Bleep Bobby Knight. This Guy Deserves To Be Remembered:
Ady Barkan, a progressive activist and attorney who used his years-long struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to call for the protection and expansion of public health care coverage, died on Wednesday. He was 39.
Over the course of a career cut tragically short by illness, Barkan managed to shape policy debates on workers’ rights, the Federal Reserve, the Trump tax cuts, Medicare for All and civil liberties.
Rather than retreat from public life after his October 2016 diagnosis with ALS, a fatal disease that causes paralysis, Barkan vowed to use his last breaths to leave the world better than he entered it.
Barkan never stopped believing that people were, at their core, reasonable, and that the obstacles to change could be removed ― or at least lowered ― by appealing to humans’ universal capacity for logic and compassion.
“He just has this intense conviction that the world is meant to be, at some fundamental level, a reasonable and just place,” said Nate Smith, Barkan’s best friend since they were high school classmates in Claremont, California.
Please read this entire obituary. A great all-too-short life well-lived.
Pot, Meet Kettle. Rethug senators irate at Tuberville’s delay tactics:
The war in Gaza and a serious medical emergency suffered by the Marine Corps’ top officer have forced into the open months of simmering Republican frustration with Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s expansive hold on President Biden’s military nominees, driving several of his colleagues to publicly denounce the gambit and urge Senate leaders to take immediate action to end the impasse.
On Wednesday night, a remarkable scene unfolded on the Senate floor as several Republicans, including Sens. Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Todd C. Young (Ind.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) confronted Tuberville, imploring him to lift his hold for the sake of national security and proposing votes on individual officers whose promotions have been delayed. Tuberville rebuffed them one by one, blocking each proposed nominee as his colleagues’ frustration continued to rise.
The confrontation stretched nearly five hours, with Ernst, a retired Army officer, and Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, rotating to bring forward the bulk of 61 officers presented by name. They called out Tuberville for saying previously that he would relent on nominations that were brought forward for votes individually.
“Xi Jinping is loving this. So is Putin,” Sullivan said at one point, referring to top leaders in China and Russia. “How dumb can we be, man?”
Rhetorical question. Real dumb. Hey, they wrote the book on delay. They’re not victims, they’re just feeling what it’s like to be on the other side.
Robert Neuwirth, a journalist and author, watched from behind a police barricade as hundreds of American Jews staged a sit-in demonstration inside New York’s Grand Central Terminal on Friday night. He was coming to terms with a bloody military operation in the Gaza Strip that the state of Israel claims it is carrying out on behalf of Jews worldwide.
“I spent the bulk of my life trying to avoid this,” Neuwirth said, referring to the public show of dissent against Israel’s military action in the Strip, which Palestinian officials say has now claimed 8,796 lives.
“I didn’t want my life defined by the atrocities that Israel committed. So I just stayed quiet. Now, I can no longer stay quiet.”
A few feet away, Lane Stein choked back tears as he denounced “by-the-book ethnic cleansing” in Gaza. Stein, whose sister lives in Israel, said his family doesn’t speak to him about what’s happening. “They know my stance on the issue.”
But as many Jews rally behind the Israeli government’s military response, a vocal and growing minority is speaking out — often in conflict with their close friends and family. They’re campaigning for a cease-fire and diplomatic efforts to save the lives of hostages currently held in Gaza, as well as the more than 2 million innocent civilians in the tiny territory.
Inside Grand Central, as protesters chanted “cease-fire now,” Helen Schiff — a Jewish veteran of the movement for Palestinians’ rights, who was part of a 2009 Code Pink delegation to Gaza ― said the demonstration was one sign of a historic shift among American Jews.
“I hope that it’s going to result in something changing,” Schiff said. “But it’s going to be a long haul.”
You can be a proud Jew and still oppose the wanton overkill in Israel’s response, and oppose AIPAC’s deadly influence on Congress. I stand with them.
Shawn Fain And The UAW Win Huge Victory. All while demonstrating what is possible:
The union was not only trying to win a record contract for members, but also signal to workers throughout the country that there is still strength in numbers and claims that labor’s best days will forever be behind it are a myth. The strike sent a message that the working class can still organize itself and demand—not plead for—what it deserves. That could be seen in how UAW President Shawn Fain treated the billionaires and CEOs atop our economy with unrelenting disdain as he refused to shake their hands, lambasted their greed with scripture, and mocked them with memes. In the end, Fain and his members won.
The strike came as the United States transitions to a new green economy that risks undermining protections for unionized workers. Fain made clear that does not have to happen, stressing that “corporate America is not going to force us to choose between good jobs and green jobs.” He has now backed that up by securing major concessions that would allow workers at Big Three battery plants to come under the UAW’s national agreements.
I saw Michael Moore on TV last night, and he was thrilled. This could herald generational change. Who’s next?
Why Not Start With Amazon And Walmart?:
The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has called on the CEOs of Amazon, Walmart and DoorDash and the US government to address allegations that top US corporations pay such low wages that they trap workers in poverty, forcing them to rely on government-assistance programs to survive.
Olivier De Schutter has written to the three major US corporations and the US government, requesting responses to numerous allegations. They include a 2020 US Government Accountability Office report that found Amazon and Walmart were listed among the top 25 employers with workers relying on the supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap), formerly known as food stamps, or Medicaid in nine states studied, with Walmart ranked first and Amazon ranked sixth.
It is utterly indefensible that Delaware funnels taxpayer money to firms that exploit workers like this. Will our next Governor reverse this trend? I want answers.
Does Unethical Behavior Run In This Family? I’m thinking ‘yes’:
Wilmington City Council member Zanthia Oliver is once again the subject of an ethics violation, this time claiming the elected official improperly cashed city checks meant to cover the costs of community events hosted last year.
An ethics complaint submitted against Oliver on Sept. 11 claims that the councilmember deposited a $610 check into her personal account meant to pay for a July community event at Brown/Burton/Winchester Park and did not disclose her affiliation with the Eastside Civic Association in the city’s required annual financial disclosures.
“I would never jeopardize the job I love for $610,” Oliver said of the latest ethics complaint. (Editor’s Note: Yes she would.)
The complaint is the second ethics investigation that Oliver has been involved in this year. She was given a “public reprimand” by the Wilmington Ethics Commission in April for her 2020 vote supporting a $200,000 grant for her brother Norman Oliver’s nonprofit, Our Youth, Inc.
This family has existed on hoovering up public funds for decades. They will continue to do so as long as those who make the payoffs allow it.
What do you want to talk about?