I've been thinking about them this year. I'm sure you know whom. Chances are, you've been thinking about them too.

Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres died at a hospital in Conroe, Texas after living in a concentration camp for six weeks. Geraldo Lunas Campos died by homicide in another concentration camp in El Paso, Texas. ICE claimed he tried to die by suicide, but the autopsy and witnesses confirm that his captors killed him. Víctor Manuel Díaz died in that same camp less than two weeks later. His family disputes ICE's claims that he died by suicide, too. Parady La died at a hopital in Philadelphia still under custody. He suffered from drug withdrawal in Philadelphia's concentration camp while his organs failed. Renee Nicole Good was leaving the scene of an ICE abduction near her home when they murdered her. The day before, Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz died of heart failure in custody weeks after ICE kidnapped him. Heber Sánchez Domínguez died at a concentration camp in Georgia. It's possible he died by suicide but we don't know for sure. Alex Pretti was helping a fallen protestor when agents surrounded, beat, and shot him to death. I'm grateful to Melissa Hellmann at the Guardian for bearing witness to the people we've lost. She and many others have kept each of these names alive. Their lives held significance and value beyond their early deaths.

Indeed, those 8 people could have been any of us. Our oppressors don't care who we are. They believe that people who aren't white don't belong here. They believe that anyone white who stands against them are traitors to their race. It's unfortunate but true that we probably know two of these names best. I wish our society treated every life as having equal worth and value. Of course there's a racial component to that. The u.s. media never gave the same fair coverage to the war in Palestine that they gave the war in Ukraine. But these people and many more, 32 last year alone, died unjustly. Each loss is senseless and unnecessary.

This year, yes, but for every year since its founding, the united states has had a propensity for violence. With that, I realize, comes a numbness. A challenge for me is to keep from internalizing that numbness myself. I've been getting up early to read Ruth Wilson Gilmore's book Abolition Geography. Gilmore collected essays, speeches, and interviews over three decades of her work. If you're not familiar with the author, check out this interview with Sonali Kolhatkar. Or try the popular account Ruth Wilson Gilmore Girls (yep). Released in 2022, Gilmore's essays will feel relevant for as long as we throw people into cages. In one chapter, Gilmore writes,

“In my view, the founding moments of US nationalism, well-rehearsed in mainstream histories, are foundational to both state and culture. First, the United States was “conceived in slavery” and christened by genocide. These early practices established high expectations of state aggression against enemies of the national purpose—such as revolutionary slaves and indigenous peoples—and served as the crucible for development of a military culture that valorized armed men in uniform as the nation’s true sacrificial subjects.”

Gilmore argues that before it was even born, the culture of the u.s. was state aggression. The police and the military operate within that culture. Most people don't even notice it. Unless (until) you're the target of that aggression it feels like the radio. It's on in the background while we go about our lives at home and work. Agencies like ICE further weaponize that culture. They do their horrible work in outfits that look like what the police and american military wear. The Minnesota National Guard now wear vests so they don't look as much like ICE agents. But the focus—the target—of that aggression isn't fixed. It can change at any time to suit any purpose. This force might feel restrained with another president in office. But that's only because someone else is now in the crosshairs.

This is the landscape we live in. Change here is possible, even critical, but it won't be easy. Against the terror in our world, we can be steadfast and resolute, like a stone resists a river. Or we can be persistent and overwhelming, like the same river against the stone. I heard Ruth Wilson Gilmore speak at a conference a few years ago. She said, “There are more of us than there are of them. Our job is to find more us.” Whatever we resist, we must resist together.

I hope I live a long life. But I also make that same wish for the people I defend. We all deserve a life of comfort, of safety, of belonging. Where I differ from my enemies is that they want that kind of life only for themselves. They will exploit, imprison, burn out, and even kill a person who they feel is a threat to their own comfort. There is no reform capable of controlling this violence. Training only produces more efficient killers. It only makes people's deaths more high-resolution.

I'm still reading Abolition Geography so I'm sure I'll have more to say soon. People who are wiser and more experienced than me have put great thought into what might come next. They've been working on these issues for decades, even centuries. I see my role, in part, is to draw from their wisdom and incorporate it into my own. My role as a descendant is to bear witness and keep standing up. I hope we continue to stand together. I hope we can find more us.

This is nuts:

According to the American Psychiatric Association, nearly 40 percent of men and 20 percent of women gamble online daily. Two percent of those bettors gamble more than ten hours a day. Sports bettors have wagered over $600 billion since 2018. The National Council on Problem Gambling notes that about 2.5 million Americans “meet the criteria” for a severe problem; five to eight million more have mild to moderate issues.

As the country’s affordability crisis deepens, individuals and entire families can slide into cycles of addiction and debt. Bank of America warned in a November research note that gambling is creating “emerging credit risks” across the economy; an April paper from UCLA and USC found that credit scores in states that have adopted online sports betting are down, and bankruptcy rates and auto loan delinquencies are up. Eight U.S. studies found that 1 in 5 problem gamblers have tried to commit suicide, the highest rate for any addiction disorder.

Most bettors are men. They’ve gotten younger and younger as sports betting companies gamified gambling. Pokémon, the trading card and video game mega-franchise, co-opted slot machine and casino imagery in the 1990s, and technology companies latched on, eager to bring in young gamblers to replace the old heads. Public schools see problems with boys, and sports betting stokes some school officials’ fears of it becoming as ubiquitous as cellphones and as poisonous as social media.

State politicians have largely looked the other way: The attractive tax revenues from the relative handful of bettors reduce the need for broad-based taxes. Conveniently ignored are the profound contradictions between safeguarding the public welfare and the mental health and financial problems gambling can exacerbate. “It’s a system of taxation by exploitation, and it’s been an epic public-policy failure,” says Les Bernal, the national director of Stop Predatory Gambling, a national advocacy group.

….

In most states, excise tax revenues are small, comprising less than 10 percent of a state’s budget, and in many cases 5 percent or less. Sin taxes on gambling, alcohol, and marijuana are especially volatile and can often level off or plummet (as in the case of cigarettes) depending on the market or changes in social attitudes. In the sports betting sector, companies could pass their costs on to bettors in the form of higher odds. Such a shift could drive bettors into grayer areas. “If you can get better odds by betting with the bookie down the street, then maybe you’ll do that instead of participating in the legal market,” says Adam Hoffer, director of excise tax policy studies at the Tax Foundation, a Washington think tank.

But the “legal” market isn’t exactly generous to its customers either. DraftKings uses AI to learn which micro bets will entice users. Apps carpet-bomb promotions for “free” money that cannot be redeemed unless bet multiple times. “There’s been plenty of stories over the last couple of years on the people who do sign up [to bet] and are on losing streaks and get emails from DraftKings bots basically saying, ‘Here’s another $1,000!’” Stevens says. “That kind of business model that essentially poisons you if you are so addicted; it is something to me that the state should have no interest in from a public-health perspective.”

Vermont’s sports betting revenue goes into its general fund, a Responsible Gaming Special Fund, and industry regulation. In 2024, Vermont bettors did well enough that tax revenues were under projections at $6 million, still a healthy sum for a small state.

Stevens believes that young men, the targets of all this psychological warfare, think they can handle betting constantly on their phones, but they ignore the ever-present dangers. It’s the same for state officials, who dismiss the negative impact of gambling because it brings in money they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. Can Vermont decouple itself from these revenues?

“What it really comes down to is we would rather tax, whether it’s by choice or not, with lotteries and gambling,” says Stevens. “That’s the way our culture is, and I don’t see that changing.”

So basically, the entire nation is now dependent on mostly young men ruining their lives through addiction. Might as well just promote smoking, at least it looked cool in black and white films.

The post How Exploiting Pathetic Male Addicts Took Over the Economy appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

It is so easy to yield to temptation. My head might know a path leads only to shame and regret, but my heart urges me to take one step, and then another. It started on Tuesday, with news that Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid chose, for some reason, to use the occasion of his bronze medal–winning performance in the men’s 20km to confess on live television that he cheated on his girlfriend and desperately wants her back. Well, I thought, surely there is no harm in devoting some of my mental resources to learning more about this. Twenty-four hours have now passed and I can think of nothing else. At some point in the dead of night, I accidentally learned how to read Norwegian. These vowel combinations look totally normal to me.

The immediate details were compelling and strange. Lægreid told Norwegian broadcaster NRK, "There is something I want to share with someone who may not be watching today. Half a year ago, I met the love of my life. The world’s most beautiful and nicest person. Three months ago, I made the mistake of my life and cheated on her, and I told her about that a week ago. This has been the worst week of my life." Weeping, he went on to explain that "I had the gold medal in life, and I am sure there are many people who will see things differently, but I only have eyes for her. Sport has come second these last few days. Yes, I wish I could share this with her."

Thanks to a helpful Defector commenter, I learned that this declaration was even more ill-timed than I imagined, given that the gold medalist, fellow Norwegian, Johan-Olav Botn, also dedicated his win to someone no longer with him—their teammate Sivert Guttorm Bakken, who was found dead in his hotel room in December.

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

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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.