UNFTR Weekly Roundup

99 Note: Apologies for the delayed release of the newsletter! Thank you for your patience, and I hope you enjoy 😀

This week in our Members Only Newsletter you missed:

Max Notes on Biden’s delusional UN address.
The Tuesday Top Five news articles everyone should be reading.
An original essay from News Beat’s Rashed Mian on the genocide tearing us apart.
And “Not for Nothing” on Rich Lowry dropping the N-word, Daniel Dubois dropping Anthony Joshua and Nikki Glaser dropping the mic.

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

The Great Man-Made River episode was a bit of a bear so I wanted to shout out our man Manny Faces for pulling together the podcast version. It was an old school Unfucking with his signature touch.

We’re at an interesting point with UNFTR. As we talk about in Show Notes this week, the podcasting universe is getting harder and harder to break through. And yet the audio experience of our brand is still our bread and butter. What’s fun, but also challenging, is that we’re welcoming new Unf*ckers from YouTube and bringing scores of new friends into the fold every day through the website. Here’s something that I hadn’t contemplated until now…

Many of us have been together for nearly four years. (Hard to believe it, actually.) And because this is such a tight knit community, we’ve grown together and learned so much from each other. Aside from shorthand and inside jokes (Ketchup v. Mustard, #FMF, PITOTWIU, 99 murdering white men over 75, etc.) we’ve managed to do a bit of worldbuilding. So when new Unf*ckers enter our world, I sometimes forget that there’s a few years of backstory to our little world.

I’ve often referred to early episodes as our building blocks, a way to “level-set,” similar to the way courses are offered at 100, 200, 300 & 400 levels. As such, I’ve taken time to revisit some of our earlier pieces and put them on YouTube to fill in those gaps. Even still, because we have a catalog and much of our knowledge has come from interacting with the original members there’s so much missing.

It’s left me in a weird position of rebuilding our knowledge base on YouTube and on the website while pursuing new avenues to keep the train moving forward. I want to make sure that the new visitors feel comfortable and welcome without interrupting our collective learning journey. In that spirit, let me offer the ultimate level setting thesis of the show and lay out where I think this is all going…

Thesis statement: Unf*cking the Republic seeks to understand why and how we arrived in the funhouse mirror image of a democracy. We look at root causes and policy rather than focus on outcomes and conspiracies. In doing so we try to explain how a small group of people came to rule the country. Call it oligarchy, inverted totalitarianism, or any other name you want, the billionaire class runs things around here. Our job is to explain how it happened so we can better prepare to unwind it all.

Where it’s going: We’re increasingly trying to find solutions to problems now that we have a better understanding of how the knots were tied in the first place. But we’re constantly in search of new ideas regarding systems. Systems of power, culture, politics and economics. The old concepts are themselves great building blocks. We need to understand the roots of socialism and how it grew out of the Enlightenment. We also need to unpack the corrupting aspects of capitalism while addressing why socialist and socialist-adjecent systems have been unable to unseat capitalist structures.

It’s lofty and overwhelming but we’ve made a lot of progress. So as we continue build out this framework and find new stories to tell, it’s important to remember why we’re here and what we’re looking to accomplish.

Other things I’m obsessing over…

Ana de Armas in the Wickiverse? Yes please.
Why do people accept invitations to debate Mehdi Hasan?
VP Debate is coming up. This is the bar that has been set.

-Max

Chart of the Week

Polls are shit. Polls are great. Polls are fine. Which is it? Let’s take a poll.

Who's ahead in Pennsylvania? Updating average for each candidate in 2024 presidential polls, accounting for each poll's recency, sample size, methodology and house effects, 9/30/2024. Harris +.08. Totals=Harris 48%, Trump 47.2%.

Sources: 538

Harris seems to be pulling ahead in certain midwest states, whereas Trump is supposedly pulling away in the Sunbelt. It’s feeling more and more like all eyes will be on Pennsylvania.

Headlines

Give it away, give it away now. Or later.

It’s rare that campaign tax plans are adopted completely because elected officials break their campaign promises routinely once they’re in office. Not to mention, you have to pretty much control Congress to make this happen because there are so many special interests at play. Both campaigns are promising a slew of tax relief packages but (hold onto your hats) Trump’s plan would blow a deficit hole five to six times bigger than the Harris plan. There are reasonable ideas in both plans, mind you. But there are even more misguided ideas. The one area I can say with certainty is a huge difference between the two is corporate taxation. Harris wants to go from 21% to 28% and Trump wants to bring it down to 15%. Unreal. We’re probably overdue on a corporate tax policy Unf*cking…

From the article:

“Her plans would result in the deficit growing by about $1.2 trillion over the next decade, compared with $5.8 trillion for Trump’s proposals, according to an estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model made prior to Trump’s [state and local tax] SALT proposal. The Penn Wharton Budget Model is a group within the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School that analyzes the budgetary impact of government policies. If Trump were to also eliminate the SALT deduction cap, his plans would increase the deficit by $6.9 trillion over the next decade, Kent Smetters, the faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, told CBS MoneyWatch on Friday.”

CBS News: Trump is promising new tax breaks for millions of Americans. Will his tariffs cover the costs?

Friends of Elon

It says something that most of Elon’s “friends” didn’t pull the trigger to invest in X. Also, the investors who did say a lot about X. Good lord.

From the article:

“We now have a complete list—dated April 2023—of who helped Musk acquire Twitter. I’ve argued that this list is important for a number of reasons, but here’s just one: according to the Washington Post, anyone who invested more than $250 million received special access to sensitive data about the company and its users. Who pitched in that much? Saudi Arabia, Qatar, a mysterious UAE-based venture capital firm, a lawless crypto exchange, and CIA contractor Ellison. I’m sure they’re happy with their access. What follows is a rough taxonomy of X shareholders—a half-serious attempt to categorize and account for the moneymen helping boost Musk Inc. It takes a lot of cash to prop up an oligarch, and some of it comes from unsavory sources.”

The Baffler: All That Twitters: Who owns a piece of Elon Musk?

Why the Eric Adams Is Such a Big Deal

Apart from the fact that the greatest city in the world (yeah, I said it) deserves better than a disorganized, pro-cop centrist with no policy agenda, the Adams fiasco speaks to a larger issue in our elections. Even with ranked choice primary voting, the election was essentially rigged by monied interests who tipped the balance in Adams’ favor. No matter how you slice it, the only fix that matters in our politics is to get money the fuck out of it.

From the article:

“While this moment is satisfying for his political opponents, we should remember that at the foundation of these allegations is Adams’s defrauding the public of funds. Despite his blessing by the business community and its giant spigot of cash, this fraud was necessary to create the fundraising advantage that narrowly produced his victory in the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary.”

Jacobin: Eric Adams Never Had a Mandate

This Week on the Pod

Show Notes: Meaningless Rage and Outrage on the Debate Stage.

The US Constitution ripped in the middle revealing white text on a blue background that says, ‘Unf*cking the Republic.’ Letters have a glitchy rainbow effect on them.

In this week’s Show Notes Max and 99 catch up in studio to touch on the Libya episode and catch up on recent feedback from Unf*ckers. Plus, they had a therapy session about the state of podcasting and feelings around the election as well. Enjoy!

Access Episode Resources

Don’t Miss:

The Great Man-Made River Project

Stamp commemorating Gaddafi as River Builder. His photo accompanies text that reads ‘Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The Great Man - River Builder.’

The Great Man-Made River in Libya was once considered the 8th Wonder of the World. Water was first discovered in the 1960s when oil and gas drilling companies discovered enormous aquifers beneath the desert sands of Libya. 20 years after these discoveries, Libya was under the brutal dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi who had overthrown the monarchy in 1969. Gaddafi embarked on an ambitious plan to pump water from under the desert into large reservoirs that were connected by pipelines throughout the country. While three of the five planned phases were completed at an estimated cost of $30 billion, the project was halted when Gaddafi was killed in 2011 during the Arab Spring uprisings. This is the fascinating story of a despot who had a grand vision for Islamic pan-Arab nationalism and will forever be linked to one of the greatest engineering feats the world has ever seen; a man who was ultimately betrayed by western “allies” and ironically died as brutally as he ruled at the hands of young Islamic Arab nationalists.

Here’s a snippet from the pod:

Max: “The discovery of vast oil reserves in Libya in 1959 changed everything. Suddenly Libya was on everyone’s radar. As we mentioned in the introduction, not only was access to the Mediterranean a crucial advantage, the quality of Libya’s crude was exceptionally pure and therefore easy to refine. Major oil and gas interests from the west began to set roots in an ally nation that happened to be in desperate need of capital. And the British were all too happy to wean the new kingdom off its foreign welfare support.”

Read The Essay

Access Episode Resources

Resources

Pod Love

“Eric Adams, soon-to-be-former Mayor of New York City, has finally been indicted—a surprise to no one. In this special episode of Gaslit Nation, we break down the latest developments and remind our listeners: If this is what we know, imagine what we don’t. Adams’ corruption and assault on democracy in NYC are just the visible tip of a much larger, deeply entrenched network of local corruption that has long served as a feeding ground for foreign adversaries. America is in a war of attrition, both abroad and at home. The barbarians are at the gate, and now more than ever, it’s going to take a resurgence of people-powered movements to defend our democracy and push back against these threats.”

Gaslit Nation: Barbarians at the Gate

Book Love

This one is a throwback. A book that lit a fuse for me and uncovered the fascinating world of commodities trading.

“In The Futures, Forbes magazine senior writer Emily Lambert tells the rich and dramatic history of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade, the original futures market. Commodities exchanges have become some of the largest financial markets in our global economic system, yet the exchanges themselves and the speculators who run them remain largely misunderstood, as does their chief instrument: the futures contract.”

The Futures: The Rise of the Speculator and the Origins of the World’s Biggest Markets by Emily Lambert

**Unf*cker Comment of the Week**

From @AaronLance on YouTube

“It’s not about him. Eric Schmidt just got caught saying the quiet part out loud. No one gets to that level of wealth without being a sociopath. They train and compete at how to exploit people.”

Progressive Corner

Progressive Spotlight: Jumaane Williams [Update].

The New York City Public Advocate is one of the most prominent progressives in New York. Long a fighter for marginalized voices, Williams isn’t afraid to use his position to advocate for justice.

Progressive Organization of the Week: Indigenous Environmental Network.

“IEN is an alliance of Indigenous Peoples whose Shared Mission is to Protect the Sacredness of Earth Mother from contamination & exploitation by Respecting and Adhering to Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Law.”

Check Out the New UNFTR Directory of Progressive Resources for More