The illusion that their fortunes are entirely their own

Last week Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported on the chaos the Supreme Court created by releasing its decision that gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the part that bans gerrymandering based on race. In Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry postponed primary elections until after that legislature redraws maps, even though early voting begins in ten days. Mass voter confusion will result. In Alabama they’re ready to redraw maps, but their case before the Supremes back in 2023, which the state lost because of Section 2, requires them to keep their existing maps until 2030. They’re trying to get that little provision removed. I’ve heard Tennessee has passed a new map destroying black majority districts around Memphis. Emily Singer of Kos reported in Florida, which just approved new maps that give Republicans a more seats, a lawsuit has been filed saying the maps were drawn for partisan advantage, which is illegal according to a state constitution amendment passed in 2010 with 63% of the vote. We know the maps were drawn for partisan advantage because important people said exactly that. Jason Poreda, the guy who drew the new districts, admitted such during a hearing. Fox News presented the map by coloring the new districts red and blue. The new districts were drawn using the standard gerrymandering principles. Tampa was divided into three districts so that the Democrats in the city are much fewer than the Republicans in the surrounding rural areas. David Horsey posted a cartoon on Kos showing this opinion was written by Justice Jim Crow while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson looks on. In Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Adam Serwer of The Atlantic discussing the gutting of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court.

What the Roberts Court is making possible is a country where white people can maintain their political dominance at the expense of Americans who are not white. The anticaste provisions of the Reconstruction amendments, intended by their authors to reverse the “horrid blasphemy” that America was a white man’s country, are being inverted to defend that dominance. This is not the color-blindness of Martin Luther King Jr., but what the scholar Ian Haney López has called “reactionary colorblindness,” the purpose of which is to maintain racial hierarchy through superficially neutral means. It takes the view that the Constitution’s “color-blindness” renders any attempt to remedy anti-Black racism unconstitutional, because by definition that would involve making racial distinctions. Similarly, the ruling in this case does not explicitly overturn the VRA’s ban on racial discrimination in voting so much as rewrite it to allow such discrimination.

David Shuster of Blue Amp media:

California’s billionaires are freaking out. Like most other obscenely wealthy Americans in this Trump era, the plutocrats have been bloated with paper wealth, fortified by legions of accountants, and possess a moral philosophy that rarely extends beyond their own reflection. They hold to the illusion that their fortunes are entirely their own. But, more than 1.5 million California voters have a different view and have now signed a petition pushing forward a ballot initiative that would impose a billionaire tax. The California proposal is disarmingly simple: If voters approve the initiative this November, the state will impose a one-time levy of roughly 5 percent on the swollen fortunes of those whose wealth has passed the billion-dollar mark. The proceeds will be directed largely towards health care, food assistance, and the assorted necessities of a functioning civilization.

See below for more on taxing the rich. In Sunday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Jermaine Fowler of his “The Humanity Archive” Substack discussing the bankruptcy of Spirit Airlines.

Spirit carried the people the legacy carriers did not want. Working class. Disproportionately Black, Latino, and immigrant. The fees, the seats, the mockery were the visible signs of the sorting. […] The hubs tell the story. Fort Lauderdale. San Juan. Detroit. Atlantic City. The Caribbean. Latin America. Spanish at the customer service line since 2001, the year of the San Juan route. The carrier the legacy airlines mocked was the one that flew the diaspora home. Thirty-seven percent of American households earning under fifty thousand dollars flew at all in the past five years. Seventy-three percent of households earning over fifty thousand did. Take the floor away and the slice that depended on it does not move up. It stops flying.

In Monday’s roundup Dworkin quoted David Daley and Eric J Segall of The Guardian:

The court has essentially ruled that unless a legislator records a confession of their own bigotry, the map is constitutional – making the only person allowed to define a racist act the person committing it. Congress understood the absurdity of this in 1982, which is why legislators wrote an effects-based standard into the law. Discrimination does not announce itself. The intent standard is the cloak of the coward. Roberts sealed the trap years ago: in Rucho v Common Cause, he ruled that partisan gerrymandering is beyond federal review. Now, any map that dilutes Black voting power hides behind partisan strategy, and the courts cannot touch it. The court has achieved something more perverse still: drawing districts to protect Black voters is itself the racial discrimination. Erasing them is not.

Dan Pfeiffer of The Message Box on why the press is harder on Democrats than Republicans.

For the press, the story of Trump and his family being corrupt is old news. The New York Times and others still do deep investigative pieces uncovering the corruption, but those stories rarely make it into the daily coverage of the Trump administration. Trump, Karoline Leavitt, and other Trump surrogates are rarely pushed to answer tough questions about it, and when they are, they just feign outrage and never engage with the substance. The second reason is that the press holds Democrats to a higher standard. This has always been sort of true, but it’s been particularly true in the Trump era. Reporters think Democratic voters care about whether their leaders are corrupt and Republican voters don’t. Therefore, a Democratic scandal could have bigger political implications, while a Republican scandal dies on the vine. Third, most of the media is VERY sensitive to accusations that they are biased against Republicans. This is less true than it used to be, but most reporters are personally liberal on issues like abortion, guns, and climate. Some end up overcompensating by being tougher on Democrats.

In today’s roundup Kev quoted Gaby Goldstein of Talking Points Memo discussing the ruling that did the gutting, known as Louisiana v. Callais:

The conservative strategy for consolidating state-level power has never been a secret. In March 2010, Karl Rove penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed literally titled “The GOP Targets State Legislatures.” The sub-head: “He who controls redistricting can control Congress.” The piece laid out the whole playbook for Project REDMAP: by flipping a few handfuls of state legislative seats in the 2010 midterms, Republicans could redraw congressional and state legislative maps for a generation. Democrats either did not believe them or had nothing to counter it. That year, Republicans gained control of 11 additional state legislatures and ran the table on redistricting. Today, they hold 23 trifectas — a net loss of just two in 15 years. But REDMAP was only one part of a larger architecture. The deeper strategy has three moves. First, build and solidify power in state legislatures. Second, strip away federal protections — through the courts, and by dismantling federal regulations, funding, and programs. Third, devolve that authority to the states where you’ve already built structural advantages through gerrymandering, voter suppression and long-term policy infrastructure. The linchpin of the whole operation is control of state legislatures.

Alphonso David of The Contrarian:

But there is also a simpler economic truth: voter suppression has a price. When districts are manipulated and voting becomes harder, people pay by driving farther and spending more on gas or transit to vote. For working people, especially hourly workers and parents without flexible schedules or support systems, voter suppression leads to increased childcare costs or missing a shift to vote. The cruelty of it all is that voters are being asked to absorb those costs when they’re already living paycheck to paycheck in a system attempting to further dilute their political power. That is the math of modern voter suppression: make voting more expensive while making each vote feel less powerful. ... A 2019 study on Black disenfranchisement and taxation in the South found that after literacy-test requirements were introduced, counties with larger Black populations saw a nearly 5.4% decline in real per-person tax receipts. Put simply, when Black people were pushed out of the electorate, local governments collected and invested less money to serve Black communities. That meant fewer resources for schools, weaker public services, and less support for the very communities whose political power had been stripped away. The result is a double economic penalty: you make less money, and then your community gets less support from the government meant to serve you.

Daniel Nichanian of Bolts Magazine hosts an Ask Bolts column where readers can ask a question and a couple experts will answer them. The column for May 5 was about the Calais decision with Kareem Crayton and Justin Levitt providing the answers. I didn’t read the whole article, jumping to the section on what are possible remedies. Here are part of the answers. Crayton noted we haven’t explored all of the 14th Amendment. The second provision is the Penalty Clause, which says that if a state denies or curtails voting rights Congress can penalize it with a reduction of Congressional representation. It has never been used. Crayton also said, “We’re not going to get better from this court, I don’t think. I think they’ve shown us who they are.” Levitt discussed what Congress can do. It still has some things it can do.

There are ways to insulate congressional bills from judicial review. There are ways to insulate current bills from review by the Supreme Court. There are ways to craft remedies that rely on things like the 14th Amendment’s second section or on the Guarantee Clause (which guarantees “a republican form of government” for all states in the union). There are ways to craft remedies that do things other than what the court has forbidden in Callais, including relaxing the assumption that the remedy has to be single-member districts. By the way, other remedies are already available under the VRA: There was a Federal Voting Rights Act claim resolved using proportional representation in Eastpointe, Michigan. But I’ll say it’s going to take a really strong push by the public to get a Congress that’s willing to reform voting rights in this way. And while we’re there, there’s an awful lot that could be done on court reform. If there is a strong enough prodemocracy movement to change Congress’s orientation, that means there is a strong enough prodemocracy movement to change the court’s orientation.

Crayton again:

Our mission is to do the “citizen work” (organizing, speaking up, and voting) without distractions. What are the distractions? They include the voices that say you must accept second class citizenship when the constitution guarantees you first-class. And it also means ignoring and sometimes pushing back on friendly voices stuck on dismay and disorder. Things are bad, but they don’t have to be if we use the power we each have to demand change.

Kevin Hardy, in an article for Stateline posted on Kos, discussed the growing effort to tax the rich. Maine recently passed a bill to add a 2% tax to those with an income more than $1 million a year. Maine joins Washsington, New Jersey, and Massachusetts that have passed such laws. A dozen states, including Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Virginia have proposed new taxes. In California advocates gathered enough signatures to put a one-time tax on billionaires on the November ballot. Proponents say these bills make the tax structure, already tilted against the poor, more fair. Opponents fear taxes on business owners will dissuade starting new companies (yep, again trotting out the smallest companies to protect the greediness of the biggest). There is also the claim that taxing the rich more will prompt them to move to a state with lower taxes. But data doesn’t show that happening. Taxing the rich in liberal states comes as conservative states are making their tax systems more regressive, placing more tax burdens on the poor. Both efforts come as the wealth gap has been getting wider for decades and made worse by last summer’s Big Brutal Bill.

The gap between the rich and poor has been widening for decades. Wealth for the bottom fifth of American households has barely moved in recent decades, while the top 0.1% have seen their wealth increase by nearly $40 million each, according to an analysis by the anti-poverty nonprofit Oxfam America. Between 1980 and 2022, the share of national income going to the top 1% doubled, while the share going to the bottom 50% fell by a third, Oxfam reported.

Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit started a post with:

Nikita Khrushchev famously said “We will bury you” (“My vas pokhoronim”) to Western ambassadors in Moscow on November 18, 1956. Seventy years later, it appears that Russia’s goal is being realized.

Hartmann listed several ways that this is happening. The nasty guy announced pulling 5,000 troops from Germany, harming NATO. He ended sanctions on Russian oil, giving Putin billions in revenue. Robert Kennedy is undermining trust in vaccines and disease prevention, making us more vulnerable. Pete Hegseth is purging senior career leadership of the military. DOGE hollowed out federal institutional expertise. Musk ended USAID, allowing China and Russia to secure natural resources and military outposts. Voice of America broadcasts propaganda, weakening America’s advocacy of democracy. ICE and Stephen Miller are gutting the asylum system, straining courts, devastating tourism, and destroying our reputation. Russel Vought concentrated the budget in the nasty guy’s hands, overriding Congress. The FBI has been weaponized and purged, as has the Department of Justice. The Department of Education is being vandalized, cutting school and student protections. A climate denier runs the Department of Energy and another runs the National Park Service. The Transportation Department is loosening safety regulations The Treasury Department pushes for financial concentration and deregulation. The Commerce Department is pushing tariffs and trade decisions, straining trade relationships and exploding inflation. Witkoff and Kushner have screwed up negotiations with Iran. The Department of Agriculture favors agribusiness over family farms while stripping food stamps and school meals. The Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back regulations for Big Oil billionaires. Housing and Urban Development is dropping programs for poor families. The intelligence agencies have politicized their analysis and sidelined career analysts. The State Department has hollowed out diplomatic staff, allowing Russia and China to set the agenda.

This list is an operational blueprint, the kind of document a hostile foreign intelligence service might draw up if it had been handed unlimited access to the executive branch and told to dismantle the American republic from inside without firing a single shot: — Hollow out the public health system so disease can do its work, — Demoralize the officer corps and burn through munitions in unconstitutional wars, — Terminate the diplomats and intelligence professionals who keep allies aligned, — Replace independent journalism with state propaganda at Voice of America, — Defund the agencies Congress created, — Abandon the clean energy transition that would have weakened OPEC and Russia simultaneously, — Politicize the FBI and DOJ so they target dissenters instead of crooks, and — Turn armed, masked ICE thugs loose to terrorize immigrant communities while training the rest of us to accept anonymous federal agents disappearing our neighbors into massive concentration camps. Every line item that would appear on such a plan has been checked off in the last 14 months, executed by a cabinet of grifters, ideologues, and 13 billionaires whose loyalty runs to Trump and the morbidly rich rather than to the nation whose Constitution they swore an oath to defend. ... [Khrushchev] may have been right about something deeper than ideology: a great power can absolutely be killed from the inside by people who pretend to govern while methodically removing every load-bearing wall in the structure just to enrich themselves.

This will end with “ordinary Americans deciding we’ve finally had enough.”

Khrushchev never managed to bury us. Let’s make damn sure Trump, Putin, and America’s rightwing billionaires don’t either.

Oliver Willis of Kos, as part of his series of Explaining the Right, discussed the conservative media bubble.

The point of this fake world is to keep conservative-leaning voters in a state of constant agitation, fuming about the supposed excesses of the left while being fed a steady diet of lies about right-wing leaders, both elected and cultural, fighting against these forces. ... But this isn’t reality for millions of people. Despite the success of right-wing media outlets, they haven’t fooled everyone yet.

To that last point note since Fox News launched in 1996 Democrats won presidential elections in 1996, 2008, 2012, and 2020 and won the popular vote in 2000 and 2016. There have also been several times Democrats held majorities in at least one house of Congress. Which is the reason for the current gerrymandering drive. That conservative media bubble is vulnerable when voters can see for themselves there is a disconnect, which can prompt voters to vote for Democrats.

As long as the dollars are spent on them and no one else

To all you IT people and people just doing coding – back in my day we called in programming and I had the job title of programmer – do you know about COBOL? Unless you work in particular industries, have been doing coding for a long time, or are working on antique systems, you probably don’t. Which means you probably don’t know its idiosyncrasies. Such as how it stores dates. Thankfully, my need to use it was quite brief. COBOL is a computer programming (or coding) language, as are C++, python, java, and such. I’ve been out of the industry for a good many years so I don’t know the modern languages. So I looked up top programming languages for 2025 and found a list on Geeks for Geeks. Beyond what I mentioned above it listed C#, PHP, Ruby, Swift, SQL, Kotlin, and several more. I’ve heard of C# and SQL though used neither. I hadn’t heard of the others. lobachevsky of the Daily Kos community wrote:

Elon Musk claimed that his team found 150-year-old people collecting Social Security! He implied there were dead people being sent benefits, with checks cashed by someone else. But no—the people getting paid are very much alive. They are collecting their own benefits. They’re not committing fraud. They’re just not 150 years old, of course.

What’s going on is that on May 20, 1875 the International Bureau of Weight and Measures was established. Though computers, and COBOL, are nowhere near that old the creators of COBOL chose representing dates as the number of days since that date. That was ... let me see now ... almost 150 years ago. If the Social Security system doesn’t know a birth date it has as blank or zero. Elsewhere in the COBOL program it would know to say a birth date of 1875 should be interpreted as no birth date. But a person reading just the database would not know that. Which is a big reason why sending DOGE employees barely in their 20s, if that, rampaging through a computer system is a really bad idea. I guess they didn’t notice every one of those 150 year old people were born on the same date. Walter Einenkel of Kos reports that Musk is or will soon have the Internal Revenue Service in his sights. The primary goal is to lay off all those newly hired agents, the ones with the job to make sure the rich don’t cheat on their taxes. Yeah, the people from whom the IRS collected more than $1 billion last year. DOGE in the IRS means the boys have access to the tax info of every tax payer in America. That by itself is scary. It also means the richest guy in the world has the power to fire the people who collect his taxes. How that affects the speed of your tax refund is not known. File your taxes anyway. The deadline is still April 15. You don’t want to give them a reason to come after you. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that during a time of international turmoil – a tenuous cease fire in Gaza with the nasty guy talking about ethnic cleansing, the nasty guy and Putin discussing Ukraine’s fate without Ukraine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth angering NATO allies, and the usual daily arguing and fighting at various places around the world – the US does not have an ambassador to the United Nations. One would think that would be necessary so at least the nasty guy and his minions could speak with a unified voice. There is a nominee for the job, Rep. Elise Stefanik. But her confirmation is on hold. That’s because the Republican House majority is so slim that her vote might be critical – for such things as approving the $880 billion cut to Medicare to ease in the vote for tax cuts for billionaires due later this year.

The state of paralysis once again shows that Republicans have prioritized the well-being of the wealthiest above everything else, even America’s role on the world stage.

Kos of Kos discussed the research funding given out by the National Institutes of Health to universities. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama said she would work with Health Secretary Robert Kennedy to make sure the Alabama University system would be exempted. She must think the University of Michigan, the University of California system, or the universities of all the other states are not also doing top level research.

It’s so weird that the biggest moocher states like West Virginia, Louisiana, and Alabama suddenly love socialism—as long as the dollars are spent on them and no one else. And Alabama, the eighth-biggest moocher state in the country which gobbles up twice as much in federal funds as it pays in taxes, really needs to learn a lesson. Trump’s draconian cuts (instigated by his co-President Elon Musk and his shady DOGE cabal) won’t hurt blue states as much as they will decimate red states. If Republican legislators and voters alike want those federal dollars, maybe vote for the party that believes in sharing the wealth and uplifting everyone? Which brings us back to the difference between us and them: We are capable of empathy, even when something doesn’t affect us directly. Republicans only care when it does. Meanwhile, the University of Alabama will need to pinch pennies. Maybe they can start with football coach Kalen DeBoer’s $10 million annual salary, which will add up to over $80 million through 2031.

No interest in cultivating an image of responsible manhood

During the months my performing group rehearses I rarely post to this blog on Tuesdays. I am today because rehearsal was called off because of the cold weather. At the time of posting the temperature was 2F and is expected to go down to -5F overnight. That’s about -20C and colder than a household freezer. Add a wind chill to that and there are plenty of reasons to call off events and close schools. I finished the book The Star That Stays by Anna Rose Johnson, that star being the North Star that is motionless in the night sky. This is a young adult novel about Norvia Nelson. Most of the story takes place when she is 14 in 1914. Norvia was born on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan to a mother with Ojibwa and French-Acadian ancestry and a Swedish father. She has three brothers, Herman, Elton, and Caspar and a sister Dicta, short of Benedicta. When she is about twelve the family moves to Boyne City, Michigan. Her parents divorce and her Pa moves to Flint. As the major part of the story opens Ma announces she is about to marry Virgil Ward. He has two grown daughters and son Vernon, who is a few months younger than Norvia and of poor health. He is home schooled. Norvia doesn’t like the idea of Ma marrying again and is afraid that Virgil will be too much like Pa. Virgil turns out to be quite nice. She also wants to go to high school, an idea that Pa was against. Norvia is delighted that Virgil’s house has many of the 19th century books featuring strong girls, such as Little Women and Anne of Green Gables. She wants to be fun and popular as these girls are. She wants a Dashing Young Man as her beau. Shortly after Ma and Virgil are married he is dismissed from his church’s leadership because he married a divorced woman. So Norvie is afraid people won’t let her become popular if they find out she has a divorced mother and has Ojibwa heritage. Over the year nothing profound happens to Norvia. This is just a lot of normal stuff teenagers go through. She eventually figures out what her book heroines are really teaching her and she begins to appreciate her step family. I enjoyed the story, though I saw it really wasn’t written for me. I was originally attracted to the story because its idea of a girl dealing with having to hide her Native ancestry. However, her mother being divorced is a bigger concern. The author states that the skeleton of this story is based on her actual ancestors and even included a few photos, though the names in the novel and on the photos were changed. I did not watch or listen to the inauguration yesterday. I had better things to do with my time. Of course, a lot of the important things were in NPR’s news reports, which confirmed I didn’t miss anything. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos listed some strange things that happened at the inauguration yesterday. I’ll mention just a couple. Though Melania held a Bible, the nasty guy did not put his hand on it as he repeated the oath of office. That has some Evangelicals quite perturbed. In the front row were not Congressional leaders, but billionaires. Emily Singer of Kos wrote of nine promises the nasty guy included in his speech that won’t lower the price of eggs. Some of them: He’s sending troops to the border. He said of oil production, “drill baby drill” – but while he can open more land to drilling he can’t require oil companies to drill more. Oil companies don’t want the price to go much lower. He said he will “bring back free speech in America.” The First Amendment already does that. Does he mean free speech for himself and none for his opponents? He declared the official policy of the US government will be that there are only two genders. Nope, no help in egg prices, but a great deal of hurt for transgender people. He’ll change Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. Hillary Clinton had a good laugh. He’ll take the Panama Canal back from China. China doesn’t own or operate it. He’ll put American astronauts on Mars. Musk had a big smile after that one. NPR reported the nasty guy signed dozens, maybe hundreds, of executive orders yesterday. That’s all about fulfilling his promises of doing certain things “on day one.” I haven’t kept a link to a list of them, so maybe I’ll write about them in the future. One item not in all those signed orders is tariffs. The auto industry is quite concerned with tariffs since their supply chain loops over the Canada and Mexico borders many times. Tom Allen, the midday classical music host on CBC Music (that’s the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), had a bit of fun with the idea of tariffs. Early in today’s program he played music performed by an American. He interrupted it three quarters of the way through so the last 25% could be played by a Canadian performer. At the end of the program he did something similar, playing a four movement piece by an American orchestra and interrupting it after three movements to play the last by an orchestra in Finland. Willis reported that one of the things the nasty guy signed is a pardon for those who attacked the Capitol four years ago. This is a pardon for more than 1500 people and included the dangerous leaders of the attack. One of them said now that he’s free and his conviction cleared he will go buy some guns. The Republican Party is no longer the party of Law and Order (if they ever truly were). In a tweet on Bluesky Willis included a photo showing the temperatures at noon at some previous inaugurations. Ronald Reagan's second was 7F and deserved to be indoors. John Kennedy’s was 22F, Barack Obama’s first was at 28F, and Jimmy Carter’s was 28F. Others were warmer than that. So the nasty guy’s second at 22 was not too cold. I had written about speculation that it was moved indoors to avoid him having to see small crowds (definitely smaller than Obama’s and Biden’s). Another excuse I heard was the move was prompted by the invited billionaires who didn’t want to sit in the cold (and with the ceremony in the Rotunda they had exclusive seats in a more exclusive crowd). In contrast to the nasty guy issuing pardons for violent insurrectionists, on the last day Biden issued preemptive pardons to people who upheld the law and earned the nasty guy’s wrath. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported they include Dr. Anthony Fauci who had guided us through the pandemic, retired Gen. Mark Milley who had called the nasty guy fascist, and to members, staff, and testifying police of the House January 6 Committee that investigated the Capitol attack. This last group included chairs Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson. Biden’s pardons said this should not be taken that these people committed crimes, rather that to protect them from threats of prosecution by the nasty guy. Emily Singer of Kos reported that DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency tasked with proposing cuts to the federal government, is likely making it’s first cut – co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy. He’s accused of being lazy and spending too much time trying to get himself elected or appointed to office. He failed at being a candidate for president. He didn’t get appointed to the Ohio senate seat vacated by the new vice nasty. He will now likely run for governor of Ohio. Does he like losing? As for DOGE, it is being sued. The lawsuit says it meets the requirements for being a “federal advisory committee.” As such it needs to be regulated so the government receives “transparent and balanced advice.” And that means it must file a charter with Congress, keep regular minutes, and allow the public to attend. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker of The Atlantic.

Like nearly every entity that has tried and failed to bend Trump to its will—his party, his former rivals, his partners in Congress, and his former aides among them—the tech elites largely seem to have decided that they’re better off seeking Trump’s favor. ... The sheer quantity of money flowing to, and surrounding, Trump has increased. In his first term, he assembled the wealthiest Cabinet in history; this time, his would-be Cabinet includes more than a dozen billionaires. Sixteen of his appointees come not just from the top one percent, but from the top one-ten-thousandth percent, according to the Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer-advocacy organization. Democrats, too, have long kept their wealthiest donors close, inviting them in on policy discussions and providing special access, but never before have the nation’s wealthiest played such a central role in the formation of a new administration.

Down in the comments greg posted a photo in honor of Martin Luther King day of a young black man holding a sign that says:

Dear White People: Stop using Dr. King as an example of a peaceful protest... You shot him too.

In the comments of another pundit roundup Nick Anderson posted a cartoon:

Over a package of candy: Red Dye No. 3 has been banned in the U.S. due to widespread health concerns. Over a MAGA hat: Red Dye No. 47 will be widely available despite concerns about the health effects on democracy.

And way down in the comments Captain Frogbert posted a meme:

Just so everyone is clear Los Angeles is under duress Mexico sends help Canada sends help Ukraine sends help Americans send help Trump elect sends insults Republicans send threats MAGA sends conspiracies Who loves America? Who is the enemy of the people? -- Russ Fraley

In a third roundup Chitown Kev quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times discussing Mark Zuckerberg’s use of the term “masculine energy.”

When Zuckerberg speaks of “masculine energy” and “aggression,” he seems to be imagining the “masculinity” of an older teenager or a younger adult. The masculinity of someone unburdened by duty, obligation or real responsibility. More Jordan Belfort in “Wolf of Wall Street” than Ed Tom Bell in “No Country for Old Men.” There is no apparent interest, from either Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or anyone else bemoaning the current cultural cachet of masculinity, in cultivating an image of responsible manhood. We have a clique of powerful middle-aged men who want nothing more than to be boys. But then this is exactly what you would expect in a country where the standard-bearer for the “return” of masculinity to the political and cultural world is Donald Trump, a selfish, petulant and narcissistic man-child who celebrates his rejection of the traditional masculine virtues of duty and restraint and who has done so for his entire career on the public stage. Trump stands for masculinity as misogyny, dominance, exploitation and — as per Zuckerberg — aggression. More concretely, Zuckerberg and like-minded tech moguls have direct material interests in cultivating Trump’s good favor by performing his brand of manhood. Meta, for instance, wants to undermine its competitors, suppress regulation and free itself from the threat of antitrust enforcement. Other tech billionaires want to leverage state power to secure their investments in artificial intelligence, ahead of a potential collapse in the value of A.I. stocks. If the bubble pops, they want Uncle Sam — and thus the American taxpayer — to be the one holding the bag. Their pose and presentation, then, are all obviously strategic.

Over the last few days I’ve heard news about plans for raids on businesses in blue states to look for illegal immigrants. I’ve heard that executive orders have been signed for mass deportations, beginning with criminal illegals (watch out for their definition of “criminal”). Yet Kos of Kos says Tom Homan, the new “Border Czar” is walking back his promise of mass deportations. CNN reported this week Homan has been telling Republican lawmakers that deporting millions of immigrants might be impossible. There just isn’t the manpower and funding to do it. To deport 20 million people would cost $1 trillion over a decade. Getting $88 billion from Congress to get it started this year is highly unlikely. Also, the current staffing of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not anywhere near enough to round up and deport millions. There aren’t enough agents to pull off big raids in sanctuary cities where local police would refuse to help. While some Republicans claim that spending $1 trillion to deport 20 million will be a net benefit (based on false assumptions), others are going to look at the loss of the rural labor force and related hit to the economy and decide not to authorize the money. Raids in red states will prompt immigrants to flee to blue states. That will worsen the economies of red states and the shift in population will perhaps shift Congressional seats back to blue states. Lisa Needham of Kos reported on a judge issuing a strange ruling. This is another by Texas judge Reed O’Connor, who is trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act. The case was brought against American Airlines that offered 401(k) retirement plans that included funds that invested in corporations

with environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) goals. [The case is] the newest—and dumbest—front in the war on “woke.” ... What O’Connor’s decision functionally does is say that investments that factor in ESG concerns are a breach of a fund manager’s duty, regardless of whether there’s a financial loss. The mere whiff of displaying a vague consciousness about the planet is simply too much to bear.

O’Connor’s efforts may not be necessary. Since the nasty guy won in November fund managers are fleeing a commitment to supporting net zero greenhouse gas emissions. Companies took on ESG and DEI actions to attempt to be more attractive in a free market. But conservatives are no longer interested in a free market. They want to get rid of “woke” wherever it may be. An Epic Maps post shows maps of Alabama. There is a band of sediments from where the coastline was 100 million years ago that created a band of fertile soil. That maps to a higher slave population in 1860, a higher black population in 2010, and a blue band in a red state from the 2020 election results.

The old biblical idea that women are supposed to “submit” to men

In an opinion piece in last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press Jeff Wattrick discussed America’s immigration policy. That policy is currently built around keeping “bad” people out by treating everyone at the border as “bad.” The discussion and action around immigration is all about how scary they are, how they are “invading” America, and how they are taking things from those already here. Texas is trying to usurp federal policy at the border. At the same time there is a labor shortage with people saying “no one wants to work anymore.” In response to that politicians push a higher retirement age and less restrictions on child labor. Wattrick wrote: “Instead of approaching immigration as a security problem, we need to treat it as a labor issue.” Immigrants grow the economy. They’re more likely to open their own business. They want to work, to provide for themselves and their families.

What if we threw out this system and just made it easy for people to move to the U.S.? Replace paramilitary border patrols with clerks who process migrants’ entry and hand out green cards. Make it legal, rather than illegal, to come here and find work or a better life. Make it easier for immigrants to pay taxes and participate in American life without the fear of deportation.

Communities like NYC that receive buses of immigrants from Texas say their social service programs are stretched. But if we let immigrants immediately work, that won’t be as big of a problem. We won’t worry about worker status and visa distinctions. There won’t be illegal immigrants. For those worried about security this would improve it. Border patrols could focus on people who are actual threats. No need to scour the border area for those who snuck across and are now in danger in the desert. There would be no need to sneak.

With every wave of immigration, nativists have made fear-based arguments against allowing immigrants in their backyards. Every time, those arguments have been proven unfounded, and our nation benefited from the immigration waves feared by so many. Greg Abbot’s border stunt is no different. Our response should finally learn from previous hysteria, and just say yes in my back yard to immigration.    Otherwise, this “crisis at the border” will never end.

I add that what’s going on at the border is not a security issue, it’s a white supremacy issue. People like Abbott don’t want more non-white residents. But they’re quite eager to welcome more white Europeans. I heard recently (don’t have a link) that a good chunk of the economic growth since the pandemic is because of the immigrants we welcomed in that time. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community wrote about the recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that says embryos shall be considered children under the Wrongful Death to Minors law from 1872. Dartagnan, with the help of Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, went through the decision to show how much the language is of Christian Nationalists, the people who want to force America to become their version of country under the rule of their god. Marcus wrote:

The longer-term danger—indeed the apparent longer-term goal—is to raise and expand the definition of unborn personhood, to go after birth control methods and reproductive technologies that involve fertilized eggs. Will fertility clinics be permitted to dispose of unused frozen embryos? Could states prohibit in vitro fertilization altogether? Will IUDs, birth control pills or the morning-after pill be banned?

The short answer to all of those questions is yes. Dartagnan wrote:

Their ultimate goal is, and has always been, a nation in which all women and anyone who might become pregnant is forced to carry their fetus to term, no matter what stage of pregnancy. A nation in which any person who assists them in preventing or terminating that pregnancy will find themselves targeted by the crosshairs of the law.

This decision should not be considered an outlier. Many people want the nasty guy in for a second term because he will fulfill their Christian Nationalist goals. Kerry Eleveld of Kos wrote that shortly after that ruling major Alabama hospitals declared they would pause in-vitro fertilization. Shortly after that candidate Nikki Haley said she agreed with it, then backpedaled a bit. Yes, a lot of Americans use IVF – and a lot more who would want to keep the procedure legal. This is enough of a problem for Republicans that former nasty guy aide Kellyanne Conway warned Republicans a few months ago there is massive support for IVF. So candidates shouldn’t talk about it. But the Alabama Supremes made sure they will have to talk about it. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed what else Republicans want to do to make things worse. The national Supremes are deciding the fate of the abortion drug mifepristone. The end of abortion rights means up next is a war on birth control – groups are already launching propaganda campaigns saying the pill is far more dangerous than decades of experience demonstrate. That’s the same lie they’re using against mifepristone. The Heritage Foundation isn’t whispering their goal. I don’t know who is being quoted.

“It seems to me that a good place to start would be a feminist movement against the pill, and for rewilding sex, returning the danger to sex, returning the intimacy and, really, the consequentiality to sex.” Conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills.

Sumner translated:

If that sounds at all confusing, what she’s saying is that women shouldn’t be able to have sex without being concerned about becoming pregnant. That’s the “rewilding,” the “danger,” and the “consequentiality” she wants. The goal of the Heritage Foundation, the Republican politicians it empowers, and the judges it selects is to end the option of sex for any purpose other than reproduction. They’re not hiding this. They are proud of it. And if that means women surrender every ounce of agency in their lives … well, that’s the goal, after all.

And all of that is to go back to the old biblical idea that women are supposed to “submit” to men. In the comments of a pundit roundup exlrrp shared a meme showing a carton of 2½ dozen eggs on a car seat and the caption, “Using the car pool lane in Alabama today.” Kos of Kos wrote Speaker Mike Johnson, faced with a tiny majority and few accomplishment his caucus can run on, tried to rally them – with a sermon. He talked about the moral decline in America.

It is a sign of Johnson’s myopic fundamentalism that he thought a Biblical sermon would rally a group of politicians sweating their endangered majority. ... If Johnson were so concerned about society’s diminishing religiosity and its effect on conservatism, what exactly has he done as speaker to arrest that decline? In fact, his merry band of cruel nihilists might be a major reason that evangelicals are abandoning their faith! One researcher methodically tracked the increasing dissatisfaction that younger, more liberal evangelicals feel toward rigid bigotry of their faith’s orthodoxy. The plain hypocrisy of self-identified Christians like Reps. Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert (as well as former Rep. George Santos) makes further mockery of their supposed faith. Their eagerness to use falsified information in their witch hunt against Hunter Biden is beyond absurd. And their crass worship of Trump, perhaps the most morally bankrupt human in the country, is the final nail in that coffin.

The sermon fell flat. One Republican said, “I’m not at church.” Another said it was “horrible.” Joan McCarter of Kos wrote the reaction was more than just grumbling. Republicans appear to be turning on their leader. A big part of their dissatisfaction with his leadership is the looming partial government shutdown on March 1. Getting spending bills passed is hampered by poison pill riders – “guns, abortion, equity programs, stripping Mayorkas’ salary.” Johnson can’t pass spending bills with Republican votes without them and with them the bills will fail in the Senate. So he’ll have to turn to Democrats to get spending bills passed. And that will have to be on Democrats’ terms. Which is what led to the ouster of McCarthy. With all that I need a laugh. Thankfully Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted some late night commentary. A sampling:

Clip of network news reporter: Alexander Smirnov was arrested Wednesday, charged with lying about financial ties between the president, his son Hunter, and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma…allegations that have been central to the Republicans' impeachment push. Guest host Desi Lydic: Not only was this guy lying about Joe Biden getting bribes, the FBI says he was also working with Russian intelligence. Yeah—Russia again! Can we please get a new storyline? Just once I want to hear that Bhutan is meddling in our elections, just to mix things up. I mean, didn’t we just find out that aliens are real? Maybe they want to get in on this. —The Daily Show "The attorney general of New York Letitia James…said that if he doesn’t come up with the money, she might seize Trump Tower. Turns out one of the downsides to putting your name on everything you own is everyone knows who owns it. It would be refreshing to see a woman grabbing his assets for a change. When you're attorney general they let you do it. You don’t even ask, you just seize. You grab 'em by the property." —Jimmy Kimmel

Jets worth $160 million taken out by drones worth $670

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos discussed the ways the Republican Party in Michigan is in disarray – including donors keeping their wallets closed. The discussion included similar situations in other states. There is also the anti-abortion crowd refusing to admit their position is unpopular. Eleveld concluded:

All across the nation, the Republican Party is reckoning with the deal it cut with the devil. In swing states like Michigan and Georgia, red states like Ohio, and nationally, the GOP is cracking up as different factions variously cling to or reject Trump. The damage done may not be fully realized until voters cast their ballots next year, but the Republican Party is entering 2024 in a position so precarious it almost defies historical comparison.

Hunter of Kos reported that Alabama is putting out the claim it has the right to prosecute people for “conspiring” to get an abortion in another state. This criminalizing interstate travel – as well as those assisting or advocating for travel. It could also open up other sorts of cases – What about travel to gamble when that is illegal in one’s home state? What about going to Las Vegas and not gambling?

If places like Alabama criminalize crossing state lines to receive abortion care, we’re entering Handmaid's Tale territory very, very quickly. And Republicans know that. They know it's untenable and unenforceable without instituting police-state powers, which is why immediately after the let-the-states-decide argument led to the fall of Roe, many of the same Republicans began declaring that states should not be allowed to decide after all and a nationwide abortion ban is now needed. Without a national ban, states like Alabama will have to institute draconian and brazenly unconstitutional (for now) travel restrictions on any state resident they believe might harbor a fetus. It's going to be horrific, and they won’t stop until nobody has any more rights than Alabama conservatives are willing to stomach.

Eleveld also reported that Republican Presidential candidate Tim Scott is a bachelor. And now Republicans are treading carefully because of the “sensitivity of the issue.” Might he be – gasp! – gay? Scott has replied that he has a girlfriend (her name is none of your business) and a person’s marital status has nothing to do with their ability to be president. If Scott begins to make headway this issue will definitely come up more often. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted an article from the New York Times about candidates trying to soften their anti-abortion stance by also promoting expanded access to contraception. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from a competitive district in Iowa expressed the pivot as, “The best way to prevent abortion is to prevent pregnancy.” The call for expanded access to contraception is good to hear. But it doesn’t replace the need for abortion care. Also, it wasn’t all that long ago that Clarence Thomas wished for a case to come before himself and the Supremes so they could ban access to contraception. In a Ukraine update Mark Sumner of Kos started with the story of the Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets that are made mostly of titanium and cost about $40 million each. Over the weekend four of those jets, plus a MiG-29 and other hardware were destroyed by a squadron of drones made from cardboard and rubber bands. The whole squadron cost $670. Welcome to the drone war. Back in November Sumner posted a Field Guide to Drones of Ukraine. He posted only part 1 and it’s out of date. Since then there have been continuous innovations. There are “kamikaze drones” that are themselves bombs. Those cardboard drones look like birds on radar and can easily be smuggled across a border and quickly assembled before the mission. It is easy to train a recruit on a drone, easier than all the other aspects of soldiering, and that recruit is safer – shoot down the drone and the soldier gets a bit smarter instead of dead. Also, that recruit could be a disabled person who couldn’t be out in the field.

It’s not clear that this democratization of discount destruction is a factor that anyone should welcome. But it’s certainly one that will be difficult to stop.

That last comment made me think of a terrorist group using drones against US soldiers. I’m sure the US military leadership is thinking long and hard about it. In another update Sumner told the story of the Soviet N1 rocket that was ready in 1967 and, after much delay, launched in 1972 where it was destroyed before it reached orbit. A big part of the problem was the designer of the rocket, Sergei Korolev, had died in 1966. That was a problem because the top-down hierarchy hoarded information and not enough people knew how the rocket worked or even whether the design was complete. Sumner then turned to Russian General Sergei Surovikin. He was the one who built the defenses in occupied southern Ukraine that the Ukrainian army is now working through. But a few months after beginning the work Surovikin was demoted. Then he has a role in the attempted coup back in June and hasn’t been seen since. The second Russian line of defense, much more robust than the first, is being called the Surovikin Line. Is what is there what the general envisioned or merely the skeleton he was able to cobble together while in command? Do the soldiers defending it understand how it is to be used for best effect? Will anyone adapt the defenses to whatever Ukraine does? Does anyone want to? If this is Surovikin’s Line and he has been disgraced does anyone want to be seen as his protégé? And if the line doesn’t hold it is the guy already disgraced that gets the blame. From Ukraine’s point of view, that’s all good. As in... Kos of Kos reported on Wednesday that Ukraine is is about to, or has, breached the Surovikin Line near the town of Verbove. The Line doesn’t seem to be as strong as all the defenses make it look. Once breached Ukraine doesn’t need to work through the entire line. It can (in a difficult maneuver) surround the line from behind and force the Russians to retreat or surrender. This post also reports of a drone attack on an airfield in Pskov, which is 800 kilometers from Ukraine and close to Estonia. Four $50 million aircraft were damaged. Also damaged, in a separate attack, was Russia’s most important semiconductor factory. These are a necessary component for Russian drones and cruise missiles. For those into military details RO37 of the Kos community discusses the possible breach of the Surovikin Line, what it means, and what Ukraine might do with the breach.

When people die because they don't have health care, I had to bury them

My Sunday movie was the documentary That Pärt Feeling, about modern Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. I’ve known about his music for quite a while and have heard several of his pieces both on the radio and live in concert. I think his most famous piece is Fratres. This documentary featured Pärt coaching Cello Octet Amsterdam. There were also several other leaders of various instrumental and choral ensembles describing what it’s like to perform his music as we heard their groups perform. This included an orchestra in Kinshasa, Congo. Pärt is quite spiritual and religious. In spite of his musical success he leads a simple life. His music is described with words like simple but hard to get right. Like thin ice, beautiful yet full of danger. It’s serene and draws people into connection. He was born in 1935 and his musical training was when Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union. His early compositions were under that influence. In the mid 1970s he saw that style and influence was not for him. He withdrew from musical life for a bit to come up with his own style. An example of that simplicity and serenity is his piece Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror) for violin and piano. This piece was not included in the movie. There are performances on YouTube, one with a score, many without. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed Republicans and the Supreme Court. The Court has been issuing a string of conservative rulings to the delight of Republicans. But at the end of the last term the Court issued a not conservative ruling – Alabama was ordered to redraw its Congressional districts to create a second black majority district. It looks like Republicans have no trouble ignoring rulings they don’t like. The Alabama legislature did redo their map and a second district has more black people, but it isn’t the majority the Voting Rights Act and the Court required. The original plaintiffs are, of course, back in a lower court. Some say Republicans may be OK if the court draws new maps – as a way of saying yeah, there’s another black district, but we didn’t create it. Others think no matter what the lower courts do the case will be back before the Supremes. Dartagnan noted Republicans also want to ignore laws that the nasty guy broke. Which means in the conservative mind the only laws that matter are the ones that coincide with conservative interests. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Ishmael Reed of El País in English:

Rather than exist in a society where members of all ethnic groups have an opportunity for success, millions of American whites would approve of a dictatorship. Ten million would restore Donald Trump to the presidency by force. Recent polls show that Biden and Trump are tied in the presidential race even though Trump said he would suspend parts of the Constitution and construct an all-powerful executive branch with him as the head.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos discussed Project 2025, a blueprint for whichever Republican can get into the White House. The document is over 900 pages and it is a battle plan to dismantle the nation’s regulatory framework. Among its goals: block expansion of renewable energy and close the Department of Energy renewable energy office. Cut the EPA environment justice office. Prevent other states from adopting California’s car pollution standards. In summary: stop the federal government’s climate work, block the transition to clean energy, and shift government agencies from regulating the fossil fuel industry to supporting it. Of course, this was released at the end of the hottest month in 125,000 years and when green energy projects are contributing to keeping the economy humming.

To sum up, this horrifying, planet-killing initiative would likely make climate change orders of magnitude worse while undermining the domestic economy and benefiting narrow, entrenched, obscenely wealthy interests. In other words, everything Republicans have been doing for decades—only more so.

Hunter of Kos discussed the heat and the effort of Pablo Manríquez of The New Republic who asked several Congressional Republicans about the heat their own constituents are cooking under. And Hunter heard that “the mocking contempt for the question positively drips from every mouth.” Steve Scalise dismissed the weather as “Southern Louisiana is always hot.” Ted Cruz said, “There are lots of people who have political agendas, and whatever happens with the weather they attribute to climate change. That's not science, it’s ideology.” So the phrase, “Hottest on record” is meaningless and is only a chance to mock. NPR host A Martínez talked to Rev. William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign about the federal minimum wage that hasn’t been raised in 14 years. We’re at a point where full time at $15 isn’t a living wage – $20 is. Some of the things Barber talked about: Both Republicans and Democrats could have raised the minimum wage – and haven’t. Both parties praised the pandemic essential workers and the minimum wasn’t raised. Barber mentioned four lies that have kept the minimum wage where it is: 1. Raising the minimum will increase inflation. Debunked by economists. 2. Personal immorality rather than societal immorality that doesn’t provide a living wage. 3. The current $7.25 puts one above the poverty level. 4. The culture wars – trans people, immigrants – are the problem when they’re really a distraction so we don’t notice the culture warriors are the same ones blocking living wages. Barber explained why he is a leader of this campaign:

I was a pastor for 40 years, almost - 30 years at one church. When people die because they don't have health care, I had to bury them. When people are stressed out and die, stroke out because they working so hard, I had to bury them. And I could not stand up in that pulpit and say, God called them home, and this was a natural death. This is policy murder. I've had to watch families be torn apart because they couldn't - they never were home with each other 'cause they were trying to do everything they could. And they are just living in so much anger because they would see these politicians getting all this money and all these CEOs getting this money, and all they wanted - all they wanted was a living wage, that's all. They just wanted the basics of life.

Aaron Mendelson of the Center for Public Integrity interviewed Santiago Mayer of Voters of Tomorrow that has the goal of boosting Gen Z voting. The interview was posted on Kos. Here’s one exchange:

Q. In recent months in 2023, we've seen this concerted effort from Republican-controlled legislatures in states like Ohio and Idaho to make it more difficult for young people to vote. The conservative election denier Cleta Mitchell recently said, “They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm. So they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.” Why do you think these politicians are so aggressively going after student voters? A: Because they're terrified of us. That's the simple answer. They are terrified because they know that young people are not buying what they're selling. We've seen it in 2018. We've seen it in 2020. We've seen it in 2022. Young people are turning away from the hate-filled platform that many people on the right have. I don't think that describing Gen Z as a Democratic generation is accurate. What Gen Z is really looking for is a future that works for them, and a government that works for them, and that protects them. And what we have seen from people on the right, especially over the last few years, and with people like Cleta Mitchell, is that they acknowledge what is happening, they know young people are rejecting them. But they refuse to really turn their platform around. And they are much more interested in continuing this wave of hate and harassment against LGBTQ+ rights, of turning back rights that my generation has never lived without, like abortion rights.

Mark Kreidler, writing for Capital and Main and posted on Kos wrote about the Hollywood strikes.

“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” one executive told the news site Deadline. Added another, “It’s been agreed to for months, even before the WGA went out.” A third industry source called the tactic “a cruel but necessary evil.”

Kreidler then tied the Hollywood strikes to the strike by the Los Angeles hotel workers. They haven’t gone on general strike, but are targeting a few hotels at a time.

Decades of deregulated takeover and consolidation across major U.S. industries have struck a hard blow to labor power. Unions are often in the position of negotiating not with their direct employer, but rather with one facet of a much, much larger conglomerate—one with nearly limitless resources and a constant eye on stock price. These corporations, often multinationals, can wait out almost any single labor situation. They may not always want to, but they can. That tips the balance of power, creates a new layer of anxiety for those with livelihoods on the line, and potentially makes negotiating brutally difficult.

There has been a lot of consolidation on both the hotel industry and in Hollywood.

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who was formerly a labor and employment lawyer for several Hollywood studios, wrote recently that for these conglomerates, “The production of entertainment/content might be a sliver of their overall business. …If some banks are ‘too big to fail,’ these companies might be ‘too big to successfully strike.’”

Go ahead and use these gerrymandered maps

I stayed up last evening to watch the Olympic men’s free figure skating program. This time I had one browser window showing NBC and another showing CBC, both on mute (though the constantly changing images were a bit annoying). I decided I would go with the network that got to the figure skating first. That was CBC, so I had Canadian commentary. The first two skaters were shown at 9:45. Then starting about 10:30 they showed the last dozen (the better ones). The program finished about 12:30. Below the CBC logo, always on the screen, was an indication what I was seeing was live. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Then I frequently saw a big digital clock on the wall of the skating venue and it’s minute numbers seemed to consistently match the time on my computer. So I checked a timezone map. Beijing is 13 hours ahead. So 10:00 pm in Detroit is 11:00 am tomorrow in Beijing. So what I was seeing on Wednesday evening in Detroit wasn’t tape delayed from Wednesday evening in Beijing but was happening live Thursday morning. That’s why it was on so late. One of the things I look for in figure skating is how well the contestant moves to the music. Those that aren’t so high in the standing tend to skate and there’s music playing and the two have little to do with each other. However, the better they are the more their movements fit the music. The gold medalist, Nathan Chen of USA, very much moved to the music, and it was wonderful. Maybe 16 years ago a quadruple jump in figure skating wasn’t a thing. At one Olympics a couple contestants tried to be the first to land a quad in competition. In these games it is rare for a male contestant not to do a quad. And one tried to be the first to land a particular type of jump that would require four and a half rotations. He didn’t fall over on landing, though there was debate about whether he got in enough rotations to count. I finished the book The Ghost and Charlie Muir by Felice Stevens. I’m sure the title is meant to bring to mind the movie The Ghost and Mrs. Muir from 1947 in which a young widow moves into a seaside cottage, finds it is haunted by an old sea captain, and falls in love with him. The book I read does have a ghost, but Charlie doesn’t fall in love with her. Charlie grew up in a series of foster homes and, now in his 20s and definitely gay, learns he is the only living relative of a deceased great-great-aunt and inherits her house. Which has a ghost. His new neighbor is Ian, who thinks he’s straight, though he finds Charlie’s kisses to be pretty hot. The ghost works to get these young men together in spite of Charlie’s trust issues and Ian’s protestations of orientation. Along the way she tells the story of her brother Eddie, who lived in Ian’s house and was part of his ancestral family, and Robert, who had lived in Charlie’s house and was related to him. Robert and Eddie were gay lovers but, in the time of WWI, could not reveal their love. This book was a recent recommendation of the Lambda Literary Awards. There are several categories of awards, this one fits into Gay Romance, and there are usually several books in each category each year. I’ve had another roundabout adventure finding another medical specialist, this one for physical therapy. This time it wasn’t in trying to verify the doctor was in my insurance network (I didn’t even try). It was trying to find this specialty at a nearby health system facility. When my primary care doc made the referral she gave me the phone number for facility A in the New Center area of Detroit, 16 miles away. I was hoping for a specialist only 4-8 miles from home. When I called a couple days ago I asked for that. I was given two phone numbers. I called the number for facility B, 4 miles away. Sorry, they can’t help. They do vision rehabilitation – learning to navigate the world as vision is failing. They don’t do PT. I looked up the number for facility C 8 miles from home where I had gone for PT before. Through the central number I got the number for PT and called. They aren’t equipped for the treatment I need and gave me the number for facility D, also 8 miles from home. That number was for the neurology department at facility D. That person gave me the number for the PT department in facility D. Which turned out to be the phone number for PT department in facility C. I called and was given another number. I called and got an appointment for Monday to see Dr L in facility D. Yeah, that soon! Today I got a reminder email for my appointment with Dr. M at facility E, 18 miles away. It was for the same time as my appointment with Dr. L. I called that number. The receptionist agreed that was too far. She connected me to a central scheduling desk. That person couldn’t see how Monday’s appointment got so mixed up. He also said Dr. L doesn’t work out of facility D. So I scheduled an appointment with a different Dr. M at facility D in two weeks. I could have gotten something a week earlier if I would take an appointment for 7:45 am. Nope, not for me. Why is this so hard? This was definitely customer disservice. I usually listen to CBC Radio out of Windsor, Ontario for three hours on weekdays. Their host is much better than the classical music host in Detroit. Canadian radio is one of the nice things about living in Detroit. Their hourly news programs have included two weeks of reports of a trucker protest that started in Ottawa. They are protesting the requirement that they must be vaccinated or every time they come back across the border from the US they must quarantine. Most truckers got vaccinated. These protests are by the small minority who refused. Over those two weeks they’ve barricaded central Ottawa, bringing it to a standstill, and tooted their horns at all hours, much to the annoyance of the residents. The protests have expanded, first to the Ambassador Bridge connecting Detroit to Windsor. Now Michigan Radio has been giving updates, such as this one. The trucks have blocked one direction of traffic (I think allowing Canada to USA). That blockade has been active for several days. This one is a big deal because Canada and America are each other’s biggest trading partners and a quarter of that trade goes across the Ambassador Bridge. A big chunk of the Detroit – Windsor trade is parts for the auto industry, which is now beginning to reduce shifts at assembly plants because they can’t get parts. The Port Huron – Sarnia crossing is just a couple hours away, though I’ve heard that’s also been blocked. As, I believe, has the commercial crossing at Niagara. I’ve also heard a crossing between North Dakota and Manitoba has been blocked. Hunter of Daily Kos wrote about the pile of lies these blockade are drawing out of the American far right. The conclusion is these truckers are a small group, maybe several thousand. Most Canadians and most Americans have been vaccinated and want to keep trade and commerce running. This is a damaging prptest, but not widespread. I’ve heard the truckers are getting a lot of American far right assistance and there are stories of Confederate flags being spotted in Ottawa. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted a few pundits commenting on the blockades. There’s even a picture of a few trucks at the top of the post. One of those quotes is of a tweet by Brendan Nyhan:

Far-right extremists routinely adopt tactics used by counterparts in other countries. US needs to get ready for this trucker convoy tactic before a major American city is paralyzed like Ottawa.

The Republican legislature in Alabama created new redistricting maps that reduced the number of the states majority black Congressional districts from two to a more gerrymandered one. Various groups sued and a lower court required the legislature to redraw the maps to create two majority black districts, as set out by the Voting Rights Act. Republicans took their case to the Supreme Court. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the Court, using the shadow docket, said yeah, that’s an interesting case we should put on our docket – sometime next term. In the meantime, Alabama, go ahead and use these gerrymandered maps for 2022 and we might ask you to redraw them in time for 2024. The shadow docket means the Court is making a decision without public debate and without a fully reasoned written and signed decision. For this order Kagan wrote a furious dissent. Kavanaugh dismissed her complaints. This decision essentially gutted the rest of the VRA. Go ahead and do racial gerrymandering all you want. This is a position so extreme that Roberts, who got the gutting process started in 2013, sided with the dissent. Wrote McCarter:

Passing the voting rights and elections reform bills already passed by the House in the Senate is one partial remedy, in that it would restore the VRA and add new protections including ending racial gerrymandering. But that’s clearly not enough, because the illegitimate Trumpian majority on the Supreme Court will be there to strike down whatever protections Congress passes. The only solution is to expand and reform the Supreme Court. President Joe Biden and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi have to do everything in their power to make that happen. What's the point of having control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, along with the biggest bully pulpit in the world, if you won't use it to secure the future of democracy?

Politics of revenge are exactly what the base craves

Yesterday evening the House was getting ready to vote on the Build Back Better Bill – the human infrastructure bill. Then Republican leader Kevin McCarthy used his prerogative as head of his party to talk as long as he wanted. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that turned out to be eight hours. When I heard that McCarthy spoke I thought there might be some phrase I could rebut in this here blog. But no go. Sumner explained:

The result was a speech where “rambling” would doesn’t begin to cover the incoherent and disconnected claims, stitched together by occasional arm waving and table-pounding designed to show that McCarthy is just as angry, vindictive, and nonsensical as Trump. As Rep. Jaime Raskin reported mid-way through this event, McCarthy managed to speak for over four hours without producing “a single memorable phrase, original insight, or even a joke.” And then he did it for four more hours. Which makes it even more … is there a word that means something is remarkable for being absolutely unremarkable?

So, no text to dissect. Instead, we can enjoy the tweets from Democratic members as they sat through it all, gathered together by Dfh1 of the Kos community. From Adam Schiff:

If you took the worst orator in the world Gave him the worst speech in the world And made him read it for the longest time in the world That would be a lot like listening to Kevin McCarthy tonight. Except, probably better.

Andrew Solender of Axios wrote about one quotable line and the reaction it got:

"Nobody elected Joe Biden to be FDR," McCarthy says in his floor speech. "I did!" one Democrat pipes up. "Me too!" says another.

That first Democrat has been identified as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Sumner quoted Eddie Vale who noted that instead of Democrats passing the bill in the evening McCarthy’s performance meant it was passed the next morning “at a much better time for press coverage.” Frank Pedraza commented on the post by Dfh1:

Trump has ripped McCarthy’s spine and keeps it in his closet at Morgue-a-Lago. Kevin takes comfort in knowing that the former [guy] has his back.

Alas, McCarthy can demonstrate he’s a big bag of wind, yet remain a threat to the country and democracy. Laura Clawson of Kos discussed the censure of Rep. Paul Gosar, mentioned yesterday, and McCarthy’s response:

The fact that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy not only opposed the censure of one of his members for blasting out a depiction, however fictional, of himself murdering a coworker and attacking the president of the United States, but threatened retribution against Democrats if and when Republicans take the majority in the House, shows the extent of the problem. McCarthy wasn’t just voting against the censure of his member—he was saying that the censure was so illegitimate as to justify him in planning, well ahead of time, to exact retribution against Democrats. “You censured our guy and removed him from committees for the murder-fantasy video, so we’re going to do the same to your members for … whatever.”

Kerry Eleveld of Kos added more:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made it exceedingly clear on Tuesday that he not only won't hold his caucus accountable for making violent threats against other members of Congress, but he will actively seek revenge against anyone who insists on the accountability he refuses to provide. ... But these GOP threats of retribution are all par for the course now. The party is effectively filled with a bunch of lawless gang members who foment violence, flout the law, and trample the Constitution, and when anyone threatens to rein them in, the GOP's knee-jerk responses are promises of revenge. ... The game is all about training their voters to believe they have been slighted and disrespected, that Democrats have committed an unforgivable abuse of power, and that Republicans will make them pay for it. That is the GOP platform, and Republicans keep running that play over and over again because their low-information voters aren't capable of seeing past it. In fact, the GOP's politics of revenge are exactly what the base craves—it's among their main reasons for living, breathing, and voting. ... But this is the kind of punitive and twisted leadership Republicans are promising as they eye a potential takeover of Congress next year. They are putting forward no policy solutions for the American people or aspirational bills they hope to enact. Instead what they’re offering is plain and simple: It is the politics of revenge. And that is very clearly exactly what GOP base voters want.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer who discussed a scenario that might play out in the late winter of 2023:

There’s a climate of disbelief in the nation’s capitol as the GOP-dominated House of Representatives wraps up debate over the impeachment of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., 46th president of the United States. It was little more than five months since the Republicans gained 43 House seats in the 2022 midterms, many in newly gerrymandered seats, and since the incoming chair of House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, started studying a menu of equally off-the-wall options — Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Afghanistan withdrawal, or something unprecedented about the president’s mental acuity — for Biden impeachment hearings. In the end, Jordan and his colleagues — including the radical QAnon conspiracy theorists who’d replaced GOP moderates Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — decided that the pretext didn’t even matter that much.

Dworkin also quoted Greg Sargent of the Washington Post:

In much of our discourse, Trump-backed GOP primary challenges to sitting Republicans tend to be cast mainly as retaliation for personal disloyalty to the former president. There’s something to that, but the full truth appears to be darker. What this really suggests is that large swaths of Republican voters appear to want to elect people to office who would have been willing to overturn the election on Trump’s behalf, and will be willing to overturn a loss in the future.

Leah McElrath tweeted a quote from an article in The Atlantic about the risk of bipartisanship undermining democracy:

“Biden’s…emphasis on his ability to cooperate with Republicans has stirred concerns…he is obscuring the threat mounting against democratic institutions…More Republicans appear to be radicalizing by the week and Biden is making the GOP seem normal.”

Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that just a few hours before Julius Jones was to be executed in Oklahoma, Governor Stitt commuted his sentence from death to life in prison without parole. That should have been clemency because there is evidence that Jones did not commit the murder for which he was convicted. I’ll let you wade into the details. One reason for mentioning this is to quote a tweet by Leah McEnrath. She quoted a tweet from Marc Lamont Hill:

And please believe that Governor Stitt knew he was going to commute the sentence yesterday. Still, he had Julius Jones undergo all the rituals and rites of execution. This is part of the cruelty and perversion of an immoral state with unmerited power to decide who lives and dies.

Then McElrath added:

Agree. Pushing the announcement until mere hours before execution was scheduled is purposeful cruelty. I’m grateful the decision was made, but the cruelty inherent in the timing and the inclusion of a denial of Jones’ rights to be considered for parole or pardon are undeniable.

Stella Levantesi and Giulio Corsi, writing for DeSmog discussed four major scare tactics climate deniers are using to stop climate action. These tactics were found through an analysis of 300,000 tweets posted since after the Paris climate summit in January 2016. Efforts used to be aimed at undermining the science. Now they’re aimed at attacking solutions, creating fear, and the usual misinformation to polarize people. 1. Doomsday scenarios, in which global economic systems are wrecked by climate change policies. Of course this obscures the global economic systems that are already being wrecked by climate change. These scenarios include the possibility of energy blackouts and shortages. 2. Claims that climate policies aren’t really about fixing the climate but about being a Trojan Horse that would turn America and the world into communist or socialist regimes. 3. Efforts to reduce the methane released by cows are interpreted to mean they will “take away America’s burgers” and force us all to be vegan, then reclaim all that unused pasture land and use it for low-income housing. 4. The full-on conspiracy theories, such as governments manipulating the weather. Learn about this strategy so you can neutralize it. Michael Harriot posted a long thread about Alabama having the deadliest prisons in America. They’re overcrowded, some of them five times capacity. There is a lot of violence between inmates (mostly black) and a lot more violence from the guards (mostly white). They’re terrible at protecting inmates from COVID. And they want to use $400 million of COVID relief money to build prisons – instead of releasing non-violent offenders or training guards, or spending the money on education or health care.

Will the Biden Administration give our money to a racist, corrupt, violent organization to LITERALLY continue slavery? Have you ever MET America?

Maggie Koerth, writing for The Fuller Project, told the story of Roberta Steele to explain why there is a shortage of people to drive school buses. The short version is the title: “Would You Manage 70 Children And a 15-Ton Vehicle for $18 An Hour?” Shortages existed before the pandemic, though are more severe now. The pay at $18 an hour seems decent (fast food workers are fighting for $15), but it is only four hours a day, nine months a year. And because of shortages drivers are covering more routes and not getting bathroom breaks. And some routes aren’t being covered, stressing parents in long lines of cars at schools. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that Ronna Romney McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee announced an effort to recruit LGBTQ voters. The effort would be in partnership with Log Cabin Republicans, who are LGBTQ conservatives who try to be a part of a party that keeps kicking them. But McDaniel got a great deal of pushback and had to clarify the effort wasn’t about giving LGBTQ people a safe space in the party. Certainly not. She just wants their votes. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a cool video on how the COVID vaccines work. This video was made by the Vaccine Makers Project. And in last Friday’s post Bill quoted some late night commentary:

Aaron Rodgers says he's an independent thinker who doesn’t want to be told what to do with his body. You ever notice how all the 'independent thinkers' are doing the exact same thing? “I'm an independent thinker—what are my thoughts, Joe Rogan?” —Trevor Noah

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Julia “Hurricane” Hawkins set a couple records at a track and field event. First, she set the world for the 100-meter dash for her age group. Second, she defined that age group as 105+. Her time was just under one minute, three seconds. Not as good as the forty second record she set at age 100.

They sent the fire trucks home while the buildings were still on fire

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed the current state of hospitals. Before getting to the COVID situation Sumner reminded us that health care conglomerates, which own hospitals, have been working to make sure there are just enough hospital beds for the patient load. Empty beds can’t be billed. That means 60-75% of hospital beds were full before COVID arrived. The goal is to maximize profit, which is distinct from taking care of people.

It is not a system designed to deal with a crisis in which tens of thousands of people need hospital care for a single disease every day. It’s especially not a system designed to deal with such a crisis for months on end. It’s not built for it. It’s not staffed for it. It’s not supplied for it.

Alabama doesn’t have any open ICU beds. Hospitals in Houston set up overflow tents, which is not good with Hurricane Nicholas bringing heavy rains. And Idaho has such a rise in cases that it is a problem ... for Washington state, Spokane in particular. That is a big problem for Washington residents who have a non COVID need for a hospital. Also annoying because Washington’s vaccination rate is one of the highest while Idaho’s rate is close to the bottom. In a second post Sumner reported that in places such as Texas and Florida, well, in half the nation, have permanently weakened the powers of public health officials to control any pandemic. These laws or executive orders block mask and vaccine (not just COVID) mandates, bock imposing quarantines, or block the close of businesses and schools. Sumner wrote:

Republicans didn’t just limit the powers of officials to deal with the raging pandemic. They did it while the disease was still spreading, hospitals overflowing, and thousands still dying. They didn’t just close down the fire department; they sent the trucks home while the buildings were still on fire.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted that Biden’s vaccine mandate was an assault on private businesses and a power grab. That prompted Bill Scher to riff on the state’s new abortion ban.

Under Texas rules, your right to choose the vaccine exists for six weeks after which if you remain unvaccinated any vaccinated American can sue you.

I like that idea. Larry Elder was the lead Republican candidate in the bid to remove California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Before the recall election Elder started saying that if Newsom kept his seat it was because of election fraud. Then Newsom kept his job, winning 67% of the vote. SemDem, of the Kos community reported that Elder is singing a different tune.

Elder lost by so much, however, that he realized he didn’t want to look like the sore loser Trump is. Elder rejected Trump’s statement that the election was rigged and asked his supporters to be “gracious in defeat.” This is something Trump is literally incapable of doing.

A decaying bridge tells everyone that "government" is incompetent

I bought my desk in the early 1990s. I bought this particular model because it was designed to hold a computer. It’s a rolltop model, though I haven’t been able to lower that top practically since I bought it. When I say it is designed for a computer I mean: * Cubby drawers designed for computer storage: 5.25” floppies and 3.5” diskettes. * A ventilated area for the pizza box shaped computer. * A central bay for the cathode ray tube monitor. * Pull out side boards with inset mouse pads designed for good traction against the ball in the mouse. * A place for the printer that can be closed away. * A built in surge protector with switches for the various components. * A pull out tray for the keyboard. As for all those great features: * I threw out the last of my floppies and diskettes 20 years ago and my current computer doesn’t have a way to read them. The previous computer probably didn’t either * Computers are no longer designed into pizza box shaped packages so the computer tower takes up space in the knee hole, as does the internet modem. * Neither of my two flat-screen monitors fit into the monitor bay. * The mouse doesn’t have a ball. It has a laser. And it has a hard time with the nearly featureless mousepad, though it did reasonably well on the wood grain around the pad. There just isn’t enough of that. * The printer doesn’t fit into the place designed for it. * Routing wires up to the surge protector is difficult so I have a second surge protector on the floor plugged into the first one, which has a switch I can reach. A second surge protector was easier to handle than several extension chords. * I do have the keyboard on the tray designed for it, though that is about the only thing I use as intended. In spite of all that it’s a beautiful piece of furniture. I got tired of the mousepad problems so went out yesterday and got a new one. It is quite thin so I easily laid it over the built in one (though not quite the same size). The cursor on the screen does a better job of following the mouse, so the new pad is worth the $10. Alas, it is more slick, so clicking on a mouse button sometimes also moves the mouse. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported on election situation in Alabama. The Republicans there have already passed their voter suppression laws and included a provision that the local GOP officials can overturn results they don’t like. Some of those local GOP officials are already acting by ousting election board officials they believe will be troublesome. One of those is Lonnie Hollis, a black woman on the Troup County election board. One troublesome thing she did in the 2020 election was to open a polling place in a black church. Yes, Democrats and democracy advocates are alarmed. Hunter of Kos discussed a New York Times story about the spectacular mismanagement of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under the nasty guy. Ben Carson was the head of HUD, surely chosen because he knew nothing of the subject. That left party hacks in charge who made sure HUD did very little. Marcia Fudge, the current head of HUD will need a long time to set the organization back to doing what it should. Though the nasty guy oversaw HUD (more accurately, didn’t oversee), the emphasis on dysfunctional government started way before he took over the Oval Office. Wrote Hunter:

The demand that government be defunded, destaffed, broken up, its tasks given to for-profit corporate enterprises and the withheld funds be distributed to the wealthy, has been the Republican demand for, at this point, decades. It is the reason there has never been a serious Republican health care reform proposal, even as the party swore up and down it was inches from having one. It is the reason that Republicans are, as we speak, demanding a continued defunding of national infrastructure, even during crisis. If the roads are paved, citizens will be happy with government. If the United States gets the sort of mass transit options or high-speed internet access that citizens in other nations take for granted, Americans will like it. A decaying bridge is a signal to all that "government," in whole, is incompetent. Nobody's going to agree to privatize every road and highway in America, putting up toll booths and letting a future Amazon of infrastructure decide where you can go and how much it will cost you to get there, if things are going well.

A few days ago I mentioned that someone started pushing the idea that if the Republicans take over the House in 2022 the nasty guy could be named Speaker. Kos of Kos reported someone mentioned that to the nasty guy and he declared it “very interesting.” However, since then he has mentioned the idea to Kevin McCarthy many times. McCarthy is the current House Minority Leader, the guy who would normally be Speaker if Republicans regained the House. Kos wrote:

As mentioned in my last piece, the conservative fantasy is that Trump takes the job for 100 days, impeaches Joe Biden just because, and then quits to run for president. Does it make sense? No. Would Trump ever actually do any work? No. Would he get his shit together in 100 days to actually accomplish anything? No. Would anything even remotely looking like “policy” happen in that time? No. All this points to the conservative inability to quit Trump.

Kos then discussed another aspect. There are many nasty guy supporters who have voted only when the nasty guy is actually on the ballot (they didn’t show up in 2017, 2018, and 2019). Perhaps this is a way to imply he’s on the ballot without him running for anything.

Meanwhile, could McCarthy look any more pathetic? He could’ve ditched the Trump albatross after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Now he’s sitting there looking like a chump as Trump tells him—repeatedly—that he wants his job.

Two weeks ago I wrote about a cartogram that stretched state boundaries to show senators per million people in the state. I recently went looking for other interesting cartograms and found some in World Mapper. Of interest are two on this page. The first shows the size of a country based on its CO2 emissions with the color of the country based on emissions per capita. China is the largest in emissions, but America, also large, is highest in emissions per capita – America’s per capita emissions is twice China’s. Also large are India (though low in per capita) and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Africa has been shrunk down to almost nothing except for South Africa and the countries along the Mediterranean. South America is pretty small. Europe is rather large with Germany the largest. Two more maps show emissions increase 1990-2015 and decrease in the same time. In the increase map China is huge, India is large, as is the Middle East. In the decrease map the largest area is Europe, especially Ukraine and other Soviet satellites. In this case the cause of decline is the fall of the Soviet Union and the halting of the most polluting industries. Another World Mapper cartogram of interest shows the spread of COVID. It’s in two parts, the first has a link to the second. The first shows the case map in April and July 2020, the second shows cumulative cases as of Jan 1, 2021. The second part also has an animation of the day by day spread over all of 2020. Of course, at the beginning China is huge. But soon Europe and America bloom in size. World Mapper has over 1100 cartograms on a variety of subjects. Under economy I saw cartograms for wealth in the year 1500 and distribution of McDonald’s Restaurants (very few in Africa). Ibram X. Kendi wrote the book Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. I have the book, though I haven’t read it yet. Kendi spoke with NPR host Steve Inskeep about the Republican assault on teaching about race. They also talked about his latest book Stamped for Kids, a youth version of the book. Then Kendi listed six books about race appropriate for children and young adults. I’ll have to add a few to my list of books to buy. Sravya Tadepalli, writing for Kos Prism discussed the importance of reflective and inclusive literature in school classrooms. Most books taught in English and literature classes are written about white men and feature white men. A few are written by white women. Students today think many are outdated and dull. It would be so much better if there was also literature by a variety of people of color. The benefit of such books include: If the book is about the culture of a person of color the student is much more invested in the story and that boosts reading comprehension. These students are usually behind in literacy That also boosts understanding of English when it is a second language. And, of course, the white students gain an understanding what their peers are going through. Though quite helpful a diversity of authors in a classroom does not solve problems caused by school segregation, disparities in school discipline, and insufficient school funding.