#American Compass

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

“The donations are striking because American Compass is a partner organization in Project 2025, a controversial right-wing think tank that has been building the policy and personnel firmament for a second Trump administration.

Project 2025 is an arm of the Heritage Foundation and it has been criticized for its hard-right, authoritarian agenda—including “dehumanizing” rhetoric towards the LGBTQ community, re-upping Trump’s attempt to include citizenship on the census, leveraging the power of the Justice Department to crack down on critics, and a potentially unconstitutional plan to sic U.S. troops on domestic protesters.”

Many oligarchs and corporations have tried to mask their right-wing connections with small donations to left leaning institutions like NPR.

The Walton family oligarchs in particular (Walmart/Sams Cub) began scrubbing the internet and hiding their right-wing ties following calls for boycotts. This began during the two terms of Republican warmongers Bush/Cheney. Walmart is particularly susceptible to boycott because they lack the diversification of other oligarchs like the Koch family. But in fact they donate to Project 2025 and other high profile right-wing initiatives that we progressives protest against.

*As a side note many still refer to the Koch brothers but this is inaccurate as one died during the Trump years and is now rotting in Hell. Other members of the family hold power and run various programs and initiatives with the Republicans.

#Walmart supports Project 2025 #republican assholes #traitor trump #crooked donald #project 2025 #dark money #vast right wing conspiracy #American Compass

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

BY TIMOTHY NOAH

For years we’ve been hearing about Republican strategies to displace the Democrats as the party of the working class, but conservative efforts to define what that means have always faltered. The main strategy, dating to the Nixon years, has been to use racial and religious prejudice to drive a wedge into what’s left of the New Deal coalition. But “working class” is an economic designation, not a cultural one. In their 2008 book Grand New Party, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam tried to argue that social issues were economic issues, but that’s too facile and sometimes plainly wrong. (What do working-class women gain by losing abortion rights?) In 2021, Representative Jim Banks wrote Representative Kevin McCarthy a memo on how to make the GOP “permanently … the Party of the Working Class.” But apart from hawkishness on trade and immigration, to which Trump had converted the GOP, Banks was silent on economic matters, relying instead on waging culture war.

American Compass was created three years ago to change that. Founded by Oren Cass, a fortyish former Bainie and domestic policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, American Compass is a conservative nonprofit that fashions itself pro-worker. It just produced a manifesto titled Rebuilding American Capitalism: A Handbook for Conservative Policymakers that attempts to define a set of conservative economic policies to help the working class. It will host a conference to discuss these on Wednesday afternoon in the Russell Senate Office Building, with remarks from Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, J.D. “Hillbilly Elegy” Vance, and Todd Young.

Rebuilding American Capitalism acknowledges wage stagnation, decries stock buybacks, bemoans financialization, and rejects “market fundamentalism.” It knocks libertarians for disdaining government and mocks Glenn Hubbard, President George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser, for stating that “the goal of the economic system [is] optimizing consumption.” It recognizes the serious problem of growing economic inequality. Except for progressives, whom it denounces cartoonishly as disdainful of the private sector and overly “eager to use public programs to provide whatever the market does not,” the manifesto is against the right things. The trouble arises when it’s called upon to be for something—specifically, labor unions.

You can’t be serious about empowering the working class unless you want to strengthen organized labor. Does American Compass want to do that? Yes and no.

Give American Compass credit for including in its manifesto a chapter forthrightly titled “Labor.” Congressional Republicans are so nauseated by this word that whenever they regain control of the House they change the name of the Committee on Education and Labor to the Committee on Education and the Workforce. This revulsion does a disservice to the roughly one-third of union members who reliably vote Republican. Indeed, there’s a conservative argument to make in favor of labor unions, and I’m pleased to see American Compass make it:

“Especially for conservatives, who cherish the role of mediating institutions, prefer private ordering to government dictates, and believe prosperity must be earned rather than redistributed, reforming and reinvigorating the laws that govern organizing and collective bargaining should be an obvious priority.”

Amen. I would add only that Republicans show their true colors by relying, whenever they control the White House, on government power to impede the growth of private-sector unions at the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB.

Also on the plus side, Rebuilding American Capitalism calls for sectoral bargaining, in which labor unions negotiate wages across industry sectors. The United Auto Workers and the United Steelworkers established a variation on sectoral bargaining called pattern bargaining back in the 1940s, though its efficacy diminished with the rise of foreign competition. The idea, which is a good one, is that competition within an industry (or its absence) shouldn’t drive down wages.

The section heading “Guarantee Workers’ Legal Right to Organize” got me very excited. But on closer inspection, the manifesto avoided any mention of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, the only serious vehicle right now to shore up labor rights, which has two Republican co-sponsors in the House (Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick and New Jersey’s Christopher Smith), though none, alas, in the Senate. The PRO Act would reverse key anti-labor provisions in the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA, voiding, for instance, state “right-to-work” laws that allow union nonmembers to enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining without paying union fees, and legalizing secondary boycotts like the supermarket boycotts that the United Farm Workers’ Cesar Chavez organized during the 1960s to bring grape growers to heel. (Chavez was allowed to target supermarkets that sold grapes only because agricultural workers weren’t covered by the NLRA, and they still aren’t.) The PRO Act would also for the first time allow the NLRB to impose serious monetary penalties on businesses that violate the NLRA; right now all it can do is require payment of back wages and reinstatement of a fired employee, which is why companies violate the act routinely.

How would Rebuilding American Capitalism guarantee workers’ right to organize? By doing, to quote Jake Gittes describing his instructions as a cop patrolling Chinatown (in the great 1974 film of that title), “as little as possible.” The PRO Act would require the NLRB to seek a court injunction to reinstate immediately any employee fired for union organizing. Rebuilding American Capitalism merely advises the NLRB to give its general counsel authority to seek such injunctions—authority the general counsel possesses already, and, under General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, is applying aggressively. Under a Republican president, the energetic pursuit of injunctions is a lot less likely to occur, and a polite request from American Compass will have no effect.

Even worse than its Chinatown approach to protecting workers’ right to organize is Rebuilding America’s section titled “Get Worker Organizations Out of Partisan Politics.” Organized labor’s political influence, even in its current greatly diminished form, is pretty much the only thing it has going for it at a time when private-sector union membership is down to 6%. Unions have always been a force in politics, and it would be suicide for them to withdraw now.

Or perhaps Rebuilding America means only that unions should withdraw from spending directly on political campaigns, something they were barred legally from doing before the Supreme Court turned corporations (and labor unions) into people in 2010’s Citizens United case. “The United States should prohibit political spending by worker organizations,” the manifesto says, “comparable to the prohibition on political spending by 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations.” Spending by affiliated PACs would still be permissible. Fine by me—but only if corporations (which take much greater advantage of Citizens United than unions do) are similarly barred from political spending. Which of course would require the Supreme Court to overturn Citizens United. Good luck with that. Rebuilding America makes much of the fact that the AFL-CIO and SEIU don’t allow members to dictate how they allocate lobby resources, but neither do corporations allow stockholders to do the same. The prospect of unions disarming unilaterally and leaving politics to corporations doesn’t seem to worry American Compass.

Ultimately, Rebuilding American Capitalism, for all its proletarian posturing, can’t muster much enthusiasm for labor unions. After its very good review early on of the data on growing income inequality, and a less-good section accusing liberals of not supporting apprenticeship programs (not remotely true), the manifesto gives the game away by stating that “although most Americans … wish they had more opportunities for their voice to be heard” in the workplace, “the traditional labor union is not the model they prefer.” Oh, please. Anybody who’s paid the slightest attention knows that labor unions enjoy more public support today than they have in half a century. It’s inconceivable that the authors of Rebuilding American Capitalism don’t know this.

To justify its claim that workers don’t especially like unions, Rebuilding American Capitalism cites polling data (from a poll conducted by American Compass) that says 63% would prefer a “worker organization” (whatever that is) to be run by labor and management, as opposed to 37% who would prefer it to be run solely by workers. This is a testament not to any wariness of unions on the public’s part but to the public’s naïveté about American management’s willingness to cooperate with labor. It’s different in Europe, of course, where they have works councils and other organizations where these things get hashed out by labor, management, and the government. American corporations rejected this model after World War II, when Walter Reuther and other union leaders proposed it. If they could now be persuaded otherwise, that would be lovely. But after reading American Compass’s manifesto, I wouldn’t trust any conservative to write the enabling legislation. Rebuilding American Capitalism has some good ideas about what ails America, but it balks at furnishing the means to fix it.

#us politics #the new republic #Timothy Noah #op eds #2023 #republicans #conservatives #gop policy #gop platform #gop #American Compass #Rebuilding American Capitalism: A Handbook for Conservative Policymakers #working class #working class solidarity #workers #union workers #worker's rights #wage stagnation #stock buybacks #financialization #market fundamentalism #lolbertarians #libertarians #progressives #organized labor #labor unions #National Labor Relations Board #Protecting the Right to Organize Act #National Labor Relations Act

[gwydionmisha]

#Donors #American Compass #The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation #The Omidyar Network Foundation #News #US Politics

[bootdork]

Sorry but as a Christian you cannot possibly be siding with Israel. Israel is bombing the oldest churches in the world, shooting at people inside their parish, exterminating the oldest Christian community in the world, bombing congregations during mass. You cannot claim to follow Christ's teachings if you condone this immense violence.

Exodus 22:21 "Do not oppress or mistreat a foreigner."

Psalm 11:5 "God tests the righteous, but those who love violence, he detests."

Psalm 68:30 "Scatter those people who delight in war."

Matthew 5:9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."

Habakkuk 2:9-13 "Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin! You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your life. The stones of the wall will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it. ‘Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime!'"

#speaking into a wall when it comes to extremist evangelicals #Jesus was a palestinian refugee and now you all turn your backs on the very same people #The american evangelicals funding and cheering on this genocide are a poison #frankly i think they're so far removed from Christ that it's silly to even call them Christians #yeah I'm sure the Christ who taught compassion and peace and nonviolence would LOVE that you're burying children under rubble. #free palestine #free gaza #free west bank #Palestine will be free and the land will heal. #christianity #catholicism

[rosalie-starfall]

Guanyin

American Born Chinese

#Michelle Yeoh #Guanyin #American Born Chinese #my gifs #tv : American Born Chinese #tv : Disney #Goddess of Compassion #goddess of mercy #my hero #I'll love her forever! #Shes honestly so busy I can't keep up!

[ltwilliammowett]

Ship's compass, New York, early 19th century

#naval navigation #ship's compass #american #early 19th century #age of sail

[olliebjorkstrand]

it's so fucking dystopic that people are dying rapidly in rafah but everyone is posting about the superbowl

#especially americans like y'all have no compassion #america worships money and that's their god #i'm tired of it #palestine #gaza #rafah #free palestine

[hideyseek]

lmao ok so im watching yesterday's z1l thermos livestream while i catch up on housework, and i waited like 3-4 encounters of the phrase before i looked up 户外 huwai ... turns out this means "outdoors" like, out in nature. i sure spent ten whole min being like ... wow ok these guys like to?? leave their house? good for them i guess

#i am FASCINATED by this livestream #its like .... tea facts ... Product Placement ... quiz game ... more thermos advertising ... another quiz game ... #its a LITTLE painful to listen to the advertising ahaha but i suppose i signed up for this #things z1l thinks u should bring on a boat: compass + camera + thermos bottle ofc #i think this is bc i also encounter like ... almost zero american celebrities in advertisements? bc i dont run into ads really.l #and also i dont know american celebrities. but im just so like ahaha of course. cant forget ur thermos bottle ! #if u've seen the clip of z1l eating the cookie u aren't missing much #hidey speaks

[gayemoji]

oh yeah okay go ahead kiss a ninE year old what the fuck !!! WHAT THE FUCK !!!

whatever credit i was giving chase before null and void i never said it

#even weorder is that the showrunners even made it a fucking plot point HUH ??? WHAT ARE YALL DOING ??? #the writers really want him to be the antagonist FINE you got me hes the worst forever #also i found out the actors actual parents founded a fucking anti immigration party here in aus so thats cool 💀 #not that that reflects on HIM as an individual whatever whatever #the point is maybe i hope the shows dont give hima big fuckin redemption and maybe i like how awful house treats him now <3 #deserved idiot be better next time #im bapping him over the head with a roll of newspaper every time he speaks like im his cartoon character father #speaking of maybe the writers were right to give him his whole sympathy story BEFORE they nerfed his moral compass #he still has an australian accent in an american show tho so its gonna be hard to shake this familarity bias i have for him 💔 #house md #house s2 #m #live

[47thpennvols]

GoFundMe: Please Help Honor 9 Black Soldiers of the American Civil War:

Average cost to purchase one cup of coffee at your favorite coffee shop: $3 to $5.

Average cost to purchase the U.S. Civil War Pension file for one U.S. Civil War soldier so that it can be digitized and made available free of charge to teachers, students, descendants of that soldier, and members of the public: $80 to $100.

Please donate whatever you can at our GoFundMe page.

#gofundme #go fund them #digital humanities #genealogy #family history #please donate #asking for help #please help #american history #education #american civil war #kindness #compassion #make a difference

[mommyslilfrenchfries]

I did this tattoo for my dad 🤪

thats all…

(the white will show within the next six months to a a year)

#jess talks 🍓 #tattoos #tattoo design #tattoo drawing #my dad #dads #america #american #compass #my artwork #american flag #fresh tattoo #my dads cooler than yours #idk how to tag this #idk what else to tag #like this #follow me #follow

[icedsodapop]

Me wanting to watch Echo (pirating it of course fuck Disney) becos I want to see a beautiful show about a disabled Native American superhero and also becos I heard Alaqua Cox, who is a disabled actress, gets to beat up Charlie Cox and I want to see it.

#moral compass I dont know her #echo #marvel #mcu #disability #native american representation #disabled representation #alaqua cox

[b0tis]

If you think Greens are "the bad guys" because they're misogynistic, then I have horrible news for you... The Dance is not exactly a battle to emancipate Westeros. 😂

Also the fact that you're looking for specific "bad guys" is... telling.

#they did a ton of immoral shit and misogyny should not be the measuring factor for evil... ight? #PLEASE yall lmfao what is it with your american moral compass. it's embarrassing. #hotd #house of the dragon #team green #anti greens #team black #anti team black #otto hightower #alicent hightower #larys strong #aegon ii targaryen #aemond targaryen #dragonposting

[ltwilliammowett]

Whaler Compass

An American drycard compass as used on an American whaleship. Made by Samuel Thaxter & Son, Boston circa 1825

#naval navigation #whaler compass #new bedford #american #c. 1825 #age of sail

[andthebeanstalk]

The cool thing about a horror movie that takes place in a mental hospital and, shockingly, actually turns out to be on the side of mentally ill people is that it avoids all the common disgusting pitfalls of mocking, demonizing, and infantilizing mentally ill people.

The downside is

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

[It's much scarier.]

#original #smile movie #smile 2022 #I'm literally two scenes in #it could definitely become ableist by the end of the movie but I'm kind of obsessed so far? #like nothing is scarier to me than the lack of quality help and validation available to victims of trauma! and this movie is LEANING INTO IT #which is way scarier and also way truer and more important to talk about than a looney bin filled with lunatics who want to murder you #like that's literally a concept based solely on people's ableist fears. #same with horror movie monsters that are just people with facial deformities or congenital disorders or just... people who are poor #(the hillbilly cannibal trope is just MAN POOR PEOPLE ARE SCARY HUH. it's garbage.) #what's ACTUALLY a horror is the way these people are treated! and that INCLUDES how they are portrayed in media! #because guess what? ghosts aren't real and an abandoned mental hospital can't hurt you #but you know what can? a doctor who doesn't believe you. a system built on neglect. THAT'S the horror we need to talk about. #and THAT is why I am going to have to watch this movie in short installments over a few days #and let me be clear: i am alive today bc of a mental hospital's IOP/PHP program. i stopped being suicidal after YEARS bc of that program #mental hospitals CAN and SHOULD be GOOD THINGS ACTUALLY. but in countries with shitty healthcare that's very hard to find. #it is also why it is my life's work to build a treatment center that PROVES we can do this ethically and with compassion #life is worth living #and the American Healthcare industry can die just the same as any other giant or dragon. empires have fallen before. it is not immortal. #YOU reading this matter. stay safe. please. it isn't the end yet. i love you.

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

Future Blessings for Zion

For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, And My covenant of peace will not be shaken,” Says the LORD who has compassion on you. — Isaiah 54:10 | New American Standard Bible 1977 (NASB77) New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. All rights reserved. Cross References: Numbers 25:12; 2 Samuel 23:5; Psalm 89:34; Psalm 102:26; Isaiah 9:6; Hebrews 12:27; Revelation 6:14

#blessings #Zion #future #Lord #God #love #covenant #peace #eternal #compassion #Isaiah 54:10 #Book of Isaiah #Old Testament #NASB77 #New American Standard Bible 1977 #The Lockman Foundation