It is a pleasure to headline our weekly "Virtual Route 66" with this from our Co-Founder's Collection from our hometown, Laguna Niguel. The brightness of hope was what struck us as we continue to be witness to the ongoing carnage in Ukraine as Putin noted that Peace Talks are at a dead end, the Russian Black Sea flagship was sunk and Mariupol (as noted by the Foreign Minister of Ukraine) was no more. The World Economy was dealing with inflation as the US MId-Term Elections begin in earnest as the former President, Donald Trump continues his fundraising efforts with the recent interesting development of Jared Kushner's investment firm having gotten 2 Billion Dollars after a personal intervention from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Our WOrld is also dealing with profound food challenges our World faces including the upcoming elections in France, Pakistan, and as COVID rages in China, and other ongoing challenges throughout the world.
We present a curation of the week that was courtesy of The Financial Times, The Washington Examiner, Heather Cox Richardson, the Economist of London, The Bulwark, and other leading thinkers and publishers around the World:
Hey y’all it’s Tim in for JVL today. The head man will be back tomorrow.
1. David McCormick’s Dignity Was First To Leave
Watching people of stature—titans of industry, high-ranking diplomats, Ivy Leaguers with doctorates in their subject of expertise—sacrifice every ounce of their dignity at the feet of a racist carnival barker will never really cease to amaze. No matter how many times we have witnessed it over the years, the spectacle is still so obscene that one struggles to look away.
As such, this weekend our collective gaze turned with a sense of vicarious embarrassment to GOP Senate candidate David McCormick.
McCormick was the CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund and is married to Goldman Sachs executive Dina Powell, one of the people who haughtily proclaimed they were “saving America” by going to work for Donald Trump. He is the kind of person who sits on high as a trustee of the Aspen Institute where he gathers his fellow members of the international elite to stroke their chins as they discuss the value of creative disruption and the need for bipartisan consensus in Washington. He has amassed the kind of wealth a person couldn’t spend if they tried. He could do anything he wanted in life. Buy an island. Or a sports team. Become a Hollywood producing magnate. He could pay for every graduate of Bloomsburg High School to go to college for a generation.
But with the entire world as his oyster, McCormick decided that the job he wanted was United States senator. And to be a senator in the GOP these days, sucking up to Trump is the ante. So McCormick hired many of his wife’s former Trump administration coworkers up to and including the white nationalist sympathizing Stephen Miller to help him go “Full MAGA.”
Multiple sources relayed to me that McCormick has told friends he would court Trump, but was drawing a line at advancing the Big Lie about the 2020 election. As it turns out the line he has drawn is so thin as to be barely visible by the human eye—which Green discovered in his interview with the candidate during which McCormick repeatedly retreated to expressing concerns about election “irregularities” and reiterated that the voters’ “doubts” should be taken seriously.
Le Sigh.
As recently as last Wednesday, Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey said McCormick was having lunch on the patio at Mar-a-Lago with Hope Hicks in his feverish attempt to suck up to the man who invented the Big Lie that he finds so distasteful (in private) and the resulting insurrection (that he publicly called a “horrific and dark chapter”).
The scene on that patio is quite the image to conjure in your head. There’s McCormick sweating profusely as he eats a rock-hard steak in a gaudy-ass club, being made to wait for the opportunity for an audience with Trump, who delights as this Big Man calls him “sir” in the hopes that the Orange God-King might look with favor upon his candidacy.
And what did McCormick get for all that humiliation? What did he get for hiring the most deplorable of Trump’s hangers on? For schlepping to Cougarville to beg like a dog?
Shunned in politie society, obviously.
But also: rejected in humiliating fashion by the man he courted.
On Saturday Donald Trump passed over David McCormick to endorse fellow huckster, Dr. Oz.
You hate to see it. You really do.
2. Senate Map for Dummies
What does Oz’s ascendance in the Pennsylvania GOP primary mean for the Senate as a whole? It is a modest green shoot in what remains a tough environment for the Democrats.
Here’s a Readers Digest run-down of what you should know about the Senate map as things stand today. I’m going to periodically pop-in for JVL over the next few months and update this breakdown to provide you with your horse-race fix.
Current Senate: 50/50, Democrats have the tie-breaker.
Potential Democratic Pick-ups:
Tier A: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Tier B: (Empty Set)
Tier C: Ohio, Florida, North Carolina
Tier G(OP Faceplant): Missouri
Potential Republican Pickups:
Tier A: Georgia, Nevada, Arizona
Tier B: New Hampshire
Tier G(OP Tsunami): Colorado
Quick Hits:
Pennsylvania: If you are a reader of this newsletter you know about John Fetterman. He’s currently up big on the great moderate hope Conor Lamb in the Democratic Senate primary. Assuming that holds (it’s early, it may not), Oz presents a much better match-up for Fetterman than McCormick does, so the Trump news is a little boost for the Dems here. As a reference point: an internal poll leaked by the Lamb Super PAC showed Fetterman +9 on Oz but -3 to McCormick.
Wisconsin: Basically every Democrat or anti-Ron Johnsonite who reaches out to me to discuss this race is panicked about Mandela Barnes, the progressive rising star leading Democratic polls. Charlie explained why back in January. The polls have begun to narrow, but Barnes is benefitting from a crowded opposition splitting the vote. Self-funding Alex Lasry is currently in second and the candidates who seem to be the most electable are in the bunch: Sarah Godlewski and moderate Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson are trailing behind.
Nevada: The lowest profile major Senate rate in the country, Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeira began sounding alarm bells about the state and Sen. Cortez-Masto’s chances last week.
Bottom Line:
If I were setting a spread for the Senate right now it would be Republicans +2.5 seats and -300 to take the Senate. (If that’s Greek to you, Sports Odds for Dummies.)
To hit the over Republicans would need to sweep both sets of Tier A races or drop one and pick up New Hampshire/Colorado instead. I’m a slight lean towards the under because it’s hard to imagine that Republicans don’t butt fumble one of those 5.
A Democratic hold in the Senate requires more than 1 butt fumble. They need to find a way to win 3 out of the 5 Tier A races. The fact that Biden won all 5 of those states in 2020 makes the task seem achievable. On the other hand Biden is currently underwater in New Jersey. So . . .
I have never subscribed to the so-called Horseshoe Theory that If you go far enough to the extreme right or to the extreme left you wind up being on the same side. Not exactly true. Both extremes hold wildly conflicting world views and adhere, theoretically, to a completely different bundle of ethics and values.
In practice, however, both extremes can wind up holding very similar or even identical political positions even though they have arrived from very different departure points and routes. The extreme right holds that an invisible but omnipotent “deep state” controls our society with a rigid overly liberal bias. What better petri dish in which to whip up one conspiracy theory after another. It’s easy to do when you portray your enemy as unseen but all powerful.
Into that seeming void, right wing conspiracists can plug in the immediate enemy of choice. Perhaps illegal immigrants who we learn are encouraged to come by such bogeymen as George Soros and then when they arrive in the U.S. they are coddled and cushioned by corrupt Democratic officials working on behest of, right, the Deep State. The goal of this operation: to de-Americanize America and turn it brown, while adding a whole lot of new Democratic voters to the rolls.
One can also take a shortcut to full conspiratorial paranoia by becoming fluent in Qanon, as the clearly-addled Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Thomas, has. Consider that text she sent Mark Meadows two days after the electoral defeat of Donald Trump. Picking up some real rubbish from the Web or from a Q-comrade, Thomas wanted to believe the whole election was an elaborate hoax, but one generated by her side to trap illicit liberals. She texted: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”
Then she added of this fanciful, if chilling, set of conspiracy theories: “I hope this is true.”
Sure. Just as true as other texts referring to “water-marked ballots” along with the moon being made of green chase. This would all be hilarious if Thomas was not the wife of a reactionary Supreme Court Justice, or if she did not have immediate access to the top levels of government, and if she had not been repeatedly received warmly in the Oval Office brining Trump lists of who should be hired and fired.
DEEP STATE VS CORPORATE AMERICA
Liberals and progressives certainly have the right to guffaw over Ginni’s delusions. But, I would posit that the more extreme parts of the American Left, especially those that thrive online rather than on the ground, are equally infected with conspiracy theories and are equally as ridiculous and off base as their right wing counterparts.
Indeed, the phrase “deep state” originated on the left, not the right, and was sometimes just called the “permanent state.” I clearly remember a piece by Tom Hayden around the 2000 elections in Tikkun where he argued that the permanent state – defense bureaucrats and lobbyists for example—were a major obstacle to reform. He was right, of course. But over the past two decades, as the Left continues to shrink, too many of its adherents have abandoned reasonable thought and have retreated into hoary slogans and knee jerk responses left over from 1968. This has led to absolutely rampant conspiracy theorizing. When you continually fail, or come up short, it’s very handy to have at your disposal an omnipresent unseeable enemy. The Christians have the Devil to blame.The Left has other variants available when describing who really runs the show, especially when things go poorly. The “ruling class,” “corporate America,” and let us not forget that golden oldie --- The CIA! To which we can now add sinister generalizations like “NATO,” “US Imperialism” and so on down the line.
We have been drowned in news about right wing conspiracies for the last five years. So let’s take a little closer look at the leftist variety,
The Russian war against Ukraine has been a perfect showcase for this tendency. I call them the Internet Left. They have no real existence on the ground (Thank God). They have no real constituency except others like them who spend hours on the keyboards tapping away at their resentments and fantasies. But, wow, they sure have become loud and dominant on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. As I noted above, they wind up taking the identical positions of the Pro-Putin Right, even though their argumentation departs radically from the Trumpies
These are real zealots. They post or tweet, and I am not kidding, up to 100 times a day. One of the headwaters of this bullshit stream is an online magazine called Grayzone, headed up by Max Blumenthal, the son of Hillaryland eminence gris Sydney Blumenthal. But the younger Blumenthal is no Clintonite. He’s probably better described as an acolyte of Assad’s Syrian dictatorship for which Max has carried a whole lot od water. Grayzone itself has been accused of being Russian-funded, and it has not really been denied. One typical piece of Blumenthal’s work is this humdinger: Was bombing of Mariupol theater staged by Ukrainian Azov extremists to trigger NATO intervention?
You know, just asking questions…Like Tucker Carlson.
Are we seeing a pattern here? You bet we are! In the logic of this Internet Left, nobody has any agency in this world other than the CIA. The 2014 mass uprising in Ukraine in which almost a million Ukrainians took to the streets to oust a corrupt pro-Russian regime is blithely written off as “the CIA coup.” And in this narrative, since then the US and its CIA have been building up Ukraine as some sort of neo-nazi aggressor who would eventually attack Russia. (insert laughter here).
After the first few days of the war, as the brutality of the Russian invasion became clear, it became politically impossible for these Tankies to overtly support Russia. Instead, they have settled on a truly repugnant, disgusting strategy: While the Russians bombard civilian areas, taking out hospitals and train stations and force as many six million refugees to flee, these “lefties” sit comfortably on their asses and whack away all day long and all night trying to discredit Ukraine. They have taken the unique situation of the formerly extreme-right Azov Battalion that had about 900 member at the start of the war and blown it up as proof that Ukraine is a nest of a neo-Nazis. I am not going to take any time to knock down their false assertions. There’s an excellent piece in the April 7 WaPo fully debunking the neo-Nazi charge, You can look it up.
The Left’s Original Sin: Fuck America
I’ve thought long and hard about where this craziness comes from and I have settled upon at least some partial answers, or at least some solid theories.
I posit that there is a sort of unwitting original sin corroding the current American Left. The last big upsurge of the Left was, of course, during the war in Vietnam. That conflict produced enormous waves of protest that shook hundreds of campuses and that shut down Washington D.C. on more than one occasion. This all gave birth to the New Left that shined brightly from the early 60’s until the early 70’s when it fell apart.
That New Left, of which I am a proud veteran, started out primarily as a protest movement, not one for social change. The change part came secondarily as the movement arose and became self-aware. That movement, naturally, was rife with anger at the U.S. government, red-hot anger, piled on a sense of betrayal that many of us 18-19 and 20 year olds felt, a betrayal of all those American values we were taught in grammar school in the 50’s. Fuck America was our view. And I am willing to say we were right…then. At least from our parochial view of being subject to a draft in a war we firmly opposed.
Therein resides the original sin I referred to. The American New Left never really matured. It suffered a body blow when its demand to end the draft was implemented and so many young people dropped out of political engagement. Then came Watergate, and the onset of the Reagan Revolution. And the Left had no real organization to confront this sea change. It had no real organic links to the working class which it hilariously claimed to represent. No real leftist structures survived the 60’s except tiny mostly Maoist groupuscles (who by the way were instrumental in destroying SDS). The left became much more proficient at protesting than doing any real organizing.
Excluded and self-exiled as well from the mainstream, the remnants of the New Left had almost zero traction in American politics from 1970 onward.
Then came Occupy in 2011 and Bernie five years later and suddenly we have the emergence of a true social democratic tendency in American politics gathering under the banner of “democratic socialism.” But co-existing with the Berniacs (of which I was one) are those boomers and also a younger generation who remained under the influence of those New Left politics of protest.
The rump group of Democratic Socialists of America, that had been maybe 3-4,000 progressives working inside the Democratic Party in 2015, ballooned along with Bernie’s rise to maybe 80,000 members today.
But along with serious activists trying to effect some local change, there is also a contingent of hard leftists inside DSA who seem intent on breaking that organization with sectarian and divisive politics. It’s so called International Committee is galavanting around the globe feating such phony and authoritarian leftists such as Maduro of Venezuela. Their intent is to expose, of course, US imperialism.
Here comes the sentence that is so hard to write. Before I write it I want you to promise to read my expository context for writing it. Ok?
The American Left still suffers from way too many of its adherents actually hating the country they claim to want to change. Hating the government. Everybody in it. And not so coincidentally, hating a lot of ordinary people who live in it. This is the “protest” reflex instilled in the 1960’s. Worse, when you have no real skin in the game, when you have zero political relevance, when you self-marginalize, you have nothing at risk, nothing to lose, by taking extreme or even absurd positions. The highest expression of this came in the early 70’s with the rise of the Weatherman faction of SDS. The antiwar movement was already in decline and infighting was peaking.
The Weatherman faction of SDS landed on a bizarre theory that ALL American workers were beneficiaries of US Imperialism and therefore were not a class to be counted on for change. Especially those sectors who benefitted from “white-skin privilege.” America was unredeemable according to the Weatherman, and they transformed the Maoist slogan of Serve The People into Serve The People Shit. All Americans were now the enemy and the Weathermen saw themselves as an advanced Third World vanguard destroying America from within.
The Weathermen were seriously deluded rich kids who dabbled in low-level terrorism, went underground for years, and now in their golden years are somehow goddamn college profs and lawyers – at least those that did not blow themselves up in that Greenwich Village townhouse. And in some redoubts the legacy of these jerks is actually celebrated as some sort of heroic if mistaken venture.
Weatherman leader Bernardine Dohrn
The Weathermen should not be glorified even a half century later. There was nothing good about them. And their attitude that America and Americans are the Enemy of Humanity should be studied as it reveals much of what is dysfunctional in the left today. The Weathermen were everything leftist activists should not be. Arrogant, violent, indifferent to ordinary people. And bereft of any serious political talent.
So, coming back to the present, what difference does it make Weathermen-inspired Max Blumenthal, for example, thinks about anything? And if it does not matter, why am I bothering to write about it? It’s because of their outsized influence on the Web.
This conspiracy theorizing on the Left is a strong incentive to demobilize. That’s what ticks me off. How can you organize, how can you build alliances, how can you build capacity when you are convinced that all is pre-determined by the CIA and nobody around you can really be trusted? And in this country that does not have strong progressive institutions, there is always a young generation searching for change and it really would not serve them to fall in among the Internet Tankies, though too many do.
Last week in a SDS Veterans Facebook group that teems with these pro-Russian “tankies,” a very well-known, long time and smart lefty veteran economist posted something about supporting Ukraine. The tankie piranhas immediately went to attack mode. He was called a corporate whore, a DNC whore, and was branded a “war criminal” by several other bozos. I’m sorry but this is really crazy stuff. It’s really damaging and depressing. And it makes working with ANY group of lefties hard to impossible, depending on how many “haters” there are.
I have spent decades among the leftist movements of many countries: Mexico, Central America, South America, Korea, South Africa, Spain, France and Italy. Nowhere among them do you find the sort of alienation that the American left suffers. No Mexican or Italian leftist is going to freak out if someone waves a national flag in their face. In fact, leftists often carry their national flags. Chilean leftists sing their national anthem with gusto. They are not corporate whore or war criminals. They merely possess a natural pride of place that seems to go lacking around here.
The war in Ukraine ushers in a new chapter in American politics and not for the better. The progressives inside the Democratic Party will now be on the defensive as Biden increases military spending, as talk of reducing deficits is once again in fashion and as we hover near an expanded war. Even worse, we are only 200 days away from an historic midterm election that will, without a doubt, mark a Republican victory (at a time when the Republican Party is in full crisis mode). If things line up a certain way, this could be the onset of a generation’s worth of Republican governance in the U.S.
This is a code red situation for all liberals, progressives, radicals and – in fact—for the entirety of the American people. The Republican Party is a now a bona fide anti-democratic autocratic outfit who intends to drive a steamroller over liberal democracy.
Democrats are very unreliable allies at best. But any part of the left that thinks or in this case dreams of confronting the Republicans, eventually defeating them, and some day, one day, governing, must absolutely make alliances with millions of rank and file Democrats and even some Democratic electeds because…because.. that’s the way world works! Branding anybody who disagrees with you as a “Democrat Whore” or “War Criminal,” is one of the best ways around to prolong and strengthen illiberal rule.++
The best political advice for both President Joe Biden and for the Democratic Party as a whole came, oddly enough, from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
Pool of support up for grabs as traditional alliances fragment amid upheaval in French politics
APRIL 12, 2022by Sarah White in Paris
The number of small businesses raising prices hit a record high but confidence is down: “The National Federation of Independent Business optimism index declined to 93.2, the lowest since April 2020, from 95.6, the group said Tuesday. The March reading was weaker than all but one estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The net share of owners expecting better business conditions in the next six months plunged to minus 49 percent, the lowest in monthly data back to 1986.”
“The report showed more firms are having greater success raising selling prices—72 percent in March after 68 percent in the prior month.”
“A net minus 18 percent of small firms, the worst since May 2020, said they anticipate stronger sales in coming months.”
“Plans for capital expenditures also deteriorated slightly, NFIB said. While small businesses had some success in hiring last month, the share with unfilled openings remains close to a record.” READ MORE
There’s some evidence that inflation may be easing: “A measure that strips out volatile food and fuel prices decelerated slightly from February as used car prices swooned. Economists and policymakers took that as a sign that inflation in goods might be starting to cool off after climbing at a breakneck pace for much of the past year. In fact, several economists said March may be a high-water mark for overall inflation. Price increases could begin abating in the coming months in part because gasoline prices have declined somewhat — the national average for a gallon was $4.10 on Tuesday, according to AAA, down from a $4.33 peak in March.” READ MORE
A giant 23-ounce can of AriZona Iced Tea still costs only 99 cents, which is what it cost when it was introduced 30 years ago: “How does AriZona pull this off while everything else goes up? The price of aluminum has doubled in the last 18 months. The price of high fructose corn syrup has tripled since 2000. Gas prices are pumping up delivery costs. One 1992 dollar, adjusted for inflation, is worth two 2022 dollars. But the 99-cent Big AZ Can, as the company calls it, persists.The short answer: the company is making less money. The big cans are still profitable, but for the moment, they’re much less so than a few years ago.”
“Don Vultaggio, the 70-year-old, 6-foot-8 founder and chairman of the company, is choosing to take a haircut in order to keep the price flat and cans moving.”
“‘I’m committed to that 99 cent price — when things go against you, you tighten your belt,’ Vultaggio said on a Zoom call in early April from his headquarters on Long Island, N.Y. Even though his costs are higher, ‘I don’t want to do what the bread guys and the gas guys and everybody else are doing.’”
“The company sells about 1 billion 99-cent cans each year, Vultaggio said, which makes up about 25 percent of its total revenue. Its fruit drinks, energy drinks, bottled teas, snacks, hard seltzer, and other offerings move less volume, but have higher prices and higher margins.”
“Vultaggio’s calculation is that raising prices and losing customers in the process just isn’t worth the short-term profit.” READ MORE
OFFICE SPACE
A record amount of office space is hitting the market: “Most office building owners have been able to ride out the pandemic because corporate tenants have been locked into long-term leases. They continued paying rent even when their employees stayed home. Now as more leases expire, a growing number of tenants are shrinking their offices because they need less space under hybrid strategies that blend office with remote work, brokers say. Leases for 243 million square feet of U.S. office space are set to expire in 2022, the most office space to hit the market in a single year since real-estate services firm JLL began tracking this data in 2015. The expiring leases represent about 11 percent of the nation’s overall leased office space.”
“‘I don’t think the landlords have felt the pain yet,’ said Jeffrey Peck, vice chairman at commercial real-estate brokerage Savills. ‘Now they’re going to start feeling the pain.’”
“Real-estate analytics firm Green Street estimates that hybrid work will cause a 15 percent drop in demand for office space. Because most building expenses are fixed, even a small drop in leasing revenue often leads to a big drop in profits and an even bigger drop in a building’s value.”
“New York-based law firm Herrick Feinstein LLP wants to reduce its office space by 30 percent to 40 percent when its lease expires in a few years, said Jonathan Adelsberg, co-chair of the firm’s real estate department.”
“He said he isn’t thrilled about giving up his private conference table, but spending less on office space means the firm’s lawyers can take home more pay. ‘You can have a bigger office or a bigger home,’ he said. ‘I mean, what would you prefer?’” READ MORE
RETAIL
Lululemon is rolling out a “recommerce” program: “Lululemon will debut a trade-in and resale option for its gently used leggings, tops and jackets later this month following a successful pilot program prompted by rising consumer prices and a commitment to sustainable purchasing. The rollout of Lululemon’s ‘Like New’ program comes after the retailer tested the so-called re-commerce platform for customers in Texas and California, which started last May. Under Like New — powered by resale technology provider Trove — customers will be able to trade in their previously worn Lululemon items in exchange for a gift card at any of the retailer’s U.S. stores.”
“The push into resale will help the premium brand within the athletic apparel sector attract customers who are looking for deals, according to Maureen Erickson, senior vice president of Global Guest Innovation at Lululemon.”
“Erickson added that a number of third-party resale sites, including ThredUp and Poshmark, are already showing up with gently used Lululemon merchandise.
“And while the secondhand merchandise will only initially be sold online, and not in Lululemon’s shops, Erickson didn’t rule out the possibility of a brick-and-mortar test of a resale section in store.” READ MORE
TAXES
Gene Marks says it’s never too early to think about next year’s taxes: “March 15 was the deadline day for small businesses that filed ‘pass-through’ returns and next week (April 18) is the tax deadline for individuals and corporations, which means — unless you extended your returns until October — your, 2021 tax year is pretty much over. But instead of putting taxes out of your mind — the federal, state and city government can eat up from 20 percent to 40 percent of your income — we should all be thinking ahead.”
Meet with your accountant: “By sharing with your accountant how your business has been doing this year, and your projections for the rest of the year, better tax estimates can be made, which should help to avoid surprises.”
Leverage the work opportunity tax credit: “The credit — which can be as much as $9,600 and offsets the amount of taxes you owe — may be available to you if you hire someone out of prison, off welfare, leaving the military or who has been unemployed for more than six months.”
Invest in capital equipment: “This year, most small businesses can deduct as much as $1.08 million when capital equipment — including machinery, furniture and most technology products — is purchased. Investing in capital equipment is a great way to hedge against inflation.” READ MORE
More factories in Shanghai are shutting down: “Analysts said Shanghai-area manufacturers were having more trouble getting parts delivered because China’s restrictions on movement are making it difficult for trucks to enter the region. That means some factories can’t operate normally even if they manage to keep workers on the job. Pegatron, a major assembler of Apple products, said Tuesday it has temporarily suspended production at factories in Shanghai and nearby Jiangsu province in compliance with local government requirements.”
“China’s lockdowns were intended to stifle Covid-19 and pave the way for a resumption of economic activity. Instead, the disease keeps spreading and the hit to the local and global economies keeps getting bigger.”
“One component hit by the logistics mess is known as a multilayer ceramic capacitor, sometimes called the rice of electronics because it is a staple part in all kinds of products from smartphones to electric vehicles.” READ MORE
“He noted his factory partner, with whom he's in contact every other day, has been shut down for three weeks. Rumor has it, he said, it might not be open for another 10 days.”
“Mise opened its preorders in mid-December and is still trying to hit its goal to ship this spring. The company plans to get preorders shipped by air freight as soon as possible once production starts again. Any regular orders will use ocean shipping.”
“However, he noted that shipping that usually takes 30 days can now take 45 to 70 days.” READ MORE
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Some restaurants are learning not to make assumptions about customers: “In Los Angeles, the chef Sara Kramer has been working on redefining restaurant etiquette since she and Sarah Hymanson opened Kismet in 2017. She had seen diners recoil from a greeting like ‘Hello, ladies!’ At Kismet and Kismet Rotisserie, every staff member is trained to use gender-neutral language such as ‘Hey, folks’ or ‘Hey, everyone’ when greeting guests, and use the gender-neutral ‘they’ and ‘them’ when a customer’s pronouns aren’t known. Such protocols are part of the restaurant’s training handbook and are regularly discussed during staff meetings, Ms. Kramer said.”
“Yelp has signaled its support for inclusion by adding labels that highlight L.G.B.T.Q.-owned businesses on the platform, and last June — Pride Month — those businesses were highlighted on maps with rainbow pins.”
“Since its founding in Los Angeles in 2016, TransCanWork has provided 500 employers and 2,500 job-seekers around the country with training to make sure all guests feel welcome, and with tools to create comfortable work environments for gender-expansive workers.”
“TransCanWork was founded in 2016 by Michaela Mendelsohn, a transgender woman who owns and manages six El Pollo Loco franchises in Southern California. She transitioned while managing the restaurants and realized the need to help gender-expansive employees.” READ MORE
“Democrats need to make more noise,” Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Greg Sargent of the Washington Post. “We have to scream from the rooftops, because this is a battle for the free world now.”
Sargent interviewed Schatz after the senator called out Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) on the floor of the Senate on April 7 for the profound disconnect between the Republican senator’s speeches and his actions. Hawley has placed a hold on President Joe Biden’s uncontroversial nominee for an assistant secretary of defense, saying that Biden’s support for Ukraine was “wavering” and that he wasn’t doing enough.
Of course, the Biden administration has been central to world efforts to support Ukraine in its attempt to hold off Russia’s invasion. Just today, Biden announced an additional $800 million in weapons, ammunition, and other security assistance to Ukraine. In contrast, Hawley voted to acquit former president Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress when he withheld $391 million of congressionally approved aid to Ukraine in order to pressure Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to cook up a story about Hunter Biden.
Hawley’s bad-faith argument goes beyond misleading statements about aid to Ukraine. Hawley has vowed that he will use his senatorial prerogative to hold up “every single civilian nominee” for the Defense Department unless Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin resigns. He has vowed the same for the State Department, demanding the resignation of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Hawley says his demands are because of the withdrawal from Afghanistan; he also said that Biden should resign. This is a highly unusual interference of the legislative branch of government with the executive branch. It also means that key positions in the departments responsible for managing our national security are not being filled, since Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer must use up valuable floor time to get nominations around Hawley’s holds.
In February, for example, Hawley blocked the confirmation of the uncontroversial head of the Pentagon’s international security team, Celeste Wallander, a Russia expert and staunch advocate for fighting Russian aggression, even while Russian troops were massing on the Ukraine border. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) noted in frustration: “He’s complaining about the problems we have in Russia and Ukraine and he’s making it worse because he’s not willing to allow those nominees who can help with that problem to go forward.” (The Senate eventually voted 83–13 to confirm Wallander.)
Hawley is not the only Republican to be complaining about the administration even as he gums up the works.
Texas governor Greg Abbott has ordered Texas state troops to inspect all commercial trucks coming from Mexico after the federal government has already inspected them. Normally, Mexican authorities inspect a commercial driver’s paperwork and then officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection thoroughly inspect the vehicle on the U.S. side of the international bridge, using dogs, X-ray machines, and personal inspections. At large crossings, officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Transportation will make sure that products and trucks meet U.S. standards. Sometimes after that, the state will spot-check a few trucks for roadworthiness. Never before has Texas inspected the contents of each commercial vehicle.
Abbott instituted the new rule after the Biden administration announced it would end the pandemic emergency health order known as Title 42. This is a public health authority used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect against the spread of disease. It was put in place by the Trump administration in March 2020. Title 42 allows the U.S. government to turn migrants from war-torn countries away at the border rather than permitting them to seek asylum as international law requires.
Abbott said the new rule would enable troopers to search for drugs and smuggled immigrants, which he claims the administration is not doing. But journalists Mitchell Ferman, Uriel J. GarcÃa, and Ivan Pierre Aguirre of the Texas Tribune report that officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety do not appear to be examining the trucks and have not announced any captured drugs or undocumented immigrants.
Wait times at border crossings have jumped from minutes to many hours, with Mexican truckers so frustrated they blocked the roads from the southern side, as well. Truckers report being stuck in their trucks for as much as 30 hours without food or water. About $440 billion worth of goods cross our southern border annually, and Abbot’s stunt has shut down as much as 60% of that trade. The shutdown will hammer those businesses that depend on Mexican products. It will also create higher prices and shortages across the entire country, especially as perishable foods rot in transit.
On Twitter, Democratic candidate for Texas governor Beto O’Rourke showed a long line of trucks behind him in Laredo and said: “What you see behind me is inflation.” White House press secretary Jen Psaki issued a statement today saying: “Governor Abbott’s unnecessary and redundant inspections of trucks transiting ports of entry between Texas and Mexico are causing significant disruptions to the food and automobile supply chains, delaying manufacturing, impacting jobs, and raising prices for families in Texas and across the country. Local businesses and trade associations are calling on Governor Abbott to reverse this decision…. Abbott’s actions are impacting people’s jobs, and the livelihoods of hardworking American families.”
Tonight, Abbott backed down on his rule, and normal traffic seems to be resuming over one of the key bridges between Mexico and the U.S., but his stunt indicates that Republicans plan to use inflation and immigration as key issues to turn out their base for the 2022 midterm elections. Today, pro-Trump Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who replaced Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) as the House Republican Conference Chair, the third-highest Republican in the House, tweeted: “We must SECURE our southern border.”
Abbott has also ordered the Texas National Guard to the U.S. border with Mexico to conduct “migration drills” in preparation for an influx of migrants. But Abbott’s use of the 10,000 National Guard personnel last fall for a border operation to prevent an influx of migrants seemed to be a political stunt: it led to complaints from National Guard personnel of lack of planning, lack of pay, lack of housing, and lack of reason to be there.
Abbott has deployed troops in the past while he was under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the February 2021 winter storm that left millions of Texans without heat or electricity for days and killed 246. This deflection seemed to be at work last February, too, when Abbott issued a letter saying that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services should investigate any instances of care for transgender children as child abuse. That letter appeared just as it came to light that Abbott was behind the extraordinarily high electricity prices in the 2021 storm. Although Abbott’s office had said he was not involved in the decision to charge maximum electricity prices, in February, Bill Magness, the former CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas that runs the state’s electrical grid, said Abbott had personally ordered him to keep prices at their maximum: $9,000 per megawatt hour.
And so Abbott grabbed headlines with a bill attacking transgender children.
Today, Abbott sent a bus of migrants seeking asylum to Washington, D.C., where they were set down right outside the offices of the Fox News Channel, which filmed them disembarking. These migrants have been processed by federal authorities and are awaiting decisions from federal judges about whether they will be allowed to remain in the U.S. “I think it’s pretty clear this is a publicity stunt,” Psaki said.
And finally, tonight, under the category of bad-faith arguments, it is clear that the current Supreme Court has run amok. Republicans attack “activist judges” who want to protect civil rights in the states by using the Fourteenth Amendment’s rule that the states cannot deprive a citizen of the equal protection of the laws. But Republican justices are making up their own law outside the normal boundaries of the court.
On April 6, five Supreme Court justices agreed to reinstate a Trump-era rule that limits the ability of states to block projects that pollute their rivers and streams. The court did so under the so-called “shadow docket,” a form of a decision previously used to address emergencies, in which the court makes a decision without arguments or written explanations. Last week, Chief Justice John Roberts indicated just how far off the rails the current Supreme Court has slid when he joined the dissent against the majority’s decision out of concern for the use of this shadow docket as a way to hand down unbriefed and unexplained decisions.
Hawley is not the only Republican these days operating in bad faith.
We close out this Weekly edition of our prowl on our "Virtual Route 66" With this:
#StandUpForUkraine
Wow, what a weekend.
First, hundreds of thousands of artists, athletes, actors, creators, and global citizens came together to Stand Up for Ukraine during our global social media rally. If you posted – thank you. Your voice made an impact.
Then, these voices and your actions helped persuade leaders to commit $10.1 billion in new grants and loans to help refugees and displaced people from Ukraine and around the world during a pledging summit held on April 9. Learn more about the impact of #StandUpFor Ukraine here.
There is still more we must do. The invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the world’s food system – creating food insecurity inside the country and threatening a global food crisis as supply chains break down.
Take the next action to continue standing with refugees and help the world avert a global food crisis.
