This Labor Day, we honor the labor movement that fought for better wages, safer working conditions, and sick days. When unions are strong, America is strong. pic.twitter.com/Dk8dpZxMdz
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 4, 2023
“Guess what? The great real estate builder, the last guy, he didn’t build a damn thing."
Biden going at Trump a bit in Philly.
via @HenryJGomez https://t.co/jGW5JgTNe8
— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) September 4, 2023
Trickle-down economics promised prosperity but failed America, especially Black Americans. It has exacerbated inequality and systemic barriers, making it harder to start a business, own a home, send children to school, and retire with dignity.
We're turning things around.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 30, 2023
Biden, at the top of his remarks on the economy, noted that “it wasn’t that long ago that America was losing jobs. In fact, my predecessor was 1 of only 2 presidents in history who entered his presidency and left with fewer jobs than when he entered.” pic.twitter.com/5CNVrbBlCC
— Ken Thomas (@KThomasDC) September 1, 2023
Janet Yellen's Treasury Department found that joining a union is among the most effective ways to get a raisehttps://t.co/AqwEVTfbyk pic.twitter.com/xQrtAfGgyO
— Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) August 29, 2023
BREAKING: The US added 187,000 jobs in August, topping the 170,000 estimate, while the unemployment rate increased to 3.8% https://t.co/4epCumrMS7 pic.twitter.com/nflHM5PRlM
— Bloomberg (@business) September 1, 2023
This quote from Jesse Jenkins on the Inflation Reduction Act really sums it up:
“We’ve been talking about bringing manufacturing jobs back to America for my entire life. We’re finally doing it, right? That’s pretty exciting,” he said.https://t.co/nW045xx0vA
— Rep. Shontel Brown (@RepShontelBrown) August 28, 2023
We are rebuilding America's infrastructure and bringing manufacturing back to communities across our nation.
Visit https://t.co/zDOkFY5G6Y to track progress in your community.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) August 31, 2023
The Biden administration is the most pro-working-class administration in my lifetime, and it's not close. https://t.co/zrMM3YTrEg
— Noah Smith ?????????? (@Noahpinion) August 30, 2023
About 3.6 million additional workers would be entitled to overtime pay under a new proposal from the Biden administration.
The proposed rule would lift the cutoff for the extra earnings from its current level of $35,568 to $55,000 annually. https://t.co/fdU64JVgN8
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) August 30, 2023
The United States has emerged from the pandemic with the strongest economy in the world.
Thank you President Biden.
We look forward to finishing the job.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) August 24, 2023
This is great news for workers, a reminder of the power and importance of collective bargaining, and another historic step in the story of the American labor movement. https://t.co/34RCOU79pF
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) August 24, 2023
Another positive indicator for people who work for wages:
One way you can tell that Biden's economy has been good for the working class is because the entire petite bourgeois class has been in open revolt against him for the past three years because he made it too easy for their abused workers to find better jobs and demand better pay. https://t.co/66J2MKr7eM
— Environmental Services Weedle (@PartyWurmple) September 4, 2023
This is the most instructively petit-bourgeois thing ever said. The perfect encapsulation of the baron's worldview, in which workers are their rightful serfs and that higher forms of capitalism are stealing from their manor. https://t.co/UKlnOWsClz
— friendly gecko (@friendly_gecko) September 3, 2023
Shalimar
It is a particularly bad problem for Marjorie Taylor Greene to have her workers stolen since the only people who will fuck her are her gym’s fitness instructors.
Aussie Sheila
Happy Labor Day USA workers!
An organised and politically powerful working class is the first and best barrier to fascism. Even if you don’t like unions, let me be clear. If socialists don’t organise workers, Reaction will.
Here’s to all those US workers struggling to organise and to the political representatives that have their back. Special shout out to the Teamsters, and of course, to the Biden/Harris administration, the most pro union US administration in my political lifetime.
Solidarity and victory! ✊✊✊✊✊✊✊
Shalimar
In other clown news, Elon Musk’s dad is worried that Elon might get assassinated for all of his meddling in politics. I think it would be a shame if that happened. We need Elon as our continuing demonstration that billionaires are far more like hyper-impulsive teenagers than superior beings who should rule over us.
Villago Delenda Est
Meanwhile, the vile fascist pig is doing what he does. Wallowing in hatred and self-pity. Attacking Joe Biden in such a way that IMAX is aghast at the patent infringement.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shalimar: They’re more like Trelane than Q, that’s for sure.
Maxim
This has probably already been discussed somewhere, but I just saw a report that FLOTUS has Covid.
sab
l@Shalimar: When I was a tiny child in the late 1950s we lived in Lexington Ky for a couple of years, and my mother was pretty horrified by how dead set the local powers-that-be were against any kind of economic development, because it would lue the affordable help away from the horse farms.
Apparently some things never change.
Aussie Sheila
@Maxim:
Not good, and I wish her a speedy recovery. But I’ll bet she has been vaxed to the max, so hopefully she recovers quickly. I cross my fingers, legs and every thing I can that Biden doesn’t get sick in the next in the next 14 months.
Heaven help us all that it seems US democracy hangs on the health of one healthy old man. What a cluster F.
Mousebumples
We have road construction everywhere around us right now. Basically have to drive over gravel intersections to get out of our subdivision and watch out for detours all over town. Definitely see a bunch of investment markers nearby on that map from MVP”s tweet.
In other news, first day of 4K for Little Mouse and first day of Daycare for Littlest Mouse. Change is good but hard, and my brain is going 100 mph right now, so probably lol as I try to fall back asleep…
smith
I mentioned this in the TBogg thread below, but want to say it again: I defy anyone to say Biden is frail and failing after watching his Labor Day speech in Philadelphia. He was the picture of a vigorous old man speaking eloquently about something he really cares about.
Tony Jay
It’s sad but instructive that everything Biden says in those top tweets would almost certainly get him deselected as a candidate in today’s Labour Party and probably see him suspended as a Party member. Doesn’t he understand that responsible business owners are put off by Trot-talk about Unions and ‘movements’? Not to mention the stereotypical out-of-touch Lefty obsession with ‘those people’ when it’s voters with ‘traditional white values’ we need? Is he trying to get Republicans elected? Only a Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh ticket can rescue your Party from the loony left! Etc, etc.
I guess it’s a measure of how far the Democratic Party has come and how retrograde modern British politics are. Keep it up, maybe in a decade or two we’ll follow you out of the hole.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
Yes it’s quite the eye opener that the US Dem administration is to the ‘left’ of the UK Labour Party. The first time in my living memory!
However let’s see what they do in government. While I share your general views about Starmer and UK Labour, I will always believe the worst Labor government is always better than any Tory (conservative/Republican) government.
Apart from anything else, the left is more able to pressure their own than a reactionary political formation and reaction is always a danger to the left.
While it seems milquetoast, in my view the best thing the left can do right now in the UK is agitate and organise for proportional/preferential voting.
We have it here in Oz, and the Aust Greens put useful pressure on our own Labor Party. Of course the Oz Greens are nothing like the US Greens. That’s because they can win both lower house and Senate seats in our system. Actually being able to win some power has a sobering effect on political formations of any kind. 😀
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
Getting Republicans Elected Every November
Baud
Via Reddit
p.a.
Who knew helping the people responsible for 70% of the economy would be… good for the economy???
Who knew the people saying the top 10% are the job-creators and need carte-blanche would be… the top 10%???
Who knew Democrats would be stronger when they abandoned “Republican-lite” policies???
Baud
@p.a.:
It’s still up in the air whether we’re stronger. We’ll find out next year.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
No, you are wrong wrt Oz. We have preferential voting here, not FPTP. Where a majority in the electorate reject conservative parties, the centre left wins. Every time. Wake up. I understand the rigidities of the US system, but it’s nothing to boast about. I prefer a more fluid and responsive system where election outcomes more nearly represents the actual votes and the preferences of the actual voters. Thank you very much.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
I was referring to US greens, as indicated by the reference to Republicans and November.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Ok. I agree with you re US Greens. They are execrable. But I think their appalling politics owes a lot to FPTP voting, and the ease with which relatively ignorant progressives can be persuaded that their woes lie with people rather than the electoral systems people are faced with. Structural factors are very big in otherwise relatively open democratic systems.
prostratedragon
Yesterday was West Indian American Day in Brooklyn: Scenes (Police Line: Do Not Cross).
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
Yes, Greens would actually be disciplined by having to compete for votes if we had the Aussie system here.
Princess
Most people would be glad that the people in their district can earn better wages. This sure pulls the mask off MTG and her ilk.
Baud
@Princess:
She has no mask.
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
Oh, the Starmerlite Tendency will form some or all of the next Government, barring a complete and utter campaigning fuckastrophe on a scale that is at once unlikely while also being well within the capabilities of the political u-bends running Labour. Since the Media moved on from Operation Boris Bounce early in 2020 the Tories have been plumbing ever deeper depths of unpopularity, and though they’re not going to lose by anything like as much as the polls say, that doesn’t mean they won’t get absolutely scalped across large areas of their True Blue Heartland.
After that, it really comes down to a question of how much influence the Lib Dems have on the Plastic Peer’s Government and how much capital they’re willing to spend demanding a genuine referendum on PR. And then getting enough people to vote for it when the backers of both major parties and their foreign donors will be 100% against it.
Sigh. This is why I prefer US politics. It’s got worse villains, but at least the good guys aren’t the moral and ethical equivalent of Trump’s tweet-editor.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
Well I won’t argue with you re your prognostications re the future of UK elections, but I would caution you re favouring the US system. The US still can’t guarantee one vote per person equally across its polity, and gerrymandering that was outlawed in my country a century ago federally is rampant in the US.
It’s still a democracy in the making, and while our system isn’t perfect I understand it’s strengths more and more the older I get. 🥰🥰🥰🥰
matt
‘Stealing’ workers by offering them higher paying jobs they voluntarily take.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay: It’s weird reading these statements, and then going back to my other social-media feeds with all these very online US leftists feeling sad and resigned about how, to avoid a fascist takeover, they’re going to have to vote for Democrats even though they’re just another group of hypercapitalists who are trying to kill you slower.
I know, people here wonder why I keep listening to these people… but most of the cool people who I’m interested in for other reasons seem to be like this, somehow. You can’t just be a liberal Democrat and be a quirky and interesting creative, you have to ally with them kind of grudgingly at best. I think being conventionally partisan strikes them as redolent of the teacher’s pet or the student-government president. There’s a part of me that keeps thinking I’d agree with them if I were a better person.
Right now I’m figuring they can complain all they want as long as they actually get out and vote for Democrats like they’re saying. They actually seem to be tailoring a pitch to like-minded people to keep them from staying home or voting Green. Maybe it’ll work.
Aussie Sheila
@Matt McIrvin:
Lets hope so. I think the interminable posturing of the US progressive/left is a result of the ‘ luxury’ of not having an alternative to FPTP voting. That way, they can posture all day, make politics a branch of aesthetics and never have to work to make a real difference, because they know that whatever they do, one or other of the two parties will win. It’s pernicious and very bad for democracy, but I’m effed if I know what you can do in the US.
The place is politically constipated.
Matt McIrvin
@Aussie Sheila: Maine actually passed IRV for most offices… though the one that really motivated it was the governor’s race, because they suffered two terms of a horrific Trumpian governor elected with a popular minority through spoiler effects, and it got overturned by the courts for that one because the specific wording of the state constitution was not compatible with ranked-choice voting.
Maine is the kind of place that really needs it because they seem to have a compulsive attraction to “independent” politicians.
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
Oh, I’m not favouring the US system, which has its own very obvious flaws. I’m favouring the current Democratic Party leadership and the sensible decisions they’ve made regarding where to aim their fire and which direction the Party and the country need to go.
100% contrary to the decision making made by the current UK Labour leadership, where a very, very risky strategy of wholesale electorate shopping is being pursuit in the name of spite and factional revenge.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay: I think that the New Labour-like adjustments the US Democrats made in the 1990s really ended up traumatizing more people than the party realized at the time, and they haven’t yet entirely lived it down even though the party is actually moving beyond that.
But, you know, the curse of the left is that because we actually care about policy we can fracture over real material differences. For instance, I see a lot of activists out there who saw the George Floyd/”defund the police” moment as an opportunity for real change in the criminal justice system and are now bitterly disappointed that it hasn’t amounted to much, and blaming Democrats for that.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
At some point, people have to realize that the left can lose credibility just like everyone else.
Tony Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
Some of America’s very online leftists, hand in hand with some of the UK’s very online leftists, can go choke on a barrel of dog’s dicks. The worst of them are clearly foreign funded trolls and the best of the rest are – being generous – way behind the curve of what the Democratic Party has become over the last decade or so. It’s not the pistol-whipped, self-abusing triangulation machine of yesteryear. It’s (naturally) tanned, rested and ready to kick some fascist arse, and it’s progressive tilt is only going to become more pronounced as the MAGOP rusts in place.
The difference over here couldn’t be starker. The UK Labour Party is run by a narrow faction of careerist middlemen who spent years working hand in hand with the Tories to defeat progressive change and are now engaged in a wholesale shifting of the Overton window towards the right in preparation for one term of failed Government.
There’s a massive real-world difference between sniping at a successful progressive Administration from the back of your Siberian bred purity pony and arguing against the current Labour leadership’s adoption of policies, rhetoric and ideological red-lines effectively indistinguishable from the Tory Government of David ‘PigPoker’ Cameron.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
I hear you, I really do. Starmer and the UK Labour right make our Labor party look like trots. I know you know this, but the best thing the left can do right now in the UK is defeat the Tories and make proportional/preferential voting law.
BTW, is there anything worse than Rachel Reeves’ nasally whine rejecting any initiative that might make things better for Labour voters? I think I dislike her more than Starmer.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay: But progressivism has moved on, too, way beyond what the Democrats are willing to countenance: you have things like abolishing police as we know them, abolishing prisons, reparations for Black people being seriously discussed, etc., and lots of people openly identifying as socialist and calling for the end of capitalism as a prerequisite for meaningful change. The Democratic Party isn’t going to get behind any of that, probably not in a hundred years. Political Commie-baiting was a bigger deal here than it was in Europe.
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
That’s why she’s there. A disciple of Gideon fucking Osborne making sure that not a single tweak is made to the design or trajectory of the money-funnel. Our taxes go into the pockets of the rich, anything else is a violation of Reeves’ fiscal-rules.
It’s like the old Blair/Brown partnership, except Starmer isn’t in charge of anything and Reeves is just a hand-puppet for the wonderful world of high finance.
Tony Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s not progressivism, not in my book. People who are calling for all of that right the fuck now are being as deliberately ignorant as the glassy-eyed fuckwits who thought Russia could go straight to perfect Communism without going through all the many, many preliminary stages Marx laid out as necessary, or snake-fondling Godbotherers who think all they need to bring about the Second Coming is a YouTube channel and a harem of teen sister-wives.
So they’re either idiots, poseurs or deliberate ratfuckers. Whatever they are, it sure as fuck isn’t progressive. It’s not even left-wing. It’s just nonsense. Might as well just hand-craft some titanium-steel armour, change your name to Tar-Eldarion the Magnificent and declare this a new Age of the World, because all you* are is a cosplaying fantasist, son.
* As in they.
VOR
I think part of the problem is just how far to the Right US Republicans have gone, IMHO far beyond the UK Tories. Throw in the Cult of Trump mentality and you have an opposition which has effectively given up on actually Governing and only wants to Rule or Ruin. Republican-lite just is less of an option.
Paul in KY
@Shalimar: And that’s only if they are ‘on the clock’ for the chore.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: They love being ‘contrary’ more than they love their country, IMO.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: That was righteous!
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: As far as getting your party into power ‘abolishing police as we know them’ is about like having ‘child sex pervert’ tattooed on your face.
You are not going to get elected. Anyone who thinks that plank will get you votes/real influence needs to put down the angel dust/floor wax pipe.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: You stated it a bit more elegantly that I.
Tony Jay
@Paul in KY:
Cheers, Mister P.