#defining federalism for government class

[iiscpr]

ivan/nathaniel collab go crazy

[mostlysignssomeportents]

America’s richest Medicare fraudsters are untouchable

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/2024/11/13/last-gasp/#i-cant-breathe

"When you're famous, they let you do it": eight words that encapsulate the terrifying rot at the heart of our lived experience, a world where impunity for the powerful trumps the pain of their victims.

"Populism," is shorthand for many things: rage, despair, distrust of institutions and a desire to destroy them. True populism seeks to channel those totally legitimate feelings into transformative change for a caring and fair society for all. So-called "right populism" exploits those feelings, using them to drive a wedge between different groups of victims, turning them against each other, so that elites can go on screwing the squabbling factions.

The far-right parties that are marching to victory through a series global elections are different in many ways, but they all share one trait: they appeal to mistrust of institutions, claiming that the government has been captured by elites who serve them at the expense of the governed. This has the benefit of being actually true, and while the fact that far-right parties are owned by these government-capturing elites might erode their credibility, the fact that so many "progressive" parties have stepped in to defend the institutional status quo leaves an open field for reactionary wreckers:

https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/02/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-slogan-219908

Why would voters turn out to support a "Department of Government Efficiency," run by a bully whose career has been defined by abusing the people he is in charge of? Maybe they're turkeys voting for Christmas, but they also have personal, traumatic experience with government departments that protected the abusive corporations that preyed on them.

Today on Propublica, Peter Elkind tells the incredible story of Lincare, the nation's leading supplier of home oxygen, a repeat-offender fraudster and predator that has made billions in public money without any real consequences:

https://www.propublica.org/article/lincare-medicare-lawsuit-settlements-oxygen-equipment

Lincare has been repeatedly found guilty of defrauding Medicare; in this century alone, they have been put on probation four times, with a "death penalty" provision that would permanently disqualify them from ever doing business with the federal government. In every case, Lincare committed fresh acts of fraud, but never faced that death penalty.

Why not? Lincare is far too big to fail. In America's bizarre, worst-in-class, world-beatingly expensive privatized health care system, even public health provision (like Medicare) is outsourced to the private sector. Lincare has monopolized oxygen, a famously very important molecule for human survival, and if it were disqualified from serving Medicare, large numbers of Americans would literally asphyxiate.

Lincare clearly knows this. Too big to fail is too big to jail, and too big to jail is too big to care. They are the poster children for impunity, repeat offenders, multiply convicted, and still offending, even today. Lincare has been convicted of fraud under the administrations of GW Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, and they're still in business.

What a business it is! Elkind takes us to the asbestos-poisoned town of Libby, Montana, where more than 2,000 of the 2.857 population suffer from respiratory diseases from the open-pit mine that operated there from 1963-1990. The elderly, dying population of this town rely on Medicare and Medicare Advantage oxygen concentrators to draw breath, and that means they rely on Lincare.

That means they are prey to Lincare's signature scam: charging Medicare (and 20% co-paying patients) to rent an oxygen concentrator every month, until they have paid for it several times over. This is illegal: under federal rules, patients are deemed to have bought their oxygen concentrators after 36 months and contractors are no longer allowed to charge them. Lincare doesn't give a fuck: the bills keep coming, and Lincare patients who survive long enough have paid the company $16,000 for a $799 gadget.

When Brandon Haugen, a local Lincare customer service rep, noticed this and queried the company's home office in Clearwater, Florida (home to Scientology and the Flexidisc), he was given the brushoff. After multiple attempts to get company leadership to acknowledge that this was illegal, he quit his job, along with his colleague and childhood friend Ben Montgomery. Between them, Haugen and Montgomery had 14 children who depended on their Lincare paychecks. Despite this, they both quit and turned whistleblower, with no job lined up. Eventually, Lincare paid $29m to settle the claim, with $5.7m to the whistleblowers and their lawyers. For Lincare, this was part of the cost of doing business and the fraud rolls on.

Lincare doesn't just defraud Medicare, they also have a high-pressure commissioned sales force that has repeatedly been caught defrauding Lincare customers – overwhelming sick, poor, elderly people. Patients are pressured to accept auto-billing, then Lincare piles medically dubious gadgets onto their monthly bills, as well as useless, overpriced "patient monitoring" services. Customers with apnea machines are mis-sold ventilators by salesmen who falsely claim these are medically necessary.

Salespeople illegally auto-shipped parts and consumables for Lincare machines to patients, then billed them for it. To satisfy the legal requirement that they telephone patients before placing these orders, sales agents would call patients, put them on hold, then part the call until the patient hung up.

Salespeople are motivated by equal parts greed and terror. Make quota and you can get up to $8,000 per month in bonuses. Miss that punishing quota and you're out on your ass (which is why one salesperson ordered a medically unnecessary ventilator).

Lincare also habitually ignores requests to pick up medically unnecessary equipment, because so long as the equipment is on the patient's premises, they can continue to bill for it. As one Ohio manager wrote to their staff: "As we have already discussed, absolutely no pick-ups/inactivation’s are to be do[ne] until I give you the green light. Even if they are deceased." Execs send out company-wide emails celebrating regional managers who have abandoned pick-ups, like a Feb 2022 "Achievement Rankings" email that touted the fact that most regional centers had at least 150 overdue pickups.

Lincare represents a deep, structural rot in American society. They are too big to punish, and too powerful to regulate. A 2006 law meant to curb oxygen payments was gutted by industry lobbyists. Today, Congress is weighing legislation, the SOAR (Supplemental Oxygen Access Reform) Act, which will allow Lincare to bill the public for hundreds of millions more every year, raising rates and eliminating competitive billing. The bill is supported by patient advocates who are rightly interested in getting oxygen to patients who have been locked out of the system, but the cost of that inclusion is that Lincare will be even more firmly insulated from its corruption.

The Trump Administration will doubtless crack down on some of America's worst companies, and the furious voters who elected the only candidate who campaigned on the idea that America was rotten will cheer him on. But Trump has made it clear that he will select the targets of his administration based on whether they are loyal to him or stand in his way, without regard to whether they harm his supporters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

Companies like Lincare, repeatedly caught paying illegal kickbacks, know how to play this game.

Image: p.Gordon (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Smoke_bomb_with_burning_fuse.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[simply-ivanka]

Who’s Afraid of Project 2025?

Democrats run against a think-tank paper that Trump disavows. Why?

Wall Street Journal

July 29, 2024

By The Editorial Board

Americans are learning more about Kamala Harris, as Democrats rush to anoint the Vice President’s candidacy after throwing President Biden overboard. Ms. Harris wasted no time saying she’s going to run hard against a policy paper that Donald Trump has disavowed—the supposedly nefarious agenda known as Project 2025. But who’s afraid of a think-tank white paper?

“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Ms. Harris tweeted shortly after President Biden dropped out. She’s picking up this ball from Mr. Biden, and her campaign website claims that Project 2025 would “strip away our freedoms” and “abolish checks and balances.”

***

Sounds terrible, but is it? The 922-page document doesn’t lack for modesty, as a wish list of policy reforms that would touch every part of government from the Justice Department to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The project is led by the Heritage Foundation and melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups. The project is also assembling a Rolodex of those who might work in a Trump Administration.

Most of the Democratic panic-mongering has focused on the project’s aim to rein in the administrative state. That includes civil service reform that would make it easier to remove some government workers, and potentially revisiting the independent status of agencies like the Federal Trade Commission.

The latter isn’t going to happen, but getting firmer presidential control over the bureaucracy would improve accountability. The federal government has become so vast that Presidents have difficulty even knowing what is going on in the executive branch. Americans don’t want to be ruled by a permanent governing class that doesn’t answer to voters.

Some items on this menu are also standard conservative fare. The document calls for an 18% corporate tax rate (now 21%), describing that levy as “the most damaging tax” in the U.S. system that falls heavily on workers. A mountain of economic literature backs that up. The blueprint suggests tying more welfare programs with work; de-regulating health insurance markets; expanding Medicare Advantage plans that seniors like; ending sugar subsidies; revving up U.S. energy production. That all sounds good to us.

Democrats are suggesting the project would gut Social Security, though in fact it bows to Mr. Trump’s preference not to touch the retirement program, which is headed for bankruptcy without reform. No project can profess to care about the rising national debt, as Heritage does, without fixing a program that was 22% of the federal budget in 2023.

At times the paper takes no position. For example: The blueprint features competing essays on trade policy. This is a tacit admission that for all the GOP’s ideological confusion on economics, many conservatives still understand that Mr. Trump’s 10% tariff is a terrible idea.

As for the politics, Mr. Trump recently said online that he knew “nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” That may be true. The chance that Mr. Trump has read any of it is remote to nil, and he doesn’t want to be tied to anyone’s ideas since he prizes maximum ideological flexibility.

The document mentions abortion nearly 200 times, but Mr. Trump wants to neutralize that issue. The project’s chief sponsor, Heritage president Kevin Roberts, also gave opponents a sword when he boasted of “a second American revolution” that would be peaceful “if the left allows it to be.” This won’t help Mr. Trump with the swing voters he needs to win re-election.

By our lights the project’s cultural overtones are also too dark and the agenda gives too little spotlight to the economic freedom and strong national defense that defined the think tank’s influence on Ronald Reagan in 1980.

***

But the left’s campaign against Project 2025 is reaching absurd decibels. You’d think Mr. Trump is a political mastermind hiding the secret plans he’ll implement with an army of shock troops marching in lockstep. If his first term is any guide, and it is the best we have, Mr. Trump will govern as a make-it-up-as-he-goes tactician rather than a strategist with a coherent policy guide. He’ll dodge and weave based on the news cycle and often based on whoever talks to him last.

Not much of the Project 2025 agenda is likely to happen, even if Republicans take the House and Senate. Democrats will block legislation with a filibuster. The bureaucracy will leak with abandon and oppose even the most minor reforms to the civil service. The press will revert to full resistance mode, and Mr. Trump’s staff will trip over their own ambitions.

Democrats know this, which is why they fear Trump II less than they claim. They’re targeting Project 2025 to distract from their own failed and unpopular policies.

[enmstorytime]

Policy Change

My first mistake was believing that I had the power to take down our university's Title IX Coordinator, Cory Corvallis. In case you don't know, it's the Title IX Coordinator's job to investigate and decide punishment in cases of sexual misconduct on campus. Cory Corvallis has been under investigation from the federal government due to his mishandling of cases, and due to his creative and retaliatory punishments. Last year, the President of the Sigma Tau Delta fraternity had been caught streaking across the quad by Cory Corvallis. The fraternity president was told he had to live in one of the Sorority Houses in nothing but his boxers and a cock cage for the rest of the school year or face expulsion. The fraternity president lasted a week before he chose to take expulsion.

The federal agency in charge of our campus investigation gave Cory Corvallis a warning.

A month later, a personal friend in my department, another creative writing professor was reported to Cory Corvallis for using new and creative methods to motivate his students. While I could never imagine going to the lengths he went to, not even our Dean could deny that his methods had been effective. I've never seen more vulnerable writing from the students on this campus. When Cory received the report that my friend had spent half of last semester teaching his classes in the buff, my friend was called into Corvallis's office to explain himself. In the name of equity, Corvallis altered my friend's contract. He is now required to offer what was supposed to be a one time deal to every class he teaches while employed at this institution. The top post on his Rate My Professor reads, "If you write some sad story about your grandma's death, he'll show you peen." His classes filled up faster than any other class on campus this semester, and he's been teaching naked since the first week of classes.

I decided this could not stand. Last Friday I sent an email to the lead federal investigator overseeing the Cory Corvallis case. I asked to set up a time to meet to discuss my concerns about Corvallis. I never heard back from the investigator.

Instead, when I returned to the office Monday morning, I found an email from Cory Corvallis in my inbox:

Dear Professor Watson,

It has come to my attention that you have something you'd like to discuss with me. I recommend in the future that you avoid trying to circumvent the system we've established on this campus. All concerns about misconduct should be reported directly to the Title IX Coordinator: Me.

You are a mandatory reporter on this campus, Professor Watson. If it comes to my attention that you have chosen to neglect reporting your concerns to the Title IX Coordinator, I promise you that there will be consequences.

Please consider this warning, and thank you in advance for your future compliance,

Cory Corvallis

My stomach plummeted as I read Cory's email. I didn't like the idea of discovering what any of Cory Corvallis's punishments might be. I would have left it alone, if I hadn't walked out of my office to bump into my friend whose office was right across the hall from mine.

I still hadn't gotten used to seeing him in all his glory, even though a stipulation of his contract was that he wear the exact amount of clothing to and from his classroom that his students had earned. My eyes swept up and down his body quickly absorbing the slight hair on his toes, the tight calves, the defined abs, the veiny forearms, and of course, his glorious, cut cock with a neatly trimmed bush.

"It's fucking humiliating," he said, covering his cock quickly with his large, lean hands. "I know half of campus has seen my cock by now, and the half who hasn't hasn't done a simple Google search."

"There are pictures online?" I asked, horrified.

"My dad found them," my friend said, shaking his head. "Sent me a text this morning with a picture of me standing at the whiteboard, marker in my hand, cock fully erect."

I shuddered at the thought of my own father seeing a picture of my erect penis and then letting me know he'd seen it.

"It gets worse, Watson," my friend said, shaking his head, his hands still glued to his privates. "With the picture, my dad wrote, 'Helen,' that's my stepmother, 'thinks we should include this with our Christmas cards this year. What do you think?"

"He's gotta be joking," I said.

"Joke or not, before long, everyone who's ever known me is going to have seen every last inch of my body."

He sighed, looked me in the eye, and then moved his hands away from his cock again.

"Look all you want, Watson," he said, sadly. "It's not like I have any control over any of this anymore."

I watched my friend walk away, somehow disgusted and erect, as his ass jiggled with each step.

I stepped back into my office and drafted another email to the lead investigatory on the Cory Corvallis case. I used my personal email this time. I rationalized that the only reason Cory had discovered that I'd reached out to the feds was because I'd made a rookie mistake and used my work email, which I should have known he would have access to. Hell, he probably had a ping anytime anyone on campus tried to email the feds. But this time, he wouldn't know.

Of course, I was wrong.

The following morning, I found this email in my inbox:

Professor Watson,

I was certain I had informed you that there would be consequences if I discovered that you'd reached out to the Feds again with your concerns about misconduct, without reporting to me first. Did you expect that you could reach out to the feds without them contacting me?

I remind you once more that I oversee all cases of misconduct on this campus. I remind you once more that you are a mandatory reporter. Now it is my duty to inform you that as the Title IX Coordinator I am responsible for defining the punishments for misconduct on our campus. I have the authority to alter contracts and policies as I see fit in order to ensure that misconduct is not repeated.

In my investigations, Professor Watson, in your latest email to the federal investigators, you wrote the sentence: "I hope to lay bare to you the cruel, unusual, and inappropriate methods Corvallis uses to punish members of our campus community."

Since I have found you guilty of not reporting to the Title IX Coordinator, allow me to "lay bare" your "cruel, unusual, and inappropriate punishment." Please report to the Title IX Office at your soonest convenience. Failure to do so within the business day will result in your immediate termination.

See you soon,

Cory Corvallis

My heart pounded and my stomach churned as I walked to Corvallis's office. I couldn't imagine what punishment he would give me, but I didn't like him emphasizing the words "lay bare." Maybe he'd make me give my students the same motivational tools my friend had.

I shuddered at the thought. I don't have my friends lean body or trimmed body hair. I have a gut. I have back hair, and chest hair, and a bushy happy trail down to some wild pubes. I didn't want to show off my body and be compared to my friend. On the other hand, a part of me hoped that if I had to face those consequences, the students wouldn't want to see me naked. Maybe I would be okay, and I'd keep on teaching classrooms full of young adults who had so many other things going on in their lives that my classes barely landed on their personal radar.

Do your worst, Corvallis, I thought as I pushed the door open to his office.

Cory Corvallis sat behind his desk, a smug grin on his face as he looked me up and down. I couldn't deny that he was handsome. He looked like a modern day Jesus: flowy hair down to his shoulders, a full beard, dark skin, and a perfectly fit suit. We'd never met before, but I'd seen his picture in a couple newspaper articles.

"Professor Watson, I assume," his voice was cool and husky.

"That's me," I said, glaring, trying to sound careless.

"Your department is so interesting to me," Corvallis said, steepling his long fingers under his chin. "I think only a few weeks ago I had a colleague of yours in here. Is that right?"

"You know it is," I said. "I wanted to talk to the Feds about how you've ruined his life."

"He ruined his own life," Corvallis said. "Besides, he could always find a job elsewhere."

"It's almost impossible to land a tenure track position in our field," I said. "And with his pictures online, with his Rate my Professor. What other institution would hire him?"

"What a shame," Cory said with an evil grin. "But we aren't here to talk about him. We're here to talk about you, my good man, and the punishment for not reporting to the Title IX Coordinator.

"Things have gotten lax around here. Too many mandated reporters think they can try and get around me. They think I won't catch them. I need to make an example."

My heart sank. I couldn't imagine a stronger example than my friend, spending each class period with his entire body on display. But something inside me warned me that I was about to have the rug ripped from under my feet, my presumably very bare and very naked feet.

He pushed a sheet of paper across the desk.

"I oversee every policy on this campus, Professor Watson," he said as I crossed the room to grab the paper. "Unlike with your friend, I do not have to have you sign a contract to change this policy. You've already signed a policy agreeing to our Professional Code of Conduct, which includes an article stating that at any time this Code of Conduct can be altered without an adjusted contract."

I looked down at the paper and my heart dropped.

"Each department has their own Dress Code written into the Code of Conduct."

I swallowed at the lump in my throat.

"If I had known how difficult it is for Creative Writing faculty to find jobs on other campuses, I would have targeted just you, of course," he said, his voice dripping with false sincerity. "But of course, I can't change it now. Then you wouldn't learn your lesson."

My eyes scanned the paper while he stared at me in silence. It read:

CREATIVE WRITING DEPARTMENT DRESS CODE:

In order to better inspire students, and to encourage transparency, vulnerability, and trust, all male Creative Writing faculty (i.e. professors, assistant professors, lecturers, adjuncts, and graduate instructors in the department) are prohibited from wearing clothing on campus. Clothing is defined as any material used to cover any section of skin, regardless of size. Any clothing brought on campus by a male Creative Writing faculty member will be confiscated by the Title IX Coordinator.

I looked back up at Cory, who shrugged and grinned.

"You can't be serious," I said. "You'll never get away with this."

"Watch me," he said, grinning. "The feds actually like what I'm doing with this campus. The investigation is all a front to squash any complaints, but they've given me total free reign."

I stared at him stupidly.

"Well," Cory said, his eyes sweeping up and down my body with glee. "I think you're in violation of policy."

I stared, my head spinning a mile a minute. It wouldn't just be me. The thought provided relief, and then terror. It wouldn't just be me, but they would know it was my fault.

"I won't ask again," Cory said coolly. "Strip immediately, or go find one of those impossible to find positions."

I slid off my blazer and began unbuttoning my shirt.

"That's more like it," he said, as my hairy, pudgy torso was freed from my shirt.

I undid my belt as I kicked off my shoes, trying to maintain eye contact with Cory so he wouldn't know that he had won.

"The walk back to your office will be chilly," Cory said, his eyes glittering with sadistic joy.

I slid my pants down my legs and stepped out of them, standing in nothing but an old pair of tighty-whities. I hadn't expected anyone to see me in my underwear today.

"I'll email the policy to your department once you leave my office," he said, breaking eye contact and watching as I moved my hands to the waistband of my underwear.

"I'll let them know who's responsible for this policy," his grin grew, as the root of my cock felt the first rush of office air. "And I'll let them know that if they have any doubts, they should stop by your office. To thank you."

In a quick motion, I pushed my briefs past my cock, and let them go. They fell to my feet, and I stepped out of them, standing before Cory Corvallis with every stitch of clothing pooled at my feet.

"I believe those are mine," Cory said.

He stepped quickly around his desk, bent down directly in front of me so that his glorious hair gently brushed my cock, and collected every article of my clothing for the day.

As he stood, he grabbed my cock with both his hands and squeezed.

"There's nothing to stop me from calling you in here, whenever I want," he said, my cock firming up in his hands. "Enjoy your walk across campus, Professor Watson. You might want to do something about this."

I was now fully erect in his hands.

"I expect I'll see you soon," he said, leading me by my erect penis to the door, opening it, and pushing me out of his office with my dick standing at full attention and my clothes bundled up on top of Cory Corvallis's desk.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Gary Taxali

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 30, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 31, 2024

Trump and the MAGA movement garnered power through performances that projected  dominance and cowed media and opponents into silence. Rather than disqualifying him from the highest office in the United States, Trump’s mocking of a disabled reporter, bragging about assaulting women, and calling immigrants rapists and criminals seemed to demonstrate his dominance and strengthen him with his base. In July the Republican National Convention celebrated that performance with a deliberate appropriation of the themes of professional wrestling, including a display by an actual professional wrestler. 

Their plan for winning the 2024 election seems to have been to put forward more of the same. 

But the national mood appears to be changing. President Joe Biden’s decision to decline the Democratic nomination for president opened the way for the Democrats to launch a new, younger, more vibrant vision for the country. 

Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, have promised to continue, and even to expand slightly, the programs that under the Biden-Harris administration have started the process of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, bringing back manufacturing, and investing in industries to combat climate change. As the country did before 1981, they are promising to continue to focus on supporting a strong middle class rather than those at the top of the economy. 

Harris and Walz are building on this economic base to recenter the United States government on the idea of community. They have deliberately rejected the identity politics that Trump used so effectively to assert his dominance and have instead emphasized that they see the country not as a community defined by winners and losers, but as one in which everyone has value and should have the same opportunities for success. 

Last night, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Harris, whose mother immigrated to the U.S. from India and whose father immigrated from Jamaica, to respond to Trump’s suggestion that she “happened to turn Black” for political advantage, “questioning a core part of your identity.” Harris responded: “Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please,” and she laughed. “That’s it?” Bash asked. “That’s it,” Harris answered. 

Harris’s refusal to accept the MAGA terms of engagement, along with the exuberant support for Harris and Walz, has Trump, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, and MAGA Republicans reeling. That, in turn, has made them seem vulnerable, and that vulnerability is now opening up room for pundits from a range of outlets to challenge them. They seem to be losing the ability to control the public conversation by asserting dominance. 

This change has been evident this week in the response to Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery with the family of a soldier who died in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago for campaign videos and photos attacking Harris, despite the fact that federal law prohibits campaign activities in the cemetery, in what is widely considered hallowed ground. The moment almost passed unnoticed, as it likely would have in the past, but Esquire’s Charles Pierce asked in his blog: “How The Hell Was Trump Allowed To Use Arlington National Cemetery As A Campaign Prop?”

Led by NPR, different outlets begin to dig into the story, and Trump, Vance, Trump’s spokesperson, and Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita all tried to brush off their lawlessness with their usual rhetoric. Trump tried to change the subject to say he was being unfairly attacked for supporting a military family. Vance tried to suggest that Harris should have attended the private ceremony and that for criticizing it she should “go to hell,” although she hadn’t commented on it. The spokesperson suggested that the female cemetery official who tried to stop them was experiencing a “mental health episode,” and LaCivita, a leading figure in the Swift Boat veterans’ attacks on John Kerry in 2004, reposted an offending video to “trigger” Army officials, he said. 

It hasn’t flown. Today, MSNBC’s Dasha Burns asked Trump directly: “Should your campaign have put out those videos and photos?” Trump answered: “Well, we have a lot of people. You know, we have people, TikTok people, you know we’re leading the Internet. That was the other thing. We’re so far above her on the Internet….” Burns interrupted and followed up: “But on that hallowed ground, should they have put out the images…?” Trump said: “Well I don’t know what the rules and regulations are, I don’t know who did it, and, I, it could have been them. It could have been the parents. It could have been somebody….”

Burns interrupted again: “It was your campaign’s TikTok that put out the video.” Trump answered: "I really don't know anything about it. All I do is I stood there and I said, 'If you'd like to have a picture, we can have a picture.' If somebody did it; this was a setup by the people in the administration that, 'Oh, Trump is coming to Arlington, that looks so bad for us.’"

In the days since Biden stepped out of contention, Trump has been flailing—often complaining that it is “unfair” that Biden isn’t his opponent any longer—but his behavior has rocketed downhill since the new grand jury delivered a new indictment revising the four charges against him for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and install himself in power. Karen Tumulty wrote in the Washington Post today that Trump is “spiraling,” noting that in the space of 24 hours he posted about Harris engaging in a sex act, promoted QAnon slogans, and called for prison for his political opponents. 

Tumulty notes that Trump’s team has been trying to get him to focus on the issues voters care about, but that after he “listlessly delivers some lines from the teleprompter,” he “gets bored and begins recycling the rants from his rallies.” Harris has stayed silent about his behavior, Tumulty says a campaign staffer told her, because “Why would we step in this man’s way?” The Harris campaign wants microphones left on throughout the planned September 10 debate, expecting that Trump will not be able to contain the rants that used to serve his interests but now turn voters off. 

To Vance is left the job of trying to clean up after Trump, but he’s not a skilled politician. Asked by John Berman about Trump’s social media attacks, Vance suggested that Trump was bringing “fun” and “jokes” to politics to “lift people up.” But observers on social media noted that claiming that attacks are “jokes” is a key part of asserting dominance. 

Vance himself went after Harris by saying that he had an early version of Harris’s CNN interview and then posting an old meme of a young Miss Teen USA who appeared to panic when answering a question and produced a nonsensical answer. When Berman told him that the young woman contemplated self-harm after becoming a national joke and asked if he would like to apologize for bringing up that old video, Vance declined to apologize, suggested we should “laugh at ourselves,” and repeated that we should “try to have some fun in politics.”

Vance got into deeper trouble, though, when asked to explain Trump’s statement when he told Dasha Burns that he opposes Florida’s six-week abortion ban. This November, Floridians will have to vote yes or no on a constitutional amendment that would put abortion rights similar to those of Roe v. Wade into the state constitution. 

Trump’s opposition to that amendment reflects the political reality that abortion bans are unpopular even in Republican-dominated states, but the MAGA base is fervently antiabortion. “That ‘thump thump’ you just heard is the entire pro-life movement going under the bus,” one wrote. 

A campaign spokesperson promptly tried to walk the statement back by saying that Trump “has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida,” which Vance reiterated on CNN. When Berman pressed him on it, though, Vance appeared to lose the ability to hear the question, suggesting the feed was bad. 

This afternoon, Trump announced he will side with the antiabortion activists and vote against the amendment to the Florida constitution that would restore the rights that were in Roe v. Wade. Harris and Walz, meanwhile, have announced a national bus tour to highlight reproductive freedom. It will start in Palm Beach, Florida, where the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago property is located. 

Today, lawyers for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the election workers Trump ally Rudy Giuliani defamed by accusing them of fraud in the 2020 election, asked a federal court to enforce the judgment that awarded them $146 million. They have asked for a court order requiring Giuliani to turn over his properties in New York and Florida, his luxury car, and his personal valuables including three New York Yankees World Series rings. Giuliani’s spokesperson accused the women of bullying Giuliani. 

The Lincoln Project, which believes that needling Trump is the best way to rattle him, today released a video that portrays Trump as a predatory animal who is old, past his prime, and abandoned by his pack. Rather than engaging in his final hunt, he has found himself the prey. The voice-over intones: “The circle of life eventually closes on all things.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Casey Wexler and Reed McMaster at MMFA:

Right-wing media have spent over a decade attacking and calling for cuts to vital food assistance programs, with particular focus on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (commonly known as “food stamps”) as well as free school lunch programs. Now, Project 2025 — an extreme right-wing initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and personnel to the next Republican presidential administration — proposes  fulfilling their wish of cutting off hundreds of thousands of Americans from vital food assistance.

Project 2025 calls for sweeping cuts to the food stamp program, which would eliminate food assistance for some Americans and slash the purchasing power of families

Project 2025’s play book, Mandate for Leadership, calls for reimplementing work requirements for food stamps, which it estimates could put 688,000 adults at risk of losing food assistance. Project 2025 claims that these work requirements would be “fairly limited” but admits that the policy will deny some Americans food assistance. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ analysis of Project 2025, “These requirements are premised on the false assumption that people who receive SNAP do not work and must be compelled to do so — an assumption rooted in a host of unfounded prejudices based on race, gender, disability status, and class. Rigorous studies have shown that the current work requirement policy is ineffective at increasing employment. Instead, it takes food assistance away from people with very low incomes and increases food insecurity and hardship.” [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 9/3/24]

Project 2025 seeks to remove automatic qualification for SNAP if an individual receives benefits from another government program or broad-based categorical eligibility. The authors of Mandate for Leadership are trying to end automatic eligibility for SNAP for those who receive other benefits because, they claim, “‘benefit’ is defined so broadly that it includes simply receiving distributed pamphlets and 1–800 numbers. This definition, with its low threshold to trigger a ‘benefit,’ allows individuals to bypass eligibility limits—particularly the asset requirement.” But a major benefit of broad-based categorical eligibility, according to CBPP, is helping families through the “benefit cliff,” when a family’s income rises just above the SNAP limit. Broad-based categorical eligibility allows states to ignore the threshold and phase out SNAP benefits gradually as income increases. It also lets families keep higher levels of allowed assets, which allows them to “avoid debt, weather unexpected financial disruptions, and better prepare to support themselves in retirement.” [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 7/30/19]

Project 2025 attacks recent increases to the Thrifty Food Plan, which estimates the cost of a healthy diet, saying the Biden administration “may have skirted regulations and congressional authority to increase the overall cost of the program.” The Biden administration raised the budget of SNAP when it found higher costs in maintaining a healthy diet, which Project 2025 called “a dramatic overreach.” Mandate says the Thrifty Food Plan has previously been based on just inflation, which was proposed in the latest federal farm bill. According to the Urban Institute, “In effect, the proposed changes would reduce SNAP benefits’ purchasing power over time, exacerbating the current SNAP benefits gap.” [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Newsweek, 4/23/24; Urban Institute, 3/18/24;]

Project 2025 seeks to close the “heat-and-eat loophole” that allows states to issue larger amounts of food stamp benefits. Food stamps are issued based on income minus certain deductions, and beneficiaries of the Low-Income Heat and Energy Assistance Program receive a large deduction even if, according to Project 2025, their LIHEAP benefits are as low as $1 (in reality, as of 2014, LIHEAP benefits have to be $20 or more). LIHEAP helps households pay utility costs, and beneficiaries of the program can maximize their SNAP benefits on top of receiving utility assistance. The program was created because low-income households have a tendency to go without food due to high energy costs. Therefore eliminating this “loophole” entirely will create the food insecurity it was implemented to prevent. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Food Research and Action Center, 3/16/21; LIHEAP Clearinghouse, 2/21/24]

Project 2025's plans for food assistance are diabolical, as its agenda includes reinstation of broad-based categorical eligibility and the Low-Income Heat and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

[cantsayidont]

A common apologia for STAR TREK — particularly TOS, but extending to the newest shows as well — is that it wants or tries to be progressive, but is tripped up by the writers' unconscious biases or the ostensibly more backward social attitudes of its time (whatever time that may be). This argument is somewhat perplexing because STAR TREK has never been what you'd call subtle in expressing its liberal imperialist values, either in 1966–1968 or now.

The core of STAR TREK, which is explained clearly in Roddenberry's pitch and the TOS writer's bible (excerpted at some length in Stephen Whitfield's THE MAKING OF STAR TREK, inter alia), is a hybridization of Horatio Hornblower, the C.S. Forester adventure novels about a heroic British naval officer during the Napoleonic wars, and the American Western, a genre that still dominated a big swath of American TV drama in the period when STAR TREK was conceived. Roddenberry himself had previously written for some of those shows, in particular HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL, and his pitch line for STAR TREK was "WAGON TRAIN to the stars."

To its credit, STAR TREK ended up being about more than just that, but Roddenberry was very clear that at heart, the series was about extending the conquest of the American frontier to the stars. Of the Enterprise and the other ships of its class, Roddenberry said:

In addition to the twelve Starships, there are lesser classes of vessels, capable of operating over much more limited distances. They are involved in commercial ventures, survey work, archaeological expeditions, medical research, and so on. The Starships are the heavy cruisers, the ones which can best defend themselves as they probe farther and farther out, opening new areas … and then the others follow. [Whitfield, 204; emphasis added]

Because TOS avoids saying anything very substantive about civilian life and government outside of Starfleet, we actually know very little about factors may be driving this wave of colonialism. If Earth in the TOS-era is a post-scarcity paradise (which, it should be noted, the original show does not ever actually say), why leave home for a riskier, hardscrabble life on worlds like Rigel XII ("Mudd's Women") or Cestus III ("Arena")? Part of it is plainly capitalist interests: There are explicitly opportunities to strike it rich discovering or exploiting valuable resources (or fleecing those who have or hope to, as Harry Mudd does). The Federation is also keen to cement its political hold on worlds that are near the borders of rival empires; the plot of "The Trouble with Tribbles," for example, hinges on the Federation's determination to colonize Sherman's Planet, which is also claimed by the Klingon Empire.

However, these plot details are to some extent beside the point: The premise of STAR TREK, and of most Westerns, is that the importance and heroic necessity of colonizing and "developing" the frontier, bringing (white) civilization to the "savage" wilderness, is self-evident.

Much of STAR TREK is predicated on concepts of "social evolution," the idea that there are a series of consistently defined hierarchical stages from the primitive to the advanced. TOS often states this quite explicitly, but it has remained a key feature of the STAR TREK premise up to the present. This process of advancement is described as both natural and a matter of moral urgency: Kirk rails against the "stagnation" of less-advanced societies, and on multiple occasions argues that the importance of reversing stagnation (or devolution) justifies violating the Prime Directive with dramatic interventionist action to put a civilization back on what he considers the proper track.

The concepts of social evolution STAR TREK espouses are fundamentally racist — it's a philosophy that rationalizes colonial exploitation (and in the real world even slavery) — and play into the franchise's virulent anti-indigenous attitudes. Indeed, STAR TREK frequently takes an openly contemptuous view of "primitive" peoples, who in TOS are often presented as simpletons, either kindly child-men (e.g., "The Apple") or dangerous savages driven by quasi-animal cunning (as with some of the characters in "A Private Little War"). Probably the ugliest example in TOS is "The Paradise Syndrome, where Kirk loses his memory and falls in with a society of American Indians transported centuries earlier to a distant planet; the story emphasizes that, even deprived of the knowledge and technology of his century, Kirk is still the intellectual superior of the people around him (who of course are played by white actors in redface). However, this a recurring theme throughout STAR TREK: Indigenous species are consistently presented as something less than people unless their stage of advancement approximates that of 20th century Earth (as with the Roman proconsul in "Bread and Circuses," who is one of the very few indigenous "primitives" to be credited with any kind of intellectual sophistication). The application of the Prime Directive (which is wildly inconsistent and honored more in the breach than in the observance) is based not on respect for cultural differences, but on a patronizing desire to "protect" indigenous pre-warp civilizations from ideas that their primitive minds can't yet handle.

STAR TREK pays lip service to the idea of cultural and racial diversity, and the Vulcan slogan (in the third season of TOS) "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations." However, what it most consistently espouses is the importance of ensuring the march of social evolution along orthodox lines and the eventual absorption of other races, cultures, and species into the Federation's (white American liberal) ideas of socioeconomic and technological progress. As Kirk says to Ayelborne in "Errand of Mercy":

KIRK: Gentlemen, I must get you to reconsider. We can be of immense help to you. In addition to military aid, we can send you specialists, technicians. We can show you how to feed a thousand people where one was fed before. We can help you build schools, educate the young in the latest technological and scientific skills. Your public facilities are almost nonexistent. We can help you remake your world, end disease, hunger, hardship. All we ask in return is that you let us help you. Now.

"Errand of Mercy" is notable in that Kirk's condescension toward the Organians proves to be ill-founded: What he and Spock assumed was a stagnant, primitive society is actually a kind of backyard bird feeder maintained by a vastly more advanced species that is trying very hard to be patient as Kirk and the Klingons strut around making pronouncements. At the end of the episode, Kirk admits openly that he's embarrassed at how badly he misread the situation. However, this doesn't ultimately lead him to question his presumptions about social progress; he simply admits that in this specific case, they were misapplied.

The result of "Errand of Mercy," as revealed in the second season of TOS, is a peace treaty between the Federation and Klingons that makes the show's endorsement of colonialism and economic imperialism that much clearer: As we're told in "The Trouble with Tribbles," under this new treaty, if there is a territorial dispute over a newly discovered or colonized world, "one side or the other must prove it can develop the planet most efficiently," with the ostensibly benevolent and freedom-loving Federation and the ostensibly "brutal and aggressive" Klingon Empire vying to determine who will be permitted to exploit that world and its resources. The exact role of the Organians in the framing of this treaty is unclear — they have no need of or interest in Federation-style economic development, and nothing in "Errand of Mercy" suggests that they see much value in it, although the Organians do say they find the prospect of a shooting war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire both morally objectionable and "intensely painful" — but its result is to more firmly establish the Cold War conflict between the Federation and Klingons as the competition of two rival colonial powers for control of valuable territory and resources. Their conflict is a primarily economic one, not really substantively based on what Kor calls the "minor ideological differences" between the two empires, which both Kor and the Organians regard as incidental. (Kirk takes issue with that contention, but as previously noted, Kirk has more than once used the explicit threat of planetary genocide to get what he wants, so Kor probably has a point here!)

Later STAR TREK shows are sometimes more self-conscious about these values, but they seldom actually question them, and there's really only so far that STAR TREK can move these load-bearing narrative elements without becoming something really fundamentally different than it is. Moreover, DISCOVERY, STRANGE NEW WORLDS, and PICARD have seemed committed to doubling down on many of the franchise's more disturbing ideological elements, while attempting to paper over viewer unease with appeals to nostalgia, faux-patriotism, and sentimentality.

[emptyheadgamer]

Im mad about gun laws again. this shit wouldnt be half the messy issue it is if they hadn't been so head up ass convoluted when coming up with definitions.

Say I have an Ar15 (or any other pistol/rifle)

according to current NFA regulations as interpreted by the ATF, if it has

a stock and a barrel >16": its a rifle

a stock and a barrel <16": its a SBR

a brace or nothing and no vertical foregrip: its a pistol

a brace or nothing, a vertical foregrip, and its <26" overall length: its an AOW

a brace or nothing, a vertical foregrip, and its >26" overall length: its an OF

a brace or nothing, a barrel >16", and it was manufactured with a stock that has been removed: Its a Rifle

a brace or nothing, a barrel <16", and it was manufactured with a stock that has been removed: its an SBR

Capable of fully automatic fire, was registered by 1986, and not a SBR: Its a machine gun

Capable of fully automatic fire, was registered by 1986, and is an SBR: Its both a machine gun and a SBR

Capable of fully automatic fire and not registered by 1986 or manufactured after 1986: Its a felony for any individual in the US to own this. Government entities such as the military and FFL businesses with a SOT can possess as orginizations.

NFA: National Firearms Act. The legislation responsible for most federal regulations on firearms, including the Hughes amendment which is what creats the bans on civilians from owning machine guns.

SBR: Short barreled rifle, requires $200 atf tax stamp to own

AOW: Any other weapon, requires $5 atf tax stamp to own

OF: Other Firearm, does not require tax stamp.

FFL: Federal firearms license, part of a business license that allows a business to sell firearms

SOT: Special Occupational Taxpayer, an additional license that allows a business to possess and transfer Class 3 items like machine guns

Fully Automatic: Detonates more than one cartridge per single activation of the trigger. Includes burst fire and multi barrel firearms that fire more than one barrel from a single trigger pull. Does NOT include bump stocks, binary triggers, forced reset triggers, and gatling cranks all of which work by various mechanical means to allow the shooter to perform single trigger activations more rapidly. Requires a $200 tax stamp of civilian legal ownership of pre 1986 registered ones.

Transferrable: Short hand for referring to a machine gun that was registered before the 1986 cut off and ownership can be transferred to a civilian who meets and follows the restrictions for class 3 NFA items, such as getting a tax stamp and not crossing state lines with it without receiving approval from the ATF.

Tax stamp: ATF paperwork saying your ID is on record and you have passed a background check, been fingerprinted, supplied the required proof of engraving, and the serial number has been added to their database. Can take up to a year to be approved by the ATF, sometimes even longer. Paperwork must be kept with the relevant gun or suppressor at all times. Required separately for each classification that causes the need for one, so a surpressed pre-86 full auto sbr would require 3, totalling $600 in paperwork fees to the atf completely separate from the cost of the gun

ATF: Government agency responsible for Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Has a reputation for shooting peoples dogs due to their consistent use of no knock night raids when serving any kind of warrant causing them to become a statistical outlier for being attacked by startled pets.

bonus

Assault weapon:

Not a federal legal term or an ATF classification, defined by state laws and varies by state. Not synonymous with assault rifle, a classification used specifically only in terms of equipment for different military roles (and one of the first requirements for filling the assault rifle role is being a machine gun).

Most common features defining an assault weapon: folding stock, barrel threaded to accept a muzzle device such as brake, compensator, or supressor (even if no muzzle device attached), being equipped with a "high capacity" magazine (most commonly either >10 or >20 round capacity).

Some state and local governments are starting to name AR and AK pattern rifles as assault weapons regardless of weather they are in full compliance with all restrictions.

And that's just pistols/rifles. shotguns have an entirely different set of rules, as do flare launchers, explosives (which includes molotovs, and yes the atf does still require serial numbers for them), and just about anything else you can think of.

No matter how you feel about new gun control, i think everybody should be able to agree this is some unnecessarily convoluted nonsense

[cliff-montgomery]

The Thorny Problem of Straw Purchases in U.S. Gun Law

by Cliff Montgomery - Feb. 15th, 2024

Yesterday’s mass shooting at a parade intended to celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs’ recent Super Bowl victory over the San Francisco 49s once again reminds us of the need for serious gun laws and gun law reform.

On February 9th, two short reviews on current federal gun laws were released by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The CRS refers to itself as a “ non-partisan shared staff to congressional committees and Members of Congress.” In short, it prepares concise, easy-to understand reports on matters of the moment to members of the U.S. and their affiliated staff members.

We will cover those two short studies for our readers. Tonight, we look at the report Gun Control: Straw Purchase and Gun Trafficking Provisions in Public Law 117-159, better known as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

Straw purchases are defined by the study as “illegal firearms transactions in which a person serves as a middleman by posing as the transferee, but is actually acquiring the firearm for another person.”

Below, we offer readers most of the central statements found in the CRS report:

“On June 25, 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA; S. 2938; P.L. 117-159). This law includes the Stop Illegal Trafficking in Firearms Act, provisions of which amend the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA, 18 U.S.C. §§921 et seq.) to more explicitly prohibit straw purchases and illegal gun trafficking. Related provisions expand federal law enforcement investigative authorities.

Federal Firearms Law

“The GCA is the principal statute regulating interstate firearms commerce in the United States. The purpose of the GCA is to assist federal, state, and local law enforcement in ongoing efforts to reduce violent crime.

“Congress constructed the GCA to allow state and local governments to regulate firearms more strictly within their own borders, so long as state law does not conflict with federal law or violate constitutional provisions.

“Hence, one condition of a federal firearms license for gun dealers, which permits the holder to engage in interstate firearms commerce, is that the licensee must comply with both federal and state law.

“Also, under the GCA there are several classes of persons prohibited from shipping, transporting, receiving, or possessing firearms or ammunition (e.g., convicted felons, fugitives, unlawful drug users). It was and remains unlawful under the GCA for any person to transfer knowingly a firearm or ammunition to a prohibited person (18 U.S.C. §922(d)). Violations are punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is the principal agency that administers and enforces the GCA, as well as the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA, 26 U.S.C. §§5801 et seq.).

“The NFA further regulates certain firearms deemed to be especially dangerous (e.g., machine guns, short-barreled shotguns) by taxing all aspects of the making and transfer of such weapons and requiring their registration with the Attorney General.

Straw Purchase Provision

“Straw purchases are illegal firearms transactions in which a person serves as a middleman by posing as the transferee, but is actually acquiring the firearm for another person.

“As discussed below, straw purchases are unlawful under two existing laws. Prosecutions under those provisions have been characterized by some as mere paperwork violations and, hence, inadequate in terms of deterring unlawful gun trafficking.

“P.L. 117-159 amends the GCA with a new provision, 18 U.S.C. §932, to prohibit any person from knowingly purchasing or conspiring to purchase any firearm for, on behalf of, or at the request or demand of any other persons if the purchaser knows or has reasonable cause to believe that the actual buyer

is a person prohibited from being transferred a firearm under 18 U.S.C. §922(d);

plans to use, carry, possess, or sell (dispose of) the firearm(s) in furtherance of a felony, federal crime of terrorism, or drug trafficking crime; or

plans to sell or otherwise dispose of the firearm(s) to a person who would meet any of the conditions described above.

“Violations are punishable by a fine and up to 15 years’ imprisonment. Violations made by a person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that any firearm involved will be used to commit a felony, federal crime of terrorism, or drug trafficking crime are punishable by a fine and up to 25 years’ imprisonment.

Gun Trafficking Provision

“Gun trafficking entails the movement or diversion of firearms from legal to illegal channels of commerce in violation of the GCA. P.L. 117-159 amends the GCA with a new provision, 18 U.S.C. §933, to prohibit any person from shipping, transporting, causing to be shipped or transported, or otherwise disposing of any firearm to another person with the knowledge or reasonable cause to believe that the transferee’s use, carrying, or possession would constitute a felony.

“It would also prohibit the receipt of such firearm if the transferee knows or has reasonable cause to believe that receiving it would constitute a felony. Attempts and conspiracies to violate these provisions are proscribed as well. Violations are punishable by a fine and up to 15 years’ imprisonment. […]

GCA Interstate Transfer Prohibitions

“The GCA generally prohibits anyone who is not a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) from acquiring a firearm from an out-of-state source. [But] Interstate transfers among unlicensed persons may be facilitated through an FFL in the state where the transferee resides. […]

GCA Record-keeping and Straw Purchases

“Under the GCA (18 U.S.C. §926), Congress authorized a decentralized system of record-keeping allowing ATF to trace a firearm’s chain of commerce, from manufacturer or importer to dealer, and to the first retail purchaser of record. FFLs must maintain certain records, including ATF Forms 4473, on transfers to non-FFLs as well as a parallel acquisition/disposition log.

“As part of a firearms transaction, both the FFL and purchaser must truthfully fill out and sign the ATF Form 4473. The FFL must verify the purchaser’s name, date of birth, and other information by examining government-issued identification (e.g., driver’s license). The purchaser attests on Form 4473 that he or she is not a prohibited person and is the actual transferee/buyer. […]

“[However,] straw purchases are not easily detected because they only become apparent when the straw purchase is revealed by a subsequent transfer to a prohibited person.

Other GCA Gun Trafficking Prohibitions

“According to ATF, gun trafficking often entails an unlawful flow of firearms from jurisdictions with less restrictive firearms laws to jurisdictions with more restrictive firearms laws, both domestically and internationally.

“Such unlawful activities can include, but are not limited to, the following:

straw purchasers or straw purchasing rings in violation of the provisions described above;

persons engaging in the business of dealing in firearms without a license in violation of 18 U.S.C. §921(a)(1)(A), punishable by up to 5 years’ imprisonment;

corrupt FFLs dealing off-the-books in an attempt to escape federal regulation in violation of 18 U.S.C. §922(b)(5), punishable by up to 5 years’ imprisonment; and

trafficking in stolen firearms in violation of 18 U.S.C. §922(j), punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

“Under current law, offenders could potentially be charged with multiple offenses under both the preexisting GCA provisions such as those discussed above and 18 U.S.C. §§932 and 933.

“Since P.L. 117-159 went into effect on October 31, 2023, 250 defendants have been charged with gun trafficking, including 80 charged with violating the law’s straw purchase provision.

“In January 2024, the National Shooting Sports Foundation—an industry trade group for the firearms industry—noted that the ATF has yet to implement two parts of P.L. 117-159: ‘Firearm Handler Background Checks’ (FHCs) and instant point-of-sale background checks when an FFL buys from a private individual.

“The former would allow FFLs to use the NICS to background check FFL employees and has been in regulatory review since September 26, 2023. The latter would allow FFLs to instantly identify if a weapon is stolen at the point of sale by authorizing importers, manufacturers, and dealers of firearms to access records of stolen firearms in the National Crime Information Center; it has been in the interim final rule stage since May 17, 2023.”

[eponymous-rose]

I found it super useful to do this in a previous year, so here's all the stuff I've got going on for the next three-month quarter. Hope this is interesting to anyone thinking of going the academic route or just curious about what their professor does all day when they're not teaching!

Context: I'm a fifth-year assistant professor (tenure-track) at an R1 public university in a science field.

I'm just teaching the one class this quarter! It's a class I created myself and have taught on four previous occasions, so I have a lot of really great materials available to me. Its enrollment has also quadrupled since the first time I taught it. Womp-womp. Designing and giving lectures 3x/week, creating new assignments 1x/week (carefully ChatGPT-proofed when they're not integrating critical assessments of ChatGPT), writing two take-home midterms, grading all of the above, and, of course, innovating on the course. Trying out some fun new activities to replace the individual projects that have become unwieldy with this number of students. And, inevitably, the scheduled and unscheduled office hours.

I'm primary advisor for a great new grad student, but, in all the federal government's deadline-y wisdom, the grant proposal I was going to use to fund his research fell through. While we scramble to re-submit, the department has given me 9 months of funding, but that also means this student is going up for some highly competitive graduate fellowships to help fill the financial void. Lots of working with him to craft his very first proposal while we talk the undergrad to grad transition, classes, and These Winters Oh You Know (he's from the PNW, he's all set). His actual research is a little on hold for now, but we'll be doing some very cool stuff collaborating with a friend at another university as well as someone at a federal agency that I'm gonna sweet-talk into inviting us down for some in-person work in May. We meet for an hour every week.

As part of that, I'm meeting weekly with my co-PI on that failed proposal to craft a resubmission (we got very positive reviews, just didn't make the funding cutoff). It's a process!

My other active grad student is getting to the end of his PhD already! He just wrapped up two internships this summer and is full of ideas and new directions, which is great, but also: now is the time to find that finish line. He has his last pre-defense exam coming up soon, and my job is to make sure he has a solid story to tell that has a well-defined ending. I'd like to see him publish another paper before finishing as well, and I think he'll have no problems doing so. He's on a federal research grant and also needs to discharge some responsibilities there and make sure he has a transition plan in place for whoever takes over from him. Had a friend at another institution reach out expressing an interest in hiring him for a postdoc, and he's interested, so also going to try to get him a visit down there. We meet for an hour every week!

Said student has also initiated a collaboration with some of his friends from school back in China to do some truly wild stuff, and honestly in this case I'm just along for the ride and to gently steer them back on-course when they start getting a bit in the weeds. We're meeting every second week, and the biggest thing I have to do here is make sure he has open access to a supercomputer to do his thing. It's cool to have reached the stage where my main responsibility is to get out of his way.

Said student also independently reached out to someone with a really cool dataset, and after a meeting carefully smoothing over that e-mail from "blasé demand for free data" to "opportunity to collaborate as a team", we've got a pretty cool project lining up. Might have to wait until after his PhD defense, though.

I have another grad student who took a job elsewhere and really, really wanted to finish his Master's remotely, which is all well and good, but honestly, doing that while trying to start a new job is soul-crushingly difficult. Our department has recently created an option to get a Master's without writing a thesis, so I need to follow up on that and get him this Master's degree.

A former student has reached out about converting his Master's thesis to a journal article, and that'll be a long process, but sure? Maybe? We'll figure it out.

A colleague and I have decided to create a research project for an undergrad who reached out to us looking for opportunities to get more credits. We're still not 100% sure where we're going with this, and a lot will depend on her programming skills, but she's only a sophomore and so we'll ideally have several years to work together on this research. We meet once a week.

Said colleague and I are also working on blending our research groups a bit (mainly because it's awkward to have 3-person "group meetings"), and as part of that we're trying to find a time to have both groups do biweekly coffee-shop meetings where we discuss a cool paper in the field.

I'm participating in a weather forecasting competition that involves writing a forecast 4 days a week, occasionally sending out reminder e-mails, meeting weekly, and probably giving a briefing at some point.

Traveling in October to give an invited seminar at a very big-name university in my field. This has been happening more and more lately (I've now given invited seminars/keynotes in four different countries, to say nothing of the conference talks elsewhere) and I have a pretty solid template for a one-hour talk, but this is a group of people who specialize in my area of research, so I've gotta step up my game there. I'll also be meeting with folks there for a day and will have to figure out what to do with my course while I'm gone.

One other bit of out-of-state travel in October is to attend a meeting of a national group I'm a part of - they've thrown in an early-career workshop, and the whole thing is being paid for, so I'll be there for one extra day learning me a thing. Excited that my grad school officemate will be there!

Final travel this quarter will be during the final exam week, when I go to a giant conference in my field along with my nearly-finished PhD student - we'll both be giving talks there, and since it isn't my usual professional organization hosting it, I get to avoid all of my usual wave of volunteer responsibilities. Phew.

This isn't happening until January, but I was invited to speak at the biggest student conference in my field, and while I can't travel there, they've set up an opportunity for me to do it virtually - I need to get my materials to them by November, I think.

I'm still on the editorial board for three different academic journals, which comes with a fair number of reviews (often "tiebreakers" when the other peer reviewers are in disagreement) every month. Genuinely really enjoy it, because otherwise when the heck am I gonna find time to deep-read any new papers in my field? Also writing reviews for federal funding agency grants now, which is a longer process but also very interesting and helpful.

I'm coordinating the charitable fundraising among the faculty in my department this year - I have a meeting coming up with the head honcho at the university level about what charity drives we'll be doing in the run-up to the holiday season and then I think I just mostly forward e-mails? This is a new position for me.

I'm one of four faculty (plus a grad student) on a new hire search committee for a tenure-track faculty member. It's been interesting thus far, but due to some financial tapdancing going on at the moment, we may delay the hire by a year. Our department typically gets 100+ highly qualified applications for each position (which is wild, we're not huge and have like 21 faculty total), so that's a huge time sink once the ball gets rolling on it. We did put together the ad we were going to send out.

I extended my term on the college's scholarship committee, which generally involves a couple meetings a year of giving out extra money to students. Good stuff, especially since we received a gift at the college level recently that means nearly everyone who applies gets something.

I'm working on a research project I got funded through a small internal grant - it's been weird to have a research project that's just me doing coding and writing. I really need to block out some protected time for that! It's a fun project and I think I budgeted for two publications. We'll see how it turns out!

A while ago, I was approached by a truly giant scientific journal to write a review article about my entire research focus. I brought on three colleagues who had written similar reviews in the past, got our proposal approved, and promptly had multiple freakouts trying to get a full draft written. Recently got most of that draft completed and sent it to the editor, who had AMAZING and detailed feedback. This is the kind of article where we have an art team at our beck and call to create graphics for us. We really want to do this right.

I got pulled into a research thing with a national lab a while ago and keep forgetting about it - my role appears to be mostly done, and now I mostly just occasionally get random e-mails with dire security clearance warnings that amount to "I wrote this whitepaper report, can you confirm I properly represented your contribution?" It would be lovely if a publication came out of this, it's fun work (not military), but who knows.

A colleague and I are waiting to hear back on a really, really cool grant proposal we submitted a couple months ago. We probably still have 6 months before we hear anything, but man, I think about it every day. It would be so neat and the program manager agreed that it was an awesome idea, but of course now we're in the reviewers' hands. We might do some preliminary work in anticipation of possibly having to resubmit next year.

Speaking of grant proposals, I need to at least put a draft together for a new project. As my grad students graduate, I need funding to bring new ones on! This is also the one thing my department chair has suggested is a little weak on my CV: number of grants obtained. It's SUCH a long process, with probably 80-100 hours of work for each grant proposal written. Ugh. It is fun when it's an idea I'm excited about, at least.

I'm on the committees of about a half-dozen grad students (and am anticipating possibly hearing from one more) - my role is mostly to provide very occasional guidance on the overall research project, providing specialized knowledge the student and their primary advisor may not have, and attending all exams. I also have to keep an eye out for and help mediate any issues between the student and their advisor. That can get messy.

We have 3 weekly seminars in the department! They're very interesting and I'm mostly just glad I'm not coordinating one of the seminar series this year.

I've started getting inquiries from potential graduate students. See above re: not knowing if I'll have funding for a new student next year. Why can't we just coordinate our deadlines?

I've started working with a science advisory board for a major organization within my field, which has been interesting so far! As a more junior member, my input isn't being super actively sought yet, so I get to just learn about the processes involved and nod sagely a lot. Thankfully the two-day meeting last week was remote.

I'm on another national committee that's currently working on organizing our next big conference in late 2024. There's always a lot that goes into that (and I don't have a super high opinion of the guy running the group after he posted some crappy stuff about students on social media), but thankfully I've managed to dodge some of the bigger responsibilities.

I'm part of a very cool peer-mentoring group where I chat weekly with scientists in different-but-comparable fields about any and all of the above. It's very nice to have a bit of a place to vent!

Oh yes, and the tenure/promotion-application process kicks off this year. I have a meeting next week with my mentoring committee to see if they feel I'm ready to go up. Here goes nothing...

I think that's mostly it? It's gonna be a busy 3 months. Time to make some lists...

[argyrocratie]

"In the case of car culture, the problems of sprawl and automobile dependency did not inevitably result from the automobile itself, but from the power interests that redesigned society around it. The problem was created by subsidies to monoculture development, freeways systems imposed by eminent domain, and legal prohibitions — like zoning — against mixed-use development.

Before the rise of car culture and car-centered urban design, the norm was the compact, mixed-use city or town where residences were within foot, bicycle, bus or streetcar distance of the downtown district where people worked or shopped. Increased population was accommodated primarily by modular proliferation — e.g. the railroad suburb — rather than outward sprawl.

Absent the imposition of car culture by the federal and local governments and by the local real estate industry, the automobile would have served a useful niche function in cities laid out in the old fashion. Its primary market would have been people like farmers in the areas outside cities, where population concentrations were insufficient to be served by streetcar or rail lines. For periodic trips into town and back, perhaps in a small truck capable of conveying a load of vegetables to the farmers’ market or bringing home groceries and dry goods, a light internal combustion engine or electric motor would have been sufficient. With no need for rapid acceleration on the freeway, there would be no point for heavy engine blocks with six cylinders, and the overall weight of the vehicle could be reduced accordingly. With flat body panels capable of being produced on a cutting table, there would have been no need for Detroit’s two- or three-story stamping presses. The automobile industry would have been an affair of hundreds of local factories.

Hence it is not true that “[p]ast a certain threshold of energy consumption, the transportation industry dictates the configuration of social space.” Rather, the configuration of social space dictates the forms of transportation adopted, which dictates the level of energy consumption.

Illich’s tendency to see the proliferation of managerial bureaucracies and their unwilling clienteles as an expansionary phenomenon in its own right with no need for a causal explanation, rather than a secondary effect of larger class and power interests, is also illustrated in his treatment of squatters.

Both the non-modernized and the post-modern oppose society’s ban on spatial self-assertion, and will have to reckon with the police intervening against the nuisance they create. They will be branded as intruders, illegal occupants, anarchists and nuisances, depending on the circumstance under which they assert their liberty to dwell: as Indians who break in and settle on fallow land in Lima; as favellados in Rio de Janeiro, who return to squat on the hillside from which they have just been driven — after 40 years’ occupancy — by the police; as students who dare to convert ruins in Berlin’s Kreuzberg into their dwelling; as Puerto Ricans who force their way back into the walled-up and burnt buildings of the South Bronx. They will all be removed, not so much because of the damage they do to the owner of the site, or because they threaten the health or peace of their neighbors, but because of the challenge to the social axiom that defines a citizen as a unit in need of a standard garage. [emphasis added] Both the Indian tribe that moves down from the Andes into the suburbs of Lima and the Chicago neighborhood council that unplugs itself from the city housing authority challenge the now-prevalent model of the citizen as homo castrensis, billeted man.

Illich’s framing of this as some inherent expansionary logic or hegemonic drive inherent in the “managerial-professional classes” themselves, and not the outcome of a much larger, long-term process of land privatization and enclosure driven by capitalist class interests, is a major critical failure."

-Kevin Carson, ”The Thought of Ivan Illich: A Libertarian Analysis“

[samueldays]

Racial Gerrymandering

This New York Times Article (archive) can be practice in noticing the thing separately from the name. It doesn't use the word "gerrymandering", but that is what it's calling for.

Most other states would be ashamed of the tongue lashing issued against the government of Alabama on Tuesday by a trio of federal judges, all of whom were clearly furious that the state ignored their order to create a second majority-Black congressional district.

This is court-ordered racial gerrymandering, but I suppose the NYT doesn't want such negatively-loaded terms near their client race.

In doing so, Alabama illustrated how contempt for the law — not to mention for equal representation and basic fairness — is an animating value in whole swaths of America. There are days when it feels as if defiance is defining large parts of the country, as represented by so many politicians who feel comfortable only when they are resisting someone else’s agenda rather than coming up with their own.

The journalist cries out 'basic fairness' as he demands your state be gerrymandered. Journalism delenda est. When the NYT has the reputation of the Daily Mail, I will be happy.

The journo's take on 'equal representation' is race-first quotas, and as for 'law', the Voting Rights Act talks about the right to vote and participate in the political process with an end in mind of electing a representative; the court interpreted "opportunity [...] to elect representatives of their choice" very broadly to demand blacks as a racial collective must get two set-aside districts so they can racially win two elections to get representatives, plural, of their choice to be elected. This has a severe case of Proves Too Much regarding every other protected class minority. Reductio ad absurdum.

An aggravating context, then, is the fact that congressional districts are a finite and small number in a zero-sum game. To be specific, Alabama has seven. Demanding two of those for a specific minority is a hell of a lot.

Demanding any districts be racial set-asides at all is dubious gerrymandering, but from a glance at the census data, Alabama's population does not even divide neatly into racial sevenths to gerrymander with. The state is majority white, between one and two sevenths black, less than one seventh hispanic, less than one seventh 'other'. How do you feel about a court-mandated hispanic-majority district too? 🙄

The census brings me to another issue: the implicit requirements of surveillance state and segregation that are needed to get these black-majority districts.

To make it informationally possible to draw black-majority districts, one needs to know where the blacks live, in great detail, with recent updates. It is not obvious that the state tracking this is a good thing.

And to make it topologically possible to draw black-majority districts, one needs the blacks to clump very tightly together. The more black-majority districts one tries to draw, the more every other district in Alabama must be a whiteland. Again, zero-sum game. (Math below.)

Perhaps you want to argue that this is still worth it! But to argue for the racial gerrymandering you should face the costs and trade-offs. You should have the courage to say "I want segregation, so I can have black-majority districts", because a high degree of segregation is a prerequisite to black-majority districts. Can't draw black-majority districts through a thoroughly integrated population.

The NYT instead decides to go with guilt-by-association to George Wallace, pretending it's a continuous history from a man who wanted segregation to Alabama refusing segregated districts. Piss on journalists.

---

Electoral district math: at seven districts, each one gets 14-15% of the population. (The current districts are all in this range.) Alabama has a 26% black population. To be the majority in two districts, one has to assign at least 8 percentage points of blacks to each. That's 16% in those two, leaving 10% for the other five. Possibly even more lopsided if the black majority districts are to have more margin for error and discrete subdistricts.

Splitting the remaining 10% or less gives an average of two percentage points or less in the remaining five districts. In practice some will cluster unevenly around that average, because Alabama's black population is very unevenly distributed.

Meanwhile, the majority-black districts by necessity have fewer whites than average for the state, so the remaining districts must have more whites than average, in a state that was over two-thirds white to begin with. Moving people around between districts does not change their sum.

The cost of two majority-black districts is that the other five districts will be so white, the whites in one of those districts outnumber the blacks in all five of those districts put together. 5:1 is a lower bound, 10:1 is likely to happen due to nonlinear scaling.

Trivia: with arbitrarily complex boundaries, you could gerrymander Alabama to have a whole 3 majority-black districts with a slim eight-to-seven majority, at the cost of the other 4 districts getting white:black ratios exceeding thirty-to-one.

[jackomaha]

What is a normie?

Is the worst nostalgia the nostalgia you have for a time you weren't even alive to remember? I don't think I'm alone in my generation for feeling envious of people who got to experience the last decade of individualism right before me, in the nineties.

I go back and forth on it. Reading Chuck Klosterman on the nineties, how we we could enjoy technology without being enslaved to it, american consumerism seemed so harmlessly fun like early youtube before ads, it's hard not to see the time as adam & eve in the garden of eden before eve met the serpent, through a contemporary lens. Then I get cynical about it, how I'd still find things and people to hate like Bill Hicks did. Or how deceiving age can be, that the younger years are remembered better than the older, present years. I think we just romanticize the past to repress the knowing that we'll always have something good we took for granted only in retrospect.

In retrospect that has to be the individualism. And the most pointed approach to compare 90s individualism to today is to start by defining what a normie is. In 2024, a normie is someone who scrolls through executions in third world countries when work is slow. Someone who knows podcasters better than their own family members. Someone who is afraid to take the airpods out. It is someone who has seen more sex than the amount of sex their grandparents ever had. People or animals. By the age of 16. Again I don't want to romanticize a time I wasn't around for or be too cynical of the present but goddammit I know people had an imagination beyond fucking spongebob memes and office references. It's not just that a 90s normie is less depressed than today's normies, better question what is an individual today? If you are an individual today, you do not have a niche hobby like coin collecting or you play the didgeridoo. If you are an individual today you must have an in depth knowledge of government sponsored satanic pedophile cults, transhumanism, the singularity, CIA psy-ops & coups, the federal reserve, proxy wars, mRNA vaccines, mind control, special prosecutors, ballistics, and if just the awareness alone doesn't make you jaded enough, the ostracization by friends, family, would-be-friends, and would-be-family will leave you standing on a sidewalk on a cinematic fall day, kids launching off swings into raked piles of leaves, mothers pushing strollers wondering if maybe it's YOU.

Yes the normies in the 90s were a little too naïve but they were unique at heart. We weren't supposed to stay that way forever, but this hip kind of narcisstic nihilism should not be the successor to that naïve but aspiring individualism in the nineties. The human's evolution of consciousness starts out as gullible, recklessly curious as a child, then undergoes a melancholic metamorphosis throughout adolescene before a level-headed, purpose-driven adult can emerge. I think the last pre-internet era, the 60s through the 90s was the childhood of the current collective conscious. Enjoying and benefiting from acid, rock n roll, consumerism with some class and imagination - a very apelike enlightenment before the childlike wonder wears off, naturally, but saturated through conformity pressures stifiling pure creativity, conditioning to the 9-5 starts in kindergarten. Then the information-age up until covid was the edgy adolescene. Having the what-you-were-taught innocence questioned in a forum then unrecognizably changed emerging from a rabbit hole. 9/11, pearl harbor, JFK, like finding out santa claus isn't real, drawing swastikas over the teacher's marks on your space race report.

People should have graduated by the end of covid. This is still the information age, but it's now post-covid and pre-singularity. Time to grow up and stop being so naïve or sardonic.

[dailyanarchistposts]

I.3.5 What would confederations of syndicates do?

Voluntary confederation among syndicates is considered necessary by social anarchists for numerous reasons but mostly in order to decide on the policies governing relations between syndicates and to co-ordinate their activities. This could vary from agreeing technical standards, to producing guidelines and policies on specific issues, to agreeing major investment decisions or prioritising certain large-scale economic projects or areas of research. In addition, they would be the means by which disputes could be solved and any tendencies back towards capitalism or some other class society identified and acted upon.

This can be seen from Proudhon, who was the first to suggest the need for such federations. “All my economic ideas developed over the last twenty-five years,” he stated, “can be defined in three words: Agro-industrial federation” This was required because ”[h]owever impeccable in its basic logic the federal principle may be … it will not survive if economic factors tend persistently to dissolve it. In other words, political right requires to be buttressed by economic right”. A free society could not survive if “capital and commerce” existed, as it would be “divided into two classes — one of landlords, capitalists, and entrepreneurs, the other of wage-earning proletarians, one rich, the other poor.” Thus “in an economic context, confederation may be intended to provide reciprocal security in commerce and industry … The purpose of such specific federal arrangements is to protect the citizens … from capitalist and financial exploitation, both from within and from the outside; in their aggregate they form … an agro-industrial federation” [The Principle of Federation, p. 74, p. 67 and p. 70]

While capitalism results in “interest on capital” and “wage-labour or economic servitude, in short inequality of condition”, the “agro-industrial federation … will tend to foster increasing equality … through mutualism in credit and insurance … guaranteeing the right to work and to education, and an organisation of work which allows each labourer to become a skilled worker and an artist, each wage-earner to become his own master.” The “industrial federation” will apply “on the largest scale” the “principles of mutualism” and “economic solidarity”. As “industries are sisters”, they “are parts of the same body” and “one cannot suffer without the others sharing in its suffering. They should therefore federate … in order to guarantee the conditions of common prosperity, upon which no one has an exclusive claim.” Thus mutualism sees “all industries guaranteeing one another mutually” as well as “organising all public services in an economical fashion and in hands other than the state’s.” [Op. Cit., p. 70, p. 71, p. 72 and p. 70]

Later anarchists took up, built upon and clarified these ideas of economic federation. There are two basic kinds of confederation: an industrial one (i.e., a federation of all workplaces of a certain type) and a regional one (i.e. a federation of all syndicates within a given economic area). Thus there would be a federation for each industry and a federation of all syndicates in a geographical area. Both would operate at different levels, meaning there would be confederations for both industrial and inter-industrial associations at the local and regional levels and beyond. The basic aim of this inter-industry and cross-industry networking is to ensure that the relevant information is spread across the various parts of the economy so that each can effectively co-ordinate its plans with the others in a way which minimises ecological and social harm. Thus there would be a railway workers confederation to manage the rail network but the local, regional and national depots and stations would send a delegate to meet regularly with the other syndicates in the same geographical area to discuss general economic issues.

However, it is essential to remember that each syndicate within the confederation is autonomous. The confederations seek to co-ordinate activities of joint interest (in particular investment decisions for new plant and the rationalisation of existing plant in light of reduced demand). They do not determine what work a syndicate does or how they do it:

“With the factory thus largely conducting its own concerns, the duties of the larger Guild organisations [i.e. confederations] would be mainly those of co-ordination, or regulation, and of representing the Guild in its external relations. They would, where it was necessary, co-ordinate the production of various factories, so as to make supply coincide with demand… they would organise research … This large Guild organisation… must be based directly on the various factories included in the Guild.” [Cole, Guild Socialism Restated, pp. 59–60]

So it is important to note that the lowest units of confederation — the workers’ assemblies — will control the higher levels, through their power to elect mandated and recallable delegates to meetings of higher confederal units. It would be fair to make the assumption that the “higher” up the federation a decision is made, the more general it will be. Due to the complexity of life it would be difficult for federations which cover wide areas to plan large-scale projects in any detail and so would be, in practice, more forums for agreeing guidelines and priorities than planning actual specific projects or economies. As Russian anarcho-syndicalist G.P. Maximov put it, the aim “was to co-ordinate all activity, all local interest, to create a centre but not a centre of decrees and ordinances but a centre of regulation, of guidance — and only through such a centre to organise the industrial life of the country.” [quoted by M. Brinton, For Workers’ Power, p. 330]

So this is a decentralised system, as the workers’ assemblies and councils at the base having the final say on all policy decisions, being able to revoke policies made by those with delegated decision-making power and to recall those who made them:

“When it comes to the material and technical method of production, anarchists have no preconceived solutions or absolute prescriptions, and bow to what experience and conditions in a free society recommend and prescribe. What matters is that, whatever the type of production adopted, it should be the free choice of the producers themselves, and cannot possibly be imposed, any more than any form is possible of exploitations of another’s labour… Anarchists do not a priori exclude any practical solution and likewise concede that there may be a number of different solutions at different times.” [Luigi Fabbri, “Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism”, pp. 13–49, The Poverty of Statism, Albert Meltzer (ed.), p. 22]

Confederations would exist for specific reasons. Mutualists, as can be seen from Proudhon, are aware of the dangers associated with even a self-managed, socialistic market and create support structures to defend workers’ self-management. Moreover, it is likely that industrial syndicates would be linked to mutual banks (a credit syndicate). Such syndicates would exist to provide interest-free credit for self-management, new syndicate expansion and so on. And if the experience of capitalism is anything to go by, mutual banks will also reduce the business cycle as ”[c]ountries like Japan and Germany that are usually classifies as bank-centred — because banks provide more outside finance than markets, and because more firms have long-term relationships with their banks — show greater growth in and stability of investment over time than the market-centred ones, like the US and Britain … Further, studies comparing German and Japanese firms with tight bank ties to those without them also show that firms with bank ties exhibit greater stability in investment over the business cycle.” [Doug Henwood, Wall Street, pp. 174–5]

One argument against co-operatives is that they do not allow the diversification of risk (all the worker’s eggs are on one basket). Ignoring the obvious point that most workers today do not have shares and are dependent on their job to survive, this objection can be addressed by means of “the horizontal association or grouping of enterprises to pool their business risk. The Mondragon co-operatives are associated together in a number of regional groups that pool their profits in varying degrees. Instead of a worker diversifying his or her capital in six companies, six companies partially pool their profits in a group or federation and accomplish the same risk-reduction purpose without transferable equity capital.” Thus “risk-pooling in federations of co-operatives” ensure that “transferable equity capital is not necessary to obtain risk diversification in the flow of annual worker income.” [David Ellerman, The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm, p. 104] Moreover, as the example of many isolated co-operatives under capitalism have shown, support networks are essential for co-operatives to survive. It is no co-incidence that the Mondragon co-operative complex in the Basque region of Spain has a credit union and mutual support networks between its co-operatives and is by far the most successful co-operative system in the world. The “agro-industrial federation” exists precisely for these reasons.

Under collectivist and communist anarchism, the federations would have addition tasks. There are two key roles. Firstly, the sharing and co-ordination of information produced by the syndicates and, secondly, determining the response to the changes in production and consumption indicated by this information.

Confederations (negotiated-co-ordination bodies) would be responsible for clearly defined branches of production, and in general, production units would operate in only one branch of production. These confederations would have direct links to other confederations and the relevant communal confederations, which supply the syndicates with guidelines for decision making (see section I.4.4) and ensure that common problems can be highlighted and discussed. These confederations exist to ensure that information is spread between workplaces and to ensure that the industry responds to changes in social demand. In other words, these confederations exist to co-ordinate major new investment decisions (i.e. if demand exceeds supply) and to determine how to respond if there is excess capacity (i.e. if supply exceeds demand).

It should be pointed out that these confederated investment decisions will exist along with the investments associated with the creation of new syndicates, plus internal syndicate investment decisions. We are not suggesting that every investment decision is to be made by the confederations. (This would be particularly impossible for new industries, for which a confederation would not exist!) Therefore, in addition to co-ordinated production units, an anarchist society would see numerous small-scale, local activities which would ensure creativity, diversity, and flexibility. Only after these activities had spread across society would confederal co-ordination become necessary. So while production will be based on autonomous networking, the investment response to consumer actions would, to some degree, be co-ordinated by a confederation of syndicates in that branch of production. By such means, the confederation can ensure that resources are not wasted by individual syndicates over-producing goods or over-investing in response to changes in production. By communicating across workplaces, people can overcome the barriers to co-ordinating their plans which one finds in market systems (see section C.7.2) and so avoid the economic and social disruptions associated with them.

Thus, major investment decisions would be made at congresses and plenums of the industry’s syndicates, by a process of horizontal, negotiated co-ordination. Major investment decisions are co-ordinated at an appropriate level, with each unit in the confederation being autonomous, deciding what to do with its own productive capacity in order to meet social demand. Thus we have self-governing production units co-ordinated by confederations (horizontal negotiation), which ensures local initiative (a vital source of flexibility, creativity, and diversity) and a rational response to changes in social demand. As links between syndicates are non-hierarchical, each syndicate remains self-governing. This ensures decentralisation of power and direct control, initiative, and experimentation by those involved in doing the work.

It should be noted that during the Spanish Revolution successfully federated in different ways. Gaston Leval noted that these forms of confederation did not harm the libertarian nature of self-management:

“Everything was controlled by the syndicates. But it must not therefore be assumed that everything was decided by a few higher bureaucratic committees without consulting the rank and file members of the union. Here libertarian democracy was practised. As in the C.N.T. there was a reciprocal double structure; from the grass roots at the base … upwards, and in the other direction a reciprocal influence from the federation of these same local units at all levels downwards, from the source back to the source.” [The Anarchist Collectives, p. 105]

The exact nature of any confederal responsibilities will vary, although we “prefer decentralised management; but ultimately, in practical and technical problems, we defer to free experience.” [Luigi Fabbri, Op. Cit., p. 24] The specific form of organisation will obviously vary as required from industry to industry, area to area, but the underlying ideas of self-management and free association will be the same. Moreover, the “essential thing … is that its [the confederation or guild] function should be kept down to the minimum possible for each industry.” [Cole, Op. Cit., p. 61]

Another important role for inter-syndicate federations is to even-out inequalities. After all, each area will not be identical in terms of natural resources, quality of land, situation, accessibility, and so on. Simply put, social anarchists “believe that because of natural differences in fertility, health and location of the soil it would be impossible to ensure that every individual enjoyed equal working conditions.” Under such circumstances, it would be “impossible to achieve a state of equality from the beginning” and so “justice and equity are, for natural reasons, impossible to achieve … and that freedom would thus also be unachievable.” [Malatesta, The Anarchist Revolution, p. 16 and p. 21]

This was recognised by Proudhon, who saw the need for economic federation due to differences in raw materials, quality of land and so on, and as such argued that a portion of income from agricultural produce be paid into a central fund which would be used to make equalisation payments to compensate farmers with less favourably situated or less fertile land. As he put it, economic rent “in agriculture has no other cause than the inequality in the quality of land … if anyone has a claim on account of this inequality … [it is] the other land workers who hold inferior land. That is why in our scheme for liquidation [of capitalism] we stipulated that every variety of cultivation should pay a proportional contribution, destined to accomplish a balancing of returns among farm workers and an assurance of products.” In addition, “all the towns of the Republic shall come to an understanding for equalising among them the quality of tracts of land, as well as accidents of culture.” [General Idea of the Revolution, p. 209 and p. 200]

By federating together, workers can ensure that “the earth will … be an economic domain available to everyone, the riches of which will be enjoyed by all human beings.” [Malatesta, Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 93] Local deficiencies of raw materials, in the quality of land, and, therefore, supplies would be compensated from outside, by the socialisation of production and consumption. This would allow all of humanity to share and benefit from economic activity, so ensuring that well-being for all is possible.

Federation would eliminate the possibility of rich and poor collectives and syndicates co-existing side by side. As Kropotkin argued, ”[c]ommon possession of the necessities for production implies the common enjoyment of the fruits of common production … when everybody, contributing for the common well-being to the full extent of his [or her] capacities, shall enjoy also from the common stock of society to the fullest possible extent of his [or her] needs.” [Anarchism, p. 59] Hence we find the CNT arguing in its 1936 resolution on libertarian communism that ”[a]s far as the interchange of produce between communes is concerned, the communal councils are to liase with the regional federations of communes and with the confederal council of production and distribution, applying for whatever they may need and [giving] any available surplus stocks.” [quoted by Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 107] This clearly followed Kropotkin’s comments that the “socialising of production, consumption, and exchange” would be based on workplaces “belong[ing] to federated Communes.” [The Conquest of Bread, p. 136]

The legacy of capitalism, with its rich and poor areas, its rich and poor workplaces, will be a problem any revolution will face. The inequalities produced by centuries of class society will take time to change. This is one of the tasks of the confederation, to ensure the socialisation of both production and consumption so that people are not penalised for the accidents of history and that each commune can develop itself to an adequate level. In the words of the CNT during the Spanish Revolution:

“Many arguments are used against the idea of socialisation; one of these — the most delightful — says that by socialising an industry we simply take it over and run it with the consequence that we have flourishing industries where the workers are privileged, and unfortunate industries where the workers get less benefits but have to work harder than workers elsewhere … There are differences between the workers in prosperous industries and those which barely survive… Such anomalies, which we don’t deny exist, are attributed to the attempts at socialisation. We firmly assert that the opposite is true; such anomalies are the logical result of the absence of socialisation. “The socialisation which we propose will resolve these problems which are used to attack it. Were Catalan industry socialised, everything would be organically linked — industry, agriculture, and the trade union organisations, in accordance with the council for the economy. They would become normalised, the working day would become more equal or what comes to the same thing, the differences between workers of different activities would end … “Socialisation is — and let its detractors hear it — the genuine authentic organisation of the economy. Undoubtedly the economy has to be organised; but not according to the old methods, which are precisely those which we are destroying, but in accordance with new norms which will make our people become an example to the world proletariat.” [Solidaridad Obrera, 30 April 1937, p. l2]

Workers’ self-management does not automatically mean that all forms of economic domination and exploitation would be eliminated. After all, in a market economy firms can accrue super-profits simply because of their size or control over a specific technology or resource. Hence Proudhon’s suggestion that “advocates of mutualism” would “regulate the market” to ensure “an honest breakdown of cost prices”, fix “after amicable discussion of a maximum and minimum profit margin” and “the organising of regulating societies.” [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 70] It seems likely that the agro-industrial federation would be the body which ensures that. Similarly, the federation would be the means by which to air, and deal with, suggestions that syndicates are monopolising their resources, i.e., treating them as private property rather than socialised possessions. Thus the federation would unite workers “to guarantee the mutual use of the tools of production” which are, “by a reciprocal contract”, the “collective property of the whole.” [James Guillaume, “On Building the New Social Order”, pp. 356–79, Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 376]

The inter-industry confederations help ensure that when the members of a syndicate change work to another syndicate in another (or the same) branch of industry, they have the same rights as the members of their new syndicate. In other words, by being part of the confederation, a worker ensures that s/he has the same rights and an equal say in whatever workplace is joined. This is essential to ensure that a co-operative society remains co-operative, as the system is based on the principle of “one person, one vote” by all those involved the work process. If specific syndicates are restricting access and so producing wage-labour, monopolising resources and so charging monopoly prices, the federation would be forum to publicly shame such syndicates and organise boycotts of them. Such anti-social activity is unlikely to be tolerated by a free people seeking to protect that freedom.

However, it could again be argued that these confederations are still centralised and that workers would still be following orders coming from above. This is incorrect, for any decisions concerning an industry or plant are under the direct control of those involved. For example, the steel industry confederation may decide to rationalise itself at one of its congresses. Murray Bookchin sketches the response to this situation as follows:

”[L]et us suppose that a board of highly qualified technicians is established [by this congress] to propose changes in the steel industry. This board … advances proposals to rationalise the industry by closing down some plants and expanding the operation of others … Is this a ‘centralised’ body or not? The answer is both yes and no. Yes, only in the sense that the board is dealing with problems that concern the country as a whole; no, because it can make no decision that must be executed for the country as a whole. The board’s plan must be examined by all the workers in the plants [that are affected] … The board itself has no power to enforce ‘decisions’; it merely makes recommendations. Additionally, its personnel are controlled by the plant in which they work and the locality in which they live … they would have no decision-making powers. The adoption, modification or rejection of their plans would rest entirely with … [those] involved.” [Post Scarcity Anarchism, p. 180]

Therefore, confederations would not be in positions of power over the individual syndicates. No attempt is made to determine which plants produce which steel for which customers in which manner. Thus, the confederations of syndicates ensure a decentralised, spontaneous economic order without the negative side-effects of capitalism (namely power concentrations within firms and in the market, periodic crises, etc.).

As one can imagine, an essential feature of these confederations will be the collection and processing of information in order to determine how an industry is developing. This does not imply bureaucracy or centralised control at the top. Taking the issue of centralisation first, the confederation is run by delegate assemblies, meaning that any officers elected at a congress only implement the decisions made by the delegates of the relevant syndicates. It is in the congresses and plenums of the confederation that new investment decisions, for example, are made. The key point to remember is that the confederation exists purely to co-ordinate joint activity and share information, it does not take an interest in how a workplace is run or what orders from consumers it fills. (Of course, if a given workplace introduces policies which other syndicates disapprove of, it can be expelled). As the delegates to these congresses and plenums are mandated and their decisions subject to rejection and modification by each productive unit, the confederation is not centralised.

As far as bureaucracy goes, the collecting and processing of information does necessitate an administrative staff to do the work. However, this problem affects capitalist firms as well; and since syndicates are based on bottom-up decision making, its clear that, unlike a centralised capitalist corporation, administration would be smaller. In fact, it is likely that a fixed administration staff for the confederation would not exist in the first place! At the regular congresses, a particular syndicate may be selected to do the confederation’s information processing, with this job being rotated regularly around different syndicates. In this way, a specific administrative body and equipment can be avoided and the task of collating information placed directly in the hands of ordinary workers. Further, it prevents the development of a bureaucratic elite by ensuring that all participants are versed in information-processing procedures.

Lastly, what information would be collected? That depends on the context. Individual syndicates would record inputs and outputs, producing summary sheets of information. For example, total energy input, in kilowatts and by type, raw material inputs, labour hours spent, orders received, orders accepted, output, and so forth. This information can be processed into energy use and labour time per product (for example), in order to give an idea of how efficient production is and how it is changing over time. For confederations, the output of individual syndicates can be aggregated and local and other averages can be calculated. In addition, changes in demand can be identified by this aggregation process and used to identify when investment will be needed or plants closed down. In this way the chronic slumps and booms of capitalism can be avoided without creating a system which is even more centralised than capitalism.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 20, 2023

Yesterday, David Roberts of the energy and politics newsletter Volts noted that a Washington Post article illustrated how right-wing extremism is accomplishing its goal of destroying faith in democracy. Examining how “in a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics,” the article revealed how right-wing extremism has sucked up so much media oxygen that people have tuned out, making them unaware that Biden and the Democrats are doing their best to deliver precisely what those in the article claim to want: compromise, access to abortion, affordable health care, and gun safety. 

One person interviewed said, “I can’t really speak to anything [Biden] has done because I’ve tuned it out, like a lot of people have. We’re so tired of the us-against-them politics.” Roberts points out that “both sides” are not extremists, but many Americans have no idea that the Democrats are actually trying to govern, including by reaching across the aisle. Roberts notes that the media focus on the right wing enables the right wing to define our politics. That, in turn, serves the radical right by destroying Americans’ faith in our democratic government. 

Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele echoed that observation this morning when he wrote, “We need to stop the false equivalency BS between Biden and Trump. Only one acts with the intention to do real harm.”

Indeed, as David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo puts it, “the gathering storm of Trump 2.0 is upon us,” and Trump and his people are telling us exactly what a second Trump term would look like. Yesterday, Trump echoed his “vermin” post of the other day, saying: “2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our Country, we will rout the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL!”   

Trump’s open swing toward authoritarianism should be disqualifying even for Republicans—can you imagine Ronald Reagan talking this way?—but MAGA Republicans are lining up behind him. Last week the Texas legislature passed a bill to seize immigration authority from the federal government in what is a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution, and yesterday, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that he was “proud to endorse” Trump for president because of his proposed border policies (which include the deportation of 10 million people).

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has also endorsed Trump, and on Friday he announced he was ordering the release of more than 40,000 hours of tapes from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, answering the demands of far-right congress members who insist the tapes will prove there was no such attack despite the conclusion of the House committee investigating the attack that Trump criminally conspired to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and refused to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. 

Trump loyalist Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) promptly spread a debunked conspiracy theory that one of the attackers shown in the tapes, Kevin Lyons, was actually a law enforcement officer hiding a badge. Lyons—who was not, in fact, a police officer—was carrying a vape and a photo he stole from then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and is now serving a 51-month prison sentence. (Former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) tweeted: “Hey [Mike Lee]—heads up. A nutball conspiracy theorist appears to be posting from your account.”)

Both E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted yesterday that MAGA Republicans have no policies for addressing inflation or relations with China or gun safety; instead, they have coalesced only around the belief that officials in “the administrative state” thwarted Trump in his first term and that a second term will be about revenge on his enemies and smashing American liberalism. 

MIke Davis, one of the men under consideration for attorney general, told a podcast host in September that he would “unleash hell on Washington, D.C.,” getting rid of career politicians, indicting President Joe Biden “and every other scumball, sleazeball Biden,” and helping pardon those found guilty of crimes associated with the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. “We’re gonna deport a lot of people, 10 million people and growing—anchor babies, their parents, their grandparents,” Davis said. “We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious. We’re gonna detain a lot of people in the D.C. gulag and Gitmo.”

In the Washington Post, Josh Dawsey talked to former Trump officials who do not believe Trump should be anywhere near the presidency, and yet they either fear for their safety if they oppose him or despair that nothing they say seems to matter. John F. Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, told Dawsey that it is beyond his comprehension that Trump has the support he does. 

“I came out and told people the awful things he said about wounded soldiers, and it didn’t have half a day’s bounce. You had his attorney general Bill Barr come out, and not a half a day’s bounce. If anything, his numbers go up. It might even move the needle in the wrong direction. I think we’re in a dangerous zone in our country,” Kelly said.  

Part of the attraction of right-wing figures is they offer easy solutions to the complicated issues of the modern world. Argentina has inflation over 140%, and 40% of its people live in poverty. Yesterday, voters elected as president far-right libertarian Javier Milei, who is known as “El Loco” (The Madman). Milei wants to legalize the sale of organs, denies climate change, and wielded a chainsaw on the campaign trail to show he would cut down the state and “exterminate” inflation. Both Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, two far-right former presidents who launched attacks against their own governments, congratulated him. 

In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took on the question of authoritarianism. Robert J. Biggs, a terminally ill World War II veteran, wrote to Eisenhower, asking him to cut through the confusion of the postwar years. “We wait for someone to speak for us and back him completely if the statement is made in truth,” Biggs wrote. Eisenhower responded at length. While unity was imperative in the military, he said, “in a democracy debate is the breath of life. This is to me what Lincoln meant by government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’” 

Dictators, Eisenhower wrote, “make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems—freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.” 

Once again, liberal democracy is under attack, but it is notable—to me, anyway, as I watch to see how the public conversation is changing—that more and more people are stepping up to defend it. In the New York Times today, legal scholar Cass Sunstein warned that “[o]n the left, some people insist that liberalism is exhausted and dying, and unable to handle the problems posed by entrenched inequalities, corporate power and environmental degradation. On the right, some people think that liberalism is responsible for the collapse of traditional values, rampant criminality, disrespect for authority and widespread immorality.”

Sunstein went on to defend liberalism in a 34-point description, but his first point was the most important: “Liberals believe in six things,” he wrote: “freedom, human rights, pluralism, security, the rule of law and democracy,” including fact-based debate and accountability of elected officials to the people.

Finally, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who was a staunch advocate for the health and empowerment of marginalized people—and who embodied the principles Sunstein listed, though that’s not why I’m mentioning her—died yesterday at 96. “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” former President Jimmy Carter said in a statement. 

More to the point, perhaps, considering the Carters’ profound humanity, is that when journalist Katie Couric once asked President Carter whether winning a Nobel Peace Prize or being elected president of the United States was the most exciting thing that ever happened to him, Carter answered: “When Rosalynn said she’d marry me—I think that’s the most exciting thing.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[deadpresidents]

Over the years, Ford’s attention to the residents of the Fifth District has bordered on the pastoral. When, early in his Congressional career, a visiting member of the Daughters of the American Revolution fell on a Washington street corner and broke her ankle, no one knew how she was going to get back to Michigan, until Ford offered to drive her there himself. A quarter century later, he still insists that every letter addressed to him receive a personal response, within twenty-four hours if possible. This includes high school debaters researching their topic, candidates for a small business loan and the female traveler who desires an introduction to officials at the U.S. embassy in London so “she won’t be lonely on Thanksgiving Day.” Following a rash of UFO sightings in Southern Michigan, Ford was showered with letters and telegrams demanding a federal investigation. He duly complied, even while acknowledging doubts about “planet people” possessed of the antigravity secret roaming the universe at fifty thousand miles per hour.

Ford’s Capitol Hill office opens at seven a.m., two hours ahead of his colleagues. “We campaign 365 days a year,” he reminds his staff. As a result, scarcely a birthday, wedding, obituary, civic award or graduating class in West Michigan goes unrecognized by the United States Congress. An elderly couple, otherwise unknown to their Congressman, is nevertheless touched to receive anniversary greetings under his signature. Years later, on learning that the wife is in a nursing home, close to death, Ford drops by for a consoling visit. “The strongest weapon in a political campaign is the good credited to you by word of mouth” -- this Ford credo goes a long way toward explaining him and the Congressional mindset he personifies. By stressing individual contacts over ideological mandates, Ford defines leadership in transactional terms, constituent service on a grand scale. His is a vision of government suspicious of visionaries. When asked the secret of his political success, Ford reveals more than he perhaps intends by replying, “I made everyone else’s problems my problems.”

-- Richard Norton Smith, on Gerald Ford’s devotion to his constituents during his nearly quarter-century of service representing Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Smith’s new book, An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford [BOOK | KINDLE], is the definitive biography ever written about President Ford and is available now.