Do you have a Ring (TM) or similar video camera by your front door? With the curved end of a claw hammer, deliver a sharp downward stroke to the device’s top edge. Think of the blow as a slicing or chopping motion. When the unit is severed from your doorway, place it in the trash.

For stubbornly attached units, you can also use the flat side of the hammer in a straight-on strike, repeated until the item is rendered into a pile of splinters that can be swept up using an everyday broom and dustpan.

Some say this approach to your Ring camera is wasteful. This is true. It would have been more efficient never to install this device at all. But perhaps you moved into a home that already has one. Or perhaps you were momentarily afflicted with an episode of irrational terror, which has now passed. Either way you need to get the thing off. Whatever waste is produced is, at this point, unavoidable.

Others say that this action is destructive. This is an error. What is destructive is the insidious belief that the world outside your front door is to be treated with suspicion; that every passerby is a potential threat; that every neighbor is a potential enemy; that every human interaction must be stored and cataloged as evidence of possible crime. This attitude is destructive of good will, of brotherhood, of peace, of love. This is the attitude of the Gestapo. This is the attitude of the paranoid lunatic. This is totalitarianism creeping into your home disguised as safety.

One swift stroke of that claw hammer will fix all that.

I get it. People are worried that they may be victims of a home invasion. Is your dad Charles Lindbergh? If not, you will not be kidnapped as you sleep. I guarantee it. In fact, I am so confident of this that I am willing to bet one thousand dollars, right now, that it won’t happen to you. That’s how I got the big vault of gold I have: positive thinking, and basic statistical literacy.

But what if someone steals your Amazon package off your front steps? Well, what if they do? I guess you would have to get a refund. I guess you might suffer an extremely minor inconvenience. I guess it could be an opportunity to reflect on the painful predations of poverty under capitalism, which creates economic desires, renders people unable to satisfy them, and then taunts them with constant visions of abundance in which they cannot share. True, it is a tragedy of unimaginably small proportions that someone has stolen your box of paper towels. Would you let them steal your optimism, as well?

Your front door is equipped with a lock. If you are fretful about what may be coming towards you, engage it. That will prevent anyone from entering your home without your permission. Your front door is equipped with a peephole. If you are fretful about who might be standing there, look through it and see. I think you’ll find that the use of these existing items solves the problems that you have been tricked into imagining that you have. No panopticon is necessary.

Crime. “Crime.” “Crime!” It is a conceptual delivery system for an unhappy life of fear. Reject it as a category of being. Reject it as an intellectually coherent object. Reject it as a lens with which to view the world. Life is a series of surprising events, some bad and some delightful. The unfolding of these events makes up the wondrous parade of life itself. Defining this entire parade by the theoretical possibility of a small handful of negative outliers does not guarantee you peace of mind. Rather, it guarantees the opposite: an unceasing focus on the worst, a needless hypervigilance bleeding into anxiety. Thrown into this disordered state, you find yourself easy prey for those who would invent solutions to this imagined problem that they themselves have conjured. The mask of safety hides the sallow face of the predator.

You want to point a freaking camera at every postal worker and cookie-selling Girl Scout and dinner party attendee that approaches your door? What is this, a house, or a prison? It is plainly crazy. It is far afield from reasonable. Its normalization is evidence of a latent societal sickness. We don’t point cameras at our friends. We don’t leer suspiciously at our neighbors. We don’t assail humanity with an accusatory spotlight. These things are not okay.

The only people who deserve such brutal treatment are those who have, through their actions, proven that they harbor you ill will. For example: the people who try to sell you Ring cameras. Go ahead and point the cameras at them. They are certainly not to be trusted.

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Also

• Related reading: The Subway Is Not Scary; Quit Your Evil Job; Things You Can Lie About.

• A few content recommendations today: An interesting Substack Live discussion of mental health, tonight at 7 PM; an exciting new podcast series about the Starbucks union drive that Haymarket Books Audio will be dropping later today; and an hour of yours truly talking about how the journalism industry got broken and how we can fix it, on the Unwashed and Unruly podcast. Fun!

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I’m glad most of you read LGM while seated in front of a screen or on your phone because the fact that gigantic MAGA billionaires exploit the hell out of Latin American labor, much of which is undocumented, will no doubt knock you off your feet if you are standing.

When JD Vance delivered a speech about the US economy late last year at a Uline facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, he talked up the Trump administration’s key goals: removing “illegal aliens” from the country, rewarding companies that keep jobs in the US, and paying Americans good wages.

“We’re going to reward companies that build here in America and give good wages to do it,” Vance said.

The venue was no accident. Uline, a multi-billion dollar privately-held office supply company, is owned by Liz and Richard Uihlein, two of the biggest donors to Maga Republicans in the 2024 election.

But when it comes to immigration, Uline’s employment practices over the last several years provide an alternative picture of how the US economy works in the real world.

For years, the Guardian reported in an investigation first published in December 2024, Uline relied on what it called a “shuttle program”, a scheme in which Uline brought workers from Mexico to staff warehouses in Florida, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania for weeks and even months at a time, using visas that are meant for workers who are being trained – not working regular full-time jobs.

Uline has never responded to the Guardian’s questions about the shuttle program, which sources familiar with the program say abruptly ended in 2024, after the Guardian’s story was published.

Now, for the first time, a former Uline employee named Christian Valenzuela, 42, has come forward to share his experience in the shuttle program, including stints in Allentown, where Vance spoke in December.

Uline travel itineraries, which Valenzuela shared with the Guardian, show he made at least five trips to the US beginning in early 2022, and worked in the company’s facilities in Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin.

“They told us we had to go to the United States because there were not many people who were working at that time. It was around the time of the pandemic,” he said in an interview. Uline did pay the Mexican workers a bonus, gas money and paid for accommodations, but they were paid their usual Mexican wage, Valenzuela said. The Guardian has previously reported this was a fraction of what their American counterparts earned.

But the Uihleins seem like such good morally upright people!

The post The Billionaire Hypocrites appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

More than a year ago, I approached my friend Itai with an idea. I had sought their advice a few months earlier about a board I was planning to join. Our initial conversation had gone so well that I asked them to write an essay with me. We decided to write a guide for folks like us who were considering board service but didn’t know who or what to ask. The more we talked, the more we realized we had so much information to share that it wouldn't fit in a single post. At our very first meeting we outlined who this book was for:

Folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, People of Color, or People of the Global Majority

• LGBTQIA+ folks
• Poor folks

We gathered the sum of our experiences from serving on and working with boards of directors. We spent months in collaboration to write and revise our advice. We hired an incredible illustrator (Trae Middlebrooks) and asked colleagues with board experience to review our manuscript.

And then we published our book! Buy So you might join a board... on gumroad.

We want everyone, especially folks in our priority audience, to read this. We hope the book finds a second audience among board members who want to know how their boards can be more welcoming. It can help them think about the answers that any prospective board member might need to know.

We priced this book for large nonprofits and institutions who can afford our advice. But organizations with small budgets can use the discount code BOARD to buy the book for $50. Our primary audience, who we want more than anything to read this book, can use discount code POWER to buy it for $1. We offer these codes on the honor system for folks who can use them. And if our lowest price is a hardship for you (or you don’t have the means to buy online), please email store@bethefuture.space for a free copy, no questions asked.

Check the book out on gumroad. If you'd like to read before you share, I've excerpted our introduction below:

introduction for So you might join a board...

Organizations rely on their board of directors to provide governance and financial oversight. The law requires nonprofits to have a board of directors to ensure they act in the best interests of the community. When done well, a board of directors is a group of folks with a diverse set of skills, backgrounds, and experiences. But like many of society’s spaces, most boards are monocultural by design, built to serve the needs of a fraction of the community. A board can include members who don’t know much about the communities their nonprofit serves. We're grateful to know that many organizations are working to change that. They know that a board of directors should be full of folks who reflect the nonprofit and its community. That might be where you come in…

This guide is for people who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color (BIPOC). You may be thinking about joining a board or someone is recruiting you into one. This guide is also for folks who identify as LGBTQ+ or queer. It's for poor folks or people who don't have an absurd amount of wealth. It's definitely for people who are any combination of the above!

We have both joined and served on boards of directors. They have recruited us for our skills, for our identity, our background, and our values. We've accepted these invitations and we've declined them. We've served on boards and resigned from them. We've found deep joy in guiding the work of an organization that acts in the service of their values. We’ve gained valuable learning experiences and deeper insights into an organization, its industry, and the communities they support.

Why We Need Allies

Today, we're living in an era of american technofascist rule. If we're very lucky, you could be reading this at a time when those threats are over. But for now, many of our community members face unwanted levels of hostile visibility. People who are Black, Latine, and/or trans are fighting for their causes in spite of this attention.

This is a great time for cis and white allies to join the boards of trans- and immigrant-supporting orgs. People with these identities risk arrest, kidnapping, or worse. If you're a trans person considering service on a trans-supporting nonprofit board, please do! They definitely need that. But we can't ignore the risks that trans people and immigrants face. We need people who will be safe stepping forward—taking the heat without taking the reins.

Joining a board of directors is a great way, but not the only way, to support an organization's work. It can be so exciting to give back to a nonprofit that's helped you, your family, friends, or community. The roles board members play will look different depending on the board and organization. Nonprofits are far from being the only form of activism and civic service. But they provide safety nets for communities, the arts,
and critically important causes. These organizations face intense challenges that this moment in our history requires. They need new perspectives and skillsets to help overcome them.

Contributing in a mission-driven way can be deeply rewarding. Folks we know who have served on a board of directors have developed friendships that extended past the conference table. They’ve steered a floundering organization in a new direction or towards greater sustainability. They’ve felt more connected to people in and outside their communities. We want everyone to seek these rewards. We also want people to have a holistic idea of the common requirements, challenges, and risks. Not everyone is aware of the liability that may come with service on a board. Once you're on the board, you're on the hook for the fiscal responsibility and oversight that comes from it. You may also face dynamics that can produce stress and are not a great fit for everyone. We offer this guide in the hopes that it will help you decide if joining a board is right for you.

Buy So you might join a board... on gumroad.

Do you know anyone who might benefit from reading? Please share with them this email/page or the link above! We need all the word of mouth advertising we can get.