Burying the white working class

Apologies if this has been posted before:

MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald claimed, “Many attributed the outcome to West Virginia voters’ discomfort with Obama’s race. The state is one of the whitest in the country.” To be fair, it’s now widely known that Hillary Clinton keeps hot sauce in her purse at all times.

These kinds of statements are the name of the game for today’s Democratic elite. The party has established a clear line on the white wage-earning class: they’re all either dying (demographically or literally), irrelevant in an increasingly nonwhite country, or so hopelessly racist they can go off themselves with a Miller High Life-prescription-painkiller cocktail for all they care. As liberal hero and Sanders nemesis Barney Frank put it a couple of weeks ago, “the likelihood that fifty-eight-year-old coal miners are going to become the solar engineers of the future is nil.”

The problem with this line is not just that it’s gross and elitist — it’s that it’s not even true. The working class is bigger than ever, is still really white, and is broadly supportive of a progressive populist agenda.

It just turns out that the Democratic Party outside of Sanders isn’t too interested in that agenda. And it’s even less interested in that specific chunk of the working class that forces liberals to confront head on the naked brutality of the economic system they cherish.

Shelly Bond fired, notorious sexual predator keeps job

In a move that we'll tell you up front is resulting in an INSTANT resetting of the Has DC Done Something Stupid Today counter, DC Comics has decided to "restructure" its Vertigo imprint and release Vertigo Vice President and Executive Editor Shelly Bond. The move comes as a shock for multiple reasons, including Bond's long tenure with the company and the widespread respect of her peers, and also the fact that Vertigo is the only part of DC that people actually like. Vertigo's editorial staff will now report directly to Dan Didio and Jim Lee, because that's worked out so well for DC Comics proper for the past several years. Here's a statement DC sent to CBR about the changes:

(snip)

Of course, Hanover is referring to what's considered an open secret in comics, and something we've discussed second hand with dozens of journalists and industry insiders. When Alex de Campi talked about a senior DC editor with multiple sexual harassment reports on his HR record, she was, we believe, talking about Eddie Berganza. Let's revisit her statements:

I am standing as a candidate in Bristol City Council's election

I will be the Wessex Regionalist candidate for Eastville ward. Please feel free to send good vibes my way.

Welcome to the post-work economy

BEN SCHILLER 03.15.16 6:00 AM
If the goal of the economy is to provide decent-paying work for everyone, that economy clearly isn't doing a good job at the moment. Real wages for most Americans haven't increased in 40 years. Real unemployment—which includes the "under-employed"—is above 10%. Many jobs are now part-time, flexi-time, or "gigs" with no benefits and few protections. And, we spend a lot of money to subsidize so-called "bullshit jobs": more than 50% of fast food workers receive some form of public assistance, for instance.

And, even for people who are employed, work often isn't that fun. For all the talk of the meaning and purpose of our jobs, most people see them merely as a means to an end. Only 29% of employees in North America say they're engaged (worldwide, the number is 13%). And the reality is that a lot of work will soon be done by computer. Processing-type technology has already eliminated many "routine manual" and "routine cognitive" activities, notably in factories and offices. And new artificially intelligent machines are likely to take away more, even within professional occupations. Forty-seven percent of jobs are at risk over the next 20 years, one study showed.

Of course, there are many conventional ways we could deal with this, including improving education and training (so more people can work up the wage-scale and beyond the ability of robots) and raising minimum wages. But, over the long term, it's questionable whether even these approaches will be sufficient. The fundamental problem could be that work is losing its value. The thing that provided—that allowed families to prosper and individuals to build a sense-of-self—is under attack.

In response, many are now calling for a "universal basic income" (UBI)—where the state gives everyone enough to live on. This would put a floor under the class of people we're calling the "precariat," people for whom work doesn't lead to increased financial security. It would free us from the bullshit, allowing everyone to benefit from automation, not just the lucky few. And it would leave us more time for creative, fulfilling things, enjoying the "abundance" that new technology affords (think how useful and cheap computers are today and imagine what they might let everyone do in the future). There are several UBI trials planned in Finland, Switzerland, and Canada (and, indeed, several reasons why the idea is attractive).

The best part of Bernie's victory for me...

...is that the Clinton campaign fought dirty and lost. It shows that the electorate was too savvy to reward a campaign based on lies, and goes a long way to restoring my faith in the voting public. An honest victory for Hillary would still have been a blow, but to see her win like that would have been too much to take in.

Trump street art in my hometown

This just appeared on the side of the Hen & Chicken pub in Bedminster, Bristol, England:

Ted Rall toon

Don't forget the down-ticket races

President Sanders would be the best result, of course, but President Clinton plus a congress full of Bernie Dems would be better than President Clinton plus a congress full of Turd Way Dems voting with the Republicans 95% of the time. I don't even want to think about President Trump.

The RW attack thread

There are plenty of threads about attacks from the Clinton campaign, but I spotted this on my Facebook timeline and thought I'd start a thread where people could post attacks from Republicans, Libertarians and other wingnuts, as well as allowing creative types to come up with rebuttals and counter-memes. After all, we can expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing if Bernie becomes the nominee. Anyway, here's the meme:

What's this about delegates?

I keep seeing that Hillary got more delegates in NH, despite Bernie winning decisively. Is this true, and if so, how is it possible?