I’ve tried to sift to the most damning evidence GOP has on Biden and it’s not much, certainly not enough to impeach:
In the 2020 election, Joe Biden (at a debate) and his campaign said his son Hunter had not made money from China — and that Biden had not met one of Hunter’s Ukrainian business associates while he was vice president, except for maybe a brief hello. Both of those claims were false, according to sworn testimony by Hunter Biden and his business partner, Devon Archer. It’s not worth quibbling, Democrats, just acknowledge this and move on, it’s not so bad.
In 1998 when the GOP tried to impeach a president for lying — Clinton, who was under oath denying sex with Monica — it backfired, and party popularity plummeted, plus the ringleader, Speaker Newt Gingrich, had to step down. Clinton left office with a Gallup poll approval rating of 65%, higher than that of every other departing president measured since Harry Truman.
The impeachment inquiry Kevin McCarthy has now unilaterally and personally declared against President Joe Biden is, in fact, illegal.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel – The TRUMP Administration Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel – ruled, on January 19th, 2020, that there can be no impeachment and no impeachment inquiry without… a vote. And that ruling is still on the books. Today. And Kevin McCarthy has violated it. Kevin McCarthy has broken the law.
NYT: Trump Orchestrating Impeachment — “The former president has talked regularly with members of the House Freedom Caucus and other congressional Republicans who pushed for impeachment, telling them ‘Either impeach the bum, or fade into oblivion.’”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she told former Trump at dinner in Mar-A-Lago Sunday night that she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”
This will backfire on Republicans. After all, it was tRUMPsky who orchestrated it. House Republicans have tied themselves to his initiative and everything he touches dies. I’m not worried about this in the slightest. Republicans don’t have the common sense of a green grape if they can’t understand that they need to completely disassociate themselves from Orange Adolf.
Poo-tin + tRUMPsky are running mates in 2024. If MAGAts start spewing Poo-tin’s counterclockwise spin on SFB’s many criminal indictments, they are siding with a communist government.
MTG is backing a commie Russian, so what does that make her, and Matty-likes-em-young-Gaetz, and the rest of the so-called ~Freedom~ Caucus?
They are un-American. They hate democracy. They wouldn’t know real freedom if it hit them in their collective backside.
So, let’s start taking about tRUMPskt’s many indictments. That is, after all, why he directed US House members to pull this little impeachment stunt. He wants the focus off of him. Nope. Gonna focus on tRUMPsky’s many criminal indictments. Gonna focus on Republicans wanting to destroy our democracy. Gonna focus on Republicans’ intent to destroy Social Security and Medicare.
Republicans are a clear and present danger to our democracy and we’re going to focus on that.
Is Bobblehead’s juvenile behavior because she needs attention, because she was told to do something to draw attention away from tRUMPsky’s many, criminal indictments, or because she’s a garbage human? Mmm, probably a combination of all three.
“Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates often speak out on hot topics. Only one faces impeachment threat”
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who Republicans are threatening to impeach over comments she made on the campaign trail about abortion and redistricting isn’t the first member of the court to offer public opinions about major issues of the day.”
“They are threatening to remove Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who was elected earlier this year with a strong statewide majority, if she does not recuse herself from a redistricting case that could cost Republicans their outsized majorities in the Legislature. Her election flipped control of the court to a 4-3 liberal tilt after 15 years of a conservative majority.”
“One conservative justice frequently spoke out in favor of gun rights during her campaign, even producing a political mailer showing her brandishing a shotgun and wearing a hat promoting the NRA. Another had previously called Planned Parenthood, a frequent litigant in abortion cases, a “wicked organization.”
Republicans are willing to do anything to steal power and kill democracy.
“House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has done little to quell his troubles in the spending showdown with House conservatives, setting up a potential clash with his right flank that could force the speaker to choose between keeping the government open and keeping his job.”
That is why, if Kev is pushed off of that proverbial cliff, any Republicans who actual love democracy should vote with Dems for the next SOTH. They should show Americans, and the world, that they aren’t all a bunch of fascists. If they do not, well, then they are embracing fascism.
Romney will not seek second term in US Senate
Utah’s US Senator Mitt Romney, who as the Republican nominee lost the 2012 presidential election to incumbent Barack Obama, has announced that he won’t seek a second term. He told the Washington Post it was time for a new generation to “step up” and “shape the world they’re going to live in”.
Romney twice voted to impeach Donald Trump and the 76-year-old told the Post that he believed a second term, which would take him into his 80s, would be “less productive” than his work now.
More to follow. Here’s the report.
A federal judge issued a protective order Wednesday in the Mar-a-Lago case, clearing the sharing of classified evidence as the Justice Department prosecutes former President Trump for mishandling government secrets.
The order from Judge Aileen Cannon does not acknowledge a request from Trump to review those documents by redesignating a space in his home as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF).
It instead leaves it to a chief information security officer, a neutral party designated to manage the classified evidence in the case, to make arrangements for Trump and his legal team to review the evidence.
The order largely used standard language included in protective orders in classified cases, noting in a line echoing the subject of the case itself that “any unauthorized disclosure or mishandling of classified information may constitute violations of federal criminal law.”
It also bars Trump from making public comments about classified evidence in the case, noting that even classified information that “appears in the public domain” is not fair game to discuss unless it has been released as part of an official government statement.
[continues]
I hope Kristen Welker leads SFB into spilling something he ought not have said, but I won’t be watching. When it comes to Orange Adolf, the highlight reel on the nightly news is plenty of SFB content.
Also, Willard knows exactly what Republicans want to do in the future. This is not just about SFB re-hashing 2020. I found Mitt’s little presser today disappointing.
“…Laura Olson, the woman with whom suspended attorney general Ken Paxton is alleged to have had an extramarital affair, was present but deemed unavailable to testify.”
“5:24 p.m., Rusty Hardin passed the witness and said the House rests. Buzbee noted Hardin rested before allowing him time to cross-examine the witness. Buzbee said he accepted the rest and would recall the witness if he needed to.”
“5:29 p.m., Buzbee called for a Motion for a Directed Verdict to poll the jury of senators for a vote to challenge the sufficiency of the evidence. Under the rules, it takes a majority of members present (16 eligible). If the motion fails to get a majority vote then it will be denied.”
“The event was spearheaded by journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan, who testified under oath that the mummified specimens are not part of “our terrestrial evolution”, with almost a third of their DNA remaining “unknown”, reported Mexican media.”
“Mr Maussan has previously been associated with claims of “alien” discoveries that have later been debunked, including five mummies found in Peru in 2017 that were later shown to be human children.”
He said: “These specimen are not part of our terrestrial evolution… These aren’t beings that were found after a UFO wreckage. They were found in diatom (algae) mines, and were later fossilized.”
“X-rays of the specimens were also shown during the hearing, with experts testifying under oath that one of the bodies is seen to have “eggs” inside, while both were said to have implants made of very rare metals, such as Osmium.”
Oh, Dear Lowered! Someone warn Greg Abbott that there are egg-bearing aliens in Mexico.
“To be sure, the tight labor market is still driving incomes up, but not as quickly as last year. And the Fed is intent on softening up the labor market to further curb inflation by targeting wages.”
Motherf&@&ers! The Fed needs to keep its stinking hands off.
All of this talk of another “civil” war is BS. What’s going to happen is that the class warfare that’s been waged on Americans by the Fed, Congress and their billionaire handlers, is going to be met with such fury that it will tear society apart.
Here’s the thing about the Fed jacking around with people’s lives. This isn’t just some economics project, they are hurting millions of human beings and that is their INTENTION. They want to negatively impact wages. They are more concerned about how Wall Street behaves and the big money players can be protected.
Is rent going to go down after wages are reduced and jobs are cut? Nope. Are healthcare costs going to come down. Nah. Class warfare. It’s been happening to us, but it’s about to become a two-sided battle.
“Fields, who led Ford between 2014 and 2017, is warning the Big Three (the traditional name for legacy automakers Ford, GM and Stellantis) not to cave to labor demands in a way that leaves them in a precarious financial situation and at a competitive disadvantage, even as the workers who build the cars eye their healthy profits.”
“The automakers can’t plead poverty,” Fields told CNN on Wednesday, noting the industry’s recent string of profitable years. “They will need to find a creative way to package a fair contract that rewards workers but do it in a way that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the past.”
OK. Let the execs give a percentage of their salaries for which they didn’t do much to earn their huge pay increases, let them put that money back into the kitty for the real workers.
“In the last four years, the price of cars went up 30%. [Automakers’] CEO pay went up 40%. No one said a word. No one had any complaints about that but God forbid the workers ask for their fair share,” Fain told Jake Tapper.
“Workplace Data Is a Tool of Class Warfare- Workers will benefit from technology when they control how it’s used.”
“For well over a century, companies have sought to generate, capture, and quantify information about workers and work processes and use it to suppress wages.”
“In the 1970s oil shocks, competition in global manufacturing, stagflation, and the costs of maintaining an imperial military generated a profitability crisis. Our policy responses first encouraged deindustrialization—which eviscerated organized labor—and then encouraged the growth of today’s service economy, where our largest employers are in retail, food service, logistics, hospitality, and healthcare.”
“Many such firms employ massive numbers of workers but suffer from low productivity growth because their product requires human labor or attentiveness that is difficult to augment through technology. As a result they have especially strong incentives to suppress wage growth. Many embrace a business model with high employment levels but low skills and high turnover, and use new technologies to prevent workers from building collective power.”
“Today companies often aspire to constant surveillance that reaches all aspects of work and production. Surveillance today is also asymmetric: companies can monitor workers without them knowing while simultaneously preventing workers from monitoring management. In that sense, surveillance technologies materialize today’s workplace class politics.”
“…Amazon was seeking to hire two “intelligence analysts” into its Global Security Operations division (GSO). The analysts would use data analytics and other tools to detect and resist “labor organizing threats” and other political opposition to the company. Later that month an Amazon employee alleged that GSO had also monitored internal company message boards to spot union organizing, focusing on boards developed by workers of color and other groups typically underrepresented in Silicon Valley. Such pervasive worker surveillance backfired on Amazon in at least one case. Employees at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island unionized in 2022, in part out of frustration over incessant automated productivity monitoring. Corporate surveillance has also contributed to organizing among Uber and Lyft drivers, Apple store workers, and employees at Tesla’s self-driving program.”
“Employers have long enjoyed rights to monitor the performance of work in most cases. But after the 1970s crisis, employers—themselves under pressure from finance capital—pushed for greater freedom to hire and fire workers at will, to avoid unionization, to purchase labor while denying workers basic employment protections, and to treat the enterprise more like their own sovereign property. That left workers less able to resist ever-expanding surveillance.”
“Walmart set the template here in the 1980s and ’90s. The company used data on store-level inventory and the movement of goods around the globe to optimize its sourcing and distribution systems from its headquarters in Bentonville, growing into a retail behemoth in the process. But Walmart also pressed suppliers for ever lower costs, even driving down wages among those suppliers’ workers. FedEx similarly grew into a delivery giant by developing sophisticated logistics systems and by treating drivers as independent contractors, thus denying them basic labor law protections. Amazon built on Walmart’s model, combining global sourcing with an online sales platform. Uber and other gig economy companies built on FedEx’s model, developing matching algorithms for short-term logistical tasks to be performed by drivers without labor protections.”
“Algorithmic monitoring systems may report workers who do not perform quickly enough or who might take a bathroom break without a manager’s clearance, sometimes even recommending termination. Given the simplicity of these jobs, Amazon can plug workers in and out of them easily and risks little by terminating those who protest.”
Yesterday, I took an elderly friend shopping. There was only one human working the entire floor of the store. She said that everyone was leaving because they are implementing robotics to rack clothes (which I cannot fathom), and eventually this department store will be self-checkout like a grocery store. I wish I were as elderly as my friend, but maybe I won’t be around long anyway, as one never knows. Capitalism has turned the world into a dumpster fire and I’d rather not be around feel the heat.
hannity’s staff beat me to the not-so-misspelling of “gates” in their GAETZ OF HELL: Rep Holds First Hearing on Alleged Abuse Against J6 Defendants (hannity.com) 6/14/23 report. so can’t take punny credit for an apt descriptive label in thread title referring to floriduh’s favorite rep.
Stealing from Hannity is no vice, Pat
I’ve tried to sift to the most damning evidence GOP has on Biden and it’s not much, certainly not enough to impeach:
In the 2020 election, Joe Biden (at a debate) and his campaign said his son Hunter had not made money from China — and that Biden had not met one of Hunter’s Ukrainian business associates while he was vice president, except for maybe a brief hello. Both of those claims were false, according to sworn testimony by Hunter Biden and his business partner, Devon Archer. It’s not worth quibbling, Democrats, just acknowledge this and move on, it’s not so bad.
In 1998 when the GOP tried to impeach a president for lying — Clinton, who was under oath denying sex with Monica — it backfired, and party popularity plummeted, plus the ringleader, Speaker Newt Gingrich, had to step down. Clinton left office with a Gallup poll approval rating of 65%, higher than that of every other departing president measured since Harry Truman.
Old Berman says:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-countdown-with-keith-olbe-99705496/
The impeachment inquiry Kevin McCarthy has now unilaterally and personally declared against President Joe Biden is, in fact, illegal.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel – The TRUMP Administration Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel – ruled, on January 19th, 2020, that there can be no impeachment and no impeachment inquiry without… a vote. And that ruling is still on the books. Today. And Kevin McCarthy has violated it. Kevin McCarthy has broken the law.
NYT: Trump Orchestrating Impeachment — “The former president has talked regularly with members of the House Freedom Caucus and other congressional Republicans who pushed for impeachment, telling them ‘Either impeach the bum, or fade into oblivion.’”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she told former Trump at dinner in Mar-A-Lago Sunday night that she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”
— NYT Free link
Bobo and her boob are ejected from Denver theater.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/video-shows-boebert-storming-out-of-theater-after-beetlejuice-ejection
This will backfire on Republicans. After all, it was tRUMPsky who orchestrated it. House Republicans have tied themselves to his initiative and everything he touches dies. I’m not worried about this in the slightest. Republicans don’t have the common sense of a green grape if they can’t understand that they need to completely disassociate themselves from Orange Adolf.
Biden/Harris 2024
Bobo and her escort
Went out to see a play.
She couldn’t keep her mouth shut
So they were sent away.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/09/12/chris-christie-donald-trump-vladimir-putin-indictments/70835862007/
Poo-tin + tRUMPsky are running mates in 2024. If MAGAts start spewing Poo-tin’s counterclockwise spin on SFB’s many criminal indictments, they are siding with a communist government.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-putin-indictments-good-for-russia_n_65014889e4b04bad69ec0518
MTG is backing a commie Russian, so what does that make her, and Matty-likes-em-young-Gaetz, and the rest of the so-called ~Freedom~ Caucus?
They are un-American. They hate democracy. They wouldn’t know real freedom if it hit them in their collective backside.
So, let’s start taking about tRUMPskt’s many indictments. That is, after all, why he directed US House members to pull this little impeachment stunt. He wants the focus off of him. Nope. Gonna focus on tRUMPsky’s many criminal indictments. Gonna focus on Republicans wanting to destroy our democracy. Gonna focus on Republicans’ intent to destroy Social Security and Medicare.
Republicans are a clear and present danger to our democracy and we’re going to focus on that.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/what-are-the-legal-cases-against-donald-trump.html
“The Case(s) Against Donald Trump It’s hard to keep track, so we made a guide.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-indictments-details-guide-charges-trial-dates-people-case/
“Trump’s 4 indictments in detail: A quick-look guide to charges, trial dates and key players for each case”
Is Bobblehead’s juvenile behavior because she needs attention, because she was told to do something to draw attention away from tRUMPsky’s many, criminal indictments, or because she’s a garbage human? Mmm, probably a combination of all three.
Large Marge got the Big-Eyes for grander things.
That was quick
Hey, at least it’s money being raised to be put toward President Biden’s reelection.
Orange Adolf needs donations for legal fees due to his many, criminal indictments.
Biden/Harris 2024!
ps – The Lincoln Project needs to get on it.
https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-supreme-court-liberal-justice-impeachment-election-0a699275f5da45189dd5503469594dae
“Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates often speak out on hot topics. Only one faces impeachment threat”
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who Republicans are threatening to impeach over comments she made on the campaign trail about abortion and redistricting isn’t the first member of the court to offer public opinions about major issues of the day.”
“They are threatening to remove Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who was elected earlier this year with a strong statewide majority, if she does not recuse herself from a redistricting case that could cost Republicans their outsized majorities in the Legislature. Her election flipped control of the court to a 4-3 liberal tilt after 15 years of a conservative majority.”
“One conservative justice frequently spoke out in favor of gun rights during her campaign, even producing a political mailer showing her brandishing a shotgun and wearing a hat promoting the NRA. Another had previously called Planned Parenthood, a frequent litigant in abortion cases, a “wicked organization.”
Republicans are willing to do anything to steal power and kill democracy.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/politics/government-shutdown-negotiations-conservatives-spending/index.html
“House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has done little to quell his troubles in the spending showdown with House conservatives, setting up a potential clash with his right flank that could force the speaker to choose between keeping the government open and keeping his job.”
That is why, if Kev is pushed off of that proverbial cliff, any Republicans who actual love democracy should vote with Dems for the next SOTH. They should show Americans, and the world, that they aren’t all a bunch of fascists. If they do not, well, then they are embracing fascism.
the guardian:
Husband of Alaska congresswoman Mary Peltola dies in plane crash | Alaska | The Guardian
Federal judge sidesteps Trump request to view classified info at Mar-a-Lago in protective order | The Hill
SFB can’t keep his yap shut, and how can they monitor handling of docs? Supervised visitation?
OMG, Matt Gutz.
Maybe Willard can help Dems save democracy since he won’t be worried about getting re-elected.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/media/kristen-welker-donald-trump-interview/index.html
I hope Kristen Welker leads SFB into spilling something he ought not have said, but I won’t be watching. When it comes to Orange Adolf, the highlight reel on the nightly news is plenty of SFB content.
Also, Willard knows exactly what Republicans want to do in the future. This is not just about SFB re-hashing 2020. I found Mitt’s little presser today disappointing.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/13/ken-paxton-impeachment-trial-live-updates/
“…Laura Olson, the woman with whom suspended attorney general Ken Paxton is alleged to have had an extramarital affair, was present but deemed unavailable to testify.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/video/ag-ken-paxtons-alleged-mistress-laura-olson-present-at-trial/
“Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, is married to Paxton. She must be present for the trial but cannot vote on the articles of impeachment.”
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/politics/lone-star-politics/coming-up-day-7-of-the-ken-paxton-impeachment-trial/3336974/
They just accidentally rested the case?
“5:24 p.m., Rusty Hardin passed the witness and said the House rests. Buzbee noted Hardin rested before allowing him time to cross-examine the witness. Buzbee said he accepted the rest and would recall the witness if he needed to.”
“5:29 p.m., Buzbee called for a Motion for a Directed Verdict to poll the jury of senators for a vote to challenge the sufficiency of the evidence. Under the rules, it takes a majority of members present (16 eligible). If the motion fails to get a majority vote then it will be denied.”
Maybe Ms Welker will try to start her new job off on the right track by slicing and dicing the orange cheese.
I hope so!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/aliens-in-mexico-congress-ufo-b2410477.html
“The event was spearheaded by journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan, who testified under oath that the mummified specimens are not part of “our terrestrial evolution”, with almost a third of their DNA remaining “unknown”, reported Mexican media.”
“Mr Maussan has previously been associated with claims of “alien” discoveries that have later been debunked, including five mummies found in Peru in 2017 that were later shown to be human children.”
He said: “These specimen are not part of our terrestrial evolution… These aren’t beings that were found after a UFO wreckage. They were found in diatom (algae) mines, and were later fossilized.”
“X-rays of the specimens were also shown during the hearing, with experts testifying under oath that one of the bodies is seen to have “eggs” inside, while both were said to have implants made of very rare metals, such as Osmium.”
Oh, Dear Lowered! Someone warn Greg Abbott that there are egg-bearing aliens in Mexico.
RIP Gooseberry
traveling at the speed of light
keep your electric eye on me
bonus track
🪐 🚶♂️ 💫
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/opinions/us-economy-recession-consumer-spending-peterson-lundh/index.html
“To be sure, the tight labor market is still driving incomes up, but not as quickly as last year. And the Fed is intent on softening up the labor market to further curb inflation by targeting wages.”
Motherf&@&ers! The Fed needs to keep its stinking hands off.
All of this talk of another “civil” war is BS. What’s going to happen is that the class warfare that’s been waged on Americans by the Fed, Congress and their billionaire handlers, is going to be met with such fury that it will tear society apart.
Here’s the thing about the Fed jacking around with people’s lives. This isn’t just some economics project, they are hurting millions of human beings and that is their INTENTION. They want to negatively impact wages. They are more concerned about how Wall Street behaves and the big money players can be protected.
Is rent going to go down after wages are reduced and jobs are cut? Nope. Are healthcare costs going to come down. Nah. Class warfare. It’s been happening to us, but it’s about to become a two-sided battle.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/business/auto-strike-uaw-mark-fields/index.html
“Fields, who led Ford between 2014 and 2017, is warning the Big Three (the traditional name for legacy automakers Ford, GM and Stellantis) not to cave to labor demands in a way that leaves them in a precarious financial situation and at a competitive disadvantage, even as the workers who build the cars eye their healthy profits.”
“The automakers can’t plead poverty,” Fields told CNN on Wednesday, noting the industry’s recent string of profitable years. “They will need to find a creative way to package a fair contract that rewards workers but do it in a way that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the past.”
OK. Let the execs give a percentage of their salaries for which they didn’t do much to earn their huge pay increases, let them put that money back into the kitty for the real workers.
“In the last four years, the price of cars went up 30%. [Automakers’] CEO pay went up 40%. No one said a word. No one had any complaints about that but God forbid the workers ask for their fair share,” Fain told Jake Tapper.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/workplace-data-is-a-tool-of-class-warfare/
“Workplace Data Is a Tool of Class Warfare- Workers will benefit from technology when they control how it’s used.”
“For well over a century, companies have sought to generate, capture, and quantify information about workers and work processes and use it to suppress wages.”
“In the 1970s oil shocks, competition in global manufacturing, stagflation, and the costs of maintaining an imperial military generated a profitability crisis. Our policy responses first encouraged deindustrialization—which eviscerated organized labor—and then encouraged the growth of today’s service economy, where our largest employers are in retail, food service, logistics, hospitality, and healthcare.”
“Many such firms employ massive numbers of workers but suffer from low productivity growth because their product requires human labor or attentiveness that is difficult to augment through technology. As a result they have especially strong incentives to suppress wage growth. Many embrace a business model with high employment levels but low skills and high turnover, and use new technologies to prevent workers from building collective power.”
“Today companies often aspire to constant surveillance that reaches all aspects of work and production. Surveillance today is also asymmetric: companies can monitor workers without them knowing while simultaneously preventing workers from monitoring management. In that sense, surveillance technologies materialize today’s workplace class politics.”
“…Amazon was seeking to hire two “intelligence analysts” into its Global Security Operations division (GSO). The analysts would use data analytics and other tools to detect and resist “labor organizing threats” and other political opposition to the company. Later that month an Amazon employee alleged that GSO had also monitored internal company message boards to spot union organizing, focusing on boards developed by workers of color and other groups typically underrepresented in Silicon Valley. Such pervasive worker surveillance backfired on Amazon in at least one case. Employees at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island unionized in 2022, in part out of frustration over incessant automated productivity monitoring. Corporate surveillance has also contributed to organizing among Uber and Lyft drivers, Apple store workers, and employees at Tesla’s self-driving program.”
“Employers have long enjoyed rights to monitor the performance of work in most cases. But after the 1970s crisis, employers—themselves under pressure from finance capital—pushed for greater freedom to hire and fire workers at will, to avoid unionization, to purchase labor while denying workers basic employment protections, and to treat the enterprise more like their own sovereign property. That left workers less able to resist ever-expanding surveillance.”
“Walmart set the template here in the 1980s and ’90s. The company used data on store-level inventory and the movement of goods around the globe to optimize its sourcing and distribution systems from its headquarters in Bentonville, growing into a retail behemoth in the process. But Walmart also pressed suppliers for ever lower costs, even driving down wages among those suppliers’ workers. FedEx similarly grew into a delivery giant by developing sophisticated logistics systems and by treating drivers as independent contractors, thus denying them basic labor law protections. Amazon built on Walmart’s model, combining global sourcing with an online sales platform. Uber and other gig economy companies built on FedEx’s model, developing matching algorithms for short-term logistical tasks to be performed by drivers without labor protections.”
“Algorithmic monitoring systems may report workers who do not perform quickly enough or who might take a bathroom break without a manager’s clearance, sometimes even recommending termination. Given the simplicity of these jobs, Amazon can plug workers in and out of them easily and risks little by terminating those who protest.”
Yesterday, I took an elderly friend shopping. There was only one human working the entire floor of the store. She said that everyone was leaving because they are implementing robotics to rack clothes (which I cannot fathom), and eventually this department store will be self-checkout like a grocery store. I wish I were as elderly as my friend, but maybe I won’t be around long anyway, as one never knows. Capitalism has turned the world into a dumpster fire and I’d rather not be around feel the heat.
NEW THREAD by Craig, our fearless leader