable Trend

In some cases, voters acted in a conservative manner by rejecting ballot measures advanced by leftists. Voters in seven states rejected various ranked-choice voting measures, and Alaska may have narrowly repealed its own ranked-choice process. (Ranked-choice voting did advance in the District of Columbia.)

Likewise, proposals to remove restrictions on local rent control and weaken the state’s property tax cap, failed in California. California and Massachusetts also rejected efforts to raise the minimum wage — the former could be attributed to the consequences of the Golden State’s $20 minimum wage for fast-food establishments — while ballot measures on the minimum wage succeeded in Arizona, Missouri, and Alaska.

In other cases, conservatives achieved actual policy wins, rather than just stopping further liberal assaults. Witness Proposition 36 in California, which restored penalties for crime that a 2014 ballot measure had weakened. This year’s ballot measure won in every California county, demonstrating just how fed up Golden State voters are with rampant lawlessness under Democrat supermajority rule. The trend also explains why George Soros-backed Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon lost his re-election campaign by nearly 20 points.