Tidbits – June 15, 2023 – Reader Comments: Trump Indictment; Killing Blacks a Growth Industry; David Byrne Relents; Readers Respond: “People’s Media” Network; 10 Years of Fight for $15; Eddie Kay Way-Street Naming Ceremony; Cartoons; More

(1): an outburst of opprobrium from vigilantes -those very un-regulated militias, and elected Republican office-holders who have de facto groomed them, and who will now use their offices to cheer on civil war (see the ‘marching orders’ issued by Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana), and

(2): As the indictment was filed in Florida, there is a very good chance that the case will be assigned to Aileen Cannon, the federal judge who overreached both Trump’s lawyers’ requests and established law in her rulings last year -which were later negated by other justices.

See last August’s article here:

Another Trump Judge Jumbles the Law

Durt Fibo
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

If Trump Is Re-Elected -- Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Nick Anderson
June 9, 2023
Pen Strokes

What Day Is This (with thanks to A. A. Milne and illustrator E. H. Shepard)

Voting Rights and Taxation Without Representation

Unfortunately, the entire discussion of "voting rights" revolves around gerrymandering and other voter suppression methods. Always forgotten is the more than half-million people in Washington, Colony of Colombia who have no representation in the Senate, no voting Representation in the House, and even not the right to govern own City without any activity leading to the "suppression."

They don't even play the game of trying to show that there is representation. "Gerrymandering" gets justified with ridiculous claims, "voter suppression" actions like long lines, short voting hours, few voting places and no water is described as protecting the accuracy of the vote. No excuses are given for our lack of vote and little attempt to provide it. As our license plates say,

"Taxation Without Representation."

Arlene Halfon
Washington, CC

Re: Is Killing Blacks a Growth Industry?

A trigger warning would have been good.

Kate Casa

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Powerful piece.

Thank you.

Terry Tucker
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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This article should be taken down. The very basic vetting was not done. A simple google would have found a lie in the second paragraph. The writer used a mainstream propaganda tale that Kyle Rittenhouse killed black men. They were not black men.

Even CNN has been forced to tell the truths to this propaganda tale.: https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/01/us/kyle-rittenhouse-shooting-victims-trial/index.html

The lies are still around and you just copied and help disseminated the lie. You can't help facilitate bullshit. Eventually you'll become antiquated if you do enough. And you'll lose me. I've found inaccurate stories on your site, but all in all, there's some pretty good reads.

John Mudd

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Moderator's Note:

While Ishmael Reed's article deals with a new level of attacks and murders of African Americans, the sentence in the article reads:

"Contrast those who in the old days lynched for free with Kyle Rittenhouse, who raised 2 million for a defense fund. He killed two demonstrators."

Because of the focus of his article, one could assume that the inclusion of the reference is that the victims of Ritenhouse are African Americans. Another assumption could be that the perpetrators of right-wing vigilante racist violence used this assault, like they use similar assaults to raise mega funds for their racist agenda.

We thank the reader for pointing out the confusion this has created. We have reached out to Ishmael Reed for a clarification.

Lawyer Wanted

Re: Iowa Governor Signs One of the Most Dangerous Rollbacks of Child Labor Laws in the Country

Every single one of those amendments is terrifying on their own but the last one to limit the states' ability to impose penalties for future violations by employers should chill EVERYONE to the bone. That basically says that employers will get a free pass to break labour laws and do as they please with employees. 😡

Robert Laite
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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You have to keep the kids in school or on the job so they don’t have time to slip on down to the library to hear a book reading by a drag queen.

Mike Noon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: “This Ain’t No Disco,” Broadway Tells David Byrne

HERE LIES LOVE Will Add 12 Local 802 Musicians To Broadway Production

Here Lies Love begins performances at the Broadway Theatre on Saturday, June 17.

By: A.A. Cristi
June 09, 2023
Broadway World

Broadway's Here Lies Love and the AFM Local 802 musicians union have reached an agreement on the issue of orchestra size for the production. According to recently released statements from both camps, the production will open on Broadway with 12 union musicians in its pit.

The statement from the union reads, “After negotiation, we have reached an agreement that will bring live music to “Here Lies Love” with the inclusion of 12 musicians to the show. Broadway is a very special place with the best musicians and performances in the world, and we are glad this agreement honors that tradition.”

A statement from the show's producers reads, “On behalf of our entire cast, company and creative team, we have reached an agreement with Musicians Union Local 802, per the collective bargaining agreement. We look forward to welcoming audiences to experience the revolutionary musical experience that is Here Lies Love at the Broadway Theatre beginning on Saturday, June 17.”

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The Nation (via Portside) https://portside.org/2023-06-08/aint-no-disco-broadway-tells-david-byrn… "The local musicians' union"
NY Times: "A labor union representing musicians"

David Horne
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Here lies David Byrne. And lies and lies and lies some more.

Nick Unger
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Well gee, I guess I'm not allowed to simply oppose Byrne's union busting, I must abandon my love of Talking Heads. Gosh.

Jason Schulman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Book Bandit -- Cartoon by Mike Luckovich

Mike Luckovich
January 24, 2023
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Re: Maine State House Kills “Right To Work” Legislation Prohibiting Employment Conditional on Payment of Union Dues

(posting on Portside Labor)

Now get rid of "at will employment."

Eleanor Roosevelt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: To Deepen Democracy, Give Workers More Say

Give's ass. U.S. workers will have to TAKE the dominant role in the nation's politics before lasting economic equilibrium can be reached.

Gene W Ferrell
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

The Former Guys -- Cartoon by Pat Bagley

Pat Bagley
June 9, 2023
The Salt Lake Tribune

Re: I Crashed Henry Kissinger’s 100th-Birthday Party: The Elite Love Him But for Some Reason Won’t Say Why.

I am so glad someone had the integrity and guts to confront one of our most despicable war criminals, Henry Kissinger. We have not forgotten the despicable slaughter of Vietnamese and Cambodians in the war.

Noel Kent,
University of Hawaii at Manoa

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An outage that the war-criminal swine is still alive!

Michael S Goodman

Re: The Surprising Pervasiveness of American Arrogance

Dear Kevin Young, Charles Patrick, and other Putin apologists:

Do a thought experiment. Russia invaded the US 8 years ago and took several states (pick the one you live in). Then he comes back and tries to take our entire country, slaughtering Americans, destroying our cities, kidnapping our children to turn them into "good Russians." And he is doing this all under the mystical belief that Russia has the right - the obligation - to destroy "Western decadence." And he has made it clear that when he finishes with the US, he plans to take the rest of North and South America. (Remember, this is a thought experiment.)

If allowed to keep large swaths of Ukraine, Russia will invade again to take more - all of it. Any negotiation that leaves Russia controlling a part of this nation is a win for Putin. "Not one more penny for the war in Ukraine" is a false framing. These progressives are saying "not one more penny to defend against invasion."

I have opposed illegal invasions all my life. And let's clarify our language. We were not engaged in a "Vietnam War." We were engaged in the invasion of Vietnam - and all such acts since then were invasions. This is not a "war in Ukraine" it is the invasion of Ukraine." I supported the complete withdrawal of the US from Vietnam. I support the complete withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine.

I too am appalled by progressives willing to yield another nation to a Russian invasion. Would they do that if it were their own country? If you support giving away parts of a country to an invader, you cannot lay claims to a progressive stance.

Dan Jordan

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I find this article quite a compelling read.

Sam Webb
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Pence’s Horse -- Cartoon by Rob Rogers

Rob Rogers
June 9, 2023
robrogers.com

Re: The Arc

(posting on Portside Culture)

Kenneth Pobo's poem "the Arc of History" seems representative of a regrettable tendency that bends towards resignation and defeat. There is something to be criticized in the optimistic fatalism of the MLK quote: "We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." But let's criticize the fatalism rather than the optimism. We act. The arc of the moral universe must be bent to our will.

MLK coined this phrase to help galvanize the civil rights movement. Today, the palpable agency of the 60s is not manifest. Let us not therefore—in our justifiable contrarianism—render defeat as an immutable natural law. Maybe pessimism has a shorter half-life than we think.

Gilbert Bernstein

Re: How Hollywood’s Anti-Communist Crackdown Made TV and Movies Bland and Boring

(posting on Portside Culture)

KNOWING AMERICAN HISTORY IN REGARDS TO THE RIGHTS OF PEOPLE TO HOLD THEIR OWN OPINIONS AND NOT BE JAILED/HARASSED/BLACKLISTED ETC. This is a subject dear to my heart, as my father William Marx Mandel, was called before McCarran; McCarthy and HUAC and it sure was not only hard for him, but for his wife and children.

Phyllis Mandel
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: “People’s Media” Network, but Pro-Russia and Pro-China

I am very critical of Xi, I can't support Putin in any way, and I use material from Peoples Dispatch and NewsClick often as moderator of Portside's Global Left Midweek. Why? Because they offer real reportage about real movements. I can be critical of the sources without condemning them in such a redbaiting tone as this article. The claimed connections between Singham, Prashad and their associated groups with foreign states aren't given enough proof to justify this article's https://portside.org/2023-06-09/peoples-media-network-pro-russia-and-pr… premise.

Ethan Young
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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This reads like a “Hit Peace” and urgent warning to be aware, wary, and demarcating-critical of these socialists activists, organizations, and global alliances. The absolute rejectionist tone marks the individual and organizational subjects as surreptitious villains with through and through inappropriate and unacceptable invariably incorrect and harmful politics and alliances. The schematic “Pro Russia Pro China intransigent critical framework does not provide or even hint at the almost inferred ideological and political correct line somewhere and/or among some people and organizations to be found in opposition to this of Dark Money confederacy in which Socialist Cuba is noted.

Why this factional critique? Why no identification and examination of the wider entangled global alliances (BRICS, CELAC, UNASUR, Bank of the South) obviously not always wholesome ideological and political motives and goals in the real-time regional-global economic, political development, military alliances and dangerous maneuvers certainly connected to the Russia-China pivots in an increasingly deadly confrontational oppositional power flows against US-EUROPE-NATO, Australian, Japanese, etc.al. global dominance alliances.

Why no political education approach to identifying, unraveling, bridging where possible, continuing productive debate where warranted these real, not ideal, global developments? Why not focus-critique motives, goals and contradictions of realpolitik multipolarity, not general critical rejection of Russia and China state actors at large, and crude condemnation bounty like organigrama and portrait specific targeting?

I raise and critically reject this all too familiar sectarianism. I do so not out of fealty to abstract unity, nor uncompromising allegiance to some inflexible Left code of Principles and Decorum. I critique this approach to progressive and left debate and alignments from some actual vantage of critical sectarian engagements over years and decades with some the targeted socialists whom I respect despite some noted and likely significant differences of analysis and in overall progressive and Left political practice. I do so because this sort of self assumed journalism (not necessarily this journalist) narrows the larger ideo-political landscape and de facto dismisses hundreds of young progressive, and self and organizational declared socialists. multiracial-cultural—ethnic-gender-class in their composition whom I’ve critically engaged and still engage who work in strategic ideological, political, and organizational alliances with some of these individuals and organizations, even if I do not.

What are they to learn, take away, seriously engage from this attack mode of progressive and Left shallow analysis and portrait attacks?

I have and do critically participate on some of these targeted media platforms, consistently proactive and critical about Russia and China, Multipolarity, BRICS, and so on, expressly regarding working class and exploited and oppressed sectors, and related unacceptable ideological and political contradictions among the aligned in this momentous, urgent, and global power shift. One of the leading Left organizers in the spread of identified organizations critiqued referred to me as the most ecumenical Marxist I know”. Although I am not all-embracing, and I have my no-cross and rejection lines, I neither embrace shallow analysis , nor abstractions, nor mechanical application of agreed upon principles.

We can and must do better or remain isolated from the always messy. complications and contradictions in the worldwide freedom struggles against Capitalism-Imperialism and a wide range of intra-systems competitive, confrontational, and revolutionary social movement and state governance projects.

James Early

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I wonder why on earth Portside reposted "People's Media" Network by William Bredderman of the Daily Beast. It is a right-wing hit job on Code Pink, Vijay Prashad, PSL, the Peoples Forum, People's Dispatch, and other progressive individuals and organizations.

Joe Jamison

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Moderator's Note:

This article provides some transparency about the funding of media sites that are directed mainly to a left audience. Knowledge about funding is important for people who work for or write for or read a media site. Dark money can be toxic. How the reader incorporates knowledge about funding into their evaluation of a story and its source is up to the reader. But it's better to know than not to know. This article contains relevant facts, even if some may find the facts embarrassing.

End Crypto’s Presumption Of Legitimacy and Other Quick Hits

It’s Time That The Media Accept What Even Wall Street And Venture Capitalists Have – Crypto Is One Massive Grift. Those Involved With It Should Be Treated Accordingly.

Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Laws & Regulations (*Creative Commons Attribution 2.0*)

Henry Burke
June 9, 2023
Revolving Door Project

This week the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced lawsuits against both Binance and Coinbase – the world’s largest and second-largest cryptocurrency exchanges respectively. The SEC has taken its time to build the caselaw needed to go after these massive cryptocurrency exchanges and it has spent the past two years winning 130 cases related to digital assets. While some have attacked this process, SEC Chair Gary Gensler understood the need for legal precedent before going after the crypto industry’s largest fish. After years of catching minnows, Gensler clearly feels he is finally in the position to crack down on the entire crypto ecosystem that has flourished by plainly violating securities law.

But Gensler isn’t the only one who believes the crypto ecosystem is built by grifters and upon a foundation of violations of American securities law: the investor class has now accepted this too. While cryptocurrency was once the new frontier of investment, venture capitalists and Wall Street are both rightfully fleeing the industry. In the past 12 months, every facet of the industry has faced a scandal large enough to tank its credibility forever. Amazingly though, the political press refuses to update their priors. Cryptocurrency is still treated as a legitimate industry at the forefront of tech innovation.

Let’s do a brief (and incomplete) summary of the largest cryptocurrency news of the past year.

May 2022 – Luna and UST stablecoins – crypto tokens that were supposed to retain a constant value through algorithmic processes – collapsed. The collapse resulted in a loss of $60 billion in the crypto market and drove the crypto firms Celsius, Three Arrows Capital and Voyager Digital into bankruptcy. The founder of Luna and UST, Do Kwon, was indicted for his role in the fraud back in March.

July 2022 – Crypto lender BlockFi which had once been valued at $3 billion, was forced to look for an emergency bailout as a result of the Luna collapse and a massive $100 million settlement with the SEC for violations of securities law. BlockFi received a buyout offer from FTX which allowed the company to continue operating… until it was forced to declare bankruptcy after the collapse of FTX.

November 2022 – Crypto currency’s third largest exchange, FTX, which was once valued at $32 billion, collapsed as it was revealed that the company had been committing fraud for years and stealing customer deposits to use in its crypto trading firm, Alameda Research. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was indicted on multiple counts of fraud. Customers lost almost $9 billion.

March 2023 – Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank, three of the traditional finance industry’s most crypto-friendly banks, collapsed in a larger bank failure than the 2008 crisis. All three of the banks had significant risks as a result of their relationship with crypto.