BeckyDem
BeckyDem's JournalRep. Barbara Lee @RepBarbaraLee: On the first anniversary of the Jan 6th, join myself,
https://twitter.com/RepBarbaraLee/status/1477019024890413059( Save the date. )
Was this beautiful or what? Wow. Watch Carlile perform "River" at the Kennedy Center Honors below.
https://www.advocate.com/music/2021/12/23/brandi-carlile-honors-joni-mitchell-soaring-river-cover
Carlile, a longtime protégé of the 78-year-old Mitchell,was spellbinding as she played piano – backed by the Kennedy Center Orchestra – during “River” (“I love you, Joni, you magical thing!” she yelled toward Mitchell’s honoree box at song’s end). And power-lunged Americana-rocker Brittany Howard showcased a restrained, husky vocal for the devastating “Both Sides Now,” with former Kennedy Center honoree Herbie Hancock accompanying her on piano.
On the red carpet before the ceremony, Judy Collins, who recorded the first version of Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” in 1967, said the two have remained “friends along the way.” “She’s brought so much beauty into the world,” Collins said.
https://www.advocate.com/music/2021/12/23/brandi-carlile-honors-joni-mitchell-soaring-river-cover
Scroll down at the link and watch her tribute to Joni. Beautiful!
NLRB Invites Briefs Regarding Independent Contractor Standard
Office of Public Affairs
202-273-1991
publicinfo@nlrb.gov
www.nlrb.gov
December 27, 2021
In a notice issued today in The Atlanta Opera, Inc. 371 NLRB No. 45 (2021), the National Labor Relations Board invited parties and amici to submit briefs addressing whether the Board should reconsider its standard for determining the independent contractor status of workers.
In 2019, in SuperShuttle DFW, Inc., the Board overruled the prior standard for determining independent contractor status which was set forth in FedEx Home Delivery in 2014. In today’s notice, the Board invites the filing of briefs to afford the parties and interested amici the opportunity to address the following questions:
https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-invites-briefs-regarding-independent-contractor-standard
(Indicators are very good that Biden's National Labor Board will NOT define Lyft, Uber, and DoorDash drivers
as independent contractors, meaning they will have the legal right to unionize. Potentially huge win..huge. )
Fingers crossed and all that. 
AOC: Here's our 21 wins for 2021 ( Tweet )
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1473693773196632072( Smart, as usual! )
A Key Founder of Critical Race Theory Discusses the Right-Wing Panic Over It
Proponents and opponents of critical race theory demonstrate as the Placentia Yorba Linda School Board in Yorba Linda, California, discusses a proposed resolution to ban it from being taught in schools, on November 16, 2021.
By
C.J. Polychroniou,
Truthout
Published
December 11, 2021
Critical race theory (CRT) has become a new bogeyman in conservative circles in the United States. Right-wing groups are applying the term indiscriminately, using it inaccurately as a catch-all buzzword to stand in for everything they oppose, including any discussion of systemic racism in the classroom.
Excerpt:
For a better understanding of what CRT is and what it is not, Truthout reached out to one of the key founders of CRT, Richard Delgado, the John J. Sparkman Chair of Law at the University of Alabama. Professor Delgado — the author of 30 books and one of the most-cited legal scholars on race and the law in the country — has become a target of numerous threats by racist and neo-fascist elements since the recent right-wing campaign against CRT began.
C.J. Polychroniou: Professor Delgado, I would like to ask you to describe to us where CRT comes from, and then to discuss in some detail what CRT is and what it is not.
https://truthout.org/articles/a-key-founder-of-critical-race-theory-discusses-the-right-wing-panic-over-it/
Barbara Arnwine, Esq.: are at US Capitol w @UniteThePoor demanding US Senate #ProtectOurVote
https://twitter.com/barbs73/status/1470446368904912899 
Trump's Next Coup Has Already Begun
January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election.
By Barton Gellman
Excerpt: “The democratic emergency is already here,” Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine, told me in late October. Hasen prides himself on a judicious temperament. Only a year ago he was cautioning me against hyperbole. Now he speaks matter-of-factly about the death of our body politic. “We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” he said, “but urgent action is not happening.”
For more than a year now, with tacit and explicit support from their party’s national leaders, state Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft. Elected officials in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states have studied Donald Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 election. They have noted the points of failure and have taken concrete steps to avoid failure next time. Some of them have rewritten statutes to seize partisan control of decisions about which ballots to count and which to discard, which results to certify and which to reject. They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie. They are fine-tuning a legal argument that purports to allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters.
Excerpt: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, excommunicated and primaried at Trump’s behest for certifying Biden’s victory, nonetheless signed a new law in March that undercuts the power of the county authorities who normally manage elections. Now a GOP-dominated state board, beholden to the legislature, may overrule and take control of voting tallies in any jurisdiction—for example, a heavily Black and Democratic one like Fulton County. The State Election Board can suspend a county board if it deems the board to be “underperforming” and replace it with a handpicked administrator. The administrator, in turn, will have final say on disqualifying voters and declaring ballots null and void. Instead of complaining about balls and strikes, Team Trump will now own the referee.
“The best-case scenario is [that in] the next session this law is overturned,” Nuriddin said. “The worst case is they start just pulling election directors across the state.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/january-6-insurrection-trump-coup-2024-election/620843/
( Excellent journalism, long, detailed and comes with a critical warning. )
This Violent Piece of Insurrection Was Planned Openly on Unencrypted Channels'
CounterSpin interview with Dorothee Benz on January 6 insurrection
Janine Jackson
Excerpt: Joining us now is political scientist Dorothee Benz. A writer, organizer and strategist, she has many years of work in frontline struggles here in the US. She joins us by phone from Brooklyn. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Dorothee Benz.
Dorothee Benz: It’s great to be here.
JJ: My brain at first went to language, you know: Is “protester” the best label when the target is the democratic process? Is “chaos” the most evocative description for a planned and predicted action with some measure of evident official sanction? Now I’m reading “unprepared”; everyone was “unprepared.”
But there are deeper questions about corporate media’s role here. Just to throw a dart: While they’ve recently begun to qualify it, elite media spent years referring matter of factly to “voter fraud,” despite its virtual nonexistence, because they simply had to suggest a Democratic equivalent to evidence of Republican voter suppression, lest they be accused of bias. So the idea that you can just declare fraud without evidence has been well-established by the press itself.
https://fair.org/home/this-violent-piece-of-insurrection-was-planned-openly-on-unencrypted-channels/
( Excellent analysis )
Opinion: The Supreme Court isn't well. The only hope for a cure is more justices.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=
The Supreme Court building in Washington. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg)
By Nancy Gertner
and
Laurence H. Tribe
Today at 5:01 p.m. EST
Nancy Gertner is a retired U.S. District Court judge. Laurence H. Tribe is Carl M. Loeb University Professor emeritus and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School. Both served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.
We now believe that Congress must expand the size of the Supreme Court and do so as soon as possible. We did not come to this conclusion lightly.
One of us is a constitutional law scholar and frequent advocate before the Supreme Court, the other a federal judge for 17 years. After serving on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court over eight months, hearing multiple witnesses, reading draft upon draft of the final report issued this week, our views have evolved. We started out leaning toward term limits for Supreme Court justices but against court expansion and ended up doubtful about term limits but in favor of expanding the size of the court.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/09/expand-supreme-court-laurence-tribe-nancy-gertner/
( It's time. )
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Member since: Thu Feb 9, 2017, 01:31 PM
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