Taking From IRS, Giving to Israel
Plus: Massive union wins, abortion rebrands, Silvio Berlusconi's nude-art collection, and more...
No cease-fire likely: Yesterday, United Nations (U.N.) officials advocated for a cease-fire before the U.N. Security Council, saying that 1.4 million out of Gaza's total 2 million population has been displaced. And last night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authoritatively declared that "calls for a cease-fire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas."
Israel started its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on Friday, after delaying for many days. It kept initial details quiet, and is most likely responsible for the massive blackout that crippled communications into and out of Gaza, cutting off phone and internet service for the region. The "strategic ambiguity" with which Israel is carrying out its ground invasion of Gaza "keeps Hamas uncertain about Israel's next steps" and "allows Israeli soldiers to maintain a siege of Gaza City, where Hamas has dug a network of underground tunnels and fortifications," reports The New York Times. Speculation also abounds that Israel is trying to buy time and assess Hezbollah's response to make sure the northern front isn't heating up in parallel.
Money must come from somewhere: Meanwhile in the U.S., House Republicans are looking to put together a $14 billion Israel aid package—by cutting IRS funding.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) has said, in essence, that the money needs to come from somewhere to avoid adding to the national debt. Republicans claimed that at least some of the massive $80 billion cash infusion that came last year, which will be doled out to the IRS over 10 years, could be diverted elsewhere. Democrats in the Senate called the bill "dead on arrival" and pointed to the fact that cutting funding for our nation's tax collectors could hurt collections.
President Joe Biden, for his part, has called for pairing the Israel aid package with $60 billion in funding for Ukraine—something the fiscally conservative contingent in the House rejects.
Huge gains: After 41 days of strikes, the autoworkers have reached a deal with the Big Three—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (Chrysler)—and won massive pay raises. "We won things nobody thought was possible," said United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain.
The deal includes a 25 percent wage increase across the board over four years. "By the end of the contract's term in 2028, most of the Detroit companies' unionized workers would make in the mid-$80,000s annually, before overtime pay," per The Wall Street Journal. "The gains in the deal…are valued at more than four times the gains from the 2019 contract, and provide more in base wage increases than Ford workers have received in the past 22 years," reads a statement from the union. But all these gains come at a cost, of course: Ford says the new contract will most likely "add $850 to $900 per vehicle," adds the Journal.
"When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't just be with the Big Three, but with the Big Five or Big Six," Fain said in the statement, referring to the non-unionized U.S. shops, like Tesla and Volkswagen.
But he's probably wrong. At a certain point, some automakers simply won't be able to absorb the increased labor costs, as well as the competitive pressures created by the electric vehicle race.
Or, they might not be at the bargaining table at all, having replaced the majority of their human workers.
The pro-choice cause is getting a rebrand: NARAL Pro-Choice America recently changed its name to Reproductive Freedom for All. The group's president, Mini Timmaraju, says they want to go for a "broader range of policy outcomes" including "repealing the Hyde Amendment, eliminating the filibuster, and focusing on issues like contraceptive access, maternal health outcomes, and paid family leave, as well as abortion access," reports Elle. (It's kind of funny that "eliminating the filibuster" was stuck in there.)
The Hyde Amendment, which mostly bars the funding of abortion via federal funds, meaning the procedure is not covered by Medicare or Medicaid, and the Helms Amendment, which prevents U.S. foreign aid from funding abortions in poor countries, are probably good things to keep in place, from my pro-life perspective. For people with strong conscience objections to abortion, ensuring that taxpayer money isn't being used to fund these procedures is something that helps to honor the fact that abortion is seen as a profoundly immoral act by (a bit less than) half the country.
But it'll be interesting to see how abortion politics play out more broadly in the 2024 election. "Abortion rights supporters were disproportionately motivated by Dobbs during the 2022 midterm elections, according to an analysis by KFF," reports Axios. "After a midterm red wave that never materialized, Republicans are looking to shift away from 'pro-life' to recapture suburban women who disagree with the Dobbs decision." The emphasis is being shifted, per political strategists, from the language of choice to the language of freedom.
Scenes from New York:
I am of the old-fashioned opinion that snitches get stitches, and that New York City's new short-term rental law—which I reported on last month—is idiotic. Here's your related rage-read from the New York Times.
QUICK HITS
- "Far-left support for Hamas is not an aberration," writes Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy.
- Simply put: No.
- The transcript of Kibbutz Nir Oz's group chat, from the October 7 pogrom, is a harrowing read.
- Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's former prime minister, apparently bought more than 25,000 paintings, including "a fair share of nudes." Now that he's dead, nobody's quite sure where they should all go.
- The new executive order on AI is worth keeping an eye on:
as @JimPethokoukis notes, "The president's new executive order on #AI is a massive escalation of government intervention into the American technology sector."
"Tech progress delayed is tech progress denied," he correctly observes. ????https://t.co/m0RcQTc1If
— Adam Thierer (@AdamThierer) October 30, 2023
- What even is going on here?
What you are about to watch is the **final round** of the most prestigious national high school debate tournament. Team A proceeds to tell Team B that they **will not** be debating the assigned topic (benefits/costs of the IMF) because trans people are being genocided by MAGA… pic.twitter.com/osH0RHXmZI
— James Fishback (@j_fishback) October 30, 2023
- Don't you just hate when you run out of things to be mad about online and have to start talking about how pumpkin spice is racist?
https://twitter.com/zackvoell/status/1719159558981984488
