cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2080065

B-b-based NY Dems?! Critical support?!

Full support to Mao, of course.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2066954

From the rest of the headline:

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(...) ("Independence Restoration Day"). They chanted "Lithuania for Lithuanians only", "Lithuania without Russians" etc.

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Things are getting dire. I have a friend in Lithuania and he says they are, though this has been going on for a while...

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2063506

Let's bring it.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2059933

Quote:

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Kotick is also looking for partners, which could include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

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Oh God NO

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2046445

Subscribe to this person.

Trying to help 'em out.

Also, comment and like (you know, for the algorithm).

Cheers!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2040520

I quite liked it!

It felt like I was watching a great biopic and I liked some of the cinematography as well and the way they shot certain things.

But also, it felt a bit like a Guy Ritchie film with the film constantly cutting back and forth between different eras... which I sort-of liked but I can understand why others didn't like it and it has its limitations (not to mention: it's hard to do effectively).

The problem is that, unless you're a communist or a history buff, you won't always understand the references. There's a lot missing, even for a film that's 3 hours long. I don't mind the 3 hour duration. But people talked vaguely about shit or were kinda obscure with what they said. I will say that it captures the Cold War and Second Red Scare aspect well. But you won't, say, care who Stimson is unless you already know who Stimson is, so to speak.

I'm surprised that the communists are described and shown to be, more or less, sympathetic. Oppie says something about "appeasing the Soviets" but that's probably just fluff and we all know that he doesn't mean it (plus, he was likely a Communist Party USA member at one point anyway so, in a way, it doesn't matter what anti-communist thing he might say here and there because we know that it's bullshit). Does the audience know that? They probably sort-of do. I say "sort-of" because no doubt it'll go over other peoples' heads.

It definitely feels like Christopher Nolan made it... for himself, so to speak, in the way it just glosses over things that the audience could've probably got a primer on to begin with. Like, I felt like the director and the people behind the film really liked the subject matter but they still had to dumb it down in the end. They still had to do it all fast within a 3 hour framework.

It's amazing that none of the other characters besides, say, Teller (for example) have personalities. Well, certainly, Groves has a personality, Jean has a personality, but you can tell that, for example, Lomanwitz doesn't have much of a personality to begin with. Whatever his historical significance, the movie will gloss over it at times, and you can tell that, even when the movie references things from an hour previously (it is a bit tightly written), it's not... able to do so in a way that's always significant. I see what Nolan was trying to do by revisiting certain scenes and seeing it from a different angle. I like it. But it doesn't always work.

I understand that most MLs will hate this film. I've seen many that do.

But I went in not expecting that much in terms of accuracy and was pleasantly surprised by, well, other aspects of the film, including the Second Red Scare aspect.

Also, Kitty saying that she sees a difference between communism and Soviet communism was honestly a good answer. I liked it, but again, that's a theoretical debate that MLs sometimes have all the time (I don't believe that the Soviet model is the only model of socialism). I don't know. I just liked it. You can glean things from the dialogue of the movie... if you fill in the dots with what you already know (and use sub-titles all the while).

On another note: I don't mind "no-personality" characters per se (I've read A Song of Ice and Fire, for crying out loud, and I like it, but I'm doing a re-read and there are certainly third-party characters that come off as basically being there to enliven the scene, act as a go-between for certain characters, or expand the world). As bonkers as it might sound, I don't think every character (not even a secondary character) has to have an expanded backstory and personality so long as they're there to explain things and support the secondary characters or main characters... To give an A Song of Ice and Fire example, Robett Glover (a character from the books, not Game of Thrones) isn't going to be on the same level as, say, Jon Snow or Davos Seaworth. And I get that. But sometimes, it seems that even the secondary characters in the film Oppenheimer could've used a bit more oomph, a bit more presence, a bit more of the it quality (and, hell, sometimes the main characters too).

Again, interesting ideas.

Interesting way of doing things with the film.

But obviously, the film can't get a high score in all the things it's trying to do.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2039938

It's a long-form article so here's an excerpt of the first part:

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Baltimore is often maligned as a shrinking city beset by crime and intractable poverty. But take a walk down President Street just south of Little Italy on a Friday night, and you will enter a world that appears far removed from the idea of a city that is terminally in decay.

Past the empty pavilions of the Inner Harbor and east of the city’s increasingly troubled downtown business district, a cluster of towering high-rises emerges from the harbor like a defiant mountain range of concrete.

A cobblestone boulevard leads to a European-style thoroughfare dotted with a dazzling array of upscale restaurants and outdoor dining patios. Lines of traffic spill onto the side streets as eager tourists vie for hard-to-find parking spots.

The outdoor bars and retail shops thrum with activity while the upscale Four Seasons Hotel sits astride panoramic views of the tranquil harbor. Stories of luxury condominiums extend into a swanky dance club, which perches atop the building like a palatial penthouse. An express elevator operated by a top hat-wearing attendant delivers partygoers to an often-packed dance floor.

It’s a world unto itself, seemingly far removed from the David Simon-conjured Wire-fied landscape of a failed city beset by corruption, drug dealing, and over policing: An upscale bubble that offers a gleaming rebuke to the naysayers who deem Baltimore a dysfunctional city of a dwindling population and violent crime.

But it’s a success story that comes with a hefty, less obviously apparent, asterisk. Harbor East is, in some sense, a taxpayer-bolstered paradise.

Based on the findings of our nearly year-long investigation into how Harbor East came to be, this shining city within the city is a success story heavily dependent upon public subsidies to an extent that has not previously been reported. It is a waterfront oasis fueled by dozens of tax breaks and incentives, built and sustained by tens of millions of dollars in city money.

How these tax subsidies have both defined and transformed Harbor East is a story entangled in the city that surrounds it. As our ongoing investigation Tax Broke has revealed, it is a tale of how a community walled off from its affluent suburban neighbors turned to tax incentives to reverse years of decay and population loss. But it’s also an example of the secrecy that obscures the details of how much this policy costs and who it really benefits.

As this spreadsheet illustrates, records obtained by TRNN reveal that, between 2012 and 2022, Harbor East received roughly $115.8 million in tax relief from the city through various subsidies and incentives.

However, despite numerous Maryland Public Information Act requests, city officials would release only a limited range of data from 2013–2022 pertaining to Harbor East tax records. They also would not release separate tax bills regarding a series of PILOTs—payment in lieu of taxes—granted to buildings within the development, which led to additional tax savings for developers.

Still, what we were able to obtain paints a picture of a luxury development built upon a foundation of public subsidies.

The most lucrative of these incentives went to the Marriott Waterfront Hotel. To date, $57 million in property tax has been abated, part of a 25-year PILOT that requires a tax payment of $1 per year.

But the city has also granted tax relief to a variety of other buildings.

Roughly 75% of the additional Harbor East properties garnered subsidies worth approximately $58 million in just under a decade. The bulk of the tax breaks were PILOTs, given to at least seven properties comprising the waterfront development.

PILOTs offer fairly straightforward tax relief: Property taxes are phased in over time on a sliding scale, from a small percentage of the actual tax bill to a greater share of what would actually be owed. A ten-year PILOT, for example, might require the property to pay 5% of the entire tax bill for the first three years, then 20% for the next four, and, finally, 80% for the remaining two. But the city has been opaque about the tax savings from individual PILOTs, removing the data from online tax records and ignoring our requests for additional data.

But some properties were granted more than one tax break.

The pricey office tower built to house the Legg Mason investment firm benefited from both an Enterprise Zone credit and a PILOT. The subsidies were intended to maintain 600 jobs and keep the firm’s headquarters in the city.

Legg Mason was acquired by California-based investment firm Franklin Templeton in 2020. The name is currently off the building, but the subsidies remain. Records show the owners of the building have not been required to pay full city property tax since 2018.

In addition to the PILOTs, multiple other buildings within the same development also received Enterprise Zone tax credits and abatements under the Brownfields incentive program. Each forgives a percentage of property taxes ranging from 50% to 75% of the entire tax bill for five to ten years, depending on a variety of criteria.

The Enterprise Zone credit is designed to spur commercial development in poor neighborhoods but was expanded over time to include the entire city. The Brownfields credit incentivizes developers to remediate contaminated properties and offers a similarly generous 75% reduction in tax bills for five to ten years.

The Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences used a Brownfield credit to save roughly $10.6 million in taxes over the past decade. This incentive included nearly $6 million for the luxury condos that sit atop the hotel.

The $115 million figure does not paint a full picture of the taxpayer tab for Harbor East. The scope of our calculations is limited by the fact that many of the tax credits granted to these developments were in effect prior to 2013—records that were not available, according to city finance officials.

The lack of transparency is, in part, due to how the city bills properties that receive tax subsidies.

Special credits like Brownfields and Enterprise Zones are not detailed online. Instead, we had to ask the city for copies of the separate paper bills it mails annually to developers, which list the value of the credit. From the paper bills, we calculated the 10-year figure for taxes abated through Brownfields and Enterprise Zone tax credits that contribute to the $115 million taxpayer tab.

Even the taxes abated via PILOTs were challenging to calculate. The city told us tax bills for PILOTs are mailed separately from ordinary tax bills, including special credits. We asked for copies of the separate PILOT bills, but the city would not release them, again without explanation or response to our request.

To work around the lack of data, we obtained two decades’ worth of property assessments for all the parcels that comprise Harbor East. We used the value of the buildings to calculate the property taxes owed in any given year. Then, we applied the formulas outlined in council legislation, which authorized several of the Harbor East PILOTs to estimate the tax savings for a given PILOT to arrive at the approximate figure.

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Anyone else live in Baltimore or Maryland?

What do you think of all this?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1987995

An excerpt from the article:

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Gone are the days when former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz could argue that the company’s upstart barista network would be no more than a blip in the coffee behemoth’s history.

On Tuesday, Starbucks Workers United (SBWU)’s parent union and Starbucks announced that they had reached a “foundational framework” for substantive negotiations over a range of issues.

“The fight is worth fighting for. This victory alone proves that no workplace is out of reach for organizing,” fired former Starbucks barista Alicia Flores of Portland, Oregon told In These Times, speaking in a personal capacity.

The two sides hope the agreement will form the basis for contract talks at nearly 400 union shops, the resolution of ongoing litigation, and an agreement over rules governing future organizing at Starbucks locations. While the publicly announced details of the agreement include few specifics and even fewer guarantees, the barista network has won at least the potential for negotiations over a first master contract.

“This agreement…is a very, very big deal,” said Dave Kamper, Senior Strategist at the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute. “Starbucks Workers United has shown that determined workers, willing to use all the tools of worker power at their disposal…can bring companies to the bargaining table.”

Starbucks also announced that, as a measure of good faith, it will provide credit card tipping and other benefits to union stores that it has provided to nonunion stores since May 2022.

Some SBWU members were reluctant to speak to In These Times about the framework. But those who did open up were enthusiastic.

“I’m excited for the gang at SBWU to bargain a fair contract and to hopefully get reinstated as a fired worker,” said Flores.

Similarly, barista James Greene of the Pittsburgh area, also speaking in a personal capacity, said that he is “encouraged by the company’s [message]” and hopes “we can negotiate in good faith soon.”

---

A milestone battle and victory for Starbucks Workers United!

Read the rest of the article through the link up top (which also talks about labor and the anti-Zionist movement in the USA).

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1976670

Check it out. Also:

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“George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.” These were the words of famed rapper Kanye West during the 2005 nationally televised telethon benefit for victims of Hurricane Katrina. In this notorious quote, Kanye expressed a popular conception of the Bush administration for a whole generation of people. How is it then, that less than 15 years later the same Kanye West — son of a Black Panther who had previously made commentary on racism in the U.S. — would go on a national tour professing his love for Hitler? Even more recently, beloved star in the Black community, Nicki Minaj, cozied up to Ben Shapiro after rapper Megan Thee Stallion blasted her for misogynoir. Both of these instances illustrate the right’s newfound investment in popular culture in response to young people, people of color and the LGBTQ community’s increasing acceptance of socialism.

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Kanye was the son of a Black Panther?! Holy shit...

Anyway:

It's only a few paragraphs long and is for a pre-convention discussion (since CPUSA is in discussion period for our democratic process).

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1971306

Damn, this was a record for me.

It was a rally and march for Palestine at the city nearby.

@[email protected] might know about it, but I don't think they're here now (I'm just tagging in case they are).

Ask me about it if you want, but right now I'm "venting" about something positive; I'm really proud of myself for keeping up the pressure regarding Gaza and helping to do that.

Definitely join an org or activist group if you can.

That's all. Cheers!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1968230

Pretty expected, to be honest.

Especially now that Joe Sims is in and not John Bachtell.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1967643

20 minutes or so.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1962122

Subscribe, comment, like, etc.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1941627

Just found out about this an hour ago.

Holy shit, this is good, and it's Marxist writers' group too.

We need more stuff like this.

@[email protected] Thought you might be interested in this, old friend (since you're the only other person I know right now besides myself that knew BayArea415, at least online).

But anyway, on another note, I'm glad that the PatSoc infiltration attempts were sorted out, otherwise the content would just be a repeat of Haz's trash ideas lol

Glad they're experimenting with a writing and literature group; very early in its initial phase, from what I know.

It's a pity that one of the people didn't get a chance to finish his own fictional work and had to stop at the beginning before it got to the crux or point of it all.

Anyway, enjoy, y'all.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1904493

Good discussion and a long one too. Nearly an hour. I felt Ben was a good guest too. And of course, there's Justine Medina as well.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1863958

The book is this one:

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1856459

How to Be a Good Communist

Written/Published: July 1939

Source: Selected Works of Liu Shaoqi, Volume I

First Published: Foreign Languages Press

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I'm reading this for the first time, btw, based on something I heard online. Someone also recommended it to me and said Liu Shaoqi was underrated.

Definitely giving this a go.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1852949

I talked about this video in this post here.

It really helped me. I mean, this was a godsend (except for the jump-scare near the beginning). I would heartily recommend it to people who struggle with productivity either way.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1849807

Love these!

I hope everyone else enjoys this episode.

I didn't know about the recent call for more colonialism in Africa by Erik Prince till now.

If anyone has any more info on that, let me know.

Thanks!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1833747

Good stuff.

Love Henry Winston.

You can read the book for yourself here.

Check it out. I highly recommend this book.

Oh yeah, and there's a sequel to it as well. Maybe I'll do a book club on both later on.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1795146

Video is about 50 minutes long.

You can listen to it while you're doing other things.

Glad they touched on the AFL-CIO and the recent developments in the labor movement, especially vis a vis the South.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1782164

You can purchase the book (from the original publisher rather than Amazon, hopefully, if you want) over here:

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-5414-6

Full title is:

Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance by Roland Boer

Please:

Subscribe

comment

like

share

etc.

the video (to help out with this Marxist-Leninist YouTube channel, which is very underrated).

Thank you!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1766587

I'm quite excited for where the CPUSA is going.

Enjoy!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1735517

You can read this masterpiece here.

People swear by this work by Liu Shaoqi and I have yet to read it myself, but plan to start soon.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1715379

Someone reads from "Socialist Reconstruction," a book published by PSL.