Taylor Swift SNAFU is a by-product of monopolies

FTX, Ticketmaster, and the Good People Hurt by Greed

ROBERT REICH for robertreich.substack.com

Taylor Swift performs onstage during the Z100's iHeartRadio Jingle Ball 2019 at Madison Square Garden in New York on December 13, 2019. (Photo: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

Friends,

I’m not going to talk about Twitter today. I want to focus on two other outrages.

Over the past week, both Ticketmaster and FTX crashed.

This is what unregulated monopolies do, eventually – taking lots of angry consumers with them.

Which is why we need to either regulate or to bust up corporations that corner markets. But to do so, we need to stop big money.

Taylor Swift is the most popular artist in America; she hadn’t done live shows for four years. Ticketmaster was her ticketing agent. But because Ticketmaster had under-invested in its platform, its site and app couldn’t handle the demand (not before scalpers managed to get plenty of tickets and put them on sale for multiples of the original list price).

The new White Meat

For more cartoons by Ted Rall, CLICK HERE

 

Here comes the Grifter in Chief

By Ann Telnaes

 

On Black Friday, Amazon Workers in 40+ Countries Strike and Protest 'Despicable' Treatment

Workers' protest puts spotlight on Amazon's dark side

JAKE JOHNSON For Common Dreams

Garment workers in Bangladesh take part in a "Make Amazon Pay" demonstration on November 25, 2022. (Photo: UNI Global Union/Twitter)

Thousands of Amazon workers in more than 40 countries are planning to mark Black Friday by walking off the job and protesting the corporate behemoth's abuse of employees and the climate, as well as its chronic avoidance of taxes while raking in huge profits.

"Make Amazon Pay" actions are expected to include marches and rallies for union recognition in Bangladesh, strikes at nearly 20 warehouses in France and Germany, walkouts in a dozen cities in the United States, and a protest by newly unionized workers in Japan.

"Today, unions, civil society, and progressive elected officials will stand shoulder to shoulder in a massive global day of action to denounce Amazon's despicable multimillion-dollar campaigns to kill worker-led union efforts," Christy Hoffman, president of UNI Global Union, said in a statement. "It's time for the tech giant to cease their awful, unsafe practices immediately, respect the law, and negotiate with the workers who want to make their jobs better."

Amazon spent around $4.3 million on anti-union consultants in the U.S. last year as it worked to crush historic labor organizing efforts in Alabama and New York. Workers ultimately voted earlier this year to unionize at a Staten Island warehouse, the first-ever organized location in the United States.

Meanwhile, Amazon avoided $5 billion in federal corporate income taxes in the U.S. last year, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, as the company continued to shortchange and exploit its employees, who are frequently injured on the job as they race to meet the company's punishing productivity metrics.

And every guy immediately covers his crotch

A new analysis shows a “crisis” of male reproductive health

Grace van Deelen for the Environmental Health News

For years, scientists across the world have gathered evidence showing declines in sperm quality. Now, new research compiling the results of those studies has found that sperm count has dropped dramatically around the world, and the rate of decline is accelerating.

In a new analysis, researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center, the University of Copenhagen, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, among others, found that sperm count globally dropped by more than half between 1973 and 2018, and that the decline is accelerating: Since 1972, sperm count has dropped by about 1% each year. Since 2000, the annual decrease has been, on average, more than 2.6%.

The findings raise concerns that an increasing number of people will need assistance to reproduce, as well as concerns about the overall health of human society, since low sperm count is linked to higher rates of some diseases. And while scientists are still trying to tease out the reasons for the drop, chemical exposures, especially to pesticides, are a likely factor — and climate change may even play a role. 

Researchers are calling for urgent action to bolster more research into sperm count, determine the causes of the decline, and prevent further deterioration of male reproductive health.

“We have clear evidence that there is a crisis in male reproduction,” Hagai Levine, lead author on the study and an epidemiologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told EHN.

Brown pledges to hire union labor for major construction

Brown commits to all-union labor, Building Futures support on construction projects over $25 million

Brown University

Through a new landmark agreement with the Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council and Building Futures, Brown University has marked a milestone in its longstanding commitment to ensuring that campus development serves as a regional economic engine and career catalyst for local workers.

During a signing ceremony at Brown on Monday, Nov. 14, University President Christina H. Paxson joined leaders from RIBCTC and Building Futures in signing a five-year memorandum of understanding that formally commits Brown to employing all-union labor for all campus construction projects over $25 million. This builds on a strong history of engaging union labor for Brown capital projects.

The agreement also extends the University’s existing goal of ensuring that at least 15% of labor hours worked to construct those projects are performed by graduates of Building Futures. Paxson said the formal project labor agreement deepens Brown’s commitment to the Rhode Island building trades by supporting an array of well-paying union jobs as well as training for local residents looking to build careers in construction.

Rise in mass shootings started in 2016

Rampage at Virginia Walmart follows upward trend in supermarket gun attacks

Jillian Peterson, Hamline University and James Densley, Metropolitan State University

The latest target in America’s gun crime epidemic. 
AP Photo/Alex Brandon

A gun rampage at a Walmart in Virginia is the latest amid a rise in mass shootings in general in the U.S., and mass shootings at grocery and retail stores in particular.

Multiple people including the gunman were killed in the incident on Nov. 22, 2022 at an outlet of the retailer in Chesapeake. It follows a racist attack at a grocery store in Buffalo earlier this year in which 10 Black shoppers were killed. A previous Walmart mass shooting in El Paso, Texas in 2021 was similarly racially motivated – 23 people were killed by a gunman who had posted a hate-filled anti-immigrant manifesto online.

We are criminologists who study the life histories of mass shooters in the United States. Since 2017, we have conducted dozens of interviews with incarcerated perpetrators and people who knew them. We also built a comprehensive database of mass public shootings using public data, with the shooters coded on nearly 200 different variables.

This can't possibly be a parody of Elon Musk, right?

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE.

 

Robert Reich discusses what happens next after the mid-terms

 

You can watch directly on YouTube here: What’s Next After The Midterms? Ro Khanna & Robert Reich Discuss - YouTube

Researchers Bust Common Telemedicine Myths

Not What You Think 

By UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER MEDICAL CENTER 

Telemedicine, often known as telehealth or e-medicine, is the remote delivery of healthcare services via electronic information and telecommunication technologies.  This allows healthcare providers to examine, diagnose, and treat patients without having to see them in person.

A new study shows that telemedicine is effective and doesn’t reduce access to care. 

A first-of-its-kind study demonstrating telemedicine’s exceptional effectiveness comes to the conclusion that common telemedicine concerns don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Just 2 minutes a day

Short Bursts of Vigorous Activity Linked With Living Longer

By EUROPEAN SOCIETY OF CARDIOLOGY

Bursts of vigorous activity lasting two minutes at a time and totaling just 15 minutes a week are associated with a reduced risk of death. This is according to new research that was published on October 27 in the European Heart Journal, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).^[1]

“The results indicate that accumulating vigorous activity in short bouts across the week can help us live longer,” said study author Dr. Matthew N. Ahmadi of the University of Sydney, Australia. “Given that lack of time is the most commonly reported barrier to regular physical activity, accruing small amounts sporadically during the day may be a particularly attractive option for busy people.”

American workers feel alienated, helpless and overwhelmed

Here’s one way to alleviate their malaise

Alec Stubbs, UMass Boston

Labor-saving technologies have not afforded workers more
leisure time. Pict Rider/iStock via Getty Images

First it was the “Great Resignation.” Then it was “nobody wants to work anymore.” Now it’s “quiet quitting.”

Yet it seems like no one wants to talk about what I see as the root cause of America’s economic malaise – work under contemporary capitalism is fundamentally flawed.

As a political philosopher studying the effects of contemporary capitalism on the future of work, I believe that the inability to dictate and meaningfully control one’s own working life is the problem.

Democratizing work is the solution.

EDITOR'S NOTE: While the author presents a number of very good ideas, none of them as likely to ever happen without strong labor unions. - Will Collette

GOP won't dump Trumpism anytime soon

Trump-backed Republicans lost some big races this year, but the leopard won’t change its spots.

By Mitchell Zimmerman 

By Michael deAdder

In the face of midterm election results that confounded predictions and crushed Republican hopes for a landslide victory, some in the media are suggesting that the party may finally turn away from Trump.

Trump-backed Republicans did indeed blow some critical races. But this hope suggests there are reasonable Republican office-holders out there who are now ready to liberate themselves from Trump’s orbit and re-make the GOP as a normal, democracy-respecting party.

The suggestion that there was an “extremist” fever that has run its course is false.

The reality: MAGA Republicans are the Republican Party. Few Republican politicians who resisted Trumpism remain in office, while Republican office-holders who supported Trump’s efforts to overthrow American democracy remain the mainstay of the party.

Recall that in 2020, even in the immediate aftermath of an insurrection that threatened the murder of Vice President Pence and House Speaker Pelosi, a large majority of Republican representatives voted to reject the results of a free and fair election.

These democracy-defying Republicans remain the core of the party. A solid majority of the Republican representatives who will assemble in Washington in January are the very same people who voted to reject the 2020 election result. There is no reason to imagine they will be more respectful of democracy in the future.

The Republican Party long ago abandoned behaving like a normal party — one which prizes democracy, accepts the verdict of the voters when it loses, and learns from defeats.

This is how it works after every mass shooting

 

Trump getting ready to run