Last week in El Salvador:

An El Salvador court has rejected the appeal of a woman sentenced to 30 years in prison over what she says was a stillbirth.

Teodora del Carmen Vásquez, 37, said she was working in 2007 when she began to experience intense pain, then bleeding. She called for help before fainting. As she came round, police officers surrounded her and accused her of murdering her baby by inducing an abortion of her nearly full-term baby.

She was convicted of aggravated murder in 2008.

The non-profit Center for Reproductive Rights, which has been campaigning for the release of dozens of other women convicted of murder in El Salvador for obstetric emergencies, said the decision was “another slap in the face for Teodora, who never committed any crime”.

“The Salvadoran court is perpetuating the criminal prosecution of women who suffer pregnancy complications, denying women their dignity, freedom and rights,” said Nancy Northup, the centre’s president and CEO.

“El Salvador’s abortion law criminalises and wrongfully imprisons women. Today the Salvadoran court chose to deny Teodora her due process.”

That “savior” really hates women.

In 2014, a coalition of NGOs, led by Agrupación Ciudadana and the Center for Reproductive Rights, launched the “Las 17” online campaign to call for the release of women who had experienced obstetric emergencies and who were charged with having an illegal abortion and then convicted of murder. Three women have been released. But in July 19-year old Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz, who had been raped, was sentenced to 30 years for murder after she had a stillbirth.

What was that about witch hunts again?

Sweden too.

Cissi Wallin was inspired by the explosion of the Harvey Weinstein racket to name a name.

Ms. Wallin had filed a police report in 2011, a few years after she was sexually assaulted, only to see it dismissed within weeks. Now she decided to do something different: She put the name of a well-known columnist for Sweden’s largest left-wing tabloid newspaper on her Instagram page, alongside a statement saying he had drugged and violently raped her in Stockholm more than a decade ago.

Soon more people came forward about the man. I was a co-author of an investigation into his behavior.

And suddenly, just as in the United States, stories of other national figures in the arts and media began pouring forth. About men who had used their professional power and influence to harass or abuse younger, often subordinate women, often at work. About situations in which “everyone knew,” but men viewed as indispensable had been protected by management for years (sometimes the perpetrators were management). In contrast to the situation in the United States, however, the wave quickly grew beyond accusations against the famous and powerful: Tens of thousands of Swedish women have signed a series of appeals in the national press detailing incidents of brutal sexual assault and harassment in almost every professional field, from law, medicine and academia to politics and defense. Committed by Swedish men.

The libertarian crew will say oh no, that’s a witch hunt, that’s infantilizing women, that will never do; all those tens of thousands of women must deal with their own personal harasser or harassers and then Move On. But knowing it happens a lot lets women know they’re not alone in being harassed and they’re not alone in saying it should stop. It’s not weak or infantile to want to know what the truth is and to want fellow resisters in fighting back.

As someone who has lived and worked in both Sweden and the United States, I’ve seen sexual harassment in both places over decades. In my experience, the American workplace is more openly sexualized and flirtatious, a place where women are expected to be open and enthusiastic to advances by men, whether in the form of offers of mentorship that must happen over dinner or as more direct abuses of power.

Sweden, on the other hand, is more cold, correct and asexual on the surface. But give a Swedish man a drink or two after work, and you’ll be surprised how quickly many of them will take out their various frustrations in the form of lewd behavior against women, only to seamlessly go back to voicing egalitarian ideals the next day.

#ThemToo

Via Actual Feminist News:

Stop the Harassment and Threats
Against Radical Feminists

Ad in the December 2017 Issue of The Progressive

[Note from the editors: Below find the text of an ad that appears in the December issue of The Progressive. In our view the issue raised warrants a conversation on the revolutionary left. We are therefore reproducing the ad here as our way of helping to facilitate that discussion.]

As socialists and progressives we are committed to building a united movement of the left rich in our diversity capable of creating a just, democratic, and egalitarian society freed from all forms of oppression and discrimination. To build such a movement for fundamental change will require an atmosphere of mutual respect, and an ability to tolerate political differences among our movement sisters and brothers. It will also require a willingness to engage in open debate and discussion in order to find common ground and build solidarity among various oppressed groups with at times divergent interests.

Radical feminists have been an essential part of the broader progressive movement for social justice from the Second Wave of feminism in the 1960s through the present. Radical feminism puts front and center the question of female liberation, i.e., how to end female oppression and subordination by a patriarchal society, therefore raising important issues for the left.

We are therefore disturbed by recent demonization, intimidation, and threats of violence against radical and lesbian feminists by certain segments of the transgender community and their supporters who have attempted to silence feminist voices and have had a chilling effect on the ability to engage in open discussion and debate on complex issues of sex, gender, and sexuality, a debate that is sorely needed in order to build an effective and united movement.

These disturbing incidents include the following:

(1) Ann Menasche, a long time social justice activist, socialist, Green, and civil rights lawyer was cyberbullied on Facebook in March of 2017 by a group of trans-activists and their supporters. She was labeled a “TERF” (“Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist”), “Nazi,” “rapist,” “racist,” and a supporter of “genocide” who, like other “TERFs” are hateful bigots that deserve to die. Several people contacted her employer in an unsuccessful attempt to get her fired from her job. Her “crime” was to respond to a post by writing that persons born female are oppressed on the basis of sex (a position taken by many leftists since the time of Karl Marx), and that it was unfortunate that many males fail to recognize this fact.

(2) Feminists involved in the Vancouver Women’s Library faced similar threats and epithets by a group calling itself “Trans Communist Cadre” during its opening night event in February of 2017. Though the library welcomed transwomen to participate in the event and to join the library, more than two dozen protesters showed up, blocking and assaulting female patrons, tearing a poster from the wall, pouring red wine on the bookshelves and books, and tripping the fire alarm. They labelled library supporters “TERFS” and “fascists,” demanded that the library take “TERF” books off the shelves (authors such as Adrienne Rich and Mary Daly) and made groundless accusations of violence against library founders.

(3) In March of 2017, Tasha-Rose Hodges, a mother of six with children in the St Paul, Minnesota, school district, announced her candidacy for Board of Education. The focus of her campaign was to improve the quality of education in St. Paul and address problems like lead in the drinking water. She had also taken a strong stand against bullying of any kind in the schools, including on the basis of gender identity. However, because she had expressed gender-critical views, within 24 hours of announcing her candidacy, an on-line campaign began to bully her into dropping out of the race. They described Hodges as a “loathsome snake,” accusing her of spreading “venom” and “hate,” with one writer telling her crudely to essentially go home and masturbate. Another reminded readers “to punch your local TERF.” The harassment escalated to include death threats. Hodges ended up dropping out of the race because it was no longer possible for her to focus on the issues that had motivated her campaign to begin with.

(4) In January, 2017, the Working Class Movement Library in Salford England, a small volunteer-run library which archives stories of working class people’s lives and activism, announced that it would be hosting feminist journalist Julie Bindel as a speaker. Julie is a founder of Justice for Women, a movement for women who live with domestic violence. She was to speak on her experiences growing up as a working class lesbian. In response, hundreds of people began a petition campaign demanding that the library rescind the invitation, claiming that her work and her views on gender constituted bigotry. Julie was accused of “violence,” and was called a “fascist” and “Nazi.” The protesters even went so far as to go after the library’s funding. However, many women around the world voiced their support for her right to speak. Ultimately, the library did not cave into the pressure to no-platform her, and on February 4, 2017, Julie gave her talk.

(5) In January, 2017, Carey Callahan, a person who has detransitioned from a transman back to female (not herself a radical feminist), posted on her blog a link to screen shots of responses a friend of hers, also a de-transitioner, had received to a post the friend made on twitter. Her friend had tweeted that she believed there was a need for female-only space. Two transwomen responded by providing a detailed description of how they would rape her, sending her pictures of their genitals. Casey, who describes herself as “invested in the well-being of anyone with gender dysphoria, whether trans-identified or not,” declared that she was done with taking seriously people who use the word “TERF” because of the harassment and threats that go along with the word.

Tragically, both radical feminists and transgender persons experience oppression and violence (overwhelmingly at the hands of heterosexual males) as a result of the strict gender norms, sexism, and homophobia of our society. Women as a group are subjected to systemic physical and sexual violence. Moreover, many radical feminists are lesbians who remain a marginalized and stigmatized group because of their sexuality. Most lesbians are also gender nonconforming in other ways and many have themselves experienced “gender dysphoria.” To the extent that conflicting ideologies and interests have developed between activists from two oppressed groups—transwomen and radical feminists—we are challenged to find ways to enhance communication and debate and to ensure that all voices are heard.

We, the undersigned, as supporters of feminism and progressive politics believe that regardless of one’s views on gender, the tactics of name-calling, no-platforming, and threats to individual feminists’ jobs, livelihoods, and personal safety must be wholeheartedly rejected by progressives. Such tactics have no place on the left.

Signers:

Mick Allan—Author, British Labor Party & union mem-ber: UK • T. Grace Atkinson—Radical Feminist, author: New York • Jessica Barr—Lesbian Feminist: North Carolina • Tina Beacock—Lesbian, socialist, Chicago Teacher’s Union member: Illinois • Julia Beck Jean-Baptiste—Case manager, Dept. of Health; feminist activist: Maryland • Steve Bloom—New York City activist, poet, composer: New York • Michael Brackney—Green Party activist: California • Sandi Brockway—Founder, “Microcosm USA,” peace & justice activist: California • Ras-Iras Charles—Non-western progressive, writer on politics/economics: Dominica • Beth Chopp—Engineer, former union president: California • Paul Cocksholt—Socialist author, Scottish Republican activist, Member, Solidarity (Scotland): UK • Kim Cortez—Marxist feminist writer: Arizona • Max Dashu—Historian, educator & writer: California • Peter Dolack—Activist, author, writer of “Systemic Disorder” Blog: New York • Martin DuFresne—Translator, pro-feminist activist: Canada • Theresa El Amin—Founder & Regional Director, Southern Anti-Racism Network: Georgia • Marisa Figueiredo—Redstockings: Massa-chusetts • Mariana Firestone—20 something radical lesbian feminist & activist: New York • Laurie Fuchs— Founder & director, Ladyslipper Music: North Carolina • Rochelle Glickman—Feminist & Green Party member: California • Rick Greenblatt—Independent Socialist, Green Party activist: California • Shani Handel—Long-time activist: New Mexico • Carol Hanisch—Women’s Liberation; co-editor of Meeting Ground On-line: New York • Kim Harmon—Educator, feminist: Ohio • Chris Hedges—Author & social critic, “On Contact”: New Jersey • Pete Healey—Long-time activist: New York • Andrea Houtman—Long-time socialist & Green Party activist: California • Rya NT Jones—Trans YouTuber: Wisconsin • Morgan Laird—Writer, student, radical feminist activist: Texas • Traven Leyshon—Dual mem-ber Solidarity/Democratic Socialists of America, socialist labor activist: Vermont • Rachel (“Charlie Rae”) Lima—Writer, “The Fifth Column”: North Carolina • Merritt Linden—Lesbian Feminist activist: California • Karla Lindquist—Domestic violence counselor, reproductive rights and union activist: Oregon • Fran Luck—Host/Producer, “Joy of Resistance,” Multi-cultural feminist radio, WBAI: New York • Sherry Lypsky—Red-stockings: Pennsylvania • Matt Meyer—Int’l Peace Research Association: New York • Selene Michaels—Visual artist & feminist activist: New York • Blaine Mogel—College instructor, Sierra Club & Green Party: California • Nichole Montoya—Web developer, Housing & Green Party activist: California • David Morrison—Green Party Activist: California • Meghan Murphy—Founder & Editor, Feminist Current: Canada • Lisa Neuman—Translator, Radical Feminist: UK • Damien Oheix—Factory worker: France • Sarah Palmer—Marxist freelance writer: Massachusetts • Marge Piercy—Poet, novelist, memoirist: Massachusetts • Lynne Sandoval—Lesbian-feminist & Green Party activist: California • Kathie Sarachild—Redstockings: New York • Kathy Scarbrough—Women’s Liberation; co-editor of Meeting Ground On-line: New Jersey • Meg Starr—Resistance in Brooklyn: New York • Jean-Baptiste Studer—Polemicist; former local secretary, Movement des Jeunes Communistes de France: France • Linda Thompson—Past co-chair, Green Party of Connecticut: Connecticut • Emily Weir—Trade unionist, communist: UK • Parker Wolf—Radical feminist, Butch Lesbian blogger: Illinois • Miranda Yardley—Transexual blogger; editor, “Terrorizer” music magazine: UK

All organizational affiliations for identification purposes

For years, decades, workplace sexual harassment goes unreported and unprevented, then one big perp is outed and the dam breaks – so naturally the next step is the move to say repair that dam right now. Spiked came up with several women prepared to say this has gone much too far – not the routine harassment but the reporting of the routine harassment.

Lionel Shriver is one.

In the complicated dance of courtship, someone has to make a move, and the way one conventionally discovers if one’s attraction is returned is to brave some gentle physical contact and perhaps accept rebuff.

Actually it’s not. There are many other “moves” in that complicated dance; physical contact is not the first step. Also, the workplace is not a dating agency, and it’s a bad idea to treat it as one. The issue isn’t just groping in general, it’s mostly groping at work and how it can handicap women.

Julia Hartley-Brewer is one.

Women who put up with sexual harassment and keep quiet about it for years, protecting the perpetrators, are hailed as heroines and strong, powerful feminists. Yet, bizarrely, women who speak out and deal with sexual harassment forcefully at the time, and then happily move on with their lives as I and millions of other women have done over the years, are derided as ‘victim-blamers’ or even ‘rape apologists’. It’s almost as if a woman is only ‘the right kind of woman’ if she is willing to play the victim.

Horse shit. Women didn’t “put up with sexual harassment,” they had it forced on them and weren’t able to speak out and deal with it. Some did speak out but got nowhere; some did speak out and got fired or blacklisted. Apparently Hartley-Brewer had better luck, which is great for her, but it’s far from a reason for her to accuse women who had worse luck of “protecting” the perps. Situations differ; perps differ; outcomes differ.

This is not what feminism was supposed to be about. It was supposed to be about empowering women, not infantilising them.

The top fave libertarian trope – oppressed groups must never discuss their oppression, because that’s “playing the victim” and being “infantilized.” They have to suck it up and move on, take responsibility and tough it out, be empowered. There’s no such thing as structural oppression, it’s all just random incidents between Free Individuals, and the strong will survive.

Feminism was too so supposed to be about structural oppression. Hartley-Brewer is confusing feminism with the self-help movement.

She ends by saying with emphasis that it’s a witch hunt.

It’s all like that – typical libertarian talking points, Living Marxism morphed into Droning Randism.

Rebecca Solnit:

Oh look, it’s hate on women for not stopping men from doing horrible things to women, again? Street poster blaming Merle Streep for raper-dude, though she has said she didn’t know and made a strong statement for victims, against him (in comments below). Possibly connected to the Pentagon Papers movie she’s starring in, and the poster is by right-wing artist Sabo, who Mike Cernovich (Mr. Pizzagate if you’re not familiar with him) is urging people to donate to. The gist of these kind of attacks is so fundamentalist: men are women’s responsibility, not their own.

Sure, blame Meryl Streep for Harvey Weinstein; that makes all the sense in the world.

Solnit quotes herself from a couple of months ago:

Remember that every time a man commits a violent act it only takes one or two steps to figure out how it’s a woman’s fault, and that these dance steps are widely known and practiced and quite a bit of fun. There are things men do that are the fault of women who are too sexy, and other things men do that are the fault of women who are not sexy enough, but women only come in those two flavors: not enough, too much, and it is the fate of heterosexual men to endure this affliction. Wives are responsible for their husbands, especially if their husbands are supremely powerful and terrifying figures leading double lives and accountable to no one. But women are now also in the workforce, where they have so many opportunities to be responsible for other men as well.

She knew.

In case you need a moment of happy in your twitter feed pic.twitter.com/QKUo2OLXov

— Lisa Abeyta (@LisaAbeyta) December 17, 2017

Trump is doing another Shove the Diplomats Out of the Way move. He says he won’t let a single one of them sit next to him at lunch if they don’t do what he tells them.

Donald Trump has threatened to withhold “billions” of dollars of US aid from countries which vote in favour of a United Nations resolution rejecting the US president’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

His comments came after the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, wrote to about 180 of 193 member states warning that she will be “taking names” of countries that vote for a general assembly resolution on Thursday critical of the announcement which overturned decades of US foreign policy.

They have to say they like us and we’re awesome or she’ll tell on them.

Trump was in a cabinet meeting today pretending to be a grownup, so he expanded on Haley’s scary “I’m telling.”

“Let them vote against us,” he said.

“We’ll save a lot. We don’t care. But this isn’t like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said. “We’re not going to be taken advantage of any longer.”

Let them. We don’t care. We don’t want to go to the stinky old prom anyway.

The emergency UN general assembly meeting was called for Thursday to protest against the US veto at Monday’s security council meeting on a resolution the Jerusalem issue – which was supported by all other 14 members.

The security council resolution demanded that all countries comply with pre-existing UN security council resolutions on Jerusalem, dating back to 1967, including requirements that the city’s final status be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

What?? What’s it got to do with them? Especially the Palestinians?! It’s for the US to decide, because the US is the boss of everything.

Critics point out [that] Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem – as well as the US veto – are both in opposition to numerous security council resolutions.

Trump’s extraordinary intervention marked the latest escalation of diplomatic tensions over a decision that has seen the US widely criticised and isolated. It came after a day of high drama.

In a letter to UN ambassadors, Haley told countries – including European delegations – that she will report back to the US president with the names of those who support a draft resolution rejecting the US move at the UN general assembly on Thursday, adding that Trump took the issue personally.

Oh for god’s sake. Who cares? Trump takes everything personally, because he’s a narcissistic childish shit. The UN isn’t a sandbox, it’s the UN. This is embarrassing as well as disgusting.

The resolution reaffirms 10 security council resolutions on Jerusalem, dating back to 1967, including requirements that the city’s final status must be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

…

Referring to Haley’s letter, which was disclosed by the Guardian and other media organisations on Wednesday morning, Trump said: “I like the message that Nikki sent yesterday at the United Nations.

“Our great citizens who love this country are tired of this country being taken advantage of – we’re not going to be taken advantage of any longer.”

Baby talk, again. He’s losing vocabulary so fast he’ll be reduced to mama dada baba in a few weeks.

In her letter, Haley wrote: “As you consider your vote, I encourage you to know the president and the US take this vote personally.

“The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those who voted against us,” she continued.

Oh grow up.

Patrick Chappatte

The New York Times

Paul Krugman last week on Republican contempt for people who work for a living:

As usual, Republicans seek to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable, but they don’t treat all Americans with a given income the same. Instead, their bill — on which we don’t have full details, but whose shape is clear — hugely privileges owners, whether of businesses or of financial assets, over those who simply work for a living.

And this privileging of nonwage income isn’t an accident. Modern Republicans exalt “job creators,” that is, people who own businesses directly or indirectly via their stockholdings. Meanwhile, they show implicit contempt for mere employees.

Because mere employees are losers.

Cutting corporate taxes is hugely unpopular; even Republicans are almost as likely to say they should be raised as to say they should be lowered. The Bush tax cuts, at least initially, had wide (though unjustified) popular support; but the public overwhelmingly disapproves of the current Republican plan.

But Republicans don’t seem able to help themselves: Their disdain for ordinary working Americans as opposed to investors, heirs, and business owners runs so deep that they can’t contain it.

When I realized the extent to which G.O.P. tax plans were going to favor business owners over ordinary workers, I found myself remembering what happened in 2012, when Eric Cantor — then the House majority leader — tried to celebrate Labor Day. He put out a tweet for the occasion that somehow failed to mention workers at all, instead praising those who have “built a business and earned their own success.”

On Labor Day.

You couldn’t make it up.

It’s not only that the tax bill is designed to make the rich richer and everyone else poorer – it’s also that they passed it without even reading it. They voted yes without knowing what they were saying yes to. Wouldn’t you think Knowing What They Are Saying Yes To would be right at the very heart of their job, which is after all to legislate? Isn’t it a pretty gross dereliction of duty for legislators to sign legislation sight unseen? Isn’t that an obvious occasion to shout hoarsely YOU HAD ONE JOB?

It’s discomfortingly similar to driving a train without bothering to slow down for curves.

In its great haste, the “world’s greatest deliberative body” held no hearings or debate on tax reform. The Senate’s Republicans made sloppy math mistakes, crossed out and rewrote whole sections of the bill by hand at the 11th hour and forced a vote on it before anyone could conceivably read it.

That should not be how any of this works. It’s more like a bank heist than legislation – except it’s a bank heist in reverse: it’s banks heisting the 99% of their customers who aren’t billionaires.

The link between the heedlessly negligent style and anti-redistributive substance of recent Republican lawmaking is easy to overlook. The key is the libertarian idea, woven into the right’s ideological DNA, that redistribution is the exploitation of the “makers” by the “takers.” It immediately follows that democracy, which enables and legitimizes this exploitation, is itself an engine of injustice. As the novelist Ayn Rand put it, under democracy “one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority.”

What’s missing there? The fact that the ability to profit from “one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind” depends on that “gang” – to buy the stuff, to make the stuff, to staff the police and the courts that protect the stuff. Without the “gang” the work and the mind may be their own reward but they don’t make anybody rich.

In the 20th century, and in particular after World War II, with voting rights and Soviet Communism on the march, the risk that wealthy democracies might redistribute their way to serfdom had never seemed more real. Radical libertarian thinkers like Rand and Murray Rothbard (who would be a muse to both Charles Koch and Ron Paul) responded with a theory of absolute property rights that morally criminalized taxation and narrowed the scope of legitimate government action and democratic discretion nearly to nothing. “What is the State anyway but organized banditry?” Rothbard asked. “What is taxation but theft on a gigantic, unchecked scale?”

What is profit but organized banditry and theft? It cuts both ways. Radical libertarians should try moving to a desert island and seeing how much profit they can make there. Wealth is absolutely dependent on a vast complicated system full of people, so it’s far from self-evidently unfair for those who prosper from the system to pay back a hefty sum.

[T]he idea that there is an inherent tension between democracy and the integrity of property rights is wildly misguided. The liberal-democratic state is a relatively recent historical innovation, and our best accounts of the transition from autocracy to democracy points to the role of democratic political inclusion in protecting property rights.

Exactly.

Cornel West decided it would be a good idea to pick a fight with Ta-Nehisi Coates for not being…well, enough like Cornel West.

It started on Sunday, when Mr. West published an article in The Guardian calling Mr. Coates “the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle,” and accusing him of “fetishizing white supremacy” while ignoring “Wall Street greed, U.S. imperial crimes or black elite indifference to poverty.”

It’s a pretty crappy article, frankly. There’s no argument, just a lot of assertion:

Coates rightly highlights the vicious legacy of white supremacy – past and present. He sees it everywhere and ever reminds us of its plundering effects. Unfortunately, he hardly keeps track of our fightback, and never connects this ugly legacy to the predatory capitalist practices, imperial policies (of war, occupation, detention, assassination) or the black elite’s refusal to confront poverty, patriarchy or transphobia.

In short, Coates fetishizes white supremacy. He makes it almighty, magical and unremovable. What concerns me is his narrative of “defiance”. For Coates, defiance is narrowly aesthetic – a personal commitment to writing with no connection to collective action. It generates crocodile tears of neoliberals who have no intention of sharing power or giving up privilege.

See what I mean? It’s just word-stringing…and not always even good word-stringing:

The disagreements between Coates and I are substantive and serious. It would be wrong to construe my quest for truth and justice as motivated by pettiness. Must every serious critique be reduced to a vicious takedown or an ugly act of hatred? Can we not acknowledge that there are deep disagreements among us with our very lives and destinies at stake? Is it even possible to downplay career moves and personal insecurities in order to highlight our clashing and conflicting ways of viewing the cold and cruel world we inhabit?

I dunno, but he could at least have caught that howler in the first sentence.

Back to the Times:

Late on Monday, Mr. Coates, who had more than 1.25 million Twitter followers as of earlier this month, tweeted, “Peace, y’all. I’m out. I didn’t get in it for this.” And at some point after that, he deleted his account.

So that’s productive.

This got on a lot of people’s nerves today:

ATTENTION CISGENDER PEOPLE.

Can you imagine what it's like leaving your home in constant fear of assault, harassment and ridicule? This is what trans people experience every day of their lives. Help our trans siblings. Read this thread and share, please. https://t.co/LDixnSrhLJ

— Ryan John Butcher (@ryanjohnbutcher) December 18, 2017

Ryan John Butcher

ATTENTION CISGENDER PEOPLE.

Can you imagine what it’s like leaving your home in constant fear of assault, harassment and ridicule? This is what trans people experience every day of their lives. Help our trans siblings. Read this thread and share, please.

Says clueless dude to “CISGENDER PEOPLE” which of course includes women, who don’t need to “imagine” what it’s like leaving your home in constant fear of assault, harassment and ridicule, since that’s their daily reality during at least some part of their lives. If they’re mouthy and opinionated, it’s full time all their lives.

have you not been paying attention to the #MeToo??
This is what women have been experiencing all our lives.
In India women are regualrly raped and beaten on public transport
In Saudi they cant even leave their homes without a man.
What did you think womanhood was like?

— Emma Salmon (@emmasalmon66) December 19, 2017

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor:

The House just passed the disgraceful Trump-Republican tax bill, enacting large and permanent tax cuts for corporations (that is, the richest 1 percent who own 40 percent of all shares of stock), and temporary cuts for individuals (the lion’s share going to the richest 1 tenth of 1 percent). The Senate is expected to approve it tonight or tomorrow, and Trump will sign it into law before Christmas.

A decade from now, according the nonpartisan analysts, the top 1% will have received 83% of the gains from this tax cut, and the richest 0.1% will get 60% of the gains. But 13 million Americans will have lost health coverage, the national debt will be $1.5 trillion larger, and Republicans will use the debt as an excuse to target Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Never before in American history has this much money been transferred from the poor and middle class to the rich. Shame on the Republicans and on Trump. We must, as the saying goes, throw these bums out.

Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California:

I just voted NO on the Republican tax plan. Here’s why:

Since their failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Trump and Republicans in Congress have desperately sought a legislative accomplishment — a “win” to show voters that with control of both the House and Senate and the Presidency, they could get something done.

Today, in the headlong pursuit of something, anything that they could point to as a legislative success, they passed a massive tax cut for the wealthy that they would like to portray as “tax reform.” But this “win” comes as a terrible loss for the country. It is, in fact, a gift to GOP wealthy sponsors and lives up to none of the GOP promises about helping the middle class or simplifying the tax code. Instead, it is a highly partisan bill that was rushed through both chambers and benefits few families more than the President’s own.

I voted no on this bill because, simply put, it overwhelmingly benefits large corporations and families with large incomes and estates, while doing little for most families, especially those in California. This bill particularly hurts middle class families in states like mine, millions of which will get a whopping tax increase since their ability to deduct state and local taxes is reduced, along with the mortgage interest deduction.

The bill also repeals a key provision in the Affordable Care Act, which will lead to 13 million Americans losing insurance and millions more paying higher premiums. In other words, for any family or individual that may see a tax break, they’ll most likely be using that money to pay for higher healthcare costs.

To make matters worse, the $1.46 trillion cost to this bill will trigger massive automatic program cuts to social safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security. There is little doubt that having increased the deficit by trillions with this bill, Republicans will seek to pay back that money through such cuts to Medicare and Social Security. That is the other shoe which is now set to fall on middle class and working families.

President Trump promised a “giant tax cut for Christmas,” and there’s no question he delivered that – for himself and other real estate developers who can now use pass through income to great personal advantage and reward.

The great shame in all of this is that none of it is necessary. There was nothing precluding bipartisan legislation that would simplify the tax code, assist the middle class and small businesses and diminish our national debt. Nothing except a decision by the majority to railroad through a deceptive measure for their wealthy patrons instead.

So there was this train derailment not far from here yesterday, that dumped train cars all over the main north-south freeway for the West coast; it killed three passengers. The train was going 80 miles an hour as it went into a curve, where the speed limit was 30.

The revelation that a passenger train was speeding 50 miles per hour over the speed limit at the time of a fatal crash near Tacoma, Wash., has once again focused attention on Amtrak’s safety culture, the role of human error in rail accidents, and the need for technology that automatically slows trains that are going too fast.

Late Monday night, National Transportation Safety Board officials said that the train, bound from Seattle to Portland, Ore., was traveling at 80 miles per hour, on a curve with a limit of 30 miles per hour, when it jumped the tracks and careened into a busy highway and a stand of evergreens. At least three people were killed and about 100 were injured, officials said.

Yesterday afternoon, before the NTSB confirmation, it was already being reported that the train had apparently been going 80. News outlets also published the audio of the engineer’s call to emergency services, so we could hear him say “we were approaching the curve and then we were on the ground”…as if there were something surprising about that when the train was going 80. You don’t have to be a professional to know that trains can’t go 80 on curves, because they’re not agile enough.

The accident mirrored Amtrak’s worst disaster in recent years, in 2015, when a train derailed at more than 100 miles per hour in Philadelphia, on a curve posted at 50 miles per hour, killing eight people.

Train 501, carrying 77 passengers and seven crew members, derailed Monday morning, between Tacoma and Olympia, on the inaugural run of a new route for Amtrak’s Cascades service, where the tracks curve onto an overpass crossing Interstate 5. It was not clear how familiar the engineer was with that stretch of track, or whether that played a role in the crash.

Well oops. Wouldn’t you kind of hope all that would have been considered beforehand? “Oh, hey, new track, had we better maybe make sure the engineer knows where the curves are and knows to slow down when approaching them?” Do they not plan for these things?

Apparently not as much as they should.

Just last month, the N.T.S.B. reported that Amtrak had a “weak safety culture”. That conclusion stemmed from an investigation into a 2016 accident in Chester, Penn., that killed two track workers.

Federal law requires railroads, by the end of 2018, to have positive train control, which automatically slows trains if they are exceeding speed limits or approaching dangerous conditions. In its latest progress report to the railroad administration, Amtrak said it had installed positive train control on all 603 miles of track on the Northeast Corridor, from Washington to Boston.

Congress passed the law requiring positive train control in 2008, after the head-on collision of a commuter train and a freight train in Los Angeles killed 25 people. Railroads were supposed to have the system in place by 2015, but it became clear that many of them would not meet that deadline, the industry lobbied for more time, and Congress postponed the requirement by three years.

The Times includes a photo of the curve. I wouldn’t even call it a curve, it’s a damn corner.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

The NTSB press release last month starts with a bang:

The National Transportation Safety Board determined Tuesday the April 3, 2016, derailment of Amtrak train 89 near Chester, Pennsylvania was caused by deficient safety management across many levels of Amtrak and the resultant  lack of a clear, consistent and accepted vision for safety.

A backhoe operator and a track supervisor were killed, and 39 people were injured when Amtrak train 89, traveling on the Northeast Corridor from Philadelphia to Washington on track 3, struck a backhoe at about 7:50 a.m. The train engineer saw equipment and people working on and near track 3 and initiated emergency braking that slowed the train from 106 mph to approximately 99 mph at the time of impact.

The NTSB also determined allowing a passenger train to travel at maximum authorized speed on unprotected track where workers were present, the absence of shunting devices, the foreman’s failure to conduct a job briefing at the start of the shift, all coupled with the numerous inconsistent views of safety and safety management throughout Amtrak, led to the accident.

Cause: human error.

Interesting. A couple of weeks ago Paul Ryan was saying ooh we need to cut the deficit, need to reduce all this spending on health care.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday that congressional Republicans will aim next year to reduce spending on both federal health care and anti-poverty programs, citing the need to reduce America’s deficit.

“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said during an appearance on Ross Kaminsky’s talk radio show. “… Frankly, it’s the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements — because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”

But a huge tax cut for the rich that is predicted to add a trillion dollars to Our Debt over the next decade…that is somehow not where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.

Ryan’s remarks add to the growing signs that top Republicans aim to cut government spending next year. Republicans are close to passing a tax bill nonpartisan analysts say would increase the deficit by at least $1 trillion over a decade. Trump recently called on Congress to move to cut welfare spending after the tax bill, and Senate Republicans have cited the need to reduce the national deficit while growing the economy.

It’s all rather stark, isn’t it.

Matt Damon is still busy telling us all how to talk about the problem of men preying on women in the workplace. He thinks we should talk more about the men in Hollywood who aren’t sexual predators. He also thinks he knows who they are and that they’re the vast majority.

Damon says not all the men in Hollywood are despicable.

“We’re in this watershed moment, and it’s great, but I think one thing that’s not being talked about is there are a whole s—load of guys — the preponderance of men I’ve worked with — who don’t do this kind of thing and whose lives aren’t going to be affected,” Damon told Business Insider while promoting his new movie, “Downsizing,” opening in theaters Friday.

That’s super-interesting but I have to wonder how he knows. I have to wonder how he thinks he knows. Does he think men tell everyone they harass and assault women?

“If I have to sign a sexual-harassment thing, I don’t care, I’ll sign it,” he said. “I would have signed it before. I don’t do that, and most of the people I know don’t do that.”

Because he would infallibly know it if they did.

Business Insider also asked Damon whether the current climate in Hollywood had made him more conscious of the people he’d work with on future projects. Would he back out of a movie if an actor, director, or producer had been accused of sexual misconduct?

“That always went into my thinking,” Damon said. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to work with somebody who — life’s too short for that. But the question of if somebody had allegations against them, you know, it would be a case-by-case basis. You go, ‘What’s the story here?'”

And then you tell yourself the answer, because you infallibly know which men harass women and which men don’t.

A headline:

27% of California adolescents say they are viewed as gender nonconforming, study finds

Hmm. How good are adolescents at sussing out what other people think of them? Adults aren’t all that good at it, even with experience and learning; I don’t think it’s the kind of thing adolescents are better at.

“The data show that more than one in four California youth express their gender in ways that go against the dominant stereotypes,” said lead author Bianca D.M. Wilson, the Rabbi Barbara Zacky Senior Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute.

But that’s a different claim. The claim in the headline is twice-meta – it’s a claim about 1 )what people say 2)other people think. It’s not a claim about how people express their gender.

Gender nonconforming refers to people whose behaviors and appearance defy the dominant cultural and societal stereotypes of their gender. The health interview survey measured gender expression by asking adolescents how they thought people at school viewed their physical expressions of femininity and masculinity. Youth who reported that people at school saw them as equally masculine and feminine were categorized as “androgynous.” Girls who thought they were seen as mostly or very masculine and boys who thought they were seen as mostly or very feminine were categorized as “highly gender nonconforming.”

There again: they’re confusing levels. Asking adolescents 1)how they thought 2)people at school viewed their physical expressions of femininity and masculinity is twice meta again. It’s not a question about how in fact the adolescents “express their gender.” Doing a thing is one level; how people see it is a second; what people say about what people see is a third. If you mush them all together you get mush.

Anyway. I’m still looking forward to the time when everyone realizes that “the dominant cultural and societal stereotypes of their gender” are surplus baggage and just throws them all out instead of trying to label either conformity to them or rebellion against them.