Thread/ Let’s be clear. This was never ever not going to happen. Not when Reagan eviscerated all public spending and accused anyone who questioned this a communist. Or when he started the death by a thousand budget cuts 1/
of our sacred covenant that every citizen deserves a good education and a decent change at a decent life. It was never not going to happen when Timothy McVeigh and his accomplices bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. 2/
Not when the NRA called ATF agents “jack-booted thugs.” Not when oops, the anti-choice language about murder led to the killings of several doctors at clinics. Not when Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld chose fascist language like “Homeland Security” to exploit 9/11 3/
What did I tell you? The layoffs were always coming. Today Disney chose to layoff nearly 30% of their workforce on the same day as the first presidential debate. Hoping, I am sure, to have the news of this drowned out by the news of that. 1/
Josh D'Amaro's "it's incredibly painful" reminds me of when I was a kid and my father was getting ready to spank me and he'd say "this is gonna hurt you more than it's gonna hurt me." It was bullshit then and it's even more bullshit now. 2/
The layoffs are apparently heavy on part-time workers and it should concern you that such a high percentage of their workforce is part time. That's because, like so many other companies relying on an hourly labor force, lots of shenanigans are used to prevent.3/
THREAD/ There is a deep rot at the core of American fundamentalist capitalism. Over the years a greed-is-good mindset has taken hold across corporate culture. And CEO's have taken the ball and run with it. They populate their boards with other CEO's 1/ nytimes.com/2020/07/29/bus…
And they add layers and layers of executive structure between themselves and their workers. Eventually they forget what they once knew (if they ever did) about what it was like to live paycheck to paycheck, to have no power over your own destiny, to feel like a cog 2/
In a giant machine whose work is "unskilled" ergo easily replaced by a hundred other people who would rather take your horribly paid job rather than continue to languish on unemployment. I objected when Disney furloughed their workers not because they shouldn't have, but 3/
A beautiful reframe of the Harper's letter, which I frankly think is a slightly less crotchety version of classic conservative grousing about "political correctness." Speech is and should be free, yes, but that is not to say it should not have consequences. 1/
I happen to have experienced this on a personal level. Yes, I got "ratio-ed" on Twitter (and deserved it) and have somehow lived to tell the tale. What I tried to do in the situation is to honestly have a look at what I might have done wrong, learn from it and go forward 2/
With respect for my critics, and with enough regard for my own integrity that it remains my lodestar but not so much that I cannot admit that from time to time it doesn't know enough, hasn't thought deeply enough, or just isn't smart enough to always be right. 3/
So Breonna was the victim of a no-knock warrant. The cops claim they identified themselves but they were under no obligation, legally speaking, to do so. And given the record of white police officers shooting people and then lying about it, 1/ THREAD motherjones.com/crime-justice/…
I'm gonna believe her boyfriend, Kenneth Taylor, that they did not. BTW, he was also shot that night. The no-knock warrant was given to the police because they thought Breonna MIGHT be receiving packages for a drug dealer who lived not nearby and whom she didn't know. 2/
In other words, they could have easily a)asked her about it b)knocked c)come during the day or d)done some actual detective work during which they'd have figured this out for themselves. But they did none of these things. Instead they chose, at midnight, to bust down her door 3/
Twitter math. Sometimes you have to add story one to story two to understand. Here is story number one:
to me, not at all surprising. Who does this feel surprising to? There is nothing about mainstream liberalism that is not consistent with racism 1/ independent.co.uk/voices/amy-coo…
Story number two:
Yes, Joe Biden was an asshole during that interview but what got lost in the hoohah afterward was what Charlamagne was saying: you guys are not working hard enough to deserve the votes of the black community 2/ foxnews.com/politics/charl…
So yes, the Democratic Party is not holding its own feet to the fire. Sure we ridicule conservative trolls who pretend that Dems are the real racists because they supported slavery a century and a half ago, and were late to peel off of the dixiecrats. Of course that is 3/