How might big corporations fight new SEC climate change disclosure rules, per Daniel E. Walters and William M. Manson at The Conversation?. They'll say it'll cost them more than our SEC says it will; they'll say our SEC can't regulate disclosure of "Scope 3 emissions" (which result mainly from the activities of suppliers and producers); they'll say our SEC can't regulate "major questions" like climate-related disclosures at all, though it seems to me that telling investors what they're in for in re a corporation's dedication to battling climate change fits our SEC's mission fairly snugly.
Sonali Kohatkar says our Postal Service can be a model for other government agencies. For all the hurt inflicted upon our Postal Service by the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act's benefits pre-payment mandate, our Postal Service still "delivers to more addresses with fewer...employees” than big private mail services like UPS or FedEx, both of which don't handle our Postal Service's volume, or deliver to areas where they don't think they can make money. To those who'd say "mail delivery is hardly comparable to such complex needs as health care or banking," Ms. Kolhatkar reminds us that the private corporations that dominate these fields hardly do very well at them -- mainly because they account to their owners and shareholders more than they do to their customers.
Dan Pfeiffer explains "Why the MAGA Movement Loves Putin," a.k.a. "Russia's Pinochet." He lists four reasons -- they're "addicted to strength," they have "an apocalyptic mentality," they love "white power," and they understand "the perverse incentives of the internet attention economy" -- all of which might well be boiled down to "they follow the biggest dick." Of course, right-wingers don't love real strength; they love acting out the drama of strength, a drama that usually involves a lot of yelling at liberals and fantasizing about doing violence to them (or, maybe, just doing violence to them). It's kinda like watching a car wreck, which I'm sure is the idea.
When I hear that a majority of Americans believe "public schools are on the wrong track," I remember that Americans have legitimate fears about what two years of mostly-remote learning has done to their kids, but I still feel like right-wing propaganda has caused this particular poll result. Right-wingers ginned up controversy over something that doesn't even get taught in schools and now we all feel some kind of way about "racism"? That's so beneath us as Americans. And how have we responded to this question (or similar ones) in previous polls? We should know that, so we know more about what these results mean, but sadly, the article doesn't tell us.
Branko Marcetic at Jacobin performs a public service by reminding us that "The Right is Still the Enemy of Freedom." Regardless of Republicans' newfound (and selective, and opportunistic!) opposition to big tech corporations, they're still the ones "criminalizing protest," "banning books, concepts, and even words from schools," and "using executive power in new, repressive ways." 23 states (all run entirely by Republicans) have criminalized protest, 11 laws have made it damn near impossible to talk about racism in many schools, and Republicans have spearheaded anti-BDS laws in 32 states, when you'd think refusing to give money to someone would be a value for which they'd fight to the death. And, of course, they love themselves some Putin and Orbán.
Finally, Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) says that just as our Supreme Court should have left abortion to the states, they should have left laws against interracial marriage to the states! He tried to walk it back, of course, saying he "misunderstood a line of questioning" and discrimination is always wrong yadda yadda yadda, but we need to take the time to explain exactly why he's wrong. If we believe, as a civilization, that you should get to marry whomever you want -- the only way to interpret our Supreme Court's ruling in Oberkfell v. Hodges -- then we cannot accept a state's "right" to keep you from doing that. Mr. Braun, like many right-wingers, loves "states' rights" more than he loves people. This remains a common malady among Congressfolk, but not a tolerable one.
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