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theculturedmarxist · 4 years

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Idiotic “Conspiracy Theory”: John Boyega was cast as one of the leads in Star Wars because The Jews want to normalize miscegenation in an effort to effiminize American men and replace the White race!

Legitimate theory of a conspiracy: The Democrats have repeatedly stated how unpopular Bernie Sanders is with the wealthy capitalists that make up and fund their party leadership in spite of his overwhelming public support, and considering the political and professional ties of those involved and the vested interest the wealthy have in not seeing a man that wants to increase their taxes and undo some of the harm they’ve caused to the working class, the events in Iowa are at least somewhat suspicious.

The bourgeoisie get so incredibly nervous whenever people question their narrative because they are literally conspiring against the working class all the fucking time. This is in spite of the fact that they themselves admit it, boldly and openly. It’s just that when they do, they don’t use the words “conspiracy.”

Behind a Key Anti-Labor Case, a Web of Conservative Donors

In the summer of 2016, government workers in Illinois received a mailing that offered them tips on how to leave their union. By paying a so-called fair-share fee instead of standard union dues, the mailing said, they would no longer be bound by union rules and could not be punished for refusing to strike.

“To put it simply,” the document concluded, “becoming a fair-share payer means you will have more freedom.”

The mailing, sent by a group called the Illinois Policy Institute, may have seemed like disinterested advice. In fact, it was one prong of a broader campaign against public-sector unions, backed by some of the biggest donors on the right. It is an effort that will reach its apex on Monday, when the Supreme Court hears a case that could cripple public-sector unions by allowing the workers they represent to avoid paying fees.

One of the institute’s largest donors is a foundation bankrolled by Richard Uihlein, an Illinois industrialist who has spent millions backing Republican candidates in recent years, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois.

Tax filings show that Mr. Uihlein has also been the chief financial backer in recent years of the Liberty Justice Center, which represents Mark Janus, the Illinois child support specialist who is the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case.

And Mr. Uihlein has donated well over $1 million over the years to groups like the Federalist Society that work to orient the judiciary in a more conservative direction. They have helped produce a Supreme Court that most experts expect to rule in Mr. Janus’s favor.

The case illustrates the cohesiveness with which conservative philanthropists have taken on unions in recent decades. “It’s a mistake to look at the Janus case and earlier litigation as isolated episodes,” said Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a Columbia University political scientist who studies conservative groups. “It’s part of a multipronged, multitiered strategy.”

Today, MLB's Owners Decide How To Wage War

MLB's 30 owners will meet in Baltimore today to elect the first new commissioner since Bud Selig took the reins in 1992—unless there is enough discord and politicking to prevent any candidate from receiving the required 23 votes. Which there almost certainly is! Today will see the first open, public battle in a vicious power struggle that promises to define MLB's relationship with its players over the coming decades, and, more immediately, the likelihood of a work stoppage in 2016.

The three finalists named by the search committee last week are MLB COO Rob Manfred, MLB VP of business Tim Brosnan, and Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner.

As has been reported out over recent weeks and months by The New York Times, this is a two-horse race between Manfred, Selig's underboss and presumptive successor, and Werner, a dark-horse candidate backed by a coalition of maverick owners led by White Sox boss Jerry Reinsdorf.

The battle here is not between Manfred and Werner; it's between Selig and Reinsdorf, two of the last remnants of baseball's old guard from the biliously anti-labor power structure of the 1980s, when owners illegally colluded to fix the free agency market to keep salaries down. (As always, it's important to remember that the players' strike of 1994 was really about the owners' collusion in the 1980s.)

Koch Brothers’ Internal Strategy Memo on Selling Tax Cuts: Ignore The Deficit

The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch spent much of the eight years of the Obama presidency stoking fears about the budget deficit. Their political network aired an unending cascade of campaign advertisements against Democratic politicians, sponsored several national bus tours, and paid organizers in communities across the country to mobilize public demonstrations, all focused on the dangers of increasing the deficit.

One such ad even warned that government debt would lead to a Chinese takeover of America — which, for many voters, is a concern linked to debt. Another effort, also quietly bankrolled by the Koch network, used Justin Bieber memes to try to reach millennials about too much government borrowing.

Now that Republicans control all levers of power in Washington and the Koch brothers are poised to reap a windfall of billions of dollars through tax cuts, they have a new message: Don’t worry about the deficit.

The Intercept obtained a messaging memo from the Koch brothers’ network on how to sell tax reform legislation. The memo went out to members of the network of likeminded Republican donors, which includes dozens of wealthy investors and business executives.

“Network,” “web,” “association,” “coalition,” “group,” “foundation.” When you strip away all the corporate newspeak, they are saying that these people are engaged in a conspiracy.

Historically, anti-labor conspiracies have themselves been big business. Just take the Mohawk Valley Formula for example:

The Mohawk Valley formula is a plan for strikebreaking purportedly written by the president of the Remington Rand company James Rand, Jr. around the time of the Remington Rand strike at Ilion, New York in 1936/37.

The plan includes discrediting union leaders, frightening the public with the threat of violence, using local police and vigilantes to intimidate strikers, forming associations of "loyal employees" to influence public debate, fortifying workplaces, employing large numbers of replacement workers, and threatening to close the plant if work is not resumed.[1][2]

The authenticity of the written plan has never been clearly established. Although it was allegedly published in the National Association of Manufacturers Labor Relations Bulletin, no original copy has been found, nor does NAM list it among its pamphlets from that era.[3][non-primary source needed] Parts of the plan use language sympathetic to the views of labor organizers. The Remington Rand company did indeed ruthlessly suppress the strikes, as documented in a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, and the plan has been accepted as a guide to the methods that were used. At least one source names the strikebreaker Pearl Bergoff and his so-called "Bergoff Technique" as the origin of the formula.[4] Rand and Bergoff were both indicted by the same federal grand jury for their roles in the Remington Rand strike.

Noam Chomsky has described the formula as the result of business owners' trend away from violent strikebreaking to a "scientific" approach based on propaganda. An essential feature of this approach is the identification of the management's interests with "Americanism," while labor activism is portrayed as the work of un-American outsiders. Workers are thus persuaded to turn against the activists and toward management to demonstrate their patriotism.[5][6]

The following is the text of the Mohawk Valley formula as quoted in the labor press:

When a strike is threatened, label the union leaders as "agitators" to discredit them with the public and their own followers. Conduct balloting under the foremen to ascertain the strength of the union and to make possible misrepresentation of the strikers as a small minority. Exert economic pressure through threats to move the plant, align bankers, real estate owners and businessmen into a "Citizens' Committee".

Raise high the banner of "law and order", thereby causing the community to mass legal and police weapons against imagined violence and to forget that employees have equal rights with others in the community.

Call a "mass meeting" to coordinate public sentiment against the strike and strengthen the Citizens' Committee.

Form a large police force to intimidate the strikers and exert a psychological effect. Utilize local police, state police, vigilantes and special deputies chosen, if possible, from other neighborhoods.

Convince the strikers their cause is hopeless with a "back-to-work" movement by a puppet association of so-called "loyal employees" secretly organized by the employer.

When enough applications are on hand, set a date for opening the plant by having such opening requested by the puppet "back-to-work" association.

Stage the "opening" theatrically by throwing open the gates and having the employees march in a mass protected by squads of armed police so as to dramatize and exaggerate the opening and heighten the demoralizing effect.

Demoralize the strikers with a continuing show of force. If necessary turn the locality into a warlike camp and barricade it from the outside world.

Close the publicity barrage on the theme that the plant is in full operation and the strikers are merely a minority attempting to interfere with the right to work. With this, the campaign is over—the employer has broken the strike.[2]

A similar, although more nuanced and longer, version was published in The Nation in 1937.[1]

The louder the capitalists cry and whinge about “conspiracy theories” the more certain you can be that the capitalists are engaged in a fucking conspiracy.

#conspiracy #conspiracy theories #conspiracy theory #bernie sanders #bernie sander for president #bernie sanders for president #iowa caucus #democratic national convention #democratic party #democrats #capitalism #overthrow the bourgeoisie #down with the bourgeoisie #koch brothers #supreme court

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khixsoncounselorpdx · 6 years

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UNION NOW: A Better Future for Mental Health Providers—and Clients

I spent my first couple years as a counselor in agencies or institutions. I’ll spare you the details but please know I spent many lunch hours hours in Hillsboro crying over my Mexi Tots. True Story. Many of us get out of agencies and non-profits as soon as we can and hustle our way through private practice. It works out for many us. But what about the workers who want or need to work in these agencies? What about the clients whose only option is to go to these agencies to obtain care? Private practice clinicians are not available to everyone.

Photo from United We Heal press conference in 2016

Years of Fighting

Union activity in the mental health sector has occurred intermittently over the years in Portland and the most recent push is about 2 ½ years in. One of the reasons unions have not succeeded in this sector is that management and executives are vehemently opposed to them. They spend thousands of dollars on anti-union lawyers and consultants. Volunteers of America spent over 18 months in negotiations before they got a contract. Interesting how non-profits can find plenty of money in their budgets to fight unions. They also love to send letters to their employees discouraging unions and bringing in HR or management for “the talk.” What follows is an excerpt of a never-sent* letter responding to an anti-union letter sent to all employees by a mental health large agency in summer 2016:

It is highly arrogant to make the bold statement that {insert agency} “does not believe that a union can additionally benefit our employees.” This attitude discounts the legitimate grievances so many of us in the mental health professions have experienced working on the frontlines of mental health throughout our careers. It is well known that the working conditions (low wages compared to cost of master’s level training, high productivity standards, high burnout, etc.) contribute to high turnover in community mental health settings. Turnover leads to a disruption in client care and inadequate access to treatment. This attitude of no added benefit to employees does not consider the impact of business-as-usual on the provision of client care. How might an employee union improve client care? This was not considered in your communication.

The statement that your employees are “already receiving more advantages than a union could offer, without any of the disadvantages, such as union dues and initiation fees, the possibility of fines and assessments, not to mention any possible work disruptions and the divisive culture that can result” treads irresponsibly towards anti-union scare tactics and blatant misinformation. While labor organizations must abide by their own rules, The National Labor Relations Act “forbids employers from interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of rights relating to organizing, forming, joining or assisting a labor organization for collective bargaining purposes, or from working together to improve terms and conditions of employment, or refraining from any such activity.”

While agency management glossed over employee grievances and downplayed the benefits of a union for workers, this letter highlighted the unheard side of this argument—how can organizing not only benefit the workers but also benefit clients? For example, quality client care can be assured through a contract that outlines things like having enough staff to handle caseloads so that counselors are able to provide the attention each client needs and deserves. This in turn could mitigate burnout on the part of the employees resulting in a lower level of turnover and stability for agency clients, again establishing a higher degree of quality care. And so on…

Working Conditions

I am deeply frustrated with the ongoing exploitation of mental health workers and the clients they work with. While I’ve not not been employed at agencies since 2006, I’ve never left this work behind. I taught students who would end up in agencies and did my best to prepare them without freaking them out about the working conditions. All the while, they were openly discouraged from going into private practice by their programs and professors. Very striking how professors who haven’t “worked in the trenches” for years feel entitled to influence how people will sell their own labor. As a supervisor of workers, I’ve heard (and documented) how they are treated, and I’ve gotta admit, many days I just want to burn it all down to the ground and here’s why.

This is an incomplete list of oppressive working conditions my supervisee-colleagues have shared with me first hand:

Sexual harassment by fellow colleagues

Judgement by supervisors for reasonable emotional reactions to intense stories, trauma, and life-threatening client situations

Inadequate and harmful clinical supervision (sometimes, no supervision at all)

Silenced for calling out ethical violations of the agency itself

Abuse of power by supervisors

Reprimands for appropriately advocating for clients

Judgement and oppression for their own mental health issues

Discouragement or rejection of much needed time off work

Denial of requests to diversify their caseload or working environment to increase their clinical experience

Denied opportunities to increase their supervision or leadership capacity

Unions are Dangerously Wonderful

It is really important to understand why management and executives in the mental health sector are so afraid of unions and are putting so much money into resisting them. If we are unionized, these agencies will be held accountable for the abuses they continue to perpetuate on workers and clients. There will be protection from bosses through a negotiated just-cause discipline process, not the default Oregon standard of at-will employment. There will be a contract. There will be a union steward you can go to when the negotiated working conditions are violated and they will help advocate for you. It will not be perfect, but it will be absolutely better than what we have. Even if you find yourself in a high paying job in mental health or feel pretty cozy in your private practice, consider this: Earlier this week a supervisee told me that they were directly denied a break by their supervisor during their 8-hour shift not days after Human Resources came in to give them the anti-union speech. This happened. Our colleagues and the clients in our communities deserve more, and we must support them. Please sign this petition from Portland Jobs with Justice to support the workers of Cascadia:

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/support-the-union-of-cascadia-workers-2?source=direct_link&

This post is dedicated to all the people working intensely behind the scenes right now to support unionization in the mental health sector. To all of those that came before them: you did not fail, you paved the way for for an organized future.

*it was collectively agreed upon that this was not the right tactic at the time

Northland Poster Collective 1994

Additional Resources:

Volunteers of America successful, hard-fought contract:

https://www.afscme.org/now/oregon-voa-members-win-first-contract

The Unheard Voices, a white paper on the mental health sector in Portland: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58ee7966d482e9cd1f9da132/t/58efd18c5016e1685c57798f/1492111761859/OR+BH+White+Paper_FINAL+032717.pdf

United We Heal launch press conference:

https://www.facebook.com/sasspdx/videos/1713285602303547/

Janus vs. AFSCME Supreme Court Decision:

https://www.colorlines.com/articles/supreme-court-strikes-blow-against-public-labor-unions-janus-v-afscme-decision

Economic Policy Institute study on the benefits of unions for all workers:

https://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/

Princeton University study shows that unions reduce income inequality: https://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/bitstream/88435/dsp01gx41mm54w/3/620.pdf

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maxwellyjordan · 6 years

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Friday round-up

As the Monday deadline President Donald Trump has set for announcing his replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy approaches, Robert Costa and Seung Min Kim report for The Washington Post that “Trump’s deliberations over a Supreme Court nominee now center on three candidates culled from his shortlist: federal judges Brett M. Kavanaugh, Raymond Kethledge and Amy Coney Barrett.” At NPR, Nina Totenberg names Kavanaugh and Barrett as the two finalists, and reports that “a quintessentially Washingtonian fight has erupted between [their] supporters.”

Eliana Johnson reports at Politico that among the reported front-runners, “[m]uch of the jockeying has centered on D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh.” An anonymous contributor to The Federalist finds a “troubling pattern” of “errors” by Kavanaugh “in religious liberty cases,” concluding that “Kavanaugh poses too big of a risk of disappointing on religious freedom to be placed on the nation’s highest court.” But at Politico, Matthew Nussbaum notes that the betting markets are favoring Kavanaugh. For The Washington Post, Beth Reinhard reports that Barrett “has argued that justices should not be bound by court precedent in deciding whether to overturn landmark decisions that they deem out of step with the Constitution.” At The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Marcia Coyle and Tony Mauro offer “some ‘out of the box’ insights” into Kethledge, including that the judge “has been a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights.”

At National Review, Lillian Beview observes that another reported frontrunner, Judge Amul Thapar, with whom she has co-taught a class about judicial philosophy, “has a great deal in common with Justice Thomas.” In an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, Ilya Shapiro explains why Thapar deserves serious consideration. Abigail Simon looks at four of the frontrunners for Time. For The Washington Post, Aaron Blake lists the pros and cons of six shortlisters. At The Weekly Standard, Ryan Owens and Christopher Crewson discuss their recent research showing that “the American people tend to support nominees who espouse ‘Original Intent,’ which we defined as judges who ‘look to the intent of the drafters and ratifiers of the Constitution to reach conclusions about its meaning.’”

Axios’ Mike Allen predicts that Trump’s pick will be “more about personality than pedigree.” At Politico, Annie Karni and Eliana Johnson report that the “process of filling a second Supreme Court opening [is] play[ing] out like a political campaign, with attention to the whole package, including a potential nominee’s appearance as well as the look and feel of his or her family.” At The Hill, Jourdain Carney reports that “[s]enators are griping that the looming nomination … will prevent them from being able to focus on legislation, as lawmakers dig in for a drawn-out rhetorical battle to confirm” Kennedy’s replacement.

For The New York Times, Carl Hulse observes that “[t]he coming showdown over replacing … Kennedy … should only add to the perception of the court as a platform for a defining struggle between Republicans and Democrats.” At Politico Magazine, David Greenberg puts the partisan wrangling in historical context, noting that “[i]t’s hard to recall now, but for most of the past century almost nobody would admit to voting for or against a nominee because of his or her partisan affiliation.”

Looking at the court after Kennedy, Oliver Roeder at FiveThirtyEight points out that liberals shouldn’t place too much hope in the presumed new “median voter,” noting that “[w]hile the statistical metrics show Roberts taking a relatively moderate position, he has very rarely voted with the liberals when it mattered.” At Take Care, Leah Litman maintains that “there’s no question the modified Court will overturn Roe; the only question is how it will do so.” But in an op-ed for NBC News, Danny Cavallos argues that “[c]ontrary to what many commentators and Democrats are saying, Roe v. Wade is probably not ‘doomed.’” NPR features an interview with election-law expert Richard Hasen “about how retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s successor may affect voting rights.” At Politico, Josh Gerstein reports that a “pile of pending lawsuits over Donald Trump’s personal and business conduct could put his nominee to the Supreme Court in an awkward position: deciding whether to cast potentially pivotal votes on legal matters of keen importance to the president.”

Constitution Daily’s We the People podcast looks at Kennedy’s legacy. In an op-ed for Politico Magazine, Rahm Emanuel refutes the “[c]onventional wisdom hold[ing] that Justice Anthony Kennedy was a moderate whose rulings hewed down the center of the fairway with the centrist wisdom of a modern-day King Solomon.”

At Take Care, Nikolas Bowie observes that Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, in which the court held that an Illinois law allowing public-sector unions to charge nonmembers for collective-bargaining activities violates the First Amendment, contains a “recyclable sentence” that “could serve as the basis for undermining an enormous number of priorities that have nothing to do with labor.” At The Nation, Moshe Marvit writes, “[S]cratch the surface of the Janus case and what fast becomes clear is that it, like so much else in the right-to-work realm, did not begin with a worker but rather with a wealthy anti-union businessman.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in this case.]

Briefly:

For The Economist, Steven Mazie explains why “the framers entrust[ed] judges[, including Supreme Court justices,] with lifetime appointments, when every other democracy in the world imposes term limits, a mandatory retirement age or both.”

For The Washington Post, Jessica Contrera looks at Kristen Waggoner, the public face of Alliance Defending Freedom, “an Arizona-based Christian conservative legal nonprofit” “fighting for the right of Christians to openly express their faith — and winning.”

In the latest episode of Rewire.News’ Boom! Lawyered podcast, Jessica Mason Pieklo and Imani Gandy “sift through the wreckage of the Court’s decisions” this term.

In an op-ed for Forbes, Cory Andrews weighs in on National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, in which the court held that a California’s statute that requires crisis pregnancy centers to make disclosures, including about the availability of abortions, likely violates the First Amendment, observing that the opinion lacks “any acknowledgment, much less discussion, of the Court’s longstanding exception to strict-scrutiny review for commercial speech.”

Also at Take Care, Lina Khan criticizes the majority’s “clums[]y” analysis in Ohio v. American Express Co., “which establishes a special rule for analyzing the conduct of companies that operate in ‘two-sided transaction platforms,’ significantly raising the burden that plaintiffs must meet at the very earliest stage of litigation.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the petitioners in this case.]

At Understanding the ADA, William Goren notes that the court’s opinion in South Dakota v. Wayfair, which opened the door for states to collect sales tax on all internet purchases, “suggest[s] that the Supreme Court would likely hold that businesses that are only on the web are places of accommodation under the ADA.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel to the petitioner in this case.]

We rely on our readers to send us links for our round-up. If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, podcast, or op-ed relating to the Supreme Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com. Thank you!

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#law #justice

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