August 13, 2024 ❧ Extreme heat kills 47,000, “No Tax on Tips,” and Greg Abbott’s horrible new hospital policy

Plus: Ukraine enters Russia, J.D. Vance does drag, and you can now buy "Seagull Insurance"

This is your brain on news

CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)

❧ Kamala Harris has adopted Donald Trump’s promise to do away with taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers. Trump has been relentlessly chanting the phrase “No tax on tips!” as a selling point for his 2024 campaign, and it’s understandable that Democrats would be skittish about losing support among the nation’s many waiters, bartenders, and hairdressers.

But any economic proposal from team Trump should always be given the side-eye. He is quite good at trumpeting economic policies that sound pro-worker but end up primarily benefiting businesses. While this isn’t as bad as his “all-tariff” tax policy, which would essentially shift most of the nation’s tax burden onto the lowest earners, it’s still not good. For Popular Information, Judd Legum points out a number of problems with it:

First, many people who rely on tips earn so little money that they already pay no federal income taxes. For example, half of all servers earn $32,000 or less. A server with a family who earns $32,000 does not owe any federal income tax and, therefore, would not benefit at all from Trump's proposal. 

The bigger issue is that the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 an hour. The tipped minimum wage has not increased since 1991. Combined with tips, these workers are supposed to earn a minimum of $7.25 an hour. That is not close to a living wage in the United States in 2024… 

For most servers—excluding the roughly 10 percent who make greater than $60,000—the benefits of this policy will be negligible or non-existent. Legum also points out that it does nothing to help restaurant workers like hosts, cooks, and dishwashers, who are paid hourly wages and don’t get tips.

When these two agree on something, it's time to start asking questions. 

But there is also a reason why industry lobbying groups like the National Restaurant Association are in favor of this policy. Legum continues:

The hotel and restaurant industry has been desperate to halt the momentum of state initiatives to raise the minimum wage…Eliminating taxation on tips could sap support from efforts both to eliminate the tipped minimum wage and raise the minimum wage overall… 

That's why the Restaurant Workers United (RWU), a labor union that represents many of the industry's workers, opposes Trump's plan. "The call to end taxes on tips is just a misguided way of trying to fix a problem of uplifting the lower class," Elyanna Calle, a bartender and RWU organizer in Austin, said. Saru Jayaraman, president of the labor advocacy group One Fair Wage, calls Trump's proposal "not just the wrong solution, but a fake solution."

Unlike Trump, Harris has also promised that alongside this proposal, she will seek to raise the minimum wage for hourly workers. (She hasn’t clarified by how much, which is kind of important). But Democrats also promised to raise the minimum wage in 2020, only to end up dithering on it over the past four years, infamously letting the so-called “Senate parliamentarian” descend from the clouds to strike the policy down out of nowhere. If the no-tax-on-tips policy were implemented alongside a minimum wage increase, which would actually boost take-home pay for tens of millions of workers, it would not be particularly objectionable and would give a sliver of service workers an additional boost. But it is no substitute for raising the minimum wage, and we should be wary that Harris may be attempting to use it as a consolation prize in place of something more broadly beneficial.

In other news…

• Harris is also attempting to copy Trump by promising to get “tough” on the border and hire more agents. In fact, where she once called out Trump for his cruelty to migrants, she is now criticizing him for not being harsh enough, saying that he “talks a big game about border security. But he does not walk the walk.” (Washington Post)
  
  
• The much-hyped interview between Trump and Elon Musk didn’t go very well. Hosted on Twitter/X, the stream started 45 minutes late, and many people weren’t able to view it at all. Musk has blamed hackers, but it’s possible that the world’s (sometimes) richest man just can’t run a basic livestream. (Politico)

To be fair to Elon, broadcasting audio is hard. The technology has only existed for 100 years or so. (Screenshot: SEGA L'éveilleur via Twitter)

• Trump also praised Musk for firing employees when they went on strike: “‘I love it,’ he said, ‘You're the greatest ... I mean, I look at what you do. You just walk in and you just say, 'You wanna quit?' They go on strike, I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, 'That's OK, you're all gone... Every one of you is gone.’” The United Autoworkers have already filed a lawsuit with the National Labor Relations Board accusing both Trump and Musk of “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers.” (Axios)
  
  
• Photos have been unearthed of what appears to be vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance—who now constantly bashes the LGBTQ community—dressed in drag while at Yale Law school. A spokesman for Vance has not denied the authenticity of the photos, which were reportedly taken by a classmate in 2012. Honestly, Vance looks a lot more free in these pictures than he has ever looked during his political career. (Daily Beast)

Apparently J.D. stands for “Joyful Diva.” (Photo: The Daily Beast)

• Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) faces a Democratic primary challenger today in city councilman Don Samuels, whom she narrowly defeated in 2022. Surprisingly, AIPAC, which poured more than $25 million into ousting fellow Squad members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, has not directly gotten involved in this race. But other pro-Israel donors and groups, including one called “Zionists for Don Samuels,” have been heavily involved in raising funds and their candidate has been almost solely focused on attacking Omar for her opposition to the war in Gaza. Omar appears likely to stave off the challenge according to polls, but stay tuned. (The Intercept)
  
  
• LONG READ: The New Republic’s Timothy Noah has a critique of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s new book, in which Gorsuch “rails against the regulatory state and explains why judges should have its power instead.”

AROUND THE STATES

❧ Texas hospitals will be required to collect data on their patients’ citizenship status. It’s the latest anti-immigrant policy from Governor Greg Abbott, who issued an executive order last Thursday. Under the new policy, hospitals will have to “collect information… regarding patients who are not lawfully present within the United States, including the number of inpatient discharges and emergency visits by and the cost of the care provided to such patients.” Starting on November 1, this data will have to be reported directly to both the state’s Health and Human Services Commission and the governor himself. 

This is being sold as a cost-cutting effort, with Abbott arguing that “Texans should not have to shoulder the burden of financially supporting medical care for illegal immigrants.” But it’s fairly obvious that it has other, more sinister purposes too. In the first place, getting all this data about sick and injured immigrants will only help Abbott and Texas law enforcement conduct more raids and deportations against them, potentially taking undocumented people into custody as soon as they leave the hospital. Beyond that, advocates are warning that the policy will “intimidate the community, our immigrant community, from trying to get the help that they need,” as people may avoid getting necessary medical treatment if they fear being deported as a result. 

We already know that Governor Abbott doesn’t care whether immigrants live or die; his use of floating saw blades as a barrier in the Rio Grande shows that. But doctors, hospital aides, and other medical professionals have a responsibility to their patients, regardless of whether those patients have their immigration paperwork in order. This policy is obviously xenophobic and inhumane, and it has to be resisted. Healthcare workers—especially unionized ones, who have some leverage—should simply refuse to comply, and prepare to fight Abbott and his agenda every step of the way. 

Abbott seems to spend 90 percent of his waking hours devising new ways to be cruel to immigrants. The other 10 percent are spent opening Buc-ees’ gas stations.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In other news...

• Also in Texas, Ryan Kindell—the Texas Ranger who was suspended for his “inaction” during the Uvalde school shooting, where police waited 77 minutes before entering a classroom to stop the violence—has gotten his job back. He’s received an annual salary of roughly $100,000 while on suspension, which isn’t bad money for doing literally nothing. (Texas Tribune)
  
  
• Espanola, New Mexico is the latest U.S. city to launch a crackdown against the homeless since the Supreme Court ruled they could be banned from sleeping outside, with a police “sweep” removing 24 people from an encampment last week. (KOAT)
  
  
• California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has also been harassing the homeless, threatening to withhold state funding from any city that doesn’t crack down on encampments and even showing up to conduct raids himself. That’s depraved even by politicians’ usual standards. (Cal Matters)

Newsom (estimated net worth: $20 million) destroys someone’s makeshift sleeping area. 

(Image: California Governor’s Office)

• The Republican-controlled election board in Georgia has passed a series of new rules for November, including allowing individual counties to delay reporting results, more access to the vote-counting process for partisan poll observers, video surveillance around ballot drop boxes, and “Citizens Only” signs at polling places. (CNN)
  
  
• According to data from the Department of Labor, Maryland ranks worst in the country for wage theft, with at least 12,639 violations and $4,486,871 unfairly withheld from workers since 2021. (Fox 5 D.C.)
  
  
• Google has just been ruled an illegal monopoly by a federal judge. For the Lever, Matt Stoller explains how the ruling was reached, what it means, and what “life after the Google-opoly” could look like.

• The government of Florida is now requiring the state’s 12 public universities to vet books used in course syllabi for “anti-Israel” bias. “You could say the effort smacks of Orwell — if anyone in charge actually knew who Orwell was,” writes University of Houston professor Robert Zaretsky, in the Forward.
  
  
• South Dakota’s congressional race is centering on an unlikely issue: pesticide control. According to the South Dakota Searchlight: 

Rep. Johnson worked with biotech giant Bayer to insert a provision into a draft of the federal farm bill. According to legal and environmental experts interviewed by the Post, the provision could help shield Bayer from lawsuits alleging that frequent use of its Roundup herbicide causes cancer.

• This week in Stories that Could Only Happen in Pennsylvania: At a Duncansville mini golf course, a live groundhog was found nestled among the stuffed animals inside the claw machine. The critter was reportedly “unharmed” and the course plans to make it their official mascot. They are currently polling the public for a name. (Fox 43)

Soon to be the third most famous groundhog in Pennsylvania 

(Photo: Pennsylvania Game Commission- Southcentral Region)

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OF THE WEEK

What could they possibly mean by this?

Is it a euphemism? If you know, write in. 

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ Extreme heat caused 47,000 deaths in Europe in 2023, according to a new report from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. Last year was the hottest on record worldwide and the second hottest in Europe. Despite this, heat-related mortality was actually lower than the previous year—when 60,000 people died across the continent—in large part due to more active measures to protect people, including more widespread air conditioning and more public reminders for people to stay inside and stay hydrated. The study also estimates that twice as many people would have died had these temperatures struck at the beginning of the 21st century. 

Of course, this isn’t something we should treat as a triumph of human innovation. For one thing, 47,000 deaths due to heat is still obscene. It’s the equivalent of everyone at Yankee Stadium suddenly dropping dead of heat stroke one day. And while air conditioning is certainly necessary to cope with oppressive heat in the short term, as long as it runs on fossil fuels, it’s also going to keep making the climate crisis worse, so it’s not a long term solution. 

As long as the global temperature keeps increasing, we are on track for vast swathes of the Earth to become uninhabitable for weeks or months at a time. Last year, a group of researchers at Penn State found that by mid-century, some heavily populated places—like Lahore, Pakistan and Al Hudaydah, Yemen—could soon experience multiple months out of the year where temperatures are hot enough to trigger widespread illness and death even among young, healthy people. Many other major cities, including Delhi, Hanoi, and Dubai face risk of unlivable temperatures for weeks.

Obviously, we as a species should make efforts to adapt to climate change and Europe has shown that mitigation efforts can work. But as climate scientist Jordan Clark told the New York Times, “We’re quickly approaching the limits to what the human body can withstand. We can’t adapt forever.” To really solve the problem, and not just slap a Band-aid over it, fossil fuel production will need to come to an end. 

Infographic: PreventionWeb

In other news...

• Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have moved into the Russian territory of Kursk over the past week in a surprise incursion that appears to have caught both Russia and the West off guard. Ukraine claims to have captured more than 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory (a number Russia disputes), which it hopes will grant it more leverage at peace negotiations. More than 121,000 people have been forced to flee Kursk and other border regions, meanwhile Putin has threatened that “The enemy will certainly get the response he deserves,” which suggests a frightening escalation. (New York Times)
  
  
• The Biden administration has released another $3.5 billion worth of military aid to Israel, even as news continues to pile up about new human rights abuses and atrocities every day. The very next day, Israel bombed a school that was sheltering displaced people, killing at least 100 people including many women and children. The White House said it was “deeply concerned” about the atrocity, which is the same thing they’ve said about approximately the last 100 atrocities just like it. (Al Jazeera)
  
  
• Dozens of Rohingya refugees fleeing persecution in Myanmar were killed in a drone strike while trying to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. Both sides in Myanmar’s current civil war—the military government and the ethnonationalist Arakan Army rebels—have accused one another of perpetrating the attack, which is believed to have killed anywhere from 70 to 200 civilians. It’s possible that either side is to blame, since both have committed atrocities against the Rohingya. (Reuters)

PAST AFFAIRS

For more on the plight of the Rohingya, read William Bruno’s piece from July about why “The Rohingya Need International Solidarity”:

“The current civil war in Myanmar is a struggle between a military dictatorship and a complex, multiethnic resistance, the outcome of which has profound implications for the Rohingya’s future. Unfortunately, the world has paid relatively little attention to the war or the Rohingya…

Despite the lackluster media attention, this is an issue of significance for the international left, which should mobilize in solidarity with the Rohingya in the same way it has done for the Palestinian freedom movement, which has seen the coalescing of disparate movements for a unified cause.”

• The government of Tanzania has arrested more than 500 supporters of the opposition Chadema party, including its leader Tundu Lissu, in an attempt to prevent mass protests like the ones that have shaken up Kenya and Nigeria in recent months. (Al Jazeera)
  
  
• Peru has passed a law barring any further prosecutions for crimes against humanity committed before 2002. The move essentially gives amnesty to ex-president Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted in 2009 of ordering murders and kidnappings and stands accused of a wide variety of other human rights abuses, including forced mass sterilizations. The United Nations has condemned the new policy. (Associated Press)
  
  
• In Belgrade, Serbia, tens of thousands of environmental protestors have rallied against a proposed lithium mining project, blocking railway stations and even a major highway. At least 14 have been arrested so far, and President Aleksandar Vučić has accused them—without evidence—of being involved with a “Western” plot against Serbia. (NBC)
  
  
• A group of British fox hunters has launched an effort to become classified as a “protected ethnic minority” under the United Kingdom’s 2010 Equality Act. The act was meant to prevent people from being fired from their jobs on the basis of characteristics like race, religion, disability, or gender. But the fox hunters alleged that because they have also been fired from jobs for participating in their favorite sport (which is illegal in most of the U.K.), they, too, are victims of discrimination. As Britain sees one of the worst outbreaks of racist violence in decades, it’s time we think about the real victims of discrimination: guys who wear silly hats and hunt cute animals for sport. (The Guardian)

Britain’s most persecuted minority marches for civil rights.

 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

BIRD FACT OF THE WEEK 

In Scotland, you can buy “seagull insurance” for your sandwich!

This unique financial product is available, as far as we can tell, in exactly one place on Earth: the Cheesy Toast Shack in St. Andrews, a seaside town north of Edinburgh. Many of the Google reviews for the Shack mention marauding gulls, with one tourist warning: “Be prepared though, the seagulls know this place exists and will use force to get your food!” Kate Carter-Larg, one of the restaurant's owners, describes the birds as “super aggressive and actually terrifying.” So the cheesemongers have come up with a unique solution: for £1 sterling, you can get “seagull insurance” with your meal, and claim a free replacement sandwich if your first one happens to be snatched from above. 

The seagulls of the British Isles are powerful and voracious birds. In the past, they’ve been known to eat entire squirrels and even carry away small dogs. So this precaution makes sense, and it’s a lot more humane than other proposals for dealing with the gulls, like bringing in hawks to hunt them or even killing them directly, as has been proposed in Ireland. If all conflicts between humans and animals were handled like this, the world might be a lot better off. 

Time to file a claim. (Image: Peter Gerard via YouTube)