ICYMI: Clothes for Goblins, Right-Wing Nuts, Wage Theft, and more 

Clothe the Goblins! 

Judd Legum reports that the Moms for Liberty campaign to make books decent for children has led to Florida teachers drawing clothes on picture book illustrations—such as adding underpants to cartoon child in Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen and covering a goblin’s butt in Unicorns Are The Worst. Other consequences of the group’s pressure were more serious:  outright removal of hundreds of books from school library shelves and death threats to school board members who resisted. 

Right-Wing Nuts

White Christian nationalists are literally up in arms about fears of a “great replacement” of white people by not-white immigrants. A Tennessee man who planned an attack with explosives and sniper rifles was arrested by the FBI before he could get to the border. A few others were arrested near the border with guns, cannabis, and “a white powdery substance.” 

Getting serious about wage theft

While wage theft is getting more ink in newspapers and a little more attention from lawmakers and enforcers, it’s still not getting punished. 

In Minnesota, Attorney General Keith Ellison is going after employers who steal money from their employees by making them pay up. He’s suing to get a big dairy farm in Stearns County to pay up three million dollars they stole from employees by shorting hours, not paying overtime, illegal deductions from paychecks, and even threatening and physically assaulting employees. 

But shouldn’t they also be prosecuted as criminals? If some kid shoplifts repeatedly, they get a criminal conviction and, if they steal enough or often enough, they go to jail. 

Why isn’t Ellison prosecuting them criminally? Well—that’s the job of county attorneys, not the attorney general. the attorney general can only prosecute if the county attorneys as them to step in.  If local authorities don’t want to be bothered prosecuting employers, the thieves get away without punishment. Minnesota’s wage theft law provides for criminal punishment, but according to the Minnesota Reformer’s reporting, “In the past four years, wage theft charges have been brought by prosecutors just five times.” 

MN Reformer’s Patrick Coolican writes: 

“A $3 million heist of a Minneapolis bank would make national news, whereas when the attorney general alleges a company stole $3 million from its workers, it doesn’t even make the front page of the Star Tribune. 

“That’s because we have two justice systems in this country: One for people who knock over a liquor store and come away with a few hundred dollars, and an entirely different one for people who steal millions from their own workers.” 

 Want to know more about the District of Columbia Circuit Court ruling that Trump is not immune from prosecution?

Here’s a link to the 57-page decision. The good parts start at page 20, after the lengthy discussion of jurisdiction. I particularly like these paragraphs (p. 40):

“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results. Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count. 

“At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches. Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the President, the Congress could not legislate, the Executive could not prosecute and the Judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”

Unsafe at Any Speed?

One year after the East Palestine freight train derailment released toxic chemicals, driving residents from their homes, none of the promised safety regulations have been passed. Massive lobbying of Congress by the railroad industry blocked even the minimal requirement to have more than one person staffing miles-long trains. Meanwhile, 2023 saw even more derailments than 2022. 

Quick Takes

Parker Molloy has a long article stuffed with absolutely on-point anecdotes that show why Context is For Trying to Understand Reality, Not Winning Arguments. That’s the Problem.

Cory Doctorow’s fascinating description of How I got scammed (05 Feb 2024) is an important cautionary tale for even those of us who think we are sophisticated users of today’s technology.  

Paul Pfeiffer’s The Giving Tree or a Sharing Garden? offers a scathing take-down of the popular children’s book, a meditation on retirement, and a call to action for sustainability. Quite a lot to pack into a single blog post!