#Office of the United States Trade Representative

[robertreich]

How the Corporate Takeover of American Politics Began

The corporate takeover of American politics started with a man and a memo you've probably never heard of.

In 1971, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked Lewis Powell, a corporate attorney who would go on to become a Supreme Court justice, to draft a memo on the state of the country.

Powell’s memo argued that the American economic system was “under broad attack” from consumer, labor, and environmental groups.

In reality, these groups were doing nothing more than enforcing the implicit social contract that had emerged at the end of the Second World War. They wanted to ensure corporations were responsive to all their stakeholders — workers, consumers, and the environment — not just their shareholders.

But Powell and the Chamber saw it differently. In his memo, Powell urged businesses to mobilize for political combat, and stressed that the critical ingredients for success were joint organizing and funding.

The Chamber distributed the memo to leading CEOs, large businesses, and trade associations — hoping to persuade them that Big Business could dominate American politics in ways not seen since the Gilded Age.

It worked.

The Chamber’s call for a business crusade birthed a new corporate-political industry practically overnight. Tens of thousands of corporate lobbyists and political operatives descended on Washington and state capitals across the country.

I should know — I saw it happen with my own eyes.

In 1976, I worked at the Federal Trade Commission. Jimmy Carter had appointed consumer advocates to battle big corporations that for years had been deluding or injuring consumers.

Yet almost everything we initiated at the FTC was met by unexpectedly fierce political resistance from Congress. At one point, when we began examining advertising directed at children, Congress stopped funding the agency altogether, shutting it down for weeks.

I was dumbfounded. What had happened?

In three words, The Powell Memo.

Lobbyists and their allies in Congress, and eventually the Reagan administration, worked to defang agencies like the FTC — and to staff them with officials who would overlook corporate misbehavior.

Their influence led the FTC to stop seriously enforcing antitrust laws — among other things — allowing massive corporations to merge and concentrate their power even further.

Washington was transformed from a sleepy government town into a glittering center of corporate America — replete with elegant office buildings, fancy restaurants, and five-star hotels.

Meanwhile, Justice Lewis Powell used the Court to chip away at restrictions on corporate power in politics. His opinions in the 1970s and 80s laid the foundation for corporations to claim free speech rights in the form of financial contributions to political campaigns.

Put another way — without Lewis Powell, there would probably be no Citizens United — the case that threw out limits on corporate campaign spending as a violation of the “free speech” of corporations.

These actions have transformed our political system. Corporate money supports platoons of lawyers, often outgunning any state or federal attorneys who dare to stand in their way. Lobbying has become a $3.7 billion dollar industry.

Corporations regularly outspend labor unions and public interest groups during election years. And too many politicians in Washington represent the interests of corporations — not their constituents. As a result, corporate taxes have been cut, loopholes widened, and regulations gutted.

Corporate consolidation has also given companies unprecedented market power, allowing them to raise prices on everything from baby formula to gasoline. Their profits have jumped into the stratosphere — the highest in 70 years.

But despite the success of the Powell Memo, Big Business has not yet won. The people are beginning to fight back.

First, antitrust is making a comeback. Both at the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department we’re seeing a new willingness to take on corporate power.

Second, working people are standing up. Across the country workers are unionizing at a faster rate than we’ve seen in decades — including at some of the biggest corporations in the world — and they’re winning.

Third, campaign finance reform is within reach. Millions of Americans are intent on limiting corporate money in politics – and politicians are starting to listen.

All of these tell me that now is our best opportunity in decades to take on corporate power — at the ballot box, in the workplace, and in Washington.

Let’s get it done.

[radiofreederry]

Happy birthday, Nicolas Maduro! (November 23, 1962)

The current President of Venezuela and a onetime trade union leader, Nicolas Maduro was born in Caracas to a working class family with leftist sympathies. He worked for many years as a bus driver, which is when he became active in trade unionism. He was an early political ally of Hugo Chavez, playing a leading role in the Fifth Republic Movement which carried Chavez to the Venezuelan Presidency at the close of the 20th Century. Maduro played a variety of roles in Chavez' government until becoming his final Vice President, a role which led him to becoming President after Chavez' death and a subsequent election. In office, Maduro has led Venezuela through a coup attempt by the United States and taken a leading role in the regional left.

"Should Latin America and the Caribbean accept these methods that so hurt our region in the entire 20th century? How many military interventions? How many coup d’états? How many dictatorships were imposed during the long and dark 20th century in Latin America and the Caribbean, and who did it favor? Did it favor the Peoples? What interests did they represent? The interests of the transnational companies, the unpopular interests; long dictatorships, like Augusto Pinochet’s in Chile, were faced by our peoples due to the stubbornness of the American elites."

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 28, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 29, 2023

In Chicago today, President Joe Biden gave a historic speech at the Old Post Office Building downtown. In it, he was crystal clear that he has launched a new economic vision for the United States to stand against that of today’s Republicans. As he has said since he took office, he intends to build the economy “from the middle out and the bottom up instead of just the top down.”

His vision, he said, “is a fundamental break from the economic theory that has failed America’s middle class for decades now.”

That theory is “trickle-down economics,” the idea that cutting taxes for the wealthy and for corporations while shrinking public investment in infrastructure and public education will nurture the economy. Under that theory the most important metric was a company’s bottom line, Biden pointed out, so companies reduced costs by taking factories and supply chains overseas to find cheap labor, leaving “entire towns and communities…hollowed out.” It also meant cutting taxes, which led to dramatic cuts in public investments in infrastructure, research, social programs and so on, with the idea that concentrating money in a few hands would prompt private investment in the economy. That investment would, the theory went, provide more jobs and enable everyone to prosper.

This is the worldview that the Republicans have embraced since 1980 and that, Biden said, has “failed the middle class. It failed America. It blew up the deficit. It increased inequity. And it weakened…our infrastructure. It stripped the dignity, pride, and hope out of communities one after another…. People working as hard as ever couldn’t get ahead because it’s harder to buy a home, pay for a college education, start a business, retire with dignity. [For] the first time in a generation, the path of the middle class seemed out of reach,” Biden said.   

Biden came into office determined to reverse this policy by investing in the American people rather than in tax cuts. With the help of a Democratic Congress, the president backed legislation that invests in infrastructure, repairing our long-neglected roads and bridges, and in supply chains and manufacturing. Rather than scaring off private investment, as the trickle-down theory argued, that public investment has attracted more than $490 billion of private money into new industries. Manufacturing is booming. Together, infrastructure and manufacturing have created new jobs that pay well. 

Central to Biden’s vision is the idea that the prosperity of the United States rests on its working people, rather than its elites. In Chicago he emphasized his administration’s focus on training and education, as well as its emphasis on the trades and unions. He also emphasized economic competition, noting that business consolidation has stifled innovation, reduced wages, made supply chains vulnerable, and raised costs for consumers. 

To reduce the deficit that has exploded in the past decades and to pay for new programs, Biden reiterated the need for fair taxes on the wealthy and corporations after decades of cuts. “Big Oil made $200 billion last year and got a…$30 billion tax break,” he said, while billionaires pay an average of 8% in taxes, less than “a schoolteacher, a firefighter, or a cop.” He called for “making the tax code fair for everyone, making the wealthy and the super-wealthy and big corporations begin to pay their fair share, without raising taxes at all on the middle class.”

“We’re not going to continue down the trickle-down path as long as I’m president,” Biden said. “This is the moment we are finally going to make a break…. Here’s the simple truth about trickle-down economics: It didn’t represent the best of American capitalism, let alone America.  It represented a moment where we walked away… from… how this country was built…. Bidenomics is just another way of saying: Restore the American Dream because it worked before. It’s rooted in what’s always worked best in this country: investing in America, investing in Americans. Because when we invest in our people, we strengthen the middle class, we see the economy grow. That benefits all Americans. That’s the American Dream.”

Biden often points to the New Deal of the 1930s as his inspiration. In that era, under Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Congress responded to the economic crash spurred by unregulated capitalism by passing a wide range of laws that regulated business and protected workers, provided a basic social safety net including Social Security, and promoted infrastructure. 

In his speech accepting the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination, FDR condemned the policies of his predecessors that turned the government over to businessmen, declaring that “the welfare and the soundness of a nation depend first upon what the great mass of the people wish and need; and second, whether or not they are getting it.” He pledged to give the American people a “new deal” to replace the one that had led them into the Depression, and to lead a “crusade to restore America to its own people.” 

But FDR was not the first president to see ordinary Americans as the heart of the nation and to call for a government that protected them, rather than an economic elite. FDR’s distant relative Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, made a similar argument as president thirty years earlier. Responding to a world in which a few wealthy industrialists—nicknamed “robber barons”—monopolized politics and the economy, he called for a “square deal” for the American people. 

“[W]hen I say that I am for the square deal,” TR said in 1910, “I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.” He called for conservation of natural resources, business regulation, higher wages, and “social” legislation to create a “new nationalism” that would rebuild the country. Overall, he wanted “a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.”  

But TR didn’t invent the idea of government investment in and protection of ordinary Americans either. In his New Nationalism speech, TR pointed back to his revered predecessor, Republican president Abraham Lincoln, who believed that the government must serve the interests of ordinary people rather than those of elite southern enslavers. When South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond told the Senate in 1858 that society was made up of “mudsills” overseen by their betters, who directed their labor and, gathering the wealth they produced, used it to advance the country, Lincoln was outraged. 

Society moved forward not at the hands of a wealthy elite, he countered, but through the hard work of ordinary men who constantly innovated. A community based on the work and wisdom of farmers, he said in 1859, “will be alike independent of crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings.” In office, Lincoln turned the government from protecting enslavers to advancing the interests of workingmen, including government support for higher education. 

Biden has recently embraced the term “Bidenomics,” a term coined by his opponents who insist that their embrace of tax cuts is the only way to create a healthy economy. But Bidenomics is simply a new word for a time-honored American idea.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[dailyanarchistposts]

Malawi’s May Days

Under the one-party State, May Day was not a public holiday nor could unions organise independent May Days.

So, the first May Day in independent Malawi was in 1994. Held at the Ryalls Hotel in Blantyre just two weeks before the first multiparty general elections, and 11 months after a referendum in favour of elections, it was organised by the Hotels and Food Workers Union. Held, however, at a luxury hotel, without publicity and in the wake of State repression of dissidents and strikers, the event was poorly attended.

May Day became an official public holiday in 1995 under the newly-elected United Democratic Front (UDF) government – which included Chihana as Second Vice-President.

That year, the Trade Union Congress of Malawi (TUCM) held a widely publicised series of May Day activities at Kamuzu Stadium and a peaceful march. The then minister of Labour, Ziliro Chibambo, was present, as were employer representatives. When the minister saluted workers’ contributions to the independence and democracy struggles, promising to defend workers, the mammoth crowd jubilantly ululated.

That same minister was, however, lambasted by the UDF government, after investors complained bitterly of his speech. By the 1996 May Day commemorations, a new minister of Labour was in office. And only from 2004 did the State President start attending May Day events.

[mariacallous]

For nearly a decade, U.S. trade policy has been remade in the image of a single man: Robert Lighthizer. As President Donald Trump’s trade representative, he turned the United States away from six decades of support for a rules-based, multilateral trading system and toward a robustly nationalist approach. Lighthizer’s successor under President Joe Biden, Katherine Tai, has continued on the path he laid out. Even as most of Trump’s former officials have denounced him as unfit to be president again, Lighthizer has kept the faith—seeing in Trump, as many others do, a flawed vessel for some greater public good. He remains one of Trump’s top policy advisors in the 2024 campaign and would be set for a bigger job—likely Treasury secretary—if Trump wins in November. Lighthizer’s mission of transforming not just U.S. trade policy but broader U.S. international economic policy is just getting started.

Lighthizer’s influence was on full display last month, when Biden traveled to the headquarters of United Steelworkers, North America’s largest industrial union, in Pittsburgh, in the political battleground state of Pennsylvania. Following the visit, the administration announced plans to sharply increase the tariffs on certain Chinese imports that were first imposed, at Lighthizer’s urging, by Trump. This week, following a review by Tai’s office, the administration slapped a 100 percent tariff on imported Chinese electric vehicles and raised the rates on Chinese-made semiconductors, lithium-ion batteries, solar cells, steel, and aluminum. Tai has also launched a new Section 301 investigation—a 1970s-era tool of U.S. trade unilateralism revived by Lighthizer—into Chinese subsidies for the shipbuilding industry. More tariffs are likely to follow. And Lighthizer himself has been counseling Trump to devalue the strong U.S. dollar if he is elected in order to boost U.S. exports—advice that has been widely read as an audition for the Treasury post.

Lighthizer’s growing influence is a warning to U.S. trading partners—including the country’s closest allies—that the aggressive nationalism of Trump’s trade policies is not a passing phase. Instead, the United States has made a choice across both political parties to embrace an “America First” approach to international economic policy. The implications of that choice will play out for years, and likely decades, to come. That makes Lighthizer—following a career spent mostly as a voice in the wilderness decrying the U.S. embrace of free trade and multilateral rules—the man in the middle.

Lighthizer is an unlikely figure to have become the architect of the next generation of U.S. international economic policy. Born just after the end of World War II, he spent most of his career as a lawyer protecting the U.S. steel industry against foreign competition. Once the anchor industry of U.S. manufacturing, steel is now a rounding error in an economy dominated by information technology, a growing green industry, and the exploding international trade in services, including higher education and tourism. But the lessons he learned from steel—that U.S. trading partners engage in predatory practices, including by subsidizing production and dumping goods below their cost, that have stolen U.S. jobs and hollowed out manufacturing—have now become gospel for trade officials in both parties.

Lighthizer’s 2023 book, No Trade Is Free, is a searing indictment of the many decades of consensus on the benefits of trade liberalization. From Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama, U.S. presidents believed that negotiated reductions of global trade barriers would make the United States and the world richer and safer. Lighthizer always disagreed. But after a brief stint at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the Reagan administration, he fell into obscurity, resurfacing every so often at congressional hearings, most notably to warn against admitting China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which happened in 2001. His book, written after Trump’s 2020 election defeat, is an “I told you so” to the U.S. trade establishment. Reducing tariffs and binding Washington’s hands through global trade rules was, he writes, “a starker, more indisputable failure than even I could have predicted,” leading to the loss of U.S. manufacturing, the stagnation of Americans’ wages, and a U.S. strategic position that has deteriorated sharply against China. But, he argues, the “political establishments of both the Republican and Democratic parties, under the influence of multinational corporations and importers, were unwilling or unable to recognize their mistakes.”

As Trump’s trade representative for the entire four years of his term—a rare accomplishment under a mercurial president—Lighthizer was able to turn the United States onto a different course. He slapped tariffs of up to 25 percent on steel and aluminum imports from much of the world, imposed similar tariffs on three-quarters of China’s exports to the United States, and strong-armed Canada and Mexico into a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. These moves were largely popular at home—Democrats rallied behind the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement over provisions that tightened labor law enforcement in Mexico and required more production in the United States. The Biden team has also kept the China tariffs in place, despite strong initial opposition from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

But Lighthizer is just getting started. What he envisions, in the simplest terms, is a United States that worries far less about being a stabilizing force in the global economy and far more about pursuing its own narrow economic interests. As Treasury secretary, he would have many more tools at hand to carry out that mission.

The key metric for Lighthizer is one that conventional economists rarely pay attention to: the trade deficit. The United States has run a deficit in goods and services every year since 1975, topping out at a whopping $951 billion in 2022, although trade deficits were much higher relative to the size of the economy in the mid-2000s. Most economists, however, consider the trade deficit to be a function of national savings rates—the necessary consequence of high U.S. consumption and low private and public savings—and therefore largely immune to government intervention on the trade side. Lighthizer disagrees, seeing the deficit as a direct transfer of U.S. wealth to competitors, most importantly China, that can be corrected through forceful government action.

He would make it a goal of U.S. policy to balance trade with the rest of the world, not just China. The implications are enormous. One tool, which Lighthizer has reportedly proposed to Trump, is a concerted effort to weaken the U.S. dollar against other currencies. Other things being equal, a cheaper dollar would reduce the prices that foreigners pay for U.S. exports, make imports more expensive for Americans, and help bring trade closer to balance. The dollar, however, has long been overvalued, partly because of its role as the global currency of choice; more recently, it has been soaring in response to a strong U.S. economy and conflicts in the Middle East and Europe that have sent investors running for the safe haven of U.S. assets. Details are scant, but Lighthizer appears to be envisioning a reprise of actions taken by U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1971 and Ronald Reagan in 1987: imposing or threatening tariffs on trading partners unless they agree to take steps to revalue their currencies against the dollar. Given the scale of global financial flows today—a multiple of the level of when Reagan wrestled down the dollar—the consequences of messing with the stability of the currency are hard to predict.

Lighthizer similarly envisions an overhaul of the U.S. tax system to promote the competitiveness of U.S.-based manufacturing. For complicated historical reasons, U.S. exports have long been harmed by the U.S. tax system. Europe and most other countries rely heavily on value-added taxes (VAT), from which goods and services leaving the country are usually exempt. U.S. taxes, on the other hand, are largely income-based, and such taxes are not reimbursable under global trade rules. A U.S. company exporting to Europe pays both U.S. corporate income taxes and the local VAT on its sales in Europe—which puts products made in the United States at a competitive disadvantage. Lighthizer wants that to end by making the corporate tax system “border adjustable” to emulate the advantages of a VAT. Such revisions would have to run a congressional gauntlet, however, and have failed in the past due to pushback from large U.S. importers such as Walmart. Expect a Treasury Secretary Lighthizer to make another run at it.

But Lighthizer’s favorite tool remains the one most clearly controlled from the White House: tariffs. Writing in the Economist in March in defense of Trump’s announced plan to impose sweeping new tariffs if he is elected, he argued that the United States’ “bold experiment” with eliminating tariffs “has failed.” New tariffs—at least 10 percent across the board, in addition to some higher, more targeted duties—are needed “to reduce America’s trade deficit and to speed up its reindustrialisation,” he wrote. “Experience suggests that this will succeed and that high-paying industrial jobs will be created.” His book suggests how far such an effort might go. Tariffs should be imposed on all imports “at a progressively higher rate year after year until we achieve balance.” In other words, a 10 percent minimum on all trade is only the opening bid.

He would further seek to eliminate an obscure provision known as de minimis—the value below which imports are exempt from customs entirely. With the 2015 Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, Congress increased that rate from $200 to $800, with the goal of eliminating costly paperwork for smaller shipments of consumer goods. The change happened just as international online ordering was taking off. Consider the Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein, which has grown from a tiny business in 2015 into a giant with at least $30 billion in annual sales that now controls nearly 30 percent of the U.S. fast-fashion market—without a single U.S. store or brand. Downloads of Shein’s shopping app rose from fewer than 3 million globally in 2015 to more than 260 million last year. The company’s business model involves shipping Chinese-made clothing directly to American consumers duty-free because of the de minimis exemption; shipping giants such as FedEx and UPS are happy to cooperate. Lighthizer argues that the provision gives many Chinese companies duty-free access to the U.S. market without requiring any reciprocity.

Lighthizer’s influence will remain, no matter who wins in November. Biden has tried to walk a line between promoting U.S. manufacturing and seeking common ground with allies, who fear growing U.S. protectionism—foreign concerns of which Lighthizer has long been dismissive. But in an election year, the Biden administration’s evenhandedness is disappearing. At the behest of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown from Ohio, a Democrat who faces a tough reelection battle in a Trump-leaning state, Biden has promised, for example, to block the proposed takeover of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel. The Japanese company has already pledged to honor all union contracts, move its U.S. headquarters from Houston to Pittsburgh, and not cut jobs or move production overseas. But U.S. labor unions remain opposed to the deal, so Biden has said he will block the takeover on specious national security grounds, a move that is sure to infuriate the most important U.S. ally in the Asia-Pacific.

The areas of common ground between Lighthizer and the Democrats are much deeper than most people recognize. Consider climate change—many Republicans, including Trump, are skeptical of the science and opposed to any government actions to reduce the use of fossil fuels. But Lighthizer strongly favors extra tariffs on carbon-heavy imports, a policy that the European Union is already rolling out and that is now being seriously explored by the Biden administration. Lighthizer favors a carbon border tax that would impose additional tariffs on emissions-intensive products—including cement, fertilizers, and aluminum—with the argument that to do otherwise is to benefit countries producing goods “using much more carbon than we would tolerate here,” he writes in No Trade Is Free.

Under Tai and an emboldened Labor Department, the Biden administration has also become more aggressive in using trade tools to sanction human and labor rights violators around the world. Lighthizer would go much further than that. In his book, he proposes that all imports should be blocked unless the exporting companies adhere to U.S.-level standards for environmental protection, labor rules, and worker health and safety.

The biggest target for each of these initiatives is, of course, China. It was the Trump administration that launched a U.S. policy shift on China, treating it less as a trading partner and more as a hostile adversary. Lighthizer, who played a key role in this shift, minces no words, arguing that China is “the greatest threat that the American nation and its system of Western liberal democratic government has faced since the American Revolution.” He cites as evidence China’s huge economy, almost the size of the United States’, which makes it a far more capable adversary than the former Soviet Union—let alone Nazi Germany or imperial Japan. Lighthizer would seek something close to a full economic decoupling; as a first step, he recommends eliminating China’s “most favored nation” status, granted by Congress in 2000 to permit Beijing’s entry to the WTO. That would give the president a completely free hand to slap discriminatory tariffs on China.

Few on the Democratic side propose to go that far. So far, the Biden team is trying to distinguish between strategic trade with China in products such as semiconductors and new EV technologies that may need to be restricted and most ordinary consumer goods, which can be traded freely. The administration’s strategies—circumscribed with the phrases “small yard and high fence” and “derisking”—still envision a lot of room for mutual gain in U.S.-China trade. But the more China comes to be seen as a threat, the more compelling Lighthizer’s comprehensive decoupling logic will become. Any form of U.S. trade with China is likely to enrich China, potentially making it a more formidable adversary down the road. In an election year, especially, calls for nuance in the U.S.-China relationship are likely to be drowned out.

But while the influence of Lighthizer’s agenda will grow and endure in both parties, the disruptions could be more modest than many observers fear. When Trump imposed his tariffs, the global trade system proved more resilient than once seemed likely, producing only a modest downturn in U.S.-China trade and small uptick in inflation. But there is also a growing danger that a little bit of U.S. protectionism suddenly escalates into something much more harmful. Lighthizer’s colleague-in-arms during the Trump administration, former Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro—currently in prison for refusing to cooperate with Congress’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack—wants the United States to demand tariff reciprocity across the board. Any country that refused to reduce its tariff on a product to U.S. levels—Europe’s 10 percent tariff on passenger cars would have to fall to the U.S. rate of 2.5 percent—would face offsetting tariffs. (The Europeans would then likely retaliate by offsetting the United States’ 25 percent tariff on imported SUVs.) The Democrats, too, are eager to slap an array of new tariffs on a host of clean energy products, including wind turbines and EVs; last month, Tai told a congressional committee that the administration would take “early action, decisive action” to protect the U.S. EV industry.

The growing popularity of protectionism in both parties suggests there is much more to come. If other countries respond in kind, which is all but certain, it is easy to envision the sort of damaging trade and currency wars that have not occurred since the 1920s and ’30s.

To be sure, there is no rule that history must repeat itself. The United States could simply be in the midst of correcting trade policies that went too far and too fast in the direction of liberalization, leaving some U.S. industries and workers vulnerable to predatory competition. A middle ground is certainly possible. But all the evidence suggests that the United States is in serious danger of heading too far and too fast in the opposite direction. Should that be in doubt, just take a close look at what Lighthizer—the most important figure in U.S. trade policy to have emerged in our lifetime—has done, is saying, and still plans to do. 

[sam-glade]

Happy WBW!! I would like to ask about the ruling class in your world! What is their power based on? Is it for example military power like with warrior nobilities of some ancient societies, or land ownership like in feudal societies, or something else? How is the status inherited? For example by first born, distributed to all children, voted for by the members (like in many clan systems), something else?

Hi Karkki, Happy WBW

Let me roll up my sleeves and get on with some info dumping.

Tl;dr: it's heavily inspired, but not a 1-1 copy of the Golden Liberty system.

As of Days of Dusk, the Sunblessed Realm is ruled by the five princes - hence, it's now more often referred to as the Five Princedoms. The king is believed to be alive, but absent, residing in his Palace in the Clouds. He's more or less revered as a god, but honestly, he does jack shit, only serves as a reminder for the princes that there's a higher power. The princes of course test the limits further and further as time goes on.

The princes descend from the king's closest friends and supporters, who fought off the Primeval Darkness with him about 3000 years ago. Given the longevity of the people, it means a vastly different number of generation between the progenitor of the family and the current head of state. For example, Anthea and Ianim are grandchildren of the First Prince, the White Dragon, the King's closest friend, and they're 100-200 years old. The Prince of the North is also from the third generation, and he's just over a 1000. Other families have anywhere between 5 and 12 generations.

Upon assuming the title of the head of state, the prince names their successor, so that there's no squabble over inheritance. The successor's role is mostly representative - I like to compare it to the First Lady in the US, doing mostly charity and outreach work. They'll also attend all sort of formal events from weddings to openings of new factories. The successor can be the child of the prince, but often is the younger sibling, and in one case the spouse.

In the Southern and Western princedoms, which trade a lot across the sea and are very economy-driven, the merchants and guilds hold a lot of power, and the prince is a figurehead. In the others, the princes have a lot more direct power; e.g. the First Prince's power is nigh-absolute. If she weren't such a firm believer in the Sun King's divine rule, she'd quite likely become a dictator. Fortunately, her religious-like faith keeps her in check.

It's also worth noting that the army is separated from the government, in that it's an institution that spans all five princedoms and it's sole purpose is to kill demons, not fight against humans. However, every Sword is legally obligated to serve their 20 years while their Sword develops, and it's genetically inherited, so direct descendants of the progenitors of the princes' families who were Swords end up serving in the army and rising high in the rank (if only so that other officers gain some favour with them outside the army), thus giving them influence there as well. E.g. the White Dragon commanded the Winged Division, which evolved from his cavalry units, and now Anthea is the commander. There are questions raised about conflicts of interest.

By the end of Prodigal Children, this goes too far, and in the South, there's a revolt, which leads to that state declaring itself a republic, and being ruled by a handful of populist leaders, mostly guildmasters. The West on the other hand tries something modelled after elective monarchy, which has the nobility choosing the successor, so it's not locked to a single family, but still relies on inherited titles. Eventually, it will tend to various flavours of democracy (though 3000 years later, in The Truth Teller, it has again gone wrong, where you have basically one uncontested political party turning authoritarian.

So that's the aristocracy.

Now, for the nobility, it's modelled after the szlachta. The key characteristics are that it's a rather numerous class, and the poorer nobles are honestly not as wealthy as a homeowner in a city, as a rule of thumb, while district governors can are comparable to wealthy merchants, so there's a fair bit of spread. The noble houses usually own a village or two, so yes, it's serfdom. The poorer ones may end up co-owning a village, the wealthier - owning a handful of them. One example we see on page is the Sixth Tree, who don't own a village, but a gun making factory, and that's what pays for their taxes.

The noble titles are inherited by the firstborn or oldest adopted child, though that might be changed by a written declaration.

The nobility gathers at regular intervals for local/regional/state-wide assemblies. There, they vote on various changes to the law, resolve feuds, etc. Yes, they can vote by letter. Technically anyone can veto any resolution, and one veto is enough to send it back to the drawing board, which means the assemblies can drag on for a while. Also, there's a tonne of politicking involved, as you might expect - voting for something just to curry favour, etc. (Side note: I keep calling it assemblies, though I've seen 'parliament' used more often in English. It's based on the idea of sejmik).

The assemblies that involve the princes are the prince-wide and general assemblies, and yes, that puts another limit on the prince's power and what they can put into law. If they try taking too much power away from the nobility, they'll be vetoed. However, being too trigger happy with vetoing them is sure to put you on their naughty list ;)

Finally, if the nobility believes that the prince is really screwing them or the state over, they can call for a lawful insurrection - which is how one of the princes gets replaced in Prodigal Children. It's based on rokosz. Then, they choose the next prince from among themselves.

.

Adding Days of Dusk taglist (please message me to +/-): @acertainmoshke @another-white-void @cee-grice @cljordan-imperium @elshells

@goldxdarkness @poetinprose @sparrow-orion-writes @tisiphonewolfe

[zvaigzdelasas]

It has been around six months since the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine. During this time, the world has keenly witnessed seismic shifting trends across economic, geopolitical and cultural lines. But perhaps the most profound impact the conflict has had (and continues to have) on the world is the acceleration it has inspired towards multipolarity—that is, global power more evenly distributed amongst several advanced economic nations rather than contained within a single hegemonic power, which in this case is the United States. Underpinning much of this acceleration, moreover, is the trend of de-dollarisation.

It should be highlighted from the outset that de-dollarisation has been, observably, a long-term process that emerged over the last two decades. A March paper from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that the dollar still plays “an outsized role” in global markets despite the US economy representing a shrinking share of global output over the last two decades and that its dominant role in global trade, international debt and non-bank borrowing still far outstrips the US’ share of trade, bond issuance, and international borrowing and lending.

But the IMF also noted that central banks today are not holding the greenback as reserves in the same quantities as yesteryear. “The dollar’s share of global foreign-exchange reserves fell below 59 percent in the final quarter of last year, extending a two-decade decline, according to the IMF’s Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves data,” the paper stated. “Strikingly, the decline in the dollar’s share has not been accompanied by an increase in the shares of the pound sterling, yen and euro, other long-standing reserve currencies…. Rather, the shift out of dollars has been in two directions: a quarter into the Chinese renminbi, and three quarters into the currencies of smaller countries that have played a more limited role as reserve currencies.”

Why is this the case? Seemingly, a multitude of factors are responsible. For one, it appears the world has reached something of a tipping point this year. With around one-quarter of the global population suffering from the direct impact of US-led economic sanctions, which invariably diminishes their ability to trade and perform other necessary economic and financial activities that are often priced using the dollar, it should perhaps come as no surprise that de-dollarisation has intensified across the world. Indeed, this trend often simply reflects the desperation of some countries to survive, let alone thrive, with brutal sanctions having remained on countries during the COVID-19 pandemic proving devastating in some cases.

“The destructive impact of said measures at the national level, plus their extraterritorial implication, together with the phenomenon of over-compliance and the fear for ‘secondary sanctions’, hinder the ability of national governments in procuring even basic medical equipment and supplies, including coronavirus test kits and medicine,” a joint March 2020 letter from the governments of China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria and Venezuela—all bearers of US-led sanctions—to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) read. The letter called for an end to sanctions, which “illegal[ly] and blatantly violate international law and the charter of the United Nations”, and that it was a “hard if not impossible deed for those countries who are currently facing the application of unilateral coercive measures” to cope.

Sanctions have also played a critical role in the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe. Indeed, as the schism has continued to widen this year between the West, dominated by the United States, the European Union (EU) and Japan, versus the Eastern powers of China and Russia, there have been a number of concerted moves by the latter to wean themselves off their reliance on the greenback. For Russia, de-dollarisation began around 2014 after it annexed Crimea, which was executed in response to what it perceived was a US-backed coup d’état in Ukraine. The Western sanctions that followed the annexation drastically reduced Russian entities’ ability to raise capital in Western markets, which forced Moscow to reduce its dollar holdings and dramatically increase its exposure to alternative assets, such as gold. 

Since the outbreak of war this year and the imposition of further economic sanctions against Russia in response, Moscow has only further expedited this de-dollarisation process. Having been excluded from the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system, which banks use globally to transfer funds, Russia first hiked its key interest rate to 20 percent to protect the ruble, imposed further capital controls to prevent excessive currency from leaving its shores and insisted that all “unfriendly” countries pay only in rubles for its vast exports of fossil fuels.

More recently, Russia has been busy agreeing on bilateral fuel deals with several countries involving at least partial payment in rubles rather than dollars. For instance, it signed a roadmap for economic cooperation and trade with Turkey worth $100 billion a year, with Ankara agreeing to pay for gas imports in rubles. Turkey also confirmed that five of its commercial banks would use the Russian Mir payment system, helping Russian tourists in Turkey to use their currency.

Domestically, meanwhile, Russia’s largest exchange, Moscow Exchange, announced on August 8 that it would halve the maximum threshold of dollars it can accept as collateral to underwrite transactions from 50 percent to 25 percent. Any sums exceeding this limit would have to be converted into “friendlier” alternatives. And Moscow Exchange has also started trading bonds denominated in the Chinese yuan to attract Asian investors and further diversify away from the greenback. “Debt instruments denominated in the Chinese yuan open up an additional source of forex liquidity for Russian borrowers,” said Gleb Shevelenkov, head of the debt market at Moscow Exchange.

Speaking of the yuan, China’s rapidly growing global economic might may pose the biggest threat to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. And its recent forays into Middle Eastern markets—Saudi Arabian oil in particular—could ultimately go a long way towards tipping the scales in favour of widespread adoption of the Asian superpower’s currency. Indeed, part of how the US dollar rose to global supremacy in the first place has been down to its role as the de facto currency used in global commodities markets. Commonly known as the “petrodollar”, the requirement for the massive value of global oil sales to be denominated in the dollar has gone a long way towards guaranteeing the credibility of the currency, particularly after the US left the Bretton Woods system of monetary management in 1971, which severed the dollar from its backing of gold bullion.   

Since then, the petrodollar has thus been crucial in maintaining global dollar hegemony. “The oil market, and by extension the entire global commodities market, is the insurance policy of the status of the dollar as reserve currency,” economist Gal Luft, co-director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and co-author of the book De-Dollarization: The Revolt Against the Dollar and the Rise of a New Financial World Order, explained to the Wall Street Journal. “If that block is taken out of the wall, the wall will begin to collapse.”

Cue the “collapse”? Perhaps not completely or imminently, but relations between the US and Saudi Arabia have visibly soured in recent years at the same time as the world’s largest oil exporter has demonstrated a distinct warming to China. Over one-quarter of Saudi oil exports were snapped up by China in 2020, while state oil behemoth Saudi Aramco also recently concluded a $10-billion deal with Chinese petroleum companies. And with reports suggesting that oil transactions between the two countries could well be priced in yuan in the near future, this would dramatically raise the Chinese currency’s global profile and severely dent the petrodollar’s worldwide dominance.

With China extending billions of dollars of investment funding to Saudi Arabia this year and relations between President Xi Jinping and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the rise, therefore, things could develop rather quickly in favour of the East. “The dynamics have dramatically changed. The US relationship with the Saudis has changed. China is the world’s biggest crude importer, and they are offering many lucrative incentives to the kingdom,” an unnamed Saudi official told the Wall Street Journal in March. “China has been offering everything you could possibly imagine to the kingdom.” And while some analysts believe a wholesale shift onto yuan pricing is unlikely, others believe that a partial shift would enable payments to Chinese contractors currently involved in mega projects within the kingdom.

Other than the petrodollar, the US has also historically propped up its currency by issuing government debt to other nations, which has helped to finance its budget deficit. During the 2008 global financial crisis, China came to the US’ rescue by purchasing enormous quantities of US Treasury bills. Indeed, by 2010, China held more than $1 trillion in US Treasuries, and between 2008 and 2013, its foreign-exchange reserves—US debt-instruments holdings—expanded by a mammoth $2 trillion.

But in July, it was revealed that China’s holdings of US debt had fallen back under $1 trillion for the first time in 12 years, extending a trend of offloading US Treasuries that began in 2017 as the trade war waged by the US against China intensified. Given the further deterioration in relations between the two economic heavyweights that has transpired this year, it would thus appear that China is now keener than ever to rid itself of its dollar exposure. “They’re unhappy with the way the U.S. keeps using financial sanctions around the world,” David Dollar of the Brookings Institution’s China Center told Marketplace in July. Referring to the decision to kick Russia off SWIFT, Thomas Hogan of the American Institute for Economic Research added that this was “a major wake-up call” for China and other nations not fully aligned with Western political goals. “They realize that the SWIFT system could be used as a political weapon to harm them economically.”

Even developing nations are getting in on the act in clear acts of defiance against the dollar empire. Egypt, for example, has suffered greatly under the weight of borrowing as it seeks to stabilise its economy and prop up the value of the Egyptian pound. Indeed, the country’s sovereign debt has roughly quadrupled in the last 10 years as it has repeatedly sought financial support from US-led development institutions such as the IMF. But the cost of servicing this dollar-denominated debt has seriously dented Egyptians’ living standards amidst a deteriorating global economic landscape.

Cairo’s solution? Issuing yuan-denominated debt to raise funding in the Chinese bond market for the first time, a move announced as a realistic option by the Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait in May 2022. “The growing mountains of debt and high cost of borrowing in USD is forcing Egypt to seek alternative windows for funding to avert a potential sovereign debt crisis and a collapse in EGP’s purchasing power, which could destabilise society and the government,” Magdy Abd Alhadi, an Egyptian economist, told The New Arab news publication. Independent analyst Firas Modad added, “Egypt imports a large amount of goods and services from China, including for the construction of the New Administrative Capital. This requires Egypt to have access to the yuan. It is likely cheaper to borrow in yuan than to borrow in dollars and convert to the yuan.”

What does all this say about the dollar’s credibility in 2022? For some, de-dollarisation can be viewed as an expression of a loss of confidence in the US currency as a safe haven—a status that the dollar has enjoyed for decades—and a preference for seeking safety in alternative assets, such as gold and other currencies.

A survey published in June by the World Gold Council (WGC), for instance, found that 80 percent of the 57 central banks it surveyed expect to expand their gold reserves within the next year, particularly those within emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). “More EMDE respondents regard ‘shifts in global economic power’ as a relevant factor in their reserve management decisions, which could indicate growing concerns over the threat of a decoupling between major economies amid ongoing tensions,” the report stated, adding that 42 percent of respondents expect the dollar to decline as a proportion of total reserves in the next five years as they—EMDE central banks in particular—are now less confident in the role of the US dollar as a global reserve currency.

Of course, one might well scoff at the notion of the world being governed by any currency other than the US dollar in the near future. But as this year has shown, global dynamics can shift quickly. As one of Russia’s most revered figures [lol] famously said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” We are now observing such “weeks”. Given the massive power plays undertaken by the US, China, Russia and many other nations, the seemingly unstoppable rise of global multipolarity can only mean the further weakening of the dollar’s supremacy. One wonders whether the US has the wherewithal to successfully pivot away from its prevailing foreign-affairs approach to prevent it.

even demons know

[todaysdocument]

Rabbi Stephen Wise, President of the American Jewish Congress, sent this letter to President Roosevelt, appealing to him to publicly acknowledge the massacre of two million Jewish people under Hitler. 12/2/1942. 

Collection FDR-FDRPOF: President's Official Files (Roosevelt Administration)

Series: Franklin D. Roosevelt President's Official Files

File Unit: OF 76-c: Jewish 1942 - July 1943 (Church Matters)

Transcription:

AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS

330 WEST 42nd STREET NEW YORK CITY

STEPHEN S. WISE, PRESIDENT CABLE ADDRESS 'CONGRESS'

CARL SHERMAN, CHAIRMAN, EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE TELEPHONE LONGACRE 5-2600

NATHAN D. PERLMAN}

LEO H. LOWITZ } VICE-PRESIDENTS

LOUIS LIPSKY, CHAIRMAN, GOVERNING COUNCIL

M. MALDWIN FERTIG, CHAIRMAN, ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE

JACOB LEICHTMAN, TREASURER

Office of Dr. Wise

40 West 68 Street,

December 2, 1942.

The President

The White House

Washington, D. C.

Dear Boss:

I do not wish to add an atom to the awful burden which you are bearing with magic, and, as I believe, heaven-inspired strength at this time. But you do know that the most overwhelming disaster of Jewish history has befallen Jews in the form of the Hitler mass-massacres. Hitler's decision was to exterminate the Jewish people in all Hitler-ruled lands, and it is indisputable that as many as two million civilian Jews have been slain.

I have had cables and underground advices for some months, telling of these things. I succeeded, together with the heads of other Jewish organizations, in keeping these out of the press and have been in constant communication with the State Department, particularly Under Secretary Welles. The State Department has now received what it believes to be confirmation of these unspeakable horrors and has approved of my giving the facts to the press. The organizations banded together in the Conference of which I am [handwritten parenthesis/bracket seen to left of following text in Image:] Chairman, feel that they wish to present to you a memorandum of this situation, so terrible that this day is being observed as a day of mourning and fasting throughout the Jewish world. We hope above all that you will speak [following lines of text in Image *not* bracketed] a word which may bring solace and hope to millions of Jews who mourn, and be an expression of the conscience of the American people.

I had gathered from the State Department that you were prepared to receive

a small delegation, which would include representatives of the [organization names (separately) hand-underlined:] American [handwritten:] x

Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, [handwritten mark:] x [/handwritten] the B'nai B'rith. It would [handwritten (to rt. of handwritten underlining beneath part of "would"):] x

be gravely misunderstood if, despite your overwhelming preoccupation, you

did not make it possible to receive our delegation and to utter what I am

sure will be your heartening and consoling reply.

As your old friend, I beg you will somehow arrange to do this.

Ever yours,

[Signature:] Stephen

PRESIDENT

SSW: S

[seen (in Image) near left edge, shortly above lower-left corner is a printed elliptical union label, reading (in tiny type):]

ALLIED PRINTING

TRADES [central part:] UNION LABEL [/central part]COUNCIL [seen shortly to right of union label; printed in larger type:] 34

NEW YORk

[transgenderer]

James Anthony Traficant Jr. (May 8, 1941 – September 27, 2014) was an American politician and convicted felon who served as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio. A staunch economic populist known for his flamboyant personality,[1] he represented the 17th congressional district, which centered on his hometown of Youngstown and included parts of three counties in northeast Ohio's Mahoning Valley.

He was expelled from the House on July 24, 2002 after being convicted of ten felony counts, including taking bribes, filing false tax returns, racketeering, and forcing his congressional staff to perform chores at his farm in Ohio and houseboat in Washington, D.C.[2] He was sentenced to prison and released on September 2, 2009, after serving a seven-year sentence. Traficant died on September 27, 2014, following a tractor accident at his farm in Green Township, Ohio.

Traficant was infamous during his time in Congress for his short, rambling, and often crude rants on the House floor, often decrying his key issues such as his opposition to free trade and the IRS. He usually ended his speeches with the phrase "beam me up", a Star Trek reference. He also became known for his flamboyant fashion sense - including cowboy boots and polyester suits - and his toupee.[1][15]

After his expulsion, Traficant ran as an independent candidate for another term in the House while incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Allenwood.[30] He received 28,045 votes, or 15 percent, and became one of only a handful of individuals in the history of the United States to run for a federal office from prison. Tim Ryan, a former aide to Traficant, won the election.

In September 2010, Traficant was certified to run for the same seat he held before his expulsion, and said that his platform would be to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[39] (The Sixteenth Amendment (Amendment XVI) to the United States Constitution allows Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population)

Traficant was injured in an accident at his farm in Greenford, Ohio, on September 23, 2014. A tractor he was driving into a pole barn flipped over and trapped him underneath. A subsequent medical investigation determined that Traficant had not had a heart attack or seizure before the accident, and was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol. In addition, he had not sustained any crushing injuries in the accident. The forensic pathologist who conducted the examination attributed Traficant's death to positional asphyxiation, stating that he had been unable to breathe because of the weight of the tractor on top of him.[50]

[yr-obedt-cicero]

What were the founding fathers’ reaction to the Haitian Revolution?

Due to the Yellow Fever epidemic having a massive toll on the perception of Dominguans, initially Washington was dubious to support it. As it was believed that the Yellow Fever plague was brought to Philadelphia by ships carrying Dominguan refugees. Doctor Benjamin Rush was an eminent physician and abolitionist, but sincerely believed that the black population had immunity to the illness. And so also thought they had an obligation to attend to the afflicted. Which then created the Free African Society. Anyway, Rush was ultimately wrong; as black people died at a rate almost equal to that of the white's population.

So, while Washington was president (Until 1797), he wasn't supportive towards the Dominguans in rebellion. But this would change later on, when John Adams had been elected president. Following Joseph Bunel's arrival in 1798 - Toussaint L'Ouverture's diplomatic representative - Bunel had reportedly met with Adams and other government officials in 1798 or 1799 accompanied by his wife, Marie Bunel, who was a free Black creole.

This soon evolved into a political party dispute though. As - like many Federalists such as Hamilton, Pickering, and Washington - Adams saw supporting the rebellion as an opportunity to fighting against the common enemy, the French. Because the United States had been harassed by the French for years prior, and was then engaged in a Quasi-war with France. It was also seen as a chance to help the American trade, and merchants by gaining a valuable trading partner in the West Indies. Hamilton and Pickering convinced Adams to appoint Edward Stevens as the United States consul-general in Saint-Domingue. He sent Stevens to Haiti with instructions to establish a relationship with Toussaint and express support for his regime. The Federalist administration hoped to incite a movement toward Haitian independence, but Louverture maintained a colonial relationship with France. Stevens's title, “consul”, suggested a diplomat attached to a country, not a colony, reflecting the Adams administration's view of the Haitian situation. But overall, the Federalists rather saw it as an economic investment, and military enhancement.

But many Democratic-Republican's, or southern politicians/farmers, disagreed with the support to the Haitian revolution, particularly Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a slave owner with 600 enslaved people at his disposal. A great motive to his so-called “abolitionist” ideals, which was just that he wanted the slave trade system abolished and for black people to get deported, was the fear of the United States one day being faced with a slave rebellion. Especially since Jefferson lived in the south, where slavery was prominent. He believed that the black population should be deported as to protect planation owners. So, you can imagine that Jefferson's largest concern for the Haitian revolution was that it would inspire American slaves to revolt as well. Not to mention, Jefferson had initially urged the US government to support the French revolution for the common ideals of liberty, and patriotism. But the Federalists had argued they shouldn't cause riffs between America and Great Britain again, especially when their developing country and recovering militia was still all very fragile. Jefferson thought the support for the Haitian revolution was hypocritical, and endangering for the United States. This additionally sparked much slander of claiming the Federalists sided with monarchy and Great Britain, instead of more libertarian country's like France.

This also didn't go smoothly either, for soon relations between the two republics soured after Adams left office in 1800, and when Jefferson took charge, he refused to officially recognize Haiti until 1862.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

BY TIMOTHY NOAH

For years we’ve been hearing about Republican strategies to displace the Democrats as the party of the working class, but conservative efforts to define what that means have always faltered. The main strategy, dating to the Nixon years, has been to use racial and religious prejudice to drive a wedge into what’s left of the New Deal coalition. But “working class” is an economic designation, not a cultural one. In their 2008 book Grand New Party, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam tried to argue that social issues were economic issues, but that’s too facile and sometimes plainly wrong. (What do working-class women gain by losing abortion rights?) In 2021, Representative Jim Banks wrote Representative Kevin McCarthy a memo on how to make the GOP “permanently … the Party of the Working Class.” But apart from hawkishness on trade and immigration, to which Trump had converted the GOP, Banks was silent on economic matters, relying instead on waging culture war.

American Compass was created three years ago to change that. Founded by Oren Cass, a fortyish former Bainie and domestic policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, American Compass is a conservative nonprofit that fashions itself pro-worker. It just produced a manifesto titled Rebuilding American Capitalism: A Handbook for Conservative Policymakers that attempts to define a set of conservative economic policies to help the working class. It will host a conference to discuss these on Wednesday afternoon in the Russell Senate Office Building, with remarks from Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, J.D. “Hillbilly Elegy” Vance, and Todd Young.

Rebuilding American Capitalism acknowledges wage stagnation, decries stock buybacks, bemoans financialization, and rejects “market fundamentalism.” It knocks libertarians for disdaining government and mocks Glenn Hubbard, President George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser, for stating that “the goal of the economic system [is] optimizing consumption.” It recognizes the serious problem of growing economic inequality. Except for progressives, whom it denounces cartoonishly as disdainful of the private sector and overly “eager to use public programs to provide whatever the market does not,” the manifesto is against the right things. The trouble arises when it’s called upon to be for something—specifically, labor unions.

You can’t be serious about empowering the working class unless you want to strengthen organized labor. Does American Compass want to do that? Yes and no.

Give American Compass credit for including in its manifesto a chapter forthrightly titled “Labor.” Congressional Republicans are so nauseated by this word that whenever they regain control of the House they change the name of the Committee on Education and Labor to the Committee on Education and the Workforce. This revulsion does a disservice to the roughly one-third of union members who reliably vote Republican. Indeed, there’s a conservative argument to make in favor of labor unions, and I’m pleased to see American Compass make it:

“Especially for conservatives, who cherish the role of mediating institutions, prefer private ordering to government dictates, and believe prosperity must be earned rather than redistributed, reforming and reinvigorating the laws that govern organizing and collective bargaining should be an obvious priority.”

Amen. I would add only that Republicans show their true colors by relying, whenever they control the White House, on government power to impede the growth of private-sector unions at the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB.

Also on the plus side, Rebuilding American Capitalism calls for sectoral bargaining, in which labor unions negotiate wages across industry sectors. The United Auto Workers and the United Steelworkers established a variation on sectoral bargaining called pattern bargaining back in the 1940s, though its efficacy diminished with the rise of foreign competition. The idea, which is a good one, is that competition within an industry (or its absence) shouldn’t drive down wages.

The section heading “Guarantee Workers’ Legal Right to Organize” got me very excited. But on closer inspection, the manifesto avoided any mention of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, the only serious vehicle right now to shore up labor rights, which has two Republican co-sponsors in the House (Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick and New Jersey’s Christopher Smith), though none, alas, in the Senate. The PRO Act would reverse key anti-labor provisions in the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA, voiding, for instance, state “right-to-work” laws that allow union nonmembers to enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining without paying union fees, and legalizing secondary boycotts like the supermarket boycotts that the United Farm Workers’ Cesar Chavez organized during the 1960s to bring grape growers to heel. (Chavez was allowed to target supermarkets that sold grapes only because agricultural workers weren’t covered by the NLRA, and they still aren’t.) The PRO Act would also for the first time allow the NLRB to impose serious monetary penalties on businesses that violate the NLRA; right now all it can do is require payment of back wages and reinstatement of a fired employee, which is why companies violate the act routinely.

How would Rebuilding American Capitalism guarantee workers’ right to organize? By doing, to quote Jake Gittes describing his instructions as a cop patrolling Chinatown (in the great 1974 film of that title), “as little as possible.” The PRO Act would require the NLRB to seek a court injunction to reinstate immediately any employee fired for union organizing. Rebuilding American Capitalism merely advises the NLRB to give its general counsel authority to seek such injunctions—authority the general counsel possesses already, and, under General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, is applying aggressively. Under a Republican president, the energetic pursuit of injunctions is a lot less likely to occur, and a polite request from American Compass will have no effect.

Even worse than its Chinatown approach to protecting workers’ right to organize is Rebuilding America’s section titled “Get Worker Organizations Out of Partisan Politics.” Organized labor’s political influence, even in its current greatly diminished form, is pretty much the only thing it has going for it at a time when private-sector union membership is down to 6%. Unions have always been a force in politics, and it would be suicide for them to withdraw now.

Or perhaps Rebuilding America means only that unions should withdraw from spending directly on political campaigns, something they were barred legally from doing before the Supreme Court turned corporations (and labor unions) into people in 2010’s Citizens United case. “The United States should prohibit political spending by worker organizations,” the manifesto says, “comparable to the prohibition on political spending by 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations.” Spending by affiliated PACs would still be permissible. Fine by me—but only if corporations (which take much greater advantage of Citizens United than unions do) are similarly barred from political spending. Which of course would require the Supreme Court to overturn Citizens United. Good luck with that. Rebuilding America makes much of the fact that the AFL-CIO and SEIU don’t allow members to dictate how they allocate lobby resources, but neither do corporations allow stockholders to do the same. The prospect of unions disarming unilaterally and leaving politics to corporations doesn’t seem to worry American Compass.

Ultimately, Rebuilding American Capitalism, for all its proletarian posturing, can’t muster much enthusiasm for labor unions. After its very good review early on of the data on growing income inequality, and a less-good section accusing liberals of not supporting apprenticeship programs (not remotely true), the manifesto gives the game away by stating that “although most Americans … wish they had more opportunities for their voice to be heard” in the workplace, “the traditional labor union is not the model they prefer.” Oh, please. Anybody who’s paid the slightest attention knows that labor unions enjoy more public support today than they have in half a century. It’s inconceivable that the authors of Rebuilding American Capitalism don’t know this.

To justify its claim that workers don’t especially like unions, Rebuilding American Capitalism cites polling data (from a poll conducted by American Compass) that says 63% would prefer a “worker organization” (whatever that is) to be run by labor and management, as opposed to 37% who would prefer it to be run solely by workers. This is a testament not to any wariness of unions on the public’s part but to the public’s naïveté about American management’s willingness to cooperate with labor. It’s different in Europe, of course, where they have works councils and other organizations where these things get hashed out by labor, management, and the government. American corporations rejected this model after World War II, when Walter Reuther and other union leaders proposed it. If they could now be persuaded otherwise, that would be lovely. But after reading American Compass’s manifesto, I wouldn’t trust any conservative to write the enabling legislation. Rebuilding American Capitalism has some good ideas about what ails America, but it balks at furnishing the means to fix it.

[lboogie1906]

Lieutenant Governor Dr. Mervyn Malcolm Dymally (May 12, 1926 – October 7, 2012) politician from Los Angeles, who has served in the California Assembly, the State Senate, and as a Congressman. He is the first African American Lt. Governor of California. He was once again in the California Assembly.

He was born in Trinidad. After high school, he was a reporter for The Vanguard, the publication of the Oil Workers Trade Union. He left Trinidad at 19 to study Journalism at Lincoln University. He transferred to Chapman College and to Los Angeles State College where he graduated with a BA in Education. He received his MA in Government from California State University in Sacramento and a Ph.D. from the United States International University.

He became a teacher of handicapped students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He was a lecturer at several universities including Central State University in Ohio and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine.

He joined the Young Democrats organization and rose through the ranks to become the California State Treasurer. When Senator John Kennedy ran for President, he made a Field Coordinator in his campaign. In 1962, ran for office for the first time. He campaigned for a seat in the California Assembly and won.

He represented South Los Angeles, which covered the areas of Compton, Paramount, and North Long Beach. While in the California Assembly, he served as the Chairman of the Assembly Democratic Study Group. He became the first African American elected to serve in the State Senate and soon became the Chairman of the Senate Majority Caucus.

He made history when he became the first African-American Lt. Governor of the state of California. He was elected to Congress where he represented South Los Angeles County. He was the first foreign-born Black person to serve as a member of Congress. He served as the Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa.

He retired from Congress in 1992. In 2002, he was once again elected to the California Assembly from his old district. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[native-academia]

𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕔𝕙 𝕡𝕣𝕠𝕛𝕖𝕔𝕥: 𝕓𝕦𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕦 𝕠𝕗 𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟 𝕒𝕗𝕗𝕒𝕚𝕣𝕤

When the factory fur trade of North America was abolished in 1822, the US Government was left searching for a way to maintain control in Indian territories. John C. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, created the “Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)” on March 11, 1824. He did so without authorization from Congress, which is against the general practice although not expressly forbidden by the Constitution. John Calhoun would go on to become the Vice President of the United States the following year. 

1825 was an interesting year in US history, representing the end of the Era of Good Feelings that followed the War of 1812. The presidential election would split the previous first party system into the Democrat and Republican system we now know today. The country was taking its first steps to limit the expansion of slavery into its newly aquired territories. As Jacksonian Democracy extended the privilege of voting to most white men aged 21 or older, removing the previous requirement to own land, racist and colonial mentalities spread in the form of “manifest destiny”. The US needed to remove Indian peoples from their homelands and they needed a way to do it. 

The Bureau of Indian Affairs would go on to forcibly remove native peoples from their nations under the direction of Senator and then Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun. In the late 1800’s, after succeeding in removing many tribal nations from their homelands, the Bureau of Indian Affairs created the Residential Schooling system to assimilate Indian children into American culture. Missionaries had already established the practice, but the Bureau of Indian affairs built their schools specifically off-reservation and incorporated “students” from a variety of different tribes to aid in their goal of assimilation. Their model was the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.

The 1960’s and 1970’s saw a rise in activism for and among American Indians. The Bureau faced a number of displays of public opposition by Indian people and those who supported them, like the 1972 Occupation of BIA Headquarters. Today, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is responsible for quite a few different things, all concerning the affairs of American Indian people on Tribal lands.

The Bureau as a whole is responsible for the federal recognition of tribes, most recently the Little Shell Tribe of Montana. The Office of Field Operations is responsible for regional operations, working with tribal governments on the management of natural resources, agriculture, fish and wildlife, and parks. The Office of Justice Services operates several programs and also provides funding for law enforcement, tribal courts, and detention facilities on federal lands. Their jurisdiction is surprisingly expansive, holding authority over all crimes committed on reservations and all federal crimes, as well as all crimes committed within “dependent Indian communities” or on trust lands. It is also the responsibility of the OJS to enforce tribal criminal codes and assist tribes in maintaining their courts and justice systems. They also operate the Indian Police Academy, where agents are trained to work specifically in Indian Country. The Office of Trust Services is responsible for overseeing land and resources that are recognized as tribal but owned in trust by the US federal government. Finally, the Office of Indian Services comprises a wide range of different programs, including social services and child welfare, transportation infrastructure, awarding federal funds to tribes, and providing resources to tribal governments. It is generally in their mission statement and enumerated responsibilities to uphold tribal sovereignty under the Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act.

Sources: x.x.x.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Kevin Siers cartoon: Trump fills us in on his view of the rule of law

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 5, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 06, 2024

In 1776, as British colonists in North America were contemplating how to construct a new nation, Massachusetts lawyer John Adams famously wrote to friends about the relationship between government and the law. A republic, he wrote, “is an Empire of Laws and not of Men: and therefore…that particular Arrangement…which is best calculated to Secure an exact and impartial Execution of the Laws, is the best Republic.” 

In 1787 the framers of the Constitution set out to create a nation built on the rule of law. The next year, the states ratified their new framework, and in 1789, the Constitution went into effect. One of the first acts of the newly seated Congress was to establish a federal court system. The Judiciary Act of 1789 set out the different courts and their jurisdictions. And in 1868, with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, Americans explicitly wrote into the Constitution the principle that all U.S. citizens must be equal before the law. Two years later, they established the Department of Justice to make sure that principle would be honored across the country. 

In the past three years, the Biden administration has worked to confirm that the U.S. is a nation of laws. That work has borne fruit. In the past few days, several cases have jumped out in which the administration has used the law to protect ordinary Americans. 

On Tuesday, April 30, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenged more than 300 junk patent listings for drugs that treat diabetes, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and that help people lose weight, including Ozempic. Bogus patent listings prevent generic drugs from entering the market, keeping brand-name drug prices high. The FTC gives the manufacturer 20 days to withdraw or amend the listing or certify, under penalty of perjury, that they are correct. In November the FTC successfully challenged junk patents on asthma inhalers, reducing their price to $35.  

FTC chair Lina Khan said: “By challenging junk patent filings, the FTC is fighting these illegal tactics and making sure that Americans can get timely access to innovative and affordable versions of the medicines they need.”

On Thursday, May 2, Yvette Wang, the chief of staff to Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire businessman who works with Trump associate Steve Bannon (in 2020, law enforcement officers arrested Bannon on Guo’s yacht on charges of fraud), pleaded guilty to conspiring with Guo in a massive fraud scheme that involved wire fraud and money laundering and netted more than $1 billion. Wang personally will forfeit $1.4 billion to the United States and faces up to ten years in prison. The trial for Wang and Guo is scheduled to start on May 20. Guo has pleaded not guilty. 

On Friday the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the auditing firm for Trump’s social media company and its owner with “massive fraud.” The SEC called BF Borgers a “sham audit mill” and said it “deliberately systemically failed to conduct” audits and reviews that were filed with the SEC between January 2021 and June 2023. Those reports are supposed to inform investors about the value of companies. The SEC fined the company $14 million and banned it from practicing accounting. Its owner, Benjamin Borgers, did not admit wrongdoing but accepted the judgment. 

Also on Friday, the Department of Justice released a grand jury’s indictment of Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and his wife, Imelda, alleging that beginning no later than 2014 and until at least November 2021, they accepted close to $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani oil and gas company and a Mexican bank and then laundered the payments through Imelda’s company. In exchange, the indictment says, Cuellar agreed to adjust U.S. policy toward Azerbaijan, especially its oil industry, and to oppose laws that would curb money laundering and regulate the payday lending industry.  

On Friday, at former president Trump’s fraud trial for interfering in the 2016 election by paying $130,000 to buy the silence of adult film actress Stormy Daniels and falsifying business records to hide the payment, former White House aide Hope Hicks established that Trump had indeed intended to silence Daniels in order to stop voters from hearing her information before the election. Appearing reluctant to testify against Trump, Hicks nonetheless described a conversation with Trump in 2018, after Daniels’s story became public. Trump told her that “it was better to be dealing with it now, and it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.”

The rule of law protects ordinary Americans and defends their right to elect a government of their choice. But in 2024, it is under attack.

Trump continues to insist that the stories about his extramarital affairs are false, but his main strategy for addressing his many legal troubles is to insist that the justice system is rigged against him. This continues a pattern he began as soon as he took office, when he unsuccessfully pressured FBI director James Comey to drop the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s interaction with Russian operatives. Although FBI directors are supposed to be virtually untouchable during their ten-year term, Trump fired Comey and then spent the rest of his term accusing the FBI of persecuting him.

That attack on our judicial system expanded to sweep in all the judges who ruled against his campaign operatives and his extremist policies on immigration. He called the courts a “joke” and a “laughingstock” and attacked the Justice Department as a whole and judges personally.

Those attacks increased after Trump left office and was indicted for his efforts to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. An analysis by NBC News of more than 14,000 Trump posts and reposts from April 2022 to January 6, 2024, showed that in some periods he attacked the judicial system more than he promoted his campaign. He aimed his attacks most often at special counsel Jack Smith, as well as New York attorney general Letitia James; Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over Trump’s Manhattan fraud trial; Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg; and Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis—all of whom are in charge of cases against Trump.  

Reporters Dareh Gregorian and Jasmine Cui wrote: “The posts generally portray Trump as the victim of a Democratic scheme designed to derail his presidential bid, with an array of judges and prosecutors working against him at the behest of President Joe Biden, and all part of a partisan ‘witch hunt,’ a term he used about 250 times during that time period.” 

At a meeting for donors at Mar-a-Lago Saturday, Trump complained about the criminal charges against him, calling Jack Smith a “f**king a**hole,” and accused President Joe Biden of running a “Gestapo administration,” a reference to the German secret police that crushed opposition and rounded up Jews, Roma, LGBT individuals, and other targeted groups during World War II. 

Trump has vowed to take control of the Justice Department and make it serve his interests. Chris Geidner of Law Dork noted today that the federal courts already favor Republicans, and a second Trump presidency would allow him to fill multiple court vacancies, probably including some on the Supreme Court, with his extremists. They would cement the ideology of MAGA Republicans into our laws for the foreseeable future. 

Trump’s war on the Department of Justice over his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election has already progressed into an attempt to delegitimize the results of the 2024 election, suggesting he does not believe he will win in a free and fair election. 

Yesterday, Charlie Spies, the Republican Party’s top lawyer, resigned after Trump turned on him for his public statements that the 2020 election was not stolen. Spies was one of three lawyers the Trump team hired in March after it took over the Republican National Committee (RNC). An establishment Republican lawyer, Spies was paired with MAGA lawyer and former right-wing One America News Network anchor Christina Bobb to oversee the RNC’s so-called election integrity unit. Now Spies is out and Bobb, who has been indicted for election fraud for her participation in the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, remains.

In an astonishing exchange on Meet the Press this morning, Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), who is angling to become Trump’s vice presidential pick, refused six times to say he would accept the results of the 2024 election if Trump didn’t win. Host Kristen Welker asked: “Will you commit to accepting the election results of 2024?” Scott responded: “At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump.” Welker followed up: “Yes or no, will you accept the election results of 2024 no matter who wins?” Scott answered: “That is my statement.” 

When Welker continued to push the question, Scott accused NBC of working for the “Democrat Party” but refused ever to agree to the peaceful transition of power, which, as Welker noted, is the hallmark of the democratic republic people like John Adams established in 1789.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[girlactionfigure]

He told his wife, "I love you," then left for work that morning. He never returned. It was September 11, 2001.

He was a husband. He was a veteran. He was an immigrant. And, he was a hero.

According to the Homeland Security web site, Rick Rescorla is credited with saving 2,700 lives that morning, when he defied official instructions to stay in the building and instead evacuated employees at his company on the 44th floor of the South Tower.

Another hero was Betty Ong, who was one of the flight attendants aboard American Airlines Flight 11, who gave vital information to the ground crew that eventually led to the closing of airspace by the FAA for the first time in United States history.

Flight 93 passengers Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick fought their hijackers, preventing the plane from reaching its intended target, possibly the White House or the U.S. Capitol Building.

There were also 412 First Responders who died in the line of duty - 343 firefighters (including a chaplain and two paramedics) of the New York City Fire Department, 37 police officers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department, 23 police officers of the New York City Police Department, and 8 emergency medical technicians and paramedics from private emergency medical services and 1 patrolman from the New York Fire Patrol.

There were also smaller acts of bravery, such as Michael Benfante and John Cerqueira carrying a woman in a wheelchair down 68 floors of the north tower of the World Trade Center to safety and Frank De Martini and Pablo Ortiz of the Port Authority who saved at least 50 lives in the North Tower.

They and many others were the heroes of 9/11.

In all, there were 2,977 people who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. The victims were mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters and brothers who belonged to many faiths, races, and cultures, from more than 90 countries.

Of the Americans - they were white, they were black, they were brown, they were red, they represented all the different colors that built this nation. They were LGBTQ, they were straight, they were men, they were women, they were liberal, they were conservative, they were young, they were old . . . they were ALL Americans.

No one questioned whether they stood for the national anthem or put their hand over their heart, no one demanded they show their citizenship papers, no one questioned their love for their country.

I remember 9/11. I remember the names of the victims being read. I remember the heroes who bled. I remember the families who cried. I also remember that for one day, the entire world cried with us, marched in candlelight vigils in support of "America," whether it was in England or Iran -- for one moment the world was one.

I post this each year not just to remember the victims, the heroes, all the people who were directly touched in some way that day, but I also want to post this for those who are still suffering today, the families who had no choice but to continue without their loved ones, the veterans of the wars who were not supported upon their return and represent a majority of the suicides in this nation (on this World Suicide Prevention Day), the first responders who sacrificed their lives and their health and are still suffering today and their brothers and sisters fighting fires this very moment, and, most importantly, all the people of the world still hoping for, still seeking, still dreaming of a world without HATE, a world without fear, a world without greed.

A world instead focused with Love, a world with Hope, a world with . . .

Peace ~

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page

[investmentassistant]

Overview of WL COMPANY DMCC financial marketplace

The company we want to talk about today is called WL COMPANY DMCC. WL Company DMCC (License Number DMCC-89711, Registration Number DMCC19716, Account Number 411911), registered in Dubai, UAE whose registered office is Unit No BA95, DMCC Business Centre, Level No 1, represented by the Director, Stephanie Sandilands.

DMCC is the largest free trade zone in the United Arab Emirates, which is located in Dubai. It was established in 2002 and now serves as a commodity exchange that operates in four sectors: precious goods; energy; steel and metals; agricultural products.

Main services and activities

WL COMPANY DMCC is a financial marketplace, the direction of which is financial services, consulting, management, analysis of services, provision of services by third parties to the end user. The list also includes:

• Investment ideas;

• Active product trading;

• Analytical support for traders;

• Selection of an investment strategy in the market using various assets.

WL COMPANY DMCC operates on the MetaTrader 5 trading platform. There is a convenient registration, detailed instructions, as well as the ability to connect a demo account for self-study.

Among the main services:

1. Trading.

2. Social Services.

3.ESG Investment.

4. Analytics.

5. Wealth management.

Company managers will help with registration, with opening an account, with access to the platform. After training (if required), you can make a minimum deposit of 500 USD and start trading.

Main advantages and disadvantages of WL COMPANY DMCC

Before going directly to the benefits of the marketplace, it is worth saying a few words about the loyalty program. Depending on the amount of investment, the user receives one of three grades. Each of them gives certain privileges. The program itself makes it possible to get the maximum effect from investments in a short time.

Now about the benefits of WL COMPANY DMCC:

1. Availability of a license in the jurisdiction of the DMCC trading zone.

2. No commission when making SFD transactions on shares.

3. More than 6700 trading instruments.

4. High professional level of support.

5. Very strong analytical support (client confidence level 87%).

6. Weekly comments and summaries from WL COMPANY experts.

7. Modern analysis software.

8. Large selection of investment solutions.

9. Own exclusive market analysis services in various areas.

10. Own analytical department with the publication of materials in the public domain.

11. Modern focus on social services.

The feedback from WL COMPANY DMCC clients highlights the positive characteristics of the work of marketplace analysts, the convenience of a personal account, the speed of processing positions, analysis tools, and low commissions.

Negative reviews relate to the freezing of the system, delays in withdrawing funds for a day, and the small age of the company. Also, for some users, the application for withdrawal of funds was not processed the first time, and someone could not instantly replenish the deposit. North American traders complain that WL COMPANY DMCC only has a presence in Dubai.

At the same time, the financial group received several significant awards:

• Best MetaTrader 5 Broker 2022

• The Most Reliable Fintech Service 2023

Outcome

According to the information received, it can be concluded that WL COMPANY DMCC can be called a good financial marketplace in the modern market. By registering with the DMCC, the company can be called reliable and trustworthy. There are also negative reviews, but they relate mainly to the technical component.

For August, 2023 WL COMPANY DMCC has about 12000 clients worldwide. The main regions are North America, Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Traders can act independently or use the advice of marketplace experts.