“In 2009, President Obama and the EPA decided that the will‑o’-the-wisp of fine-tuning the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere fell under the agency’s purview. They introduced a not-so-thin wedge to pry open a vast new province of regulatory oppression. Obama had sought congressional legislation, but Congress had balked. So he proceeded without any new laws; or rather, as so often happens, told an agency to issue new laws. … Now things may change. Bigly. President Trump has ordered the EPA to un-find its 2009 ‘finding’ that it has blanket authority to regulate human emission of greenhouse gases. The change will be challenged in court. The Trump administration doubtless expects — perhaps even wants — the litigation.” (02/16/26)
Source: CounterPunch
by Kshama Sawant & David Montequin
“A general strike is when workers carry out a work stoppage and shut down the profits across workplaces, sectors, and industries in an entire city, region, or nation. A general strike can be a potent tool in the hands of the working class. By shutting down the business of an entire city, region, or nation, a general strike has the potential power to bring the capitalist machine to its knees. For those same reasons, organizing a general strike and making it successful by winning the strike’s demands is far from straightforward.” (02/16/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Alan Pell Crawford
“No question, the Post has been a great newspaper, but, like other great newspapers, it has been hemorrhaging money for years, in part because it has been losing subscribers. It’s ironic that a lot of the people now bemoaning decisions made by the Post’s top brass are themselves no longer subscribing. After Bezos decided to pull the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris (ending a practice of endorsing presidential candidates, which it only began to do about the time [Bpb] Woodward was a Metro desk reporter), 250,000 high-minded subscribers bailed out. They did so no doubt unaware of how their decision might affect the paychecks of reporters about whom they are now expressing such heartfelt concern.” (02/16/26)
“Several days ago, I wrote about some of the problems the SAVE Act. Specifically, I explained that the SAVE Act marks a radical shift for Republicans. When I was the vice president for legislative affairs at FreedomWorks, I attended meetings hosted by Republican leadership in 2019 in which they railed against House Democrats’ For the People Act. They complained that various aspects of the bill violated the core tenets of federalism and that others were unconstitutional. Although the SAVE Act isn’t as comprehensive as the For the People Act, it still encroaches on an area traditionally reserved for the states.” (02/15/26)
“An American statesman was born on a German stage over the weekend. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s impressive performance at the Munich Security Conference gives us an alluring glimpse of the president he could be one day. Rubio drew a standing ovation from the assembled European heads of state, intelligence chiefs, and military leaders for a speech that was no less forceful or frank than VP JD Vance’s address that jarred the same forum last year, but was delivered with a mellifluous voice and calm humility that disarmed even the most arch Euro-socialist. Rubio was warm and reassuring rather than sneering and contemptuous. But that was no accident. He was playing ‘good cop’ to Vance’s ‘bad cop’, a strategy that paid off with the collective ‘sigh of relief’ that conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger expressed afterward, as he motioned to the audience to sit and praised Rubio’s ‘message of reassurance’.” (02/15/26)
“It may not feel like it, but atheism in the United States appears to have hit its ceiling. According to the Pew Research Center, 2 percent of the country was actively, openly nonreligious in 2011. That number rose to 4 percent by 2021—but has remained constant since. America’s oft-discussed ‘decline in religion’ is actually a story about a decline in church attendance; one’s investment in an institutional religious community is separate from belief in a god (or gods) of any variety.” (02/15/26)
“After months of empty promises to the toxic online manosphere largely responsible for the Donald’s post-January 6 rehabilitation, the fact finally became inescapable even for the most heavily deluded of MAGAloids that their hero was indeed the dog who didn’t bark and he wasn’t about to release the Epstein Files that prove it. Trump, misdiagnosing this flip flop as just another in a long line of broken campaign promises, essentially told his personality cult to chill the fuck out and get over it. This is when Trump’s approval ratings cratered and the people he had storm the Capitol began to call for his combover. And then Donald Trump began bombing dinghies in the Caribbean before pounding his chest over the footage of these war crimes on live television while barking ‘I am not a pedophile!'” (02/16/26)
“That working from home is now an expected entitlement is the result of a changing business culture and company structures. In FTSE 100 companies, you will find tiers of well paid employees who are not exactly stretched to breaking point, some preoccupied by what David Graeber called ‘bullshit jobs’ or what the sociologist Roland Paulsen called ‘empty labour’. Examples can be seen in the ever-burgeoning human-resources departments. This growth of non-jobs and sinecures has wiped out the gains expected from productivity improvements and the adoption of new technologies. What’s more, as long as CEOs equate prestige with head count, these jobs look impervious to technological changes such as AI. It was the management and executive class who revelled in the opportunity to work from home when lockdowns were declared in 2020 – and who were the biggest beneficiaries.” [editor’s note: I have a feeling this will be the dumbest article I read this week – TLK] (02/15/26)
Source: Orange County Register
by Agustina Vergara Cid
“Looking at the history of the U.S. founding and how this country originated by defying overbearing authority, one would think that suing the government for rights violations would be rather straightforward. It is not. Instead, it’s a Kafkaesque nightmare that often leaves Americans unprotected and with untold damage left unrepaired in the face of government force. As the Trump administration continues with its mass deportations (a program that has swept up U.S. citizens as well), Americans are made to confront the harsh reality of our legal system: Suing the government is incredibly hard, and government actors wielding force inappropriately against individuals often go unpunished. This shouldn’t happen in America of all places.” (02/15/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Sites online have posts about the genius trick that … . Mostly they aren’t genius, a label much misused, but that started me thinking about small changes in what you do that are clear improvements, typically when you realize that what you were doing was stupid.” (02/15/26)
