Politics Plus

Yesterday, of course, I read up on the latest shooting (at least it was the latest yesterday – by today, who knows.) I won’t be posting Biden’s speech because I am bettimg everupone has either already seen it or decided they can’t bear to. I won’t be posting Beto’s speech for about the same reasons (it is in two parts – before and after he got thrown out of abbott’s press conference.) I am posting some little-known Second Amendment history which needs to be known more sidely, along with what I think is a very powerful meme (both here) and a video with Fred Guttenberg in the Video Thread. And there’s this.  (another detail about the incident is in the comments.) Also, I did manage to get my delivery order placed, though it took two browsers and about an hour of ding other things before I could get from finalizing the products to actually checking out. sometimes that happens. As long as I have something else to do, and don’t have to sit there screaming at the computer, I’m fine with that.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Justice Department Tells Agents They Must Step in to Stop ‘Excessive Force’
Quote – In the first update to its use-of-force policy after a string of killings by police in recent years, the Justice Department has ordered federal agents to step in to “prevent or stop” excessive force by other members of law enforcement, The Washington Post reports. The policy change, the first update to its use-of-force policy since 2004, was spelled out in a memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland that was sent to federal law-enforcement agents.
Click through for quotes frpm the memo. My guess for why this took so long is that agents thought such corrective action might be (or be seen as) “hostile” – but IMO “parental” – is a better description.

Robert Reich – Why unions are coming to the new economy
Quote – A fifth reason is a new appreciation of the importance of power in driving wages, and the fraudulence of the economic idea that “you’re paid what you’re worth.” The old economic mainstay that people are paid what they are “worth” is finally revealing itself to be an ideology grounded in nothing but power. According to this old mythology, minimum wage workers aren’t “worth” more than the $7.25 an hour federal minimum many now receive. If they were worth more, they’d earn more. Any attempt to force employers to pay them more will only kill jobs. According to this same ideology, CEOs of big companies are “worth” their giant compensation packages, now averaging 350 times pay of the typical American worker. They must be worth it or they wouldn’t be paid so much. Any attempt to limit their pay is fruitless because their pay will only take some other form.
Click through for the other four, and for a more complete explanation of this one. IMO there are practical reasons why no one will ever be paid exactly what he or she is “worth,” but we can definitey do better than we are now doing.

Letters from an American – May 24, 2022
Quote – There’s not a lot to go on about what the Framers meant, although in their day, to “bear arms” meant to be part of an organized militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court wrote in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”
Click through for more history. I haven’t subscribed to this blog for very long, so this history is new to me. It is a history that everyone should learn. All of it. (BTW today’s video thread includes a short conversation with Fred Guttenberg and Nicole Wallace.)

Food For Thought