BC POLITICS
Saved by @ThomassRichards

The Democrats are at least two parties. The progressive wing of the party (which is by no means unified) and the finance wing of the party, which is also the party leadership.

1/

 During the leadership race, the progressive wing was represented by @SenSanders and @SenWarren; the former wants to minimize the role of markets in our lives, the latter wants to redeem markets by regulating them. It's a distinction with a difference, but I donated to both.

2/
Both wings of the party have prominent representatives in Congress; Sandersism are most visibly associated with @AOC (whom I donated to) and Warrenism is embodied by @RepKatiePorter (likewise), who was also one of Warren's law school proteges.

3/
Porter is a force of nature. She is infamous - and celebrated - for her brutal, no-holds-barred questioning of both corporate and administration witnesses, using a white-board to pin them down and eviscerating any attempts at bullshittery.

4/
This isn't just about getting facts into the record (though, she is SO GOOD at getting facts into the record!), it's also about effecting change, like when she single-handedly cornered the CDC's chief into guaranteeing universal, free covid tests:

https://t.co/WAfa4Ox5As

5/
During the 2020 election, corporate democrats and their supporters excoriated anyone who dared to question whether the party's corporate establishment would ever rise to the occasion and deliver the transformative change it demands.

6/
This "disunity" was treated as a reckless invitation to an apocalyptic second Trump term. Particular viciousness was directed at we who questioned the party leadership, such as supporters of @ShahidForChange, a radical human rights lawyer who primaried @SpeakerPelosi.

7/
Though Buttar was the target of a racist, Islamophobic smear-campaign mounted by party hacks, he fought a good and important fight (I was a donor to his campaign):

https://t.co/nmX0i2YJUd

8/
Pelosi's return to Congress means that Congressional Dems are now subject to her instincts, whims and loyalties. Those loyalties run deep. Pelosi is a major recipient of finance-sector donations.

https://t.co/ldOG3UlHfg

9/
Finance is one of the great villains of our century, and their cheating, theft, and destruction - foreclosures, fake accounts, usury, theft - have been rewarded, not punished. They showered establishment Dems with unprecedented sums in 2020:

https://t.co/FupfYyQ0fp

10/
One of the bright lines separating the progressive Dems from their establishment rivals is the finance sector. The latter love 'em ("that's where the money is" -W Sutton). The former are eager to euthanize some rentiers (-JM Keynes).

11/
Now, it happens that the Dems' most powerful scourge of the finance sector is Katie Porter, whose public eviscerations of finance criminals and their government enablers are the stuff of legend.

Here she is gutting @jpmorgan's Jamie Dimon:

https://t.co/ezIeQnnX4I

12/
And here she is just slaughtering the henhouse fox from Trump's Consumer Finance Protection Bureau:

https://t.co/NkoMYybLdz

Steve Mnuchin didn't have a chance. Oh my god is that mediocre, upward-failing cartoon villain out of his league.

https://t.co/Cu6xtkL4yW

13/
Which brings me back to Nancy Pelosi.

Who just rigged it so that Katie Porter will no longer be on the Congressional Finance Committee.

https://t.co/qa7lKhbrwN

14/
At a moment where the Dems' midterm fortunes are absolutely dependent on their willingness to deal out a reckoning to the banks for their covid profiteering, they are eliminating their most ardent and skilful finance-fighter.

15/
Pelosi thinks the problem isn't systemic, it's individual: that we have to reform bad banks, not banking itself. Pelosi is also worth ~$200m (mostly through her husband, a prominent finance leader) and depends on finance-sector contributions.

https://t.co/lBtVm9RjY7

16/
As Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is impossible to get a Congressional Majority Leader to understand something when her political career and family fortune depend on her not understanding it."

(Sinclair sometimes got eerily specific!)

17/
Porter is a force of nature. She flipped a red district and then won it again while publicly supporting Medicare For All. She upended the staffer-controlled Finance Committee, ending the reign of underlings who cycled in and out of the finance sector and finance regulation.

18/
The Pelosi-controlled Steering Committee appointed her to two other committees (Oversight and Natural Resources) then refused to waive the rule against serving on more than two committees, forcing her off the Finance committee.

19/
Porter is the only single mom of school-aged children in the House, giving her a unique perspective on finance that is completely alien to colleagues whose fortunes rise to the hundreds of millions.

20/
Economically, by every quantitative measure, establishment Dems are significantly to the right of Richard Nixon. Their lip-service to progressive causes stretches as far as replacing half of the 150 white dudes who own the world with women and people of color.

21/
Biden is already moving to stuff his administration with finance sector ghouls who made (literal) bank off of 393,000 US covid deaths.

The decision to call off the banks' fiercest watchdog puts the Democratic Congressional majority at risk in 2022.

22/
And that puts everything at risk: climate, economic justice, and repelling the forces of violent white nationalism.

eof/

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Surveillance companies assure us that they employ safeguards to ensure that their customers aren't abusing their products to engage in unlawful or unethical surveillance. And yet, inevitably, these companies abuse their tools THEMSELVES.

1/


It's almost as though being the kind of person who dreams of achieving incredible wealthy by spying on people makes you kind of an asshole.

2/

Like the people at @VerkadaHQ, "a fast-growing Silicon Valley surveillance startup" whose male employees used its own products to sexually harass their female colleagues and received the barest wrist-slaps for

Male Verkada employees maintained a private Slack channel where executives posted photos of female employees - captured with the company's own surveillance tools - and made sexually explicit remarks about them.

4/

When this came to light, the company's founder and CEO Filip Kaliszan called an all-hands meeting, expressed disappointment in the harassers, and told them that they could either quit...or lose some stock options. They chose the latter and remain employed there to this day.

5/
TECH
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
While many Amazon warehouse workers in Europe have unionized, its brutalized, underpaid, routinely maimed US workforce remains tragically unorganized, thanks to the US's weak labor laws that make forming a union far harder than at any time since the Gilded Age.

1/


But all that may be about to change: 6000 warehouse workers in #BHM1, the massive Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, AL, will vote next month on a push to unionize under the

Amazon, like other tech giants, is absolutely reliant on building and maintaining a competitive advantage by exploiting technology to drive wages ever downward while ducking responsibility for harming workers.

3/

Big Tech is pants-wettingly afraid of unionization, and that goes double for any solidarity between high-paid tech workers and misclassified/outsourced warehouse workers and other "unskilled" laborers.

4/

Amazon has gone so far as to hire the Pinkertons, renowned as some of history's most violent anti-worker terrorists, to bust unionization drives in its
BUSINESS
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
When it's railroading time, you get railroads.

When the railroads turn into the personal satrapies of rail-barons, you get trustbusters.

A couple decades ago, it was online service time. We had the users, the telcoms systems, the computers, the modems, so we got platforms.

1/

We had that, but we lacked something important: effective antimonopoly enforcement. Lax merger laws allowed companies with access to capital markets to buy out or neutralize all their competitors, so we got monopolies.

Right on schedule, we're getting digital trustbusters.

2/

Now, some people aren't technically sophisticated, but they do understand a lot about competition law. That's how you get meat-and-taters antitrust proposals like @amyklobuchar's #CALERA, which address the structural problems with antitrust

Klobuchar's bill is hugely important. The reason we have monopolies is that we stopped enforcing anti-monopoly law 40 years ago. Monopoly isn't a tech problem, it's everywhere from sneakers to glass bottles to pro wrestling to candy to

Klobuchar's CALERA doesn't just seek to apply antitrust law to tech - it also explicitly restores the pre-Reagan basis for fighting monopolies: we fight monopolies because they concentrate power and corrupt our politics. All monopolies are guilty unless proven otherwise.

5/
SOCIETY
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Accountancy is more likely to be mocked than celebrated (or condemned), but accountants, far more than poets, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

1/


Though "bean counters" are employed by firms, they are notionally bound by a professional code of ethics every bit as serious as the Hippocratic Oath: "count things honestly." Without an accurate accounting of quantities, you can't make good decisions on quality.

2/

Though accountancy concerns itself with counting things, it is inextricably bound up with the realm of ideas, and accounting conventions (how you account for things) are philosophical matters, not empirical ones.

3/

It's no coincidence that #ModernMonetaryTheory owes more to accountancy than it does to economics. Economic accounts of the economy have an unfortunate tendency to proceed from first principles, creating models based on pure reason, without checking in on the actual world.

4/

For example, neoclassical econ's "homo economicus," the rational value-maximizing actor who populated so many models; or economists' insistence on targeting inflation with interest rates; or treating national "debts" like they were household debts.

5/
HISTORY
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
There is no shortage of takes about what's going on with Gamestop (and other surging stocks), Robinhood and Reddit's r/wallstreetbets, many of them contradictory - at least on the face of them. But I think it's possible for most of these takes to be right. Here's how.

1/


First you need to understand the underlying mechanics of the story. Stock markets are fundamentally a way of making bets, including bets on the outcome of other peoples' bets, and bets on the outcomes of THOSE bets.

2/

All this complexity creates lots of exploitable opportunities. Some of these opportunities are considered legitimate and are given respectable names like "arbitrage." Others are considered illegitimate, and are called disreputable things like "stock manipulation."

3/

A hypothetical Martian observing all this through a telescope could not tell you which kinds of bets were honest and which were dishonest, because the difference isn't about any objective standard, but rather, about power.

4/

The strategies of powerful people are legit, while the strategies of their would-be dethroners are not legit. Sometimes, even outright frauds are OK if they're done by people with enough power.

5/
TRADING , STOCK MKT

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Cancel the Dementiacrats - Stu Cvrk
Cancel the Dementiacra...
@STUinSD
Thread – The Buffoon in the White House (Irony)

1. A pal passed this to me the other day, and I saved it for today. The author is unknown (at least to me), but this has been posted on a number of blogs. An excellent read!
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Alexandria Ocasio-Cort...
@Ocasio2018
We’ve been getting calls and outreach from Queens residents all day about this.

The community’s response? Outrage.


Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.

When we talk about bringing jobs to the community, we need to dig deep:
- Has the company promised to hire in the existing community?
- What’s the quality of jobs + how many are promised? Are these jobs low-wage or high wage? Are there benefits? Can people collectively bargain?

Displacement is not community development. Investing in luxury condos is not the same thing as investing in people and families.

Shuffling working class people out of a community does not improve their quality of life.

We need to focus on good healthcare, living wages, affordable rent. Corporations that offer none of those things should be met w/ skepticism.

It’s possible to establish economic partnerships w/ real opportunities for working families, instead of a race-to-the-bottom competition.
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\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8I Support Our Military & Law Enforcement\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
🇺🇸I Support Our Milita...
@TheWiseOwl_AZ
1. Juan O’Savin for verifying this. “Plane crashes are targeted kills.”

Here is a brief summary for those who may not be familiar with Kennedy History:
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Mangy Jay
Mangy Jay
@magi_jay
I don't think that "Democrats were cowards and couldn't stand up to McConnell" is the correct framing. Dems clearly made a political calculation. Plenty to potentially criticize about that calculation, but it was informed by factors unrelated to generalized "fear of republicans"

What we largely know now:
-There would never have been enough GOP votes to convict
-GOP had the power to hold up *all* Senate business & that means COVID relief (Dems would have been blamed for this hold up)
-Witnesses were uncooperative & would have had to have been subpoenaed

So I think the correct framing is that Democrats made a political calculation that the benefit of adding witnesses (who would not change the outcome) was not worth the political & moral cost of holding up COVID relief, as well as important confirmations. . . .

This calculation can be criticized on its own merits, but it's categorically different than just being scared of McConnell & the GOP.

For my own part, I think an error Democrats made w/r/t witnesses was not calling cooperative police officers who had been attacked that day. Just a few personal narratives from the police would have deeply embarrassed the GOP. That's a missed opportunity, in my view.
POLITICS
ScottishPanda
ScottishPanda
@PandaScottish
[thread]

I am going to do a thread on several numbers

1

2,996

4,494

43,730

106,158

Now

We go back into the dim and distant past in British politics

We go back over 2 decades

A lesson from the past

Now I am going to focus on the words of two politicians

Two politicians who have held high offices in this land

And I am going to agree with their words

So those with a long memory

May have already figured out perhaps what I am going to do based on the first two numbers

And you'd be right

So let me get going on the journey

In my first post

I deliberately anonymised those numbers

Let me now give them context

1 Princess Diana or Margaret

2,996 9/11

The final 3 are UK coronavirus death tolls:

4,494 (5th April 2020)

43,730 (30th June 2020)

106,158 (1st February 2021)
POLITICS

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Did you know?

When Saudi Arabia's King visited India in 1955, PM Nehru ordered all the Hindu Temples and Idols of Hindu Deities that came in Saudi King's way to be covered up.
Our temples are the architectural marvels in their own league.


Each of our temples tells the story of our rich history and cultural heritage. Was Nehru that ashamed of his own nation's heritage that he had to cover them up or there was some other reason? The answer would be best known to him only.

PM Nehru invited the then Saudi King Saud bin Abdul Aziz to India who accepted the invitation and planned a 17 day long official visit to India in 1955. Saudi King had brought a large delegation with him and he had to visit various Indian cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Agra,


Aligarh, Shimla, Mysore and Varanasi. However, when Saudi King reached Varanasi, Nehru ordered to cover all the temples and Idols with curtains that came in the way of the Royal Convoy. During his stay in Varanasi, Govt buildings were painted with the words "Kalma Tayyiba".


'Kalma Tayyiba' means 'There is not God but only Allah and Mohammed is his messenger'. In addition to it, Pooja and Aartis were also stopped at temples. I can call it the appeasement politics of the highest order and Nehru was indeed the greatest appeaser of all times.
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Corey Lynn \U0001f64f\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
Corey Lynn 🙏🇺🇸...
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1) OBSERVATION: The frequencies are changing. I would have to assess stats on the electromagnetic field to see its fluctuations. All I know is, I am highly sensitive to energy/frequencies, and they are changing, because…

2) 2 Weeks ago, my dog was effected by it as well. He is hearing things that aren’t technically audible. I can tell by his body language and sounds. One week ago I began feeling a pressure in my head and ears. It wasn’t painful at all, but it was intense for a bit.

3) It reminded me of taking off in an airplane a bit. I felt like I was in a vacuum. It went on and off for a couple of days. I’ve picked up on frequencies and high pitched sounds (not audible to most) for 30 years, and today my right ear began to ring for longer than usual.

4) This is nothing unusual for me, with exception of the duration. This happens often with me. No, it’s not tinnitus. Only this time, when I spoke, there was reverb creating a high pitch in my ear from my voice. This lasted for about 30 minutes. It did not hurt, just annoying.

5) So yes, the frequencies are changing. What this means exactly, I am unsure of at the moment. Some will say electromagnetic fields, others will say ascension, and some will say pole shift. I honestly can’t say at this very moment.
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Anshul Pandey
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@Anshulspiritual
THE NOTICEABLE SIGNS OBSERVED ON IMPENDING DEATH(मृत्यु के संकेत या चिन्ह)

As per Skanda Puran, Kartikeya had narrated to Muni Agastya about the signs of the coming death. This is as per this ancient scripture.


If one experiences the air coming out of right nostril continuously then it is observed that the person dies within three years. If the breathing is continuous towards upper side from both the nostrils, then the person can die within two three days.

If the breathing is through the mouth instead of the nostrils then the person may live only for two days. The person should take into coignance these signs of the occurance of any sudden death.

As per astrology when the Surya is in the 7th house and Chandrama is in its own house and the breathing is only through the right nostril then the danger exists. If you see a yellow black coloured figure who becomes invisible immediately then the life span is limited to 2 years.

If any person sneezes, passes urine, stool and semen all together he has only a year more to live. If a person sees blue coloured snakes flying in the sky then he has only six more months to live. If a person sees any thing opposite to its real self like colours
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Daoyu
Daoyu
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@franciscodeasis https://t.co/OuQaBRFPu7
Unfortunately the "This work includes the identification of viral sequences in bat samples, and has resulted in the isolation of three bat SARS-related coronaviruses that are now used as reagents to test therapeutics and vaccines." were BEFORE the


chimeric infectious clone grants were there.https://t.co/DAArwFkz6v is in 2017, Rs4231.
https://t.co/UgXygDjYbW is in 2016, RsSHC014 and RsWIV16.
https://t.co/krO69CsJ94 is in 2013, RsWIV1. notice that this is before the beginning of the project

starting in 2016. Also remember that they told about only 3 isolates/live viruses. RsSHC014 is a live infectious clone that is just as alive as those other "Isolates".

P.D. somehow is able to use funds that he have yet recieved yet, and send results and sequences from late 2019 back in time into 2015,2013 and 2016!

https://t.co/4wC7k1Lh54 Ref 3: Why ALL your pangolin samples were PCR negative? to avoid deep sequencing and accidentally reveal Paguma Larvata and Oryctolagus Cuniculus?
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Kanekoa
Kanekoa
@KanekoaTheGreat
*The Evidence Collection*

There is overwhelming evidence of election fraud. Therefore it is the duty of the Executive, Legislative, & Judicial branches to throw out the fraudulent votes & to honor their oath to protect & defend the Constitution of the USA.🇺🇸🦅

A list below.🔻


1/ Navarro Report: The Immaculate Deception - Six Key Dimensions of Election Irregularities -

2/ Analysis of 3,000 U.S. counties shows Joe Biden received 5.6 % more votes in counties using Dominion Voting Systems (Video) -

3/ Antrim Michigan Dominion Voting Systems Forensics Report -

4/ Evidence Grows: ’20 Election Was Rigged -
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