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[Lord Shonus]

Outside of ruby-red districts where no (R) can lose, election denialists were massacred at the polls. So were Trump endorsements.

And the first shots in the GOP civil war seem to have been fired. A preliminary endorsement meeting for the upcoming Speaker position put McCarthy under the threshold he'd need to get the post, and a couple of incoming (R) representatives have been talking about the need to work with Democrats.

[hector13]

Bugger Lugs is apparently going to start making his announcement in about 15 minutes.

Edit: no announcement yet but he has filed paperwork to run for president.

[Vector]

Announcement made.

Jesus fucking Christ I'm going to go buy some more video games and get ready to be called "antifa" for striking. Time to buckle in.

[JoshuaFH]

I feel that there should be serious striking going on everywhere. Mass unionization is pretty much the only thing that will prevent the nation from getting corrupted and destroyed by large corporations. I don't know the exact situation with your university, but I have a feeling that schooling is being run more like a business than a social and educational institution, so dig in and strike as hard as you can Vector.

[nenjin]

I think the situation is somewhere along the lines of "People with a decade+ experience doing Administrative level jobs in education make less in California as teachers than I do in the Midwest as an underpaid tech worker." I assume it just gets worse from thereon down.

[Great Order]

I feel that there should be serious striking going on everywhere. Mass unionization is pretty much the only thing that will prevent the nation from getting corrupted and destroyed by large corporations. I don't know the exact situation with your university, but I have a feeling that schooling is being run more like a business than a social and educational institution, so dig in and strike as hard as you can Vector.

It sort of is, I think. Over in the UK we're seeing an increasing number of strikes, and I'm hearing more and more about them across the West. I think people have been exploited too much, which they sort of plodded along with right up until everything started getting expensive.

[Lord Shonus]

Murdoch really seems to have the knives out for Trump, which is not going to be good for the demented Cheeto.

[Telgin]

These will be very interesting times for the Republican party.  For once I honestly think that Trump couldn't win a presidential election, but if he wins the Republican primary then he'll get full support of the party like last time.  It's too dangerous for them not to do that.  There's also a lot of calculus that has to be going on for any potential rivals, like DeSantis, who may fear the consequences of going up against him.  I'm not going to begin to speculate on how that will turn out.

I'm mostly sitting here, eating popcorn and wondering if the Department of Justice will file charges against him sometime soon now that the midterms are over.

[Starver]

Maybe it's time for Infrastructure Week?

(And a fight between Murdoch and Trump is a journey probably more enjoyably watched for the travelling than in ever arriving at a final destination.)

[Dostoevsky]

One of the various gossip rags had a story a day or few back that Murdoch gave Trump a warning that Murdoch's empire would not support Trump this time, preferring to support another R candidate. If it came to Trump v. Biden it'd be 'silent', but if there were a D that Murdoch liked (I guess some sort of ultra-moderate Democrat?) then he'd come out against Trump.

[McTraveller]

I don't see how public employees striking has the correct incentive path though. For private companies, workers striking presumably costs their employer profits, so the administration has an incentive to bargain.

For pubic institutions, striking deprives the public of a service, but doesn't impact revenue at all, because that's generated by taxes not by "production". Are there mechanisms for the public to set up a special election to vote out the administration or something?

Basically it seems like public worker strikes should be just before elections, not just after them - otherwise how can administrative change be effected?

[Lord Shonus]

The general public has means other than elections to make their displeasure known, and the stuff public strikes can hurt is stuff that *really* pisses people off. If you get blamed for damaging education, parents are going to be pulling out the long knives next time you're up for election even if it is a few years in the future. Meanwhile, striking just before elections gets lost in the noise, never mind that "when you can strike" tends to be built into contracts - you generally give up your right to strike during the contract period as a concession to the employer for agreeing to the grievance processes, so you can only have a strike when the contract ends or if the company has such gross misconduct that the NLRB voids the no-strike clause.

[Dostoevsky]

Speaking of strikes, remember that threatened rail strike? Well, the WH-brokered deal has been rejected by a handful of the smaller unions, so they're looking at an early December partial strike. BUT, the general expectation is that it'll be a repeat of the early 90s, when in response to a small partial strike the railroad owners went on full strike, shutting everything down in a move to force congress to capitulate and pass legislation forcing the workers to go back to the line. Congress complied quite promptly indeed back then, and is widely expected to do so again.

[Lord Shonus]

Congress forcing a deal in was always the stick. The election results may well affect the nature of that deal, but the ability of a railroad strike to cripple the economy is so great that one will never be allowed to persist. That's why Biden pushed so hard during the negotiations - he was openly trying to get a better deal than Congress would impose (as well as dodging the electoral consequences of having Congress come in like that right before an election).

[Dostoevsky]

My point was more being snarky about the railroad owners being the main strikers as opposed to the workers.

My understanding is that in this case congress will be imposing the Biden deal, though the Biden deal is still mediocre at best regarding sick leave and other time off.