#costs taxpayers MILLIONS in damage

[decolonize-the-left]

GENERAL STRIKE TIME BABEY. READ THE WHOLE POST.

While we're all mad at government sending money to Israel that police budgets are so inflated because of how often they pay settlements.

And also that it's a verified fact that our police train with Israeli soldiers. Remember when they were black bagging people in PDX? It reminded me of this ex-Israeli soldier talking about how they'd do the same thing to innocent Palestinians just to terrorize them and their neighbors. It was intentional terrorism when they did it.

Police budgets pay for all that.

Correction, we pay.

To put it more bluntly,

We pay for them to kill and terrorize people.

Just as our taxes pay for the deaths of Black and Brown people all over the world from Turtle Island to Sudan and Palestine.

In Dec. 2022, Louisville Metro Government agreed to pay Walker $2 million to settle lawsuits against the city. Metro government previously paid a $12 million settlement to Taylor’s family in Sept. 2020

We paid for Breonna Taylor's death.

And her murderers were never arrested btw. Not that there aren't still people trying to arrest them of course. But our money paid for their lawyers and wouldn't you know it, no charges have stuck.

Four years to the day after Breonna Taylor’s death, federal prosecutors are moving forward with a re-trial of one of the officers involved in the botched raid that ended her life. At a status conference Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings scheduled Brett Hankison’s final pre-trial hearing for September 13th. His re-trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 15. In November of last year, Hankinson was tried for violating the Constitutional rights of Breonna Taylor, her boyfriend, and three neighbors when he fired through two covered windows during the raid. Prosecutors argued he used excessive force when he shot into the apartment complex blindly. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, had fired at officers executing the search, claiming he thought they were intruders.

And Myles Cosgrove?

Yeah we're paying him to terrorize more people. He got a job as a fucking sheriff's deputy.

Myles Cosgrove, the former Louisville police officer, who was fired for fatally shooting Breonna Taylor in a botched 2020 police raid and hired earlier this year as a sheriff’s deputy in Carroll County, rammed a resident’s truck with his cruiser Monday and then pointed a gun at the owner and several bystanders, witnesses said.

Witnesses told The Courier Journal that Cosgrove barreled into Happy Hollow Private Resort Park trailer park at a high rate of speed without his emergency lights on, then struck William Joshua Short’s pickup truck with such force that it sent the vehicle flying into a building, breaking off two cinder blocks.

And Johnathan Mattingly wrote a fucking book about it to make money off of his role in her murder. $15 on Amazon.

He also wanted to sue Kenneth Walker, Breonna's boyfriend. You know why? For damages and injuries he sustained while killing Breonna Taylor.

WE PAID FOR ALL THAT. ALL OF IT.

Our power is in our dollar.

American politics and officials don't care for our lives. It's why they're content to watch us protest for months. Because we're still going to work. We are the worker ants simply fulfilling our duty, receiving the bare minimum to survive for our labor.

We're still building their bombs. Paying our taxes, so much that hardly any of us could afford more than rent.

We are just drones fulfilling our purpose to the upper class who doesn't give a shit about us beyond what we do for them and how little we will do it for.

If we want change we're gonna have to stop working. We're going to have to deprive them of products they sell, of our taxes, of our low cost labor.

And the strike that UAW is planning in May 2028 has inspired a lot of others to start looking at the opportunity to join in.

If you haven't heard of it yet, a strike is when workers organize and stop showing up for work. And a general strike is a mass strike across various industries around similar demands or bargaining positions.

There have been multiple calls for a general strike since then, predominantly from individuals and groups on social media, which has often resulted in confusion about what a general strike would actually look like. To be clear, a general strike is not a protest or a rally, a single picket line, or a boycott. It is, as I’ve previously defined, “a labor action in which a significant number of workers from a number of different industries who comprise a majority of the total labor force within a particular city, region, or country come together to take collective action.”

Throughout history, workers have used this tactic as a nuclear option to shut down entire cities when needed, including Philadelphia in 1835, Seattle in 1919, and beyond.[...]

If even four or five of the unions representing the workers mentioned above banded together in a nationwide general strike, the entire country would grind to a halt. When Shawn Fain asks his fellow unions to set the timer for May 2028, what he’s really saying is, get ready to shut sh*t down and level the playing field between bosses and workers once and for all.

JOIN A UNION. AND TALK ABOUT THIS.

And make one of the demands out to be an end of American support to countries participating in apartheid and genocide.

End the taxes for police budgets and settlements. If they want police departments so bad then they should FIND funding for themselves like the government makes USPS do.

One of the biggest pushbacks we hear is that there is never any official backing for calls to a general strike. Well here it is! Make sure you tell EVERYONE

This could be a global strike if other countries choose to participate on the same date

No, I don't think Palestine has 3 years so in the mean time join a union, keep protesting, start rioting, answer Every call to action coming from a Palestine and Sudan and the DRC and sign this strike card

#workers rights #workers party #general strike #strike #leftist #communist #anarchist #end the occupation #end the genocide #abolish the police #class war #no war but class war #2028 #UAW strike #united auto workers #may 2028 #may day #solidarity #classism #capitalism #biden #current events #new

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What comes after neoliberalism?

In his American Prospect editorial, “What Comes After Neoliberalism?”, Robert Kuttner declares “we’ve just about won the battle of ideas. Reality has been a helpful ally…Neoliberalism has been a splendid success for the top 1 percent, and an abject failure for everyone else”:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-03-28-what-comes-after-neoliberalism/

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/28/imagine-a-horse/#perfectly-spherical-cows-of-uniform-density-on-a-frictionless-plane

Kuttner’s op-ed is a report on the Hewlett Foundation’s recent “New Common Sense” event, where Kuttner was relieved to learn that the idea that “the economy would thrive if government just got out of the way has been demolished by the events of the past three decades.”

We can call this neoliberalism, but another word for it is economism: the belief that politics are a messy, irrational business that should be sidelined in favor of a technocratic management by a certain kind of economist — the kind of economist who uses mathematical models to demonstrate the best way to do anything:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

These are the economists whose process Ely Devons famously described thus: “If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’”

Those economists — or, if you prefer, economismists — are still around, of course, pronouncing that the “new common sense” is nonsense, and they have the models to prove it. For example, if you’re cheering on the idea of “reshoring” key industries like semiconductors and solar panels, these economismists want you to know that you’ve been sadly misled:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/24/economy-trade-united-states-china-industry-manufacturing-supply-chains-biden/

Indeed, you’re “doomed to fail”:

https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-and-investment-policy-watch/high-taxpayer-cost-saving-us-jobs-through-made-america

Why? Because onshoring is “inefficient.” Other countries, you see, have cheaper labor, weaker environmental controls, lower taxes, and the other necessities of “innovation,” and so onshored goods will be more expensive and thus worse.

Parts of this position are indeed inarguable. If you define “efficiency” as “lower prices,” then it doesn’t make sense to produce anything in America, or, indeed, any country where there are taxes, environmental regulations or labor protections. Greater efficiencies are to be had in places where children can be maimed in heavy machinery and the water and land poisoned for a millions years.

In economism, this line of reasoning is a cardinal sin — the sin of caring about distributional outcomes. According to economism, the most important factor isn’t how much of the pie you’re getting, but how big the pie is.

That’s the kind of reasoning that allows economismists to declare the entertainment industry of the past 40 years to be a success. We increased the individual property rights of creators by expanding copyright law so it lasts longer, covers more works, has higher statutory damages and requires less evidence to get a payout:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

At the same time, we weakened antitrust law and stripped away limits on abusive contractual clauses, which let (for example) three companies acquire 70% of all the sound recording copyrights in existence, whose duration is effectively infinite (the market for sound recordings older than 90 is immeasurably small).

This allowed the Big Three labels to force Spotify to take them on as co-owners, whereupon they demanded lower royalties for the artists in their catalog, to reduce Spotify’s costs and make it more valuable, which meant more billions when it IPOed:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing

Monopoly also means that all those expanded copyrights we gave to creators are immediately bargained away as a condition of passing through Big Content’s chokepoints — giving artists the right to control sampling is just a slightly delayed way of giving labels the right to control sampling, and charge artists for the samples they use:

https://doctorow.medium.com/united-we-stand-61e16ec707e2

(In the same way that giving creators the right to decide who can train a “Generative AI” with their work will simply transfer that right to the oligopolists who have the means, motive and opportunity to stop paying artists by training models on their output:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

After 40 years of deregulation, union busting, and consolidation, the entertainment industry as a whole is larger and more profitable than ever — and the share of those profits accruing to creative workers is smaller, both in real terms and proportionally, and it’s continuing to fall.

Economismists think that you’re stupid if you care about this, though. If you’re keeping score on “free markets” based on who gets how much money, or how much inequality they produce, you’re committing the sin of caring about “distributional effects.”

Smart economismists care about the size of the pie, not who gets which slice. Unsurprisingly, the greatest advocates for economism are the people to whom this philosophy allocates the biggest slices. It’s easy not to care about distributional effects when your slice of the pie is growing.

Economism is a philosophy grounded in “efficiency” — and in the philosophical sleight-of-hand that pretends that there is an objective metric called “efficiency” that everyone can agree with. If you disagree with economismists about their definition of “efficiency” then you’re doing “politics” and can be safely ignored.

The “efficiency” of economism is defined by very simple metrics, like whether prices are going down. If Walmart can force wage-cuts on its suppliers to bring you cheaper food, that’s “efficient.” It works well.

But it fails very, very badly. The high cost of low prices includes the political dislocation of downwardly mobile farmers and ag workers, which is a classic precursor to fascist uprisings. More prosaically, if your wages fall faster than prices, then you are experiencing a net price increase.

The failure modes of this efficiency are endless, and we keep smashing into them in ghastly and brutal ways, which goes a long way to explaining the “new commons sense” Kuttner mentions (“Reality has been a helpful ally.”) For example, offshoring high-tech manufacturing to distant lands works well, but fails in the face of covid lockdowns:

https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/

Allowing all the world’s shipping to be gathered into the hands of three cartels is “efficient” right up to the point where they self-regulate their way into “efficient” ships that get stuck in the Suez canal:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/29/efficient-markets-hypothesis/#too-big-to-sail

It’s easy to improve efficiency if you don’t care about how a system fails. I can improve the fuel-efficiency of every airplane in the sky right now: just have them drop their landing gear. It’ll work brilliantly, but you don’t want to be around when it starts to fail, brother.

The most glaring failure of “efficiency” is the climate emergency, where the relative ease of extracting and burning hydrocarbons was pursued irrespective of the incredible costs this imposes on the world and our species. For years, economism’s position was that we shouldn’t worry about the fact that we were all trapped in a bus barreling full speed for a cliff, because technology would inevitably figure out how to build wings for the bus before we reached the cliff’s edge:

https://locusmag.com/2022/07/cory-doctorow-the-swerve/

Today, many economismists will grudgingly admit that putting wings on the bus isn’t quite a solved problem, but they still firmly reject the idea of directly regulating the bus, because a swerve might cause it to roll and someone (in the first class seats) might break a leg.

Instead, they insist that the problem is that markets “mispriced” carbon. But as Kuttner points out: “It wasn’t just impersonal markets that priced carbon wrong. It was politically powerful executives who further enriched themselves by blocking a green transition decades ago when climate risks and self-reinforcing negative externalities were already well known.”

If you do economics without doing politics, you’re just imagining a perfectly spherical cow on a frictionless plane — it’s a cute way to model things, but it’s got limited real-world applicability. Yes, politics are squishy and hard to model, but that doesn’t mean you can just incinerate them and do math on the dubious quantitative residue:

https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/

As Kuttner writes, the problem of ignoring “distributional” questions in the fossil fuel market is how “financial executives who further enriched themselves by creating toxic securities [used] political allies in both parties to block salutary regulation.”

Deep down, economismists know that “neoliberalism is not about impersonal market forces. It’s about power.” That’s why they’re so invested in the idea that — as Margaret Thatcher endlessly repeated — “there is no alternative”:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/08/tina-v-tapas/#its-pronounced-tape-ass

Inevitabilism is a cheap rhetorical trick. “There is no alternative” is a demand disguised as a truth. It really means “Stop trying to think of an alternative.”

But the human race is blessed with a boundless imagination, one that can escape the prison of economism and its insistence that we only care about how things work and ignore how they fail. Today, the world is turning towards electrification, a project of unimaginable ambition and scale that, nevertheless, we are actively imagining.

As Robin Sloan put it, “Skeptics of solar feasi­bility pantomime a kind of technical realism, but I think the really technical people are like, oh, we’re going to rip out and replace the plumbing of human life on this planet? Right, I remember that from last time. Let’s gooo!”

https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/room-for-everybody/

Sloan is citing Deb Chachra, “Every place in the world has sun, wind, waves, flowing water, and warmth or coolness below ground, in some combination. Renewable energy sources are a step up, not a step down; instead of scarce, expensive, and polluting, they have the potential to be abundant, cheap, and globally distributed”:

https://tinyletter.com/metafoundry/letters/metafoundry-75-resilience-abundance-decentralization

The new common sense is, at core, a profound liberation of the imagination. It rejects the dogma that says that building public goods is a mystic art lost along with the secrets of the pyramids. We built national parks, Medicare, Medicaid, the public education system, public libraries — bold and ambitious national infrastructure programs.

We did that through democratically accountable, muscular states that weren’t afraid to act. These states understood that the more national capacity the state produced, the more things it could do, by directing that national capacity in times of great urgency. Self-sufficiency isn’t a mere fearful retreat from the world stage — it’s an insurance policy for an uncertain future.

Kuttner closes his editorial by asking what we call whatever we do next. “Post-neoliberalism” is pretty thin gruel. Personally, I like “pluralism” (but I’m biased).

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here's how you can do that: I'm kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon's Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they're DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

http://redteamblues.com

[Image ID: Air Force One in flight; dropping away from it are a parachute and its landing gear.]

#pluralistic #crypto forks #economism #imagine a horse #perfectly spherical cows of uniform density on a frictionless plane #neoliberialism #inevitabilism #tina #free markets #distributional outcomes #there is no alternative #supply chains #graceful failure modes #law and political economy #apologetics #robert kuttner #the american prospect

[zvaigzdelasas]

The White House is closely monitoring the upcoming labor talks in the US auto industry, negotiations that could put it at odds with the traditional support of a major union. [...]

The three contracts between the UAW and General Motors, Ford (F) and Stellantis, which sells cars and trucks under the Dodge, Ram and Chrysler brands, are due to expire September 14. Traditionally the UAW will select one of the three companies to go first and have the other two put on hold while it concentrates on reaching deal that the union will then push for from the other two automakers as part of a “pattern.” The last round of negotiations in 2019 resulted in a strike at GM by nearly 50,000 union members that lasted about six weeks, costing the automaker nearly $3 billion. There was even greater cost to the overall economy in the Midwest due to the impact on GM suppliers and local businesses in the towns where GM plants are located. Beyond that, Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan think thank estimates that UAW members lost $835 million in wages during the strike and federal and state income and payroll tax collections were nearly $350 million.

All three automakers are investing billions of dollars as part of a transition from traditional gasoline powered vehicles to electric vehicles. Such a move would allow them not only to meet tough new emissions rules, but also to build cars with less need for labor because of fewer moving parts. Ford estimates the shift to EVs will reduce the hours of work needed to build a car by one third. So the shift to EVs, supported by the Biden administration, is a major concern of the UAW heading into these talks. Biden has already been endorsed for reelection by the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, with Liz Shuler, the group’s president, describing him as “the most pro-union president in our lifetimes.” But the UAW, which is part of the AFL-CIO, has held off on joining other unions in endorsing Biden so far.[...]

“We have been absolutely clear that the switch to electric engine jobs, battery production and other EV manufacturing cannot become a race to the bottom,” Fain said in a statement from the union. “Not only is the federal government not using its power to turn the tide – they’re actively funding the race to the bottom with billions in public money.” “These companies are extremely profitable and will continue to make money hand over fist whether they’re selling combustion engines or EVs,” Fain said. “Yet the workers get a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. Why is Joe Biden’s administration facilitating this corporate greed with taxpayer money?”

5 Jul 23

[salted-caramel-tea]

yeah yeah get the crab rave ready whatever listen i’m not fucking happy to potentially be paying for another funeral and coronation a fucking year later my taxes can go to better shit than charlie and his fucking crown the education systems the nhs systems are suffering across all four constituent countries while we scoop fucking millions into the fucking rise and fall of monarchs who can absolutely pay for that shit themselves whilst taxpayers are still struggling with the damage from the cost of living crisis fuck charles and will and kate and any of the other useless cunts i dont want to pay for their shit maybe french were onto something i fucking hate the royal family

[stlsystembuster]

NEVADA TRIES ILLEGAL MEANS TO FORCE SHEEP RANCHER OF HIS LANDS

Photo by Larry Blaine

BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT GOVERNMENT RUN AMOK GRAZING NEVADA SHEEP

NEVADA TRIES ILLEGAL MEANS TO FORCE SHEEP RANCHER OF HIS LANDS

By RANGEFIRE! / December 4, 2023

Please donate to Hank Vogler here By Protect The Harvest

NEVADA RANCHER FIGHTS FOR HIS LIVELIHOOD

Hank Vogler has deep roots in western ranching and is well-versed in the unique challenges it involves. Over the years, he has been a tireless patriot and an informed, outspoken, and articulate advocate for ranchers. His insightful and provocative writings have appeared in numerous publications. C.J. Hadley, editor and publisher of RANGE magazine has referred to him as a “brilliant and entertaining communicator.” Vogler has also been an engaged and dedicated member of his community, serving on various boards and committees at the state and local levels. It follows, then, that Vogler is no stranger to controversy.

Deep Roots in Ranching

Growing up, he spent as much time as he could on his grandfather’s ranch, working as part of the cowboy and haying crews. That ranch sold when Vogler was 15, and he then set his sights on earning an agriculture degree and running his own operation. He graduated from the University of Nevada Reno in 1971, and went straight to ranching in Harney County, Oregon. A winter of record snow in the Steens Mountains resulted in 30- some ranches being entirely flooded out. There is speculation that much of the devastating flood damage could have been prevented if not for government negligence, and still further speculation that the overwhelming losses were actually allowed to happen to facilitate the expansion of the Malheur wildlife refuge. With no way for his ranch to recover, Vogler headed to Nevada.

We’re Not Nearly as Dumb as the Government Wants Us to Be

Following the loss of his Oregon ranch, it may have been Vogler’s astute criticisms of the bureaucracy that first put him in the proverbial crosshairs for attacks, and he has stayed there due to his continued, well-informed involvement in contentious western ranching issues. As a result, he has been forced to fight at great cost to keep his land and his livelihood.

In a recent interview, Vogler quipped, “We’re not nearly as dumb as the government wants us to be.” During his time in Oregon, he established many life-long friendships, including one with the Hammond family. Vogler testified for the Hammonds in court, which almost certainly stoked the fires of resentment towards him within the involved agencies.

Whisky is for Drinking; Water is For Fighting

Since 1985, Vogler has operated Need More Sheep Company in Spring Valley, near Ely in White Pine County, Nevada. Like numerous western ranches, his operation consists of privately owned land as well as attached grazing rights on Bureau of Land Management and United States Forest Service managed lands.

An old saying, often attributed to Mark Twain, goes: “Whisky is for drinking; water is for fighting.” In Nevada, the driest state in the nation, water issues can be especially volatile. It was in 1989 that the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) first proposed that a 300-mile pipeline be built from rural eastern Nevada to Las Vegas, which has historically relied on water from the Colorado River. Said pipeline would cost taxpayers $15 billion, and siphon billions of gallons from four rural valleys in White Pine and Lincoln counties. One of the valleys targeted was Spring Valley.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

In order to facilitate this, the SNWA started buying up ranches to obtain the appurtenant water rights, using taxpayer money to pay dramatically inflated prices for the properties. According to Vogler, SNWA paid around $60 million total for a collection of ranches that were realistically worth around $10 million altogether. That kind of money was hard for many to refuse, and impossible for most other ranchers to compete with. The SNWA eventually accumulated 92 various-sized parcels in White Pine County, totaling thousands of acres and including an abundance of water rights.

Great Basin Water Network

However, the pipeline concept was met with fierce opposition from the get-go. A large and diverse group of stakeholders—including Vogler–came together to form the Great Basin Water Network. Finally, after 30-some years of court battles, SNWA’s pipeline plan was officially terminated in federal court in early 2020. Nevertheless, the SNWA has held onto its properties in White Pine County, and even despite the pipeline being shot down in federal court, still has pending water rights applications as well as an application for the pipeline’s right of way with the Bureau of Land Management.

SNWA Filing for Water Rights

One of the water rights that SNWA has filed for is within a BLM grazing allotment that Vogler has utilized since about 1990, and has owned since 2004. Originally, Vogler had a casual business partnership with Reid Robison, who owned the Spring Valley Ranch base property and attached grazing rights. One of the grazing units consists of three allotments, or pastures, with a total of 8172 AUMs that include both cattle and sheep. (AUM stands for animal unit month, which is the amount of on-range feed it takes to sustain one 1000-pound cow and her calf, or the equivalent, which is five sheep). Vogler leased and utilized the pastures with terrain and vegetation more suitable for sheep, while Robison utilized those more appropriate for cattle.

Delayed Study and More Maneuvers

Vidler Water eventually obtained the ranch, but Vogler continued the management and utilization of the sheep allotments. In 2002, an agreement was penned that a three-year monitoring study would take place in order to officially determine the number of sheep AUMs versus cattle AUMs.

Vogler purchased the sheep allotments in 2004, even though the study had not been completed. Attached to his deed of trust was an exhibit stating that any adjustments to the total number of sheep would be in Vogler’s favor. Vogler was assured repeatedly that the study would be done but even as of March 2022, the study has not been completed. Vogler’s inquiries about the status of the study have been repeatedly stonewalled. In 2006, the Spring Valley Ranch was purchased by the SNWA for $22 million. With that purchase came a number of other grazing allotments, but of course not those previously sold to Vogler by Vidler water in 2004. Regardless, the SNWA filed for stockwater rights on one of Vogler’s allotments.

Nevada Water Resources – Fair and Equitable

The Nevada Division of Water Resources website states: “Nevada’s first water statute was enacted in 1866 and has been amended many times since then. Today, the law serves the people of Nevada by managing the state’s valuable water resources in a fair and equitable manner. Nevada water law has the flexibility to accommodate new and growing uses of water in Nevada while protecting those who have used the water in the past. Nevada water law is based on two fundamental concepts: prior appropriation and beneficial use. Prior appropriation (also known as “first in time, first in right”) allows for the orderly use of the state’s water resources by granting priority to senior water rights. This concept ensures the senior uses are protected, even as new uses for water are allocated. All water may be appropriated for beneficial use as provided in Chapters 533 and 534 of the Nevada Revised Statutes (referred hereafter as NRS). Irrigation, mining, recreation, commercial/industrial and municipal uses are examples of beneficial uses, among others.”

Harassment

Hence, even though Vogler owns the grazing rights on that allotment and had been putting the water there to beneficial use as stock water for years, and despite the fact that the pipeline project was terminated, SNWA nevertheless filed for those water rights and have repeatedly turned Vogler in for alleged “willful trespass” of his sheep, resulting in thousands of dollars in fines. Considering other events that have transpired, it certainly seems that spite is their main motivation and putting Vogler out of business is their goal.

Vogler has documented vandalism to his troughs, troughs being completely torn out, and harassment of his sheepherders by SNWA employees, and yet he says the BLM refuses to look at this issue. He has been told that no BLM employee would dare look into it, as it could be a career ender for them. Further, Vogler stated that the BLM State Director and representatives of the SNWA have monthly meetings, when, if the pipeline project is truly dead, there wouldn’t be a need.

No State Agencies Can Hold BLM Grazing Rights

Through other issues, it had been clearly established for some time and confirmed by the solicitor general for the BLM, that no state agencies can hold BLM grazing rights since they are not qualified to run livestock, regardless of their land ownership. The USFS is also very clear in their policy that no agencies can own grazing permits. And yet somehow, SNWA has connived its way into control over federally managed grazing allotments in White Pine County. Vogler attests that this is unlawful, perjury, and abuse of power.

Double Standards and Negligence

There are other circumstances surrounding the issue that strongly suggest that Vogler is being punished and scapegoated by the powers that be. He feels strongly that his livelihood is under attack because he has exposed the double standards and negligence of the BLM in the region, as well as what amounts to illegal grazing by the SNWA, and the apparent cooperation between the two agencies.

Barred from Tippett Pass – Causing Undue Stress to Sheep

For no apparent reason, the Ely BLM field manager has suspended Vogler’s right to merely herd his sheep across an allotment, known as Tippett Pass. Utilizing the route has been a normal part of Vogler’s operation for years, and is essential for the well-being of his sheep as well as the quality of the wool he’ll have to sell. One unfeasible alternative to crossing Tippett Pass would be to herd the sheep many additional miles over four mountain passes, through incredibly rough, difficult terrain with little available water. The ewes are heavily pregnant, and taking this alternative route home would be “absolutely cruelty to animals,” Vogler said. The other equally unfeasible alternative would be to haul the sheep home. In addition to a substantial freight bill, the pregnant ewes would suffer undue stress, and the wool would lose thousands of dollars in value due to manure contamination from the sheep being close together in the trucks.

Vogler would normally start herding the sheep toward home by mid-March. He has been pursuing relief through the court system, filing appeals to the stay on his sheep crossing the Tippett Pass allotment. On March 9, 2022, he was informed that in order to bring his sheep home via Tippett Pass, he will have to go through an NEPA process that would take months. This is unheard of for such a long-established practice

Who’s Next?

In a column, Vogler wrote: “Who will be the next Cliven Bundy or Dwight and Steve Hammond? Or, for that matter, Wayne Hage? It appears that bureaucrats fear the people who live on the far side of nowhere worse than the anarchists. Could it be the independence and self-reliance of rural people that offends the government more than mob rule in the streets? Or is it that rural people seem to have calm, fulfilling lives? Or is the issue just that there are so few people left feeding the masses that rural folks have become easy targets?”

So, who is next? Will it be me for asking too many questions? Will it be you

https://rangefire.us/2023/12/04/nevada-tries-illegal-means-to-force-sheep-rancher-of-his-lands/

https://rangefire.us/2023/12/04/nevada-tries-illegal-means-to-force-sheep-rancher-of-his-lands/

#farm #ranching #water rights #water resources #eco conscious #Sustainable #big government

[hjohn3]

The Tory Migration Catastrophe

How Conservative Immigration Policy Will Destroy Its Thatcherite Model

Source: The Financial Times

By Honest John

LIKE A desperate gambler deciding to bet his shirt on one last turn of the roulette wheel, Rishi Sunak has staked his entire political reputation on the latest iteration of the Tories’ Rwanda bill. This is a piece of legislation which has been declared illegal by the British Supreme Court; which has so far cost the British taxpayer £240m with a further £50m due to be paid to Rwanda next year; which is considered as impractical as it is morally questionable and which has seen precisely zero asylum seekers so far sent to Rwanda to have their claims processed. This sad wheeze is going to be dragged before the House of Commons once more, while Sunak desperately claims black is white and that Rwanda can miraculously become a safe country for asylum seekers by the passing of a law in Westminster. The Prime Minister’s determination to turn Tuesday’s vote on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill into effectively a vote of confidence in his leadership is simultaneously reckless and absurd. Sunak’s desperation to quieten the increasing insurrectionary noises from his party’s right wing in the wake of the dismissal of Suella Braverman, has led him to to invest all his hopes in a piece of legislation for which there is no evidence will succeed in deterring the “small boats” (its stated claim), which will place the U.K. once again in breach of international law and will succeed only in enriching the government of Rwanda, incredulously receiving millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money for its civic infrastructure, gifted by a country whose own infrastructure is falling apart. It is actually hard to find anyone outside the fevered confines of Sunak’s inner circle who supports the plan or thinks it will work. Apart perhaps from the government of Rwanda itself that is.

It is easy to laugh at the infantile antics of a government that, in any real sense, has ceased to function and to treat this latest act in the Tory psychodrama as the piece of absurdist political theatre it undoubtedly is, but the Rwanda bill is simply the congealing icing on the top of a poisonous cake that the Conservatives have been serving up for years, masquerading as migration “policy”. This is legislation that is as contradictory as it is cruel; as performative as it is populist. For the Conservatives, migration is their key emergency break glass area of public policy. When everything else that they and the succession of hopeless lightweights they have foisted on the country as Prime Ministers, has turned to dung at their touch, they still believe that the prejudice and hatred of “the British People” toward foreigners and immigrants has no bottom level: for Tories you simply cannot go too low on immigration. The Rwanda scheme - when it was first cooked up in the days of Boris Johnson and Priti Patel - had nothing in reality to do with deterring asylum seekers from trying to cross the Channel to Britain; it was all about trying to appeal to a mythical “Red Wall” voter for whom no amount of cruelty, illegality and contempt was too much when it came to migrants. As their polling figures slumped and by election and council election results confirmed their worst electoral fears, the Conservatives still believed that victimising the victims could yet turn it around for them - no matter the dark forces their racist and bile-filled rhetoric might unleash: if they could just once again gaslight the electorate into believing that all the catastrophes of the last fourteen years of Tory rule are, in fact, the fault of incoming foreigners, all may yet be well.

This dismal flirting with the fascist playbook may have resulted in the headline-catching idiocy of Sunak’s latest Rwanda wheeze, but beneath that blather James Cleverley has announced planned measures that are far more significant, far more damaging, and far more frightening than any amount of ludicrous assertions about the Rwanda scheme. Tired of being taunted by Labour and others about the huge rise in legal migration (its net increase topped 600,000 in 2022) despite all the Tory promises to bring the numbers down over the last fourteen years, the Conservatives’ response is to quite literally attack, and potentially destroy, its own Thatcherite economic model.

For over forty years, Tory politicians have extolled Britain’s “flexible” workforce; its deregulated system; its low wage/low unemployment economy and its marketised society. Indeed, for years we were told by politicians on the right and the left that in a globalised world, mobile and non-unionised workforces, cheap production costs, outsourced supply lines and minimal regulation was essential to the easy access, low price, and plentiful supply digital capitalism that has taken hold in Britain. Key to the success of this model has been migrant labour, first from the EU and now from a swathe of sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries whose residents have been offered visas to replace the low wage flexible European workers that post-Brexit Britain apparently no longer wants. The legal migrants that the Conservatives are now in such a lather about are an essential component of the Thatcherite economic model they have all been promoting to us for decades. If, as Cleverley maintains, the government wishes to reduce net migration figures by 300,000 in 2024, then that is 300,000 workers not available to drive lorries, deliver Amazon parcels, pick our crops, clean our offices, valet our cars, serve in our restaurants and, crucially staff our hospitals and care homes. By creating a shortage of deregulated low wage labour, the Tories will simultaneously damage large parts of the service economy and drive up wages, and with it inflation. In their desperate belief that hatred of foreigners will somehow save them from oblivion at the next General Election, the Conservatives are prepared to throw overboard an approach to employment and wages that has sustained them for nearly two generations and was one of the driving ideological impulses on the right that drove Brexit. The revolution has truly begun to eat itself.

Apart from the casual abandonment of what has been the essence of right-wing Toryism for years, Cleverley has also managed to introduce the class-based nastiness of the Sklled Worker minimum salary threshold of £38,700 pa that legal migrants and their dependents must meet. This is a measure that will drive families apart, possibly force British citizens, married to foreigners but earning below the threshold, to emigrate to be with their loved ones and cause untold damage to the university sector (one of the few growth areas of the British economy) and the NHS and care sector, already on its knees after years of austerity and disproportionately reliant on migrant labour. It is as if the Tories are not content with the calamities that austerity, Brexit and Trussonomics have already wrought on British society: with this latest episode of ill-thought through prejudicial nonsense, they seem to want to finish it off altogether. I have predicted for some time the implosion of modern Toryism - its Thatcherite ideology a busted flush and its Brexit nationalist makeover lacking in depth or practical solutions; but what I hadn’t bargained for was that the Tories would try to take the whole country down with them.

Never has a government looked more threadbare, pointless, desperate and unlovable. All they have left to offer is hatred, racism and self-defeating vindictiveness. If Sunak’s absurd posturing over his doomed Rwanda bill results in his resignation before Christmas and a January General Election, the “British People” that this band of charlatans and incompetents keep claiming to speak for, but who in reality they do not understand, will breathe a sigh of relief, because we the people will at last be given the opportunity to cast this catastrophic version of Toryism into an electoral oblivion it so richly deserves and from which it will, hopefully, never emerge.

Migration may yet be modern Conservatism’s epitaph.

10th December 2023

#british politics #conservative government #rishi sunak #migration policy #Rwanda bill #tory collapse #james cleverly #Thatcherite economic model #general election now!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Kemi Badenoch

Published: Mar 20, 2024

In 2021, a manager at Lloyds bank took an internal EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) course, during which he asked how he should handle a situation where someone from an ethnic minority background uses a word that would be considered offensive if it was said by a white person.

Lloyds branded him a racist for quoting the “n-word” as part of his question, and he was dismissed for gross misconduct. He then took his former employer to a tribunal, won his claim for unfair dismissal, and was awarded £800,000 in compensation.

This is not an isolated incident. For several years now, I have read reports of employers misapplying equality law under the guise of EDI initiatives. Sometimes it is egregious gold plating as above.

Most employers mean well when they set about to improve diversity and inclusion. However, actions such as positive discrimination and quotas are unlawful, even if used to diversify an organisation. This Government believes that EDI policies should unite rather than alienate employees, and crucially uphold fairness and meritocracy.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of snake oil about. Just this week, a government minister found that the training materials for one of their departmental quangos included references to outmoded concepts like “unconscious bias”, and “white privilege”, and used a picture of someone holding up a placard saying “white silence costs lives”.

All of this bunkum was contained in mandatory training for 1,400 poor souls whose primary job is to help further the Government’s economic agenda.

Rooting out the rubbish

With the number of organisations out there – and the frequency of these incidents – it is unreasonable to expect government ministers to intervene every time this happens. And no one should assume that a future government’s ministers will be as vigilant as current ones are in rooting out rubbish.

That’s why last year the Government set up an independent Inclusion at Work Panel to address this issue in an evidence-led way. The panel was made up of private and public sector experts, and was advised by a leading professor at Harvard University.

We tasked the panel with looking at the latest research to understand how employers in Britain are applying EDI, and how we can help them improve their practice. Our goal was clear: diversity and inclusion should never put any individual or group at a disadvantage, and should never damage cohesion and morale in the workplace.

The panel has today published its final report. Much of it makes for concerning reading. The UK has seen an explosion of EDI roles in organisations. Studies found that the UK employs almost twice as many EDI workers per head than any other country. This same analysis estimates that EDI jobs in our public services are costing the taxpayer at least half a billion pounds a year.

Despite this, the new report shows that, while millions are being spent on these initiatives, many popular EDI practices – such as diversity training – have little to no tangible impact in increasing diversity or reducing prejudice.

In fact, many practices have not only been proven to be ineffective, they have also been counterproductive. Data from Employment Tribunal suggests that recent years have seen a notable uptick in cases brought using the Equality Act in comparison to the years 2013-17.

The report finds that, in some cases, employers are even inadvertently breaking the law under the guise of diversity and inclusion by censoring beliefs or discriminating against certain groups in favour of others.

What’s also concerning is how few employers are using evidence when making decisions. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, only 1 in 4 business leaders say they consult data before coming up with new EDI initiatives. One in 4 say that their approach to EDI is reactive – for example, “in response to societal events like the Black Lives Matter protests”.

The panel found that organisations are crying out for better evidence on how they can practise diversity and inclusion in a way that widens their talent pool, while fostering belonging rather than division.

No group should be worse off

Sadly, even a prestigious and respected institution such as the RAF was recently found to have discriminated against white men in trying to improve diversity. No group should ever be worse off because of companies’ diversity policies – whether that be black women, or white men.

Performative gestures such as compulsory pronouns and rainbow lanyards are often a sign that organisations are struggling to demonstrate how they are being inclusive.

These clumsy diversity policies aren’t a substitute for rigorous, evidence-based measures that ensure everyone participates and thrives in the workplace.

As both Secretary of State for Business and Minister for Women and Equalities, I welcome the findings of this independent report. Over the next few weeks and months, the Government will consider seriously how we can best take forward its recommendations.

We will ensure that we do all we can to make sure that those entering or already in the workplace feel they will be treated fairly and according to merit.

[ Via: https://archive.md/JDB2Z ]

#Kemi Badenoch #DEI bureaucracy #diversity equity and inclusion #diversity #equity #inclusion #discrimination #racial discrimination #racism #diversity training #snake oil #DEI must die

[climatecalling]

Honolulu has lost more than 5 miles of its famous beaches to sea level rise and storm surges. Sunny-day flooding during high tides makes many city roads impassable. ... The damage has left the city and county spending millions of dollars on repairs and infrastructure to try to adapt to the rising risks. ... Unwilling to have their taxpayers bear the full brunt of these costs, the city and county sued Sunoco LP, Exxon Mobil Corp. and other big oil companies in 2020. Their case – one of more than two dozen involving U.S. cities, counties and states suing the oil industry over climate change – just got a break from the U.S. Supreme Court. That has significantly increased their odds of succeeding. At stake in all of these cases is who pays for the staggering cost of a changing climate. Local and state governments that are suing want to hold the major oil companies responsible for the costs of responding to disasters that scientists are increasingly able to attribute to climate disruption and tie back to the fossil fuel industry. Several of the plaintiffs accuse the companies of lying to the public about their products’ risks in violation of state or local consumer protection laws that prohibit false advertising. ... It is unlikely that even substantial verdicts in these cases will come close to covering the full costs of damage from climate change. ... But for many of the communities most at risk from these disasters, every penny counts. We believe establishing the oil companies’ responsibility may also discourage further investments in fossil fuel production by banks and brokerage houses already nervous about the financial risks of climate disruption.

#climate crisis #climate solutions #big oil #fossil fuels

[mariacallous]

Outgoing Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Friday that Prime Minister-Designate Benjamin Netanyahu was allowing far-right MK Itamar Ben Gvir to become the de facto premier in the next government after Likud signed an agreement with the extremist lawmaker’s Otzma Yehudit party that grants him an expanded security role.

The agreement signed hours earlier outlined the positions and authority that Otzma Yehudit will receive in the next government. Ben Gvir will be given a new title of national security minister and will be in charge of the national police force in addition to overseeing the Border Police’s West Bank Division.

To date, that unit has been under the auspices of the Defense Ministry and the IDF’s Central Command, with only limited input given to the Public Security Ministry.

The move means the far-right party leader will have control over Border Police troops involved in policing riots in the West Bank as well as the evacuation of settlement outposts, whose presence he has long supported.

Gantz said that establishing “a private army for Ben Gvir in [the West Bank] is dangerous … and will create real security failures.”

The outgoing minister also warned that Netanyahu’s reported decision to transfer control over the Civil Administration — the Defense Ministry body that governs aspects of civilian life in some 60 percent of the West Bank — to the Finance Ministry, which Religious Zionism chairman Bezalel Smotrich is slated to head, will lead to criticism from the international community that Israel is carrying out “de-facto annexation” of the West Bank.

“The agreement between Ben Gvir and Netanyahu marks the direction in which the next government is heading — the dismantlement of the government’s powers into fragments of ministries based on political needs; and the dismantlement of operational frameworks in the IDF, which will damage the functionality of the IDF and the police,” Gantz wrote in published comments Friday.

“Netanyahu’s conduct is an admission that the real prime minister is going to be Ben Gvir,” he added.

In addition to the National Security Ministry, Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party will also run an expanded version of the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee; the newly created Heritage Ministry; the Knesset’s Public Security Committee; the Knesset Special Committee for the Israeli Citizens’ Fund (which oversees state revenue from gas drilling), in addition to receiving the post of deputy economy minister.

The Negev and Galilee Ministry will be headed up by Otzma Yehudit No. 2 Yitzhak Wasserlauf, and Amichai Eliyahu will take on the Heritage Ministry portfolio.

The Heritage Ministry is to be created from a split of the existing Jerusalem and Heritage Ministry. The Ynet news site said the office had long been considered unnecessary by treasury officials, as Jerusalem has a municipality and heritage studies are already included in the Education Ministry.

Ynet said the splits would cost Israeli taxpayers more than NIS 60 million ($17 million) per year and about a quarter of a billion shekels ($73 million) in four years.

The Negev and Galilee Ministry will receive an annual budget of NIS 2 billion (some $580 million) and will also be responsible for carrying out the regulation of new West Bank settlements.

MK Almog Cohen will be deputy economy minister and former IDF general Zvika Fogel will chair the Public Security Committee. MK Limor Son Har-Melech will take Otzma Yehudit’s position as the rotating chair of the gas royalties committee.

The Likud-Otzma Yehudit deal also includes an agreement to establish a widescale national guard, and the expansion of reserve troop mobilization in the Border Police.

There will also be an “Expanded Southern Law,” which will permit the shooting of thieves caught stealing weapons from military bases.

Last year, the military updated its rules of engagement to allow soldiers to more easily open fire at suspected gun thieves and smugglers, in a bid to crack down on crime. It was not immediately clear what the impact of the legislative change would be.

The coalition deal was signed by Otzma Yehudit’s Chanamel Dorfman and Likud’s MK Yariv Levin. Dorfman, described by Ben Gvir as his “right-hand man,” helped establish an organization that donates money to incarcerated Jewish terrorists and extremists.

In 2013 footage aired by Channel 12 on Friday, Dorfman appeared as the groom in the so-called “knives wedding” where he and other participants waved knives as they danced to songs referencing revenge attacks on Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority also stated its concerns over Ben Gvir’s expanded authority in the West Bank.

“We view the catastrophic consequences of the agreements on the conflict with severity, and in particular the consequences of the powers that Netanyahu granted to Ben Gvir in regards to the occupied Palestinian territory,” the PA Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“The ministry renews its warning against the consequences of these agreements on the efforts to restore calm, especially since armed militia of settlers have already begun to take on an organized nature in military formations in light of their feeling that the Israeli election results provide backing for this conduct and may encourage them to commit crimes against Palestinian citizens,” it added.

The accord with Otzma Yehudit signaled Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s slow but steady progress in his efforts toward forming a coalition following the election three-and-a-half weeks ago.

The protracted negotiations have dampened Netanyahu’s hopes of quickly forming a government after the November 1 election delivered the bloc he leads a 64-seat majority in the 120-lawmaker Knesset. Talks have hit roadblocks due to his partners’ growing and sometimes competing demands.

Channel 13 news reported that Shas was set to sign an agreement with the Likud on Sunday, and United Torah Judaism after that. The network said there were still difficulties with Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party, as he seeks major control over settlements in the West Bank.

Smotrich had demanded to head either the Defense or the Finance Ministry, and Netanyahu appeared to have agreed in recent days to give him the latter for at least the first two years of the government. Despite the reported progress, talks with Smotrich continued to be mired in mutual accusations, with Religious Zionism claiming Netanyahu had gone back on promises and Likud accusing the far-right party of making exaggerated demands in exchange for fealty to the nascent government.

In addition to the first two years in the Finance Ministry, Smotrich has reportedly demanded the settlement affairs and immigrant absorption portfolios, as well as chair of four out of 11 coalition-controlled Knesset committees.

Citing sources involved in the talks, Haaretz reported that Smotrich also demanded control over the state’s Jewish conversion system.

Channel 12 said that Netanyahu would not likely be able to form a coalition in the coming week because he still needs to pass legislation that would allow twice-convicted Shas leader Aryeh Deri to become a minister. Current law bars those recently convicted of criminal offenses from being appointed as a minister.

Netanyahu will also need to pass legislation to enable the expansion of Ben Gvir’s authorities as national security ministry.

The Likud leader has until December 11 to form a government, though he can request a 14-day extension if he fails to do so in time.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil: A dangerous cocktail of violence and lies

Repairing the physical damage following the rampage of the Bolsonarist fanatics will likely cost millions, which will have to come from Brazil's taxpayers.

The harm done to Brazil's democracy and to the country's collective psyche, however, is far greater. A fanatical and violent minority went on a rampage in the capital, Brasilia, on camera. While the liberal media are now calling those responsible by name — "golpistas, criminosos, terroristas," ("coup plotters, criminals, terrorists") — others are still cozying up to Bolsonarism. It's all about ratings, clicks, likes and, of course, a lot of money.

Bolsonarism has given rise to an extreme right-wing grassroots movement in Brazil, whose members believe they are the saviors of the fatherland — without, of course, ever having asked their fellow Brazilians.

They claim to defend decency, truth and freedom against the communists — without really knowing what communism means. It seems all but impossible to bring these people back into the fold of reality. For four years they were fed misinformation and incited by Bolsonaro, his evangelical pastors, ultra-right channels like Jovem Pan, anti-democratic influencers like Allan dos Santos and others of a similar ilk. They believe they are providing legitimate resistance to an illegitimate government. In many cases, they speak quite openly of a "necessary civil war."

Continue reading.

#brazil #politics #brazilian politics #brazilian elections #democracy #brazilian elections 2022 #january 8 #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

[duchessofostergotlands]

We had a bit of discussion today, on how the monarchy will work once the Queen is gone and her cousins retire. Do you think C&C, WK, the Wessexes and Anne will be able to cope with whatever workload they set for themselves on their own? Maybe Bea or Eugenie could, ever, be included? Lady Louise?

This is an interesting conversation and one I had with friends too recently. It's a long one so get ready lol. Ultimately there is no requirement for anyone other than the monarch to do work, let alone keep up a certain engagement number. And I would say most members of the public don't have an in depth knowledge of engagement rates. So if one older royal doing about 70 engagements a year retires then I don't think it'll be noticed. But if the Queen and all the older cousins retire in a short period of time then that takes the royals down by over 450 engagements per year very rapidly (if we use last year's numbers) and that might be more noticeable.

Now I think that'll only really be an issue until the Cambridge kids are in their mid to late 20s. But that does still potentially leave a gap of maybe a decade or so. I think that there's no need to do exactly 450 engagements to cover the loss, but the problem will come if Camilla, Kate and William don't substantially up their numbers because the headlines would not be good if they dropped by 20% in one go. Louise would be popular but has always been raised to be a private citizen. Beatrice is older and Andy campaigned for her to be a working royal but she's not popular at all, and has inherited some of the York tendencies from her parents, so I can't see the public being happy with that. At most I can see her, Louise etc occupying the position of Prince/ss Michael where they are not working royals but go to State Banquets etc to boost numbers. I think the sense is the public would prefer if it was kept to who works today, but they also may not be thrilled if the royals aren't seen to be working. So the answer really is I don't think it's quite as bad as people think but a lot depends on timing, whether or not the working royals are willing to up numbers to a level the public are happy with, and a cost benefit analysis of bringing in someone to be another pair of hands vs the risk of pissing off the public by inviting the wrong pair of hands.

What complicates this for me is the Counsellor of State role. I think that needs to be reformed anyway, as I talk about all the time, but essentially when the Queen dies the CoS' will be Camilla, William, Harry, Andrew and Beatrice. So three of the five will not be working royals. And that concerns me because basically the Counsellor of State acts as monarch, they have huge power. And we have lots of different checks in place to try to ensure that that power is used ethically (the royal rota reporting on duties, checks on any business opportunities by the Lord Chancellor etc). Non-working royals don't have to do those things. Which means theoretically a dodgy company could go to Beatrice and say "withhold assent from this law which would be damaging to us and we'll give you £1 million." And there would be no way of preventing that. So in my view if you are a Counsellor of State you should have to be a working royal, taxpayer funded, and fully answerable to the public at all times. If you aren't a working royal, you should be removed as a CoS. And so even though I don't want the others to be working royals, I think if they are to remain as CoS then in the interest of democracy they should be obligated to at the very least have all business dealings checked before they agree to them. I don’t think having Bea as a working royal is great for the royal family's image but not having her as a working royal is pretty bad for our democracy! All the more reason for the government to reform the CoS role.

#ask #anon #british royal family

[erijonarexhepis-blog]

STAY

SEASON SIX, EPISODE FIFTEEN

Masterlist

THEY WERE IN THE COURTROOM again, and this time it was Jorge who had taken the stand. "Mr. Castillo, during the times that you were speaking with your daughter, Laurel, how would you categorize your relationship with her?" Lennox asked.

"Troubled."

"Why?"

"Did you ever catch your daughter lying to you?"

"Of course," Jorge answered. "When she was 14, she lied about using cocaine—"

"Behavior while a minor is improper character evidence, judge," Annalise interrupted him.

"Sustained," the judge said.

"Let's, um, move on to governor Birkhead," Lennox continued. "Mr. Castillo, have you ever met or spoken with the governor?"

"No."

"Have you ever contacted the governor or anyone associated with her to enact ill will against Ms. Keating?"

"Absolutely not."

"And do you believe any of the allegations that say the governor was involved in your son Xavier's death?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I've made a lot of money in my life— enemies too— so I can think of a long list of people who would have wanted to see my son dead."

Lennox kept glancing over at Annalise. "Mr. Castillo, one of the theories Ms. Keating has put forth is that the FBI is part of this conspiracy against her. Have you been in contact with the FBI about this?"

"No. The FBI's who put me in jail." So, he was still mad about that. "Based on misinformation from an informant. That's her sitting right behind Ms. Keating." Jorge pointed.

Annalise stood. "Objection!"

Jorge turned to the jury. "Those two women are conspiring against me."

"Mr. Castillo, don't address the gallery," the judge told him sternly. "I'm censuring the witness. Jury, disregard the last part of this testimony. Mr. Lennox, meet me in my chambers. Adjourned."

FLASH FORWARD

Shots were fired outside the courthouse. People, who were standing on the steps outside the building, started running and screaming in fear and panic. Some fell and stayed, hoping they wouldn't be hit. They were terrified.

The officers inside the building took action. They grabbed their weapons and ran down the hall to catch whoever was shooting before they killed someone. They ran past Annalise's mother, who was in distress. She hadn't seen Annalise and was worried. Her other daughter was holding her back.

"Is my baby hurt?!" She cried out. "Please tell me! Is she hurt?!"

Someone had been shot. Tegan looked down at this person in terror. How could this happen?

꧁   ꧂

"THANK YOU FOR BEING here, governor," Lennox said.

The governor had taken the stand. "You say that like I have a choice."

"Well, let's not keep you too long, then. Did you order the death of Nathaniel Lahey Sr.?"

"No."

"Do you know if Xavier Castillo ordered the death?"

"Yes, because that guard named him during the civil suit."

"Did you know Xavier Castillo?"

"No, nor have I ever met or spoken to him."

"Do you know his father, Jorge?"

"No."

"Governor, did you ever coordinate with any member of the Castillo family or the FBI to exact revenge on Ms. Keating for defeating you in a Supreme Court case?"

"No." She couldn't even look at Annalise.

"You weren't protecting your re-election?"

"No, because I plan to win my election by convincing the public I'm the best person for the job. The way not to do that is to commit a series of violent murders. That's more Ms. Keating's fallback."

Annalise stood. "Objection. Censure the witness."

"Governor," the judge scolded her.

"My apologies."

"No further questions," Lennox stated.

"Governor, when I beat you at the Supreme Court with my class action, were you upset?"

"More disappointed," the governor answered.

"Because of the damage to your political career?"

"To the taxpayer. Your victory cost the state millions."

"Money well spent if it saved thousands of poor people from unjust convictions."

"Argumentative," Lennox stated. He seemed calm.

"This speaks to the defense's theory of motive," Annalise protested.

"Sustained."

"Do you know Xavier Castillo?"

"As I stated earlier, no."

"What about Hannah Keating?"

The governor paused for a brief second. "I don't know who that is."

"She's my deceased husband's sister, Hannah. You don't know her?"

"I do not."

Annalise went over to her table. "And yet, Hannah Keating recorded herself on a phone call to Xavier Castillo saying this."

She played the recording. "I just saw the governor on tv saying Nate Lahey Sr. died."

"He did die."

"Because the governor killed him?"

Lennox stood up, not wanting to listen to more of it. "Objection. We can't authenticate this recording."

"I wish Hannah Keating were here to speak to its authenticity, but she just died." Annalise looked at the governor. "Gunshot to the head."

"Your honor."

The judge made a decision. "Falls under the death exception. I'll allow it."

Annalise hit record again. "I just saw the governor on tv saying Nate Lahey Sr. died," they heard Hannah's voice once again.

"He did die."

"Because the governor killed him?"

"Calm down."

"I wanted Annalise to go down for my brother, not hurt all these other people."

"I'm hanging up." The recording stopped.

"If you didn't know Hannah Keating or Xavier Castillo, why are they speaking so intimately about you?" Annalise approached the governor again.

The governor shook her head. "I have no idea."

"What about Nate Lahey Sr.? Did you do what Hannah said and kill him?"

"Absolutely not."

"So, if Xavier and Hannah were alive to testify, they would say the same thing?"

"Objection," Lennox spoke up but was ignored.

"Did you have them killed to cover up your lies?"

"No! My god."

The judge cut in and stopped the questioning. "I'm ending this cross!"

"Good," Annalise stated. "I'm done with this witness."

꧁   ꧂

NATE TOOK THE STAND THE next day, and he would be the last to do so. "Mr. Lahey, were you involved in any way at all with the death of Sam Keating?"

"No."

"You were arrested and almost charged for his murder, though. Why?"

"I was the boyfriend. That's always the first suspect."

Lennox nodded. "Any other reason?"

Nate looked over at Annalise. "I was framed."

"Who do you believe framed you, Mr. Lahey?"

"At the time, I thought Annalise."

"Did you ever get confirmation of this?"

"No. 'Cause she wasn't the one who framed me."

Lennox glanced over at Annalise for a brief moment. He took a step closer to Nate. "You mean she had an associate do it for her?"

"I mean, she didn't do it. That was Hannah Keating. She wanted to connect Annalise to Sam's murder, and now it's very clear to me how Hannah did it— by using the Castillos and the governor."

"Let me stop you, Mr. Lahey. Did Ms. Keating coerce you to change your testimony today?"

"No. That was you and special agent Lanford when you offered me twenty million dollars to say what you want. I'm just guessing that's so I don't tell the jury that an FBI agent working for the Castillo's murdered Asher Millstone."

꧁   ꧂

THE LAST DAY OF THE TRIAL started the following morning. It was time for the closing arguments. Lennox went first. "Forget everyone else. The Castillos, the governor, the supposed conspiracy. That is all noise to distract you from the person who brought us here— Annalise Keating. She wants to play the victim, and she is good at it too. But you know the real victims."

Lennox showed the pictures of the people as mentioned them. "Asher Millstone. DA Ronald Miller. ADA Emily Sinclair. Rebecca Sutter. Sam Keating. It all started with this man. That is the original sin. You start there. Then there's no doubt that Annalise Keating is not a victim. She's a murderer."

"I'm no victim," Annalise started. "USA Lennox was right about that. But that's the only true thing that he said today. So, here's the truth about me. I've worn a mask every day of my life. In high school, it was a smile that I faked to get boys to like me. In law school, I changed my name to sound more New England. At the law firm, I wore heels, makeup, and a wig. And when I got married, I... threw myself into becoming a Keating, and it was all to create a version of myself that the world could accept. But I'm done."

"Instead, I stand before you, mask off, to tell you the god's honest. I have done many a bad thing. I've coerced witnesses, got clients to lie on the stand, bullied students to tears, manipulated jurors like you. But those are not the crimes I'm being tried for. It's murder. And I am no murderer."

"What I am is a survivor. I survived getting taunted by the n-word when I was in grade school. I survived the sexual abuse by my uncle when I was 11. I survived losing my first love, Eve, because I was scared to be gay. Then the death of my son in a car accident, the murder of my husband, then alcoholism, depression, grief, and every death leading up to this trial."

"But today, you decide. Am I a bad person? Well, the mask is off, so I'm going to say yes. But am I the mastermind criminal who pulled off a series of violent murders? Hell no."

"Who I am is a 53-year-old woman from Memphis, Tennessee, named Anna Mae Harkness. I'm ambitious, black, bisexual, angry, sad, strong, sensitive, scared, fierce, talented, exhausted."

Annalise let out a shaky breath. She glanced from one juror to the other. She said everything she needed to say and moved almost every person in the room.

"And I am at your mercy."

April was sitting between Laurel and Connor— with Michaela on his side. The jurors had made a decision, and they were anxiously waiting to hear what they had decided for Annalise.

"Ms. Foreperson, I've been told you've reached a verdict."

"Yes, your honor," the juror responded. Some papers got passed on to the judge. The tension in the room was thick. Laurel was gripping April's hand. They had no idea how this was going to end.

The judge looked through the stack of papers as the people in the room waited anxiously. "Please stand."

Annalise and Lennox both stood. "For the charge of conspiracy to murder Sam Keating in count one of the indictment, the jury finds the defendant Annalise Keating..." she paused for a while before revealing it. "Not guilty."

When those words left her mouth, April breathed relief, as did the people sitting behind Annalise. But it was not over yet. "For murder in the first degree of Rebecca Sutter, the jury finds the defendant not guilty. For the murder in the first degree of Asher Millstone, the jury finds the defendant not guilty."

Laurel leaned back in relief, tears threatening to escape. Connor and Oliver had a somewhat similar reaction. April couldn't help but smile, her eyes watering. It was over.

Michaela, on the other hand, was not as happy. 

"For murder in the first degree of Emily Sinclair, the jury finds the defendant not guilty. For the murder in the first degree of Ronald Miller, the jury finds the defendant not guilty. For murder in the first degree of Caleb Hapstall, the jury finds the defendant not guilty."

April looked over at her professor, who was hugging her family members. They were happy. Annalise wasn't going down for something she didn't do. And that was when April knew she had done the right thing.

The judge read the rest of the charges; not guilty. Those were the words that kept repeating themselves. Annalise was free. It was over. And she was enjoying the moment with the people closest to her.

Her students stood in the hall sometime later. Connor and Oliver didn't know how to feel, but they didn't have to wonder much longer.

April turned to her friends— her family. She just looked at them and took in the moment. It was over. It was finally over.

They could go back to when they worried about silly things, not murder. Their lives could go back to normal— somewhat normal.

But not for April.

She was ready. She knew it was the right thing, but she hadn't told anyone.

Her friends watched the two police officers approach them, and they were confused. Especially when they cuffed April. There was a lot she hid from them.

They questioned the officers— asked them why they were taking their friend away. What did April do? She told them she got probation.

April looked at her friends as the officers put the cuffs on. "I lied," she shrugged. "I'm the one who takes care of you. So that's what I'm doing."

They looked back at her with tears in their eyes. They were also confused and panicked. "I'm going to be fine. Fifteen years is not that much. Take care of yourselves."

"No, you can't do this!" Connor yelled at the police officer when they dragged her away. He was the most affected by this.

"Connor," Oliver pulled him back. He was crying too. Michaela reached out in an attempt to comfort him, but Oliver pushed her hand away. "You don't get to do that after everything."

"Oliver—"

"You betrayed everyone," Oliver cut her off harshly. Michaela was taken aback. She didn't have anything to say. She knew what she had done. She decided to walk away, no matter how much it hurt.

"Let's leave," Laurel spoke. She turned her stroller. And the three made their way to the exit. For a moment, they had enjoyed that feeling of happiness and relief. They hadn't felt that in a long time.

April gave up information and her freedom for her friends. She considered them family. She had lost her father, and her mother was being rearrested; that was a part of the deal she made.

As she was taken away, she thought about her friends and where they would end up. Annalise was free, and her friends were leaving. They were all going to start fresh.

April was unaware of the shooting outside the courthouse as it happened. As fast as that happiness appeared, it was gone. They were gone. It was over.

It was finally over.

She would be alone in prison, but that was how it had always been. Alone. But she took comfort in knowing her family would be okay.

No more worrying about people going after them or who killed who. It was over. It was finally over.

#femoc #femlead #michaelapratt #murdermystery #familydrama #femalelead #murder #annalisekeating #frankdelfino #laurelcastillo #connor walsh #coliver #bonniewinterbottom

[rebelbrat]

It was common among Galra royalty and nobility to have harems. Galra harems, like human harems, are pretty fucked up, but they are a bit different than human harems. For one thing, harems can contain individuals of any gender--depending on the ruler’s sexual orientation they could be single-gender or a mix of genders. Moreover, in a Galra harem, members are usually allowed to freely have romantic relationships and sex with any other member of the harem that they cannot have biological children with. This is because Galra are not monogamous by nature, and most rulers are not so cruel as to deprive their concubines of polygamy which they have a natural and irrepressible inclination toward. Finally, Galra harems are not simply determined based on physical appearance--in Galra cultures, your attractiveness is tied to how well you can fight as well as the extraness of your fighting style, so a Galra harem is usually an incredibly deadly fighting force too. It’s basically the royal or noble’s designated army of everyone they find is sexy.

However, Galra harems are still pretty yikes because they restrain their members’ freedom and use said members as status symbols. Members are not free to pursue relationships outside the harem, or even have kids that are not the ruler’s, and the penalty of having a kid that isn’t the harem leader’s is usually death for both the parents and the offspring. Concubines are supposed to be married solely to the ruler and to put them first in their hearts and given their fighting strength are supposed to die for the ruler as well, even if the harem is so big that said ruler barely pays them any attention and they get much more emotionally and sexually out of their fellow harem members. What’s more, many rulers see their concubines as collectibles that they can use to show off how many people are attracted to them and what ~quality~ of partner they can attract in such large numbers (ew). Kids produced with the harem are treated as the same way; they are like statistics of how far the noble or ruler can spread their genes across the galaxy. Some people will say that life in a harem is great because you have all your material needs provided for and you usually live a luxurious lifestyle paid for by taxpayer dollars. But much like a human harem, it’s a life spent in a gilded cage--you have everything you want except freedom, and the lack of that alone can make it very not worth the trouble.

Zarkon had a harem once, of over 1 million people. With this harem, he produced 500,000 children. Those 500,000 children, apart from his harem which like other Galra harems are militarized, became their own set of field armies in his military--and, being a shitty dad even before Tobias was born, he treated his kids more like subordinates rather than children. Things went on this way until Honerva came around and told him to dismiss all of his concubines and forget about his 500k+ children so that he could focus exclusively on her and the kids they produced. And because Zarkon would do anything for love, he immediately dismissed his entire harem as well as his 500,000 children. Not only did he put 1.5 million people simultaneously out of a job and deal an incredible amount of economic damage, he also never spoke to any of them again, dealing an untold amount of emotional damage that--unlike the monetary costs--simply can’t be calculated.

Soon.

Very, very soon.

#we are where we come from but also where we're headed. || WORLDBUILDING

[fruityyamenrunner]

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip celebrated their forty-fifth wedding anniversary on Friday, 20 November 1992. They weren’t, however, together to mark what should have been a happy occasion, for he was away on a trip to Argentina, in his capacity as president of the World Wide Fund for Nature. She was therefore alone when she heard the news that a fire had broken out at Windsor Castle.

She arrived from Buckingham Palace some hours after the start of the conflagration, at which point firefighters were still struggling to bring the blaze under control. Hundreds of staff were joined by Army personnel as a priceless collection of paintings, books, carpets and porcelain was removed from the burning building; in their midst, television cameras filmed the Queen, in off-duty headscarf and wellingtons, cutting a distraught and forlorn figure. ‘Her Majesty is utterly devastated,’ Prince Andrew told news reporters, the formality of his words somehow distancing viewers from what was clearly a deep personal disaster.

It was also a potential disaster for the country, whether one accepted the idea that this thousand-year-old building and its contents were held in trust and that the loss was to us all, or whether one merely counted the financial cost of the damage. For Windsor Castle, like the other royal palaces, was not insured – the premiums would have been prohibitive – and the repairs were, announced the national heritage secretary Peter Brooke, to be paid for from the national purse. ‘The heart of the nation went out to the Queen last night,’ he said. ‘I am sure the Queen will want to see her home restored in the way which we all see fit.’

It wasn’t supposed to be a startling revelation, merely a statement of the obvious, but the idea that taxpayers were expected to pick up the estimated tab of £60 million unexpectedly aroused considerable hostility, even while the embers were still glowing. ‘With the greatest respect, Ma’am, you should foot the bill,’ said the Sunday Mirror, and its sister paper ran a telephone poll for readers in which 95 per cent of the 40,000 callers agreed with the proposition that the Queen should contribute to the restoration costs. The Sun also asked its listeners to phone and received 60,000 calls saying she should pay, against just 4,000 disagreeing. It was a response that caused genuine shock. ‘We must have got it wrong,’ lamented one courtier. ‘At the moment of her desolation, this woman, who had done nothing but give service to her country, didn’t even have the solace of her people’s sympathy.’ A public appeal was launched and raised just £25,000.

-- Alwyn Turner, A Classless Society

[theyoungturks]

AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, is gladly supporting the privatization of medicare by wasting taxpayer dollars. Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola discuss on The Young Turks. Watch TYT LIVE on weekdays 6-8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/theyoungturks/live Read more HERE: https://jacobin.com/2022/11/aarp-medicare-advantage-privatization-health-care-seniors "Despite massive and systemic problems with for-profit Medicare plans denying care to seniors while costing the government more than $7 billion annually in excess fees, the leading advocacy group tasked with protecting older Americans is welcoming the privatization of the national health insurance program — while earning as much as $814 million annually from insurers advertising the plans. The state of affairs lays bare a conflict inside AARP, the major advocacy organization for Americans fifty and older, over how to approach the regulation of Medicare Advantage, the for-profit version of Medicare." *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt Unbossed with Nina Turner https://www.youtube.com/unbossedtyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA #TYT #TheYoungTurks #BreakingNews 221123__TB02_AARP_Betrays_Older_Americans by The Young Turks

#IFTTT #YouTube

[de-temple]

The two dominant political parties in the United States work together in an elaborate system of controlled opposition to serve corporations and other moneyed interests because their primary purpose is to preserve and promote themselves. What appears to be strife and gridlock between the parties is, to a large degree, an artful deception and grand illusion designed to convince the masses that practical government activity is taking place. Yet, this orchestrated political theatre is intended to give the impression that only unsustainable, incremental change can be achieved. That nothing can fundamentally change under the current design. And the lack of worthwhile progress is nobody's fault in particular. Of course, discerning citizens understand that this staged battle of political wills exists to serve corporate and oligarch interests. It's all part of a game to keep us appeased by repairing local damages rather than preventing the harm and suffering from occurring in the first place.

Both of the major political parties in the United States are two faces of the same political faction.

BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES

— care primarily about party preservation

— are highly influenced by the donor class

— serve corporations and capital investors

— support a bloated military and its budget

— provide tax cuts for the wealthy

— favor privatization of core human services

— thwart democracy with fraudulent elections

— fail to address the root causes of our social woes

— place profit over people

— are the problem, not the solution

According to OpenSecrets, the FIRE sector of our economy (finance, insurance and real-estate) is comprised of 438 Political Action Committees, and together contributed $996 million dollars to political campaigns during the 2019-2020 election cycle and another $560 million dollars to political campaigns during the 2021-2022 election cycle. That's $1.5 billion dollars in political campaign contributions over the two most recent election cycles. The contributions are about as evenly distributed between political parties as it can get, with 50.7% going to Democrats and 49.3% to Republicans. Not only does this promote the formation of monopolies and oligopolies within markets, but it also transfers the burden of civilization costs from corporations and wealthy capital investors to communities and individual taxpayers.

As a result, a 2014 Princeton University study confirmed that the general population in the United States has nearly no impact on political decisions and policy-making, while corporations have significant influence.

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research division of the Economist Group, the United States ranks only 29th on the "2023 Global Democracy Index”. Twenty-eight nations have more favorable democracies than we do. In fact, the EIU labels the United States a "flawed democracy" as opposed to a "full democracy". [Source: Global Democracy Index (2023)] Again, this is what happens when corporations are given the freedom to purchase government favor in order to influence legislation and laws that give themselves power over ordinary people.

...