#central gov jobs

[jobspingin]

BECIL 2023 Recruitment | Office Attendant 28 Posts

BECIL 2023 Recruitment | Role: Office Attendant | Total Vacancies: 28 Posts | End Date: 24.03.2023 | BECIL 2023 Recruitment @ https://www.becil.com/ BECIL 2023 Recruitment: BECIL has issued the advertisement from upon passed MBA/ ICWA/ B.Com. There are More vacancies will be need to fill for above said post. Aspirants who meet the eligibility criteria are requested to apply the Broadcast…

[mariacallous]

Louisiana public schools are now required to display the Ten Commandments in all classrooms, after Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the requirement into law Wednesday.

House Bill 71, approved by state lawmakers last month, mandates that a poster-size display of the Ten Commandments with “large, easily readable font” be in every classroom at schools that receive state funding, from kindergarten through the university level.

The legislation specifies the exact language that must be printed on the classroom displays and outlines that the text of the Ten Commandments must be the central focus of the poster or framed document.

Before signing the bill, Landry called it “one of (his) favorites.”

“If you want to respect the rule of law, you gotta start from the original law given which was Moses. … He got his commandments from God,” Landry said.

Opponents of the bill have argued that a state requiring a religious text in all classrooms would violate the establishment clause of the US Constitution, which says that Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Civil liberties groups swiftly vowed to challenge the law – which makes Louisiana the first in the nation to require the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom that receives state funding – in court.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation said that the law violates longstanding Supreme Court precedent and the First Amendment and would result in “unconstitutional religious coercion of students.”

“The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice, without pressure from the government. Politicians have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine on students and families in public schools,” the groups said in a joint statement.

Supporters of the law, in defending the measure, have leaned on the 2022 US Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which gave a high school football coach his job back after he was disciplined over a controversy involving prayer on the field. The Supreme Court ruled that the coach’s prayers amounted to private speech, protected by the First Amendment, and could not be restricted by the school district.

The decision lowered the bar between church and state in an opinion that legal experts predicted would allow more religious expression in public spaces. At the time, the court clarified that a government entity does not necessarily violate the establishment clause by permitting religious expression in public.

Louisiana state Rep. Dodie Horton, the Republican author of the bill, said at the bill signing that “it’s like hope is in the air everywhere.” Horton has dismissed concerns from Democratic opponents of the measure, saying the Ten Commandments are rooted in legal history and her bill would place a “moral code” in the classroom

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andrew Perez and Adam Rawnsley at Rolling Stone:

THE CONSULTING FIRM led by Leonard Leo, the architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, has worked for billionaire Charles Koch’s political advocacy network and a dark-money group that is currently arguing a Supreme Court case designed to preempt a wealth tax, according to documents obtained by Rolling Stone. The firm even worked to promote a book by Donald Trump cronies Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. Leo has played a central role in shifting the high court and its decisions far to the right. As former President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three of the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices. He also leads a dark-money network that boosted their confirmations and helps determine what cases the justices hear and shape their rulings. The Supreme Court connection has paid off for Leo — big time. In 2021, he was gifted control of a $1.6 billion political advocacy slush fund. Over the past decade, Leo’s dark money network has plowed more than $100 million into his for-profit consulting firm, CRC Advisors. 

Leo co-chairs the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers network. He is also the chairman of CRC. Like many consulting firms, CRC does not publicly disclose its clients. However, several of the firm’s clients were named in resumes that applicants submitted to an online jobs bank hosted by the Conservative Partnership Institute, which accidentally left the files exposed online. One CRC employee’s 2024 resume says his clients include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a dark-money group arguing a case before the Supreme Court this term that is designed to slam the door shut on a federal wealth tax. Experts say the case could upend the nation’s tax code.  “In the last Congress, legislation to establish a wealth tax was introduced in both the House and the Senate,” CEI wrote in its petition to the Supreme Court, adding that justices should act now to “head off a major constitutional clash down the line.” During oral arguments in December, Justice Samuel Alito presented a hypothetical where “somebody graduates from school and starts up a little business in his garage, and 20 years later, 30 years later, the person is a billionaire,” and asked whether the government “can Congress tax all of that.” According to the CRC employee’s 2024 resume, Leo’s firm has also worked for the Koch network’s political advocacy arm, Americans for Prosperity. AFP’s super PAC spent more than $40 million supporting former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s failed Republican primary campaign against Trump this election cycle. AFP’s charitable arm has supported a case at the Supreme Court this term pushing justices to block the government from influencing content moderation by social media platforms.

Rolling Stone exposes radical right-wing SCOTUS puppetmaster Leonard Leo's consulting firm CRC Advisors, whose clients were leaked online.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Way to go DeSatan, you just cost Central Florida a $1 billion construction project that when completed would have employed 2,000 white collar jobs and support personnel.

[reasoningdaily]

Schools do a poor job of teaching about America’s legacy of white supremacy, according to a scholar who researches racial discrimination.

A Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C., in 1926

When it comes to how deeply embedded racism is in American society, blacks and whites have sharply different views.

For instance, 70 percent of whites believe that individual discrimination is a bigger problem than discrimination built into the nation’s laws and institutions. Only 48 percent of blacks believe that is true.

Many blacks and whites also fail to see eye to eye regarding the use of blackface, which dominated the news cycle during the early part of 2019 due to a series of scandals that involve the highest elected leaders in Virginia, where I teach.

The donning of blackface happens throughout the country, particularly on college campuses. Recent polls indicate that 42 percent of white American adults either think blackface is acceptable or are uncertain as to whether it is.

One of the most recent blackface scandals has involved Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, whose yearbook page from medical school features someone in blackface standing alongside another person dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe. Northam has denied being either person. The more Northam has tried to defend his past actions, the clearer it has become to me how little he appears to know about fundamental aspects of American history, such as slavery. For instance, Northam referred to Virginia’s earliest slaves as “indentured servants”. His ignorance has led to greater scrutiny of how he managed to ascend to the highest leadership position in a racially diverse state with such a profound history of racism and white supremacy.

Ignorance is Pervasive

The reality is Gov. Northam is not alone. Most Americans are largely uninformed of our nation’s history of white supremacy and racial terror.

As a scholar who researches racial discrimination, I believe much of this ignorance is due to negligence in our education system. For example, a recent study found that only 8 percent of high school seniors knew that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. There are ample opportunities to include much more about white supremacy, racial discrimination and racial violence into school curricula. Here are three things that I believe should be incorporated into all social studies curricula today:

1. The Civil War was fought over slavery and one of its offshoots – the convict-lease system – did not end until the 1940s.

The Civil War was fought over the South’s desire to maintain the institution of slavery in order to continue to profit from it. It is not possible to separate the Confederacy from a pro-slavery agenda and curriculums across the nation must be clear about this fact.

 A Confederate treasury note from the Civil War Era shows how reliant the South’s economy was on slave labor. Photo from Scott Rothstein / www.shutterstock.com.

After the end of the Civil War, southern whites sought to keep slavery through other means. Following a brief post-Civil War period known as Reconstruction, white southerners created new laws that gave them legal authority to arrest blacks over the most minor offenses, such as not being able to prove they had a job.

While imprisoned under these laws, blacks were then leased to corporations and farms where they were forced to work without pay under extremely harsh conditions. This “convict leasing” was, as many have argued, slavery by another name and it persisted until the 1940s.

Southern jails made money leasing convicts for forced labor in the Jim Crow South. Circa 1903. Photo from Everett Historical / www.shutterstock.com.

2. The Jim Crow era was violent.

While students may be taught about segregation and laws preventing blacks from voting, they often are not taught about the extreme violence whites enacted upon blacks throughout the Jim Crow era, which took place from 1877 through the 1950s. Mob violence and lynchings were frequent occurrences – and not just in the South – throughout the Jim Crow era.

Racial terror was used as a means for whites to maintain power and prevent blacks from gaining equality. Notably, many whites – not just white supremacist groups like the Klu Klux Klan – engaged in this violence. Moreover, the torture and murder of blacks was not associated with any consequences.

During this same time, white society created negative stereotypes about blacks as a way to dehumanize blacks and justify the violence whites enacted upon them. These negative stereotypes included that blacks were ignorant, lazy, cowardly, criminal and hypersexual.

Blackface minstrelsy refers to whites darkening their skin and dressing in tattered clothing to perform the negative stereotypes as part of entertainment. This imagery and entertainment served to solidify negative stereotypes about blacks in society. Many of these negative stereotypes persist today.

3. Racial inequality was preserved through housing discrimination and segregation.

During the early 1900s, a number of policies were put into place in our country’s most important institutions to further segregate and oppress blacks. For example, in the 1930s, the federal government, banks and the real estate industry worked together to prevent blacks from becoming homeowners and to create racially segregated neighborhoods.

This process, known as redlining, served to concentrate whites in middle-class suburbs and blacks in impoverished urban centers. Racial segregation in housing has consequences for everything from education to employment. Moreover, because public school funding relies so heavily on local taxes, housing segregation affects the quality of schools students attend.

All of this means that even after the removal of discriminatory housing policies and school segregation laws in the 1950s and 1960s, the consequences of this intentional segregation in housing persist in the form of highly segregated and unequal schools. All students should learn this history to ensure that they do not wrongly conclude that current racial disparities are based on individual shortcomings – or worse, black inferiority – as opposed to systematic oppression.

Americans live in a starkly unequal society where health and economic outcomes are largely influenced by race. We cannot begin to meaningfully address this inequality as a society if we do not properly understand its origins. The white supremacists responsible for sanitizing our history lessons understood this. Their intent was clearly to keep the country ignorant of its racist past in order to stymie racial equality. To change the tide, we must incorporate a more accurate depiction of our country’s racist history in our K-12 curricula.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The mood at the Sankofa Cultural Arts and Business Center on Chicago’s west side was celebratory on June 25, 2019, as hundreds gathered to watch Illinois make history.

With the stroke of a pen, Gov. J.B. Pritzker made it legal for adults in Illinois to possess up to 30 grams of marijuana without fear of arrest. When sales began in 2020, legalization was expected to be a financial boon for the state, but the promise went deeper for some supporters.

“Today, we're hitting the reset button on the war on drugs,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, said to applause. “Today, we begin the process of undoing the harm of the war on drugs.”

People who had been arrested for, but not charged with, low-level cannabis offenses would have those records erased automatically. Pritzker pardoned thousands more who were convicted of possession of less than 30 grams. Anyone who had been prosecuted for possession of up to 500 grams – a little more than a pound – would be able to petition the court to have those records expunged.

“Today we're giving hundreds of thousands of people the chance at a better life, jobs, housing and real opportunity,” Pritzker said.

Around a third of Americans have some kind of criminal record by the time they are 25, said Daniel Kuehnert, a staff attorney in the western office of Land of Lincoln Legal Aid, a nonprofit serving a swath of Illinois from the Metro East to the Quad Cities. While it may just be an arrest record, “those records are consulted by basically all sorts of entities for important life decisions,” he said.

“And particularly with employment, we see employers who have better jobs doing the heavier criminal background checks,” said Megan Kinney, the managing attorney at Land of Lincoln Legal Aid’s central office, which serves clients in six counties in southwest Illinois. “So it really is not only a barrier to employment, but it's a barrier to good, well-paying, stable jobs with benefits.”

Land of Lincoln Legal Aid was one of 18 nonprofits that joined a coalition called New Leaf Illinois. The state funded the initiative, which provided free legal representation to people who wanted cannabis convictions off their record.

Christopher Bradford was among thousands helped by New Leaf. He was in his mid-20s when he was convicted of felony possession in 2003, giving him a criminal record that potential employers would not overlook.

“And I just felt like, that wasn’t right,” he said in a video posted to New Leaf’s website. “I felt like I was being singled out from others because I had a felony conviction.”

New Leaf helped Bradford clear his record, which allowed him to get a job as a kitchen manager at a restaurant in Springfield, Illinois.

“I’m working, I’m providing for my family, so you know, I’m happy,” he said.

PITFALLS IN THE PROCESS

The law wasn’t perfect.

The word “automatic” was a misnomer, said Kinney. An individual with a criminal record for marijuana had to take an active role in the court system to make that record go away, and every single court in the state is its own entity.

"You have to file a petition in every single county in which there was a charge and arrest or conviction,” Kinney said. “There's not just some magic button that someone can press and all these records just go poof, and they go away.”

The law also failed to address local restrictions on marijuana, said Kuehnert. While some counties were willing to expunge those ordinance violations, “we’ve been encountering some counties where the Judge is like, ‘Oh, hey, wait a minute, this law doesn't say anything about ordinance violations.’”

Despite those complications, Kuehnert said, Illinois generally gets high marks nationwide for how its law is structured.

“It’s been pretty good at helping people get their records cleared, helping folks move forward in their lives and helping heal some of the damage to both individuals and our communities from the war on drugs,” he said.

EXPUNGEMENT IN MISSOURI

When advocates for recreational marijuana in Missouri drafted their ballot measure, they made sure to include expungement provisions as well.

All nonviolent marijuana offenses, except for operating under the influence or sales to a minor, were to be automatically removed by the court, said John Payne, the campaign manager for Legal Missouri 2022.

While there was no formal organization like New Leaf Illinois in Missouri’s initiative, the campaign coordinated with groups like the ACLU and Empower Missouri, Payne said.

“A government program is never 100% accurate the first time,” he said. “We've talked to attorneys from some of these organizations and other attorneys who are just not necessarily affiliated with them but who have said, we'd be happy to help assist.”

Misdemeanors were supposed to be expunged by June 8, while the deadline to remove felony records is Dec. 6. But experts told KCUR those dates did not take into account how time-consuming and complicated it can be to expunge even a misdemeanor case. And while the courts asked for additional money from the state, lawmakers have not provided the assistance.

“I do know that they're making a hell of an effort because I know that the clerk's offices have hired extra people to come in and help,” Stephen Sokoloff, senior counsel for the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, told KCUR. “In some places, I think retirees have been asked to come back and help.”

The law does not outline a penalty for missing the expungement deadlines.

[kontextmaschine]

Like, I'll totally agree that California NIMBYs are ridiculous and have committed the state to a poorly chosen path, but I don't think you guys appreciate how very explicitly central "a civilization where everyone lives in a small-town environment with direct exposure to undeveloped nature" has been to the California Dream

Like before even the postwar Golden Age buildout under Gov. Brown the Elder that really instantiated this suburban paradise, the prewar boom of LA was very commonly framed – embraced by boosters to draw more residents – in terms of a job-rich city that uniquely didn't have "slum" housing.

(You don't even hear about "slum clearance" – the postwar practice of demolishing blocks at a time and giving the former residents intentions of something better that much anymore, but large areas of downtown-adjacent land in American cities was hyper-dense and low quality tenements or often formerly comfortable-class housing that had been subdivided all to hell)

California had an idiom for "life at high residential density" – the crowded, warrenlike Chinatowns of LA and especially SF since the Gold Rush, chaotically full of improvised enterprise, drug addiction, and murderous gang violence!

In the early 1980s, Long Beach – the industrialized working class shore to the south of LA, kind of its Queens, was like "ha-HA, we have filled this wonderful location at low bungalow density, time to upzone so as to keep this a functional area for working-class life!"

Of course the thing is the 1980s in Southern California went on to feature a massive illegal immigration wave (Cheech Marin's 1987 Born in East L.A. is called that because it's about an American-born bilingual Mexican Angelino experiencing this) which often landed in Long Beach AND the crack- and gang- heavy nadir of South LA-area Black communities.

Which is to say, in actual historical precedent that informs cultural sentiment, dense housing in California (let's talk *Oakland*) consistently means "the white average-Joe neighborhood becomes overrun with inscrutable, addiction-riven, gang-murderous Others"

And the whole environmental stuff – there's a clear line from John Muir and the Sierra Club through Paul Erlich and The Population Bomb to the Bay Area types who want to cap tech jobs or the people who worry about water (or road!) use coming from new development that the way to keep properly stewarding the land without exhausting finite resources was to limit population.

You can work racial or wevs angles too, a lot of the West Coast issues with natives and Chinese workers came from the way that the coast's founding culture really came from a "Free Soil" philosophy, common among smallholders and "mechanics" in the (then-"West"), one of the two strains that went into the Republican anti-slavery stance along Boston moralism (New York, as the major port city of an international economy powered by cotton, was fairly pro-Confederate), that this was supposed to be a country to enable white men's ability to establish self-sufficient petty dynasties of their own, and that indulging all this nonwhite work – creating a national economy oriented around slave-produced agricultural exports rather than white artisan industrial development, Pacific landowners recruiting natives or Chinese in a labor shortage rather than letting white wages rise so the workers could establish their pioneer fortunes – were, fundamentally, taking their jerbs.

And the pastoralism! This was the pleasant climate where the ranch house really blew up, integrating the outdoors and living area. Backyards – and home gardens – were key.

(In a LOT of ways Portland as I came to it at the dawn of the 2010s suddenly reminded me of things I had read about midcentury LA far closer than the one I saw in the 2000s)

Pete Seeger in 1963, "little boxes made of ticky tacky", Joni Mitchell in 1970, "paved paradise and put up a parking lot", these were laments for greenfield development coming before the activist-driven 1970s downzonings that saw that greenfield development was the ONLY way for California to add housing.

[wtffundiefamilies]

CNN —  Louisiana public schools are now required to display the Ten Commandments in all classrooms, after Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the requirement into law Wednesday. House Bill 71, approved by state lawmakers last month, mandates that a poster-size display of the Ten Commandments with “large, easily readable font” be in every classroom at schools that receive The legislation specifies the exact language that must be printed on the classroom displays and outlines that the text of the Ten Commandments must be the central focus of the poster or framed document. Before signing the bill, Landry called it “one of (his) favorites.” “If you want to respect the rule of law, you gotta start from the original law given which was Moses. … He got his commandments from God,” Landry said. Opponents of the bill have argued that a state requiring a religious text in all classrooms would violate the establishment clause of the US Constitution, which says that Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Civil liberties groups swiftly vowed to challenge the law – which makes Louisiana the first in the nation to require the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom that receives state funding – in court. The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation said that the law violates longstanding Supreme Court precedent and the First Amendment and would result in “unconstitutional religious coercion of students.” “The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice, without pressure from the government. Politicians have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine on students and families in public schools,” the groups said in a joint statement. Supporters of the law, in defending the measure, have leaned on the 2022 US Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which gave a high school football coach his job back after he was disciplined over a controversy involving prayer on the field. The Supreme Court ruled that the coach’s prayers amounted to private speech, protected by the First Amendment, and could not be restricted by the school district. The decision lowered the bar between church and state in an opinion that legal experts predicted would allow more religious expression in public spaces. At the time, the court clarified that a government entity does not necessarily violate the establishment clause by permitting religious expression in public. Louisiana state Rep. Dodie Horton, the Republican author of the bill, said at the bill signing that “it’s like hope is in the air everywhere.” Horton has dismissed concerns from Democratic opponents of the measure, saying the Ten Commandments are rooted in legal history and her bill would place a “moral code” in the classroom.

[steel--fairy]

Worldbuilding Headcanons #1

so the pokemon league definitely ISN'T the government lol no offense to people who like it, but that's just kind of a stupid idea with how suddenly the champion can change.

but i do think they're likely sponsored by the government. or even a part of the government but like. in a position like how the national parks service is part of the government? obviously part of it but pretty focused on their one thing and definitely do not have a say in how things are run overall.

the league mainly focuses on battling rules (things like making aiming at another person in battle illegal) and anti pokemon abuse. they're probably also a reliable source of info on pokemon, like if you find an injured wild absol when visiting hoenn, you'd call the hoenn league/check their website for info on what to do with it.

(...so the comparison i'm looking for is fish and wildlife services? hm.)

(on that note though, i do imagine that, because of the world they live in, most pokemon regions have a very weak central government and mayors have a lot of importance in how a place is run. i can't really say more than that though because frankly i dont care about this topic and i almost failed ap us gov for a reason)

and taking things from more recent games, there's the active side of the league (gym leaders, elite 4, champion) and the passive side (the chairperson and other pencil pushers). the passive side makes the rules while the active side makes sure they're being carried out. gym leaders focus on their cities and towns while the elite 4 and champion focus on the region as a whole. they mainly deal with things like "making sure pokemon aren't being abused" but being hired by the league does mean you'll be obligated to help out if some sort of shenanigans are going down (ie all the evil team plots) in your area. ignoring things can lead to you being fired.

(there's also an element of danger because of that that turns a lot of people off from being an active member of the pokemon league. possible death by rampaging pokemon or local mafia boss is not a great pitch.)

so league members do regularly get paid... though maybe not well given how many have other jobs lol probably depends in the region! they also have things like vacations and days off too.

i'd also say that gym leaders likely are more well known then the e4/champ since they interact with more people on a daily basis. local celebrities, basically. now, the others can be famous, but they're usually famous because of other things, not because theyre champion (minus galar). diantha's famous because shes an actress and wallace because hes a former coordinator, not because they're champions.

(and with the galar mention, i do see their league as being structured very differently. they're athletes who recieve sponsorships instead of workers with regular pay. paldea is also slightly different, with the league being tied to the academy. the regions from the ranger games have the ranger union instead of the league but they basically do the same thing)

i have no idea where else im going with this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ end post.

[mariacallous]

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate was met with enthusiasm from Democrats across the party, including from the party’s left wing. A big part of this is Walz’s solidly pro-labor governing record and his appeal to working-class voters, which was on display on Wednesday when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Although his championing of working Americans’ jobs, pay, and rights has obvious and important domestic appeal, it also has a potentially significant implication for foreign policy under a Harris-Walz administration.

One of the Biden administration’s most important projects, sometimes summarized as “post-neoliberalism,” has been the move away from unfettered so-called free trade—the pro-corporate theology that dominated the past few decades of economic policymaking. The government is now fully back in the business of investing in U.S. workers and communities. (A 2023 report tracking this progress was published by the Roosevelt Institute, a think tank helping to drive this transformation.)

As vice president, Harris has played a key role in this pivotal project, and selecting one of the  most pro-worker governors in the country as a running mate signals that she is all-in on this shift. This is great news, because not only is this post-neoliberal, pro-worker agenda likely where the election will be won, but it is also central to the larger goal of defending global democracy.

Conservatives have noticed. “By picking Tim Walz as her running mate, Harris has gone a long way toward bolstering her left-populist flank and neutralizing [Republican vice presidential candidate J.D.] Vance’s potential appeal,” wrote Sohrab Ahmari, the founder and editor of the conservative nationalist magazine Compact and a leading voice of the populist new right, when the pick was announced. “Walz can’t be framed as a neoliberal Democrat in the Clinton-Obama mold.”

Vance’s own speech at the Republican National Convention in July was billed as foreign policy-focused, but it was really all about how U.S. elites had failed the country’s struggling workers. Playing up his family roots in a small Ohio town—“a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington”—Vance attacked U.S. President Joe Biden for his past support of the North American Free Trade Agreement, for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, and for “the disastrous invasion of Iraq.”

“At each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan, in other states across our country, jobs were sent overseas, and our children were sent to war,” Vance said. While larded over with common right-wing tropes and xenophobic invective, the speech sounded like a road map for how the Republican Party intends to capture the working class.

In its own way, Vance’s speech was a darker, divisive version of a more affirmative and unifying  address that U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gave in April 2023, which laid out the Biden administration’s global economic agenda. Confronting the flawed assumptions that dominated U.S. statecraft in the past 40 years—“that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently”—Sullivan rejected the philosophy that “championed tax cutting and deregulation, privatization over public action, and trade liberalization as an end in itself.”

Like Vance a year later, Sullivan acknowledged that elites had failed working people in the United States. He said that not only had an economic integration approach failed as a geopolitical strategy—not stopping China from military expansion or deterring Russia from invading its neighbors—but it also radically increased economic and political inequality, both globally and domestically. The speech marked an important step forward in Washington’s thinking.

However, much less noticed was a speech that Sullivan gave a week later at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which showed how the Biden administration still had one foot in the previous era. In that speech, Sullivan laid out the administration’s plan to maintain U.S. hegemony in the Middle East by buttressing relationships with various repressive, undemocratic regimes and stitching together an alliance intended both to contain Iran and box China out of the region.

I noted to administration colleagues at the time that the second speech was a formula for squandering the opportunities of the first. While the Biden administration had discarded some of the flawed foreign-policy assumptions of the past, it continued to hold fast to the idea that Washington can purchase security and prosperity for U.S. workers by exporting insecurity and repression to others, whether in the Middle East, China, or anywhere else. The past 10 months of catastrophic war in Gaza should have discredited that notion, if it wasn’t already.

The United States can build a more equitable global order, or it can frantically try to maintain global primacy, but it can’t do both. The Harris-Walz team has an important task and a big opportunity to diminish this contradiction and complete this transformation. Just as the neoliberal era proved that giving carte blanche to big corporations—whether they’re car companies or weapons manufacturers—is not a means for achieving broad economic progress or security, the past 20 years of the “war on terror” showed that a heavily militarized foreign policy feeds global insecurity and shreds the fabric of international norms.

As outlined by Trump and Vance, the Republican vision is essentially zero-sum: The United States and its workers only win by others losing, and vice versa. The Harris-Walz team can offer a vision of contrasting solidarity, which doesn’t seek to build political consensus by vilifying the foreign enemy of the moment but rather seeks ways to uplifts workers and their communities in every country.

The U.S. public needs to hear more about how diplomacy and cooperation—including with China, can provide other benefits for Americans, as evidenced recently when China imposed new controls on fentanyl precursor chemicals—and about how the issue of irregular migration, which has been a driving force in far-right populism, can only be addressed by improving conditions and reducing violence in the home countries of those migrants—a shared struggle that the labor movement understands and embraces.

A real pro-worker foreign policy doesn’t pit the security and prosperity of Americans against workers in other countries but recognizes that our security and prosperity are bound together. We saw the outlines of that in the speech from Walz, the good neighbor and the inspiring coach, on Wednesday. That is the winning global vision that he and Harris should embrace.

[saivikram]

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[bllsbailey]

Federal Judge Blocks Piece of DeSantis' 'Stop Woke Act'

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker

A federal judge is barring a central piece of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' "Stop Woke Act" that restricts trainings about race in the workplace, issuing the blow Friday, reported Politico.

The bill, passed in 2022, aimed to restrict lessons on subjects like "white privilege" in schools and businesses. It was never able to be implemented for businesses as the state was sued and lost on the count of a violation of free speech protected by the Constitution.

Protect Democracy, the organization that represented businesses suing Florida in response to the "Stop Woke Act," issued a statement following the ruling.

"Today's decision serves as a powerful reminder that the First Amendment cannot be warped to serve the interests of elected officials," said Shalini Goel Agarwal, special counsel for the organization.

The law stated that lessons or trainings that provoked "guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress" due to a person's race, color, sex, or national origin were illegal.

A group of businesses challenged the law, claiming they were being forced to self-censor on "important societal matters" and kept "from engaging employees in robust discussion of ideas essential for improving their workplaces."

Attorneys for the DeSantis administration countered the argument, saying the law does not restrict speech and addresses only what employers can force employees to listen to, including "certain speech against their will" at the risk of losing their jobs.

How the policy applies to colleges and universities is still being challenged and awaiting a court ruling.

© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

[pashterlengkap]

Kamala Harris centers LGBTQ+ rights in speech to teachers’ union

In a campaign appearance today at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention in Houston, Texas, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at length about the corrosive effect that book bans and other anti-LGBTQ+ policy and legislation are having on America’s teachers and children. Her speech indicated that she’ll devote attention to those issues in her presidential campaign. “We are in a fight for our most fundamental freedoms,” Harris declared to the thousands of teachers at AFT’s annual gathering. “And to this room of leaders, I say: Bring it on.” Related GOP leaders beg Republicans to stop making racist comments about Kamala Harris Several Republicans have implied thatt she’s just vice president because of her gender and mixed race. Chants of “Bring it on! Bring it on!” erupted across the hall. Your LGBTQ+ guide to Election 2024 Stay ahead of the 2024 Election with our newsletter that covers candidates, issues, and perspectives that matter. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Harris has made the far-right assault on personal freedoms — like the right to choose and marriage equality — central to her vice-presidency, leading the administration of President Joe Biden to call for federal legislation restoring the protections of Roe v Wade nationwide and working with legislators to shepherd the Respect for Marriage Act through Congress. President Biden signed that legislation in 2022. Shortly after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade, Harris called Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurrence a harbinger of other reversals to come. Thomas said the nation’s highest court should consider overturning the gay marriage law as well as others guaranteeing the rights to consensual same-sex intercourse and access to contraceptives. “I think he just said the quiet part out loud,” Harris said. Harris drew a stark contrast in her speech between Democrats and the MAGA-fueled Republican candidates that voters will choose between in November. “In this moment across our nation, we witness a full-on attack on hard-won, hard-fought freedoms,” she told the teachers’ union members on Thursday.   “While you teach students about democracy and representative government, extremists attack the sacred freedom to vote,” Harris said. “While you try to create welcoming places where our children can learn, extremists attack our freedom to live safe from gun violence. They have the nerve to tell teachers to strap on a gun in the classroom while they refuse to pass common sense gun safety laws! “And while you teach students about our nation’s past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation’s true and full history, including book bans. Book bans, in this year of our Lord 2024!” she added. From deep in the hall, a supporter shouted, “You tell ’em, President Harris,” eliciting a broad smile from the presumptive Democratic nominee. “Just think about it: we want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books! Can you imagine?” Harris asked incedulously. “All the while, these extremists also attack the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. They passed so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws,” Harris said of Republicans in Florida and other states that turned out copycat versions of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s signature legislation that restricts classroom instruction on LGBTQ+ identities. Harris, who has boasted she’ll hold her record up to former President Trump’s “any day of the week,” then fully embraced her role promoting marriage equality in its earliest days. “Many of you may know, in 2004 on Valentine’s Day weekend, I was one of the first elected officials in the country to perform same-sex marriages,” Harris told the teachers to applause. “It pains me so to think 20 years later that there are young teachers in their 20s who are afraid to put up a photograph of themselves and their partner, for fear they could lose their job,” she said. “And what is their job? The most noble of work, teaching other… http://dlvr.it/TB4xTN

[dankusner]

Uber reduces workforce size for Dallas office, forfeits millions in tax incentives

Uber is backing away from its plans for a mega office in Dallas.

The company confirmed Thursday it plans to have only 500 employees at its new offices in Deep Ellum instead of the promised 3,000.

The decision means Uber will be giving back $30 million worth of government incentives.

Those incentives were tied to the promise of 3,000 high paying jobs, and commitments for those employees to live and work in Dallas.

"Given the dramatic impact of the pandemic, we are concentrating our efforts on our core mobility and delivery platforms and resizing our company to match the realities of our business," an Uber spokesperson said in a statement.

Uber’s decision to open its second largest hub in Dallas was celebrated in 2019 with an event featuring Gov. Greg Abbott and Mayor Eric Johnson.

"The decision to be in Dallas was driven by partnership with state of Texas," Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said then.

At the time, the company was making plans for driverless cars and even flying taxis.

But now, Uber is ending its partnership with the state, city, and county.

A partnership worth more than $30 million in incentives based on Uber's ability to hit certain hiring and salary goals.

It's a call that may not be entirely to blame on the pandemic.

SMU economist Mike Davis said even in 2019, there were doubts about the company’s ability to deliver the promised jobs.

"I think it was a longshot even in 2019, because remember, Uber had never earned a profit," Davis said.

The groundbreaking came months after the company had laid off 1,000 employees, so the pandemic hit Uber especially hard.

"If bars and restaurants are closed, hotels not full, airlines not transporting, Uber will not do well at all," Davis explained.

While the work from home environment is having an impact on office buildings around the world, Davis does not think Uber's hub downsizing will become a trend for other Dallas businesses.

"Also found out central offices do matter. Zoom is good, but there is an important element when people meet face to face," he said.

The city already paid $25,000 for the cost of permit fees.

A memo from the city's chief of economic development says the city will ask for repayment.

Uber reduces workforce size for Dallas office, forfeits millions in tax incentives

The company confirmed Thursday it plans to have only 500 employees at its new offices in Deep Ellum instead of the promised 3,000.

"I am disappointed but not surprised by Uber's decision, considering the significant economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic," Mayor Johnson said in a statement.

According to state records, there is no indication Uber received a much larger incentive from the Texas Enterprise Fund.

"Many of the jobs they planned to move here were for Elevate, which is their air taxi service they hope to launch and another back office function of Uber, those two pieces of business were sold off during the pandemic, so that is unique to this," Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.

Jenkins said while the loss of jobs is unfortunate, he’s optimistic about the future.

"The companies that are looking here are all in a non-disclosure agreement, but I can tell you that you are going to see some big companies move here, some jobs be created," he explained.

Dallas City Councilman Tennell Atkins is the chair of the Economic Development Committee.

He said the city is requesting Uber repay its investment.

"Right now, we do not have to offer Uber any type of incentive from the taxpayer to get there. We put about $25,000 that we wrote them, they’re going to reimburse us for the money," he said.

The city said Uber currently has 200 employees at the Deep Ellum location.

It’s unclear when the next 300 or so employees will be hired.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

WA Senate passes bill to bar hiring discrimination for cannabis use

BY CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE

Washington employers would be prohibited from refusing to hire a potential worker solely because of a drug test showing they had used cannabis under a bill that passed the state Senate on Wednesday.

Washington voters approved recreational marijuana in 2012 through Initiative 502. More than a decade later, though, as more states have moved to legalize the drug, Washington employers can still screen out applicants who use cannabis.

If Senate Bill 5123 becomes law, Washington would join several other states that have enacted laws shielding employees from workplace penalties for off-duty cannabis use. The bill passed the state Senate on a 28-21 vote Wednesday, sending it to the House for further consideration.

In 2019, Nevada became the first state to stop employers from rejecting an applicant because of a drug test showing cannabis use. Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill barring discrimination in hiring, firing and other conditions of employment if a worker uses cannabis while off duty.

The Washington bill’s sponsor, Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, introduced a similar proposal last year, but it didn’t get to the floor for a vote. Washington’s bill only covers drug tests before hiring, Keiser said. An employer could still test you for cannabis once you have a job, and could still make a hiring decision based on a drug test that doesn’t include cannabis.

“If your employer wants to test you every week after you’re hired, they’re still able to do that,” Keiser said. “This is simply opening the front door of getting into a job. Because too many people who see that they have to take a drug test to even apply, don’t even apply.”

Certain jobs are excluded from the bill, including in the airline and aerospace industries and those requiring a federal background investigation or security clearance. Employers could still screen workers for cannabis after an accident or if they suspect impairment on the job.

Thanks to an amendment from Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, the bill also excludes professions where impairment on the job means “substantial risk of death.”

A central challenge in regulating cannabis use in the workplace is that a test that measures impairment from the drug is not yet available. That poses a problem especially for workers and employers who are subject to federal regulations, including through contracts with the federal government or because workers must have commercial driver’s licenses.

Burl Bryson, executive director of The Cannabis Alliance, told lawmakers in a public hearing Jan. 10 that potential candidates can consume cannabis legally “and still test positive for weeks later.”

“If the same approach were applied to alcohol, employers would refuse employment to anyone who enjoyed a beer or glass of wine on the weekend,” Bryson said.

“It simply doesn’t make sense to base an employment decision on that kind of unreliable outcome and test,” Keiser said on the Senate floor just before the vote Wednesday.

The bill had drawn some opposition from business lobbyists, who expressed worries about employers’ responsibility for safety problems in the workplace.

Bob Battles, general counsel and government affairs director for the Association of Washington Business, which has 7,000 members including major employers Boeing and Microsoft, said Wednesday the organization shifted to a more neutral position, citing changes clarifying that it covered only preemployment screening, as well as King’s amendment to exclude positions where impairment could be deadly.