"Both sides do nothing for the american people!"

And yet here you are, representing a mysterious third option, which also doing nothing.

Judge dismisses corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams

The fix is in

Adams had pleaded not guilty to bribery and other charges after a 2024 indictment accused him of accepting illegal campaign contributions and travel discounts from a Turkish official and others — and returning the favors by, among other things, helping Turkey open a diplomatic building without passing fire inspections.

The case, brought during President Joe Biden's administration, was on track for an April trial until Trump’s Justice Department moved to drop it. Ho delayed the trial and appointed former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement to assist him in deciding what to do.

The Justice Department had wanted the option to revive the case in the fall. Adams’ lawyers wanted it gone for good.

In a written submission on March 7, Clement told Ho he had no choice under the law but to dismiss the case. But he recommended that the judge reject the Justice Department’s request to be able to refile them after this year’s mayoral election, which would leave “a prospect that hangs like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the accused.”

The decision comes with three months to go until a Democratic primary that is likely to chose the city's next mayor.

Anna Betts at The Guardian:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is rightly calling out Donald Trump for exploiting the antisemitism issue to attack higher education institutions under the false guise of “fighting antisemitism.”

Nina Martin at Mother Jones:

[...]

A big win for reproductive freedom in Alabama: in Yellowhammer Fund v. Marshall, Alabama cannot charge those who help abortion patients get out-of-state abortions.

See Also:

America is facing an aging crisis. The number of Americans over the age of 65 is expected to reach 80 million by 2040, a 30% increase in just 20 years, with the number of those over age 84 expected to more than double during the same period, to 15 million.

Meanwhile, the share of working-age Americans needed to support them has been declining, particularly among the U.S.-born. The share of the U.S.-born who were between the ages of 16 and 64 dropped from 61.7% in 2018 to 60.9% in 2023. By contrast, in 2023, 77.1% of immigrants, or 36.9 million people, were between the ages of 16 and 64.

As more Americans elect to age at home, home healthcare aides are already in critically short supply. By 2032, the United States is expected to be short 4.6 million home care workers, leaving millions of Americans without the vital care they need. Without immigrants, the situation would be far more dire.

Immigrants comprised 28.4% of the nation’s health aides (including home health aides, nursing assistants, and more) and 15.9% of its nurses in 2023. Already strained by staffing shortages, some states are bracing for worse if immigrant workers are deported. In Hawaii, the immigrant share of health aides increased from 41.4% in 2018 to 50.9% in 2023. In Georgia, the immigrant share of nurses rose from 10.9% to 15.7%.

You don't have to like weed but I find people who are vehemently anti-weed but claim to be left leaning infuriating. If you go into a rage because you smelled someone smoking pot, how the fuck do you expect to form community with people addicted to meth? It's easier to say you hate smokers than to say you hate all drug users in leftist spaces because one makes you sound a bit like a square while the other is the writing on the wall. You aren't anti-weed, you're anti-drug user and anyone who uses substances is not safe around you.

I know dozens of people who use meth, coke, and fentanyl. While heroin is harder to get I do know some folks who use it when they can. Some of these drug users are my neighbors, some are my clients, and some are my friends & family. One does not cease to be human just because they use a substance you find scary.

Community doesn't mean you need to invite them to your home and look away if they smoke there. It means you don't call your property manager because you suspect your neighbor uses. It means you don't require drug tests for homeless shelters and housing services. It means the very idea of someone who smokes meth in your community doesn't make you go, "what the hell."

Genuinely kind of a wild thing to see in the replies as someone who has been professionally practicing harm reduction for years.

Considering recent events over here in the States, this seemed like a good time to bring this back. Over the next four years, expect an increase in discourse around "undesirables." This will include but not be limited to drug addicts.

Also, from someone who works at a smoke/head shop: WAY MORE PEOPLE ARE DRUG USERS THAN YOU THINK. Way more people are addicted to opiates, meth, whippets, cocaine, you name it, than you have been lead to believe, and on top of that, they are often the "normal" or "functional" people you see every day, not just the person tweaking out at the gas stations. Judges, bank tellers, grandmas, teachers, the nice lady who runs your bakery— all of them. You are ALREADY IN COMMUNITY WITH THESE PEOPLE. Start fucking acting like it.

I'm gonna keep repeating this: 'community' is not a fucking friend group.

It's not a clique. It's not you and the people YOU think are cool and funny.

Drug users are your neighbors whether you're too much of an obnoxious self-righteous asshat to be aware of that or not. You don't *get* to say drug users don't deserve to be meaningfully connected to and included in the populations they call home (which is what community actually means, btw) and the mere assertion that you can is a big part of why ppl seek connection in drugs in the first place.

It doesn't matter if ppl use or not but tbh if we really wanted to cut down on addiction all we'd need to do is have fewer stuck up motherfuckers who look down on 'undesirables' in the first place.

'community' is not a fucking friend group.'community' is not a fucking friend group.'community' is not a fucking friend group.'community' is not a fucking friend group.'community' is not a fucking friend group.'community' is not a fucking friend group.

In this argument tho, there seems to be a huge bloody leap from "being annoyed by drug use" to "literally can't stand anybody who could possibly have ever used any drug"

I'm by no means a puritan, but not wanting to be exposed to fumes against your will is a pretty fucking normal thing.

it is, however, telling that anarchists once again seem to only have any sympathy for the most run-down strata of the lumpenproletariat, leftovers of a bygone mode of production and various rejects of the system. yes, we should sympathise with them, but it is seriously not irrational to exclude them from some things. drug addicts make terrible revolutionaries.

I don't usually reblog shitty responses to go 'whoa look at this shithead', but I'm gonna go for this one because it's an educational example and if you reblog this stuff directly from me and then write this, you're gonna piss me off. So here goes:

Look at the first two paragraphs, the way the post tries to start with a reasonable sounding take, of just 'being annoyed' and 'not wanting to be exposed to fumes'. It's a weak take because nobody said you can't be annoyed by people or that you can't have any non-smoking spaces. Everything was just about accepting addicts as members of your community and not subjecting them to isolation.

But, you see, the first two paragraphs are not meant to be a coherent response to the above, they're meant to set the tone 'I am the voice of reason', to soften the taste of what comes next.

And what comes next, the third paragraph, is just a bunch of slurs about addicts and very poor people. For those unfamiliar with marxist lingo:

And this is ended by rejecting the call of accepting addicts as members of your community because they supposedly 'make terrible revolutionaries'.

Note the huge shift here from 'annoyed by smoke' to judging the character and abilities of the entire group labelled 'addicts'. The original post said 'it's easier to say you hate smokers than to say you hate all drug users' and this poster just did exactly that: lead with 'not wanting to be exposed to fumes' to then whip out the open bigotry in the third act.

The idea that drug addicts can't be revolutionaries is bullshit of course. But this reveals the value system of the 'revolutionary' tumblr user writing this, They see nothing of value in including the most oppressed in their communities and their solidarity, simply for the sake of not leaving anyone behind. Their only standard for who matters is whether they can be productive enough to contribute significantly to the revolution.

With that kind of take, it's understandable why they want you to think it's just about 'being annoyed by drug use'. Because what comes next is just 'fuck the poor' wrapped in marxist language.

This is such a good breakdown of what I made this post about. It's so ironic to see people essentially complain about a supposed strawman and then reveal they themselves are made of straw.

Even if you claim to be a Marxist, you are not immune to conservative ideas and propaganda. The US has never truly left the War on Drugs. It is so ingrained in us that people have been using that same rhetoric against certain medications for years. I was not surprised by RFK Jr's anti-medication stance because of what was said to me when I first started taking medication for my mental illnesses as a teenager in the 2010s.

Being against one form of substance use is a pipeline to being against any form of substance use. Yes, this includes whatever you take that you think is safe from these talking points. The "Make America Healthy Again" movement in the US views you as inferior because you need support. When you understand that most drug use is self-medication, it's easy to understand the connections.

Also, I want to address the "of course anarchists are going to care most about the most poor of us" crap that one person spouted in fancy language.

First, just because it's kinda funny, but I never really claimed to be an anarchist. I don't think I am enough of an anarchist to call myself one, though I do really value their teachings and the work they do. If the anarchists think I am one of them, hell yeah, I won't complain. Fucking love anarchists.

Second, and more importantly, saying that caring for the most disenfranchised of our population is a bad thing is really weird. It doesn't mean we don't care about anyone else, but if you won't figure out how to advocate for those with the least power in the room then you will only be able to serve those with the most power. This doesn't even go into the complexities of who is seen as a "good" drug user and a "bad" drug user in slightly more progressive spaces.

But if folks are going to freak out about accepting that they're going to be exposed to stoners, I really don't think those same people are ready to talk about people who take the "scary" substances, or even who is "allowed" to use substances and who isn't.

I think they referred to 'anarchists' because they reblogged this from me and I have anarchism in my username, but I'm glad that you like anarchists and welcome to the club. :)

About their response being weird... in case you're not aware (hope I'm not over-explaining): this persons' disdain for the most disenfranchised probably comes directly from Marx and Engels. They theorized that the 'working class' were those who sold their labor - who worked (legal) jobs. And according to them, there was another, inferior, underclass which they called the 'Lumpenproletariat': People of low morals who did not do recognized work and who were incapable of gaining class consciousness and of becoming true revolutionaries. Their description varies and often amount to a list of stigmatized groups. One description from Marx:

It's not hard to see how 'drug users' would make it on this list for a modern Marxist.

Marx and Engels were wrong about the 'Lumpenproletariat', of course. Escaped slaves, homeless people, sex workers, traveling workers, people doing criminalized work and addicts have always been class conscious and have frequently been fierce revolutionaries.

But for the dogmatic Marxist, the 'Lumpenproletariat' remains a tool of exclusion and of respectability politics. Is anything that poor people do to survive morally complicated or does it scare you? Then you can just call them the lumpenproletariat! Only the noble non-criminal, non-sex-worker, housed and employed worker is the true working class!

It's a no-true-scotsman game that allows the dogmatic Marxist to distance themselves from anyone among the oppressed who makes them uncomfortable, maintaining an exclusive club of appropriately civil revolutionaries and actually being proud of their exclusion of the most disenfranchised.

I wanna add to this that a thing Marxists like this have conveniently memory-holed is that tons of Marxists included queer people in the 'Lumpenproletariat' until the early 00's.

These homophobic and transphobic Marxists jumped on the fact that everyone from bourgie gay men to poor street queens visited the only gay bar in town, and used that to argue that queer people were 'class traitors' and that their 'obsession with sex and gender' kept them from developing real class consciousness. Along with all the 'not real workers' stuff because of the many queer people who couldn't get a legal job.

And this is how 'Lumpenproletariat' has always functioned. It's a left-wing spin on calling groups of marginalized people 'degenerate' or 'anti-social'.

It bears emphasis that Marx thought that way about criminalized people largely because Marxist theory views industrial capitalism not as a scourge or a moral injustice but as a necessary stage in societal development. There isn't a path to communism that doesn't go through capitalism, and in many a situational analysis that turns out a fine assumption because capitalism is just what we got -- but it presents real problems because Marx was also obsessed with sorting people into classes, so class consciousness and standing in the revolution are ALSO pay-walled behind wage labor.

Because the only class of people seen as "good revolutionaries" is the proletariat, an identity contingent on capitalism in the first place, Marxism can induce a disdain for people who do not or cannot participate in capitalist labor markets. Marxism does not refute the idea that a person's worth and dignity comes from their labor: the rationale for a proletarian revolution is NOT primarily that industrial capitalism abuses and kills people and the environment, it's that workers don't get the fruits of their own labor; it's still intrinsically tied to the idea that you are only entitled to exist in society if you contribute to it, just with different math about who contributes most. Those who don't labor or who have the audacity to bother their peers by being drug addicted, disabled, ill, et al. are fundamentally worthless and disenfranchised to Marxist theory because labor IS what entitles people to worth and franchise in Marxism. A number of folks have tried to retrofit this by analogizing non-commercial labor as also being labor [and some good notions spring from this, like the idea that domestic labor should be paid] but it remains very very hard for Marxism to actually respect people who just don't contribute to the system of laboring/producing more laborers OR to imagine that some people's right to exist might be in conflict with a politely organized society where everyone conforms to a common denominator for the common good.

That hint of antipathy for anarchists "only caring about the lumpenproletariat" is key here cause that IS one of the big differences between Marxism and most forms of anarchism: enough of a difference that Marxists are aware of the criticism and feel the need to twist it back around. The criticism specifically being that Marxist theory DOESN'T care about the lumpenproletariat. Instead of just taking that criticism, we get a wad of justifications for why those who labor for a wage shouldn't HAVE to tolerate their comrades in rags, why really it's the addicts and whores and mentally ill people holding up the revolution by [checks notes] asking to be tolerated and for the revolution to also fight for their rights.

U.S. Treasury to Eliminate Paper Checks: What It Means for Tax Refunds, Social Security | Kiplinger

The Treasury's elimination of paper checks for Social Security payments will require those receiving benefits by check to transition to electronic payment methods, like direct deposit or prepaid debit cards. Data show that more than 450,000 individuals receive paper Social Security checks.

Additionally, the transition could strain Social Security Administration resources as recipients seek assistance updating their payment information.

Many individuals who are unable to make changes online will require in-person support. That will be challenging, given the Trump administration's cuts to the federal agency, including the closure of many Social Security local offices.

Juliana Kim at NPR:

FCC opens bogus politically-motivated investigation into Disney and ABC over DEI practices.

See Also:

Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, and Noel Sims at Popular Information:

Many Venezuelans were deemed gang members because of their tattoos

[...]

"We're better than this"

Popular Information has a solid report on the gang member points system, and apparently a Michael Jordan jump silhouette qualifies as a “gang symbol”, per the morally deficient Trump Misadministration.

Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse:

Karoline Leavitt and JD Vance’s BS lies about Kilmar Abrego Garcia being a “MS-13 member” are why we have due process.

See Also:

Karoline Leavitt works for Trump and is by default a liar.

Health records of more than 280,000 older adults revealed that those who received a largely discontinued shingles vaccine called Zostavax were 20% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia over the next seven years than those who went without.

Pascal Geldsetzer, at Stanford University, said: “For the first time we are able to say much more confidently that the shingles vaccine causes a reduction in dementia risk. If this truly is a causal effect, we have a finding that’s of tremendous importance.”

The researchers took advantage of a vaccination rollout that took place in Wales more than a decade ago. Public health policy dictated that from 1 September 2013, people born on or after 2 September 1933 became eligible for the Zostavax shot, while those who were older missed out.

The policy created a natural experiment where the older population was sharply divided into two groups depending on their access to the vaccine. This allowed the researchers to compare dementia rates in older people born weeks apart but on either side of the vaccine eligibility divide.

After accounting for the fact that not all those eligible for the vaccine received it, the researchers found vaccination led to a 20% reduction in dementia risk, with the strongest effect in women. Anupam Jena, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, said the implications were profound.

Bice: Elon Musk group removes video from $1M winner after she says she got money to 'vote'

Just how nervous is billionaire Elon Musk about allegations that he may be violating the state's bribery statute by paying people to vote?

On Tuesday, Musk's super PAC, America PAC, pulled a video from X featuring $1 million giveaway winner Ekaterina Deistler in which she said she received the money, in part, to "vote." X is owned by the tech billionaire.

"My name’s Ekaterina Deistler," she said in a video posted Monday morning. "I did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do: sign the petition, refer friends and family, vote, and now I have a million dollars."

But the video was taken down yesterday, and America PAC posted a new video of Deistler on X on Tuesday afternoon.

"My name’s Ekaterina Deistler, and I'm from Green Bay, Wisconsin," she said in the new video. "I did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do: sign the petition, refer friends and family, and now I have a million dollars."

It's almost exactly the same, except the word "vote" has been removed. She is no longer saying she was paid, in part, to vote in the Supreme Court race.

I know this sounds sort of stupid, but genuinely, my problem is not with what Democrats say most of the time, its how the say it.

Genuinely. It makes me crazy. There are so many democrats - Hillary - who were saying great things but couched it in so much cautious, pre-tested, nuanced language that it sounded either boring or like a bad thing.

There is a time for the thousand word prepared remarks answer to a question about the way the regime is snatching people off the street, and there is a time to respond in under ten words, several of which are obscenities.

There is this mistake made that taking the high ground means staying in a permanently elevated style of speaking, and it makes it so freaking easy for people to hear it as disconnected from them. Yes, there is a ton of nuance and explanation for why eggs are expensive, but the thesis statement goes upfront when you're talking to people. And the thesis isn't "as you know, cuts to regulation have increased the spread of bird flu, and combined with the market uncertainty that the companies are using to keep the price high without lowering their profit, the cost is unacceptable"

Just look at the camera or the person and go, "Yeah this sucks. I paid 9 bucks for 12 eggs this weekend. That's ridiculous." then get into the damn details.

Just. Godsake. Please. Human first. Nuance second. if someone would swipe past on tiktok bc you're not grabbing them fast enough, then go hire an under grad and hand them a squirt gun and tell them to get you every time you fail to speak like a human being.

Seeing real ideas so shellacked in spin makes it seem like an open hand reaching out to help that's thoroughly encased in lucite.

Hold up, in case this breaches containment.

This is bitching about how baby left progressives throw a tantrum and threaten not to vote if the candidate fails to check box every goddamn thing in every goddamn speech. Which is how Dems end up sounding so unnatural.

“They talked about the price of eggs first? Wow. I guess they don’t care about animal rights then, they’re exactly as bad as the other side”

So now they have to do the stupid, long, vague thesis statement to appease who the fuck ever is up their ass today.

The far left is the reason they talk like that. They can’t piss off that group or they’ll lose that side of the voting bloc. They can’t go all the way to the far left or they’ll lose the centrists they also need.

But the centrists? They’re not going to complain about a candidate failing to list the full alphabet mafia in the correct order and refuse to vote. They also won’t throw a tantrum if the candidate doesn’t mention their exact union. But. They’re going to be ostracized and unwelcome if the guy had to pause and apologize about that in careful, practiced language about a niche issue instead of talking like a human. And then the centrists are going to vote for the guy who sounds human who also wants to dissolve government regulations.