160 posts
Latest Posts by duboisproposal - Page 3
Hey, I feel like everyone should be aware that teachers in the U.S. are being taught how to deal with when I.C.E comes into their classrooms looking for undocumented immigrants (students aka children). I.C.E officers are allowed to detain teachers if they believe they are protecting students. This is actual dystopian shit. Putting children on planes without their parents and dropping them off at an airport in a probably unsafe country where they have little to no connections is inhumane! Everyone should be appalled!
The top lawyer for Republicans thinks the First Amendment does not apply when describing an adjudicated rapist, convicted felon, and fraud breaking laws in very obvious ways.
Free speech ends at the Oval Office.
They do not get more frail and braindead than Pam Bondi and First Felon.
U.S Added to a Global Human Rights Watchlist
Why You Should Be Worried About America’s Declining Human Rights Ranking
When you think of human rights abuses, you might picture authoritarian regimes, not the United States. But according to a new report from CIVICUS (source), the U.S. is now officially categorized as a "narrowed" democracy—a status shared with countries where free speech, protests, and civil liberties are increasingly under attack. The U.S. joins the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Chile, Slovakia, and 37 other countries with "narrowed" civic freedoms. That’s the kind of company America is now keeping.
What Does This Mean for You?
Your Right to Protest Is Under Threat – Laws restricting peaceful demonstrations have been ramping up, making it easier for authorities to criminalize protests they don’t like.
Censorship and Press Freedom Are in Decline – Journalists covering protests or political corruption are facing more harassment, and state-level laws are making it harder to report the truth.
Targeting of Activists and Marginalized Groups – The crackdown on civil rights groups, LGBTQ+ organizations, and racial justice movements is accelerating.
Legal Attacks on Voting Rights – Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and efforts to limit ballot access are all symptoms of a democracy that’s backsliding fast.
What’s at Stake?
If the U.S. keeps trending in this direction, basic freedoms—like the ability to voice your opinion, challenge authority, or even vote—could become privileges instead of rights. Young people, activists, and minority communities will be the first to feel the impact, but make no mistake: this affects everyone who believes in a fair and free society.
The Bigger Picture
This is not just about one bad policy or one election cycle—it’s about a systematic shift toward authoritarianism. Through executive orders, Trump has sought to consolidate power in the executive branch, making it easier for him and his allies to monitor and control departments and agencies to ensure they are only carrying out Trump’s agenda. The more people accept restrictions on speech, protests, and voting, the easier it becomes for those in power to tighten their grip. This is how democracies die: not with a single dramatic event, but through a slow erosion of rights, one law at a time.
What Can You Do?
Stay Informed – Know what’s happening at the state and federal levels.
Speak Up – The more people push back, the harder it is for leaders to silence dissent.
Vote Like Democracy Depends on It – Because, frankly, it does.
The U.S. has long claimed to be a beacon of democracy. But that light is fading—and unless we fight for our rights, it could go out completely.
"He hasn't violated any part of the constitution"
So I got this in one of those hit and run TUMBLR messages where the writer sends me a message, blocks me, and then runs away with it's tail between it's legs so I cannot reply.
I would normally post the person's name and the comment but I've grown soft in my old age. I think it's because the person is troubled and quite oblivious of the constitution.
But this gives me another chance to show what the constitution actually says and if i play my cards right maybe the poor person will come across it via another blog.
So, let's get this started, shall we?
He had a person arrested for speaking out against him. That violated Amendment 1.
He kicked a news source out of his news pit because they asked questions too tough for his staff. That also violated Amendment 1.
He gave a list of words that are forbidden to be used in scientific reports. Once again, a violation of Amendment 1.
He openly tried to pass a bill that will allow a group of people to hunt and handle people who are anti-Christian biased. Another violation of Amendment 1.
He has threatened to pull funding to any colleges that allow peaceful protests. That is another violation of Amendment 1.
Ok, what's next?
Let's revisit the man arrested at his own apartment because he spoke against Trump. Then we can discuss the woman that was arrested on the side of the street because she spoke out against Trump. The ICE officers shown no papers that gave them rights to arrest anybody legally. The officers have kicked down doors and arrested people for no real reason. This violates the fourth Amendment.
Let's talk about Due Process.
This is a little tricky but once you understand it... it's not hard to understand.
People have been arrested and sent out of this nation. These people received no trial. This also goes against the constitution.
It goes against the fifth amendment.
and the sixth amendment
and before you claim that they are not legal immigrants (which they were)
There is this part of the constitution...
So in other words, legal or illegal, while in this nation they SHALL RECIEVE DUE PROCESS
ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN COLLECTED BY ICE DESERVE DUE PROCESS.
So, to those that claim Trump hasn't violated the constitution... You need to wake up. Because you are next.
Don't believe me??
Here is a video of Trump openly saying that if you have guns and you get into trouble your guns will be removed with out due process... WITH OUT TRIAL
Thanks for playing.
In case it wasn't clear: DOGE is working with Russia, providing a backdoor for SOMEONE in Russia to login to US systems. PBS Newshour interviewed the whistleblower and yeeeeeah it's pretty damning stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWpqJ8pD2Ng Basically the cybercriminal version of hiding a blood stain on the floor by ripping out the floor and leaving a gaping hole where floor used to be.... But leaving a great big bloodsmear from the hole in the floor all the way to a suspiciously stinky truck in the parking lot, that's owned by the known neighborhood hitman, which also happens to be piled high with blood-stained flooring.
Can anybody give these old-ass Democrats protest lessons? They're acting like they're still living in pre-2015 politics when the GOP gave a shit and wasn't deranged.
A member gets up and starts shouting: All get up and shout with him.
Don't walk out: MAKE them carry you all out, not shutting up the entire time. I'm serious, go limp, be dead weight.
Putin's Puppet says a provable lie: Everyone chant "LIE" in unison for a solid minute instead of holding pitiful little signs in front of a man who can't read above a 3rd grade level.
Have someone who knows ASL sitting with you, interpreting everything in full view.
If you're gonna hold signs, make them BIG like you're actually trying to do something. Have them in multiple languages.
Make other signs that say clever or cutting things that will make him rage for days. "DOESN'T OLD TRUMP LOOK TIRED?" or "PUPPET PRESIDENT" or "EVERYONE IS FACT-CHECKING THIS SPEECH TRUMP DIDN'T WRITE" or "THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES" or his current tanking approval rating next to a laughing emoji.
Make a stink every day in congress, throw as many bills as you can on the floor even if they go nowhere, look like you're trying.
Have someone, idk maybe someone you actually want to boost for President in 3 gd years, be your voice of opposition in the media, loudly complaining and telling the facts, every single day. Let the people know you're there!
How hard is this? There's probably better suggestions than mine if they actually hired seasoned protestors or behaviorists/psychologists or even the biggest teenage troll they can find on a messageboard.
The Emperor Has No Clothes. So fucking act like it.
Fandom Crossover notes from Wikipedia
Saw this on wikipedia and thought it was cool - The author of the short story that inspired "They Live" - Ray Nelson In Paris, he worked with Michael Moorcock smuggling then-banned Henry Miller books out of France.
Ultimate Fandom crossover! Rowdy Roddy Piper! John Carpenter! Elric of Melnibone! Henry Miller! Sex! Action! Art! Pop Art! More sex but also some of it is kind of sad and humanistic in a alcoholic way! And a sword that hungers for souls!
Again when people say our protests are doing nothing…..
SHUT THAT SHIT DOWN!! LOOK AT THIS SIZE!! DC TURNED OUT!! (Not my pics since I got them from reddit and I had a burner 🤣)
And it’s NOTHING compared to BOSTON’S!!!!
Again guys….things are grim but they are NOT over yet!!!
Remember! Fascism ONLY WINS IF we let it!!
“Never again” is now.
They Live Part Deux
Roddy Piper and Keith David have kicked ass and died heroically while alerting the entire world that aliens have produced Mass Propaganda mind control convincing everyone to conform to a Late Stage Capitalism hellscape! In service to evil uncaring overlords!
The whole world has seen the evil unmasked, surrounding them, goading them, making everything worse, prodding people to commit atrocities and be uncaring and conservative. And then the sequel- it's been like two weeks, everyone knows that the rich people are uncaring evil aliens, but pretty much everyone just keeps going to work, and the greediest most ambitious people are A-Okay being in bed and working hand in hand with demonic alien entities with Nefarious Agendas. There isn't much action in the sequel, it's a slice of life story where everyone realizes they are boiling frogs incapable of doing much to cause change.
These are my shower thoughts when considering if I want to partake in the 50501 protest on the 19th.
The thing is - this helped a bunch of useless decrepit parasites and hurt everyone else. Royalty really just is like that. Tyrants and dictators really are like that. Hurt people indiscriminately. Claim somehow his actions benefit gullible people through demagoguery and propaganda. If you like a cruel dictator because you believe that his cruelty and irrational greed will benefit you, doesn't that seem to presuppose either a) you are going to be able to be in that room full of a small handful of deal makers in the white house, or b) the person who you admire because of their absolute lack of empathy or concern for others is somehow going to show concern for you personally and people just like you?
That's beyond really fucking dumb. You may be a Republican but you aren't going to feed from the trough of the corrupt Republican machine. You are grist for their appetite. Your families and communities are grist for their lust for conquest and power and absolute control. Corruption only helps a small handful of assholes. Just because you may be infected with delusions doesn't mean anything good will come from them. This is pure destructive Mad King Bullshit.
No corruption to see here folks please don't pay attention to the giant red flag. I really fucking hate it here.
No corruption here folks! 🙄
Hey, just in case you have trouble with false equivalency between Antifa and Fascists. Someone made this handy chart to help you with your stupid bullshit!
I mean she did tell you.
Hey friends!! April 5th was a success! Here’s a next protest date!!
This is great because it keeps the momentum! The MAGAs wanna pretend this accomplished nothing but it did so let’s continue!
Movements that don’t continue with their momentum go nowhere and that is something that we can NOT afford!
Not to do something about Shitbreak’s wannabe DICTATOR March….
conservatives need to get the fuck off of Tumblr, this is NOT your place buddy...
The most remarkable thing about antitrust (that no one talks about)
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH on May 15 at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE. More tour dates here.
It's hard to remember now, but for more than three years under Biden, it was possible to read the headlines every morning and feel excited that your government was taking big, decisive action to tame the corporate behemoths that rip you off, maim you on the job, and undermine our democracy.
The antitrust surge under Biden was and is a truly remarkable thing: a sustained, organized, effective government policy that supported the interests of the majority of people against the interests of a tiny cohort of ultra-wealthy wreckers and looters. According to political scientists, that antitrust surge should have been impossible. In 2014, a pair of political scientists from Northwestern and Princeton published their landmark study, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens":
https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-%20Page1.pdf
The paper analyzes 1,779 US policy fights from 1981 to 2002, and conclude that the US only does things that regular people want if those are also things that rich people want:
Ordinary citizens… get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence.
When ordinary people want something that rich people don't want, ordinary people lose. Even when 80% of us want something, we only get our way 43% of the time. This is antidemocratic in the most fundamental sense: rich minorities get their way at the expense of working people, nearly all the time.
And then there's antitrust. Ordinary people don't like having their wages stolen. They don't like having their rents jacked up by algorithmic collusion. They don't like having their air and water poisoned. They don't like being mangled or killed on the job. They don't like having to sign noncompetes that bar them from taking a better job if one opens up.
More to the point, working people are not made better off when stuff like this happens. On average, working people own either zero or nearly zero stocks, not even in a 401(k) retirement savings, because 40 years of wage stagnation and the near-abolition of employer based defined-benefits pensions has left most Americans with nearly no retirement savings (hence the panic over Trump and Musk's attempt to kill Social Security):
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses
By contrast, the richest 10% own 94% of all the stocks held by Americans. Even if you, personally, don't want to be locked up by a noncompete or have your water poisoned by frackers, if you're in the top 10%, you probably benefit when this happens. After all, businesses cheat and maim because it's profitable, not because they're sadistic (they may be sadistic, or they may be depraved in their indifference to the harms they visit upon the rest of us, but the reason they do it is money):
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-ownership-wealthiest-americans-one-percent-record-high-economy-2024-1
Antitrust systematically attacks the sky-high monopoly rents extracted by the largest corporations and redistributes them to working people and small businesses, which, for the most part, are not listed on stock exchanges or traded over the counter. In other words, antitrust is a way to clobber the policy priorities favored by the wealthy in order to benefit the rest of us.
That means that the antitrust surge is amazing. It's one of those things that shouldn't exist at all. It defies political science. What's more, antitrust fervor precedes the Biden administration. Some of the Biden administration's most important antitrust cases (like the Google case) started under Trump. Some were even kicked off by far-right state attorneys general, like Texas's cartoonishly corrupt AG Ken Paxton, who led a coalition of nearly every AG in American in suing Facebook.
Antitrust fervor isn't a US phenomenon – it's global. Take Canada: in its entire history, the Competition Bureau (Canada's answer to the FTC) filed only three merger challenges, and won zero of them. But last year, Parliament passed a massive, muscular new bill giving the Competition Bureau unprecedented powers:
https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-59
In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority led the world in investigating and punishing Big Tech monopolies…and they did so under a succession of shambolic Conservative governments. Indeed, it was a Labour (or "Labour") Prime minister, Keir Starmer, who fired the head of the CMA and replaced him with the former head of Amazon UK:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter
We've seen big, ambitious antitrust action all over the world: Germany, France, Spain, the EU, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and even China.
It goes without saying that there is no dark money org funneling billionaires' wealth into this project to destroy billionaires. This is a groundswell political phenomenon, it's global, and it's powerful. The fact that Starmer and Trump have gutted their wildly effective antitrust agencies is heartbreaking, but it's not the end. The reason the US and the UK pursued such an ambitious antitrust agenda is the public groundswell. Getting rid of the agencies doesn't kill that groundswell – if anything, it only makes people madder.
It's hard to overstate just how weird the antitrust surge is. We've been fighting for decades for even tiny concessions to the interests of working people – a modest, below-inflation rise in the minimum wage, say, or small-dollar efforts to improve public education, reduce student debt, or control the price of prescription drugs. These efforts have largely failed, and when they've succeeded, the victories were modest, or worse, merely symbolic.
But antitrust is the exception. Antitrust – again, a movement that is squarely aimed at neutralizing the power of the wealthy – is the most successful popular movement of the past decade. Companies worth trillions of dollars are facing breakup as a result of antitrust cases. Everyone from meat-packers to landlords to sea freighters to pharma companies have faced massive, multi-billion-dollar setbacks at the expense of the antitrust movement.
Like I said, the current antitrust surge kicked off under Trump. But of course, that doesn't mean the GOP power-brokers support it – rather, they were cornered into it by their own base. The same is true of the Democrats: Biden didn't appoint the most effective antitrust enforcers the US has seen since the 1970s because he opposed corporate monopolies. Remember, this is the guy who, on the campaign trail, told business audiences that "nothing would fundamentally change" under a Biden administration:
https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/
Nor does the Democratic Party power-structure support this stuff. Remember when Harris's billionaire surrogates Marc Cuban and Reid Hoffman demanded that Harris fire the Biden administration's antitrust enforcers?
https://prospect.org/power/2024-07-26-corporate-wishcasting-attack-lina-khan/
The success of the antitrust movement happened in spite of the Democratic Party, in spite of the GOP. To the extent that either party embraced an antitrust agenda, it's because the people demanded it, so undeniably that the parties chose the public interest over the interest of the billionaires who call nearly every shot for them.
It's impossible to overstate what an anomaly this is. On today's episode of the excellent Organized Money podcast, hosts Matt Stoller and David Dayen reminisce with Jonathan Kanter, Biden's former DoJ antitrust boss, about a conference they attended together in 2017 where the after-dinner keynote speaker was Richard Posner, a judge who was hugely influential in the dismantling of antitrust in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Dayen, the substance of Posner's keynote was:
Antitrust. That's dead, isn't it? I don't know what you guys are even talking about. This is ridiculous. There is no such thing as antitrust law.
And Kanter, Dayen, Stoller and future FTC chair Lina Khan were all sitting around a table, listening to this in 2017. By 2021, Kanter and Khan were running the DoJ and FTC antitrust agenda, and they did more in the next three years than all their predecessors over the past 40 years, combined.
Khan, Kanter, and their colleagues (like Rohit Chopra at the CFPB) did incredible work during the Biden administration. There is no denying their skill, their competence, their commitment. But the reason they were able to bring all those virtues to bear in service to working Americans is the massive popular surge of rage at corporate dominance. In other words, the Biden administration's prodigious trustbusting accomplishments were the effect of the antitrust movement, not its cause.
The corollary is that just because Trump has dismantled the agencies that were buoyed up by the movement, it doesn't make the movement itself smaller or less powerful. If anything, the Trump regime's relentless pursuit of an agenda in service to the rich at working people's expense will only add fuel to the anti-corporate, anti-billionaire wildfire. Trump's tariff chaos might be bad for some parts of the ruling class, but as Van Jackson writes for Labor Notes, there's plenty of plutocrats who love the prospect of a deep recession sparked by global trade chaos:
[L]avish tax cuts, deregulation, and an environment friendly to union-busting are just as valuable to most CEOs as a growing economy. What they lose in the stock market, they will more than make up in surplus labor, a fire sale on distressed assets, and Trump’s promise to totally eliminate the capital gains tax.
https://labornotes.org/blogs/2025/04/viewpoint-why-oligarchs-want-recession?
American wealth is more concentrated today than it was in France on the eve of the French Revolution. People are pissed. That anger is out there, waiting to be harnessed by smart political movements:
https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1909607195961917687
To grab that anger and mobilize it, we need to show people that their rage over specific issues is actually downstream of excessive corporate power. Furious that one company owns every brand of eggs and has used the excuse of bird flu to make record profits? You're not angry about eggs, you're angry about corporate power:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/10/demand-and-supply/#keep-cal-maine-and-carry-on
Worried that the EPA has been put in an induced coma and that means your kids will grow up with asthma and lead poisoning? You're actually angry about corporate power:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/04/air-pollution-trump-administration/682361/
The Department of Education is in the hands of a woman who took over her rapey husband's professional wrestling monopoly, a corporation that misclassified performers as contractors, leaving them without health care so they have to beg for pennies on Gofundme so they can die with dignity of their workplace-related injuries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8UQ4O7UiDs
Trump's Secretary of Education is monumentally unqualified for her position. Not only is she is planning to fire teachers en masse and replace them with AI, she doesn't know what AI is and just gave a speech where she repeatedly referred to it as "A-1":
https://gizmodo.com/trumps-education-chief-linda-mcmahon-repeatedly-calls-ai-a1-in-school-speech-2000587329
Angry about this? Worried that your kids' teachers are about to be replaced with steak-sauce thanks to the incompetence of this fucking muttonhead? Me too. But you're not just angry at Trump or Linda McMahon – you're angry at corporate power.
In his book The Public Domain, the copyright scholar James Boyle talks about the political salience of the term "ecology." Boyle recounts how, prior to the rise of the word "ecology," there were many standalone issues, but no movement. Sure, you care about owls, and I care about the ozone layer, but what does the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere have to do with the destiny of charismatic nocturnal avians?
https://thepublicdomain.org/thepublicdomain1.pdf
The term "ecology" welded all these thousands of issues together into a movement. When I look at the incredible, organic, bottom-up surge of antitrust energy, the only explanation I can find is that something similar is happening here. Concentrated corporate power is the common enemy of beer drinkers, surgeons, shippers, patients, farmers, grocery shoppers, social media users, any anyone who wears sneakers:
https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers
Something remarkable is happening, right under our noses. Nothing like this has happened in my lifetime. The world is terrifying, but this? This is exciting.
Smart political organizers have a once-in-a-century opportunity here. Trump's wildly unpopular destruction of the antitrust enforcement system opens up all kinds of opportunities for state enforcers (remember, states can also enforce antitrust law):
https://www.thesling.org/state-antimonopoly-enforcement-must-be-a-guardian-of-american-democracy-heres-how/
A massive political change that bubbles up from the bottom, aimed directly at the richest, most powerful people in the history of the human race, is an amazing thing. As bad as things are – and boy are they bad – this remains true, and important.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/10/solidarity-forever/#oligarchism
Image: umseas (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/snre/34605145761/
CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
☠️💀☠️
Power to the People
“Trump is corrupt. So corrupt, in fact, that it is kind of alarming to me that we are not talking about his corruption even more than we are already talking about it. I mean, his family started some damn crypto companies and then he, as president, declared that he is going to get the US government to buy a ton of crypto. He is directly selling off pardons and commutations to felons who can pay adequate bribes. He is firing prosecutors who are Democrats and installing buffoonish loyalists in important legal positions, so they can conduct witch hunts on his behalf. The world’s biggest and most complex corporations have been reduced to paying bribes in order to directly beg the president for their priorities, at the club the president owns.”
— Hamilton Nolan