#Joan Walsh

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A taxonomy of corporate bullshit

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

There are six lies that corporations have told since time immemorial, and Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen's new book Corporate Bullsht: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America* provides an essential taxonomy of this dirty six:

https://thenewpress.com/books/corporate-bullsht

In his review for The American Prospect, David Dayen summarizes how these six lies "offer a civic-minded, reasonable-sounding justification for positions that in fact are motivated entirely by self-interest":

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2023-10-27-lies-my-corporation-told-me-hanauer-walsh-cohen-review/

I. Pure denial

As far back as the slave trade, corporate apologists and mouthpieces have led by asserting that true things are false, and vice-versa. In 1837, John Calhoun asserted that "Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually." George Fitzhugh called enslaved Africans in America "the freest people in the world."

This tactic never went away. Children sent to work in factories are "perfectly happy." Polluted water is "purer than the water that came from the river before we used it." Poor families "don't really exist." Pesticides don't lead to "illness or death." Climate change is "beneficial." Lead "helps guard your health."

II. Markets can solve problems, governments can't

Alan Greenspan made a career out of blithely asserting that markets self-correct. It was only after the world economy imploded in 2008 that he admitted that his doctrine had a "flaw":

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/greenspan-admits-flaw-to-congress-predicts-more-economic-problems

No matter how serious a problem is, the market will fix it. In 1973, the US Chamber of Commerce railed against safety regulations, because "safety is good business," and could be left to the market. If unsafe products persist in the market, it's because consumers choose to trade safety off "for a lower price tag" (Chamber spox Laurence Kraus). Racism can't be corrected with anti-discrimination laws. It's only when "the market" realizes that racism is bad for business that it will finally be abolished.

III. Consumers and workers are to blame

In 1946, the National Coal Association blamed rampant deaths and maimings in the country's coal-mines on "carelessness on the part of men." In 2003, the National Restaurant Association sang the same tune, condemning nutritional labels because "there are not good or bad foods. There are good and bad diets." Reagan's interior secretary Donald Hodel counseled personal responsibility to address a thinning ozone layer: "people who don’t stand out in the sun—it doesn’t affect them."

IV. Government cures are always worse than the disease

Lee Iacocca called 1970's Clean Air Act "a threat to the entire American economy and to every person in America." Every labor and consumer protection before and since has been damned as a plague on American jobs and prosperity. The incentive to work can't survive Social Security, welfare or unemployment insurance. Minimum wages kill jobs, etc etc.

V. Helping people only hurts them

Medicare will "destroy private initiative for our aged to protect themselves with insurance" (Republican Senator Milward Simpson, 1965). Covid relief is unfair to people that are currently in the workforce" (Republican Governor Brian Kemp, 2021). Welfare produces "learned helplessness."

VI. Everyone who disagrees with me is a socialist

Grover Cleveland's 2% on top incomes is "communistic warfare against rights of property" (NY Tribune, 1895). "Socialized medicine" will leave "our children and our children’s children [asking] what it once was like in America when men were free" (Reagan, 1961).

Everything is "socialism": anti-child labor laws, Social Security, minimum wages, family and medical leave. Even fascism is socialism! In 1938, the National Association of Manufacturers called labor rights "communism, bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism."

As Dayen says, it's refreshing to see how the right hasn't had an original idea in 150 years, and simply relies on repeating the same nonsense with minor updates. Right wing ideological innovation consists of finding new ways to say, "actually, your boss is right."

The left's great curse is object permanence: the ability to remember things, like the fact that it used to be possible for a worker to support a family of five on a single income, or that the economy once experienced decades of growth with a 90%+ top rate of income tax (other things the left manages to remember: the "intelligence community" are sociopathic monsters, not Trump-slaying heroes).

When the business lobby rails against long-overdue antitrust action against Amazon and Google, object permanence puts it all in perspective. The talking points about this being job-destroying socialism are the same warmed-over nonsense used to defend rail-barons and Rockefeller. "If you don't like it, shop elsewhere," has been the corporate apologist's line since slavery times.

As Dayen says, Corporate Bullshit is a "reference book for conservative debating points, in an attempt to rob them of their rhetorical power." It will be out on Halloween:

https://bookshop.org/a/54985/9781620977514

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/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong

#pluralistic #corporate bullshit #lies #books #reviews #taxonomies #labor #denialism #consumerism #Nick Hanauer #Joan Walsh #Donald Cohen #history #object permanence #taking the right seriously

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

“Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn way.”

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries clearly won the day on Tuesday. He made history as the first Black House caucus leader; it was also the first time (to the best of my fact-checking ability) Brooklyn’s Biggie Smalls was quoted on the House floor. While Republicans savaged one another, Democrats spread love. Jubilant, they looked like they were in the majority, not (narrowly) outnumbered by Republicans. While it’s still extremely unlikely, Jeffries went to bed closer to being House Speaker than he was Tuesday morning. Let it be said that in all three roll calls, Jeffries got 212 votes, at least nine more than McCarthy, and only a few shy of what the next Speaker will need.

Debased House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is still not speaker, after three roll call votes in which he actually lost support. What happens when a man tries to sell his soul but finds no buyer? (A question for House Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, too.) McCarthy gave the wing nuts virtually everything they asked for—the ability for only five members to force a vote to oust him as leader, key committee appointments, other rules changes, a gutted ethics committee, the ability to defund federal departments they don’t like. But they didn’t budge, and in fact their numbers climbed from an estimated five in the morning to 20 at 5 PM.

That’s when Representative Tom Cole moved to adjourn until noon on Wednesday. There had been talk that McCarthy and Co. wanted at least one more roll call vote, to “wear down” the opposition. But since the opposite was happening—the opposition was emboldened—most of the House did McCarthy a solid by voting to end his grueling day of trial by procedural combat.

Let it not be said, however, that the divided House GOP majority changed nothing. Shortly after noon on Tuesday, House security officials took down the weapon-detecting magnetometers, installed after January 6, that were intended to make sure no one entered the House chamber with a weapon. So there’s that.

There will be plenty of assessments of McCarthy’s plight after Tuesday, but I want to focus on Jeffries’s victory, even if it only lasts a day. It was also Nancy Pelosi’s: As she turned over her leadership post to Jeffries, she also bequeathed him a caucus schooled in sticking together, left, liberal, and center, when it matters most. I don’t think Beltway reporters addicted to a “Dems in disarray” story line ever understood what Pelosi accomplished, whether it was delivering her whole caucus for the Affordable Care Act in 2010, when the left was itching to bolt, to all the times she kept her members united under Donald Trump, to the selective defections she allowed—by the so-called Squad as well as centrists—as she pushed President Biden’s agenda in the past two years, knowing that certain members might need to go their own way given the proclivities of their districts.

So far, Jeffries hasn’t needed to grant any dispensation to Democrats to vote for someone else as Speaker. He won all Democratic votes, in a Speaker battle, for the first time since Pelosi did in 2007. That makes sense: Even though he is a liberal not unanimously beloved on the left, he won his caucus leader post by unanimous acclamation. Any reservations members had about him, whether from the left or the center, got subsumed by learned behavior: Being united has paid dividends for Democrats. Why stop now?

Midafternoon Tuesday, several reporters with GOP sources began floating the idea that Democrats might leave the floor, reducing the overall number of votes McCarthy would need to become Speaker. (The victor needs a majority of those present and voting for a named candidate, not of the entire House). I called bullshit at the time. It made no sense, given how Republicans were self-immolating. If there were a vital House Democratic center, maybe there would be people trying to cut deals with Republicans. (And while there isn’t, it’s still possible some incompetents are trying.)

Actually, a vital House Democratic center might be approaching Republicans in districts Joe Biden won to get them to vote for Jeffries. There are at least five: in Southern California, central New York, and southeastern Pennsylvania. Maybe Problem Solver Josh Gottheimer can work his magic? I doubt it. In fact, a much-gossipped-about photo capturing Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez chatting amiably with GOP psycho dentist Paul Gosar, who once produced a cartoon of himself killing the Bronx-Queens leader, turned out to show AOC gently disabusing Gosar of the notion that Democrats were ready to walk out and make it easier for McCarthy to win. “Dems in disarray,” d’oh! That message is strong.

It must be said that despite ideological fractures within the Democratic caucus, Jeffries had the unanimous support of the Congressional Black Caucus, and his historic leadership role, by most accounts, trumped policy differences. Progressives bristled last cycle when he joined with Gottheimer to thwart progressive Democratic challengers and refused “to bend the knee to democratic socialism,” as he put it. (As if anyone asked him to.) But when I heard Cori Bush cast her vote for Jeffries the first time, I knew he’d get all 212 Democrats. And he did. Three times.

After a brutal House GOP caucus meeting Tuesday morning, implacable McCarthy foe Matt Gaetz of Florida, who seems to have survived sex trafficking accusations, allegedly said, “I don’t care if we…elect Hakeem Jeffries.” I don’t believe that any more than I believe anything Gaetz says, but it’s still out there. Not counting on it, not betting on it, but whatever happens, Jeffries is in a hugely stronger position after this GOP multiple-vote shit show than he was even when Tuesday began. No matter who becomes Speaker, he’s going to be the most important House leader.

#us politics #news #2023 #the nation #op eds #118th congress #joan walsh #speaker of the house #rep. Hakeem Jeffries #rep. kevin mccarthy #rep. elise stefanik #rep. Tom Cole #rep. nancy pelosi #rep. alexandria ocasio cortez #rep. paul gosar #Congressional Black Caucus #Democrats #rep. matt gaetz #republicans #conservatives #progressives

[thenewdemocratus]

Front Page: David Horowitz: Salon's Infantile Leftism

Source:The New Democrat  To just to speak to David Horwitz’s critique of Salon and Joan Walsh. He did what he accuses them of doing, which I’ll get into later. Using hyperbolic rhetoric to critique President Obama and Democrats. Saying they are destroying the economy, anti-military and you can go down the line and read his article yourself. Which is how he counters Joan Walsh who said that…

View On WordPress

#David Horowitz #Dennis Prager #Far Left #Joan Walsh #Leftism #Leftists #MSNBC Talk #Salon #Social Democracy #Social Democrats

[ctmwidower]

Sister Monica Joan shows exactly how to respond to someone who says “With respect...” 

CtM S12E04

#ctm #call the midwife #sister monica joan #mr walsh

[gatutor]

Humphrey Bogart-Joan Leslie "El último refugio" (High Sierra) 1941, de Raoul Walsh.

#Joan Leslie #Humphrey Bogart #Raoul Walsh

[morn1e]

eughhhhh joan faceclaim kate walsh?vanessa kirby?save me fictional character

#tbh kirby looks more like her idk how 2 explain #neither of them have prominent noses like joan does but idk both r joan core 2 me. #but kirby somewhat wins.but yet walsh has a more oval face&eyes like jomama. #goddamn!

[maturemenoftvandfilms]

Top 10 List Of Hairy Guys I Like

In no particular order.

Wilford Brimley

Colin Baker

Paul Sorvino

Kevin Dunn

Ed Asner

Richard Riehle

M. Emmet Walsh

Harris Yulin

Joan Laporta

Bob Hoskins

#Joan Laporta #Harris Yulin #Bob Hoskins #M. Emmet Walsh #Richard Riehle #Edward Asner #Ed Asner #Wilford Brimley #Colin Baker #Paul Sorvino #Kevin Dunn #top 10 list #top ten list #celebrities #shirtless #CILF

[weirdlookindog]

The Witches (1966)

AKA The Devil's Own

#the witches #the devil's own #joan fontaine #kay walsh #alec mccowen #1966 #1960s movies #cyril frankel #hammer horror #horror movie poster

[vintagepromotions]

Christmas paper dolls by Joan Walsh Anglund (1981).

#vintage paper doll #1980s #joan walsh anglund #christmas #merry christmas #xmas #children #dolls #paper dolls #usa

[dosmaul]

The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956) dir. Raoul Walsh

#joan leslie #raoul walsh #richard egan #leon lontoc #the revolt of mamie stover #1956

[filmap]

The Witches Cyril Frankel. 1966

Mansion The Manor House, Hambleden, Henley-on-Thames RG9 6RP, UK See in map

See in imdb

#cyril frankel #the witches #joan fontaine #kay walsh #england #united kingdom #knife #witch #mansion #buckinghamshire #movie #cinema #film #location #google maps #street view #folk horror #1966

[camyfilms]

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER 2012

We accept the love we think we deserve.

#the perks of being a wallflower #2012 #logan lerman #emma watson #ezra miller #mae whitman #paul rudd #nina dobrev #johnny simmons #erin wilhelmi #adam hagenbuch #kate walsh #dylan mcdermott #melanie lynskey #joan cusack #zane holtz #reece thompson

[otrtbs]

and im being so very brave about it <3

#feeling very richard siken 'we are all going forward. none of us are going back' #while trying to remember joan walsh's 'I shall be older than this one day. I shall think myself young when I remember.' #anywayZ she's 22 now #if you're also a capricorn i see you and i know you and we are astrologically bonded <3 #but january capricorn superiority sorry sorry 😤 #nat rambles #officially officially officially older than james potter </3 but i do get my free cake slice from caffè nero <3 #so there's that

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

“I was born with nothing and raised on plenty of the same.“

The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Raoul Walsh, 1956)  

#The Revolt of Mamie Stover #Raoul Walsh #quote #Jane Russell #Richard Egan #Joan Leslie #Agnes Moorehead #Leo Tover #1956 #fashion #love #back #drink #alcohol #writing #beach #water #sea #hug #hugs #bed #ship

[lairreparablefugadeltiempo]

Wild Girl (Raoul Walsh, 1932)

#wild girl #raoul walsh #joan bennett #1932 #western #western movies

[byneddiedingo]

Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett in Me and My Gal (Raoul Walsh, 1932)

Cast: Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Marion Burns, George Walsh, J. Farrell MacDonald, Noel Madison, Henry B. Walthall, Bert Hanlon, Adrian Morris, George Chandler. Screenplay: Arthur Kober, Philip Klein, Barry Conners. Cinematography: Arthur C. Miller. Art direction: Gordon Wiles. Film editing: Jack Murray.

Why have I never seen Me and My Gal before? Is it because it's not an easy movie to pigeonhole, being not quite romantic comedy, not quite screwball, and not quite crime drama? Or because it's one of those pre-Code movies that teeter on the edge of seriousness and back off from it in sometimes uncomfortable ways? It starts with an old man about to drown his dog and ends with the police detective protagonist fudging the truth to protect the not entirely innocent. And in between it's wall-to-wall wisecracks, most of them delivered by a never-better Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, who does the gum-chewing dame as well as anyone, even Joan Blondell. Tracy plays Danny Dolan, a cop whose attitude toward those he's supposed to protect and serve is summed up in his response to someone telling him there's been another bank robbery: "Oh, who'd the bank rob now?" And when told that it was the bank that got robbed, retorts, "Ah, turned the tables on 'em, eh? Smart!" There's also a slapstick drunk, a well-staged bank break-in, and even a parody of the Clark Gable and Norma Shearer movie based on Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude (Robert Z. Leonard, 1932), which Dolan remembers as Strange Inner Tube. Much of the credit for turning potential chaos into a thoroughly entertaining movie has to go to Raoul Walsh, one those Hollywood tough-guy directors who seem not to get the recognition they deserve today. 

#Me and My Gal #Raoul Walsh #Spencer Tracy #Joan Bennett