FirstCircle

It is an astonishing thing to watch a single man hamstring the United States economy. It is also astonishing to watch Republican senators try to convince the American people that a falling stock market and contracting economy is a good thing. “Our economy has been on a sugar high for a long time. It’s been distorted by excess government spending,” Montana Senator Tim Sheehy told Fox News Channel host Larry Kudlow today. “What we're seeing here from this administration and what you're gonna see from this Congress is re-disciplining to ensure that our economy is based on private investment and free-market growth, not public sector spending.”

In fact, until a brief spike in spending during the coronavirus crisis, government expenditure in the United States as a percentage of gross domestic product has held relatively steady around 20% since the 1950s.

Today, Trump met with Secretary-General Mark Rutte of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) who was eager to get Trump to reiterate U.S. support for NATO. Trump told Rutte that the United States needs control of Denmark’s autonomous territory of Greenland “for international security, not just security—international—we have a lot of our favorite players cruising around the coast, and we have to be careful.” Asked about whether the U.S. would annex Greenland, he answered: “I think that will happen.”

All the talk now is of how we might defend ourselves without the US. But almost everyone with a voice in public life appears to be avoiding a much bigger and more troubling question: how we might defend ourselves against the US.

This is kinda regional, but also not, as the Grand Coulee Dam produces a tremendous amount of power for the US.

The third powerhouse ("Nat"), completed in 1974 to increase energy production, makes Grand Coulee the largest power station in the United States by nameplate capacity at 6,809 MW (Wikipedia).

And now the Regime is firing the people who run it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26300141

Though we might find it hard to imagine, we cannot now rule it out: the possibility of systemic collapse in the United States. The degradation of federal government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk could trigger a series of converging and compounding crises, leading to social, financial and industrial failure.

The law criminalizes being outside with “camping paraphernalia,” like sleeping bags or cookware, without written permission from property owners or the city. It includes a provision that anyone “causing, permitting, aiding, abetting or concealing” violations is subject to up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

“[The mayor] claims no service providers will get arrested, but ultimately, the law prevails,” said Vivian Han, CEO of the nonprofit Abode Services. “This is for all time, not just while he’s mayor.”

Greg Ward, a minister at Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation, said his church hands out “blessing bags” of food and clothing.

“Putting [them] in the hands of the unhoused could be aiding and abetting,” said Ward. “That could make us criminals.”

The previous Sunday, the workers spoke with a supervisor at Lamell, Jimenez said, telling him that they wanted a meeting with the company’s president, Ronald Lamell, Jr., to speak about the raise issue. The workers also wanted to discuss what they said were times company superiors entered employer-provided housing without permission. The group asked to have this meeting before they returned to work on Monday, Jimenez said.

The company did not agree to the meeting, and the supervisor indicated there would be “punishment” if the workers did not show up the following morning, Jimenez said.

The workers then commenced a work-stoppage on Monday morning. A manager entered the employer-provided home where Jimenez lives, he said, banging on doors and telling the workers they were fired if they did not show up for work.

The company then offered individual workers their jobs back at a lower wage, $14.50, according to Jimenez — a move he described as “humiliating.” The company also told the workers to vacate their employer-provided homes adjacent to the company’s sawmill, Jimenez said.

At the protest on Friday, the group marched to Lamell’s office with banners and drums, hoping to ask the company’s leadership for their jobs back — with a raise. Though employees could be seen inside through the office’s windows, none came to the door.

Instead, a fleet of Essex police vehicles pulled down the snowy road to the office.

Handing the organ to nurse Tammy Nelson, Shaknovsky told her to mark it “spleen,” even though it weighed at least 10 times as much as the average spleen and was clearly a liver, according to Bryan’s lawsuit. Nelson allegedly did as she was told.

Within minutes, other doctors and hospital higher-ups swarmed the operating room, the suit states. All of them allegedly recognized the organ that had been removed was a liver but nevertheless covered up Shaknovsky’s mistake by documenting on official records that he had cut out Bryan’s spleen.

Shaknovsky allegedly tried to persuade hospital staff members that it was the spleen. He repeatedly left and returned to the operating room to tell people that Bryan had died of a “splenic aneurysm,” the suit states. In informing Bryan of her husband’s death, he allegedly told her the cause was a spleen so diseased that it had swelled to four times the normal size and shifted to the other side of his body.

Ascension nurse Kathleen Montag chased Bryan into the parking lot and lied about how her husband had died to get her signature agreeing to forgo an autopsy, the suit states.

The cover-up fell apart when the district’s medical examiner performed an autopsy and determined that the organ that had been removed was Bryan’s liver while his spleen was untouched and in the normal position, state disciplinary records show. The medical examiner ruled Bryan’s death a homicide caused by bleeding to death and having his liver removed.

The leaders of the Greater Idaho movement have asked President-elect Donald Trump to support their efforts to have counties in eastern Oregon join Idaho – a state they say is more in tune with them politically, economically and culturally.

“Unlike typical politicians, you have a unique ability as a practical problem-solver to get things done, and your support can bring a peaceful resolution to Oregon’s long-standing east-west divide,” the three leaders said in a Dec. 4 letter to Trump.

Matt McCaw, the executive director of Citizens for Greater Idaho, said Thursday morning that the group has not yet received a response from Trump.

“It takes time for these things to filter through, but we are hopeful that somebody from the administration will reach out to us and pick this up,” McCaw said. “This is an idea whose time has come.”

The letter added that “eastern Oregon residents recognize that representative government will never come from Oregon because we are outvoted on every issue the progressives put forth, leaving us completely disenfranchised

On a recent snowy morning in Derby, Letourneau accompanied a reporter up to the hill near his home, pointing out along the way a large “Trump 2024” flag he had strung up nearby. Along the road at the foot of the hill, he has a large white and red sign telling state and federal law enforcement to “beware” and stay off of his land.

But he does allow the government to lease a slice of that land to operate a surveillance tower, a deal Letourneau said he signed off on because he thinks the tower is an important tool for local U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. He said he’s heard for years about those same agents arresting people who attempt to enter the U.S. on the road that runs along the hill and, at points, parallels the Canadian border.

“We need something they can work with to catch those aliens,” he said, referring to people who cross the border without authorization. “They’re coming right and left.”

Lt. John Rodgers, a 20-year sheriff’s veteran in Clark County, where Springfield is the county seat, made the statements in several posts on Facebook, WHIO-TV reported. In one post, he reportedly wrote: “I am sorry. If you support the Democrat Party I will not help you.” Another said: “The problem is that I know which of you supports the Democratic Party and I will not help you survive the end of days.”

The sheriff’s office said Rodgers, who has commanded the department’s road patrol, would remain on duty, with a written reprimand for violating the department’s social media policy.

While Boeing did not specify what would be taken away from Thursday’s offer if it were to fail, Holden said that could mean cutting any number of gains, including canceling a commitment to build the next airplane in the Puget Sound region, backing away from a 38% wage increase or losing a 1% decrease in health care costs.

On Friday, some workers were heeding Holden’s warning. Sitting down for an interview with The Seattle Times, Holden had just finished a Zoom call with more than 500 members who questioned him closely about the new offer and his recommendation to accept it. He had told them about the risk of losing the earlier gains.

The response from those on the call, he said, “led me to believe … they’re looking to accept it.”

For sure, there are still Machinists unwilling to bend. Rob Davis, a 13-year Everett employee, said he’s still a no vote and dismissed the union leadership as “a finger puppet of Boeing.”

Andrew DeFreese, an equipment operator in Everett, said Friday he’s also sticking with his no vote. He wants to hold out for more paid time off and quicker steps to progress through the wage scales.

Another fired worker, Hossam Nasr, said the purpose of the vigil was both “to honor the victims of the Palestinian genocide in Gaza and to call attention to Microsoft’s complicity in the genocide” because of the use of its technology by the Israeli military.

Nasr said his firing was disclosed on social media by the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism more than an hour before he received the call from Microsoft. The group didn’t immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on how it learned about the firing.

The same group had months earlier publicly called on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to take action against Nasr for his public stances on Israel.

Nasr, an Egyptian-raised 2021 graduate of Harvard University, is also a co-organizer of Harvard Alumni for Palestine.

Google earlier this year fired more than 50 workers in the aftermath of protests over technology the company is supplying the Israeli government amid the Gaza war. The firings stemmed from internal turmoil and sit-in protests at Google offices centered on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.