Department of (in)Justice says white supremacist gangsters can sue Donald Trump

benfell

Gilead

Donald Trump

Coup attempt


Fig. 1. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

“Speaking to the public on matters of public concern is a traditional function of the Presidency, and the outer perimeter of the President’s Office includes a vast realm of such speech,” attorneys for the Justice Department’s Civil Division wrote. “But that traditional function is one of public communication. It does not include incitement of imminent private violence.”

Two officers with the U.S. Capitol Police, joined by 11 Democratic House members, are seeking to hold Trump liable for physical and psychological injuries they suffered during the riot. Trump has argued he is protected from the lawsuit by the absolute immunity conferred on a president performing his official duties.[1]

We should not forget that the coup attempt was aided and abetted by some white supremacist gangsters.[2]

Dylan Byers, “Will Rupert Make a ‘Blood Sacrifice’?” Puck, March 1, 2023, https://puck.news/will-rupert-make-a-blood-sacrifice/

Rachel Weiner, “Trump can be sued by police over Jan. 6 riot, Justice Department says,” Washington Post, March 2, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/02/trump-jan6-lawsuit-riot/

Right-wing militias

Military


Fig. 1. Image of unstated origin and unknown date posted to Quora by Karl Burkhalter,[3] fair use.

People actually do this shit:

Lt. Cmdr. Jason Fischer, a spokesman for the commander of Naval Surface Force Atlantic, confirmed to Military.com that the ship’s crew found “rope tied similar to a slipknot” on or near a sailor’s bunk in three instances during the month of February, seemingly meant to send a message to that sailor.

According to the Navy, on two occasions, “a small rope tied in a fashion resembling a noose” was found tied to the bunk itself, and on one occasion it was found on the floor nearby in one of the living quarters of the Norfolk, Virginia-based ship.[4]

Konstantin Toropin, “Navy Investigating 3 Instances of ‘Hate Symbols’ Aboard Destroyer,” Military.com, March 2, 2023, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/03/02/navy-investigating-3-instances-of-hate-symbols-aboard-destroyer.html

Police White supremacist gangs


Fig. 1. Photograph by Lorie Shaull, April 1, 2021, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

“[Deputy gangs] create rituals that valorize violence, such as recording all deputy-involved shootings in an official book, celebrating with ‘shooting parties,’ and authorizing deputies who have shot a community member to add embellishments to their common gang tattoos,” the special counsel team wrote this week.[5]

Keri Blakinger, “Special counsel urges sheriff to ban the ‘cancer’ of deputy gangs,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-02/la-me-deputy-gangs-report

Work


Fig. 1. Yeah, this is me. The sign says, “If you’re whining about a labor shortage, STOP ignoring my job applications!” And the QR-code leads here. Photograph by author, January 16, 2023.

As the decade-long bull market came stuttering to an end and tech stock prices fell throughout last year, pressure to cut costs from Wall Street built and in the past few months a deluge of layoffs and cost-cutting has flooded Silicon Valley. The big-idea side projects that were supposed to become the revenue-drivers of the future have been particularly hard hit, with some of them being completely dismantled, and others facing deep cuts.

“They’ve assumed that everything that they touch is going to work. And in reality, it’s not,” said Roger McNamee, a veteran venture capitalist who was an early investor in Facebook before becoming a high-profile critic of social media’s impact on society.[6]

An article in the Washington Post argues that the culture of innovation that nurtured even the boldest (riskiest) startups may be in retreat.

The shift is a major change for the tech industry’s culture, where employees would jump from well-paying jobs at Big Tech companies to risky start-ups, comfortable in the assumption that they could return if the smaller company didn’t work out.[7]

This has happened before. I still haven’t recovered from being laid off in the dot-com crash of 2001, even as I returned to school and finished all the way through to a Ph.D. And a significant source of my feeling forsaken lies in the refusal of my so-called friends from that era to lift even a finger to help me return to work, instead leaving me with the trash on the side of the “information superhighway.”[8] That makes it very hard for me to shed any tears for techies getting laid off.[9]

Now as Uber takes its pressures out on drivers, March is off to a distinctly poor start for me:

Fig. 3. Graph of estimated daily average net income (in blue, using Internal Revenue Service mileage allowance) by month since January 2022, against estimated daily operating costs (in red, using Internal Revenue Service mileage allowance), what the federal minimum wage would be for a six-and-a-half hour day had it kept pace with productivity[10] (in green), the (outdated[11]) federal poverty line[12] (in light orange), and the Pennsylvania minimum wage[13] (in orange), created by author, February 10, 2023, revamped February 18, updated as of March 2, 2023, original is updated daily.

But my former ‘friends’ from that era are not the only ones to have forsaken me. I’m still not seeing a realistic alternative to suicide as all anyone has for me is the very same bullshit that’s failed me for 22 years.[14]

Gerrit De Vynck, Caroline O’Donovan, and Naomi Nix, “The age of the Silicon Valley ‘moonshot’ is over,” Washington Post, March 2, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/02/big-tech-moonshots-google-meta-amazon/

  1. [1]Rachel Weiner, “Trump can be sued by police over Jan. 6 riot, Justice Department says,” Washington Post, March 2, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/02/trump-jan6-lawsuit-riot/↩
  2. [2]Kyle Cheney, Sarah Ferris, and Laura Barrón-López, “‘Inside job’: House Dems ask if Capitol rioters had hidden help,” Politico, January 8, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/congress-democrats-capitol-riot-inside-job-456725; Maggie Koerth, “The Police’s Tepid Response To The Capitol Breach Wasn’t An Aberration,” FiveThirtyEight, January 7, 2021, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polices-tepid-response-to-the-capitol-breach-wasnt-an-aberration/; Kurtis Lee, Jaweed Kaleem, and Laura King, “‘White supremacy was on full display.’ Double standard seen in police response to riot at Capitol,” Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-01-07/la-na-washington-capitol-police-attack-race↩
  3. [3]Quora, “Do you agree with the Marine Corps’ decision to ban the public display of the Confederate flag?” n.d., https://www.quora.com/Do-you-agree-with-the-Marine-Corps-decision-to-ban-the-public-display-of-the-Confederate-flag↩
  4. [4]Konstantin Toropin, “Navy Investigating 3 Instances of ‘Hate Symbols’ Aboard Destroyer,” Military.com, March 2, 2023, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/03/02/navy-investigating-3-instances-of-hate-symbols-aboard-destroyer.html↩
  5. [5]Keri Blakinger, “Special counsel urges sheriff to ban the ‘cancer’ of deputy gangs,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-02/la-me-deputy-gangs-report↩
  6. [6]Gerrit De Vynck, Caroline O’Donovan, and Naomi Nix, “The age of the Silicon Valley ‘moonshot’ is over,” Washington Post, March 2, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/02/big-tech-moonshots-google-meta-amazon/↩
  7. [7]Gerrit De Vynck, Caroline O’Donovan, and Naomi Nix, “The age of the Silicon Valley ‘moonshot’ is over,” Washington Post, March 2, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/02/big-tech-moonshots-google-meta-amazon/↩
  8. [8]David Benfell, “About my job hunt,” Not Housebroken, n.d., https://disunitedstates.org/about-my-job-hunt/↩
  9. [9]David Benfell, “Sympathy for those poor, oppressed upper classes,” Not Housebroken, February 7, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2023/02/02/sympathy-for-those-poor-oppressed-upper-classes/↩
  10. [10]Dean Baker, “Correction: The $23 an Hour Minimum Wage,” Center for Economic Policy and Research, March 16, 2022, https://cepr.net/the-26-an-hour-minimum-wage/↩
  11. [11]Areeba Haider and Justin Schweitzer, “The Poverty Line Matters, But It Isn’t Capturing Everyone It Should,” Center for American Progress, March 5, 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/poverty-line-matters-isnt-capturing-everyone/↩
  12. [12]U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, “Federal poverty level (FPL),” n.d., https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-fpl/↩
  13. [13]U.S. Department of Labor, “State Minimum Wage Laws,” January 1, 2023, https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/state↩
  14. [14]David Benfell, “A life worth living,” Not Housebroken, February 18, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/12/27/a-life-worth-living/↩

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