Lawmakers, mostly Republican ones, increasingly want to deregulate laws governing children in the workplace. According to EPI, at least 10 states introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor protections in the past two years.”I wonder, does that category include the unpaid internships that go to Ivy League sophomores and juniors, the better to enhance their connections, that the opinion magazines are notorious for using, and if In These Times participate in that market. Silly me, it's not the spawn of the coastal cosmopolitans, let alone the underage braceros, let alone sex slaves, that are Today's Outrage. It's that fourteen-year-old slicing the onions at the pizzeria or washing the stemware at the bar.
Among them is Arkansas, whose GOP governor is the former White House press secretary under Donald Trump, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. In March, Sanders signed a new bill removing employer requirements to verify the age of children as young as 14 before hiring them, calling such protections “burdensome and obsolete.” Her Republican colleagues in Iowa and Wisconsin have passed similar laws. In Ohio, one Democrat even joined in to loosen the state’s child labor laws.
It’s already legal for teenagers to take on certain types of summer jobs and paid internships. In an ideal world, such employment can offer them valuable work experience in a safe environment and allow them to earn extra spending money to save up for nice things. Indeed, children from privileged backgrounds have traditionally been able to land such jobs over their less privileged counterparts, using family connections.
Republicans are invoking such benign jobs as babysitting or lifeguarding to claim that deregulation will help kids earn money to save up for a car or prom dress. But children’s well-being is not driving their desires to ease child labor laws. These lawmakers are hardly concerned about making it easier for teens to deliver newspapers or wash cars during summer vacation. We would be hard-pressed to imagine their 16-year-old children or grandchildren serving alcohol for six hours a day at a bar past 9 p.m. on a school night and letting the bar owner off the hook if that child gets injured on the job — which is what Iowa Republicans have now legalized.No, it's about undermining labor militancy. It always is.
What they appear to care about is businesses having a larger pool of vulnerable workers to exploit at a time when worker demands for higher wages and better working conditions are rising and strike activity has increased. Who’s more vulnerable than children, particularly undocumented and low-income ones?Who, indeed, but those are not the kids washing stemware at the bar. As far as responding to labor militancy, well, there's automation for that, whether it's placing orders for hamburgers (rather than have the current crop of McDonald's hires make a hash of the order) or sorting potatoes or grading coal. The reality, whether in those farm fields, or those Iowa bars, or the coal breaking sheds, has always been the same.
Children work because their families are desperately poor, and the meager addition to the family income they can contribute is often necessary for survival. Banning child labor through trade regulations or governmental prohibitions often simply forces the children into less-desirable alternatives. When U.S. activists started pressuring Bangladesh into eliminating child labor, the results were disastrous.The complications get more fraught if the Border Patrol starts raiding those fields (or those supper clubs?) It didn't turn out so well when U.S. trade policy placed sanctions on Bangladesh's shirt factories.
Paul Krugman summarizes what happened more bluntly: "The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets—and that a significant number were forced into prostitution." [Yes, that Paul Krugman. — Ed.] Based on the information they have, families tend to choose the best available job for their children. Taking that option away does not eliminate the necessity of work; it forces them to take a less-desirable job. As repulsive as a child working in a sweatshop may be, it is not nearly as repulsive as a child forced into prostitution through the actions of unthinking Western activists.That deregulation of child labor in the heartland states, though, is a symptom of falling living standards.
In rural Sub-Saharan Africa, the U.N. data also shows that girls often spend more time gathering wood and water than boys—time that could be spent in a classroom instead.The backsliding, whether in the developed world, or in the United States as water conservation and sustainable electricity production reveal themselves in the form of deprivation for hoi polloi, is predictable. Washing stemware becomes hoeing beans by hand becomes child marriages. Reap what you sow, self-styled progressives.
Fortunately, access to running water and electricity is rapidly spreading across the globe. As more households gain access to modern technologies, more children will leave behind backbreaking physical labor for school books and studying.
"This pioneering research shows that since the onset of the war in Ukraine, the most vulnerable people around the world are bearing the brunt of skyrocketing food, fuel, and fertilizer prices, with women and girls the hardest hit," ActionAid global policy analyst Alberta Guerra said in a statement. "They are disproportionally affected by multiple crises that impact their food intake, education, their right to live free from child marriage, and their mental health and well-being."Russia and Ukraine might be sellers of grains and fertilizer (in part because the social democratic countries limit grain production and subject fertilizer production to all manner of environmentalist ukases?) and yet their absence shows up, bigly, in the developing world.
Joy Mabenge, ActionAid's country director for Zimbabwe—a particularly hard-hit country where reported gasoline prices skyrocketed by more than 900%, the cost of pasta soared by as much as 750%, fertilizer was 700% dearer, and feminine hygiene pads increased sixfold in price—said that "food and fuel prices in Zimbabwe have been increasing on a near-daily basis, hitting the country's many families who live below the poverty line the hardest."
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has drafted new rules that would order eateries using the decades-old baking method to slice carbon emissions by up to 75%.As many pizzerias are downstairs with apartments upstairs, air filters made sense, regulations or not.
“All New Yorkers deserve to breathe healthy air and wood and coal-fired stoves are among the largest contributors of harmful pollutants in neighborhoods with poor air quality,” DEP spokesman Ted Timbers said in a statement Sunday. “This common-sense rule, developed with restaurant and environmental justice groups, requires a professional review of whether installing emission controls is feasible.”
The rule could require pizzerias with such ovens installed prior to May 2016 to buy pricey emission-control devices — with the owner of one Brooklyn joint saying he’s already tossed $20,000 on an air filter system in anticipation of the new mandate.
Oh yeah, it’s a big expense!” said Paul Giannone, the owner of Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint. “It’s not just the expense of having it installed, it’s the maintenance. I got to pay somebody to do it, to go up there every couple of weeks and hose it down and you know do the maintenance.”Coasian bargaining, with mushrooms and onions! It being a government mandate, though, it brings out the rent-seekers.
Giannone added that while the air filter is “expensive and it’s a huge hassle,” it also has some upsides.
“My neighbors are much happier. I had a guy coming in for years complaining that the smoke was, you know, going right into his apartment and I haven’t seen him since I got the scrubber installed.”
Other iconic pizza joints facing the heat include Lombardi’s in Little Italy, Arturo’s in Soho, John’s of Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, Patsy’s in Turtle Bay and the Upper West Side and Grimaldi’s near the Brooklyn Bridge — that pride themselves on having their pies baked in coal-and-wood-fired ovens.The special pleading, it goes on and on and on. Not surprisingly, the architects and engineers get to wet their beaks.
A city official said that under 100 restaurants total would be impacted.
One pizza restaurateur, who requested anonymity, told The Post that sensitive negotiations are currently taking place with DEP officials on whether to grandfather in or exempt the dozens of coal-and-wood-oven-fired pizza joints from the mandate.
He said politicians and bureaucrats should stop messing with their crust.
“This is an unfunded mandate and it’s going to cost us a fortune not to mention ruining the taste of the pizza totally destroying the product,” the restaurateur, who has a coal-fired oven, fumed.
Well, they were reminded that there was such a thing as white privilege. They had forgotten about it, possibly on purpose.That's a predictable riff, it being easier to privilege-shame people than to engage in the serious work of encouraging the insiders to be receptive to the efforts of outsiders to participate in the social order, as well as to encourage the outsiders to appropriate the useful features of that order as their own. Never mind that it's easy, it antagonizes the insiders, and it's wrong.
They were told that, yes, white privilege is a thing, and it's pretty obvious. They fumed and feigned outrage at this accurate report on the state of the real world until they convinced themselves that it was a huge lie and an outrage. Coached by their favorite enablers in the media, they worked themselves up into an emotional lather until they could act their parts somewhat convincingly, even with all the unrealistic lines. Think of the Stanislavsky Method in acting, except this was the Limbaugh Method of acting out.
Of course it wasn't just about white privilege; that's just the most obvious aspect of the advantages that individuals or groups enjoy (or do not enjoy) in our society, without having to show any particular merit. When the renewed discussion of privilege was extended to male privilege, white men — incongruously led by an obese man-boy in orange makeup sporting a spun-sugar combover — embarked on their White Men's Campaign of Endless Grievances.
So many things in our society can be understood by thinking back to high school. Think of nearly any Hollywood film about suburban teenagers, in which the good-looking spoiled brats of the country-club set get their comeuppance in the third act after reveling in all sorts of bad behavior. These days, roughly a third of the country seems to be rooting for the obvious villains in a new version of that story, now unfolding in our troubled being democracy. It could be called "White Men Whining III: The Retribution," but honestly we've already been gifted the best possible title: "Florida: Where Woke Goes to Die."By Mr Swearingen's standards does the Columbine shooting of thirty years ago qualify as a comeuppance?
Joking aside, the privileges afforded by stereotypical or conventional "good looks" — which generally implicate categories of race and class — are undeniable. Like all other forms of privilege, it provides people with entrée, a form of soft power that can corrupt one's thinking pretty quickly. Handsome boys and beautiful girls often age into vapid adults as a result of this privilege; they never had to put any effort into being accepted.
When we choose to enter these spaces with their fraying etiquette and bicentenary warhorse repertoire, what need are we fulfilling?Repudiating your cultural patrimony will have the same effect at the concert hall that it has had at the church.
The world of classical music performance has entered a perilous and disorienting era. Ensembles old and new are having to address themselves to the revealed preferences and ineffable desires of an audience in transition.
I suspect that, not so long ago, the stodginess was actually a selling point. When I went to classical concerts as a child, it never occurred to me that the decorum was meant to be really exclusive, screening out the rabble. It was, instead, an opportunity for members of the rabble with aspirations for more to try on clothes and manners we would not normally adopt. The tuxedoed gentleman on the stage a short distance from the Midwestern hometown of Tom Wambsgans and Garrison Keillor, focused intently on his violin and the music of Mozart, was doing something so elevated and important that I felt I should really put off shuffling through the program until the cadenza wrapped up and the movement was over. The gradation—between movements, you may shift, cough, turn pages, or be seated but must not talk or clap; at the end of the piece you can clap and cheer and talk again—has a gamelike spirit that a young concertgoer may be eager to learn and internalize. And in any case, it was part of the meaning and function of the enterprise to embrace its rituals. We had come to be elevated; for entertainment, no doubt, but entertainment that was set apart from the general run of things by its content and form. For the space of the event, we were set apart, too: We were there to become cultured.It's called socialization, and the customs of the concert hall might recognize that there was something about the presentation of the high culture that reflected the evolutionary advantages its development conferred.
Worcester’s Polar Park didn’t make the magazine — although it’s in this Trains.com article — but it’s clear it qualifies.He'll always have that story, it's something that many Red Sox hitters past or present, won't have, no matter how many times they've hit one over the Green Monster.
In fact, you can not only see the trains, you can hit them with a batted ball.
At least, Boston Red Sox farmhand Bobby Dalbec can. While it’s hard to see in the accompanying video clip, broadcasters and subsequent news reports say Dalbec’s home run Tuesday night against the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs carried beyond the ballpark and hit a passing train — one of the five to 10 CSX freights that passes daily.
The Cascade Institute notes that “a global polycrisis occurs when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects. These interacting crises produce harms greater than the sum of those the crises would produce in isolation, were their host systems not so deeply interconnected.”Pretty standard stuff, and no surprise to readers of long standing. Will the saecular crisis be resolved over the time it takes to raise the next generation, or, this time, is a protracted era of stagnation a possibility?
Evidence of polycrisis is usually separated into two buckets—environmental and social. Signs of environmental crisis include climate change, the disappearance of wild nature, relentless resource depletion, the increasing chemical pollution of air and water, soil loss and degradation, and fresh water scarcity. Evidence of social crisis includes increasing economic inequality, poverty, racism and other forms of discrimination, the rise of authoritarianism, and impacts of rapid technological change (such as automation).
Our current set of crises can be described as a polycrisis because self-reinforcing feedbacks between ecological breakdown and social breakdown are strengthening and growing more numerous. For example, climate-driven human migration presents challenges to political systems while also eroding traditional cultural norms that support environmental stewardship. Societies in the midst of social crisis, and ones turning toward authoritarian regimes, are seldom able to muster efforts toward resource conservation, emissions reduction, and habitat preservation; indeed, under such circumstances, past efforts in these directions may be undermined.Well, for one thing, that complexity has emerged concurrently with the incompetence. Let's go to Harold Robertson in Palladium.
All of this is happening in the wake of a couple of decades’ worth of historical studies that show societal collapse to be a normal, predictable, and even inescapable periodic occurrence throughout the past few thousand years. It appears that societies tend to become more complex, develop new technologies, accumulate wealth, and grow more unequal over time. Their leaders start to quarrel with one another, weakening overall social cohesion. Finally, after two or three centuries of this, almost anything can push a society over the brink—a natural disaster, resource depletion, war, insurrection, epidemic, or financial crash. Scholars who engage with the accumulating literature on societal collapse can hardly help noting the relevance for today’s world. We’ve built a global civilization of unparalleled complexity, wealth, and inequality, all based on depleting, polluting fossil fuels. What could go wrong?
At a casual glance, the recent cascades of American disasters might seem unrelated. In a span of fewer than six months in 2017, three U.S. Naval warships experienced three separate collisions resulting in 17 deaths. A year later, powerlines owned by PG&E started a wildfire that killed 85 people. The pipeline carrying almost half of the East Coast’s gasoline shut down due to a ransomware attack. Almost half a million intermodal containers sat on cargo ships unable to dock at Los Angeles ports. A train carrying thousands of tons of hazardous and flammable chemicals derailed near East Palestine, Ohio. Air Traffic Control cleared a FedEx plane to land on a runway occupied by a Southwest plane preparing to take off. Eye drops contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria killed four and blinded fourteen.Yet another polycrisis, this one self-inflicted by a different pathology?
While disasters like these are often front-page news, the broader connection between the disasters barely elicits any mention. America must be understood as a system of interwoven systems; the healthcare system sends a bill to a patient using the postal system, and that patient uses the mobile phone system to pay the bill with a credit card issued by the banking system. All these systems must be assumed to work for anyone to make even simple decisions. But the failure of one system has cascading consequences for all of the adjacent systems. As a consequence of escalating rates of failure, America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.
The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems. At its inception, it represented a break from the trend of the 1920s to the 1960s, when the direct meritocratic evaluation of competence became the norm across vast swaths of American society.I don't know, the Technocratic Experts who have made such a hash of the first quarter-century of the 21st Century keep appealing to their Credentials. It's not as if all the box-checking tokens of the Jarrett regency don't have degrees from the Best Universities, is it?
Administrative law judges have accepted statistically observable disparities in outcomes between groups as prima facie evidence of illegal discrimination. The result has been clear: any time meritocracy and diversity come into direct conflict, diversity must take priority.Rather, it's that Complex Adaptive Systems tend to do what the Damn Well Please, and the Men (or Women, or Hermaphrodites) of System aren't as smart as they think they are. Maybe, contra that earlier post, High Modern Authoritarianism will be a casualty of the ekpyrosis.
The resulting norms have steadily eroded institutional competency, causing America’s complex systems to fail with increasing regularity. In the language of a systems theorist, by decreasing the competency of the actors within the system, formerly stable systems have begun to experience normal accidents at a rate that is faster than the system can adapt. The prognosis is harsh but clear: either selection for competence will return or America will experience devolution to more primitive forms of civilization and loss of geopolitical power.
If you read this “goodbye column from the StarTribune, you might think it’s just another of similar ones we’ve seen by Illinoisans. But it’s about Minnesota, written by a native of the state and prominent founder of a public company named Howard Root.I used to think of Illinois as having sensible, non-Trumpian Republicans, and enough Adlai Stevenson type Democrats to keep the place from going nuts. Both states, though, have become sanctuary states for abortion seekers, which might make sense, as neither strike me as worth considering as a place to raise children, particularly Normal children.
“What used to be Minnesota Nice has become Minnesota Nuts, and I’m out,” he wrote.
Root’s column is far from one man’s opinion. The numbers increasingly show he is not alone. Last year’s election and the most recent legislative session locked Minnesota into the radical progressivism now popular in much of America, just as Illinois has done over a longer stretch of years. The impact on the Midwest may be significant, altering interstate migration of people and employers, and matching Illinois as a top choice for residents who prefer one-party dominance that will be difficult to change.
Sure, Minnesota has long been solidly liberal, but it was tempered by some degree of business friendliness and practicality. Its economy generally performed well in recent decades and its population increased a healthy 7.6% from 2010 to 2020.
In last year’s elections, progressives captured all three branches of government and immediately proceeded with measures to lock in their control. They passed automatic voter registry, expanded early registration for minors and allowed felons to vote. They raised the legal requirement for major party status to assure no challenges from what Minnesotan’s call “marijuana” third parties. All high schools must now provide an ethnic studies course to indoctrinate progressive views on race, gender, class, sexuality, religion and legal status.Those are opportunities for Wisconsin, and perhaps for the Free State of Iowa, should people in those states do the right things.
“So add it up,” a Minnesota political scientist wrote. “The DFL [Minnesota Democrats] and governor have expanded the electorate to their likely advantage, created a new curricular and preregistration pipeline for shaping young DFL voters, and crushed those troublesome marijuana parties.”
That should all sound familiar to Illinoisans, aside from the marijuana thing. Much of the progressive election success in Minnesota can be attributed to campaign lies, as described here in Townhall, which also should sound familiar to Illinoisans.
With their new control over state government, Minnesota progressives rapidly passed a range of the far left’s favorite programs, again much like those Illinois passed in recent years.
It’s safe to expect Wisconsin to begin poaching Minnesota businesses as successfully as it has in Illinois. The Wisconsin-Minnesota border has long been a battle line in that fight much like the Wisconsin-Illinois border.That article concludes, "'Good riddance,' Illinois progressives often say to fleeing centrists and conservatives, and 'welcome' to progressives." They say "good riddance" now, but will they, in the way of communist states, and possibly California, want to hit them with exit taxes later? And who is saying "welcome" to those arriving illegal immigrants in Woodlawn these days?
While Scott Walker was Wisconsin governor several years ago, he told me how easy it was for his economic development folks to steal Illinois businesses. They’d just look for companies in Northern Illinois with leases coming up for renewal, then contact those businesses and lay out the advantages of moving. Southeastern Minnesota is full of businesses ripe for picking. The Wisconsin border is only 30 miles from Minneapolis-St. Paul.
In the longer run, and perhaps most importantly, the extreme shift leftward along with locked-in one-party status means Minnesota will play a larger role in the great national reshuffling caused by political migration that we’ve written about earlier.
Why does anyone go to college? The most popular answer given by American college freshmen from 1991 to 2019 was, “To be able to get a better job.” The Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA, which conducted an annual survey of full-time students at some 200 four-year colleges, routinely found 75 to 85 percent gave that answer, though many also said, “To make more money.” The next most popular answer during those decades was, “To learn more about things that interest me.” Trailing these answers but still widely endorsed was the ambition, “To gain a general education and appreciation of ideas.”The beginning of that UCLA survey coincided with the more cheerful bits of the Consciousness Revolution, but after those first heady summers, reality came to bat.
I don’t have access to more recent results but I suspect the students are still saying much the same. Those answers, however, merely scratch the surface. The real reasons, then and now, that students go to college are hidden in a mixture of social expectations, family dynamics, ambitions, emotional longing, and inertia, covered with a veneer of socially acceptable rationalizations.
Especially notable are changes in two contrasting value statements: The importance of “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” and of “being very well off financially.” In the late 1960s developing a meaningful philosophy of life was the top value, being endorsed as an “essential” or “very important” goal by more than 80 percent of the entering freshmen. Being very well off financially, on the other hand, lagged far behind in the late 1960s, ranking fifth or sixth on the list with less than 45 percent of the freshmen endorsing it as a very important or essential goal in life. Since that time these two values have basically traded places, with being very well off financially now the top value (at 73.6 percent endorsement) and developing a meaningful philosophy of life now occupying sixth place at only 43.1 percent endorsement.Yes, and the tenured radicals might have completed the long march through the English Department and installed all sorts of Diversity Weenies in Student Affairs and otherwise let their freak flags fly, and yet, once they filled the area studies departments with their star students, Starbucks hired their other graduates. Ever since, though, that shift from "meaningful philosophy" (perhaps assisted by pre-herpes casual sex and Acapulco Gold?) to "being well off" (because more than a few hippies of the Sixties became yuppies in early middle age during Morning in America?) has been something that the Student Affairs types lamented, but (read that philosophy essay in full) failed to address in a meaningful, meaning rigorous, and therefore oppressive, or hegemonic, or downright evil, way.
The chief meteorologist for a Des Moines news station announced Wednesday he is stepping down after receiving violent threats for his frank coverage of the climate emergency and how it could affect his viewers' lives—something he considered a mission as he regularly delivered news about the weather to Iowa residents.It's nyekulturny for viewers to threaten the lives of television personalities, even though the job of teevee weatherman during the growing season is often that of the bearer of bad news.
Chris Gloninger joined CBS affiliate station KCCI in 2021 after receiving recognition for his coverage of the climate crisis and the environment at NBC10 in Boston.
He immediately set to work connecting the warming planet with rising sea levels, intense hurricanes, and other extreme weather events in his work on air. In recent reports he has told his audience that the wildfire smoke that enveloped parts of the U.S. this month was the result of the climate crisis.
"A lot of these fires are gaining steam and seeing explosive growth because of the warming planet," Gloninger told viewers earlier this week.
Whilst very readable, at times I really struggled to follow what Marshall was talking about. He seems to shudder from topic to topic within a few paragraphs - this book would have benefitted significantly from some headings within each chapter. I also really struggled with Marshall's argument that Africa is not a world power because it didn't have navigable rivers or the appropriate coastline for deep water harbours. The fact that significant parts of Africa have relatively comfortable weather and therefore good access to food, unlike Europe (which meant Africa did not need to invent farming like Europe), seems lost of Marshall. There was an air throughout that Marshall views America as the best thing since sliced bread, and that he takes a decidedly Western view on appropriate nation-state building. This ended up tainting this book for me, and I struggled towards the end. I think if Marshall had bothered to discuss the South Pacific, Canada and Antartica, I would have enjoyed this book more.I can launch Book Review No. 6 directly from that reader's struggle. That coasts, rivers, and mountain ranges determine location patterns and tribal or national groupings make sense. That Old Pharaoh was able to sustain the same sort of civilization for four millennia based on the largesse from the Nile didn't stop latter-day Egyptians from damming the Nile at Aswan, the better to ... control the floods. China has maintained civilizational continuity for almost that long, and they have the Yellow and Yangtze to replenish the coastal plains for farming, and yet, latter-day mandarins dammed the Three Gorges, the better to ... control the floods.
Bay City native Madonna — no fan of censorship — probably wouldn’t be thrilled with her Michigan hometown’s violation of its citizens’ First Amendment rights. The city code prohibits people speaking during the public comment period of city commission meetings from “demeaning city officials, officers, or employees,” making “[d]erogatory comments directed at another person,” or “using vulgarities.” That’s bad news for Bay City residents who want to take the Queen of Pop’s advice to “Express Yourself.”The setting is all, dear reader. What is edgy at a concert sells records. It doesn't advance the argument at a public meeting. You'd think that would be obvious. It's a lesson, though, worth repeating.
Civilization and the pleasantness of everyday life depend on unwritten rules. Early in the 20th century, an English mathematician and government official, Lord Moulton, described complying with these rules as "obedience to the unenforceable"--the area of personal choice that falls between illegal acts and complete freedom.The elaboration warrants a Michael Munger podcast.
The difficulty that he saw was that free debate presupposes that you don't actually say anything that you want because that destroys debate. So, free debate can be self-destroying if you actually take that seriously. You have to recognize that there are unenforceable obligations of self-governance.You can't codify "demeaning," the Foundation notes.
That's where I wanted to start, was: this theme of self-governance is one that comes down to us through the ages in political economy and in moral philosophy.
The prohibitions on “demeaning” and “derogatory” comments violate the First Amendment by selectively targeting speech based on viewpoint. The Supreme Court has made clear that even a speech restriction that “evenhandedly prohibits disparagement of all groups” is viewpoint discriminatory because determining whether speech is disparaging requires the government to consider the viewpoint expressed. And basic First Amendment law dictates that speech does not lose protection because others subjectively find it offensive or otherwise objectionable.So it always is with speech codes. I wonder, though, how effective voters are expressing themselves in the Madonna fashion at a council meeting, or how well received the policy actions of the aldermen are after they've told the constituents just how deplorable they are.
My desire for your approval and your desire to avoid my disapproval, etc., is really the foundation of civilization. That the norms that emerge from that process are what allow us to interact with each other with grace and pleasantness to make our plans. And he actually says that we are the deputies of the author of nature--meaning God doesn't need to strike down with lightning bad people. God put inside human beings this desire for the approval of others and to avoid disapproval. And that is sufficient to--it's not sufficient. It pushes us in a direction of doing the right thing.It seems so cathartic to deconstruct those bourgeois conventions, until decorum breaks down at the school board or city council, followed by governance itself.
The throngs of teen and 20-something women flowed into the ballroom of the Gaylord Texan hotel on Friday night in a blur of shimmer and pink. There were sequins. There were bell-bottoms. There were sequin bell-bottoms. Most opted for some form of heel — often platformed, sometimes bedazzled. Others sported go-go or cowboy boots. (Kari Lake’s daughter wore a rose gold pair of the latter.) A disco ball as wide as a bathtub hung above them, giving them a silvery twinkle as they settled in to neat rows hundreds of chairs long. “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire blasted through the sound system.As long as there are youngsters who understand that the popular version of the late Sixties, followed by that kidney stone of a decade that was the Seventies, were a prolonged E-T-T-S moment, there is hope for the country.
They were ready for their trip back to the 1970s — or to a certain anti-feminist version of the era, anyway.
“That decade fundamentally changed the narrative surrounding women, what our role should be, what our lives should look like,” said Alex Clark, the evening’s unofficial emcee for the Young Women’s Leadership Summit, an annual event thrown by Turning Point USA, a sort of MAGA youth group. “All these years later, I’m not sure that was very good advice. Are you?”No. It's more important, though, for Post readers to be reinforced in their prejudices.
Clark, who hosts a pop culture podcast for Turning Point, dressed for her opening-night speech in a sequined shift dress. The summit’s branding stretched across the screen behind her, all groovy lines and fat serif fonts in mustard, mauve and sienna. It was inspired, at least in part, by “Mrs. America,” the 2020 miniseries about the failed fight to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (with an implicit solidarity with Phyllis Schlafly, not Gloria Steinem).
“In the ’70s, women were given all sorts of lies,” she continued. “They just told us, ‘Well, you can be a man.’ And I guess we’ve kind of accomplished that. But are we happier?”
What does it mean to be young, female and conservative in America, 2023?That last sentence is clickbait. Reality is subtler. Think of the gathering as a safe space for a different sort of marginalized population.
At the leadership summit, there were answers. It means posing for selfies in a mirror made to look like a magazine cover with a headline that reads, “Birth control is so last year.” It means having it all — but having kids and a husband before trying to get the rest. It means buying tampons and beauty products and other items from companies that market themselves as pro-Christian or anti-“woke.” It means embracing a particular kind of American nostalgia, one where women’s liberation means being free from the complexities of modern gender politics.
Perhaps most of all, it means seeing transgender women as a grave threat to womanhood.
[Texas A&M student Georgia] Chapa had been to a number of Turning Point events. In her experience, the co-ed ones are (informally) more oriented to partying and finding a “dudeservative” to marry, she said, while the women’s summit is more of a “feminine escape.” It’s women supporting women — specifically, women supporting women in their choice to reject liberal gender politics.That might be an opportunity for the women of the fevered brow to find some common ground, with or without the "mansplaining" jargon. If the traders offering products and services pose questions such as "Are you dating a beta?" there might be limits to those areas of agreement. High powered careers get in the way of people's personal lives, though, and if the conference is alerting participants to that reality, that's a corporal act of mercy. Perhaps it was not feminism per se that is the lie, it's the belief that you can have it all. Sorry, no, not this side of the big rock candy mountain.
“It’s nice to be here, where you agree with everybody on the conservative issues,” said Sarah Miller, a student at Boise State University who was attending the summit for the first time. “I walk around here and I have my filter off. We all agree on the core themes. You can make jokes. It’s a really nice sense of community.”
The NBA has a problem, and Adam Silver needs to address it and address it quickly.The league has a draft lottery, and the reserve clause is long gone from sports. Good players, though, still want to play on teams with other good players.
A year after signing a 5-year, 250 million dollar deal, there is no reason that Bradley Beal was suddenly so upset and waived his no-trade clause to create, wait for it…another superteam in the NBA.
The player movement and empowerment in the NBA have gotten entirely out of control, and if Silver wants to keep parity in his league, like the NFL, he needs to act and act quickly.
Growing up in Houston, Juneteenth—an event that commemorates June 19, 1865, as the day enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free (more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed)—was a Black holiday in my hometown.The story of Juneteenth in Texas involves Great Power Maneuvering. Federal troops were sent to the Mexican border to keep an eye on the House of Hapsburg, and along the way they delivered the word that the rebellion was over and the slaves were free. That story might be beyond my poor power to add or detract. I'll let historian Allen C. Guelzo, who once lived and taught in Gettysburg, explain.
I remember spending my summers down at Galveston Beach and watching the procession of decorated cars with live music proceed as the Jubilee parade commenced. I can still smell the tasty barbeque, remember the gallons of signature red soda passed around, and all that hot sauce doused on my plate as the red and blue Juneteenth flags were waved.
Juneteenth was our Fourth of July—a celebration which reminded me that the South still had something to say, and that Black people didn’t have to wait for the validation of our white peers to gather around our history.
Currently, the bridge closes only when a Florida East Coast Railway freight train approaches. Before closure, mariners are given a warning, allowing the FEC train to retain momentum and move through downtown Stuart without stopping.That's not the case at the New River draw.
Beginning June 21 and until Dec.17, 2023, that changes. The new rule will require all trains, that are unable to complete passage by the scheduled openings to be held until all marine traffic passes. The Coast Guard calls “temporary deviation” a test and is inviting comment before Aug. 4, 2023.
The latest ruling is a departure from the way rail and marine traffic interact at Fort Lauderdale’s New River drawbridge before and after hourly Brightline trains were first extended to Miami in May 2018.Remember those Rowan and Martin Laugh-In skits about the CIA not knowing what the FBI is doing? Comedy shows come and comedy shows go, but government agencies still don't communicate with each other. The Coasties have yet to respond to Trains. Federal Railroad Administration people know how to reach Trains, but apparently the Coasties aren't monitoring that frequency.
“The Fort Lauderdale experience was successful because we were able to find that middle ground and, no surprise, communication was the real key,” recalls Jay Westbrook.
Now retired, the former CSX passenger rail liaison with Amtrak was hired by what was then the parent company of both Brightline and FEC to create DispatchCo, an independent dispatching entity to evenly balance — in perpetuity — the competing needs of passenger and freight operations.
Finding middle ground and nonstop communication is exactly how DispatchCo, helped by generous capacity and infrastructure upgrades, keeps hourly Brightline trains on time and FEC happy. Similarly, Westbrook tells Trains News Wire, “mutual respect and trust” helped achieve peaceful coexistence between the railroad and over 400 members of the Marine Industries Association of South Florida.
Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Warren Flatau told Trains News Wire on June 12 that his agency “is aware of the matter, but we have not communicated directly with the U.S. Coast Guard,” adding, “It is a certainty that FEC and Brightline will make their concerns known to the Coast Guard through the public comment process.” He says FRA staff he questioned is unaware of any other rail line where bridge openings are scheduled more than once per hour through the day at fixed times and of fixed duration.A second track across the bridge and through the coastal towns would help out, funds permitting.
When briefed on what the Coast Guard now has in mind, former DispatchCo head Westbrook remarked, “Wow! That’s going to be a real challenge!”
One could argue that the exchange between Silva and Powell was codependent. But both of them show signs of being passive-aggressive. After all, if the pair were confronted with a rainbow flag, a Progress/Pride flag, an ANTIFA flag, or a BLM sign, neither of them would be able to get to their feet fast enough to place their hands over their hearts and recite the required pledge. Neither of them would have a second thought about making you assimilate to their paradigms. After all, their paradigms are superior to yours.By public radio standards, it's a short interview, but it says more about the participants than about the flag.
While some see the American Flag as a symbol of freedom for all – others, like some people of color — struggle with a connection to that symbol due to their experiences in the United States."One Hundred Percent Americanism" used to be a Klan thing, a hundred years ago, and the best way to push back against the heirs to the Klan, if that's what they're suspecting, is to make the Stars and Stripes the flag of any American, diluting the perceived appropriation of it by white nationalists. At the same time, many of those central Illinois towns were sundown towns: that "hurry up and leave" is historical memory, with nothing to do with flying the flag per se. On the other hand, once you get south of Interstate 74 you start encountering Cardinal fans.
For example, I'm Black American, and over the past few years, I've continued to analyze what the American Flag means to me. Especially considering the growth in extremism post-Trump-presidency and those extremists using the American Flag against people of color to say they're the real Americans.
I explained to Associate Professor of Philosophy at Marquette University, Dr. Grant Silva, the challenge I had with the excessive display of the American Flag.
During a road trip with my friend to another friend's wedding in Springfield, Illinois, we stopped for gas in this small town where American Flags lined businesses along the street we were driving down.
"And both of us were like, "Yeah, we need to hurry up and leave. And I thought about it like, 'why did we feel like that?'" Powell says.
Black people for generations have dealt with tension with the American flag. Our feelings were nothing new. But I asked Silva what he thought and he says he's had similar experiences.
Silva told me a story of traveling with his family to his grandfather-in-law's childhood home in Chippewa Falls and stopping at a gas station in Eau Claire on the way.
"I remember seeing stickers that said something similar to like ‘Immigrant Hunting License,’ and it had like a target and the image of people crossing — like the sign, the signage that they use to signify that people may be crossing a border like family, a family crossing," Silva says.
The subsequent article not only demeaned our athletic and business accomplishments, it furthered the narrative that hard working, creative and driven women can only do well if they are deemed attractive. The piece disregards our work ethic and dedication towards NIL and business endeavors. He fails to acknowledge the young girls/women that follow us and that we work hard to inspire.Don't cry with your mouths full, ladies.
We agreed to do the interview and wanted to support a woman ran news outlet. We are both disappointed and disgusted by this journalism practice and blatant sexist trope. We only wish to inspire young women to chase their dreams, work hard and think big. Now we must also defend them against men that wish to sum their potential [up] to physical appearance.
When Esmita Spudes Bidari was a young girl in Nepal, she dreamed of being in the military, but that wasn’t a real option in her country.What is it I've been writing about having a country that buys into its immigrants? The article focuses on legal immigrants buying into the country in the most fundamental way.
Last week, she raised her right hand and took the oath to join the U.S. Army Reserves, thanks in part to a recruiter in Dallas who also is Nepalese and reached out to her through an online group.
Bidari, who heads to basic training in August, is just the latest in a growing number of legal migrants enlisting in the U.S. military as it more aggressively seeks out immigrants, offering a fast track to citizenship to those who sign up.
The military has had success in recruiting legal immigrants, particularly among those seeking a job, education benefits and training as well as a quick route to becoming an American citizen. But they also require additional security screening and more help filling out forms, particularly those who are less proficient in English.At the end of basic training, the recruits receive their citizenship papers along with their stripe.
Both the Army and the Air Force say they will not meet their recruiting goals this year, and the Navy also expects to fall short. Pulling more from the legal immigrant population may not provide large numbers, but any small boosts will help. The Marine Corps is the only service on pace to meet its goal.
The shortfalls have led to a wide range of new recruiting programs, ad campaigns and other incentives to help the services compete with often higher-paying, less risky jobs in the private sector. Defense leaders say young people are less familiar with the military, are drawn more to corporate jobs that provide similar education and other benefits, and want to avoid the risk of injury and death that service in defense of the United States could bring. In addition, they say that little more than 20% meet the physical, mental and character requirements to join.
“We have large populations of legal U.S. residents who are exceptionally patriotic, they’re exceptionally grateful for the opportunities that this country has provided,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, head of the service’s recruiting command.
The first group of 14 included several who are seeking various medical jobs, while another wants to be an air transportation specialist. Thomas said Airman 1st Class Natalia Laziuk, 31, emigrated from Russia nine years ago, has dreamed of being a U.S. citizen since she was 11, and learned about the military by watching American movies and television.Currently, the earned citizenship in arms is for legal residents of the States. The legal residency bureaucracy is at best a muddle, and its muddledness might contribute to the volume of illegal border crossing: and more than a few of those arrivals (I'm thinking of refugees from China in particular) might also be useful in the uniform, particularly in this odd Cold War II we currently find ourselves in.
“Talking to this young airman, she essentially said, ‘I just wanted to be useful to my country,’” he said. “And that’s a story that we see played over and over and over again. I’ve talked to a number of these folks around the country. They’re hungry to serve.”
For Bidari, who arrived in the U.S. in 2016 to attend college, the fast track to citizenship was important because it will make it easier for her to travel and bring her parents to the United States to visit. Speaking in a call from Chicago just a day after she was sworn in, she said she enlisted for six years and hopes that her future citizenship will help her become an officer.
