The practice of charging people for their time in lockup is but one contributor to a vast array of fines and fees that extracts money from people at virtually every stage of the criminal legal system—starting with jail booking and often lingering, through probation and parole, for years or decades after someone has been released, and affecting even those charged as children. Cities, counties, and states try to collect such fees to fund government operations. But by reaching into the skinny accounts of incarcerated people and the family members who support them, these governments place vulnerable people in financial ruin while often failing to generate sustainable revenue streams.
The estimable Bolts news site has some good news: Dauphin County (Pennsylvania) commissioners, in a move that is heartening for those who believe in actual justice, erased the unpayable – but still punitive – debts of formerly jailed residents. This followed on a decision to stop charging these unconscionable pay-to-be-jailed fees, which are malign by design. These fees ensured that many of not most of the formerly jailed people, some of whom were not guilty of anything, would never be out of debt, and therefore would never be able to participate in normal life.
Criminal justice in America is a cruel business, and getting more so in the Trump era. But it's stupid – not just immoral – to engage in cruelty when it's guaranteed to backfire.
Musk has since joined Ford as the most prominent American employer of his era implacably opposed to unions. He also is recapitulating Ford’s backing of America First politicos while simultaneously committing major resources to manufacturing in a nation (for Ford, Germany; for Musk, China) posing the greatest threat to liberal democracies. Worse yet, Ford’s vociferous antisemitism helped to fuel the rise of German Nazism, while Musk has now gone all in to promote the rise of Germany’s neo-Nazis, who constitute much of the base of the AfD, which, to the alarm of millions of Germans, may finish second in that nation’s upcoming elections.
As the Prospect observes, the parallels between Henry Ford and Elon Musk are eerie. They're also a reminder that huge wealth and business innovation often come with social and political views – and the means to help make them policy – that are repugnant to democracy and human rights.
Of the two, Musk is the more dangerous. His wealth and power are at a level that is, as far as I can tell, unprecedented. He is unaccountable, so far, just like his purported political boss, Trump. (It frequently seems debatable who's in charge.)
If American democracy – and, as Musk backs fascists around the globe – and democracy worldwide survive, it will only be because we find a way to separate Musk from power. I don't know how to make it happen, but I do know this: If you buy a Tesla or participate actively on the former Twitter, you are directly helping him. Please don't.
At the Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, on Tuesday, the most telling feature may be the voices from whom the senators [didn't] hear. The Trump transition team has waged an intense, and in many ways unprecedented, behind-the-scenes campaign ahead of the hearing to intimidate and silence potential witnesses, aimed at keeping Republican senators in line and in the dark.
Mayer is one of America's finest journalists, and once again she is breaking important news in her New Yorker reporting.
Most political news operations are treating this abominable nomination as an especially entertaining horse race story. But Mayer has dug deeper behind the scenes to explain just how personally rancid and professionally unqualified this nominee is – and how vile his backers have been in their campaign, likely successful, to put him in charge of the military. We desperately need this kind of journalism, but we're getting far, far too little of it.
[T]he sort of viral hoaxes that ran roughshod over the platform during the 2016 US presidential election — “Pope Francis endorses Trump,” Pizzagate, and all the rest — are now just as eligible for free amplification on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads as true stories. In 2016, of course, Meta hadn’t yet invested huge sums in machine-learning classifiers that can spot when a piece of viral content is likely a hoax. But nine years later, after the company’s own analyses found that these classifiers could reduce the reach of these hoaxes by more than 90 percent, Meta is shutting them off.
I remember the day in 2010 when Mark Zuckerberg, then a (very) young CEO of the increasingly powerful Facebook, was a guest speaker at the now-defunct "All Things Digital" conference. He was drenched in sweat as Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher grilled him about his company's moves toward evil – yes, even back then – and how he evaded question after question. I also recall urging folks to calm down, and cut him a slight break given his age and position. I didn't trust him, I said, but some people do outgrow youthful shitty behavior, after all.
He didn't. Not even close. He's now one of the tech industry's most evil people – worse because he's also one of the most powerful. And his moves in the past few days to make Facebook even more fascism-friendly, as Platformer reports, are beyond reprehensible.
I just canceled my Instagram/Threads account. The sole reason I stay on Facebook, for the moment, is the sheer usefulness of the private group for my small town in California. It's currently the best place to get real – that is, mostly true – news about the community. I hope we will find a way, collectively, to move to a site we own and control, and I hope to present alternatives to our current moderator and others in the group. I'm leaning toward advocating a WordPress/BuddyPress setup, or perhaps Discourse, but have more research to do.
Above all, I want to help us escape the grip of a company whose bosses are willfully working to help destroy democracy and human rights in America, as they've done in several violence-soaked countries abroad.
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
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Michael Barajas
Harold Meyerson
Jane Mayer
Casey Newton
