![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdThe LGB Alliance is getting more and more ludicrously anti-queer in general. Today it was out there saying being against same-sex marriage rights isn't homophobic.
This sockpuppet has a lot of holes in it now.
----- 1 -----
Coronavirus Is Killing Our Economy Because It Was Already Sick
By Eric Levitz
17 June 2020
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/how-inequality-is-deepening-the-coronavirus-recession.html
[EDITOR: This isn't really about Coronavirus, so I'm putting it here]
The modern American economy is top-heavy by design.
In the late 1970s, many U.S. policymakers decided that income inequality had gotten too low. Strong union contracts had enabled many workers to earn more than their labor was worth, while excessive taxation of business was depressing productive investment. As a result, demand for goods had come to outstrip supply, leading to rising prices, which led to higher interest rates — which further discouraged supply-expanding investment — in a vicious, stagflationary cycle.
To the high priests of Reaganomics, the way out of this morass was clear: America needed to divert income away from those who spend it (i.e. workers) and toward those who invest it (i.e. the rich). After all, consumption gobbles up scarce resources, while investment reduces scarcity by enhancing the economy’s productive capacity. Breaking labor unions and slashing capital gains taxes would make the economy less equal. But such policies would also channel a higher share of national income toward growth-enhancing projects. And this would leave the typical worker with a somewhat smaller slice of a much larger economic pie. A rising tide would lift even the humblest of dinghies.
The basic premise of this growth model — that one can increase long-term, societal prosperity by suppressing consumption to fuel investment — may be valid in some contexts. For example, if you are a developing country that lacks basic infrastructure and manufacturing capacity, expanding the share of income available for investment will typically increase your overall wealth. China’s explosive growth during the 1990s and early aughts was built atop precisely this model. To make more capital available for rapid industrialization, authorities suppressed wages. This produced growth robust enough to lift workers’ living standards even as their share of income gains fell. Eventually, however, this strategy becomes self-defeating.
Channeling investment into genuinely productive projects gets harder once you’ve picked the low-hanging industrial fruit. And this challenge is all the greater in a context where the purchasing power of ordinary people has been systematically depressed: Simply put, when the vast majority of workers have little discretionary income, profitable business ideas are harder to find (businesses need paying customers, after all). Thus, at a certain point, wage suppression stops aiding growth and starts inhibiting it. In their (excellent) new book, Peking University economist Michael Pettis and Barron’s columnist Matthew Klein argue that China’s iteration of the invest-led development model has been obsolete for more than a decade. Unwilling or incapable of enacting reforms that would increase wages — and thus, consumption — Beijing has sustained employment and GDP growth by financing useless capital investments. Instead of giving ordinary Chinese people the financial means to assert their material wants and needs — and then enabling investment to flow into enterprises that fulfill those mass desires — China is building housing developments in cities without people.
----- 2 -----
Activist instrumental in the launch of the LGB Alliance linked to anti-abortion and anti-LGBT+ hate groups
Vic Parsons
June 3, 2020
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/06/03/lgb-alliance-gary-powell-center-bioethics-culture-alliance-defending-freedom-anti-lgbt/
A leading activist involved with the launch of the ‘anti-trans’ pressure group LGB Alliance, Gary Powell, slammed Supreme Court judge Lady Hale for supporting a woman who was left infertile by NHS negligence.
The court’s decision awarded the woman half a million pounds in damages, after she won her claim that the NHS should pay for her to start a much-longed for family via surrogacy.
Powell wrote that Lady Hale was guilty of “overreach” in backing the woman, saying that her starting a family by using a surrogate would “lead to an increase in the physical, emotional and financial harm caused to vulnerable women
Powell, a long-time campaigner against surrogacy, was at the pre-launch event for LGB Alliance where “all members had agreed a foundation statement which prioritised biological sex over gender theories which they regard as ‘pseudo-scientific and dangerous'”, according to The Telegraph.
He was one of the signatories of a key petition sent to Stonewall – asking the LGBT+ charity to “reconsider its approach to transgender policy” – which sparked the creation of the LGB Alliance, and he has been an ardent supporter of the group ever since.
...
Through his work opposing surrogacy, Gary Powell has ties with religious, right-wing organisations in the US that oppose equal marriage and access to abortion – despite the LGB Alliance regularly claiming not to be connected in any way to the US religious right.
The LGB Alliance’s code of conduct states that it will “not forge links with” organisations “whose aims we consider to be fundamentally hostile to the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, or that seeks to undermine women’s reproductive rights”.
The group also regularly asserts on social media that it doesn’t have links with, or accept funding from, the US religious right.
But Powell is the European special consultant for California-based nonprofit the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (CBC).
CBC is a US organisation that frequently appears at conferences and events held by right-wing groups discussing restricting abortion rights.
It was founded by Jennifer Lahl, a non-Orthodox Christian, who also shares LGB Alliance posts on social media and wrote in 2003: “It is the role of the church to be involved in personal and individual decision making.
“Prime examples are issues such as infertility and reproductive technologies.”
Gary Powell and the Heritage Foundation.
On May 6 last year, Powell spoke on a panel at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative, anti-abortion think-tank in the US that opposes same-sex marriage.
The panel was called ‘Casualties of Surrogacy: Women for Rent, Infants for Sale, LGBT Rights for Hijacking’, and Powell spoke alongside his boss, CBC founder Jennifer Lahl.
Lahl and Powell argued that commercial surrogacy is “always exploitative” and harmful to women, with Powell reminding the audience that, as a gay man, he opposes surrogacy for LGBT+ couples and the inclusion of surrogacy into “gay rights priorities“.
----- 3 -----
ryan john butcher
twitter.com/ryanjohnbutcher
18 June 2020
https://twitter.com/ryanjohnbutcher/status/1273686709029556224
lgb alliance – remember that group allegedly set up to fight for lesbian, gay and bisexual people? – now *checks notes* saying it isn't homophobic to oppose same-sex marriage
as always, when you scratch a transphobe you tend to find a homophobe, and lgb alliance is no different
[EMBEDDED IMAGE OF LGBALLIANCE TWEET]
[TRANSCRIPT BY EDITOR
To those people saying it is "homophobic" not to be in favour of gay marriage have a look at the statistics. It seems it's rather a small minority who have made their wedding vows. #LGBIssues #CanWeDropItNowPlease #NotABigDeal
]
----- 4 -----
Brett Kavanaugh walloped by John Roberts in ruling on Trump immigration policy
June 18, 2020
By Travis Gettys
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/brett-kavanaugh-walloped-by-john-roberts-in-ruling-on-trump-immigration-policy/
Chief Justice John Roberts took a swipe at the Supreme Court’s newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, in the ruling that blocks the Trump administration from ending protections under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.
The administration has tried for years to “wind down” the Obama-era program, but Roberts and the court’s four liberal justices found the administration did not follow procedures required by law — and the chief justice called out Kavanaugh’s dissent by name.
“Justice Kavanaugh asserts that this ‘foundational principle of administrative law’ … actually limits only what lawyers may argue, not what agencies may do,” Roberts wrote in his decision. “While it is true that the Court has often rejected justifications belatedly advanced by advocates, we refer to this as a prohibition on post hoc rationalizations, not advocate rationalizations, because the problem is the timing, not the speaker.”
“The functional reasons for requiring contemporaneous explanations apply with equal force regardless whether post hoc justifications are raised in court by those appearing on behalf of the agency or by agency officials themselves,” he added.
Roberts continued his upbraiding into a footnote.
----- 5 -----
UK government preparing ‘shock and awe’ Brexit media campaign
Military term features in plan to inform public about end of transition period.
By Emilio Casalicchio
6/17/20, 6:17 PM CET
Updated 6/18/20, 4:03 PM CET
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-government-preparing-shock-and-awe-brexit-media-campaign/
LONDON — The U.K. will use “shock and awe” tactics based on behavioral science to spur businesses and the public to prepare for the end of the Brexit transition period.
The term, more often used to describe a military strategy of overwhelming force and closely associated with the Iraq war, is contained in a document setting out the government's communications plan.
A massive information campaign is set to warn the public about the “consequences of not taking action,” before moving to a new phase focusing on avoiding losses as a result of the post-Brexit disruption.
The plan forms part of a £4.5 million advertising deal the government has struck with media agency MullenLowe London, which has also been working on communications around the coronavirus pandemic. The contract was found on the Tussell government procurement database.
Britain is set to leave the transition period on December 31, even if it fails to strike a trade deal with Brussels. Either way, there is expected to be new administration and checks on cross-border trade next year, as well as action needed by EU nationals in Britain, British nationals on the Continent and other groups in order to avoid disruption.
“The Transition Campaign is the most important government campaign this year,” says a tender document. It says the advertising blitz will begin in July and could stretch as far as May 2022.
----- 6 -----
Australia says it has been victim of ‘state-based’ cyber-attacks
Published Thu, Jun 18 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/18/australia-says-it-has-been-victim-of-state-based-cyber-attacks.html
A “sophisticated state-based actor” has been attempting to hack a wide range of Australian organisations for months and had stepped up its efforts recently, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday.
The attacks have targeted all levels of the government, political organisations, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure, Morrison said in a media briefing in Canberra.
“We know it is a sophisticated state-based cyber actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting,” he said.
Morrison said there were not a lot of state actors that could launch this sort of attack, but Australia will not identify which country was responsible.
Australia’s Defence Minister Linda Reynolds said advice showed no large-scale personal data breaches from the attack.
The revelation comes after Reuters reported Canberra had determined in March last year that China was responsible for a hacking attack on Australia’s parliament. Australia never publicly identified that source of the attack and China denied it was responsible.
This sockpuppet has a lot of holes in it now.
- Coronavirus Is Killing Our Economy Because It Was Already Sick
- Activist instrumental in the launch of the LGB Alliance linked to anti-abortion and anti-LGBT+ hate groups
- LGB Alliance says it's not homophobic to be against equal marriage rights
- Brett Kavanaugh walloped by John Roberts in ruling on Trump immigration policy
- UK government preparing ‘shock and awe’ Brexit media campaign
- Australia says it has been victim of ‘state-based’ cyber-attacks
----- 1 -----
Coronavirus Is Killing Our Economy Because It Was Already Sick
By Eric Levitz
17 June 2020
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/how-inequality-is-deepening-the-coronavirus-recession.html
[EDITOR: This isn't really about Coronavirus, so I'm putting it here]
The modern American economy is top-heavy by design.
In the late 1970s, many U.S. policymakers decided that income inequality had gotten too low. Strong union contracts had enabled many workers to earn more than their labor was worth, while excessive taxation of business was depressing productive investment. As a result, demand for goods had come to outstrip supply, leading to rising prices, which led to higher interest rates — which further discouraged supply-expanding investment — in a vicious, stagflationary cycle.
To the high priests of Reaganomics, the way out of this morass was clear: America needed to divert income away from those who spend it (i.e. workers) and toward those who invest it (i.e. the rich). After all, consumption gobbles up scarce resources, while investment reduces scarcity by enhancing the economy’s productive capacity. Breaking labor unions and slashing capital gains taxes would make the economy less equal. But such policies would also channel a higher share of national income toward growth-enhancing projects. And this would leave the typical worker with a somewhat smaller slice of a much larger economic pie. A rising tide would lift even the humblest of dinghies.
The basic premise of this growth model — that one can increase long-term, societal prosperity by suppressing consumption to fuel investment — may be valid in some contexts. For example, if you are a developing country that lacks basic infrastructure and manufacturing capacity, expanding the share of income available for investment will typically increase your overall wealth. China’s explosive growth during the 1990s and early aughts was built atop precisely this model. To make more capital available for rapid industrialization, authorities suppressed wages. This produced growth robust enough to lift workers’ living standards even as their share of income gains fell. Eventually, however, this strategy becomes self-defeating.
Channeling investment into genuinely productive projects gets harder once you’ve picked the low-hanging industrial fruit. And this challenge is all the greater in a context where the purchasing power of ordinary people has been systematically depressed: Simply put, when the vast majority of workers have little discretionary income, profitable business ideas are harder to find (businesses need paying customers, after all). Thus, at a certain point, wage suppression stops aiding growth and starts inhibiting it. In their (excellent) new book, Peking University economist Michael Pettis and Barron’s columnist Matthew Klein argue that China’s iteration of the invest-led development model has been obsolete for more than a decade. Unwilling or incapable of enacting reforms that would increase wages — and thus, consumption — Beijing has sustained employment and GDP growth by financing useless capital investments. Instead of giving ordinary Chinese people the financial means to assert their material wants and needs — and then enabling investment to flow into enterprises that fulfill those mass desires — China is building housing developments in cities without people.
----- 2 -----
Activist instrumental in the launch of the LGB Alliance linked to anti-abortion and anti-LGBT+ hate groups
Vic Parsons
June 3, 2020
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/06/03/lgb-alliance-gary-powell-center-bioethics-culture-alliance-defending-freedom-anti-lgbt/
A leading activist involved with the launch of the ‘anti-trans’ pressure group LGB Alliance, Gary Powell, slammed Supreme Court judge Lady Hale for supporting a woman who was left infertile by NHS negligence.
The court’s decision awarded the woman half a million pounds in damages, after she won her claim that the NHS should pay for her to start a much-longed for family via surrogacy.
Powell wrote that Lady Hale was guilty of “overreach” in backing the woman, saying that her starting a family by using a surrogate would “lead to an increase in the physical, emotional and financial harm caused to vulnerable women
Powell, a long-time campaigner against surrogacy, was at the pre-launch event for LGB Alliance where “all members had agreed a foundation statement which prioritised biological sex over gender theories which they regard as ‘pseudo-scientific and dangerous'”, according to The Telegraph.
He was one of the signatories of a key petition sent to Stonewall – asking the LGBT+ charity to “reconsider its approach to transgender policy” – which sparked the creation of the LGB Alliance, and he has been an ardent supporter of the group ever since.
...
Through his work opposing surrogacy, Gary Powell has ties with religious, right-wing organisations in the US that oppose equal marriage and access to abortion – despite the LGB Alliance regularly claiming not to be connected in any way to the US religious right.
The LGB Alliance’s code of conduct states that it will “not forge links with” organisations “whose aims we consider to be fundamentally hostile to the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, or that seeks to undermine women’s reproductive rights”.
The group also regularly asserts on social media that it doesn’t have links with, or accept funding from, the US religious right.
But Powell is the European special consultant for California-based nonprofit the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (CBC).
CBC is a US organisation that frequently appears at conferences and events held by right-wing groups discussing restricting abortion rights.
It was founded by Jennifer Lahl, a non-Orthodox Christian, who also shares LGB Alliance posts on social media and wrote in 2003: “It is the role of the church to be involved in personal and individual decision making.
“Prime examples are issues such as infertility and reproductive technologies.”
Gary Powell and the Heritage Foundation.
On May 6 last year, Powell spoke on a panel at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative, anti-abortion think-tank in the US that opposes same-sex marriage.
The panel was called ‘Casualties of Surrogacy: Women for Rent, Infants for Sale, LGBT Rights for Hijacking’, and Powell spoke alongside his boss, CBC founder Jennifer Lahl.
Lahl and Powell argued that commercial surrogacy is “always exploitative” and harmful to women, with Powell reminding the audience that, as a gay man, he opposes surrogacy for LGBT+ couples and the inclusion of surrogacy into “gay rights priorities“.
----- 3 -----
ryan john butcher
twitter.com/ryanjohnbutcher
18 June 2020
https://twitter.com/ryanjohnbutcher/status/1273686709029556224
lgb alliance – remember that group allegedly set up to fight for lesbian, gay and bisexual people? – now *checks notes* saying it isn't homophobic to oppose same-sex marriage
as always, when you scratch a transphobe you tend to find a homophobe, and lgb alliance is no different
[EMBEDDED IMAGE OF LGBALLIANCE TWEET]
[TRANSCRIPT BY EDITOR
To those people saying it is "homophobic" not to be in favour of gay marriage have a look at the statistics. It seems it's rather a small minority who have made their wedding vows. #LGBIssues #CanWeDropItNowPlease #NotABigDeal
]
----- 4 -----
Brett Kavanaugh walloped by John Roberts in ruling on Trump immigration policy
June 18, 2020
By Travis Gettys
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/brett-kavanaugh-walloped-by-john-roberts-in-ruling-on-trump-immigration-policy/
Chief Justice John Roberts took a swipe at the Supreme Court’s newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, in the ruling that blocks the Trump administration from ending protections under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.
The administration has tried for years to “wind down” the Obama-era program, but Roberts and the court’s four liberal justices found the administration did not follow procedures required by law — and the chief justice called out Kavanaugh’s dissent by name.
“Justice Kavanaugh asserts that this ‘foundational principle of administrative law’ … actually limits only what lawyers may argue, not what agencies may do,” Roberts wrote in his decision. “While it is true that the Court has often rejected justifications belatedly advanced by advocates, we refer to this as a prohibition on post hoc rationalizations, not advocate rationalizations, because the problem is the timing, not the speaker.”
“The functional reasons for requiring contemporaneous explanations apply with equal force regardless whether post hoc justifications are raised in court by those appearing on behalf of the agency or by agency officials themselves,” he added.
Roberts continued his upbraiding into a footnote.
----- 5 -----
UK government preparing ‘shock and awe’ Brexit media campaign
Military term features in plan to inform public about end of transition period.
By Emilio Casalicchio
6/17/20, 6:17 PM CET
Updated 6/18/20, 4:03 PM CET
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-government-preparing-shock-and-awe-brexit-media-campaign/
LONDON — The U.K. will use “shock and awe” tactics based on behavioral science to spur businesses and the public to prepare for the end of the Brexit transition period.
The term, more often used to describe a military strategy of overwhelming force and closely associated with the Iraq war, is contained in a document setting out the government's communications plan.
A massive information campaign is set to warn the public about the “consequences of not taking action,” before moving to a new phase focusing on avoiding losses as a result of the post-Brexit disruption.
The plan forms part of a £4.5 million advertising deal the government has struck with media agency MullenLowe London, which has also been working on communications around the coronavirus pandemic. The contract was found on the Tussell government procurement database.
Britain is set to leave the transition period on December 31, even if it fails to strike a trade deal with Brussels. Either way, there is expected to be new administration and checks on cross-border trade next year, as well as action needed by EU nationals in Britain, British nationals on the Continent and other groups in order to avoid disruption.
“The Transition Campaign is the most important government campaign this year,” says a tender document. It says the advertising blitz will begin in July and could stretch as far as May 2022.
----- 6 -----
Australia says it has been victim of ‘state-based’ cyber-attacks
Published Thu, Jun 18 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/18/australia-says-it-has-been-victim-of-state-based-cyber-attacks.html
A “sophisticated state-based actor” has been attempting to hack a wide range of Australian organisations for months and had stepped up its efforts recently, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday.
The attacks have targeted all levels of the government, political organisations, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure, Morrison said in a media briefing in Canberra.
“We know it is a sophisticated state-based cyber actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting,” he said.
Morrison said there were not a lot of state actors that could launch this sort of attack, but Australia will not identify which country was responsible.
Australia’s Defence Minister Linda Reynolds said advice showed no large-scale personal data breaches from the attack.
The revelation comes after Reuters reported Canberra had determined in March last year that China was responsible for a hacking attack on Australia’s parliament. Australia never publicly identified that source of the attack and China denied it was responsible.
