As expected, the Supreme Court hands down a split 4-4 decision in Friedrichs v. CTA, upholding the Ninth Circuit's original ruling and slowing the right's push for a "right-to-work-for-less" nation a bit. You may be surprised to learn that the "controversy" wasn't over union dues, which everyone agrees workers don't have to pay if they don't want to join the union that will then represent them when they need it to, but over "agency fees," which sure does seem to me to represent a workable compromise. And I sure hope people who complain that people should never be compelled to pay for things they don't want are ready to reimburse me for the Iraq war.
Coalition of 17 state-level Attorneys General will pursue a lawsuit against Exxon for fraud -- specifically, for knowing about the adverse effects of climate change and then for lying to America about it so they could keep making money. I do wish they hadn't spoken at length about the need "to defend the next president’s climate change agenda," and not necessarily because the next President's name might be Donald Trump -- I wish they'd stuck to the case at hand. I also hope this doesn't end in a massive "settlement" that Exxon will then write off on its taxes.
Michigan state Senate panel approves measure effectively banning courses at state colleges that "promote or discourage" unionization. Now who thinks the state government will actually apply the same scrutiny to obviously anti-union curricula as to pro-union curricula, since corporations flood the system with far more money than unions? And who thinks this bill couldn't possibly end in labor issues getting covered nowhere in the curricula -- not even in history or business, let alone labor studies?
Brendan I. Koerner, writing at Wired, explains "Why ISIS is Winning the Social Media War." It's an incredibly well-researched and incisive report in more ways than I can count, but the title is quite overstated, and, as always, the open media upon which ISIS thrives cuts both ways, which means it also makes the task of folks who'd fight ISIS easier. The long-term solution would, of course, be to end the corporate stranglehold on American politics, which enables the creation of a lot more ISIS soldiers than we'd otherwise have, but what messages should we deploy in the short term? Here's one, off the top of my head: ISIS "soldiers" are small men desperate to prove they've got big balls by making life into a shoot-em-up video game. It could use some refining, admittedly.
Finally, the incomparable David Dayen, writing at The Intercept, finds some desperation in President Obama's endorsement of Florida House Rep./DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Would Mr. Obama had waded in if Ms. Wasserman Schultz's primary opponent, Tim Canova, weren't getting traction, and close to five months before the primary, no less? In the long term, of course, Democrats should consider whether Ms. Wasserman Schultz's support for bankster bailouts, "free" trade, and payday lenders (let alone her obvious shilling for Hillary Clinton at the expense of Bernie Sanders!) might be endangering her more than any perceived liberal "disloyalty" might be.
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