CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)
❧ This week, Tim Walz called for an end to the Electoral College. The Harris campaign immediately reeled him in. At an event for donors at the home of California Governor Gavin Newsom, Walz told attendees, “I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a, we need a national popular vote.” Walz is, of course, absolutely right. As Alex Skopic wrote earlier this year for Current Affairs, the “winner-take-all” system for electing the president is “unfair and anti-democratic”:
Presidential campaigns overwhelmingly focus on “swing” states and ignore states where they’re unlikely to gain any electors. According to one analysis, an astonishing94 percentof the campaign events in the 2016 race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were held in just 12 “battleground” states, while voters in states like Oregon and West Virginia never got a visit from either candidate…Unless you live in a swing state, it’s unlikely that your concerns and wishes will be listened to.
Beyond this, the Electoral College violates the most basic principle of a democracy: that everyone’s vote should be equal. Because electors are assigned partly by how many Senators each state has, and every state gets two Senators regardless of its population, there’s an inherent inequality baked into the system. It’s a truism in politics that “land doesn’t vote, people do,” but under the Electoral College that’s not really true. States that consist mostly of empty land, like Montana and the Dakotas, have the value of their votes artificially inflated because they have two Senators, while states with a high population have their votes artificially devalued…
He looks upset about it! (Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
Not only is Walz correct, but his position is popular. According to a Pew Research survey from two weeks ago, 63 percent of Americans say they’d prefer to choose the president via a national popular vote, while just 35 percent want to keep the Electoral College. Even nearly half of Republican voters (whose candidates have only won the popular vote once in the 21st century) say that a national popular vote would be preferable.
And yet, after Walz’s comments hit the news, the Harris campaign sprung into action to dispel the notion that he would ever support anything progressive or popular. When ABC News asked whether Vice President Harris agreed with her running mate, a campaign official replied “Getting rid of the Electoral College is not a campaign position.” Walz then appeared to back off the idea in an interview on Good Morning America, saying that “[M]y position is the campaign's position.” Of course, as with many of Harris’s “positions,” she believed something completely different in 2019 when she said she was “open to the discussion” about abolishing the Electoral College.
This is just the latest progressive policy Harris has abandoned in an effort to tack to the center. It was bad enough when she abruptly changed her positions on fracking, Medicare for All, and a federal jobs guarantee. But getting rid of the Electoral College is something that Democrats of all stripes have gotten behind—evidenced by the fact that nearly every state with a Democratic governor has signed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which end-runs the Electoral College by pledging to hand states’ electors over to whichever candidate wins the most votes nationwide. Moreover, switching to the popular vote is a position that more than 8 in 10 Democratic voters support.
When Walz—an uncommonly effective governor with a raft of progressive accomplishments—was selected in August, we viewed it as an “encouraging sign” that Harris was willing to buck her party’s conventional wisdom. Nathan J. Robinson wrote:
The choice of Walz defies what I think of as the “simple-minded liberal view of American politics,” which is: to win over the maximum number of people, you “run to the center,” because if you are “too far to the left” you alienate people.
But since then, Harris has gone so far in the other direction that one wonders why she even bothered to pick Walz in the first place.
In yet another example of Harris’ utterly daft political instincts, when asked whether she’d have done anything different from Biden during his presidency, she replied that “There is not a thing that comes to mind… and I’ve been part of most of the decisions that have had impact.” Leave aside that many of the things Biden has done are atrocious—like his handling of the Middle East, his expansion of oil drilling, and his adoption of Trumpist immigration policy—he has also had a sub-40 percent approval rating for most of this year! (Washington Post)
There are also some new polls from Quinnipiac that paint a frightening picture for the Harris campaign. They show that she is now losing to Donald Trump in the crucial swing states of Michigan (Trump +3) and Wisconsin (Trump +2). She has very few paths to the presidency that do not involve winning one or both of these states. If only there were a policy stance she could take that might win her back some of the support she’s lost. (Common Dreams)
At a recent Trump rally in Detroit, a group of people wearing “Auto Workers for Trump” shirts made a prominent appearance in the crowd. But, when they were asked by reporters from the Detroit News, six of them admitted they weren’t actually auto workers. Sad to see, folks! (Newsweek)
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The wind, the wind, it sounds so wonderful. The wind, the wind, the wind is, the wind is bullshit, I’ll tell you.”
Kamala Harris’ billionaire donors, particularly Mark Cuban, have been suggesting she should fire the trust-busting Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has been largely obsequious to the Harris campaign, showed a rare bit of backbone in response, saying “Let me make this clear, since billionaires have been trying to play footsie with the ticket. Anyone goes near Lina Khan and there will be an out and out brawl. And that is a promise.” (Business Insider)
Remember in 2018, when three women accused now-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault? For a brief moment, as Senate Republicans sought an excuse to ram through the confirmation of this drunken boor, the supposedly independent FBI conducted an “investigation” into his conduct, which senators used to dismiss the allegations. But according to a new report issued by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Trump White House “exerted total control over the scope of the investigation, preventing the FBI from interviewing relevant witnesses and following up on tips. The White House refused to authorize basic investigatory steps that might have uncovered information corroborating the allegations.” (The Guardian)
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Factory workers around the United States are dying because their bosses don’t shut off machinery properly. As a new report from the Wall Street Journal points out, U.S. safety regulations say heavy machinery is supposed to be controlled using “lockout/tagout” mechanisms. “Lockouts” are exactly what they sound like—literal locks placed over the power source or switch for a machine, so only the person cleaning or maintaining it can turn it back on, and only when they’re safely out of the way. “Tagouts,” meanwhile, are big warning tags that tell everyone to leave a machine alone. Together, they look like this:
But according to Wall Street Journal reporter John Keilman, U.S. employers have been cutting corners and ignoring the rules, and their employees have paid with their lives. Keilman tells the story of Wayne Rothering, a line worker at an Ashley Furniture factory who was “a few months away from retirement” when disaster struck:
In December 2020, he stopped the conveyor and stepped inside the line to fix a torn roll of laminating paper. Behind him, powered rollers that fed 5-foot-by-6-foot slabs of fiberboard into the system continued to spin. As Rothering worked, the rollers caught hold of a board on the conveyor and propelled it into his back. The 65-year-old was crushed to death.
If there had been a lockout/tagout mechanism in place, the way it’s supposed to be, this fatal accident would have been impossible. Keilman also points out the cases of Percy Bolaños Cuellar, who was killed as he made adjustments to a die-cast machine that hadn’t been powered down, and of Dakota Locklear, who died when he was caught in a conveyor belt at an Edwards Wood Products plant. These are only a few examples: according toOSHA statistics cited in Keilman’s report, around 85 people die on the job every year and 364 have limbs amputated, with lockout/tagout issues being the most common form of safety violation in manufacturing.
The circumstances vary across cases, but workplace safety is always the responsibility of the employer, and when workers die it’s the bosses who should be held accountable. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, former OSHA official Richard Fairfax says that workers often “get pressure from supervisors or foremen to keep productivity moving,” ignoring safety precautions in the process. In order to “minimize downtime” (and thus maximize profit), factory owners literally sacrifice their workers’ safety:
“Is it better just to shut the whole machine down and lose 15 minutes of production to make sure everyone will be safe?” said Minneapolis attorney Jerry Alcazar. “To me, the lawyer, I always say yes. To the manufacturer, it’s a different calculus.”
This is the kind of thing workers had to deal with in the 19th century, when it was commonplace to lose a thumb or a leg between the cogs of some steam-powered machine. Back then, it was the great trade unions—the Industrial Workers of the World, the Knights of Labor, and many others—who fought to bring those deadly conditions to an end. Today, the old fight is flaring up again. To truly be safe in their workplaces, people have to control those workplaces themselves, and only the union movement can do the job.
In other news…
In Alabama, civil rights attorneys are calling for a federal investigation into the “suspicious” death of Dennoriss Richardson. Richardson, a Black man, was found “hanging from a rope” at an abandoned house in Colbert County on September 28, and the local sheriff’s office ruled it a suicide—but his relatives don’t believe it was, and point to the fact that Richardson had sued the police for brutality in February. This is a developing story, so stay tuned. (AL.com)
The Internet Archive and Wayback Machine have been hacked and are temporarily offline. In a massive data breach, hackers stole and leaked the username and password information of 31 million users. According to Archive founder Brewster Kahle, the website’s data—which includes millions of free books and online articles thankfully “has not been corrupted” and they are “working to restore services.” In the meantime, if you were a user of the site, you may want to start changing your passwords. (The Verge)
In another worrying development for online repositories of culture, the archives of the hip-hop website DatPiff—home of an estimated 600,000 mixtapes—have disappeared without explanation, as have all of its 366,420 files on the Internet Archive. (Audacy)
So this is how people felt when the Library of Alexandria burned.
As Hurricane Milton causes billions of dollars worth of damage in Florida, many victims may find that they are being stiffed by insurance companies. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Property insurers in recent years have hollowed out coverage and sharply increased rates to make up for steep underwriting losses driven by natural disasters.
“Insurers have become significantly tougher on hurricane claims,” said Rick Tutwiler, a claims adjuster for property owners based in Tampa, Fla. “We’ve moved to an era dominated by exclusions, diminishing coverages, and even harsher policy terms.”
As Florida weighs a ballot measure that could protect abortion rights, Governor Ron DeSantis has threatened to criminally prosecute TV stations for running an ad critical of his abortion policy. The ad features a mother, Caroline, who had to obtain an abortion 18 weeks into her second pregnancy (after Florida’s current six-week limit) in order to receive chemotherapy and radiation for her terminal brain cancer and claims she would have been unable to get treatment if her diagnosis came after DeSantis’ ban went into effect. (Rolling Stone)
In Las Vegas, the iconic Chippendales male dancers are unionizing with Actors Equity. As Kim Kelly puts it for In These Times, it's just more proof that “unions are hot.”
These guys might be stripped of their shirts, but never of their rights as workers.
❧ Saudi Arabia narrowly lost its campaign to join the United Nations Human Rights Council. On Wednesday, the 193-member UN General Assembly met in New York to vote on new members for the Council, and Saudi Arabia’s bid was by far the most controversial. It’s the second time the Gulf monarchy has tried to join in recent years, after receiving only 90 votes and being rejected in 2020. The voting process is divided by region, and in 2020 Saudi Arabia fell behind peers like Pakistan (169 votes,) Uzbekistan (164), Nepal (150), and China (139) for the four seats available in the Asia-Pacific region—which tends to be the most hotly contested. This year, the result was largely the same, with Saudi Arabia coming in sixth place for five available seats. But they improved their standing significantly, winning 117 votes this time around.
The idea that Saudi Arabia could be considered an international leader in human rights is absolutely ludicrous, and it’s quite right that they were rejected at the UN. Still, it’s worrying that they got any votes—and even worse, they were successful in getting Abdulaziz Alwasil, the Saudi ambassador to the UN, elected as chair of the Commission on the Status of Women in March. (The idea that the Saudi candidate for the role should be, you know, a woman doesn’t seem to have occurred to them.) All of this shows that the propaganda efforts of Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman, who’s spent the last few years trying to rebrand his country from “horrible oil-based theocracy” to “luxury vacation spot,” are starting to show fruit.
The phrase “fox guarding the henhouse” comes to mind. (Image: UN Watch)
Of course, Bin Salman has been aided and abetted by the United States. During his 2020 campaign for president, Joe Biden said Saudi Arabia should be a “pariah” internationally, and he was right—but when he actually got into office, he reversed course, flying to Jeddah to give Bin Salman a big ol’ fist bump in 2022. It’s a perfect object lesson in how terms like “dictator” and “war criminal,” both of which apply perfectly well to Bin Salman, are selectively used—or not used—when it’s convenient, and how U.S. leaders don’t actually care about human rights the way they claim to. Tellingly, the U.S. itself did not run for another term on the UN Human Rights Council this year, likely over its support for Israeli war crimes in Gaza. That, too, is appropriate. Neither it nor Saudi Arabia have any business telling other countries how to act, until they make major reforms themselves.
In other news…
After making the ridiculous assertion that he plans a “limited, localized, targeted” operation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to turn Lebanon into a smoldering pile of rubble just as he’s done to Gaza. On Tuesday, he urged the people of Lebanon to rise up to defeat the militant group Hezbollah. “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza. It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. This essentially amounts to telling the people of Lebanon that they must fight a civil war within their own country or be collectively punished for refusing to do so. (NBC News)
According to Netanyahu, Lebanon must choose between horrific
destruction and… horrific destruction.
Top: The Lebanese Civil War, 1975 (Photo: Libna News)
Bottom: The bombing of Gaza, 2024 (Photo: United Nations)
POEM OF THE WEEK
For Zeteo, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha has written an exclusive poem
marking one year of Israel’s war on Gaza. Here’s a brief excerpt:
In Canada, the names of 330 people “affiliated in some capacity to fascist and Nazi organizations” have been included on a new “victims of communism” memorial. Apparently the Department of Canadian Heritage learned nothing from the Yaroslav Hunka incident last year. (Ottawa Citizen)
We regret to inform you that the British are at it again.
The disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir has held their first legislative elections since being stripped of autonomy by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi five years ago. In a rebuke to Modi, voters awarded a majority of 48 seats to the pro-autonomy Jammu and Kashmir National Conference and its allies, while the ruling BJP received only 29. (Al Jazeera)
Kenya, Zimbabwe, and the Gambia are on the verge of eliminating the death penalty, which would bring the total of nations in sub-Saharan Africa who’ve done so to 27—and make all three significantly more advanced than the United States in this area. (Amnesty International)
RACCOON FACT OF THE WEEK
If you feed the raccoons, you may soon have
a raccoon convention in your yard.
That’s what a woman near Poulsbo, Washington found out recently, when she found she had so many raccoons in her yard that she could not enter her own home. The woman told police that she’d been feeding the raccoons for more than three decades without issue. But around six weeks ago, the population “exploded.”
“Somehow the word got out in raccoon land and they all showed up to her house expecting a meal," said a spokesman for the sheriff’s department. The deputies who’d been called to deal with the masked intruders “had never seen that many raccoons in one place. Nobody ever remembers being surrounded by a swarm of raccoons. This was a first.”
It may indeed be a first for this sheriff’s department in rural Washington, but if you search about online, hordes of raccoons gathering in one place are hardly unusual. See, for instance, the exploits of one James Blackwood, who nicknames himself the “Raccoon Whisperer” on YouTube. The retired Nova Scotia police officer has been uploading videos of himself feeding raccoons since 2007 and has amassed more than 650,000 subscribers. In one delightful 2020 video, Blackwood is shown reclining on a bench like some woodland Santa Claus, dispersing hot dogs to more than a dozen of the rotund rascals who gather at his knees. (He has dozens of videos just like it where his “Raccoon Diner” serves a variety of treats from whipped cream to grapes.)
This is the kind of content YouTube was made for.
But raccoons are not only interested in serving their base needs. They crave culture. Another video from Brasher State Forest in New York shows more than 20 raccoons emerging from the dense forest to listen to a man playing the flute:
Burrowing Man Music Festival, 2018
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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