Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid

“You would have to be ethically anesthetized not to detest such an obviously loathsome beast but the only thing more horrifying than this pathological trainwreck’s still buoyant popularity is the fact that he actually isn’t all that unusual among his fellow elites who seem to only begrudgingly tolerate his existence when they aren’t using their dying news empires to openly declare him to be the reincarnation of Gilles de Rais. We all seem to forget that Donald is in fact one of them, the gilded class of American aristocracy that floats effortlessly back and forth through the revolving doors of big business and big government. This is largely because both Trump and his ilk of swampland predators have quite a bit invested in the notion of him being exceptional. But he’s not.” (03/02/25)

https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-un-banality-of-maga-trump-is-not.html

Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp

“Yes, sexual abuse of children is a horrific crime. Yes, those who engage in it are criminals. But can imaginary characters be ‘minors?’ And are fictional depictions of those characters being victimized really ‘crimes?’ Over the years, politicians and law enforcement agencies have increasingly exploited such claims to groom the public into moral panic at the expense of REAL children suffering REAL sexual abuse in REAL life. It’s a pretty simple con. Most people rightly find the sexual molestation of children horrifying. They want it stopped. They want the perpetrators brought to justice. But investigating and proving real crimes is hard work.” (03/01/25)

https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/19396

Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson

“It’s not the practice of hiring foreign workers itself that undermines the bargaining power of labor. It’s the utter dependence of the foreign workers, under the H-1B program, on maintaining the favor of their employer in order to stay in the country. … Bernie [Sanders] is right, so far as it goes; it amounts in practice to a form of indentured servitude. The problem is his framing and his understanding of the structural causality. It’s indentured servitude because of foreign workers’ dependence on the employer. Their dependence on the employer results, not from their being allowed to enter the United States, not because immigration is so easy, but because legal immigration is so hard that it requires an employer’s sponsorship.” (02/28/25)

https://c4ss.org/content/60135

Source: The Intercept
by Nick Turse

“Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency began its cost-cutting efforts by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, which spends about $22 billion per year, about 0.3 percent of overall federal spending. DOGE has since targeted agencies focused on children’s education, protecting the natural world, and food safety. But after more than a month running roughshod through government, DOGE has made strikingly few cuts at the Pentagon, whose bloated budget tips the scales at around $850 billion — accounting for about 13 percent of federal spending. … Potential cuts aren’t hard to find: The Intercept easily sketched a road map amounting to more than $75 billion in annual savings for Musk and DOGE — and as much as $2 trillion over the next decade.” (02/28/25)

https://theintercept.com/2025/02/28/musk-doge-pentagon-military-spending-f35/