US opposes a Palestinian state; Quick trial update; Republicans reject inconvenient facts and truths

The NYT reports (paywalled link) that the US opposes an independent Palestinian state:

The United States blocked the U.N. Security Council on Thursday from moving forward on a Palestinian bid to be recognized as a full member state at the United Nations, quashing an effort by Palestinian allies to get the world body to back the effort.

The vote was 12 in favor of the resolution and one — the United States — opposed, with abstentions from Britain and Switzerland.  

The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, had described the bid for full-member status as an effort “to take our rightful place among the community of nations. .... Our right to self determination is a natural right — a historical right — to live in our homeland Palestine as an independent state that is free and that is sovereign.”

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said after the vote: “The shameful proposal was rejected. Terrorism will not be rewarded.”  

“The resolution provides for the Palestinian Authority to be a member of the U.N.,” U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters. “Right now, the Palestinians don’t have control over a significant portion of what is supposed to be their state. It’s being controlled by a terrorist organization,” she said, referring to Hamas.

One can only wonder if this little nugget of cynical US foreign policy hypocrisy will be just one more little thing on the crappy side of the scale that tips the 2024 election from Biden to Trump. Maybe time tell.

Notice the intense hate toward the Palestinians that gushes out of the Israeli government. Note the about same sentiment from the US government. As far as I can tell, Hamas does not control squat in Gaza. That is an Israeli lie. Israel controls nearly all of what used to be Palestinian territory everywhere. A two-state solution is an impossible mirage. 

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The NYT and other sources are reporting that all 12 jurors have been selected. Today the 6 alternates will be selected. Jury selection went a heck of a lot faster than I anticipated. The judge here seems to be serious about not letting Trump get away with his endless delay tactics. Good for the judge!

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A NYT opinion reports (paywalled link) about the intention of the UAW (United Auto Workers) to unionize car manufacturing plants throughout the South:

Southern Republican Governors Are Suddenly Afraid

U.A.W. is targeting 13 automakers — including Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, Nissan, Volvo and Tesla — employing around 150,000 workers in 36 nonunion plants across the South. It faced the first major test of its strategy on Wednesday, when 4,300 workers at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tenn., began voting on whether to unionize. The vote ends Friday. If it’s successful, it will be a breakthrough for a labor movement that has struggled to build a footing in the South.

The mere potential for union success was so threatening that the day before the vote began, several of the Southern Republican governors announced their opposition to the U.A.W. campaign. “We the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas are highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the U.A.W. has brought into our states,” their joint statement reads. “As governors, we have a responsibility to our constituents to speak up when we see special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.”

It is no shock to see conservative Republicans opposing organized labor. But it is difficult to observe this particular struggle, taking place as it is in the South, without being reminded of the region’s entrenched hostility to unions — or any other institution or effort that might weaken the political and economic dominance of capital over the whole of Southern society.  

As the sociologist Jack M. Bloom puts it in “Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement,”

The apparent defeat of Populism and the subsequent disenfranchisement of blacks [Jim Crow] brought about a severe setback for these whites, as well. Many of them lost the right to vote. They were subject to the harsh terms of their employers, and they remained without labor unions to counter the power the wealthy retained. When they did try to form unions, they found the region’s tradition of violence turned against them.

By now, deep moral rot in the form of demagogic rhetoric and lies like that quoted above from the radical governors is standard for inconvenient reality-challenged Republican elites. Claiming “misinformation and scare tactics” by unions is mendacious demagoguery. Claiming threat to “jobs and values” is a scare tactic that speaks for capitalist elites and their supporters, but not those who want a better, fairer distribution of power and wealth in society.

When it comes to corporations vs employees wanting to unionize, the weight of misinformation and scare tactics by corporations dwarfs that of labor. On top of that, the weight of illegal corporate anti-union acts usually far outweighs what offenses that unions and employees commit.  AI commentates:

Q: In labor union organizing, do labor or corporations usually rely more on demagoguery, misinformation and illegal acts?

A: Based on the search results provided, it appears that corporations and employers often rely more on demagoguery, misinformation, and illegal acts in opposing union organizing efforts by workers. The key points from the search results are:

• Employers were charged with violating federal law in 41.5% of all NLRB-supervised union elections in 2016 and 2017, including illegally firing workers, coercing and retaliating against workers for supporting a union, and disciplining workers.1

• Employers spend nearly $340 million per year hiring “union avoidance” lawyers and consultants to help them prevent employees from unionizing.1

• Companies have used misinformation campaigns, including false and fabricated “scare tactics”, to defeat union drives, such as the anti-union campaign at a Boeing plant in South Carolina.2

• Anti-union groups have engaged in misinformation campaigns to encourage public sector union members to leave their unions after the Janus Supreme Court decision, creating confusion and frustration among workers.2

• The Republican-controlled Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 to specifically allow captive audience meetings where employers can give anti-union speeches to workers, despite previous NLRB rulings that this was illegal.4

In contrast, the search results do not provide evidence of similar widespread use of demagoguery, misinformation, or illegal tactics by labor unions in organizing efforts. The evidence suggests the unfair labor practices and misinformation campaigns tend to originate more from the employer side in order to prevent unionization.

GOD'S MISFITS?

 

God’s Misfits ‘anti-government group’ accused of murdering two women, include GOP country chair

Four members of a group, calling itself “God’s Misfits” are sitting in jail in Oklahoma, accused of kidnapping and murdering two friends, according to court filings.

Tifany Machel Adams, 54; Tad Bert Cullum, 43; Cole Earl Twombly, 50; and Cora Twombly, 44 have been charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder, in relation to the disappearance of Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39 last month.

Who are the members of God’s Misfits?

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has named the four suspects as members of “God’s Misfits”, according to court documents seen by The Independent. The group was described as “anti-government” and “religious”.

Here folks is just one of those misfits:

Ms Adams is the paternal grandmother to missing Veronia Butler’s children. Her son Wrangler Rickman, 26, is currently in a rehabilitation centre, according to court documents.

She was allegedly involved in an ongoing custody battle over the two children, aged six and eight.

On Tuesday it was reported that Ms Adams was elected chair of her local Republican Party in Cimarron County, which borders Texas County.

Nuff said?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/gods-misfits-oklahoma-bodies-missing-b2529795.html

Supreme Court defends employees from discrimination on the job

The USSC just issued a shocking sort of unanimous 9-0 decision that strongly defends workers against discrimination by employers. This blows me away. I expected workers to get the shaft in a 6-3 decision upholding of the lower courts decisions to protect employers and allow discrimination. Key points:

• A female police officer on the St. Louis police force, Sergeant Jatonya Clayborn Muldrow, was transferred from a high prestige job in intelligence with high ranking officers to a low prestige job supervising day-to-day activities of neighborhood patrol officers. Her pay and rank were unchanged. She was forced against her will to take the low prestige job because the high level officers wanted to replace her with a male officer. Her supervisor sometimes called “Mrs.” rather than the customary “Sergeant” for a male police officers. Muldrow sued for discrimination under a law called Title VII.

• Title VII makes it unlawful for an employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s . . . sex.” §2000e–2(a)(1). Both parties agree that Muldrow’s transfer implicated “terms” and “conditions” of Muldrow’s employment. The applicable statutory language thus prohibits “discriminat[ing] against” an individual “with respect to” the “terms [or] conditions” of employment because of that individual’s sex.

• The lower courts found no discrimination against Muldrow, irrationally arguing that there was no “significant harm” to her because her rank and pay remained unchanged. Title VII does not mention any need for “significant harm” for discrimination liability to attach. Instead, Title VII only mentions “discrimination”, not significant harm from discrimination.

• The court held (ruled): An employee challenging a job transfer under Title VII must show that the transfer brought about some harm with respect to an identifiable term or condition of employment, but that harm need not be significant.  The court reasoned that “terms [or] conditions” phrase is not used “in the narrow contractual sense”; it covers more than the “economic or tangible.” Oncale, 523 U. S., at 78; Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U. S. 57, 64. Still, the phrase circumscribes the injuries that can give rise to a suit like this one. To make out a Title VII discrimination claim, a transferee must show some harm respecting an identifiable term or condition of employment.

My understanding is that for some years now, the courts have been reading the need for “significant harm” into Title VII law before discrimination liability can attach. The practical effect of that court-invented sleight of hand was to basically neuter the law for employers and turn it into a sword against employees. The burden of proof on employees to show “significant harm” was usually too high and thus most on the job discrimination was left unsanctioned.

Personal analysis

I absolutely did not expect the USSC to decide this way. This decision by the radical, partisan Republicans makes absolutely no sense to me. It makes perfect sense for the three Dems. This decision blows me away. Yes, I am biased but for damned good reasons. In my opinion, to understand this one needs to step back and look at the big political picture. This is not what it seems on its face.

Given my deep distrust of the six, this decision was political and driven by the political optics of the case. Apparently, the six Republican radicals believed that finding the St. Louis police did not discriminate against Muldrow would be politically damaging to Trump’s re-election and to elections of Republicans to congress. Roberts and the other five radicals are acutely of the drop in trust of the court and the six radicals being partisan Republican political operatives. Opinion polling indicated that as of July 2023, most Americans disapproved. 

Data through July 2023

Source -- Feb. 2024 data

So, what is one to think of this decision? Personally, I do not believe for one second that any of the six partisan radicals wanted to decide in favor of employees. I do believe that they felt compelled by political circumstances to side with the employee in this case. As we all know, congress can amend or even repeal laws like Title VII. A Republican congress under a Republican president could easily amend Title VII and impose a requirement that an employee has to prove significant harm at a level that is usually impossible. Or, they could amend Title VII by legalizing employer discrimination on religious grounds. All it would take is an amendment of 1-3 sentences to the existing law and this Muldrow decision would simply become irrelevant and go away. 

Project 2025 is a radical right authoritarian democracy-killing plan that, among a lot of other very bad things, intends to gut the power of anti-discrimination laws once Republican regain control of the federal government. That goal of gutting discrimination law is central and sacred to radical Christian nationalist racists and bigots. They want to hate on and openly discriminate against the LGBQT community. They are dead serious about this. Also, brass knuckles capitalist business elites are strongly on the side of wanting to unfettered freedom to harass and discriminate against employees as they wish.   

One example of the attitude of callous big business executives to treat employees like crap is discussed in this article The Nation published on Apr. 9, 2024:

The Toxic Culture at Tesla

The factory floors at America’s top seller of electric vehicles are rife with racial harassment, sexual abuse, and injuries on the job.

She [Andrea Turley, a 36-year-old self-employed hairdresser] knew what working on an assembly line would entail and hoped to stay; her grandparents had worked there for decades. “I don’t have a problem with doing hard labor,” she told me.

“The problem was the sexual harassment. It was the racism,” she said. “It’s the constant disrespect.”

On her second day of training, Turley noticed the phrase “Black bitches need to go home” written on the bathroom walls. Once she started working on the line, she heard her white male lead—the person who supervised her on the floor—use the N-word and other racial slurs like “coon,” according to a legal complaint she filed later. He also frequently used the words “bitch” and “cunt.” He “used just about every awful and offensive word I can think of,” Turley said in the filing. It wasn’t just him; other white coworkers also often used the N-word around her and her fellow Black coworkers. She frequently saw the word “bitch” written on the bathroom walls alongside the N-word and “KKK.”

Turley likes to wear layers, dressing like a “tomboy,” she said. Her lead and another coworker started making comments about her being gay, harassing her for her appearance.

That exemplifies how a significant slice of capitalist elites see employees and illegally operate despite existing laws. In my opinion, the Moldrow decision was an act of pure partisan politics by six radicals who know they are skating on thin ice at the moment. They will bide their time and wait for circumstances to be more favorable to cutting employee rights down to size. What size? So small you could drown it in the bathroom sink.

Q: Is Germaine analyzing this USSC decision too cynically, irrationally or otherwise in a flawed way(s)?

Picking jurors for the DJT trial

Various sources are reporting about the seven people seated so far as jurors on DJT’s election fraud/hush money trial. The New York Law Journal reports:

Seven jurors have been sworn in to serve on the Manhattan criminal case of Donald Trump—including two lawyers—after Trump’s legal team sought unvarnished opinions about their client.

Most responses could be categorized as reluctant, if not unresponsive, to the broad question.

“I have political views as to the Trump presidency,” said the man who is now Juror No. 7, as well as a civil litigator at Hunton Andrews Kurth. He previously worked at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.

“I don’t know the man and I don’t have opinions about him personally,” he added. “I have political views, I’m happy to answer that question, but I’m not sure that I know anyone’s character.”

Many eventual panelists and dismissed potential jurors expressed similar sentiments—that they did not hold opinions or would be able to contextualize them insofar as they held those opinions.

Not a single juror or prospective juror said anything negative about Trump. Under questioning, the Manhattanites expressed that all that matters in a criminal case is the facts—and whether they’re proven.

[Trump attorney] Todd Blanche asked Juror No. 7 if he would be able to put aside his feelings about being a lawyer and consider the testimony of a disbarred attorney—meaning Cohen—in an unbiased way.

“Yeah, I am a litigator and I take that responsibility seriously,” he responded.

That makes me very uneasy. It is hard to believe that there are many people who know something more about DJT than just his name but have no opinion of him personally. That strikes me as especially true for Juror 7, who is a litigator. Litigators see all of the aspects of human beings, including when they are under serious stress and threat in lawsuits.

At this point, I hope that these people have been picked because juror screening at this point has found a few people who actually feel the way they say they feel. But as the New York Law Journal writes, some of the responses of potential jurors feels reluctant, or unresponsive and thus evasive. If there is evasion going on here, it could cut for or against DJT.

Reporting by Slate raises a different concern about the jury, namely putting them in danger for their lives by doxxing them:

Several jurors were eliminated after Trump attorney Todd Blanche confronted them with old Facebook posts that either intimated distaste for Trump or outright said as much. Most of these jurors were eliminated via peremptory challenge by the Trump legal team, though a few were eliminated for cause—including one who had posted on Facebook “get him out and lock him up” about Trump in response to the former president’s Muslim travel ban.

The jurors that remained are a diverse group. It may have been impossible to see their faces from the overflow room where I (and most of the press corps) watched jury selection, but we still learned a whole lot about these men and women who will sit in judgment of a former president in the first such criminal trial in U.S. history.

Here is a quick primer on the jurors, who are anonymous.

Juror No. 1, foreperson

Juror No. 1 was also selected as the foreperson, meaning he will preside over jury deliberations and act as the communicator with the court. He gave some of the most anodyne answers to the 42-part questionnaire and direct voir dire. According to pool descriptions, Juror No. 1 showed up to court on Monday in a black T-shirt and carrying a black backpack. He is from Ireland but now lives in West Harlem. Juror No. 1 is married, with no kids, and said he gets his news from the New York Times, the Daily Mail, Fox News, and MSNBC. (The first and fourth responses may be why the prosecution was OK with having him on the jury; the second and third answers may be why the defense was.) During individual voir dire, Juror No. 1 was brief and to the point. When asked what he knew or thought of some of the other Trump criminal cases, Juror No. 1 replied, “I’ve heard of some of them, yeah.” When asked if he had an opinion of them, he said, “None at all.” This might have been what landed this juror the foreperson job.

Juror No. 2

Juror No. 2 is a native New Yorker and oncology nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering, who lives on the Upper East Side with her fiancé and dog. She gets her news from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Google. When asked if she would accept evidence and give it due weight even if it comes from witnesses with questionable backgrounds—such as a tabloid publisher, a former adult film star, and a lawyer like Michael Cohen who has changed his story—she responded: “I’m going to say no. I’m going to listen to all the facts. Whatever outside influences there are, they’re not going to influence me here.” When asked by Blanche as to whether she had any opinions of President Trump, she responded, “I don’t really have one especially, in this court room. I think he should be treated as anyone else and nobody is above the law.” When pressed on that question, she did not give an answer about Trump but said “I’m here for my civic duty and not let anything persuade me either way.”

Juror No. 7

Juror No. 7 lives on the Upper East Side and is originally from North Carolina. He is a Big Law civil litigator at Hunton Andrews Kurth who previously worked at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. According to the pool report, he presents as “white—tanned—and in his late middle age.” He is balding with close-cropped hair and wears glasses. He reads the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and Washington Post and listens to WNYC and the podcasts SmartLess and Car Talk. When asked if his expertise as a lawyer would influence his ability to serve as a juror in this case—basically whether or not he’d override the judge’s rulings about the law with his own feelings about them—he responded that he’d “follow the judge’s instructions.” “I’m a civil litigator which means I know virtually nothing about criminal law,” he conceded. As for his opinion of Trump, Juror No. 7 said, “I don’t know the man and I don’t have any particular opinions about him personally.” He liked some of Trump’s policies and didn’t like others. “I certainly follow the news, I am certainly aware that there are other lawsuits out there,” Juror No. 7 said. “I’m not sure I really know anything about his character.”

At least some of those jurors will probably not remain anonymous for long given the amount of detail about them that is being reported. For example, law firms usually show photos of their attorneys. Once those names get out, those jurors and their families will be in real danger from enraged MAGA freaks with guns.

This is going to be an interesting lawsuit. I hope nobody gets killed along the bumpy road to justice.

Important history behind the current DJT hush money lawsuit

The bottom line: Trump and his justice department corrupted and subverted the federal hush money lawsuit. They obstructed justice. This case should have been tried long ago in federal court, not years later in New York state court.

Summary & commentary: The DoJ asked NY state prosecutors to not proceed against Trump while they could charge him in federal court. Later NY state and the rest of the world found out that the DoJ had been corrupted. Then, the NY state prosecution started. Once again, Trump managed to escape justice. And Merrick Garland refused to do anything about it. Bill Barr should have been prosecuted for obstruction of justice. But again, Garland apparently does nothing to fix the vast damage that Trump and Barr did to the DoJ. At this point, Garland should be prosecuted for felony obstruction of justice to protect Trump and his authoritarian DoJ thugs.

Two experts opine on the strength of the case (paywalled link):

Interviewer: Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, claims that Trump falsely recorded the hush money payments as “legal expenses.” Falsifying business records is ordinarily only a misdemeanor, but the D.A. is claiming that Trump falsified records with the intent to commit other crimes or conceal other crimes, including state and federal campaign finance violations, state tax crimes and the falsification of other business records. If he falsified business records to aid in the commission of these other crimes, then Trump could be guilty of a felony.

When the case was filed, legal analysts from across the political spectrum voiced concern about the case, mainly on legal grounds. I have expressed my own doubts about the case. Now that the trial is underway, what’s your assessment of the case today?

Expert 1: We know a lot more now about the D.A.’s theory of the case than we did before. There was a lot of speculation about whether the predicate crime — the one Trump was promoting by falsifying records — was going to be federal or state, and whether it was going to be campaign-finance related or election-interference related. Now the prosecutors have shown their hand, and their lead theory is going to be that Trump meant to interfere unlawfully with an election by concealing information that the voters might have considered. A case tends to look stronger after the prosecution picks a theory and commits to it. The evidence of deliberate falsification of records is going to be very strong.  

New York criminal practitioners seem fairly unanimous that a first-time offender convicted of something like this is extremely unlikely to do jail time. Add in his age and health, and it’s even more unlikely. The ridiculous truth is that to spend jail time in New York you’ve got to be a teenager accused of swiping a backpack or something.

Expert 2: I agree, the falsification of business records seems rock-solid based on the documentary evidence.

The question for the jurors will be Trump’s knowledge and intent. I expect some of the evidence of Trump’s knowledge and intent will come from witnesses with varying degrees of credibility, but other evidence will come from emails and text messages, including those that will corroborate witnesses with credibility issues, like Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer.” The picture that the prosecutors will paint for the jury, based on the judge’s pretrial rulings, will give the jurors plenty of evidence of motive: to prevent information damaging to candidate Trump from becoming public just weeks before the 2016 election. It’s a very winnable case for the D.A.

The Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame, V 2.7

Over at a neopagan site, a way to evaluate the danger of a group, tribe or cult is described. The higher the score on 18 traits, the more dangerous the group. It would be fun to try it on the Republican Party. The site comments: 

The ABCDEF is founded upon both modern psychological theories about mental health and personal growth, and my many years of participant observation and historical research into minority belief systems. Those who believe that relativism and anarchy are as dangerous to mental health as absolutism and authoritarianism, could (I suppose) count groups with total scores nearing either extreme (high or low) as being equally hazardous. As far as dangers to physical well-being are concerned, however, both historical records and current events clearly indicate the direction in which the greatest threats lie. This is especially so since the low-scoring groups usually seem to have survival and growth rates so small that they seldom develop the abilities to commit large scale atrocities even had they the philosophical or political inclinations to do so.

Five of the 18 traits for evaluation

The GOP
Trait        My score

1               9

2               9

3               10

4               9

5               8

6               5

7               7

8               9

9               8

10             6

11             7

12             7

13             7

14             9

15             10

16             8

17             10

18             10

Total         148

If the average score is a 5 for all the traits that total score is 90. The highest score is 180.

I see the GOP as a 148, making it look quite dangerous to me.

Is that about right or too high or low?