BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — It wasn’t the most uplifting of inaugural addresses. Rather, Argentina’s newly empowered President Javier Milei presented figures to lay bare the scope of the nation’s economic “emergency,” and sought to prepare the public for a shock adjustment with drastic public spending cuts.
In first speech, Argentina’s Javier Milei warns nation of painful economic shock
Related:
With soy and lithium trade in the balance, Argentina’s Milei has a China conundrum
Seven unions representing teachers and other public workers in Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Thursday attempting to end the state’s near-total ban on collective bargaining for most public employees.
Unions in Wisconsin sue to reverse collective bargaining restrictions on teachers, others
Related:
Wisconsin’s Act 10 Is in Jeopardy (WSJ)
The law, signed by former Gov. Scott Walker, has saved the Badger State from turning into Illinois or New York, where public unions essentially run the state government for their own benefit. According to the MacIver Institute, Act 10 has saved Wisconsin taxpayers $16.8 billion since it was passed in 2011, making public finances more manageable at every level of government.
Progressive mayors who publicly rail against the law know that repealing it would wreak havoc on municipal budgets. According to Wisconsin Right Now, Milwaukee’s budget says it has saved about $345.4 million in health insurance since 2012 because of Act 10’s requirement that public employees contribute to their health plans.
The lawsuit by teachers and other public unions focuses on a narrow part of the law that exempts public-safety employees. The unions say this creates a “favored” class of workers and imposes “severe burdens on employees in the disfavored group.” Act 10’s “anti-democratic regime,” the unions continue, subjects “general” employees “to a panoply of burdens and deprives them of important rights,” while exempting police officers and firefighters from “all its injurious provisions.”
Attacks on Public-Sector Unions Harm States: How Act 10 Has Affected Education in Wisconsin
A Decade After Act 10, It’s A Different World For Wisconsin Unions
WSJ quotes MacIver Institute, from the Atlas Network via State Policy Network, Bradley Foundation, and Americans for Prosperity (Kochtopus). Former WI Governor Scott Walker, another Atlas/Koch tool, does not rule out intervening.
The Atlantic: Two Men Running to Stay Out of Prison
Liz Cheney warns US ‘sleepwalking into dictatorship
Robert Kagan: A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.
…We can expect more of this when the war against the “deep state” begins in earnest. According to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), there is a whole cabal determined to undermine American security, a “Uniparty” of elites made up of “neoconservatives on the right” and “liberal globalists on the left” who are not true Americans and therefore do not have the true interests of America at heart. Can such “anti-American” behavior be criminalized? It has in the past and can be again.
So, the Trump administration will have many avenues to persecute its enemies, real and perceived. Think of all the laws now on the books that give the federal government enormous power to surveil people for possible links to terrorism, a dangerously flexible term, not to mention all the usual opportunities to investigate people for alleged tax evasion or violation of foreign agent registration laws. The IRS under both parties has occasionally looked at depriving think tanks of their tax-exempt status because they espouse policies that align with the views of the political parties. What will happen to the think-tanker in a second Trump term who argues that the United States should ease pressure on China? Or the government official rash enough to commit such thoughts to official paper? It didn’t take more than that to ruin careers in the 1950s.
Their panic just shows how out of touch they are with the working class! As for Kagan, there’s so much more that I could say, but for now I’ll just roll my eyes! 🙄
For the first time in its two-decade history, Americans for Prosperity Action—an influential conservative organization backed by Charles Koch—has weighed in on the GOP presidential primary, crowning Nikki Haley as the best candidate to beat Donald Trump.
Koch Network Endorses Haley to Defeat Trump. But the Biggest Loser Is Ron DeSantis.
The vultures are ready to “make the economy scream” if Javier Milei wins!*
Argentina election 2023: what you need to know
Far-right libertarian Javier Milei is leading the polls ahead of Argentina’s Oct. 22 presidential vote, but it remains a tight race between the top three candidates, three surveys showed.
Related:
Argentina election: from peso to dollar?
But dollarisation would also mean immediate recession and slump. It would have to start with a massive devaluation of the domestic peso monetary base. In a very optimistic scenario, if Argentina received a loan of say $12 billion from the IMF and used $5 billion as a reserve for the banking system and $7 billion to dollarise the monetary base, the domestic peso monetary base would still have to be reduced by nearly 400%. Argentine salaries (then in US dollars) would become among the lowest globally and poverty would rise to unprecedented levels. And Argentina is already in a recession with real GDP expected to drop by around 2% this year. So either way: peso or dollar, Argentine households would pay the price in living standards.
…
Desperation has driven many Argentines to consider a ‘libertarian, anarcho-capitalist’ as president. If this were to happen, it will be going down another blind alley. Argentina’s capitalist economy will continue to fail.
Just scratching the surface:
Read More »Yves here. We’re featuring a post from openDemocracy on Argentina’s primary results that had far-right candidate Javier Milei beating the candidates of the two parties that have been in power for two decades. The post is telling, and not in a good way. Milei does advocate extreme views (not that he can go as far as he likes since even if he won a plurality again, he would still be leading a coalition government). And too many commentators forget that voters regularly move to the right in bad economic times, which Argentina is certainly suffering. It’s that the piece depicts him as a Trumpian outsider/madman, when Nick Corbishley’s post right after the primary results were in describes Milei’s considerable, if sometimes seamy, establishment connections…including to the Kochs:
How Javier Milei Upset Argentina’s Political Status Quo
Previously:
Is Argentina’s presidential frontrunner Javier Milei US’ “boy?” Rejects China+Mercosur, embraces $$
Orinoco Tribune Editor: There Was a Coup Against Pedro Castillo in Peru + Some Notes
After years of failed promises on transit, Silicon Valley is loading cars with new technologies to get a cut of the profits—and to collect data on us.
Big Tech Is Watching You as You Drive (archived)
Americans for Prosperity Action is wading into a Republican presidential primary for the first time, and waiting to see which candidate it will get behind for 2024.
Koch Network Raises Over $70 Million for Push to Sink Trump
RFK Jr. wanted to prosecute ‘climate deniers.’ Has he changed?
Kennedy Jr. talks about JFK assassination and Second Amendment rights
Previously:
[2014] Robert Kennedy Jr.: We need laws to ‘punish global warming skeptics’
The Phony War on American Culture
Consider how gender is one focus of their culture war campaign. Transgender people hardly affect our personal lives, despite the Republican campaigns to make it a voting issue. In America, only 1.3 million adults and 300,000 children identify as transgender out of a population of 332 million. Only 36 transgender athletes compete in college sports that include over half a million participants. Yet the Republican legislature in Kansas recently banned transgender girls from female high school sports, despite having only three transgender girls out of 41,00 competing in the state. Indeed, they should be respected and accommodated in some way. Yet, GOP legislators are considering a flood of bills to restrict transgender behavior, flooding email boxes with requests for donations, blasting isolated events on Fox News, and making them campaign issues.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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