New York lawmakers proposed three new bills last week that would make it difficult for wage theft violators to conduct business in the state. The legislation would bolster the power of state agencies to crack down on wage theft by stripping violators of their liquor licenses or business licenses, as well as issuing stop-work orders against them. The legislation was prompted by reports of rampant wage theft against New York workers, including two investigations published by Documented and ProPublica. The stories revealed that more than 127,000 New Yorkers have been victims of wage theft during a recent five-year period, but that the New York State Department of Labor was unable to recover $79 million in back wages owed to the workers. The stories were based on an analysis of two databases of wage theft violations obtained from the U.S. and New York Labor departments. The databases provided previously unreported details on how much money had been stolen from workers and also shed light on which businesses had committed wage theft. “We knew from our conversations with labor and from our constituent service caseload that wage theft is a chronic problem,” said Sen. Jessica Ramos, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation. “We did not have the data to understand the scale of the issue in New York state until the ProPublica and Documented series came out last year. Having this reporting as a tool set us up to put this package together and focused our attention on” the capacity of the Department of Labor. The legislation — dubbed the “wage theft deterrence package” by lawmakers — includes three bills, which are co-sponsored in the State Assembly by Assembly members Kenny Burgos, Harvey Epstein and Linda Rosenthal.

The Party Told You To Reject The Evidence Of Your Eyes And Ears. It Was Their Final, Most Essential Command.

I mean, come on. They get away with this shit because their voters are so goddamn stupid.

he looks like a little kid who just got sent to the timeout corner because he ate all of the dog food out of the dog bowl again

John Oliver is losing his shit right now.

"Not voting gets you Trump" Babe did you miss 2016, voting for Hillary got us Trump too because the Electoral College has more power than the popular vote ever will. The whole damn thing is broke and that's what these whining liberals never wanna face up to.

[alt text: photo of Indiana representative Jackie Walorski with the caption in all caps, "claims to be pro-life / dies anyway"]

Jackie Walorski, staunch pro-life Republican killed in car crash on August 3, 2022

Diane Feinstein died in office today, the longest serving of the 59 women to ever serve in the US Senate. She was California's first woman elected to the US Senate, and the 18th woman to ever be elected to the Senate at all. She was the first woman to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the first woman to become the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She was behind the first congressional action on Global Warning, helped to outlaw the use of torture by the CIA, and secure the Violence Against Women Act until 2027. She was passionately against gun violence, and authored the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which was in effect until 2007.

She was an accomplished Senator, an incredible woman, and did a great deal to push for protections for women and all vulnerable people. Her wisdom and courage in the Senator were deeply admired by many.

May her memory be a blessing.

Bad Credit? No Credit? Bankruptcy? No Problem!

Don't get cranky, call Don Hankey!

He's gone *crazy* and is giving out loans like there's no tomorrow!

Have people maliciously accused you of trying to steal a government?

Don't get cranky, call Don Hankey!

"Call today before I come to my senses!" -Hankey in straight jacket

555-666-6969

Key US Republican calls South Africa’s ICJ case ‘anti-Semitic’

Elise Stefanik, a top legislator in the US House of Representatives, noted that Republicans are “unified” in rejecting South Africa’s petition to the UN court accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention.

Dozens of lawmakers from President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party had also joined Republicans in signing on to a letter expressing “disgust” at the case.

“I joined a letter condemning South Africa for filing an anti-Semitic case against our ally Israel that perpetuates false and dangerous allegations against the Jewish state,” Stefanik said in a social media post.

The UN defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. Israel has killed more than one percent of Gaza’s population since October 7.

Costco workers in Norfolk, Va. have voted to join the Teamsters Local 822, with the union calling this its first organizing victory at the wholesale retailer in two decades. The 238-worker group will join more than 18,000 Teamsters at Costco nationwide. Successful unionization efforts in the retail industry have been relatively rare, but they may pick up steam this year following a strong year for labor in 2023, with successful strikes by the United Auto Workers against the Big Three carmakers and by SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America against Hollywood studios.

Morbidly hilarious that America is ALSO starving its children.

A country so prosperous that it can fund another country's genocide, can't even feed the children it claims to protect.

We know now that on the day that the United States suffered the worst assault on the Capitol since the British ravaged it in 1814, Trump tried to grab the steering wheel from a secret service agent to turn his presidential SUV in the direction of the violent mob so he could join them. We know that when he exhorted his followers to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” he was aware that many of them were armed with guns and wearing body armor. We know from Thursday night that when his close aides pleaded with him to call off the attack, he refused, spending 187 minutes watching events unfold on TV in the White House dining room while swatting away increasingly desperate pleas for him to act until it was clear that his hopes of violently overthrowing the election had faded. To those who track anti-democratic movements there is a chilling familiarity to this rich evocation of a president descending into an abyss of fantasy, fury and possible illegality. “The picture that the hearings depict is of a coup leader,” said the Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky. “This is a guy who was unwilling to accept defeat and was prepared to use virtually any means to try to stay illegally in power.”

‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracy |

Live vote trackers, shown early on enough, are just… objectively hilarious to me

anyways and it’s NIKKI HALEY with a LANDSLIDE WIN of SIX VOTES!!!

Soft, reactionary propaganda

There is a soft propaganda in jokes and more serious orientations around the belief that conservatives and the right more generally are particularly competent but use that competence for malicious ends

This is the same superstition that treats "Mussolini got the trains running on time" as true, or acts as if the Nazis were especially efficient but diabolical

The reality is corruption, incompetence, graft, bickering, etc.

But any jackass can kick down a barn, and it takes a skilled carpenter to build one. When the goal is to destroy things and hurt people, you don't have to be very competent at anything in particular to do that.