Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Tip Of The Iceberg

From The Palmer Report:

Given that the Manhattan District Attorney hired an organized crime specialist to help with prosecution, partnered with the New York Attorney General, and empaneled a grand jury just one month ago for a six month period to bring indictments, it’s pretty clear that today’s narrowly focused Trump Organization indictments aren’t going to be the only indictments.

But because the prosecutors running a criminal case aren’t in a position to lay out a roadmap for the public to know where the case is going, it leaves plenty of room for fretting and ratings-driven doomsday media hype: What if today’s indictments are the only indictments? What if it’s all over?

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who hasn’t always exactly taken an optimistic view of the criminal case against Donald Trump, tweeted this prediction today: “he charges brought today in Manhattan are the tip of the iceberg. Note DA request for a protective order to keep discovery close to the vest while investigation continues.”

The protective order in particular is notable, in that it makes clear that the criminal investigation is still very much ongoing. This comes even as New York Attorney General Tish James, who is helping to run this case, released a statement today confirming that it’s ongoing. Tip of the iceberg indeed.

1 comments

Posted on

Class Struggle from Below

From Infidel753:

Congress is near-paralyzed due to the filibuster and tiny Democratic majorities, but that doesn’t mean the people are.  They are taking action on their own while the government stumbles.

As the pandemic winds down and bosses try to drag home workers back to the office and re-assert the old model of shitty pay and shitty working conditions, workers are quitting in unprecedented numbers.  It’s becoming a cliché that service-sector businesses can’t get people to come and work for them — unless they offer decent wages for a change.  Republican state governments have been cutting unemployment benefits in an effort to force their serfs to give in and submit to the re-shittyization of the economy, but it isn’t working.

As for those white-collar workers who have been working from home for a year, I’ve been saying all along that companies which try to drag them back to offices will wind up at a huge competitive disadvantage — they’ll lose their best workers to other companies which continue to allow work from home.  Now that some workers are indeed being dragged back, they’re coming to realize just how awful the misery of commuting and spending all day in an office really was.  They know they can do their jobs from home as well or better.  They know there’s no valid reason for forcing them back to the office.  They know the supposed justifications are just squid-ink for the bosses’ desperate control-freakery.  They’re going to start looking for something better.  People are already quitting rather than give in.

When NPR did a story about “the great office return”, they managed to find someone to quote who said that “businesses have a civic duty to bring workers back”.  He’s an executive of a company that leases out office space to other companies.

Since our country has no major political party which is explicitly committed to the class struggle, and the structure of our government allows the Republicans to block the Democrats from doing even as much as they wish to do, that struggle must be waged by the workers themselves.  If Congress won’t bring our minimum wage into line with that of other developed nations, the workers themselves will do it by refusing to work for shitty pay any more.  If the government won’t defend our right to keep working from home instead of commuting (a zero-cost contribution to the fight against global warming, on top of everything else), then we ourselves will defend that right, by refusing to settle for anything less.  And given time, who knows what else working people will be able to achieve once these changes help them realize their power?  I’ve said before that this pandemic may ultimately be remembered as a catalyst for social progress.

Oh, and over time our people are developing a more favorable view of socialism and a less favorable view of capitalism—and this is especially true among younger people.

Be afraid, fuckers, be very afraid.  We’re on to you, and things are going to change around here, big time.

I know that I am not happy about being called back into the office every other day.

0 comments