Notices by Dan Wentzel 🏳️‍🌈 (danwentzel@urbanists.social)

Kern County is a MAGA stronghold in California that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy represented. They did the fu-ing around. Here comes the finding out part.

"Acres of grape fields sat unpicked in Kern County this week as word of Border Patrol raids circulated through Messenger chats and images of federal agents detaining laborers spread on local Facebook groups."
#FAFO
https://calmatters.org/economy/2025/01/kern-county-immigration-sweep/

Take note of all the Neville Chamberlain‘s and all of the Winston Churchill‘s at this moment in US history.

If you want to know what you and others would have done in 1938 Germany, you are about to find out.

Wherever Merrick Garland is, I hope he is having a miserable day.

@Npars01 I do not own a car by choice but maintain a driver's license. The insistence that someone needed to have their own car before applying for a stationary job never made sense nor seemed fair.

My whole life I have seen advertisements for desk jobs that required people to have driver's licenses, use of a vehicle, and insurance, even when there was no driving involved in the job at all.

Requiring a driver's license for employment is now prohibited in California if driving is not reasonably expected to be part of the job duties. This is a huge victory for people who use transit and cycling for their mobility.
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/12/28/new-in-2025-protecting-more-workers/

We don’t have to pretend and act like Donald Trump didn’t attempt a coup, wasn’t found liable for fraud and sexual assault, and wasn’t convicted of 34 felonies just because of his job title.

No election erases or changes that or who he is. I will never trust ANY decision he ever makes is office.

I just don‘t buy that 49.9% of Americans voters who picked the Presidential candidate who had attempted a coup and had been adjudicated for sexual assault because they were concerned about “prices”.

The reasons for voting for authoritarianism were darker and more nefarious than “the economy”.

Don’t be surprised if this coming Musk vs. Trump battle doesn’t end with a 25th Amendment attempt against Trump to install Vance as part of a Project 2025 coup — just as we warned before the election.

Things are just coming to a head sooner than I expected.

One of the reasons California is the 4th largest economy in the world is that we are an immigration friendly state, part of a giant single market and customs union, and we like “expertise”.

Immigrants who are feeling threatened in red states should come fill job openings in #California.

Apparently, no one in the current Administration or the next one or Congress has the courage to stand up to Elon Musk.

The most likely scenario then is that he will eventually piss off wrong authoritarian.

This account supports #UniversalHealthCare

Conservative news pundits don't think we are showing enough "grace and compassion" for the murdered rich white male CEO of a for-profit insurance corporation that makes its fortune denying life-saving medical care to desperate people.

That same multi-billion corporation is only offering a $10K reward, the shareholders practically stepped over the dead body on the way to their meeting, and continued on with their business model.

I think pundits are confused about who has a lack of compassion.

Don’t let them gaslight you.

NOW is the perfect time to talk about our health care non-system and no longer having it based on corporate greed denying life-saving treatments for profit.

The ACA was a start toward universal health care but it is not complete, and Medicare “Advantage” is a disaster.

In 2005 a Bush Republican trifecta tried to dismantle Social Security by privatizing it.

The media asked “Aren’t Democrats going to negotiate with them?”

Nancy Pelosi responded, “Is NEVER good for you?”

Voters repudiated Republicans in ‘06.

Voters repudiated Republican trifecta attempts to bring back pre-existing medical conditions in ‘18.

Just walk away from Republican proposals on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA. Let them hang themselves on their own overreaching again.

Contrary to what Republicans tell you, people are moving to California.

We welcome immigrants and migrants here.
#California

https://vid.newsweek.com/california-sees-surge-people-moving-state-605919

Does everyone get that the purpose of Trump’s tariffs are not to help American industry - they are putting a giant sales tax on the good we buy to pay for more giant tax cuts for the superwealthy.

Putting Americans through “hardship” to enrich the already rich is the point. Musk told us this BEFORE the election.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/us/politics/elon-musk-trump-economy-hardship.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

One thing I am worried about is Republicans using their trifecta to defund traditional #Medicare. They want everyone on these nisnamed private Medicare “Advantage” plans, not because they are better for patients, but because they are better for corporations .

We should be adding dental, vision, hearing, and long-term care to original Medicare.

https://www.statnews.com/2024/02/28/medicare-advantage-traditional-overpayment-patient-dissatisfaction-investors/

I don't care what restroom you use as long as you wash your hands.

However, why can't we have European public restrooms with closets and actual privacy?

(For that matter, why can't we have European high speed rail, public transit, and universal health care too?)

So....

"Vladimir Shklyarov, a world-renowned Russian ballet star who had been critical of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, died after falling from the fifth floor of a building."

A ballet star with perfect balance "falls" out of a fifth-story window. Uh-huh.

Are acts like this going to be routine in the U.S. in two months?

Normalizing Trump with smiling photo ops won't take away his plans for authoritarianism.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/style/vladimir-shklyarov-ballet-death-scli-intl/index.html

For anyone on the Fediverse who listens to #AbrahamHicks, this video resurfaced this morning, and I found it comforting and a good reminder.

If it calls to you, please enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOofti3vBko&t=629s