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Source: https://radgeek.com/feed/

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<title type="text">Rad Geek People's Daily</title>
<subtitle type="text">official state media for a secessionist republic of one</subtitle>
<updated>2025-03-26T15:51:05Z</updated>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/feed/</id>
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<generator uri="https://wordpress.org/" version="4.9.8">WordPress</generator>
<link rel="license" type="text/html" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" /> <entry>
<author>
<name>Rad Geek</name>
<uri>http://radgeek.com/</uri>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Perennial Favorites]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/03/26/perennial-favorites/" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/?p=10899</id>
<updated>2025-03-26T15:51:05Z</updated>
<published>2025-03-26T15:51:05Z</published>
<category scheme="https://radgeek.com?taxonomy=category" term="Misc" label="Misc"/>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[I first read this a while ago; I find myself referring back to it at least a couple times just about every month or so.]]></summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/03/26/perennial-favorites/"><![CDATA[I first read this a while ago; I find myself referring back to it at least a couple times just about every month or so.
<div style="background-color: #ddd; border-radius: 5px; padding: 0.5em 1.0em; margin: 1.0em 3.0em;">
<h3 style="font-size: 90%; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0em; padding-bottom: 0.5em; text-align: center;">Shared Article from kalzumeus.com</h3>
<a href="https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/">Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names
|
…</a>
Classic essay about how software routinely bumbles human names.
kalzumeus.com
 
</div>
]]></content>
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</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Rad Geek</name>
<uri>http://radgeek.com/</uri>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Homeland Security]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/03/18/homeland-security/" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/?p=10894</id>
<updated>2025-03-18T21:37:37Z</updated>
<published>2025-03-18T21:36:27Z</published>
<category scheme="https://radgeek.com?taxonomy=category" term="Misc" label="Misc"/>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[This is a despicable orgy of arbitrary state violence, and an utterly lawless assault on due process. Chicago attorneys with the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois accused the federal government in court Thursday of violating immigration law and the constitutional rights of at least 22 people who were arrested and detained […]]]></summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/03/18/homeland-security/"><![CDATA[This is a despicable orgy of arbitrary state violence, and an utterly lawless assault on due process.
<div style="background-color: #ddd; border-radius: 5px; padding: 0.5em 1.0em; margin: 1.0em 3.0em;">
<h3 style="font-size: 90%; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0em; padding-bottom: 0.5em; text-align: center;">Shared Article from WBEZ</h3>
<div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; min-height: 156px;"><a href="https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2025/03/13/chicago-attorneys-accuse-federal-agents-of-violating-immigrants-rights-and-take-legal-action"><img src="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/8b7b74f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6000x3425+0+287/resize/1461x834!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F09%2F3d%2Fb2c7be734fd9931b96eed38d7aa2%2Fimmigration-adriana.jpg" style="max-width: 200px; height: auto;" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2025/03/13/chicago-attorneys-accuse-federal-agents-of-violating-immigrants-rights-and-take-legal-action">Immigration agents arrested a U.S. citizen and created warrants …</a>
Chicago attorneys were in federal court Thursday accusing federal agents of violating immigration law and the constitutional rights of at least 22 peo…
wbez.org
 
</div>
<blockquote>
Chicago attorneys with the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois accused the federal government in court Thursday of violating immigration law and the constitutional rights of at least 22 people who were arrested and detained in the midwest since President Donald Trump’s inauguration as part of his crackdown on immigration.
Two people are still in custody, 19 were released on bond and one has already been deported.
Attorneys are asking for the immediate release of people still detained, bond reimbursements, weekly reports on immigration arrests and additional training and discipline of federal agents involved in the arrests.
The motion filed against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said federal agents arrested at least one person without probable cause. Attorneys also accused the federal government of making arrests without proper warrants and creating warrants in the field after the arrests.
Attorneys say these actions violate the <a href="https://immigrantjustice.org/NavaSettlement">Nava Settlement</a> — a 2018 class-action lawsuit filed in response to unlawful arrests by ICE agents who used traffic stops and other tactics to make arrests without a warrant. Under the agreement, ICE officials can conduct a warrantless arrest if they believe an individual is likely to escape but they must provide evidence. But in the motion filed Thursday in federal court in Chicago, attorneys said federal agents since January <q>failed to assess whether there was probable cause that an individual was likely to flee before a warrant could be issued.</q>
<q>No one disputes that ICE has authority to do immigration enforcement in the U.S., in Chicago, anywhere in the U.S.,</q> said Mark Fleming, of the National Immigrant Justice Center’s federal litigation project.[<a href="#homeland-security-n-1" class="footnoted" id="to-homeland-security-n-1">1</a>] <q>But they only have authority to do it under the laws that Congress have passed or are part of the legal limitations of the US Constitution.</q>
Fleming says the rhetoric of mass deportation is putting a lot of pressure on federal immigration officials to get their detention and arrest numbers up.
<q>In order to do this mass deportation that the administration has demanded of them, [federal agents] are going way outside the bounds of the legal guardrails around arrest and deprivation of liberty, both within the immigration laws but also under the U.S. Constitution,</q> Fleming said. <q>[ICE agents] believed that they had developed a work around the settlement, albeit an unlawful one.</q>
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins>
The 22 cases include Chicago resident Julio Noriega, 54, a U.S. citizen who, according to court documents, was arrested, handcuffed and spent most of the night at an ICE processing center in suburban Broadview. He was never questioned about his citizenship and was only released after agents looked at his ID.
<q>I was born in Chicago, Illinois and am a United States citizen,</q> Noriega said in his statement, adding that on Jan. 31, after buying pizza in Berwyn he was surrounded by ICE agents and arrested. Officers took away his wallet, which had his ID and social security card. <q>They then handcuffed me and pushed me into a white van where other people were handcuffed as well.</q>
— Adriana Cardona-Maguigad, <a href="https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2025/03/13/chicago-attorneys-accuse-federal-agents-of-violating-immigrants-rights-and-take-legal-action"><cite class="article">Immigration agents arrested a U.S. citizen and created warrants after an arrest, lawyers say in court</cite></a> <cite>WBEZ Chicago</cite>, 13 March 2025.
</blockquote>
<h3>See also:</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2008/01/27/someone_must/">GT 2008-01-27: Someone must have slandered Thomas W….</a>. <q><ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> But the point that I do want to make is that if you’re a U.S. citizen, and you’re not convinced of the central importance of immigration law–if you believe that you can reliably secure your own freedom without paying attention to the way that governments treat undocumented immigrants–then you need to think a lot harder about what a system of immigration control necessarily entails. International apartheid requires mechanisms for detecting, and then either interdicting or rounding up, unauthorized immigrants. But to discover and then interfere with their presence in the country, it necessarily entails a system of paramilitary border control, and it also necessarily entails immigration dossiers, passbooks, and government surveillance. But these systems have to be inflicted both on citizens and on immigrants for them to make any sense at all; by definition, the government can’t discover immigrants who bypass the official documentation system by getting documentation of their undocumented status, so instead the border control State has to force everyone else to carry papers, to submit to La Migra’s surveillance, and to take on the burden of giving affirmative proof of our status whenever some prick with a clipboard demands it. There’s no way to block off opportunities for undocumented immigrants to move or to get jobs except by limiting everyone’s freedom of motion or employment to government-controlled chokepoints where papers can be demanded and inspected. And there’s no way to make undocumented immigrants disappear into legal limbo without also, at the same time, creating an ominous threat to any citizen who might come under La Migra’s suspicion or might have trouble producing her own papers on demand. There is no way for international apartheid to be enforced on immigrants without massive invasions on the privacy and liberties of non-immigrants, because the basic concept — the concept of a government with the power and prerogative to systematically screen who is and who is not allowed to exist within <q>its</q> territory — requires everybody, whether their presence is authorized or unauthorized by the government, to be <a href="http://fair-use.org/p-j-proudhon/general-idea-of-the-revolution/epilogue#p39">watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so</a>. <ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins></q></li>
</ul>
<ol class="footnotes">
<li class="footnote" id="homeland-security-n-1">[1][Editor’s Note: <q>No one?</q> Nah. I dispute this, even if no-one else does. Existing law may grant them this power, but it cannot grant them authority to do things everywhere that <a href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2010/03/02/liberty-equality-solidarity-toward-a-dialectical-anarchism/">nobody has the authority to do anywhere</a>. —RG]<a class="note-return" href="#to-homeland-security-n-1">↩</a></li></ol>
]]></content>
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<entry>
<author>
<name>Rad Geek</name>
<uri>http://radgeek.com/</uri>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Overdue Process]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/03/11/overdue-process/" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/?p=10890</id>
<updated>2025-03-11T15:56:21Z</updated>
<published>2025-03-11T15:55:33Z</published>
<category scheme="https://radgeek.com?taxonomy=category" term="Misc" label="Misc"/>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[. . . Demonstrations occurring on Columbia’s campus since Oct. 7, 2023, have included both constitutionally protected speech and unlawful conduct, but the government has not made clear the factual or legal basis for Mr. Khalil’s arrest. The statements the government has released suggest its decision may be based on his constitutionally protected speech. This lack of […]]]></summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/03/11/overdue-process/"><![CDATA[<div style="background-color: #ddd; border-radius: 5px; padding: 0.5em 1.0em; margin: 1.0em 3.0em;">
<h3 style="font-size: 90%; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0em; padding-bottom: 0.5em; text-align: center;">Shared Article from The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression</h3>
<div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; min-height: 156px;"><a href="https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-demands-answers-trump-admin-officials-arrest-mahmoud-khalil"><img src="https://www.thefire.org/sites/default/files/styles/1200x630/public/2025/03/Mahmoud%20Khalil%20outside%20the%20gates%20of%20Columbia%20University%20in%20New%20York.jpg?h=17ddf58a&itok=AzuWbz0m" style="max-width: 200px; height: auto;" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-demands-answers-trump-admin-officials-arrest-mahmoud-khalil">FIRE demands answers from Trump admin officials on arrest of Mah…</a>
Agents from the Department of Homeland Security arrested a lawful permanent resident who has been involved in activism related to the current conflict…
thefire.org
 
</div>
<blockquote>
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> Demonstrations occurring on Columbia’s campus since Oct. 7, 2023, have included both constitutionally protected speech and unlawful conduct, but the government has not made clear the factual or legal basis for Mr. Khalil’s arrest. The statements the government has released suggest its decision may be based on his constitutionally protected speech. This lack of clarity is chilling protected expression, as other permanent residents cannot know whether their lawful speech could be deemed to <q>align to</q> a terrorist organization and jeopardize their immigration status.
The federal government must not use immigration enforcement to punish and filter out ideas disfavored by the administration. It must also afford due process to anyone facing arrest and detention, and must be clear and transparent about the basis for its actions, to avoid chilling protected speech. To that end, we request answers to the following questions:
What was the specific legal and factual basis for Mr. Khalil’s arrest on March 8?
What is the specific legal and factual basis for Mr. Khalil’s detention?
What is the specific legal and factual basis on which you are seeking revocation of Mr. Khalil’s green card?
Will Mr. Khalil be afforded the due process protections required by U.S. law?
Is it your intention to seek the revocation of lawful immigration status on the basis of speech protected by the First Amendment?
— Carolyn Iodice (2025), <a href="https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-demands-answers-trump-admin-officials-arrest-mahmoud-khalil"><cite class="article">FIRE Letter to Trump Administration Officials on Detention of Mahmoud Khalil</cite></a> Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, March 10, 2025
</blockquote>
]]></content>
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<entry>
<author>
<name>Rad Geek</name>
<uri>http://radgeek.com/</uri>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Reading: Adam Mastroianni, “Science Is A Strong-Link Problem”]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/02/04/reading-adam-mastroianni-science-is-a-strong-link-problem/" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/?p=10886</id>
<updated>2025-02-04T18:17:13Z</updated>
<published>2025-02-04T18:15:42Z</published>
<category scheme="https://radgeek.com?taxonomy=category" term="Misc" label="Misc"/>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[There are two kinds of problems in the world: strong-link problems and weak-link problems. Weak-link problems are problems where the overall quality depends on how good the worst stuff is. You fix weak-link problems by making the weakest links stronger, or by eliminating them entirely. . . . It’s easy to assume that all problems are like […]]]></summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/02/04/reading-adam-mastroianni-science-is-a-strong-link-problem/"><![CDATA[<div style="background-color: #ddd; border-radius: 5px; padding: 0.5em 1.0em; margin: 1.0em 3.0em;">
<h3 style="font-size: 90%; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0em; padding-bottom: 0.5em; text-align: center;">Shared Article from experimental-history.com</h3>
<div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; min-height: 156px;"><a href="https://www.experimental-history.com/p/science-is-a-strong-link-problem"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1200,h_600,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2c023909-9571-43f0-bd01-681f89217e48_1717x673.jpeg" style="max-width: 200px; height: auto;" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.experimental-history.com/p/science-is-a-strong-link-problem">Science is a strong-link problem</a>
OR: How to eat fewer asparagus beetles
Adam Mastroianni @ experimental-history.com
 
</div>
<blockquote>
There are two kinds of problems in the world: strong-link problems and weak-link problems.
Weak-link problems are problems where the overall quality depends on how good the worst stuff is. You fix weak-link problems by making the weakest links stronger, or by eliminating them entirely.
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins>
It’s easy to assume that all problems are like this, but they’re not. Some problems are strong-link problems: overall quality depends on how good the best stuff is, and the bad stuff barely matters. Like music, for instance. You listen to the stuff you like the most and ignore the rest.
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins>
Figuring out whether a problem is strong-link or weak-link is important because the way you solve them is totally different:
<h3>When you have a STRONG-LINK problem:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Increase outliers/variance/weirdness because you’ll benefit from having more very good things</li>
<li>Don’t gatekeep because you might accidentally keep the best out</li>
<li>Ignore the worst</li>
<li>Improve the best</li>
<li>Accept risk, because the downside doesn’t matter.</li>
</ul>
<h3>When you have a WEAK-LINK problem:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Decrease outliers/variance/weirdness because you’ll be harmed by having more very bad things</li>
<li>Gatekeep because it keeps the worst out</li>
<li>Improve the worst</li>
<li>Ignore the best</li>
<li>Avoid risk, because the downside is all that matters</li>
</ul>
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins>
Science is a strong-link problem.
In the long run, the best stuff is basically all that matters, and the bad stuff doesn’t matter at all. The history of science is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_theories_in_science">littered with the skulls of dead theories</a>.
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> Here’s the crazy thing: most people treat science like it’s a weak-link problem….
— Adam Mastroianni, <a href="https://www.experimental-history.com/p/science-is-a-strong-link-problem"><cite class="article">Science Is A Strong-Link Problem</cite></a> <cite class="journal">Experimental History</cite>, 11 April 2023
</blockquote>
]]></content>
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</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Rad Geek</name>
<uri>http://radgeek.com/</uri>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[An average mazing of mistakes, / The kind that everybody makes / Set random intervals apart.]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/02/01/an-average-mazing-of-mistakes-the-kind-that-everybody-makes-set-random-intervals-apart/" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/?p=10882</id>
<updated>2025-02-01T19:38:07Z</updated>
<published>2025-02-01T19:37:03Z</published>
<category scheme="https://radgeek.com?taxonomy=category" term="Misc" label="Misc"/>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[By A.E. Stallings, from POETRY (May 2020); recently featured on Poetry Foundation’s Audio Poem of the day podcast. Daedal To build a labyrinth it takes A twisted mind, a puzzled art, A fractal branching of mistakes. Drag out the shovels and the rakes, The spirit level, sacred chart. To build a labyrinth it takes Shadows, […]]]></summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/02/01/an-average-mazing-of-mistakes-the-kind-that-everybody-makes-set-random-intervals-apart/"><![CDATA[By A.E. Stallings, from <cite>POETRY</cite> (May 2020); <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/audio/153419/daedal">recently featured on Poetry Foundation’s Audio Poem of the day podcast</a>.
<blockquote>
<h3><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/153195/daedal" title="A.E. Stallings, "Daedal," in POETRY (May 2020)">Daedal</a></h3>
To build a labyrinth it takes 
A twisted mind, a puzzled art, 
A fractal branching of mistakes.
Drag out the shovels and the rakes, 
The spirit level, sacred chart. 
To build a labyrinth it takes 
Shadows, stones, a way that snakes 
And ladders to its shaky start; 
An average mazing of mistakes,
The kind that everybody makes, 
Set random intervals apart. 
To build a labyrinth it takes
Dead ends that seem like lucky breaks, 
The paths of bats that weave and dart 
Through limestone caverns of mistakes.
The shaken Etch A Sketch awakes 
A lost child buried in its heart. 
To build a labyrinth it takes 
Some good intentions, some mistakes.
— A.E. Stallings (2020) <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/153195/daedal" title="A.E. Stallings, "Daedal," in POETRY (May 2020)"><cite class="poem">Daedal</cite></a>, in <cite>POETRY</cite> (May 2020)
</blockquote>
]]></content>
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</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Rad Geek</name>
<uri>http://radgeek.com/</uri>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[What I’m Reading: Virginia Postrel, “The World of Tomorrow” (Works in Progress, December 2024)]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/01/28/what-im-reading-virginia-postrel-the-world-of-tomorrow-works-in-progress-december-2024/" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/?p=10874</id>
<updated>2025-01-28T17:18:53Z</updated>
<published>2025-01-28T17:18:53Z</published>
<category scheme="https://radgeek.com?taxonomy=category" term="Misc" label="Misc"/>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Progress used to be glamorous. For the first two thirds of the twentieth-century, the terms modern, future, and world of tomorrow shimmered with promise. Glamour is more than a synonym for fashion or celebrity, although these things can certainly be glamorous. So can a holiday resort, a city, or a career. The military can be […]]]></summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://radgeek.com/gt/2025/01/28/what-im-reading-virginia-postrel-the-world-of-tomorrow-works-in-progress-december-2024/"><![CDATA[<div style="background-color: #ddd; border-radius: 5px; padding: 0.5em 1.0em; margin: 1.0em 3.0em;">
<h3 style="font-size: 90%; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0em; padding-bottom: 0.5em; text-align: center;">Shared Article from worksinprogress.co</h3>
<div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; min-height: 156px;"><a href="https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-world-of-tomorrow/"><img src="https://wip.gatspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/The-world-of-tomorrow.png" style="max-width: 200px; height: auto;" /></a></div>
<a href="https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-world-of-tomorrow/">The world of tomorrow - Works in Progress</a>
When the future arrived, it felt… ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow?
worksinprogress.co
 
</div>
<blockquote>
Progress used to be glamorous. For the first two thirds of the twentieth-century, the terms modern, future, and world of tomorrow shimmered with promise.
Glamour is more than a synonym for fashion or celebrity, although these things can certainly be glamorous. So can a holiday resort, a city, or a career. The military can be glamorous, as can technology, science, or the religious life. It all depends on the audience. Glamour is a form of communication that, like humor, we recognize by its characteristic effect. Something is glamorous when it inspires a sense of projection and longing: if only …
Whatever its incarnation, glamour offers a promise of escape and transformation. It focuses deep, often unarticulated longings on an image or idea that makes them feel attainable. Both the longings – for wealth, happiness, security, comfort, recognition, adventure, love, tranquility, freedom, or respect — and the objects that represent them vary from person to person, culture to culture, era to era. In the twentieth-century, <q>the future</q> was a glamorous concept. <ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins>
— Virginia Postrel, <a href="https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-world-of-tomorrow/"><cite class="article">The World of Tomorrow</cite></a> <cite class="journal">Works in Progress</cite> (December 2024)
</blockquote>
]]></content>
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</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Rad Geek</name>
<uri>http://radgeek.com/</uri>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Reading: No, Culture Is Not Stuck — You just can’t see what it’s become (Katherine Dee)]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2024/12/30/reading-no-culture-is-not-stuck-you-just-cant-see-what-its-become-katherine-dee/" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/?p=10867</id>
<updated>2024-12-30T21:37:20Z</updated>
<published>2024-12-30T21:36:14Z</published>
<category scheme="https://radgeek.com?taxonomy=category" term="Art and Literature" label="Art and Literature"/>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Reading: Katherine Dee, No, Culture Is Not Stuck, at Wisdom of Crowds (4 October 2024). The idea that culture is stagnating, as Ted Gioia puts it — or that it’s stuck, as Paul Skallas says — isn’t new. Neither is the observation that there’s something different about how bad things are in this particular moment. […]]]></summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://radgeek.com/gt/2024/12/30/reading-no-culture-is-not-stuck-you-just-cant-see-what-its-become-katherine-dee/"><![CDATA[Reading: Katherine Dee, <a href="https://wisdomofcrowds.live/p/no-culture-is-not-stuck"><cite class="article">No, Culture Is Not Stuck</cite></a>, at <cite>Wisdom of Crowds</cite> (4 October 2024).
<div style="background-color: #ddd; border-radius: 5px; padding: 0.5em 1.0em; margin: 1.0em 3.0em;">
<h3 style="font-size: 90%; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0em; padding-bottom: 0.5em; text-align: center;">Shared Article from wisdomofcrowds.live</h3>
<div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; min-height: 156px;"><a href="https://wisdomofcrowds.live/p/no-culture-is-not-stuck"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1200,h_600,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8a38968-c527-41a4-b793-dfa29884c9dd_1610x906.jpeg" style="max-width: 200px; height: auto;" /></a></div>
<a href="https://wisdomofcrowds.live/p/no-culture-is-not-stuck">No, Culture is Not Stuck</a>
You just can't see what it's become.
Katherine Dee @ wisdomofcrowds.live
 
</div>
<blockquote>
The idea that culture is stagnating, as Ted Gioia <a href="https://www.honest-broker.com/p/why-do-i-keep-saying-the-culture">puts it</a> — or that it’s stuck, as Paul Skallas <a href="https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/culture-stuck">says</a> — isn’t new. Neither is the observation that there’s something different about how bad things are in this particular moment. The cultural malaise is palpable and cross-generational. The complaints are more than just <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/old-man-yells-at-cloud"><q>old man yells at cloud.</q></a> Everyone feels it.[<a href="#reading-no-culture-is-not-stuck-you-just-cant-see-what-its-become-katherine-dee-n-1" class="footnoted" id="to-reading-no-culture-is-not-stuck-you-just-cant-see-what-its-become-katherine-dee-n-1">1</a>]
Consider film and television, an easy target for cultural pessimists, and for good reason. The signs of decay are hard to ignore. <ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins>
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> If you complain about these trends, the responses you’ll get typically fall into two camps. One sympathizes with you, but offers only a resigned <q>How are you just now noticing?</q> The other dismisses your concerns as a symptom of aging. There’s plenty of great music, movies, literature, and fashion, and if you don’t like it, that’s your inability to keep up.[<a href="#reading-no-culture-is-not-stuck-you-just-cant-see-what-its-become-katherine-dee-n-2" class="footnoted" id="to-reading-no-culture-is-not-stuck-you-just-cant-see-what-its-become-katherine-dee-n-2">2</a>]
Both responses miss something important, though. They both assume that what we know as “culture” is the only type of culture that could ever exist.
There’s a third possible response, and that’s that there’s a new culture all around us.
We just don’t register it as <q>culture.</q> <ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> We’re witnessing the rise of new forms of cultural expression. If these new forms aren’t dismissed by critics, it’s because most of them don’t even register as relevant. Or maybe because they can’t even perceive them.
— Katherine Dee, <a href="https://wisdomofcrowds.live/p/no-culture-is-not-stuck"><cite class="article">No, Culture Is Not Stuck</cite></a> <cite>Wisdom of Crowds</cite> (4 October 2024).
</blockquote>
<ol class="footnotes">
<li class="footnote" id="reading-no-culture-is-not-stuck-you-just-cant-see-what-its-become-katherine-dee-n-1">[1][<q>Everyone?</q> Nah. Come on. —R.G.]<a class="note-return" href="#to-reading-no-culture-is-not-stuck-you-just-cant-see-what-its-become-katherine-dee-n-1">↩</a></li>
<li class="footnote" id="reading-no-culture-is-not-stuck-you-just-cant-see-what-its-become-katherine-dee-n-2">[2][For what it’s worth, this latter is actually the response I’m most often inclined to give when I hear this kind of stock complaints about, say, television and film: I don’t even know what people are talking about, unless it’s just to say that they’re tired of going to the movies and so can’t be arsed to find movies to go see. If you’re tired of superhero movies or Star Wars series or whatever, well, that’s fine; don’t watch that stuff. There’s a ton of weird, non-franchised, stylistically varied and highly idiosyncratic movies and series coming out every year. You don’t have to be some hipster bastard digging through the bottom of search results to find it; just make the effort to go to an arthouse theater or watch the foreign films up for an Oscar this year or whatever. Last year’s Best Picture nominees were wildly divergent, artistically ambitious, ranged from quietly meditative reflections on midlife regret to alt-Victorian Living Dead Girl picaresques and practical-effect atomic bomb explosions, and more or less all were completely different from the sort of genre pictures that the Stuck Culture bellyachers routinely and absurdly claim to be all-devouring and inescapable. I take Katherine Dee’s point in this essay that there’s also a lot of other stuff to look at; but it also just seems like the core complaint about stuckness hardly ever really reflects the real range of activity in the cultural medium alleged to be <q>stuck.</q> It’s not even prima facie compelling after a moment’s thought about what you could find in fifteen minutes’ worth of looking. —R.G.]<a class="note-return" href="#to-reading-no-culture-is-not-stuck-you-just-cant-see-what-its-become-katherine-dee-n-2">↩</a></li></ol>
]]></content>
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</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Rad Geek</name>
<uri>http://radgeek.com/</uri>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Murdercare For All?]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2024/12/11/murdercare-for-all/" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/?p=10861</id>
<updated>2024-12-11T20:00:27Z</updated>
<published>2024-12-11T20:00:27Z</published>
<category scheme="https://radgeek.com?taxonomy=category" term="Misc" label="Misc"/>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Reading: J.D. Tuccille, The People Cheering Brian Thompson’s Murder Can’t Have the Medical Utopia That They Want, today’s issue of The Rattler, for Reason.com (11 December 2024). The assassin’s fans–and the legal system has yet to convict anybody for the crime–are moral degenerates. But they’re also dreaming, if they think insurance executives like Thompson are […]]]></summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://radgeek.com/gt/2024/12/11/murdercare-for-all/"><![CDATA[Reading: J.D. Tuccille, <a href="https://reason.com/2024/12/11/the-people-cheering-brian-thompsons-murder-cant-have-the-medical-utopia-that-they-want/"><cite class="article">The People Cheering Brian Thompson’s Murder Can’t Have the Medical Utopia That They Want</cite></a>, today’s issue of <cite>The Rattler</cite>, for <cite>Reason.com</cite> (11 December 2024).
<div style="background-color: #ddd; border-radius: 5px; padding: 0.5em 1.0em; margin: 1.0em 3.0em;">
<h3 style="font-size: 90%; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0em; padding-bottom: 0.5em; text-align: center;">Shared Article from Reason.com</h3>
<div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; min-height: 156px;"><a href="https://reason.com/2024/12/11/the-people-cheering-brian-thompsons-murder-cant-have-the-medical-utopia-that-they-want/"><img src="https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/q60/uploads/2024/12/zumaamericasfortyfive100918-scaled.jpg" style="max-width: 200px; height: auto;" /></a></div>
<a href="https://reason.com/2024/12/11/the-people-cheering-brian-thompsons-murder-cant-have-the-medical-utopia-that-they-want/">The people cheering Brian Thompson’s murder can’t have the m…</a>
Making people more, rather than less, responsible for their own health care is far better than cheering the murder of others.
J.D. Tuccille @ reason.com
 
</div>
<blockquote>
The assassin’s fans–and the legal system has yet to convict anybody for the crime–are moral degenerates. But they’re also dreaming, if they think insurance executives like Thompson are all that stands between them and their visions of a single-payer medical system that satisfies every desire. While there is a lot wrong with the main way health care is paid for and delivered in the U.S., what the haters want is probably not achievable, and the means many of them prefer would make things worse.
<h3><q>Unlimited Care… Free of Charge</q></h3>
<q>It is an old joke among health policy wonks that what the American people really want from health care reform is unlimited care, from the doctor of their choice, with no wait, free of charge,</q> Michael Tanner, then of the Cato Institute, <a href="https://www.cato.org/commentary/what-americans-really-want-health-care-reform-impossible">quipped</a> in 2017.
The problem, no matter how health care is delivered, is that it requires labor, time, and resources that are available in finite supply. Somebody must decide how to allocate medications, treatments, physicians, and hospital beds, and how to pay for it all. A common assumption in some circles is that Americans ration medicine by price, handing an advantage to the wealthy and sticking it to the poor.
<q>Today, as everyone knows, health care in the US can be prohibitively expensive even for people who have insurance,</q> Dylan Scott <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/390111/united-healthcare-ceo-shot-insurance-hospitals-doctors">sniffed</a> this week at <cite>Vox</cite>.
The alternative, supposedly, is one where health care is <q>universal,</q> with bills paid by government so everybody has access to care. Except, most Americans rely on somebody else to pay the bulk of their medical bills just like Canadians, Germans, and Britons. And while there are huge differences among the systems presented as alternatives to the one in the U.S., third-party payers–whether governments or insurance companies–do enormous damage to the provision of health care.
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins>
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> Concerns about rising costs, demand, and finite resources apply just as much when the payer is the government. <ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> You have to wonder what those so furious at Brian Thompson that they would applaud his murder would say about the officials managing systems elsewhere. None of them deliver <q>unlimited care, from the doctor of their choice, with no wait, free of charge.</q> Some lack the minimal discipline imposed by what competition exists among insurers in the U.S.
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins>
<ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> <q>Policymakers need to understand that the key to <q>affordable health care</q> is not to increase the role of health insurance in peoples’ lives, but to diminish it,” Cato’s Singer concluded.[<a href="#murdercare-for-all-n-1" class="footnoted" id="to-murdercare-for-all-n-1">1</a>] <ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> Those examples point to a better health care system than what exists in the United States–or in most other countries, for that matter. They’re probably not the whole answer, because it’s unlikely that one approach will suit millions of people with different medical concerns, incomes, and preferences. But making people more, rather than less, responsible for their own health care, and getting government and other third-parties as far out of the matter as possible, is far better than cheering the murder of people who supposedly stand between us and an imaginary medical utopia.
— J.D. Tuccille, <a href="https://reason.com/2024/12/11/the-people-cheering-brian-thompsons-murder-cant-have-the-medical-utopia-that-they-want/"><cite class="article">The People Cheering Brian Thompson’s Murder Can’t Have the Medical Utopia That They Want</cite></a> <cite>The Rattler</cite>, for <cite>Reason.com</cite> (11 December 2024).
</blockquote>
<ol class="footnotes">
<li class="footnote" id="murdercare-for-all-n-1">[1][In a white paper that Tuccille referred to earlier in the article: <q>Jeffrey Singer, a surgeon and senior fellow with the Cato Institute, <a href="https://www.cato.org/commentary/health-cares-third-party-spending-trap">wrote</a> in 2013. <q>The third party payment system is the principal force behind health care price inflation.</q></q> —R.G.]<a class="note-return" href="#to-murdercare-for-all-n-1">↩</a></li></ol>
]]></content>
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</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Rad Geek</name>
<uri>http://radgeek.com/</uri>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[We Took The “Copy” Out Of “Copyright”: Influencer Edition]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2024/12/09/we-took-the-copy-out-of-copyright-influencer-edition/" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/?p=10855</id>
<updated>2024-12-09T22:37:03Z</updated>
<published>2024-12-09T22:34:54Z</published>
<category scheme="https://radgeek.com?taxonomy=category" term="Misc" label="Misc"/>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[This week in utterly deranged copyright maximalism: Just a reminder: Sydney Gifford is not claiming that Alyssa Sheil made a copy of any of her online content, not even one copy of one post or image. She’s claiming that Sheil’s inherently vague and indefinable je-ne-sais-quoi is just too similar to allow. The entire principle of […]]]></summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://radgeek.com/gt/2024/12/09/we-took-the-copy-out-of-copyright-influencer-edition/"><![CDATA[This week in utterly deranged copyright maximalism:
<div style="background-color: #ddd; border-radius: 5px; padding: 0.5em 1.0em; margin: 1.0em 3.0em;">
<h3 style="font-size: 90%; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0em; padding-bottom: 0.5em; text-align: center;">Shared Article from New York Times</h3>
<div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; min-height: 156px;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/style/clean-girl-aesthetic-influencer-lawsuit.html"><img src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/11/19/fashion/00AESTHETICS-TRIAL-top/00AESTHETICS-TRIAL-top-facebookJumbo.png" style="max-width: 200px; height: auto;" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/style/clean-girl-aesthetic-influencer-lawsuit.html">Can You Copyright A Vibe?</a>
One influencer is suing another, accusing her of copying her minimalist aesthetic on social media. It turns out there is a lot of gray area in shades …
Sandra E. Garcia @ nytimes.com
 
</div>
Just a reminder: Sydney Gifford is not claiming that Alyssa Sheil made a copy of any of her online content, not even one copy of one post or image. She’s claiming that Sheil’s inherently vague and indefinable je-ne-sais-quoi is just too similar to allow.
<a href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2023/07/20/we-took-the-copy-out-of-copyright/">The entire principle of copyright, and so-called <q>intellectual property</q> broadly, is and always has been, basically obscene, censorious, tyrannical and absurd.</a> This lawsuit would be bad enough if it were a normal assertion of copyright against, say, someone copying images or text from her online lifestyle posts and trying to police the authorized use of those materials and set the boundaries of what is or is not allowed as <q>fair use.</q> But this lawsuit is ludicrous and contemptible even if taken on copyright’s own terms, even if you stipulate the whole silly pseudo-propertarian structure of intellectual, literary and photographic property rights. <a href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2023/07/20/we-took-the-copy-out-of-copyright/">Once again we have a lawsuit premised on the idea that copyright holders are entitled to forbid and censor</a> works that aren’t even copies of <q>their</q> material, on the maximalist view that intellectual property extends not only to controlling copies or direct derivative works, but even allowing free-ranging, open-ended censorship of completely distinct original works that the copyright holder deems to have a completely indefinable <q>vibe</q> or <q>aesthetic</q> somehow or another influenced by that of their own original work. Copyright law was supposedly about controlling copying; that’s a bad enough idea, but it takes some truly deranged copyright maximalism (and a credulous press, willing to indulge this self-promoting flight of fancy) to try to recast the whole mess as some sort of an open-ended prerogative to forbid, punish or shake down anyone who consumes the work the copyright holder produces, or to demand a veto over the basic fact of artistic and cultural influence. That’s bananas.
]]></content>
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<entry>
<author>
<name>Rad Geek</name>
<uri>http://radgeek.com/</uri>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Reading: Martin Glaberman on counterintuitive consequences of “social unionism,” “business unionism,” labor militancy and the welfare state in WARTIME STRIKES (1980)]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://radgeek.com/gt/2024/12/03/reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980/" />
<id>https://radgeek.com/?p=10844</id>
<updated>2024-12-03T21:40:20Z</updated>
<published>2024-12-03T21:39:22Z</published>
<category scheme="https://radgeek.com?taxonomy=category" term="Misc" label="Misc"/>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[From Taking the Pledge, Chapter 1 of Martin Glaberman’s Wartime Strikes: The struggle against the no-strike pledge in the UAW during World War II (1980). By way of context: in December 1941, in the weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declaration of war, the Roosevelt administration held meetings where a lot […]]]></summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://radgeek.com/gt/2024/12/03/reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980/"><![CDATA[From <cite class="article">Taking the Pledge,</cite> Chapter 1 of Martin Glaberman’s <cite>Wartime Strikes: The struggle against the no-strike pledge in the UAW during World War II</cite> (1980).
By way of context: in December 1941, in the weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declaration of war, the Roosevelt administration held meetings where a lot of national union and labor federation leaders agreed to a no-strike pledge and major concessions on pay, hours and overtime — supposedly in exchange for no-lockout pledges from management, and for government imposing major regulatory restrictions on war industries, market prices and executive salaries. In most unions these concessions were made unilaterally by union leadership. The United Auto Workers provisionally adopted the measures through their Executive Board and then called a convention of their membership in April 1942 to ratify the program.
<blockquote>
The tactics used at the conference by the leadership included the implication that giving up premium pay for Saturdays and Sundays was conditional on acceptance of the whole program. The Equality of Sacrifice program included a prohibition of war profits, a $25,000 ceiling on salaries, control of inflation, rationing of necessities, and so on. Just before the vote a letter that President Roosevelt had sent to the conference was read a second time and then Richard Frankensteen, a Vice President of the UAW, shouted at the delegates, <q>Are you going to tell the President of the United States to go to hell?</q>[<a href="#reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-23" class="footnoted" id="to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-23">23</a>] The program giving up overtime pay was adopted, with 150 delegates voting in the opposition.
Relinquishing premium pay ultimately proved an embarrassment to the UAW and the CIO. The AFL was not quite as generous, and, as a result, in attempts to organize the aircraft industry, the UAW was having difficulty, losing elections to the AFL International Association of Machinists. The difficulties faced by CIO unions, attempting to organize plants against their AFL rivals, ultimately forced on Philip Murray, President of the CIO, the humiliation of having to demand thatt the government enforce a general ban on premium pay for Saturdays and Sundays, to equalize the situation. Nelson Lichtenstein writes:
<blockquote>
A 1942 contest between the UAW and the International Association of Machinists provides a graphic example of this wartime phenomenon. Under the prodding of Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen and at the request of the government, the UAW agreed to relinquish certain types of overtime pay in the interests of a general <q>Victory Through Equality of Sacrifice</q> program. UAW organizers thought this plan would help organize new war workers through its patriotic appeal. For example they <a class="page-number">[8]</a> told Southern California aircraft workers: <q>The best way (you) can speed up war production, and contribute even more to the war effort, is to join the CIO, which has made this business of winning the war its main objective.</q>
In contrast the machinists’ union emphasized wages and hours and the maintenance of overtime pay standards. The IAM attacked the UAW: <q>Can the CIO’s masterminds tell you why they know what’s good for the worker better than he knows himself? . . . the CIO sacrifices workers’ pay, workers’ overtime as the CIO’s contribution to the war effort. Big of them, huh?</q> In a series of 1942 NLRB elections the IAM decisively defeated the UAW on this issue. UAW and CIO leaders who had pitched their election campaigns on an exclusively patriotic level were stunned. In defeat they quickly appealed to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_War_Labor_Board_(1942%E2%80%931945)" title="[War Labor Board]">WLB</a> and to the Administration, not to restore overtime pay, but to force the IAM and the rest of the AFL to give it up as well. This FDR soon did by issuing a special executive order on this problem.[<a href="#reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-24" class="footnoted" id="to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-24">24</a>]
</blockquote>
It all pointed up to the stupidity of one of the arguments of the union leaders in this, as well as the giving up of the right to strike: the government will move against labor in wartime and legally restrict our overtime benefits and our right to strike. To prevent this, the remarkable strategy of surrendering these rights voluntarily was put forward.
This seeming contradiction between the supposedly conservative AFL versus the supposedly militant CIO exposes one facet of what has come to be called <q>social unionism.</q> The concerns of union leaders (especially such as Walter P. Reuther) who went beyond the traditional bread and butter unionism of the AFL to deal with general social questions have often been misunderstood as a sign of greater militancy. More often, it was simply a tendency to move the labor movement in the direction of incorporation into the structure of the <q>welfare state.</q> Social unionism represented the demands of the state for the social control of the workers at least as much as it represented the generalized interests of the membership of the unions.
The adoption of the no-strike pledge by the leaders of the major unions seems like a sharper turn in labor policy than it is in reality. The outbreak of war, the public demands of government officials for labor peace, the statements and <a class="page-number">[10]</a> resolutions of labor leaders, the fact that major strikes for union recognition were still taking place, all combine to exaggerate the degree of change involved in the no-strike policy.
The conflict between militant unionists and UAW leaders seeking to limit the independent activity of the membership dates back to the organizing days of the union. <ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> <a class="page-number">[13]</a> <ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> Control of wildcat strikes had been a continuing problem before the outbreak of war. A discussion at a special meeting of the UAW International Executive Board in Detroit on February 7, 1941 is indicative:
<blockquote>
The next issue discussed by President Thomas was the various unauthorized strikes or so-called departmental sit-downs which were taking place in a number of the plants. He then related to the Board his recent experiences in the Briggs plant at which time one of the Chief Steward [sic] openly flaunted the fact that he just closed his department, without first consulting his superior officers or the International.[<a href="#reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-1" class="footnoted" id="to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-1">1</a>] In view of this instance and similar other minor occurrences Pres. Thomas informed the Board that a letter was issued from his Office stating very definitely that the International would not support or partake in any future unauthorized strikes. To date, President Thomas was happy to report that apparently the letter had some affect [sic] since no such trouble has been encountered in the plant.
(Considerable discussion followed as to what policy the International Union should adopt in such instances and it was the consensus of opinion that the International had been too lenient and should in the future assume a firm stand on these matters.)[<a href="#reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-27" class="footnoted" id="to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-27">27</a>]
</blockquote>
This discussion might support the suspicions that the leaders of the UAW welcomed government pressure on workers to back up their own attempts to maintain labor peace, despite their public opposition to government restrictions on labor. Interesting also in the above minutes is the phrase <q>superior officers,</q> which suggests a hierarchy in which power starts at the top and diffuses downward.
In addition to their own bureaucratic need to control their members, the actions of CIO leaders were also governed <a class="page-number">[14]</a> by their desire to be incorporated into the state machine.[<a href="#reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-28" class="footnoted" id="to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-28">28</a>] Although this was presented as a desire to achieve labor representation in the government and on government boards, it quickly developed into governmental representation in the labor movement rather than the reverse. <ins class="ellipsis editorial" title="[Elision by the editor.]">. . .</ins> They would appear to their own members, not as leaders who had been elected to represent the interests of their members, but as politicians whose function it had become to get their members to sacrifice for the war effort. They viewed themselves as patriots first and unionists second. In contrast, with very few exceptions, business leaders never permitted patriotism to interfere with profits. The rush of the UAW and CIO officials to be absorbed into the wartime government bureaucracy was in partial contrast to the leaders of the AFL. AFL bureaucrats, in many ways more conservative than the CIO, nevertheless had an older tradition of avoidance of politics and governmental interference. In their simple business unionism way, they at times refrained from making concessions (such as on the premium pay issue) which seemed to benefit corporate profitability more than the war effort. It is <a class="page-number">[15]</a> not that they did not participate on government boards and play the role of government bureaucrats. It was that they were a bit more backward about it. Perhaps they were helped in this by the dictatorial nature of most AFL union constitutions and the fact that they needed less help from the government to control their own membership.[<a href="#reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-34" class="footnoted" id="to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-34">34</a>]
— Martin Glaberman, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/799229.Wartime_Strikes"><cite>Wartime Strikes: The struggle against the no-strike pledge in the UAW during World War II</cite></a> (1980), Chapter 1, pp. 8-15.
</blockquote>
Glaberman was a hard Left labor historian, deeply influenced by Trotskyism, Grace Lee Boggs, C.L.R. James and radical industrial unionism in Detroit; but the lessons he draws here — about the perverse results of <q>social unionism,</q> the value of jurisdictional competition, or the relationship between labor and the state (or, by the by, about the role of labor organizers affiliated with the American Communist Party) — are not the ones I would necessarily have expected going in.
<ol class="footnotes">
<li class="footnote" id="reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-23">[23]Preis, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1866540.Labor_s_Giant_Step" title="Art Preis, LABOR'S GIANT STEP, New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1964, pages 152-153.">op cit.</a><a class="note-return" href="#to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-23">↩</a></li>
<li class="footnote" id="reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-24">[24]Nelson Lichtenstein, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/183/oa_monograph/chapter/2145931"><cite class="article">Defending the No-Strike Pledge: CIO Politics During World War II,</cite></a> <cite class="journal">Radical America</cite>, Volume 9, Numbers 4-5, July-August 1975, page 55. Footnotes in original omitted.<a class="note-return" href="#to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-24">↩</a></li>
<li class="footnote" id="reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-1">[1][The International Executive Board of the UAW. —R.G.]<a class="note-return" href="#to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-1">↩</a></li>
<li class="footnote" id="reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-27">[27]Addes Collection 52A, Box 21, Folder: Minutes, WSULA.<a class="note-return" href="#to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-27">↩</a></li>
<li class="footnote" id="reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-28">[28]For comparable developments in the different situation of Great Britain, see Angus Calder, <cite>The People’s War</cte>, New York: Pantheon, 1969, especially pages 393-396.<a class="note-return" href="#to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-28">↩</a></li>
<li class="footnote" id="reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-34">[34]See Lichtenstein, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/183/oa_monograph/chapter/2145931" title="Nelson Lichtenstein, "Defending the No-Strike Pledge: CIO Politics During World War II" in RADICAL AMERICA 9.4-5, July-August 1975">op cit.</a>, pages 54-55.<a class="note-return" href="#to-reading-martin-glaberman-counterintuitive-consequences-social-business-unionism-labor-militancy-welfare-state-wartime-strikes-1980-n-34">↩</a></li></ol>
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