Feb. 20, 2024 ❧ NLRB under attack, more border militarization, and Trump sells sneakers
Plus: New York's governor justifies genocide, Palestinian peace talks, Swaziland's Communist party, miniscule shrews, and more
Break news, not hearts
STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD UNDER ATTACK
Last week, Amazon became the latest prominent U.S. company—after Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Trader Joe’s—to argue in court that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional. The issue arose as part of an ongoing legal case, in which the NLRB has accused Amazon of illegal retaliations at its newly-unionized Staten Island warehouse. In what the New York Times calls a “novel claim,” the company’s lawyers argue that “the structure of the N.L.R.B. violates the separation of powers” provided in the US Constitution by “impeding the executive power provided for in Article II.” This isn’t actually a very novel argument, though. Last November, the notorious Federalist Society made a version of it, writing that “the Board’s so-called administrative law judges are too independent from the president to legitimately exercise executive power.” But as the Times reports, Amazon is also invoking the Fifth and Seventh Amendments, claiming that it’s unlawful that “board hearings can seek legal remedies beyond what’s allowed without a trial by jury.” By mixing and matching different Constitutional arguments, they clearly think they’ll have a better chance of dismantling the NLRB altogether.
We shouldn’t have any illusion that the NLRB is, in and of itself, an advocate for workers’ rights. Under President Biden, it’s sometimes acted that way, making landmark rulings in favor of easier unionization and trying to ban “captive audience” meetings where companies force their workers to hear anti-union propaganda. (In fact, the NLRB is one of the only good aspects of Biden’s presidency, and he should really talk about it more if he wants to get reelected.) But as Erik Loomis writes for Democracy magazine, the NLRB is also “fundamentally unstable and deeply partisan.” When a Republican president is in office, it’s perfectly capable of turning anti-worker, as it did under Ronald Reagan. Still, it’s something—some recognition that democratically-elected governments should hold power over corporations, not the other way around. That’s exactly what capitalists like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk can’t stand, and why they’re making this legal effort now.
Given the weighty and contentious nature of this case, there’s every chance it’ll reach the Supreme Court—and given the current 6-3 conservative majority, it’s likely that the court would rule against the NLRB. The labor movement needs to be prepared for that contingency, and have plans in place. If the courts try to roll back workers’ rights, they need to be openly defied—just as they should be when they repeal reproductive rights, limit the government’s ability to regulate carbon emissions, or make any of a dozen other reactionary, anti-human decisions. Unelected judges, some of whom are transparently corrupt, have no right to decide such things. It’s the working class itself—not any board, court, or Constitution—that holds the highest authority, and should always have the final say.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Texas Governor Greg Abbott has announced that his state will build a military base near the border town of Eagle Pass for 2,000 National Guard troops who will be tasked with stopping migrant crossings. This escalates an already fraught situation between the Biden administration and Abbott’s state government. Last month, Biden (with backing from the Supreme Court) ordered the National Guard to stand aside so federal Border Patrol agents can cut the deadly razor wire installed by Abbott, which has killed and injured migrants. Despite this, the National Guard has continued to block their access, creating an unnerving standoff that is putting federalism to the test.
Of more immediate importance, it’s the latest act of militarization against desperate asylum seekers as part of Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star,” which Abbott has said involves “using every tool” short of “shooting people who come across the border, because of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder.” (In Biden’s America you can’t even shoot defenseless people anymore without being accused of murder.) Texas has been accused of civil rights violations by the Department of Justice, and reports of brutal treatment have surfaced: everything from pregnant women being denied water to migrants being impaled by buoys with attached blades. Human Rights Watch reported in November that since Lone Star began, at least 74 people have been killed and 189 injured as part of high-speed chases, which are much more common in places where the operation is taking place. Biden is far from blameless here either. His administration’s May 2023 asylum ban has trapped countless people in life-threatening situations. Over just six months, Human Rights First documented more than 1,300 cases of “torture, kidnapping, rape, extortion, and other violent attacks on asylum seekers and migrants stranded in Mexico since the administration’s asylum ban was enacted in May.”
❧ In a truly horrible case, an elderly woman has committed suicide after being told she’d be evicted from her retirement home. The tragedy happened last Friday, in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles—in what locals describe as a “senior retirement community” where “everybody gets along and has fun.” Everybody, apparently, except those who can’t pay. According to the local ABC affiliate, the incident began as a “dispute regarding an eviction process” between “a woman in her 70s” and another, younger woman, who was either her landlord or—as Complex has it—a manager for her apartment building. During the eviction, reporters for KTLA 5 say that “the elderly woman shot the other woman in the torso and then fled the scene,” leading to a standoff with the police. Finally, she took her own life via a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
It’s a terribly sad end to a human life, and one that could easily have been avoided. It should go without saying that senior citizens should not be forcibly evicted from their homes; really no one should, but especially not people whose advanced age makes them economically and socially vulnerable. Any halfway-decent society would take care of such people, and simply provide them with free housing—not back them into a corner where they feel desperate or angry enough to lash out with violence. (It’s a particularly sickening detail that, in the United States, it’s easier to get a handgun than a safe roof over your head.) This was a shocking event, but eviction itself is deadly violence, and it’s being perpetrated every day. The fact that something like this could happen—and that it’ll probably happen again, sooner or later, to someone else—is evidence of a system of property and power that’s rotten beyond redemption.
❧ The state of Utah has passed a bill nullifying any nondisclosure agreements about sexual harassment or assault. Support for the measure was strong and bipartisan in both the state House and Senate, according to Business Insider. The new legislation is intended as a supplement to the 2022 Speak Out Act, which made NDAs unenforceable if they were signed before a dispute over harassment or abuse in the workplace. It goes a step further: It also nullifies any NDA signed as a result of a dispute or settlement about workplace abuse—something that can happen under duress, or in situations where a victim doesn’t fully understand their legal rights. Obviously, it’s good news that nobody will be forced to keep silent about sexual abuse by an NDA. The Utah legislature has made the right decision here, and it’s especially welcome coming from a largely conservative state. On the other hand, it’s horrifying that NDAs like these were ever considered a valid legal instrument in the first place, and that they still are in some jurisdictions. This legislation provides a model that other states can, and should, copy to correct a terrible injustice and protect workers’ basic human rights.
⚜ LONG READ: You probably pay more in income taxes than a lot of large corporations. In Popular Information on Substack, Judd Legum and Tensim Zekeria explore how thoroughly rigged America’s taxation system is in favor of the wealthy:
In 2020… the average American family paid an effective tax rate of 13.6%.
But some massive corporations with billions in profits have a much different experience.
On February 2, for example, General Electric (GE) reported about $7 billion in profits for 2023. GE CEO and Chairman H. Lawrence Culp Jr. was effusive. “In 2023, our teams delivered an excellent year, more than tripling earnings and generating almost 70 percent more free cash flow," Culp said in a statement. Culp noted the company was able to fatten the pockets of its shareholders by spending $7 billion on "dividends, buybacks, and retiring our preferred equity.”
You might expect that, with such a profitable year, GE sent a giant check to the federal government. Instead, GE received a refund of $423 million. Data from Americans for Tax Fairness shows that GE is not an anomaly. Earlier this month, T-Mobile reported over $10.9 billion in profits in 2023 but paid just $42 million in federal income taxes, an effective tax rate of just 0.4%. Meanwhile, Tesla recorded $3.2 billion in domestic profits in 2023 but paid just $48 million in federal income taxes, an effective tax rate of 1.5%.
The 2023 annual reports of public companies will be filed throughout the year. But in 2020, “55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes… despite enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States,” according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Those 55 companies collectively brought in over $40 billion in pre-tax domestic profit. But instead of paying federal income taxes, they received $3.5 billion in rebates from the federal government.
Another ITEP report found that 39 profitable companies paid no taxes over the three-year period from 2018 to 2020. This group included FedEx, Salesforce, Penske, and Advanced Micro Devices. And T-Mobile paid no taxes over that three-year period despite collecting $11.5 billion in profits. Another 79 profitable corporations paid less than half of the statutory rate of 21% between 2018 and 2020.
Companies are able to pay little or no taxes in part due to “long-standing tax breaks preserved or expanded by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” the signature tax policy of former President Trump. Companies can continue to take advantage of tax loopholes, including huge write-offs for giving executives stock options, shifting profits off-shore, and accelerated depreciation of equipment purchases. But the statutory tax rate was also reduced from 35% to 21%. So, companies are taking these deductions off of a much smaller base.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was supposed to “broaden the base” by eliminating loopholes and lowering the rate. It ended up just lowering the rate and keeping most of the loopholes. As a result, many companies are paying little to nothing. And if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election, he may make even deeper cuts to the corporate tax rate.
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has recalled Brazil’s ambassador to Israel. Diplomatic tensions have been rising between the two countries since Sunday, when Lula compared the Israeli military’s ongoing massacre of civilians in Gaza to the Holocaust, saying “What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments” except “when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.” It’s a comparison that’s been made before—including by Jewish scholars—but Lula is the first head of state to express it publicly, and it struck a nerve. In a pretty brazen move for a country under investigation by the International Court of Justice, Israel’s foreign minister has declared Lula’s comments “shameful and unacceptable,” indicating that the Brazilian president is unwelcome in Israel unless he apologizes. So far, Lula has shown no signs of doing that. Instead, he’s recalled Ambassador Frederico Meyer to Brasília, leaving Israel’s government more isolated than ever. This makes a striking contrast to the actions of American politicians, who—with a few honorable exceptions—have offered only the faintest noises about being “frustrated” with Israel, while still giving it full military support. Wouldn’t it be nice to have leaders with a backbone, for a change?
❧ Several important Palestinian factions are set to hold talks in Moscow. Although many Western observers aren’t aware of it, there’s a quite complex internal political scene in both Gaza and the West Bank, and some of its biggest players have been invited to sit down and hash out their differences. In a public statement on the 18th, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announced that “Russia has invited all Palestinian factions who will be meeting on the 26th of this month in Moscow.” Theoretically, this includes groups like Hamas, Fatah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and several others.
So far, it’s unclear which factions will actually attend, but Shtayyeh has called for “Palestinian unity” between them, urging Hamas in particular to meet with him and other representatives of the Palestinian Authority. In the past week, there have been reports that Hamas has agreed—at least in principle—to support a two-state solution and join the Palestinian Authority in forming a future “technocratic” government in Gaza, once the current violence ends. (Per the Jerusalem Post, this would mean a government “composed of individuals based on their technical expertise and knowledge rather than political ideologies,” with no “Hamas pre-stipulated members.”) If it comes to pass, this would be a landmark moment in Palestinian politics and history, reconciling two factions that have often been at odds. For that matter, it would be a diplomatic coup for Russia as the meeting’s host country. The only problem is the fanatical hostility of Israel and its leadership, who once again rejected the notion of a Palestinian state this week, and insisted on pushing forward with their plans for a military assault on Rafah. At this point, it’s abundantly clear which nation is trying to make peace—even if it means uncomfortable compromises—and which is determined to continue the bloodshed.
❧ Erik Prince, a Trump adviser and the CEO of the military contractor Blackwater, said on his podcast that the United States should re-colonize Africa and Latin America. Jon Schwarz of The Intercept quoted Prince saying the following on his show “Off Leash.”
If so many of these countries around the world are incapable of governing themselves, it’s time for us to just put the imperial hat back on, to say, we’re going to govern those countries … ’cause enough is enough, we’re done being invaded. … You can say that about pretty much all of Africa, they’re incapable of governing themselves.
His co-host Mark Serrano recoiled somewhat, warning Prince that “People on the left are going to watch this and they’re going to say, wait a minute, Erik Prince is talking about being a colonialist again.” Prince responded: “Absolutely yes,” adding that Latin America should get the same treatment.
This type of rhetoric is hardly shocking coming from a guy like Prince: His organization, Blackwater is drenched in blood, most notoriously from the 2007 Nassour Square Massacre in Baghdad in which four of its mercenaries fired on a crowd of unarmed people, killing 14 civilians (All the killers were pardoned by Trump). Speaking of Trump, he’s also an advocate of naked US imperialism, saying last year that the US should invade Venezuela to steal its oil after having previously said we should have taken all the oil from Iraq, too. America already practices imperialism across the globe, but at least leaders in more recent years have felt the need to justify it with flowery language about “making the world safe for democracy” and what have you. It should concern us greatly that people close to a man who might be president will be encouraging him to re-colonize the globe.
⚜ LONG READ: In Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), young communists lead the fight for democracy. In the New York Times, international journalists John Eligon and Joao Silva give a revealing profile of Manqoba Motsa, one of Eswatini’s growing number of young communist rebels. Visiting Eswatini for several weeks, Eligon and Silva describe a monarchy gripped by catastrophic youth unemployment, poverty, and disease, with a “wealthy ruling elite far removed from the everyday struggles of their people.” As time goes on, the struggle against that elite has heated up:
The riot police appeared out of nowhere, charging furiously toward the young protesters trying to oust King Mswati III, who has ruled over the nation of Eswatini for 38 years. The pop of gunfire ricocheted through the streets, and the demonstrators started running for their lives.
Manqoba Motsa, a college student, and his fellow Communists quickly slipped into disguise, pulling plain T-shirts over their red hammer-and-sickle regalia. They ducked down a sloped street and raced away, thinking that, somehow, they had escaped.
Then Mr. Motsa’s phone rang: A close friend at the protest had been shot. They found him splayed on a bed in the emergency room, a bloody bandage around his torso, a tube in his arm.
“We can’t stop fighting,” the wounded protester, Mhlonishwa Mtsetfwa, told the dozen red-clad Communist Party members surrounding his hospital bed. “We’ll do this until our last breath.”
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ Donald Trump has lost yet another high-profile legal case, and he’s turning to some… ‘interesting’ fundraising methods to settle the bill. Last week, a New York judge ordered the embattled ex-president to pay $355 million in fines for various forms of civil fraud, including lying about how rich he actually is. With interest, that amount increases to around $450 million—and that’s not including the fees for his battalion of no-doubt expensive lawyers, or the unrelated $83.3 million he owes to E. Jean Carroll for defamation. In short, The Donald seems to be facing a cash crunch that could trouble even his deep pockets. Grotesquely, a wealthy supporter named Elena Cardone has started a GoFundMe for his legal expenses, which has raised more than $657,000 at the time of writing. Potential donors should beware, though—in the past, a similar fundraiser for the “Stop the Steal” movement turned out to be wildly fraudulent, with much of the money really going to buy advertising and pay off various Trump assistants, including Melania Trump’s personal fashion designer. (Steve Bannon’s “We Build the Wall” fundraiser was a scam, too.)
Meanwhile, Trump himself has a much weirder money-making strategy. On Saturday, he made a surprise appearance at Philadelphia's Sneaker Con, where he unveiled his own line of designer shoes—and got loudly booed. There are a few different models of Trump sneakers available, but the most garish—and, therefore, the ones that seem to be Trump’s favorites—are the $399 “Never Surrender High-Tops,” which come in shiny gold with a huge “T” and an American flag on the back. They’re incredibly ugly pieces of footwear, but a limited edition of 1,000 pairs has already sold out on “GetTrumpSneakers.com.” There are also miscellaneous other tacky products available on the site, including “Victory 47” cologne and a “superhero charm” depicting a buff Trump in a spandex suit. However, where the money from this stuff will actually end up—and if anyone will ever receive their glittering Trump shoes—is still anyone’s guess. Surely it’ll all be completely aboveboard, right?
❧ New York Governor Kathy Hochul this weekend trotted out one of the most insane justifications we’ve ever heard for Israel’s indefensible massacre of civilians in Gaza. During a rally in Buffalo, she attempted to put the conflict in terms with which the simple folk of upstate New York could relate:
“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo,” she said, “I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day. But think about that, that is a natural reaction. You have a right to defend yourself and to make sure it never happens again, and that is Israel’s right.”
We shouldn’t mince words about this: Hochul here told a crowd of people that if one country attacks another, it is not only justifiable, but a “natural reaction,” to kill everyone who lives in that country. Hochul, of course, apologized after her comments provoked significant backlash. She called it “an inappropriate analogy that I now realize could be hurtful to members of our community,” which seems to suggest that the problem was not that she was literally advocating genocide, but that she compared Palestinians (who deserve to be massacred in acts of vengeance) to Canadians (who do not). Funny enough, were Hochul not a sociopath, this analogy could have actually been pretty useful. Most of us understand that even if Canada attacked Buffalo, that would not justify wiping out every Canadian because the collective punishment of ordinary people for the actions of their government is reprehensible. We would be outraged if our friendly neighbors to the north were slaughtered for something they didn’t do, so we should feel the same amount of horror when it happens to innocent people in Gaza.
SHREW FACT OF THE WEEK
The Etruscan shrew is one of the world’s smallest mammals!
If anyone has a legitimate claim to be “just a little guy,” it’s these shrews. They’re absolutely minuscule, with an average body length of just 1.6 inches (or 4 centimeters, for the more rational parts of the world). That makes them a strong contender for the title of world’s smallest mammal, with the bumblebee bat being their only close rival. Shakespeare would have no trouble taming one of these shrews; the difficulty is finding them without a magnifying glass. Despite their mouselike appearance, though, shrews are not rodents! They’re insectivores, which is another type of mammal altogether. Know the difference, before you accidentally offend one at a cocktail party.
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Fact-checking by Justin Ward. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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