UNFTR Weekly Roundup

This week in our Members Only Newsletter you missed:

Max Notes on Fox News hurricane disinformation.
The Tuesday Top Five news articles everyone should be reading.
An original essay from News Beat’s Rashed Mian on FTC chair Lina Khan’s future.
And “Not for Nothing” on Ted Cruz, the Mets (of course) and protecting Sherrod Brown.

So I guess the question is…what are you waiting for? Sign up today to become a member and level up to unlock a slew of additional perks!

Max Notes

Well. It’s crunch time. Months ago we started talking about these weeks. Americans are already casting their ballots and there’s no such thing as an “October surprise.” It all comes down to whether people feel economically secure when they fill out their ballots.

The only thing the Democrats could have done to distance themselves from the economic malaise we find ourselves in was to present a new and exciting economic vision. The landmark pieces of legislation that will serve the country well over the next decade simply didn’t have time to take root for the average American let alone bear fruit.

There are other factors, of course. A departure from Biden’s Gaza strategy could have given a slight boost in key swing states. And a meaningful policy answer for the border other than (the Republicans won’t let us do what we want) may have helped a bit as well. Instead the Democrats are pursuing a conservative strategy all around, shifting the Dem Party platform to the right and relying on the abortion issue to do just enough to cross the finish line ahead in battleground states.

And now the polls are tightening, Vegas is predicting a Trump victory (see below) and Harris is running a last ditch effort to rally support among Black and Latino voters, which is the last thing they anticipated having to do at this juncture.

Then there’s the turnout issue. It’s difficult to imagine turnout matching the historic pandemic era levels we saw in 2020.

Harris may eke out a victory. Anything is possible. If she doesn’t, this will be a failure of epic proportions. Either way, on the other side of this thing we better be ready to start having serious conversations about economic inequality and the ever deepening divide between the billionaire class and literally everyone else.

Other things I’m obsessing over…

Guys. I don’t think Oswald acted alone.
I much prefer the Bargatze founding father origin story.
Sinwar is dead. Gaza is destroyed. So I guess the war in Gaza is over now?

-Max

Chart of the Week

A betting spread of the Presidential Election Winner 2024 from Polymarket. Trump with a 61.7% chance and Harris with a 38.2% chance. Buttons for Buy Yes or Buy No are next to each chance percentage.

Source: Polymarket

Unf*cker Dan H. tipped us off to this one. And it’s bananas but I suppose it was inevitable. The online betting community is officially in on the action for the election, and all we can hope is that they know less than the pollsters.

Headlines

A Nine Person Congress

I don’t think we’re talking enough about this nightmare scenario under a second Trump term: Leonard Leo forces Justices Alito (74) and Thomas (76) to retire so Trump can appoint two more young justices. Beyond this, as this article notes, Congress seems to be okay just letting the SCOTUS do its job at this point. So I guess they just run shit around here now?

From the article:

“The three major ‘administrative state’ rulings would displace Congress as the ‘decider’ when it comes to which agency regulations do or do not carry out the congressional will. If an agency action is OK with Congress—which funds the agency every year—it is unclear why it should matter to the Court. But of course, the idea here is to challenge the power of the administrative state. And the way the Court envisions doing that is by inserting court decision-making into regulatory controversies, making regulations less ‘law like,’ that is, more arbitrary and unpredictable—because in the new system it is unclear how courts will be making decisions.”

The Baffler: When the Courts Rule: The right hopes for a new era of “legislating from the bench”

Spoiling for a Fight

I think this is a pretty fair assessment from Branko Marcetic. There’s basically no one in charge over here in the United States so Netanyahu is going to have a full scale war locked and loaded for the next administration.

From the article:

“The reason why Israel is even facing this threat is because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has wanted the United States to fight Iran for decades and has realized perpetual war is his ticket to staying in power, has repeatedly launched attacks on Iran that he knows will provoke it into hitting back. Making this worse is Israeli leadership’s insistence on always having the last word in these tit-for-tat exchanges, even when it’s the one that started it. Which is where we are now, with Israel currently planning to retaliate against what was, in the first place, an Iranian retaliation against an Israeli attack launched three months ago.”

Jacobin: Biden Is Inching Toward War With Iran. Congress Is AWOL.

Amazon: Fuck Your Work-Life Balance

Amazon has a market cap of $1.2 trillion. Its AWS division is far and away the most profitable business unit and apparently it’s not good enough for AWS CEO Andy Jassy. The choice: come in 5 days a week or find another job.

From the article:

“Amazon has been enforcing a three-day in-office policy, but CEO Andy Jassy said last month the retailer would move to five days to ‘invent, collaborate and be connected.’ Some employees who had not been previously compliant were told they were ‘voluntarily resigning’ and were locked out of company systems. Amazon, the world’s second-largest private employer behind Walmart, has taken a harder line on returning to office than many of its technology peers such as Google, Meta and Microsoft who have two- to three-day in-office policies.”

Yahoo Finance: Amazon AWS CEO: Quit if you don’t want to return to office

This Week on the Pod

Un-Cooperative.

Why Worker Co-Ops Don’t Work in America.

An AI generated image of abstract human figures lined up

Worker cooperatives are often viewed as part of the solution to beating back capitalism. Yet there are more than 33 million small businesses in the U.S. and less than a thousand worker co-operatives. This week’s episode looks at the different co-op models and the barriers to the growth and success of worker cooperatives in the U.S. as opposed to Europe. We take a look at iconic cooperatives such as the Mondragon Corporation in Spain to the Park Slope Food Co-Op in Brooklyn, NY and explain how everyone can easily support worker co-ops this election day.

Here’s a snippet from the pod:

Max: “Our system is designed to support specific types of businesses from a legal, accounting and tax perspective. Cooperatives have to follow the same type of rules and regulations with the additional burden of establishing a complicated governance structure that allows for democratized management, capital investments and tax consequences related to measures that are difficult to track.”

Read The Essay

Access Episode Resources

Resources

Pod Love

“You’ve heard the Republican ticket’s pro-worker rhetoric. It often contradicts their own actions and party ideology, but is representative of an emerging faction within the right wing. Joining us to explore this new conservative ideology are Oren Cass, Chief Economist at American Compass, and Zachary Carter, author of ‘The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.’ Together, we delve into key policy battlegrounds, from labor rights and immigration to domestic manufacturing and trade. Plus, the group considers a Post-Trump Republican Party.”

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart: MAGA Mirage: Trump & Vance’s Contradictory Conservatism

Book Love

It’s finally here. And I can’t wait to dig in. So happy for our friend Nathan Robinson who is immortalized in print alongside one of the most quoted and influential theorists in history.

“The Myth of American Idealism offers a timely and comprehensive introduction to the incisive critiques of U.S. power that have made Noam Chomsky a ‘global phenomenon,’ one of the most widely known public intellectuals of all time. Surveying the history of U.S. military and economic activity around the world, Chomsky and his co-author Nathan J. Robinson vividly trace the way the American pursuit of global domination has wrought havoc in country after country - without, ironically, making Americans any safer. And they explore how dominant elites in the United States have pushed self-serving myths about this country’s commitment to ‘spreading democracy,’ while pursuing a reckless foreign policy that served the interest of few and endangered all too many.”

The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson

**Unf*cker Comment of the Week**

From @B_Estes_Undegöetz on YouTube, Responding to the Eric Schmidt video:

“We gotta stop saying ‘elites.’ Just say wealthy capitalist oligarch. Or just ruling class capitalist ideologue. Or just capitalist. That’s who this is. Elite sounds like some make-believe social group of insiders. These men…and I reckon they are 10 to 1 men…are rich 1% ideological proponents of the vicious class war against the working people of the world.”

Progressive Corner

Progressive Spotlight: Bernie Sanders.

From college activism to the halls of the Senate, Bernie Sanders has tirelessly championed progressive causes and fought for economic justice.

Progressive Organization of the Week: United for a Fair Economy.

“United for a Fair Economy challenges the concentration of wealth and power that corrupts democracy, deepens the racial divide and tears communities apart. We use popular economics education, trainings, and creative communications to support social movements working for a resilient, sustainable and equitable economy.”

Check Out the New UNFTR Directory of Progressive Resources for More