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It’s incredible how effective a strategy it has been to simply lie & pretend systemic racism doesn’t exist anymore to achieve the goal of justifying and furthering entrenching systemic racism.

BREAKING: Ex-Republican House Speaker Larry Householder has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for orchestrating a $60M bribery scheme dubbed the largest corruption scandal in Ohio history. Convicted of racketeering in April, he is expected to appeal. apnews.com/article/briber…

Doug Evans, the DA best known for his tireless crusade against Curtis Flowers, a Black Mississippian whom Evans tried an extraordinary six times for the same crime, is leaving office today with no accountability. New in Bolts from Parker Yesko: boltsmag.org/mississippi-da…

That SCOTUS agreed to hear this case and the student debt case, neither of which has a plaintiff with even the *pretense* of standing, should put to rest any lingering doubts that it is a partisan superlegislature working backwards from predetermined outcomes.

Reason this is important is it is very easy to fall into Warren nostalgia and assume liberals and progressives just need to get the court back on track. Fact is that was a blip on a far less auspicious track record.

First student loan case, Brown, is unanimous: no standing. This was expected, Nebraska v. Biden is where the real decision will be made.

Brown was a preposterous case and it's incredible that it even made its way to the Court. The plaintiffs said they were denied a public comment period to ask for more relief... and their remedy was to get rid of relief for everyone?

I will say, the one thing that gives a *teensy* bit of hope is that the conversation, even among the normie-ist of normie liberals, seems to have shifted away from "well, we just need to nominate more of *our* justices" towards "the Supreme Court is inherently bad."

We're not at the level of complete delegitimization, in the sense that liberals are actively working to undermine the authority and prestige of SCOTUS. A big part of that, no doubt, is still the influence of lawyers at the elite level in Democratic circles.

An out-of-control Court. It's time for Democrats to quit having fainting spells over norms - the norms are already cooked - and act against it directly.

"vote for dems cuz they'll fight to protect us queers" combined with dem leadership constantly telling us "it would be inappropriate to do anything about SCOTUS other than hope they start being nicer" makes for some conflicted messaging going into 2024, to put it mildly

But there's still a pretty significant shift -- especially among people who not only have no lived memory of the Warren Court (which is now the vast majority of Americans) but no lived memory of the Warren Court as the gold standard in liberal cultural memory.

The history of Jim Crow in education is among other things a history of taxation without representation. Black people as tax payers have long paid for institutions that excluded us, de jure and de facto.

reminder that student loans essentially reserve the services of the professional class for the use of the wealthy why, for example, can big corpos crush the little guy with armies of lawyers? bc average debt load for new JDs (~160k) -limits- them to taking high paying clients

Questions to ask now: What is the function of American higher education? Is it merely a zone of capitalistic competition? Or do we hope that it serves to create a competent and decent body of professionals to serve their societies and communities.

Ever notice that people loudly going after gay and trans rights are really unhealthily obsessed with the issue and get weird real fast? It’s almost like oppression and repression originate from some deep-seated personal issues that are then projected onto the rest of the world.

Almost half of products cleared so far under the new federal biofuels program are not in fact biofuels — and the EPA acknowledges that the plastic-based ones may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment. propublica.org/article/chevro…

Metro is getting $104 million from the federal government to buy 100 electric buses and convert its Cinder Bed Road bus garage in Lorton, Virginia, to an electric charging facility. bit.ly/3D8ctLf

If it is the latter, we are destined to fail even worse than we already are if we let the Court's antics stand without a serious re-investment and shifting strategy.

We need to change the way we view politics. We’re not having rational conversations with rational people who understand their stances and positions or hold them based on concrete ideas. We’re dealing with a movement based in fear and terror of the world but also of themselves.