cdarwin

cdarwin, 4 hours ago to random

Inside the effort by two Beverly Hills billionaires to kill a state law protecting farmworkers

Los Angeles-based Wonderful Co.
— the world’s largest pistachio and almond grower, the purveyor of Fiji Water, Pom pomegranate juice and Justin wines, and owner of the Teleflora flower service
— wants you to know that it’s committed to “sustainable farming and business practices” and sees its employees as “a guiding force for good.”

Wonderful’s owners, the Beverly Hills billionaires Lynda and Stewart Resnick, say their “calling” is “to leave people and the planet better than we found them.”

Here’s another side of the company.

Since February, it has been engaged in a ferocious battle with the United Farm Workers over the UFW’s campaign to unionize more than 600 Wonderful Nurseries workers in the Central Valley
@ufwupdates
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-05-16/inside-the-effort-by-two-beverly-hills-billionaires-to-kill-a-state-law-protecting-farm-workers

cdarwin, 9 hours ago to random

The man who bludgeoned Nancy Pelosi's husband with a hammer was sentenced Friday to 30 years in prison.
The attack on Paul Pelosi, who was 82 at the time, was captured on police body camera video just days before the 2022 midterm elections and sent shockwaves through the political world.
He suffered two head wounds including a skull fracture that was mended with plates and screws he will have for the rest of his life. His right arm and hand were also injured.
A jury found David DePape, 44, guilty last November of attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official. Prosecutors had asked for a 40-year prison term.
Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley sentenced DePape to 20 years for attempted kidnapping and 30 years for the assault — the maximum for both counts.
The sentences will run concurrently.
He was also given credit for the 18 months that he’s been in custody.

https://apnews.com/article/paul-pelosi-nancy-hammer-attack-depape-sentence-b41b6c776fb27f62913e3754afa1ceac

cdarwin, 10 hours ago to random

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Friday that
⭐️Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito should recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election
after a new report said
⭐️an upside-down American flag flew outside his home in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and before President Joe Biden's inauguration.

Samuel Alito’s explanations for the upside-down American flag make the story even worse.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/sen-dick-durbin-says-justice-alito-recuse-trump-cases-upside-flag-rcna152739

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/alito-flag-supreme-court-justices-stop-the-steal-ethics-rules-pitiful.html

cdarwin, 11 hours ago to random

Note, this truck-eating bridge is the Storrow Drive passage under Massachusetts Avenue (at the MIT campus)

It's a low bridge which is frequently impacted by oblivious box truck drivers

https://onefoottsunami.com/2024/05/17/maximizing-those-marketing-dollars/

cdarwin, 1 day ago to kevin

PROJECT 2025 AS COUNTERREVOLUTION

The fascists believed that you have to destroy to create,
and this is what a second Trump administration would do.

Project 2025 is a plan for an authoritarian takeover of the United States that goes by a deceptively neutral name.

It preserves Trumpism’s original radical intent in its goals to “[d]ismantle the administrative state” and “decentralize and privatize as much as possible,” allowing the American people to “live freely.”

“[T]he Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start,” Heritage Foundation head #Kevin #Roberts told The New York Times in January. “And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”

The solution to this “slow start”
—code for the restraints imposed by operating in a democracy
—is counterrevolution.

The plan promises the abolition of the Department of Education and other federal agencies.

The intent here is to destroy the legal and governance cultures of liberal democracy and create new bureaucratic structures,
staffed by new politically vetted cadres,
to support autocratic rule.

So new agencies could appear to manage parents’ and family rights, Christian affairs, and other pillars of the new order.
🔥The Department of Health and Human Services is poised to have a central role in governance, 👉😱given the priorities Trumpism places on policing sexuality, weaponizing motherhood, persecuting transgender people and LGBTQ communities, and criminalizing abortion.

#HeritageFoundation #KevinRoberts
#Project2025
https://newrepublic.com/article/181265/permanent-counterrevolution

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

Biden’s labor report card:

Historian gives ‘Union Joe’ a higher grade than any president since FDR

https://theconversation.com/bidens-labor-report-card-historian-gives-union-joe-a-higher-grade-than-any-president-since-fdr-228771

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

Archie, the Internet’s first search engine, is rescued and running

It's amazing, and a little sad, to think that something created in 1989 that changed how people used and viewed the then-nascent Internet had nearly vanished by 2024.

Nearly, that is, because the dogged researchers and enthusiasts at
The Serial Port channel on YouTube
have found what is likely the last existing copy of Archie.

Archie, first crafted by Alan Emtage while a student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, allowed for the searching of various "anonymous" FTP servers around what was then a very small web of universities, researchers, and government and military nodes.
It was groundbreaking; it was the first echo of the "anything, anywhere" Internet to come.
And when The Serial Port went looking, Archie did not exist

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/archie-the-internets-first-search-engine-is-rescued-and-running/

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

Clarence Thomas is still refusing to reveal whether he repaid the principal on the $267,000 loan that he received from Anthony Welters,
a wealthy health care executive and personal friend,
to purchase his R.V. in 1999, according to a letter that Senators Ron Wyden and Sheldon Whitehouse have sent to an attorney for Thomas.

Thomas also has yet to say whether the loan’s principal was forgiven by the lender, the Democrats argue in the letter, which was obtained by The New Republic.

If it was forgiven all or in part, the senators say, it could constitute “a significant amount of taxable income” that should be reported on federal tax returns.

“Your client’s refusal to clarify how the loan was resolved raises serious concerns regarding violations of federal tax laws,” the senators write.

Wyden chairs the Finance Committee, and Whitehouse chairs the Judiciary Committee’s panel on federal courts, both of which are spearheading an investigation of Supreme Court ethics scandals.

The tale involving this R.V. constitutes one of the higher-profile instances of Thomas potentially accepting a form of income from wealthy benefactors,
resulting in a drumbeat of stories that have shaken the court.
Though Thomas’s frequent depiction of his Prevost Marathon R.V. (which he purchased used) as a sign of his affection for salt-of-the-earth leisure activities appears sincere ...
it’s also a luxury vehicle and an extremely pricey asset, perhaps comparable to a medium-size yacht.
https://newrepublic.com/article/181627/clarence-thomas-rv-loan-democrats-letter

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

Justice Department takes 'major step' toward rescheduling marijuana

“This is monumental"

In a video announcement Thursday, President Joe Biden said he is “committed to righting” the wrongs of a “failed approach to marijuana.”

The Biden administration announced Thursday it had initiated the formal rulemaking process to reschedule marijuana to Schedule III from its Schedule I designation that it has held for more than 50 years.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/reschedule-marijuana-drug-joe-biden-justice-department-rcna152603

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

The North Carolina Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to
💥ban anyone from wearing masks in public for health reasons, 💥following an emotional debate about the wisdom of the proposal.

Republican supporters of the ban said it would help police crack down on protesters who wear masks
— which some lawmakers called a growing concern, saying demonstrators are abusing Covid-19 pandemic-era norms to wear masks that hide their identities.

“It’s about time that the craziness is at least slowed down, if not literally stopped,” said bill sponsor Buck Newton, R-Wilson.

The proposal faced strong opposition from Democratic lawmakers, community activists, and advocates for people with health issues
— who are concerned about the consequences of the proposal.
https://www.wect.com/2024/05/16/nc-senate-votes-ban-people-wearing-masks-public-health-reasons/

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

House Democrats quietly helped propel a GOP-led discharge petition to success,
marking the first time in nearly a decade the maneuver has worked.

Democratic leaders made a concerted effort to get their members to sign on, according to several senior Democratic sources. It comes after several efforts to force votes on their own bills fell short.

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) urged her colleagues to sign the petition at a closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting on Wednesday, one of the sources said.

It's the first time since 2015 that such a petition has gotten the 218 signatures needed to force a vote.

The discharge petition, introduced by Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), forces a vote on Steube's bill to 💥provide tax relief to victims of natural disasters.💥
The legislation was part of a broader, bipartisan tax package that passed the House in January but has stalled in the Senate.

Around two dozen House Republicans signed onto the discharge petition, but the rest of the 218 signatures came from Democrats.

Nearly 70 of the signatures are from Democrats who signed on the day Clark spoke to the closed-door caucus meeting.

What they're saying: "
I am grateful for the motivation and support of 217 of my bipartisan colleagues as we join forces to deliver tax relief for Americans all across the country," Steube said.

"In the 30 years of public discharge petitions, this petition is only the third to succeed. That's a testament to how important this issue is for ALL of our constituents."

Democrats said genuine support for the substance of the legislation drove their signatures
– but they also see bypassing GOP leadership as an opportunity to flex their legislative muscle.

"This Congress—under Republican leadership—has been completely chaotic and unproductive," Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) said.⭐️ "In stark contrast, Democrats have shown up repeatedly as the adults in the room."

One senior House Democrat said of the party's thinking: "Number one, [we wanted] to force the issue,
and secondly, it's just another example of how Republican leadership is not really in the 'majority'."

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/16/house-democrats-congress-gop-discharge-petition

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

A U.S. government cybersecurity official has broken ranks from his agency and publicly revealed that

attackers have repeatedly tracked the physical location of people inside the U.S. using vulnerabilities in the backbone of the world’s telecommunications cellular infrastructure in recent years

https://mastodon.social/@jsrailton/112451514687920071#.

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

Trump, allies are laying the groundwork to contest potential election loss

Donald Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork to contest a potential loss in November,
stoking doubts about the election's legitimacy even as opinion polls show the Republican presidential candidate leading in battleground states.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-allies-are-laying-groundwork-contest-potential-election-loss-2024-05-16/

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

Supreme Court rejects payday lenders’ challenge to Obama-era consumer protection bureau

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the U.S. consumer protection agency that was created under President Obama and congressional Democrats to protect Americans from financial scams.

By a 7-2 vote, the justices rejected a constitutional claim brought by a coalition of payday lenders who had won before a panel of three Trump appointees on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The lower court had questioned the legality of the agency, ruling it was not properly “accountable to Congress” because it did not receive its funding through an annual appropriation.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-05-16/supreme-court-rejects-payday-lenders-challenge-to-the-consumer-protection-bureau

cdarwin, 1 day ago to Rochester

With Ms. #Alsobrooks’s come-from-behind victory in Tuesday’s primary, voters in November will most likely have the chance to double the number of Black women ever elected to the Senate.

Another Democrat, Representative Lisa Blunt #Rochester, is the odds-on favorite to win her party’s nomination in September for an open Senate seat in heavily Democratic Delaware.

If both win in November, for the first time, two Black women will serve in Congress’s upper chamber at the same time.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Ms. #Moseley #Braun, who became the first Black female senator when she was elected from Illinois in 1992 and now serves as chairwoman of the United States African Development Foundation.

The second, from California, is now the vice president, Kamala #Harris.
A third, Laphonza #Butler, Democrat of California, was appointed to fill a vacant seat, but is not running for re-election

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/politics/black-women-senate.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

cdarwin, 2 days ago to random

Former Far-Right Hard-Liner Says Billionaires Are Using School Board Races to Sow Distrust in Public Education

https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-tim-dunn-wilks-brothers-vouchers-courtney-gore

cdarwin, 2 days ago to random

17% of Voters Blame Biden for the End of Roe

The mistaken belief, in a new poll, shows how even as abortion is mobilizing Democrats, confusion over the issue is also a challenge

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/upshot/abortion-biden-trump-blame.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

cdarwin, 2 days ago to random

Zhiming Zhao, Husam Alshareef, and colleagues were able to create a

high-efficiency metal-free battery

combining an ammonium-cation-containing electrolyte with electrodes made of carbon.

According to Zhao, the organic semiconductor anode made of graphite is cheap, and sustainable.

The scientists developed a “dual-ion” battery by using hexafluorophosphate ions as negative charge carriers for the ammonium cations
and taking advantage of graphite’s capacity to reversibly accommodate these anions within its layers.

When the battery is charging, cations and anions are simultaneously inserted into the appropriate electrode,

and when the battery is discharging, they are released into the electrolyte.

With a record operating voltage of 2.75 volts, the battery outperformed ammonium-ion-based analogs currently on the market.

“It is now possible to develop high-energy nonmetallic ion batteries that can compete with metal-ion batteries,” further stated Zhao.

The group is presently focusing on performance improvement to get closer to large-scale applications.

Zhao further added, “We are exploring anode materials with a higher capacity, which is crucial for improving the energy density.”

Alshareef’s team is creating inexpensive lithium-ion battery substitutes, especially for grid-scale storage.

https://www.azom.com/news.aspx?newsID=60681

cdarwin, 3 days ago to random

Jan. 6 felony rioter Derrick Evans loses GOP House primary in West Virginia

Rep. Carol Miller fended off a challenge from Evans,
who was sentenced to three months in prison for his role in the Capitol attack.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/derrick-evans-west-virginia-january-6-primary-election-rcna151980

cdarwin, 3 days ago to random Ukrainian

It’s Trygve Hammer
– the Navy and Marine Corps veteran,
former public school teacher,
freight rail conductor,
and now, the only Democrat running for Congress in North Dakota.

I urgently need your help to fight back against multiple GOP extremists who are dumping millions into their campaigns.

My time in the Marine Corps taught me what it means to serve, and let me tell you: GOP politicians are not serving us.

North Dakota deserves a representative who can bring the experiences of our veterans, laborers, and teachers to Congress – and that’s why I’m running.

Can you chip in ANY amount to become a Founding Donor to our campaign and help elect a pro-union, pro-choice, pro-democracy leader to Congress?

https://hammerfornd.us/FoundingDonor?t=6BmQkm

Thank you.

cdarwin, 4 days ago to random

The rapid emergence of low-priced EVs from China could shake up the global auto industry in ways not seen since Japanese makers exploded on the scene during the oil crises of the 1970s.

BYD, which stands for “Build Your Dreams,” could be a nightmare for the U.S. auto industry.

“Any car company that’s not paying attention to them as a competitor is going to be lost when they hit their market,” said Sam Fiorani, a vice president at AutoForecast Solutions near Philadelphia.
“BYD’s entry into the U.S. market isn’t an if. It’s a when.”
https://apnews.com/article/china-byd-auto-seagull-auto-ev-cae20c92432b74e95c234d93ec1df400

cdarwin, 4 days ago to random

If you sit down and talk with Republicans,
which I advise against doing,
you will notice that they justify nearly every one of their awful policies with a call to states’ rights.
They say they want to take power away from national representatives in Washington, D.C., and redistribute it to state and local governments,
which, they claim, are best equipped to determine the best policies for their constituents’ particular, parochial concerns.
They use this appeal to “federalism” to shield them from moral accountability for their disastrous actions.
Republicans will say, for instance, that their intention is not to take away abortion rights but merely to let the states decide when a person can be forced to give birth against their will.

They are lying, of course.
We know this because whenever Republicans get the power to impose their views by national fiat, they happily do so, states’ rights be damned.

Republicans are for local control right up until a local prosecutor declines to deport an immigrant or a city council decides to ban assault weapons.

Still, “states’ rights” remains their battle cry,
and few things expose the full measure of their antipathy toward democratic norms and civil rights than what they do with the power they’ve given to the states.

Most people are aware of the horrors that await when Republicans take control of statehouses and governors’ mansions.

For recent examples, consider Greg Abbott’s murder moat in Texas, or Glenn Youngkin’s crusade against abortion rights and Pornhub in Virginia.

Fewer, however, recognize the horrors that lie in store when Republicans commandeer the machinery of the law.

Put simply, whichever rights the Supreme Court does not succeed in obliterating, Republican-controlled state courts and Republican attorneys general eagerly chisel away, state by state.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/republican-attorney-general-raga/

cdarwin, 4 days ago to random

Will Zionism survive the war?

As Israel marks its 76th anniversary this week under the shadow of the Oct. 7 massacre and the Israel-Gaza war, the country’s underlying Zionist ideology is being called into question.

Various groups distort and weaponize the term “Zionism,” depicting it as a malignant form of tribalism or even racism.

To understand current developments in Israel, as well as the country’s tumultuous history, it is necessary to clarify what Zionism has really meant over its 150 years of existence.
Born in the late 19th century, modern Zionism is a national movement similar to the ones that arose during the same period among Greeks, Poles and many other peoples.

The key idea of Zionism is that Jews constitute a nation, and as such they have not just individual human rights but also a national right to self-determination.

Nothing in this Zionist idea implies that Jews are superior to others, whether they are Greeks or Poles — or Palestinians.

Nor does the idea that Jews constitute a nation necessarily deny the existence of a Palestinian nation with a right to self-determination, or the human rights of individual Palestinians. The equation of Zionism with racism — an allegation that persists long after a 1991 United Nations’ resolution revoked a previous resolution to that effect
— is therefore not only false, but is itself tainted with racism.

Proscribing Zionism implies that Jews can have no legitimate national aspirations, unlike all other peoples.
When one of the leaders of the recent protests at Columbia University claimed that “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” he was, in effect, arguing that Jews who harbor national aspirations should be systematically killed.

When other protesters chanted slogans such as “We don’t want no Zionists here,” perhaps they thought they were expressing hostility toward racism, but they were in fact calling for the harassment and expulsion of any Jews who possess national sentiments.

Of course, some Zionists
— like adherents of all other national movements
— can be racists or
bigots.

Relations between nations are often fraught with tensions, hatreds and even atrocities, particularly when they have conflicting territorial demands.
Almost every national movement in history has included hard-liners making maximalist demands and moderates willing to compromise. Zionism is no exception.

We cannot do justice here to the many strains that existed within Zionism over the past 150 years, and to the impact that events such as the Holocaust and the various Arab-Israeli wars had on Zionism.

What is clear is that over the generations many Zionists did deny the right to Palestinian nationhood, and laid claim to the entire land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, as well as to additional territories east of the Jordan, in the Sinai Peninsula and elsewhere.
(1/2)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/13/israel-independence-day-zionism-future/