Where Are We Runnin’? - American Politics Thread, May 2022

Maybe public school teachers? Does that make sense? No, that can’t be right.

Cops as teachers.

Starting to think they shouldn’t let Joe speak in public.

Good news:

In a sign that federal labor officials are closely scrutinizing management behavior during union campaigns, the National Labor Relations Board said Friday that it had found merit in accusations that Amazon and Starbucks had violated labor law.

At Amazon, the labor board found merit to charges that the company had required workers to attend anti-union meetings at a vast Staten Island warehouse where the Amazon Labor Union won a stunning election victory last month. The determination was communicated to the union Friday by an attorney for the labor board’s regional office in Brooklyn, according to Seth Goldstein, a lawyer representing the union.

Such meetings, often known as “captive audience” meetings, are legal under current labor board precedent. But last month, the board’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, issued a memo saying that the precedent was at odds with the underlying federal statute, and she indicated that she would seek to challenge it.

In the same filing of charges, the Amazon Labor Union accused the company of threatening to withhold benefits from employees if they voted to unionize, and of inaccurately indicating to employees that they could be fired if the warehouse were to unionize and they failed to pay union dues. The labor board also found merit to these accusations, according to an email from the attorney at the regional office, Matt Jackson.

Steve Schmidt going ham on John and Meghan McCain is quite the spectacle.

https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/no-books-no-money-just-the-truth?s=r

yeah this is way outside the usual dirt:

During my final call with the lobbyist, as she heard my young kids crying in the background, she told me that she wished that they could die so that I could share the depths of pain she felt when John McCain called her a “good friend” during his news conference denying the relationship. Twenty minutes later, John McCain called me panicked – he insisted that I apologize to her, or else his campaign would be over. I told John to “fuck himself,” and yet again, against my better judgment, I returned to the campaign trail.

You see, when I was 36 years old, I did not understand the difference between integrity and loyalty.

O RLY

wonder if he’s just sad he fell out of the news cycle after the lincoln project crap blew up

he probably has a book coming out, right?

oh, he’s specifically tweeted that he does _not_ have a book coming out. just the substack. lol

i can't wait to read cindy and meghan mccain's rejoinders on their substacks

he seems the most angry at all about meghan mccain. has she just been making fun of him on the view for the last 10 years or something? i missed some of that drama on account of it involving either a steve schmidt or meghan mccain

this kicked off yesterday after Meghan McCain liked a tweet that said that ran a pedo ring

that he (Schmidt) ran one

damn, i always forget that conservatives are having a moment with pedophilia right now, circular firing squad

tbf the other project lincoln guy might have been

My god can we just bring back Mr. Choppy already?

Political hatchet men turning the blade on everyone they ever collected a paycheck from is one of my favorite sports.

A winning message.

We need to get away from the idea that every kid has to go to college. Normalize treating trade school as important as a 4-year degree.

— Congressman Tim Ryan (@RepTimRyan) May 8, 2022

It is tho! There is more honor in being a tradesperson than having a fucking mba

It is = it should be

college is a scam but i wonder if tim ryan is addressing the actual problem by proposing free trade school oh wait

I totally agree….but why do I have the sneaking suspicion that this refrain from the gop and Sensible Centrists Dems just amounts to more misery for normal ppl?

Many's the day I wish I'd become a union plumber or HVAC repairman.

At a moment when public education receives less dough than ever from state capitols and academics like me get pummeled daily, getting to the right of the GOP on education is precisely what we need.

Look, kidding aside, I've been saying the same thing for years. My electrician is better educated and has more honor than an MBA (any "College of Business" is a racket). But I'm not running for Senate -- yet. Floridians, you're on notice.

I think trade schools are good options, and at the same time I always bristle at the right's embrace of CTE because it goes hand-in-hand with their contempt for higher education more broadly. I'm sure in their mind there's limited risk of trade schools going woke on them.

People go to college because there are fewer and fewer jobs that provide a living wage you can get without a four-year degree. that won't change until companies stop listing it as a basic job requirement. Once "trade schools" have the same prevalence in job listings as a bachelor's degree the institutions that award them will start charging exorbitant tuition too. And it'll still be used a quick and legal way to weed out the majority of applicants in a market with far more applicants than jobs.

I'd also force companies that hired college grads to pay the student loan debts of their hires. They're the ones that chiefly benefit from the education, so they should be paying the cost of it.

I wish I'd become a union plumber

And you get paid while you're training, rather than paying for it

My late stepdad was a union electrician (Int'l Brotherhood) and made a boatload of money, more than I'll ever make

i work for a trade school and we are working directly with employers to remove degree requirements. they have to play along, they don't really have a choice in this market xx

The trades suck, don't pay particularly well (outside of some heavily unionized states) and destroy your body. Every single plumber/HVAC/electrician I grew up around (because my father and grandfather were roofers before going into more general contracting) had awful back and knee problems - sometimes multiple surgeries (and sometimes not, because surgery is expensive and it's not really a gold plan insurance included with your job kind of world). 99% of the time I hear someone pining about the glories of the trades, they themselves have a college degree and work in air conditioning.

They all wound up dead early (because working class men) or had to go to work for Lowe's or Home Depot when they aged out of being able to climb up a ladder into an attic to work for eight hours in 105F heat.

.@POTUS strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.

— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) May 9, 2022

Meet 5/9--the new 1/6

Every single plumber/HVAC/electrician I grew up around (because my father and grandfather were roofers before going into more general contracting) had awful back and knee problems

Yeah, my uncle was an independent handyman for the last 20 years or so of his career. He was a big guy, and by the time he got to age 60, it got really hard for him to do the work — climbing ladders, getting under porches, etc. He basically had to retire early and go on disability, which was not much of a retirement. His oldest son had to move in to take care of him until he died.

I do think you can do all right at the levels a couple above where my uncle was, he wasn't a skilled electrician or anything like that. But it's true that almost all of the trades are hard and physical work, and outside of union jobs don't have great benefits.

As my grandfather said, "Of course work sucks — that's why they have to pay you to do it."

all jobs under capitalism require sacrificing some part of your body or soul to constant repetition and degradation.

there's education and then there's institutional education as it exists in the united states, two very different things that very very occasionally coincide.

all jobs under capitalism require sacrificing some part of your body or soul to constant repetition and degradation.

― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map)

like bad sex

--Bob Marley

bahd sex

Not all jobs under capitalism carry similar risks of heatstroke or ‘cutting off a finger.’

well, you can get an MBA and cut figurative and occasionally literal fingers from the working class

Outside of the 'trades' (i.e. construction trades), there are plenty of other occupations that would fit in well with vocational education - i.e auto repair, small engine repair, electronics, piano tuning, etc. Somebody has to know how to actually make the wine and fix pumps and shit like that, beyond the college-educated folks and the horrendous debt that many of them accrue

So yeah, I think trade schools are a great idea for those who don't feel drawn to a tradition 4 year education.. Germany has a great apprenticeship program that's very popular, we could use something like that

Whew, we can all relax

Senate Minority Mitch McConnell on national abortion ban: “I will never -- never -- support smashing the legislative filibuster on this issue or any other.” via @StevenTDennis https://t.co/t8ZIJhpP3m

— Zach C. Cohen (@Zachary_Cohen) May 9, 2022

The problem with fetishism of manual labor by non-manual laborers is that the weight of this coughcough better choice inevitably falls on the already economically disadvantaged. It's not going to be Tim Ryan's child shuffled into the 'vocational track' in school or encouraged to give money to a for-profit trade school afterward.

trade schools don't teach that pesky critical thinking stuff either, here in WI the GOP types love them and fund them like crazy while the state university system gets cut and downsized

New Course: CRT & The Art of F-450 Maintenance

.@SpeakerPelosi: "I want the Republican Party to take back the party to where you were when you cared about a woman's right to choose, you cared about the environment. Here I am, Nancy Pelosi, saying this country needs a strong Republican Party. Not a cult." pic.twitter.com/h12SSFQKdk

— The Hill (@thehill) May 9, 2022

It’s rough because not everyone can move out of the physical part of the trades, but I have family who have both been union and then went into management to run a union shop (construction trades) and a close friend who ended up moving into a salaried position after being in the machinists union for a number of years

there’s also going into a union role as opposed to a union-represented role because there’s a need for instructors, reps, etc

that still leaves a large number of people that fall into the cracks, but with union representation you end up with better rotation within a role, etc, that minimizes the chance of rsi and so on, and a chance to file grievances

got to listen to my dad complain a little recently about how his former coworkers went to a job fair to recruit and didn’t push people into the union training as aggressively as he’d like, and that felt nice

xp is there another political party anywhere on Earth whose leaders say they "need" a strong opposition party. It sounds as deranged as the Joker saying he and Batman need each other. Of course what she feels she needs it for is to form a coalition to keep her own party's base in check.

Most people currently alive have never heard of Republicans formerly caring about the issues she cites, unless she's talking about Nixon's era when they were slightly more indifferent to them.

it’s a pretty common trope in british politics actually, though usually deployed smugly after some spectacular bout of self-immolation by the opposition

The main one I can think of is Conservatives/Republicans as stewards of the land/conservationists whereas now they’re all climate change cynics/deniers.

Good morning!