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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
dec 5, 2022
Real News Today
*Media: Quit coddling the toxic GOP
Worthless Media
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
The Danger of the Rich & Powerful Man-BubbleAll these rich and powerful men think they’re “secret geniuses”; once they’ve concluded the “truth” of their own infallibility, they stop listening to those whose opinions contradict their own
Thom Hartmann
comment/tweet of the day
stupid attracts stupid
NanceGreggs @ du
And the answer is ...
For the past six years, decent people have asked the obvious question: How low is the GOP willing to sink in order to protect, defend, cover for, and bow down to kiss the ass of Donald Trump?
His law-breaking, his abuse of power, his pathological lying, his theft, his blatant racism, and his embarrassing stupidity weren't enough to get them off their knees.
His spewing of misinformation during COVID, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, didn't phase them. His incitement of violence, which culminated in his attempt to overthrow our democracy via armed insurrectionists, didn't remove a single pair of Republican lips from the Great Orange Taint.
And now we have the ultimate answer from the sycophantic ass-kissers across the aisle: Trump declaring that the US Constitution should be discarded is STILL NOT ENOUGH to move a single GOPer to stop crawling on their knees and demonstrate that they still have a somewhat functioning spine.
And so we move on to our next question: Is there anything more pathetic than a flaccid-dicked Republican who thinks that licking Trump's asshole is a path to political power?
Apparently, there are those who still believe it is. I don't hold out much hope for any of them.
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Donald Trump Calls for the ‘Termination’ of the United States Constitution Over 2020 Loss
Brandon Gage | the smirking chimp
December 4, 2022 - 8:45am
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday morning raged on his anti-Twitter app Truth Social about non-existent "fraud and deception" in the November 8th midterm elections – and he proposed scrapping the United States Constitution as a means to reinstall himself into the presidency. Trump also called for a do-over of the race that he lost in a landslide to President Joe Biden.
"So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution," Trump "truthed."
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in either the 2020 or 2022 elections, let alone that which was pervasive enough to affect the results.
"Our great 'Founders' did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!" Trump added. The authors of the Constitution – many of whom were traffickers of enslaved human beings – only wanted white male landowners to vote.
"So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution," Trump "truthed."
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in either the 2020 or 2022 elections, let alone that which was pervasive enough to affect the results.
"Our great 'Founders' did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!" Trump added. The authors of the Constitution – many of whom were traffickers of enslaved human beings – only wanted white male landowners to vote.
IN THE LAND OF STUPID!!!
Big Oil spent millions on both parties in California — to stop taxes on their profits from price-gouging
Matthew Chapman - raw story
December 05, 2022
On Monday, The Sacramento Bee reported on how political groups funded by oil companies spent millions in California to elect both Republicans and moderate Democrats — in large part, to head off threats the state would tax windfall profits after a year of accusations the companies are gouging consumers at the pump.
"The industry spent heavily on the primary and general elections to boost business-friendly Republicans and moderate Democrats," reported Lindsey Holden. "One oil-funded political action committee — The Coalition to Restore California’s Middle Class, Including Energy Companies who Produce Gas, Oil, Jobs and Pay Taxes — spent more than $8 million in 2022 backing candidates it thought might be helpful in fending off a possible windfall penalty. In addition to PAC spending, individual companies also gave directly to some candidates."
"There is no guarantee victorious candidates on the receiving end of the spending will ultimately do oil’s bidding," said the report. "PAC-funded television ads and mailers were typically organized through independent expenditures, meaning campaigns could neither accept nor reject the support. Early indications may emerge Monday as legislators gather for a special session, convened by Gov. Gavin Newsom to tackle alleged oil industry price gouging amid record earnings and high gas prices."
The candidates who won with support from these groups are state Senate candidate Angelique Ashby and state Assembly candidate Stephanie Nguyen, Sacramento-area Democrats who defeated more progressive Democratic opponents; Republican state Assembly candidate Juan Alanis in the Central Valley; Orange County Republican Janet Nguyen for state Senate; and Democratic Assembly candidate Juan Carrillo in Palmdale. Several other candidates they spent on lost, including moderate Democratic Assembly candidate Leticia Perez in Kern County; Republican Assemblywoman Suzette Valladares in Santa Clarita; and Matt Gunderson, a Republican state Senate candidate in San Diego.
Several factors have increased gas prices that were outside of oil companies' control, including the war in Ukraine. Additionally, California has for decades had more expensive fuel than the rest of the nation, due to the state's especially strict clean-burning standards, enacted in 1996 to improve air quality in Los Angeles, where the mountainous geography causes car exhaust to easily build up into toxic clouds of smog.
However, several politicians have pointed to oil companies' reported record-high profits as evidence that at least some of this year's huge spike in gas prices, at times over $6 a gallon throughout much of California, is a result of oil companies deliberately engineering a scarcity to improve their profit margins, at the expense of consumers and the wider economy. Lawmakers in Sacramento are set to debate a so-called "windfall tax" that could penalize oil companies above the normal corporate tax rate if their profits grow at an excessive rate, although the details of how it would work or be enforced are yet to be ironed out.
"The industry spent heavily on the primary and general elections to boost business-friendly Republicans and moderate Democrats," reported Lindsey Holden. "One oil-funded political action committee — The Coalition to Restore California’s Middle Class, Including Energy Companies who Produce Gas, Oil, Jobs and Pay Taxes — spent more than $8 million in 2022 backing candidates it thought might be helpful in fending off a possible windfall penalty. In addition to PAC spending, individual companies also gave directly to some candidates."
"There is no guarantee victorious candidates on the receiving end of the spending will ultimately do oil’s bidding," said the report. "PAC-funded television ads and mailers were typically organized through independent expenditures, meaning campaigns could neither accept nor reject the support. Early indications may emerge Monday as legislators gather for a special session, convened by Gov. Gavin Newsom to tackle alleged oil industry price gouging amid record earnings and high gas prices."
The candidates who won with support from these groups are state Senate candidate Angelique Ashby and state Assembly candidate Stephanie Nguyen, Sacramento-area Democrats who defeated more progressive Democratic opponents; Republican state Assembly candidate Juan Alanis in the Central Valley; Orange County Republican Janet Nguyen for state Senate; and Democratic Assembly candidate Juan Carrillo in Palmdale. Several other candidates they spent on lost, including moderate Democratic Assembly candidate Leticia Perez in Kern County; Republican Assemblywoman Suzette Valladares in Santa Clarita; and Matt Gunderson, a Republican state Senate candidate in San Diego.
Several factors have increased gas prices that were outside of oil companies' control, including the war in Ukraine. Additionally, California has for decades had more expensive fuel than the rest of the nation, due to the state's especially strict clean-burning standards, enacted in 1996 to improve air quality in Los Angeles, where the mountainous geography causes car exhaust to easily build up into toxic clouds of smog.
However, several politicians have pointed to oil companies' reported record-high profits as evidence that at least some of this year's huge spike in gas prices, at times over $6 a gallon throughout much of California, is a result of oil companies deliberately engineering a scarcity to improve their profit margins, at the expense of consumers and the wider economy. Lawmakers in Sacramento are set to debate a so-called "windfall tax" that could penalize oil companies above the normal corporate tax rate if their profits grow at an excessive rate, although the details of how it would work or be enforced are yet to be ironed out.
from under a rock
conservatives' bullshit!!!
THE DAILY TRASH REPORT featuring today's despicables
thomas jefferson called them "waste people" and benjamin franklin called them "rubbish" we call them "maga people"
you cannot measure stupidity!!
Georgia GOP candidate accused of voting illegally nine times while on probation for forgery and theft
Texas megachurch pastor returns to 'cheers and whistles' after quitting over 'inappropriate’ relationship
NC sheriff rules out right-wing activist as suspect in power outage after praying with her
Fox News Covers Up Trump Wanting To Terminate The Constitution
Trump will never "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." He disqualified himself from ever holding any office ever again.
'Traitor': Trumpers Attack Murkowski For Defending The Constitution
They really need to tone it down a notch.
Herschel Walker Believes He's Running For The HOUSE
Walker's lack of "fitness to hold office" continues to plague him.
Fox News Host Scolds 'Expert' Who Warns Of Twitter Brain Implants
Fox News host Arthel Neville disagreed with an "expert" who said that Elon Musk plans to use Twitter as the software for chips implanted in people's brains.
Dummy Marsha Blackburn Argues Against Military Vaccinations
Apparently, soldiers on ventilators will make us the best Army ever. The stupid, it hurts.
Atlanta schools under federal investigation for allegedly assigning Black kids to classrooms by race
Matthew Chapman - raw story
December 05, 2022
On Monday, Axios reported that federal investigators are looking into an allegation that Atlanta Public Schools are assigning Black kids to classrooms based on their race.
"According to a letter sent Nov. 14 to APS and shared with Axios, the complainant alleges that during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, a principal assigned Black children to second and third-grade classes by race," reported Kristal Dixon. "The AJC reports that a parent, who is Black, made the complaint against Mary Lin Elementary School in Candler Park. The complaint alleges that about 13 Black students were put into two classes, while white students were placed in any of the six second-grade classes, according to the AJC."
According to the report, a school administrator allegedly admitted to the complaining parent that Sharyn Briscoe, the principal at that school, "separated the students so they would not be the only Black children in their class."
"Atlanta Public Schools told Axios in a statement that it is following the federal complaint process," said the report. The district added in its statement, "Given that this matter is pending before a federal administrative agency for consideration, APS has no further comment."
While explicit decisions to group or separate children based on race are illegal, segregation persists in schools throughout the country, often because the neighborhoods the schools enroll children from are themselves segregated.
A series of court decisions over the years have gradually outlawed most of the Civil Rights Movement era methods schools have used to make sure every child had a fair process for school enrollment regardless of race.
"According to a letter sent Nov. 14 to APS and shared with Axios, the complainant alleges that during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, a principal assigned Black children to second and third-grade classes by race," reported Kristal Dixon. "The AJC reports that a parent, who is Black, made the complaint against Mary Lin Elementary School in Candler Park. The complaint alleges that about 13 Black students were put into two classes, while white students were placed in any of the six second-grade classes, according to the AJC."
According to the report, a school administrator allegedly admitted to the complaining parent that Sharyn Briscoe, the principal at that school, "separated the students so they would not be the only Black children in their class."
"Atlanta Public Schools told Axios in a statement that it is following the federal complaint process," said the report. The district added in its statement, "Given that this matter is pending before a federal administrative agency for consideration, APS has no further comment."
While explicit decisions to group or separate children based on race are illegal, segregation persists in schools throughout the country, often because the neighborhoods the schools enroll children from are themselves segregated.
A series of court decisions over the years have gradually outlawed most of the Civil Rights Movement era methods schools have used to make sure every child had a fair process for school enrollment regardless of race.
in the land of equality!!!
Native American Women Make 51 Cents for $1 Earned by Non-Latino White Men
BY Jasmine Mithani, The 19th
PUBLISHED November 30, 2022
Native American women make 51 cents for every dollar earned by non-Latino White men in 2021. It would take almost a full additional year to catch up on earnings, but their Equal Pay Day is being observed on November 30, the last day of Native American Heritage Month.
Historically, Native American women have never been adequately compensated for their labor due to the systemic effects of colonization, says a report published ahead of Wednesday’s observance by advocacy group National Women’s Law Center. This wage gap can lead to losses of over $1.1 million over a 40-year career compared with non-Latino White men.
Native women tend to have less job mobility and were among those hit hardest by pandemic losses, says Noreen Farrell, director of Equal Rights Advocates, the organization that leads the Equal Pay Day campaign. They were also slower to be rehired back at their old jobs and are disproportionately part-time workers, who are generally paid less than their full-time counterparts.
However, it’s unclear how accurate these pay statistics are, as Native Americans are undercounted in many Census surveys. One of the main issues is definitions, said Jeffrey Burnette, assistant professor in the department of anthropology and sociology at Rochester Institute of Technology. The American Community Survey, which Equal Rights Advocates uses for its pay day calculations, asks for tribal affiliation. That encompasses anyone who believes they have an Indigenous ancestor (which for many isn’t true) to enrolled citizens of sovereign nations.
Another issue stems from data collection. “One of the things that we know is that the American Community Survey struggles, much like the Census does, with getting good samples in rural areas and areas where people are in poverty, and for a number of historically marginalized groups,” Burnette said.
For Native women, lower economic security makes it difficult to risk unemployment when looking for a new job. It’s hard for Indigenous women to negotiate better benefits or pay — or even to report sexual harassment, Farrell said.
Farrell emphasizes that the wealth gap isn’t tied solely to differences in salaries. “We know that there’s historic barriers to economic opportunity for Native women, and they just get compounded when it comes to pay,” she said. “There’s a lack of affordable health care access, equity, reproductive health care access and a lack of food sovereignty for Native American women. And all of these things come in a perfect storm when there isn’t enough money in the paycheck.”
The wealth gap also stems from systemic colonialism. In 2015 the 1.89 billion acres that make up the United States, land formerly held by Native Americans, was estimated to be worth $23 trillion. Indigenous peoples were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and relocated to reservations in remote areas. While only 13 percent of Native Americans today live on reservations or tribal land trusts, 60 percent live in metropolitan areas — the smallest share of any racial minority. This often means they are farther from resources and opportunities.
Diana Bigby is the program manager for Native Women Launch, a program that seeks to provide education on business and personal finance to Indigenous women. She sees the legacy of colonialism as one of the unique challenges Native women face versus other racial groups. “I think institutionalized racism is a big part of our lives, whether we want to acknowledge that or not, because living on a reservation or trying to succeed off of a reservation is really hard for someone like me to do,” she said.
Child care is especially challenging to find in remote areas, Bigby said. She is Nakota and lives on the Fort Belknap reservation in northern Montana. The reservation has a population of 3,302, and 39.5 percent live under the poverty line, according to the 2020 American Community Survey. As a mother of five, she understands the struggle many women face when trying to balance caregiving responsibilities, a job and a side hustle.
As a part of Native Women Launch, Bigby works to support Native American women entrepreneurs. She said when the group surveyed business owners at an event earlier this year, the most common requests for support were around first steps — like finding funding or registering a business.
Another consequence of location is that a lack of internet access directly stifles opportunities. “When you live in a low-income area not everybody has a cellphone, not everybody knows to use their email,” Bigby said. “You’re like, oh, wait, it’s 2022. We’re in the technological age, but if you go on a reservation or a low-income community, the access to many different things that you maybe have access to in Missoula aren’t around this area.”
The remoteness of the reservation makes commuting to areas with more jobs difficult. Bigby said most of the jobs available on the Fort Belknap reservation are with the tribal government.
Jaime Gloshay has felt the economic injustice of pay inequity firsthand. “Up until my 35th year of life, I, with a master’s degree, with tons of experience at the federal, state, local, corporate level, was making like $16 an hour supporting a family of five,” she told The 19th. She had always been entrepreneurial, selling one-cent bookmarks door-to-door as a child, but not being able to make a living wage for over a decade underscored for her the need for Native women to run their own businesses. She also witnessed a deep distrust of lending systems while working at a community development financial institution, which cemented the need for community-led solutions.
Her experiences, plus those of others in her community, and research on barriers to economic security for Native Americans led Gloshay to found Native Women Lead with seven other women in 2017.
Gloshay, who currently serves as the organization’s co-director of building and impact, is from the White Mountain, Apache and Kiowa Nations and currently lives in Albuquerque. The organization seeks to close the racial wealth gap by creating a “network of care” for Native American women. “Entrepreneurship is one pathway to fight pay inequity, because Indigenous women can essentially claim their wage,” said Gloshay.
One of the goals of Native Women Lead is to create capital that makes sense for their communities. Discriminatory credit practices make it difficult for Native Americans to obtain loans or open lines of credit, and there are additional legal challenges to homeownership in tribal lands.
“Unfortunately, when people don’t have access to capital, they also don’t have access to opportunities to build wealth. There’s not a lot of intergenerational wealth transfer within our communities,” Gloshay said.
“How do we create a place that feels safe for people to look at finances, be real about finances, and feel deserving of accessing and building wealth?”
Creating a new system for the community also allows for trauma-aware policies. People’s experiences, such as with predatory lending or living paycheck to paycheck, can shape how they handle finances.
Designing solutions within communities is one way to address pay inequity, as is increasing financial literacy. Bigby proposed employers recognizing how Native American women can contribute beyond their job duties, by valuing cultural knowledge and community connections, as a way to bridge the pay gap.
Farrell highlighted the importance of pay transparency laws as a way to increase equity, and called on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. Rep. Sharice Davids, one of the first Native American women elected to Congress, has said it could help close the pay gap for Indigenous women.
“Wages have risen overall in the last year, but too often we take statistics like that at face value without examining if the rising tide really is reaching all boats,” Davids said in a statement to The 19th. “Clearly, Native women are not seeing the full impact of that trend, and we must continue to support policies like the Paycheck Fairness Act that address this disparity.”
Davids is one of the current co-sponsors of the bill, which was first introduced in 1997. The legislation has passed the House and died in the Senate four times, most recently in 2021.
With 55 percent of Native American mothers serving as the sole breadwinners for their families, the cascading effects of pay inequity are clear.
“We’re trying to make the connection around how economic safety and security actually leads to overall human safety,” said Gloshay.
Historically, Native American women have never been adequately compensated for their labor due to the systemic effects of colonization, says a report published ahead of Wednesday’s observance by advocacy group National Women’s Law Center. This wage gap can lead to losses of over $1.1 million over a 40-year career compared with non-Latino White men.
Native women tend to have less job mobility and were among those hit hardest by pandemic losses, says Noreen Farrell, director of Equal Rights Advocates, the organization that leads the Equal Pay Day campaign. They were also slower to be rehired back at their old jobs and are disproportionately part-time workers, who are generally paid less than their full-time counterparts.
However, it’s unclear how accurate these pay statistics are, as Native Americans are undercounted in many Census surveys. One of the main issues is definitions, said Jeffrey Burnette, assistant professor in the department of anthropology and sociology at Rochester Institute of Technology. The American Community Survey, which Equal Rights Advocates uses for its pay day calculations, asks for tribal affiliation. That encompasses anyone who believes they have an Indigenous ancestor (which for many isn’t true) to enrolled citizens of sovereign nations.
Another issue stems from data collection. “One of the things that we know is that the American Community Survey struggles, much like the Census does, with getting good samples in rural areas and areas where people are in poverty, and for a number of historically marginalized groups,” Burnette said.
For Native women, lower economic security makes it difficult to risk unemployment when looking for a new job. It’s hard for Indigenous women to negotiate better benefits or pay — or even to report sexual harassment, Farrell said.
Farrell emphasizes that the wealth gap isn’t tied solely to differences in salaries. “We know that there’s historic barriers to economic opportunity for Native women, and they just get compounded when it comes to pay,” she said. “There’s a lack of affordable health care access, equity, reproductive health care access and a lack of food sovereignty for Native American women. And all of these things come in a perfect storm when there isn’t enough money in the paycheck.”
The wealth gap also stems from systemic colonialism. In 2015 the 1.89 billion acres that make up the United States, land formerly held by Native Americans, was estimated to be worth $23 trillion. Indigenous peoples were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and relocated to reservations in remote areas. While only 13 percent of Native Americans today live on reservations or tribal land trusts, 60 percent live in metropolitan areas — the smallest share of any racial minority. This often means they are farther from resources and opportunities.
Diana Bigby is the program manager for Native Women Launch, a program that seeks to provide education on business and personal finance to Indigenous women. She sees the legacy of colonialism as one of the unique challenges Native women face versus other racial groups. “I think institutionalized racism is a big part of our lives, whether we want to acknowledge that or not, because living on a reservation or trying to succeed off of a reservation is really hard for someone like me to do,” she said.
Child care is especially challenging to find in remote areas, Bigby said. She is Nakota and lives on the Fort Belknap reservation in northern Montana. The reservation has a population of 3,302, and 39.5 percent live under the poverty line, according to the 2020 American Community Survey. As a mother of five, she understands the struggle many women face when trying to balance caregiving responsibilities, a job and a side hustle.
As a part of Native Women Launch, Bigby works to support Native American women entrepreneurs. She said when the group surveyed business owners at an event earlier this year, the most common requests for support were around first steps — like finding funding or registering a business.
Another consequence of location is that a lack of internet access directly stifles opportunities. “When you live in a low-income area not everybody has a cellphone, not everybody knows to use their email,” Bigby said. “You’re like, oh, wait, it’s 2022. We’re in the technological age, but if you go on a reservation or a low-income community, the access to many different things that you maybe have access to in Missoula aren’t around this area.”
The remoteness of the reservation makes commuting to areas with more jobs difficult. Bigby said most of the jobs available on the Fort Belknap reservation are with the tribal government.
Jaime Gloshay has felt the economic injustice of pay inequity firsthand. “Up until my 35th year of life, I, with a master’s degree, with tons of experience at the federal, state, local, corporate level, was making like $16 an hour supporting a family of five,” she told The 19th. She had always been entrepreneurial, selling one-cent bookmarks door-to-door as a child, but not being able to make a living wage for over a decade underscored for her the need for Native women to run their own businesses. She also witnessed a deep distrust of lending systems while working at a community development financial institution, which cemented the need for community-led solutions.
Her experiences, plus those of others in her community, and research on barriers to economic security for Native Americans led Gloshay to found Native Women Lead with seven other women in 2017.
Gloshay, who currently serves as the organization’s co-director of building and impact, is from the White Mountain, Apache and Kiowa Nations and currently lives in Albuquerque. The organization seeks to close the racial wealth gap by creating a “network of care” for Native American women. “Entrepreneurship is one pathway to fight pay inequity, because Indigenous women can essentially claim their wage,” said Gloshay.
One of the goals of Native Women Lead is to create capital that makes sense for their communities. Discriminatory credit practices make it difficult for Native Americans to obtain loans or open lines of credit, and there are additional legal challenges to homeownership in tribal lands.
“Unfortunately, when people don’t have access to capital, they also don’t have access to opportunities to build wealth. There’s not a lot of intergenerational wealth transfer within our communities,” Gloshay said.
“How do we create a place that feels safe for people to look at finances, be real about finances, and feel deserving of accessing and building wealth?”
Creating a new system for the community also allows for trauma-aware policies. People’s experiences, such as with predatory lending or living paycheck to paycheck, can shape how they handle finances.
Designing solutions within communities is one way to address pay inequity, as is increasing financial literacy. Bigby proposed employers recognizing how Native American women can contribute beyond their job duties, by valuing cultural knowledge and community connections, as a way to bridge the pay gap.
Farrell highlighted the importance of pay transparency laws as a way to increase equity, and called on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. Rep. Sharice Davids, one of the first Native American women elected to Congress, has said it could help close the pay gap for Indigenous women.
“Wages have risen overall in the last year, but too often we take statistics like that at face value without examining if the rising tide really is reaching all boats,” Davids said in a statement to The 19th. “Clearly, Native women are not seeing the full impact of that trend, and we must continue to support policies like the Paycheck Fairness Act that address this disparity.”
Davids is one of the current co-sponsors of the bill, which was first introduced in 1997. The legislation has passed the House and died in the Senate four times, most recently in 2021.
With 55 percent of Native American mothers serving as the sole breadwinners for their families, the cascading effects of pay inequity are clear.
“We’re trying to make the connection around how economic safety and security actually leads to overall human safety,” said Gloshay.
racists protecting racists!!!!
Boise's Police Department Has A White Nationalist Problem
As Boise officials announce an investigation into a racist police captain, extremists voice their dismay that he was "caught."
David Neiwert — CROOKS & LIARS
December 3, 2022
Boise city officials backed up their pre-Thanksgiving promises to dig deeply into the scandal that has cast a cloud over the city’s police department—the revelation that a longtime police captain was also a pseudonymous contributor to a white-nationalist organization and scheduled speaker at its annual conference—with Wednesday’s announcement by Mayor Lauren McLean that the city would hold an independent investigation into the matter conducted by a former Justice Department prosecutor.
However, the press conference itself provided a jarring reminder that the now-retired police captain’s brand of far-right extremism isn’t relegated only to the police rolls: A well-known far-right activist, acting as a pseudo-reporter for a right-wing news website, asked flustered city officials whether the (utterly bogus) Black crime statistics touted by the officer in his writings and in videos were accurate—to which, fortunately, the interim chief responded pointedly that, manipulated numbers aside, what mattered was Matthew Bryngleson’s toxic white supremacist beliefs and whether they infected the Boise Police Department (BPD).
The investigation announced by McLean will be overseen by Michael Bromwich of the D.C.-based law firm Steptoe and Johnson. Bromwich, a onetime inspector general for the Justice Department, most recently won recognition for his investigation into the Baltimore Police Department, which uncovered years of coordinated efforts to plant drugs on suspected drug dealers, steal their money and drugs, and resell them, resulting in the convictions and imprisonment of eight police officers who ran the “Gun Trace Task Force” team.
“We need to know whether racist ideology has tainted policing, hiring and promotions, internal investigations, and community interactions in any way,” McLean said. “It is one thing to hold a set of beliefs, but it is an altogether different thing to allow those beliefs to impact the behaviors, to impact your fellow officers, to impact the community. And that is what we have to be able to determine.”
McLean told reporters she was “rocked” by the news of Bryngelson’s participation in a white nationalist conference under a pseudonym.
“I don’t believe that those ideals are pervasive in our department, but the community must know, and we must know what does exist and what’s happened in our department,” McLean said. “Our officers serve this community tirelessly and were eager to learn whether Matt Bryngelson’s ideology led to any discriminatory impact on our community members or on our police department.”
McLean explained that Bromwich and his team will be tasked with exploring the extent to which Bryngelson’s racist beliefs affected his policing—as well as whether it infected BPD staff or reflected a culture of tolerance and whether Bryngleson ever used any city resources to create or distribute racist material.
Shortly into the question-and-answer portion of the press conference, however, a far-right activist named David Pettinger—apparently acting as a correspondent for the Idaho Dispatch—piped up and asked whether the bogus crime statistics that Bryngleson cited were accurate:
Were the statistics that Captain Bryngleson stated, were they not accurate? [Which?] The crime statistics—with African-American and people of nonwhite race committing more heinous crime?
Pettinger is not a working reporter in any real sense of the term, since he has no journalistic background, and the Dispatch is a website specializing in right-wing propaganda. In fact, part of his background as a far-right activist in Idaho—beyond doxxing and targeting liberals, and terrorizing public officials in their homes—includes running a Facebook page on which he called for journalists at three Boise media outlets to be executed after likening them to Nazi propagandists.
Among his many other antics, Pettinger has gained particular notoriety for protesting outside the home of an Ada County health official and frightening her children. He was arrested at the Idaho Statehouse in February 2021, wearing a Star of David and yelling about fascism. When a right-wing Republican legislator was accused of raping a then-anonymous intern in March 2021 (he was later convicted), Pettinger went in drag to a Republican rally wearing the woman’s real name.
---
In reality, as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Cassie Miller explored in depth in 2018, serious studies of the relationship of race to crime consistently find that “concentrated poverty has a criminogenic effect: lack of access to jobs, increased idle time and poorer educational opportunities all increase one’s chances of engaging in criminal behavior, and the effect is the same for black and white people. One study, released three years before The Color of Crime, found that when sociologists controlled for structural disadvantages, there were no significant differences between crime rates in black and white communities.”
The key factor is consistent poverty, which is a direct product of systemic employment discrimination rather than the supposedly inferior mental and moral abilities of nonwhite people:
A 2014 Bureau of Justice Statistics study showed that persons from poor households experienced the highest rates of violent victimization, and that rates were consistent for both blacks and whites. When sociologists asked “Is Poverty’s Detrimental Effect Race-Specific?” they found the answer was no: policies aimed at reducing poverty effectively reduced violent crime and the crime reduction rates were similar in both black and white neighborhoods, meaning it was poverty—rather than race—that contributed to the violent crime rate in the first place.
The false beliefs that arise from these smears have consequences, too: Dylann Roof, the domestic terrorist who killed nine members of a Charleston church’s black congregation in June 2015, shouted during the rampage at his victims his belief that they were “killing us.” In his manifesto, he specifically cited Taylor’s smear pamphlet as the source of his information.
To their credit, Boise police officials seem eager to have a proper investigation as their first necessary step toward their eventual reconciliation with a community that has good reasons now to distrust their officers.
“These have not been easy days,” Winegar said. “We stand ready to support the investigation by fully providing the investigator and his team with access to the documents, data, and interviews necessary to be thorough.” He added, “There is no room in the Boise Police Department for those who allow racist or white supremacist views to negatively impact policing in our community.”
The local police union representative, Cpl. Brian Holland, said his union preferred an internal investigation to an external one. Nonetheless, its members support the investigation, he said: “We do not and cannot abide by our former captain’s ideals.”
Holland hopes his colleagues will be eventually vindicated: “We felt that some comments earlier put us all in the same bucket,” he said. “We don’t feel like (those comments) represent our union members. But since then, we’re working together to make sure that we’re moving forward as a community.”
Boise City Council member Jimmy Hallyburton told the Idaho Statesman that Bryngleson’s claims, for instance, that “every major crime here involves a Black person,” were not just “clearly racist” but also fatuously wrong.
“It doesn’t take much to go look at the news, to look at some of the major crimes ... and see that that’s an absolutely false statement,” Hallyburton said. “There’s all sorts of heinous crimes that are committed by white people as well as people of color.”
Hallyburton is most of all concerned about what Bryngleson’s longtime presence of 22 years on the Boise force says about the department.
“It’s also alarming to see somebody who’s been in the Police Department that long and has managed to share those views while on BPD, and to imagine that there isn’t a system that allows those beliefs to exist,” he said, adding: “There are systems in place that allowed this person to be here for a really long time, and that’s not OK.
And we have to figure out what those systems are.”
However, the press conference itself provided a jarring reminder that the now-retired police captain’s brand of far-right extremism isn’t relegated only to the police rolls: A well-known far-right activist, acting as a pseudo-reporter for a right-wing news website, asked flustered city officials whether the (utterly bogus) Black crime statistics touted by the officer in his writings and in videos were accurate—to which, fortunately, the interim chief responded pointedly that, manipulated numbers aside, what mattered was Matthew Bryngleson’s toxic white supremacist beliefs and whether they infected the Boise Police Department (BPD).
The investigation announced by McLean will be overseen by Michael Bromwich of the D.C.-based law firm Steptoe and Johnson. Bromwich, a onetime inspector general for the Justice Department, most recently won recognition for his investigation into the Baltimore Police Department, which uncovered years of coordinated efforts to plant drugs on suspected drug dealers, steal their money and drugs, and resell them, resulting in the convictions and imprisonment of eight police officers who ran the “Gun Trace Task Force” team.
“We need to know whether racist ideology has tainted policing, hiring and promotions, internal investigations, and community interactions in any way,” McLean said. “It is one thing to hold a set of beliefs, but it is an altogether different thing to allow those beliefs to impact the behaviors, to impact your fellow officers, to impact the community. And that is what we have to be able to determine.”
McLean told reporters she was “rocked” by the news of Bryngelson’s participation in a white nationalist conference under a pseudonym.
“I don’t believe that those ideals are pervasive in our department, but the community must know, and we must know what does exist and what’s happened in our department,” McLean said. “Our officers serve this community tirelessly and were eager to learn whether Matt Bryngelson’s ideology led to any discriminatory impact on our community members or on our police department.”
McLean explained that Bromwich and his team will be tasked with exploring the extent to which Bryngelson’s racist beliefs affected his policing—as well as whether it infected BPD staff or reflected a culture of tolerance and whether Bryngleson ever used any city resources to create or distribute racist material.
Shortly into the question-and-answer portion of the press conference, however, a far-right activist named David Pettinger—apparently acting as a correspondent for the Idaho Dispatch—piped up and asked whether the bogus crime statistics that Bryngleson cited were accurate:
Were the statistics that Captain Bryngleson stated, were they not accurate? [Which?] The crime statistics—with African-American and people of nonwhite race committing more heinous crime?
Pettinger is not a working reporter in any real sense of the term, since he has no journalistic background, and the Dispatch is a website specializing in right-wing propaganda. In fact, part of his background as a far-right activist in Idaho—beyond doxxing and targeting liberals, and terrorizing public officials in their homes—includes running a Facebook page on which he called for journalists at three Boise media outlets to be executed after likening them to Nazi propagandists.
Among his many other antics, Pettinger has gained particular notoriety for protesting outside the home of an Ada County health official and frightening her children. He was arrested at the Idaho Statehouse in February 2021, wearing a Star of David and yelling about fascism. When a right-wing Republican legislator was accused of raping a then-anonymous intern in March 2021 (he was later convicted), Pettinger went in drag to a Republican rally wearing the woman’s real name.
---
In reality, as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Cassie Miller explored in depth in 2018, serious studies of the relationship of race to crime consistently find that “concentrated poverty has a criminogenic effect: lack of access to jobs, increased idle time and poorer educational opportunities all increase one’s chances of engaging in criminal behavior, and the effect is the same for black and white people. One study, released three years before The Color of Crime, found that when sociologists controlled for structural disadvantages, there were no significant differences between crime rates in black and white communities.”
The key factor is consistent poverty, which is a direct product of systemic employment discrimination rather than the supposedly inferior mental and moral abilities of nonwhite people:
A 2014 Bureau of Justice Statistics study showed that persons from poor households experienced the highest rates of violent victimization, and that rates were consistent for both blacks and whites. When sociologists asked “Is Poverty’s Detrimental Effect Race-Specific?” they found the answer was no: policies aimed at reducing poverty effectively reduced violent crime and the crime reduction rates were similar in both black and white neighborhoods, meaning it was poverty—rather than race—that contributed to the violent crime rate in the first place.
The false beliefs that arise from these smears have consequences, too: Dylann Roof, the domestic terrorist who killed nine members of a Charleston church’s black congregation in June 2015, shouted during the rampage at his victims his belief that they were “killing us.” In his manifesto, he specifically cited Taylor’s smear pamphlet as the source of his information.
To their credit, Boise police officials seem eager to have a proper investigation as their first necessary step toward their eventual reconciliation with a community that has good reasons now to distrust their officers.
“These have not been easy days,” Winegar said. “We stand ready to support the investigation by fully providing the investigator and his team with access to the documents, data, and interviews necessary to be thorough.” He added, “There is no room in the Boise Police Department for those who allow racist or white supremacist views to negatively impact policing in our community.”
The local police union representative, Cpl. Brian Holland, said his union preferred an internal investigation to an external one. Nonetheless, its members support the investigation, he said: “We do not and cannot abide by our former captain’s ideals.”
Holland hopes his colleagues will be eventually vindicated: “We felt that some comments earlier put us all in the same bucket,” he said. “We don’t feel like (those comments) represent our union members. But since then, we’re working together to make sure that we’re moving forward as a community.”
Boise City Council member Jimmy Hallyburton told the Idaho Statesman that Bryngleson’s claims, for instance, that “every major crime here involves a Black person,” were not just “clearly racist” but also fatuously wrong.
“It doesn’t take much to go look at the news, to look at some of the major crimes ... and see that that’s an absolutely false statement,” Hallyburton said. “There’s all sorts of heinous crimes that are committed by white people as well as people of color.”
Hallyburton is most of all concerned about what Bryngleson’s longtime presence of 22 years on the Boise force says about the department.
“It’s also alarming to see somebody who’s been in the Police Department that long and has managed to share those views while on BPD, and to imagine that there isn’t a system that allows those beliefs to exist,” he said, adding: “There are systems in place that allowed this person to be here for a really long time, and that’s not OK.
And we have to figure out what those systems are.”
NPR
@NPR Official
BREAKING: Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power, has filed to run for president again in 2024.
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Amazon CEO says company will not remove anti-Semitic film promoted by Brooklyn Nets' Kyrie Irving
Sky Palma - RAW STORY
December 01, 2022
The CEO of Amazon says his company will not take down an anti-Semitic film that gained attention after Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving tweeted out an Amazon link to it, the Associated Press reports.
Andy Jassy said Wednesday that his decision is due to customers having "many viewpoints."
“As a retailer of content to hundreds of millions of customers with a lot of different viewpoints, we have to allow access to those viewpoints, even if they are objectionable — objectionable and they differ from our particular viewpoints,” Jassy said.
The film, called “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” claims to uncover "the true identity of the Children of Israel." The film is based upon a Black Hebrew Israelite book of the same name that was also written by Ronald Dalton Jr. The Black Hebrew Israelites is an African American group that believes they are the true descendants of the ancient Israelites. The group is known for its anti-Semitism and members have been involved in violent incidents over the years, some targeting Jewish people.
Jassy went on to say that making decisions about what content to take down is “more straight forward” in cases when it “actively incites or promotes violence, or teaches people to do things like pedophilia.”
The AP report that "dozens of celebrities, public figures as well as Jewish organizations and the Nets have called on the company to take down the film or add a disclaimer offering an explanation as to why the documentary and related book are problematic. Amazon told the newspaper earlier this month that it would look into adding a disclaimer on the documentary’s main page. But that hasn’t happened."
Read the full report over at the Associated Press.
Andy Jassy said Wednesday that his decision is due to customers having "many viewpoints."
“As a retailer of content to hundreds of millions of customers with a lot of different viewpoints, we have to allow access to those viewpoints, even if they are objectionable — objectionable and they differ from our particular viewpoints,” Jassy said.
The film, called “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” claims to uncover "the true identity of the Children of Israel." The film is based upon a Black Hebrew Israelite book of the same name that was also written by Ronald Dalton Jr. The Black Hebrew Israelites is an African American group that believes they are the true descendants of the ancient Israelites. The group is known for its anti-Semitism and members have been involved in violent incidents over the years, some targeting Jewish people.
Jassy went on to say that making decisions about what content to take down is “more straight forward” in cases when it “actively incites or promotes violence, or teaches people to do things like pedophilia.”
The AP report that "dozens of celebrities, public figures as well as Jewish organizations and the Nets have called on the company to take down the film or add a disclaimer offering an explanation as to why the documentary and related book are problematic. Amazon told the newspaper earlier this month that it would look into adding a disclaimer on the documentary’s main page. But that hasn’t happened."
Read the full report over at the Associated Press.
Bites from Real News
*12/5/2022*
*Trump Owed Hidden Debt While In Office
Donald Trump had a foreign creditor he failed to disclose while running for president in 2016 and after assuming office in 2017.
*Buddha, Abraham, Jesus and Muhammed: Larger-than-life historic figures or largely legends?
...When he researched the origins of Christianity, he was astounded to discover how little evidence we have about Jesus as a historical person.
*The Cold War Legacy Lurking in U.S. Groundwater
For the first time, ProPublica has cataloged cleanup efforts at the 50-plus sites where uranium was processed to fuel the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Even after regulators say cleanup is complete, polluted water and sickness are often left behind.
*The Eviction Crisis Is Aiding the GOP’s Voter Suppression Schemes
Struggles with eviction can translate into disenfranchisement at the ballot box.
*DOJ Tried to Hide Report Warning That Private Border Wall in Texas Could Collapse The report confirms a ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation that found the privately built fencing could collapse during major flooding. The federal government resisted making the findings public for more than a year.
* ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH Fracking Firm Agrees to Pay a Small Town’s Water Bills for 75 Years
A fracking company has been convicted 14 years after polluting water wells in Dimock, Pennsylvania.
*POLICING IN ST. LOUIS St. Louis Can Banish People From Entire Neighborhoods. Police Can Arrest Them if They Come Back.
Neighborhood orders of protection in St. Louis are intended to fight petty crime and nuisances but they raise constitutional questions.
*Did Some in Our Federal Police Conspire to Overthrow America?
Was there a conspiracy — even if it only involved a handful of people — at the highest levels of our government to end the American Experiment that was only defeated by sheer luck?
*The Galactica AI model was trained on scientific knowledge – but it spat out alarmingly plausible nonsense
French YouTuber in Custody for Alleged Rape and Corruption of Minors QUESTIONED Dan Ladden-Hall News Correspondent
Published Dec. 05, 2022 9:53AM ET
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
French YouTube comedian Norman Thavaud was placed in police custody on Monday to face questions about the corruption of minors and rape, according to reports. The 35-year-old internet personality—who has almost 12 million subscribers on YouTube—was taken into custody after an investigation was launched by the Paris prosecutor’s office. The investigation involves “several teenage girls and young women,” Liberation reports, adding that some of them are fans of his. Thavaud has previously been accused of sexual wrongdoing involving minors, with a 2021 Urabania report alleging that the YouTuber had encouraged a 16-year-old fan to send messages and images of a sexual nature when he was 30.
Feds Delay Deadline for REAL ID—Again
REAL SLOW
Rachel Olding
Breaking News Editor
Published Dec. 05, 2022 11:43AM ET
daily beast cheat sheet
The Department of Homeland Security has once again delayed the deadline for air travelers to get a REAL ID card, until May 7, 2025—almost half a decade after the new rules were supposed to be in place. The deadline was originally Oct. 1, 2020, but the pandemic forced it to be extended twice to May 3, 2023. The latest delay was attributed, in part, to the lingering impacts of COVID, including pandemic-induced backlogs at state driver’s licensing agencies. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said states need more time “to ensure their residents can obtain a REAL ID-compliant license or identification card” and DHS will use the extension “to implement innovations to make the process more efficient and accessible.” Any flyer over 18 will need to show a REAL ID driver’s license or another federally approved ID for domestic flights by the new deadline.
*What's Inside*
*THE WEAPON REPUBLICANS POINTED AT THE HEART OF OUR DEMOCRACY
ELECTIONS
*GUESS WHO IS GETTING RICH OFF YOUR ELECTRIC BILL
REALITY
*REPUBLICAN POLICIES ARE KILLING AMERICANS: STUDY
REALITY
*SPACE INVADERS, CONTINUED -BY TOM TOMORROW
FUNNIES
*HERSCHEL WALKER'S UNDECOVER POLICE WORK!
FUNNIES
*'STRAIGHT UP FRAUD': DATA CONFIRMS PRIVATE INSURERS ARE STEALING BILLIONS
CORPORATE CRIMINALS
*WHITE MEN REFUSING TO SHARE POWER IS A SILVER STAKE PIERCING THE HEART OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY(RACE MATTERS)
*GOP WOULD UNDERMINE 40 MILLION STUDENT DEBTORS TO GAIN MIDTERM LEVERAGE
GOP POLITICS
*EXCERPT: HOW THE GOP WEAPONIZED IGNORANCE
COMMENTARY
*GEICO IS TRYING TO CRUSH WORKERS’ ATTEMPTS TO FORM AN INDEPENDENT UNION
SLAVERY 21ST CENTURY
*AN ANGRY MOB BROKE INTO A JAIL LOOKING FOR A BLACK MAN—THEN FREED HIM
HISTORY
*MAJOR PAPERS PROVIDE COVER FOR GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE
WORTHLESS MEDIA
*LIFE EXPECTANCY FOR INDIGENOUS AMERICANS DROPS BY 6.6 YEARS
FIRST AMERICANS
*TRUMP AND BANNON ARE PARTNERS IN CRIME AS THEY 'LINE THEIR POCKETS' WITH THEIR FANS' MONEY: HISTORIAN(SUCKERS)
*OPINION: WHY 'ECONOMIC POLICY' IS CODE FOR CLASS WARFARE
COMMENTARY
*late news of interest*
A Meditation On Practical Applications Of Stupidity
The Mystery of Anti-Vax & Anti-Mask
Kat Ignatz - DAILY KOS
Sunday August 01, 2021 · 5:00 AM PDT
...“The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” seems as good a way as any to explain the insane situation we’re in. It’s speculative, but in my opinion, guessing is all we’ve really got right now.
In his essay, Cipolla divides human beings into four categories and builds his theory on these characteristics.
His categories are:
And he presents his theory as five laws:
Taking Cipolla’s laws and looking for correlations with anti-vax/mask behavior, you can map out anti-vax/mask actions like this:
And you could do the same matching of Cipolla’s laws with anti-vax/mask actions, and together, we could come up with a big, five-part list of parallels between Cipolla’s theory and the anti-vax/mask movement.
And it would prove nothing.
But looking at it might make you wonder, like me, if there’s anything but dangerous, illogical, and incomprehensible behavior there.
Cipolla doesn’t explain stupid people. He simply says that they exist, and they’re irrational, unpredictable, and hazardous. He states that irrational people can’t be understood by rational minds and cautions against getting involved with irrational people because it always comes with a cost that’s often a big cost.
He says the only hope is for rational people to create more gains than the losses that irrational people cause. He was an economist so his theory is all gains and losses, and another way to think about his four human traits is total gain, loss/gain, gain/loss, and total loss.
And maybe that’s the real answer here. Maybe, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with why anti-vax/maskers act like they do. Perhaps, we should simply accept them as an incredible danger to our country, states, cities, friends, families, and selves, and we should just do everything we can to do more good than they do harm.
I like Cipolla’s theory, and I find it to be a compelling model for many of the problems we’re experiencing—like, for instance, Republicans.
In this writings, Cipolla makes a point of dividing bandits into Intelligent Bandits and Stupid Bandits. Intelligent bandits cause an equal amount of loss and gain, and they get everything they take from others. Stupid bandits cause more loss than gain, and they only get part of what they cause others to lose.
When I read that, I think about how Republicans are actively working to crash the US so they can keep their wealth and power. And then I think that they’re going so far with it that they may have moved from being stupid bandits to fully stupid because it’s irrational to think they’ll keep much of anything if the country collapses.
I also start thinking about how prevalent stupid banditry is in the world—as if it’s the only way to do business. The “bigs” are especially dangerous: big agriculture, apparel, chemical, electronics, oil, pharmaceuticals, retail, etc.
We’re all losing our lives in one way or another to these dubious ventures.
But that’s my mind drifting on to a topic for another diary, and I’ll stop this one here.
In his essay, Cipolla divides human beings into four categories and builds his theory on these characteristics.
His categories are:
- Intelligent People whose actions benefit others and themselves
- Helpless People whose actions harm them but benefit others
- Bandits whose actions harm others but benefit them
- Stupid People whose actions harm others but don’t benefit them and may, in fact, harm them, too
And he presents his theory as five laws:
- Everyone always underestimates how many stupid people there are.
- Stupidity is unrelated to any other human trait.
- Stupid people cause losses to others without gain and, possibly, with losses to themselves.
- Non-stupid people always underestimate how harmful stupid people are.
- Stupid people are the most dangerous type of person.
Taking Cipolla’s laws and looking for correlations with anti-vax/mask behavior, you can map out anti-vax/mask actions like this:
- How many: 30% of the US population is hesitating, resisting, or outright refusing to get a coronavirus vaccine.
- Unrelated to other traits: Health care workers are protesting against getting vaccinated.
- No gain and possible losses: Not even the threat of death is changing anti-vax/mask behavior.
- How harmful: Who would have predicted that Missouri would end up in such terrible condition?
- Most dangerous: Anti-vax/maskers are bringing the systems we rely on for our safety and health to the brink of crashing.
And you could do the same matching of Cipolla’s laws with anti-vax/mask actions, and together, we could come up with a big, five-part list of parallels between Cipolla’s theory and the anti-vax/mask movement.
And it would prove nothing.
But looking at it might make you wonder, like me, if there’s anything but dangerous, illogical, and incomprehensible behavior there.
Cipolla doesn’t explain stupid people. He simply says that they exist, and they’re irrational, unpredictable, and hazardous. He states that irrational people can’t be understood by rational minds and cautions against getting involved with irrational people because it always comes with a cost that’s often a big cost.
He says the only hope is for rational people to create more gains than the losses that irrational people cause. He was an economist so his theory is all gains and losses, and another way to think about his four human traits is total gain, loss/gain, gain/loss, and total loss.
And maybe that’s the real answer here. Maybe, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with why anti-vax/maskers act like they do. Perhaps, we should simply accept them as an incredible danger to our country, states, cities, friends, families, and selves, and we should just do everything we can to do more good than they do harm.
I like Cipolla’s theory, and I find it to be a compelling model for many of the problems we’re experiencing—like, for instance, Republicans.
In this writings, Cipolla makes a point of dividing bandits into Intelligent Bandits and Stupid Bandits. Intelligent bandits cause an equal amount of loss and gain, and they get everything they take from others. Stupid bandits cause more loss than gain, and they only get part of what they cause others to lose.
When I read that, I think about how Republicans are actively working to crash the US so they can keep their wealth and power. And then I think that they’re going so far with it that they may have moved from being stupid bandits to fully stupid because it’s irrational to think they’ll keep much of anything if the country collapses.
I also start thinking about how prevalent stupid banditry is in the world—as if it’s the only way to do business. The “bigs” are especially dangerous: big agriculture, apparel, chemical, electronics, oil, pharmaceuticals, retail, etc.
We’re all losing our lives in one way or another to these dubious ventures.
But that’s my mind drifting on to a topic for another diary, and I’ll stop this one here.
