DL Open Thread: Sunday, January 8, 2023

The Sham That Is Trump-Style Populism:

This crisis is entirely of the party’s own making. For decades it has whipped its base into a righteous fury by promising radical policies that offer emotional satisfaction to their hardline constituents — from rolling back Medicare and Social Security to defaulting on the national debt to eliminating whole government agencies. But because these policies are totally unworkable, they never happen.

The lesson that the base has internalized is that cowardly moderates were constantly betraying it. The solution now is to maintain a permanent vise grip on the House speaker, ensuring that he or she will always do what the hardliners want. This is, as many have noted, a recipe for permanent blackmail and constant chaos.

Why is this happening? Populism thrives as an opposition movement. It denounces the establishment, encourages fears and conspiracy theories about nefarious ruling elites, and promises emotional responses rather than actual programs (build a wall, ban immigration, stop trade). But once in government, the shallowness of its policy proposals is exposed, and its leaders can’t blame others as easily. Meanwhile, if non-populist forces are sensible and actually get things done, they defang some of the populist right.

Musk Reneges On Worker Severance Promises.  Or, to be more precise, says nothing:

Twitter Inc. employees who were laid off shortly after Elon Musk took over are still awaiting details of their severance packages months after being let go, leading to further legal trouble for the new owner.

Musk laid off roughly 50% of Twitter’s more than 7,000 employees on Nov. 4, just a week after taking control of the company. Almost 1,000 of those who were terminated lived in California, according to documents filed with the state. Those workers were required under state and federal law to keep receiving regular paychecks over the past two months.

Lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan said hundreds of Twitter workers she represents have now had their last day at the company and have received no severance notice or pay.

“No one has gotten any severance pay,” said Liss-Riordan. The Boston-based labor attorney has filed private arbitration cases and several federal class-action lawsuits and US labor board complaints related to the mass terminations, alleging a mix of retaliation, discrimination, and failure to provide required notice and pay. She said 100 arbitration claims were filed on Thursday, on top of 100 already pending.

Did someone once say, “There’s always a Delaware connection?”:

Twitter has asked the judge in San Francisco overseeing the severance suit to throw it out or, alternatively, move it to Delaware where Twitter has litigated other cases including the fight over his buyout of the company. To the degree the suit remains intact, wherever it eventually lands, Twitter argues its former employees are bound by contractual agreements requiring them to resolve any disputes with the company in closed-door arbitration rather than in open court.

Check Out Who’s Been Accused Of Groping:

Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign is long dead, but reports of it being an unmitigated shit show are apparently still coming. On Friday, a 30-something staffer told the Daily Beast that longtime Republican operative and former Walker staffer Matt Schlapp (chair of the American Conservative Union) engaged in “sustained and unwanted and unsolicited” sexual contact toward him following an October campaign event in Georgia.

In one video, according to the Daily Beast, the staffer says: “Matt Schlapp of the CPAC grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length, and I’m sitting there thinking what the hell is going on, that this person is literally doing this to me.” He added, “From the bar to the Hilton Garden Inn, he has his hands on me. And I feel so fucking dirty. I feel so fucking dirty. I’m supposed to pick this motherfucker up in the morning and just pretend like nothing happened. This is what I’m dealing with. This is what I got to do.”

According to the staffer, Schlapp texted the man at 7:26 a.m. the next morning, saying, “I’m in the lobby.” The staffer said he called his supervisor and then spoke with a senior campaign official, who was “immediately horrified,” told him not to drive Schlapp, and to put in writing, to Schlapp, what had happened. After that conversation, he texted Schlapp, writing: “I did want to say I was uncomfortable with what happened last night. The campaign does have a driver who is available to get you to Macon and back to the airport.” Schlapp allegedly replied, “Pls give me a call,” and then rang the staffer three times over the next 20 minutes, according to records seen by the Daily Beast. Later, after the staffer declined to answer any of the calls, Schlapp allegedly texted and said: “If you could see it in your heart to call me at the end of day. I would appreciate it. If not I wish you luck on the campaign and hope you keep up the good work.”

Looking forward to seeing the picture of his dutiful wife standing by her man.  She, too, is a Rethug political propagandist, and currently co-host of a show on Newsmax.  Here’s a fun fact about her:

In June 2020, amid the George Floyd protests against racism and police brutality, she retweeted praise for a man who was wielding a chainsaw against protestors while he was yelling the N-word.

‘Mother of Mercy. Is This The End Of The Royals?’:

The “absolutely catastrophic” implications of attacks on the behaviour of the royal family in the new memoir from the Duke of Sussex are being ignored, according to Catherine Mayer, the royal analyst and biographer of King Charles.

“It is possibly something that will mark the beginning of the end of the monarchy, and that is what we should discuss. It is important, given the lack of trust in the state at the moment and an upsurge in rightwing politics. Members of the royal family have become our proxies for anger about racism, misogyny and wealth. This is, after all, an institution that stands for inequality, so there are huge things at stake.”

Mayer, whose book The Heart of a King was subject to similar pre-publication security leaks and distortion when it came out in 2015, argues that fundamental questions raised by Harry in his Netflix series and new book, in addition to his interviews with Oprah Winfrey and with ITV’s Tom Bradby on Sunday, are being dodged. Accusations of bullying, racism and misogyny, as well as the class distinctions shored up by the monarchy, will eventually combine to undermine the basis of the consent by which the royal family rule, if they are not addressed, she predicts.

Wilmington’s New Police Chief:

Chief Wilfredo Campos, who was raised on the City’s West Side, has served in a variety of positions on the City police force during his extensive law enforcement career, including the Uniform Services Division, Community Policing Division, Criminal Investigation Division, and the Human Resources Division. He was also a WPD Detective assigned to a Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Task Force and has served with the United States Army Reserve. Chief Campos is also active with community organizations, including serving as a Board Member of West Side Family Healthcare and Los Jardines Senior Housing.

Chief Campos is 50-years old. He graduated in 1996 from the 84th Wilmington Police Academy, is a graduate of Thomas McKean High School, and holds a bachelor’s degree from Wilmington University. Chief Campos is also a graduate of the Senior Management Institute of Policing sponsored by the nationally renowned Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) and is a Polygraph Examiner Professional graduate of the Academy for Scientific Investigative Training in Philadelphia.

Trippi Congo is thrilled that Mayor Mike called him before he made the decision.  Which is what passes for ‘leadership’ on City Council:

“I want to thank Mayor Purzycki for reaching out to me during this transition period for the police department and seeking my thoughts on the department as a whole,” Congo said. “The Mayor made a good decision in appointing Chief Campos. City Council looks forward to collaborating with the new WPD police administration. We wish the new leadership well.”

Anybody have thoughts on the appointment?  Will it mean that areas of the City other than Buccini/Pollinville get, say, community policing?  One can only hope that the new Chief has read this treatise on Wilmington policing.  An excerpt:

Historically, police reform in Wilmington has only been about changing the playbook and not the game or its scorecard. This has certainly been the case over the past four decades, with playbooks for problem-oriented, zero tolerance, and “broken windows” policing; jump-out squads; and now Compstat, and predictive policing, all serving as exemplars of police reform.

Each of these playbooks prioritize law enforcement outputs over racial justice and other positive community outcomes. Each has also fallen out of favor over the years mostly because they do not actually work as promised.

To the detriment of Wilmington communities desperately in need of help, the only thing that has survived over many decades is the law enforcement game. Only through a new game with scorecards and playbooks — that downplay law enforcement while emphasizing building and restoring community relationships, that solve neighborhood problems through the coordination of dense networks of local resources and support and that repair harm from structured violence and racial injustice — will policing be transformed in Wilmington in ways that make communities and the police safer.

What do you want to talk about?