Friday Homestead Dispatch
Kooky Kosher Kipper
Hey, I’m surprising my own self by even writing this much content for today’s dispatch as we flew out of Tucson on Wednesday for five nights in Chicago. Because of Connie’s work I’ve been able to hang on to her coattails as we’ve traveled to three different countries and several cities in the states attending conferences for the past eleven years. In Chicago (our third conference here) we have a pretty fabulous view from the Hyatt Regency of some amazing buildings (you can see the edge of the Wrigley Building on the left) from our room on the 33rd floor.
And here she is working the crowd at last night’s opening of the SDB (Society for Developmental Biology) conference. We packed and shipped thirteen boxes of swag for her work as editorial assistant, administrator, organizer, graphic designer, and answer-all-questions go-to person for the anatomy journal Developmental Dynamics and last night (it was so busy I was even working the crowd with her) we gave away most of the STUFF.
1.
This is LARGE bit of Goddamn…the orangeman and his allies are just outright saying it. If elected, they want the Mr. tiny hands to be an authoritarian…you know, dictator. The New York Times reported on Monday that Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him. How any voter can be FOR this, let alone being ON THE FENCE, is beyond my tiny brain’s ability to digest.
He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”
The orangeman said These globalists want to squander all of America's strength, blood and treasure, chasing monsters and phantoms overseas—while keeping us distracted from the havoc they're creating right here at home. These forces are doing more damage to America than Russia and China could ever have dreamed. Evicting the sick and corrupt establishment is the monumental task for the next president. And I'm the only one who can do it. I'm the only one that can get the job done. I know exactly what has to be done.
Globalists? Trump earned more than $200 million in income from his interests in foreign countries since 2016 and reported nearly $95 million of that income from foreign business dealings. The New York Times’ reporting shed new light on Trump’s taxes and business dealings during his time at the White House, revealing an unprecedented level of foreign business entanglements for a sitting U.S. president. Trump reportedly earned at least $73 million in 2017 and 2018 from his properties abroad, according to the review of Trump’s tax returns.
Heather Cox Richardson wrote that Behind this initiative is “Project 2025,” a coalition of more than 65 right-wing organizations putting in place personnel and policies to recommend not just to Trump, but to any Republican who may win in 2024. Project 2025 is led by the Heritage Foundation, once considered a conservative think tank, that helped to lead the Reagan revolution. The party appears to have fully embraced the antidemocratic ideology advanced by authoritarian leaders like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, who argue that the post–World War II era, in which democracy seemed to triumph, is over. They claim that the tenets of democracy—equality before the law, free speech, academic freedom, a market-based economy, immigration, and so on—weaken a nation by destroying a “traditional” society based in patriarchy and Christianity.
She also reported that In West Palm Beach, Florida, last weekend, at the Turning Points Action Conference, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) compared President Biden’s Build Back Better plan to President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society programs, which invested in “education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and big labor and labor unions.” She noted that under Biden, the U.S. has made “the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs, that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete.”
Bwwaaahhhaahhahaaaaaa…like those are BAD things!?!?! It is indeed Bizarro world in the political landscape. Maybe VOTE BLUE?
2.
I wrote a bit about Leonard Leo back in March where I quoted from ProPublica that In the early years of the Trump administration, he and the Federalist Society had remarkable influence within the new government. The Federalist Society had brought the legal doctrines of originalism and textualism — close readings of laws and the Constitution to adhere to the intent and words of the authors — into the mainstream. Leo had taken a leave of absence from the group to advise President Trump on judicial appointments, helping shepherd the appointments of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and helping to fill more than 200 other positions in federal district and appellate courts.
Front page news in yesterday’s Washington Post revealed a coordinated and sophisticated public relations campaign to defend and celebrate Justice Clarence Thomas with a rush of favorable social media content financed with at least $1.8 million from conservative nonprofit groups steered by Leo. The campaign would stretch on for years and include the creation and promotion of a laudatory film about Thomas, advertising to boost positive content about him during internet searches and publication of a book about his life. In his statement to The Post, Leo said the film about Thomas was “an important counter” to the “RBG” documentary, which he claimed was “produced as a political call to action.”
3.
Two different union strikes happening, or gearing up to take place, right now with workers once again going up against the money class. The current UPS contract with the Teamsters expires July 31st so negotiations are in the works to prevent a strike. The labor union represents 340,000 of the delivery company's workers, including drivers and warehouse workers. They have been negotiating with UPS for higher wages, air conditioning in more trucks, and getting rid of a two-tier wage system for drivers who work weekends…and no more excessive overtime; no more two-tier pay; higher part-time pay; more full-time jobs; job security for feeders and package drivers; and protection from harassment.
UPS posted an adjusted profit of nearly $14 billion in 2022. The Teamsters union points to the company's financial gains as evidence that it can—and should—increase workers' wages. "These part-timers are working at poverty wages," Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien said on Morning Edition (https://www.npr.org/2023/07/07/1186338446/ups-workers-threaten-a-strike-after-contract-talks-break-down) last week. "They need to drive the starting wage rate up, reward the people that have been there a long time, and provide full-time opportunity for these folks."
And Sag-Aftra, Hollywood’s biggest union and 160,000 members strong, are joining the Writers Guild of America in a strike, marking the biggest shutdown of Hollywood since both unions last went on strike together in 1960. The Guardian reported that At the heart of the negotiations is what many members have referred to as an existential question over the future of AI in replacing writers or generating unapproved likenesses of actors, among other concerns. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) said it offered a “groundbreaking AI proposal which protects performers’ digital likenesses, including a requirement for performer’s consent for the creation and use of digital replicas or for digital alterations of a performance”. But Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Sag-Aftra’s chief negotiator and national executive director, denounced that proposal on Thursday for only paying background performers for one day of work in exchange for the rights to their digital likeness “for the rest of eternity with no compensation”.
Alex O’keefe, writer on The Bear, explains the more realistic side of the ‘glamour’ of Hollywood. And check out Fran Drescher’s fiery speech (president of Sag-Afra) calling out studios as 'disgusting' for claiming they’re losing money while 'giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs'.
And here’s some more Chicago goodness…
And now…
Sweet home Chicago xxxx.