Welcome to The Now

 

Everything that the United States of America does abroad will eventually make it home. Every foreign policy is just a domestic policy being tested in another country.  Just for the sake of context, we have BreakThrough News (via Brian Becker and Professor Richard Wolff) and Due Dissidence discussing President Trump's idea that Republicans should essentially be controlling the election process for the 2026 midterms: There are already ways in place to make sure that actual citizens vote. And just to address the hypocrisy of the group advocating bringing a suitcase full of documents with you to vote in a two-party system: these same people, whenever there is a school shooting are so quick to dismiss calls for gun legislation by saying, "just enforce the laws on the books." Why, oh why, can't we use that same logic for voter registration? Anyway, I have to stress that this ploy reinforces the theory that the those in power will not allow the system they've benefitted ...

 

 Withhold your labor, and the employer has few options (yes, even with machines and AI at their disposal):

 Kshama Sawant and Due Dissidence talk about this, a General Strike and more:

First the story of the bodies (vi Al Jazeera): Israel’s military has announced that its troops have recovered the bodies of six captives, including a dual US national, from a tunnel in southern Gaza, as it continued its 11-month long, deadly assault on the Palestinian enclave. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched war on Gaza on October 7 following an attack led by Palestinian group Hamas that left more than 1,100 people dead. The Palestinian fighters took about 250 captives in the wake of the attack. The coastal enclave has since been turned into rubble amid non-stop bombardment as Israel has been accused of stalling a ceasefire deal to free the captives. The military said on Sunday that their remains were recovered “from an underground tunnel in the Rafah area” and returned to Israel where they were formally identified. It claimed that the captives were killed not long before their bodies were recovered. The captives were identified as Almog Sarusi, Al...

 While a lot of people (myself included) were expected a more comprehensive strike, Shawn Fain has opted for something more incremental:

 In this case, about the Writer's Strike:

 As stated before , AOC (and the Squad) attempt to "fight on behalf of railroad workers was unimpressive. Fast forward about a year, and not AOC is all in for strikes, showing up at both UPS rallies and picketing with actors ! And here's a quote involving the later that piqued my curiosity: “Direct action gets the goods, now and always,” she said. “The only way that we can do this is by showing them that we are stronger. That our solidarity is stronger than their greed, that our care for one another will overcome their endless desire for more.” This can't be stressed enough: this was not her approach for the railroad workers . Back then, it was essentially, "government will decide what's best." I say this because instead of being out there talking with the workers who would be directly impact by a crappy union deal or calling for them to strike, she was apparently listening to (or blaming, depending on how you look at it) the union leaders and wasting time o...

 It appears so, and it could be costly : A 10-day UPS strike would be the most expensive strike in at least a century, costing the U.S. economy upwards of $7 billion, a study by the consulting firm Anderson Economic Group found, including $4.6 billion in losses for customers, $1 billion in lost wages and more than $800 million in direct losses at UPS. If this happens, can any other company compensate? Well: "In the event of a market disruption, no carrier can absorb all UPS volume," FedEx executives wrote in an internal company memo, according to NPR . What should we watch for?  The UPS workers’ contract will expire on July 31 and 97% of union members have voted to authorize a strike if warranted, even after an agreement was reached over hot-button issues like installing air conditioning in delivery trucks amid the warmest June on record . In the end, threatening to shut things down seems to be the only option left to get the employers to the negotiation table to begin to...

 

"Workers in America have the fundamental right to strike, and American workers have died on picket lines to protect it. The ability to withhold your labor is the one powerful tool throughout the history of unionization that has ensured that workers can improve their working conditions. This right is now on trial at the Supreme Court. The anti-worker case before the Court is undemocratic and disregards long-standing legal precedent." -- International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean M. O'Brien in a 1/10/23 press release, regarding the Supreme Court potentially dismantling the National Labor Relations Board in the   Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union 174 case. 

 The debacle over how to help the railroad workers exposed it, as Second Thought explains:

 To say that Kyle Kulinski likes talking about political stories is an understatement. As his YouTube pays states, his channel is "Home of news & politics commentary from the populist left perspective" (NOTE: it used to be from a "libertarian left perspective").  I've referred to him as a political gossip expert. Not in the intrusive TMZ-type way, but if you ever wanted to know who said what about anything even remotely political, Kulinski was the one to follow and watch. Also, whether the topic/subject/person is popular or obscure makes little difference.  So imagine my surprise to find out that Kulinski seemed to completely ignore a political story that one would think is right in his wheelhouse: That up there was a video on Bad Faith where Briahna Joy Gray and Kshama Sawant talk to Ryan Grim about the Squad's role in Congress forcing the railroad workers to accept a bad contract (that while included a bump in pay did not include any sick leave whatsoe...

Keep in mind that this is the same group who think that giving railroad workers seven days sick leave was too costly and also fretted that allowing them to strike would have cost the economy $2 billion/day and therefore not worth it:

 Just a reminder that the political media will try to funnel every issue, action and event through an electoral lens. Any options that doesn't involve voting for someone else to address your problems (and pretty much trusting in them blindly to fix them) are dismissed as unrealistic: Imagine a football team that only tried to scored by throwing passes, and never ran the ball or even tried to kick a field goal. That's essentially what these types of media people advocate.

 It's up to the Senate now to either pass it, kill it, or send it back to be modified.

"The mounting social inequality is fueling protests around the globe. The global ruling class is determined to prevent these protests from employing the weapon that can bring them down — strikes."  -- Chris Hedges, on what the working class needs to do in order to truly resist the oligarchy . 

 

Back in 2018, Brookings had am article title, " How the U.S. Military Became the Exception to America's Wage Stagnation Problem ." It referenced a (then) recent report from the Council of Foreign Relations that highlighted (among other things) that, "Over 60 percent of 2016 enlistments came from neighborhoods with a median household income between $38,345 and $80,912" before revealing that between 2000 and 2011, and E5 paygrade went from 10% under the median American to 10% more. For a variety of reasons, the middle class was the US military. The article, however, warned that this could be more of a phase than a permanent shift: The temptation for future defense budgets will be to neglect military compensation increases and regress to the historical pay gap as personnel expenditures currently encapsulate one-third of the defense budget. But, the Department of Defense (DOD) must keep an eye on the horizon and proactively anticipate and act on civilian sector eco...