Starting local, our guy Zohran Mamdani shone in the recent Democratic primary mayoral debate in NYC. Around the same time, AOC issued her long awaited endorsement of Mamdani ensuring that he snagged the headlines; because AOC is a queen and knows how to organize for maximum impact.
That said, he still has an uphill battle to climb and the long knives are out. The Israel lobby is in full swing trying to portray him as antisemitic and “progressive” Jessica Ramos, another candidate for mayor, just threw her support behind Andrew Cuomo in a cynical and brazen maneuver reminiscent of the Democratic field kneecapping Bernie.
If Mamdani has a weakness heading into the primary, it’s among ethnic voters in New York. This remains a problem all throughout the nation when it comes to progressive visions. We simply aren’t resonating so it’s an absolute imperative to recruit like-minded Black and Latino voters into the fold above all other constituencies. And not in a performative way. All the time trying to bring moderate conservative voters in the suburbs over to the Democratic Party is a waste if we cannot foster authentic coalitions among ethnic voters. If Mamdani emerges as the victor later this month then it means that his grassroots organizing in the boroughs truly landed and hopefully it lights the path forward.
In other news, if you hadn’t noticed, there’s a clash of the titans between Donald and Elon. Super. Let them fight. Grab some popcorn and check-in periodically, but don’t let it distract from the task at hand. Fifteen months is all we have to get Left messaging out to the public so our demands can be heard. Otherwise, the Third Way Democrats are going to get their way and win the midterm elections with a slate of mealymouthed moderates with no agenda other than power.
The Chart of the Week looks at the recent employment data, which is very soft. Look beyond the headline to the prior month revisions (as we note below) and you’ll see that it’s worse than is being portrayed. These figures play a role in the Big Bullshit Budget Bill episode we have coming up so reading between the lines is important right now. The spin is on like Donkey Kong but soon there will be no hiding from the degradation of economic data.
Other things I’m obsessing over…
I used to enjoy Tom Segura’s comedy. His very public display of antipathy toward “the poors” as he jokingly (not really) calls fans who are tired of his bragging about his wealth, makes it tough to stomach his persona. In an attempt to look beyond it, I gave his Netflix series a shot and…It blows. Beyond the fact that he’s leaning into his smugness with a wink and a ‘fuck you,’ the concepts are high-budget and low-funny. Leave the episodic sketches to Tim Robinson, Tom.
Chris Hedges appeared on Hasan Piker’s channel. My world came full circle so I’m good for a while.
Quick reminder that the Secretary of Education pronounces “AI” as “A1.” That is all.
-Max
This Week on the Pod
Pulling Apart the GOP Budget.
Red States and Deficits.
In preparation for our Big Bullsh*t Budget Bill episode, I’ve been putting out mini-episodes on YouTube bring Unf*ckers into the content creation process in real time. It’s a bit of an experiment designed to introduce key concepts so they make more sense in context. The budget is a massive thing and it serves as the foundation for the nation’s operating system. So it’s hard to condense the narrative in such a way that it doesn’t bore everyone to tears. The podcast this week pulls two mini narratives together to establish a baseline for the larger episode: The first part speaks to how the budget disproportionately punishes red states. The second reintroduces Monetary Monetary Theory to shift our view of debt and deficits. Let me know if you think this approach is helpful!
Here’s a snippet from the pod:
Max: Well, let’s look at debt another way. In a way that literally only the United States as a sovereign currency issuer and reserve currency of the world can look at it. Money does self-immolate. When it’s printed it doesn’t just burst into flames when it’s not being used in the economy, or taxed back into federal coffers. Think of all the money we print and send into the world economy. If the U.S. treasury is a giant bucket of water that we fill from the magic printing machine in the basement of the country, when the bucket overflows—meaning it’s more than the entirety of what we spend on, it goes into other buckets. For ease of understanding, the biggest buckets it’s poured into are U.S. consumers and corporations. So if the U.S. government sends $100 into the economy and only takes back $80 through taxes and other revenue, it means that they gave us 20 extra bucks. The problem is that we’re not all getting an even slice of that $20.
The big economic headline of the week was, of course, hiring data. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the country added 139,000 non-farm payroll jobs in May. But there was an interesting revision buried in the release we should talk about. So take a look at the trend in this chart first.
“The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for March was revised down by 65,000, from +185,000 to +120,000, and the change for April was revised down by 30,000, from +177,000 to +147,000. With these revisions, employment in March and April combined is 95,000 lower than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)”
These downward revisions are pretty significant. The figures were already lighter than what economists predicted, and it will be interesting to see if next month includes further revisions.
A couple more items to note regarding the data: Manufacturing jobs declined by 8,000 in May, which is already proof positive that you cannot simply will manufacturing jobs back into existence with a fake (or real, which is it?) tariff war if you’ve spent the past 40 years dismantling the industrial base of the nation, and have no clear industrial policy moving forward. But I digress.
The other point of interest is that the cuts to federal agencies (another 1,000 jobs disappeared across the government sector in May) have many concerned that future data releases might be insufficient due to lack of resources. This is particularly true in the case of inflation data.
Headlines
As Much as I Make Fun of New Jersey…
Ras Baraka is the real deal. He appeared on pod with our friends over at News Beat a while back, so I’ve followed him since that time. As Mayor of Newark, Baraka has seen his share of challenges, but he’s seen a fair share of wins. His profile went national when he was arrested at an ICE detention facility recently, so hopefully that juices his bid for the Governor’s mansion in NJ. You can get a good feel for his politics in this Mother Jones interview, where he nails the issue with the Democratic Party right now.
From the article:
“Health care in New Jersey is too high. Insurance companies and hospitals are killing us economically, and nobody is reining them in. LLCs are buying up all these properties and driving our mortgages up artificially, and nobody is reining them in. Childcare costs are higher than people’s rent. We can’t solve these problems. We don’t have the will to, and so people lose faith in our ability to govern. Democrats are mistaking other Democrats staying home for approval for Donald Trump. It’s not approval for Trump. It’s disapproval for you.”
If you have the means, sign up for The Baffler. I have zero skin in the game, so-to-speak, other than to treat myself to some incredible prose and analysis. This may or may not inspire you to view current events differently, but the little known story of Tommaso Aniello, known as “Masaniello” is an insightful nugget of history that I knew nothing about, but thrills me to no end to read about. It’s a reminder that while not all revolutions succeed or are even remembered, they have long-lasting implications.
From the article:
“To take Masaniello seriously means to place him within a tradition of what the historian Jonathan Israel calls the ‘radical Enlightenment.’ Still understood as a period of human liberation, of women and men unshackling themselves from the arbitrary manacles of church and state, the radical enlightenment excises the hierarchical amendments and aristocratic pretensions that underscored the age. Israel writes in Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 that the most genuinely revolutionary thinkers of the period understood that ‘humbly born men are no less capable of leadership than those nobly born.’”
Palantir is exporting Peter Thiel’s dystopian and disgusting worldview and raking it in as it spreads.
From the article:
“Palantir’s work in fascist R&D doesn’t stop at the U.S. borders; the company and Karp have trumpeted their ideological and material support for Israel as it carries out its genocide in Gaza. At an extraordinary January 2024 board meeting in Tel Aviv, the company touted its strategic partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Defense, providing it with battle tech, possibly including its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which purportedly uses AI chatbots for real-time war zone decision-making. And Palantir’s leadership has made clear that its understanding of Western supremacy means the intransigent defense of Zionism abroad as much as far-right nationalism at home.”
“Today, Trump’s administration is doing everything in its power to end the era of educational dominance the US has enjoyed for decades. The simple fact that explains the change is that democracy used to be valued across the political spectrum, while today’s Republican Party is authoritarian and understands that an educated public is a public that demands democracy while an uneducated public is much easier to manipulate and oppress.”
“So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations—who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers.”
It’s a question/comment that cuts through all the bullshit. One I remind myself to answer to the best of my ability. Presenting the “problem” is only half the battle, but it’s a necessary one to properly answer the burning question beneath it all. What do we do, indeed? Our #5NNagenda is our most comprehensive response to date. It’s our obligation to shift the Overton window by clearly stating our demands. Policy follows sentiment. Sentiment is born of either ignorance or education. Let’s commit ourselves to the latter. Lord knows there’s enough of the former on the right.
UNFTR YouTube Highlight
The Republican spending bill H.R.1 is a red state bloodbath that slashes $625 billion from Medicaid and $230 billion from SNAP over 10 years, hitting hardest in the very red states that voted GOP. Mississippi, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama depend on federal funding for up to 77% of their Medicaid costs. When that disappears, states face an impossible choice: raise taxes on struggling families, or kick people off healthcare and food assistance.
Here’s the cruel irony: cutting these safety nets doesn’t save money—it creates more expensive problems. Emergency room visits spike, homelessness increases, and schools have to pick up the slack. Meanwhile, Trump’s tariff war is pushing us toward recession, cratering state tax revenues just when they’re needed most. In this teaser to the upcoming full episode on the spending bill, we break down the human cost behind the budget numbers and why this policy is as politically shortsighted as it is morally bankrupt.
“Since its founding in 1987, Jobs with Justice has been winning campaigns that build power for working people; advancing a sustainable and powerful network of grassroots coalitions; supporting the growth and leadership of local leaders and activists; and developing strategic alliances nationally and globally that strengthen the movement for workers’ rights, economic justice, and our democracy.”
UNFTR Member Question of the Week
In a Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson-style boxing match, who would win: Trump or Elon?
BriX: Hands down, Elon. That boy is built like a Cyber truck and on Ketamine; unstoppable.
NotTheBeeGees-CBG: America
attackofhubris: Yeah, have to go with Elon. He’ll likely be on PCP or something, and Trump would shit his pants at the first hit.
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