Daniela Sirtori

For balanced, unorthodox commentary on big and smaller issues affecting US Foreign Policy and the Middle East, check out my Substack, "The Middle East -- Told Slant." The vast majority of content is free. The blog includes serialized translations of Arabic non-fiction, travel essays, and dog-related posts. For a limited time, annual US-based subscribers get one of my published books at no cost. https://lnkd.in/eibrKMaM

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A brilliant new column in Observer by Roy Swan that will unpack how we can strive for a better form of capitalism that can work for all of us, rooted in innovation, prosperity, and fairness. Check it out!!

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My latest for MSNBC: Biden’s FTC just exposed one of the GOP and businesses’ biggest lies to workers: "The Federal Trade Commission earlier this week voted to ban noncompete contracts for most workers in the United States. These contracts, research shows, depress wages, stifle entrepreneurial innovation and trap people in jobs they’d prefer to exit. Taken all together, says FTC head Lina Khan, they are “robbing people of their economic liberty.” Who would want to be against economic freedom, not to mention raises for America’s workers? The answer is both Republican FTC commissioners and business interests. And in so doing, they proved that President Joe Biden’s FTC is calling out both the GOP and the business lobby on one of their biggest lies to workers: that they are defenders of economic liberty. . . It’s hard not to suspect that the squawking employers have a bottom-line concern. The FTC’s ban exempts high-ranking executives who have a policymaking role. Businesses have other ways to ban former employees from sharing proprietary trade secrets and intellectual property, after all. But it’s well known that the best way for a worker to boost their wages is to go out and get another job. The FTC estimates that doing away with noncompetes will add $400 billion to $488 billion to workers’ wages over the next decade. That’s hardly chump change. That’s only the start of the economic costs. The use of noncompetes also stifles economic innovation. Last year, a poll released by the Small Business Majority found 46% of entrepreneurs claimed such contracts prevented them from starting or expanding their businesses. And business historians say the reason Silicon Valley developed around Stanford University and not East Coast rival MIT is because California’s strict ban on noncompetes in almost all circumstances — which has been in place since the late 19th century — gave workers the freedom to easily move from one company to another or just start up a venture of their own. The result is that the state currently ranks as the world’s fifth largest economy ... But there’s a larger issue here. We are a nation that claims to value liberty above all else. Any time government agencies even think about issuing a new regulation, politicians and lobbyists leap in screaming about threats to economic freedom. But the existence of noncompetes not only gives the lie to that myth, but it also highlights the not infrequent hypocrisy of business interests wrapping themselves in that mantle. There’s nothing — and I mean nothing — freeing about a practice that effectively keeps millions of Americans trapped in their jobs. #noncompetes #FTC #FederalTradeCommission #LinaKhan #NonCompeteAgreements

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City leaders are currently finalizing the budget—and New York City’s public libraries are still facing a staggering $58.3 million in potential cuts. If these cuts are enacted, NYPL would have to cut another day of service from our branches—on top of the loss of Sunday service last November. This means most branches would only be open five days a week. These devastating cuts would also mean fewer hours, fewer books, and fewer programs for our city. New Yorkers have successfully rallied for library funding and we need your help again. Along with The New York Public Library , Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Public Library and all the other libraries in NYC, I’m asking the NYC Office of the Mayor and the New York City Council to not cut New Yorkers short. We need our libraries. Image Description: Image shows a black background. The words “I Stand With” are written in orange text, in all capital letters. The words “NYC Libraries” are written in white text, in capital and lowercase letters. Below that, text says, in all capital letters: “#(hashtag) NoCutsToLibraries.” #Bookstagram #BookLovers #ReadersOfInstagram #BookNerds #LiteracyIsEssential #Books #SupportLocalLibraries #NoCutsToLibraries

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SEEKING YOUR NEXT BOOK CLUB OR READING GROUP TITLE? Is your group interested in discussing and analyzing historical themes and events as part of a broader exploration of literature and non-fiction? If so, this book To Tell the Truth: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent by Lewis M. Simons is likely your next read that fosters good discussion. https://lnkd.in/eNWhUbbn

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The #WorldBank-IMF meetings are over. What did they actually accomplish? Depends on your perspective, though "not enough" seems to be the consensus from the people I spoke with. Check out my latest Newswire for more on the meetings.

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YouGov released a new analysis that includes the data below on social platforms and news aggregators used as news sources the past month. Facebook still leads among adults in general with Democrats being 25% more likely to use Instagram for news. Republicans are twice as likely to use Truth Social for News. Adults under 45 are... 28% more likely to use YouTube for news. 58% more likely to use Instagram for news. 38% more likely to use X for news. 56% more likely to use TikTok for news. 73% more likely to use Reddit for news. #socialmedia #newsaggregators #socialmediafornews #youngadults #facebook #youtube #instagram #twitterx #tiktok #reddit #partyaffiliation

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My latest for MSNBC: The union plan to unleash a tsunami for Biden. "There’s plenty in the former president’s record w/ which these unions can make their case. Former President Donald Trump’s popularity among working-class voters is, to be blunt, a triumph of bluster over substance and presentation over reality. The former president says he is a friend of the common man. His actions demonstrate he is anything but. Trump’s administration was a wrecking ball when it came to worker rights, rolling back multiple safety initiatives. His Supreme Court nominees were instrumental in a major ruling weakening public-sector unions. His appointees to the National Labor Relations Board made it harder for workers to unionize. During his administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration even removed the names of people who died in workplace accidents from the front page of its website. And since he left the White House, he has fought with the United Auto Workers and urged its members to stop paying their dues. Biden’s strong pro-worker actions are a 180-degree turn from Trump’s record. He marched on a picket line last year with striking UAW members (a first for a sitting president) and met with Starbucks labor organizers. His NLRB appointments are more likely to back workers over employers. And he's been an aggressive advocate for nonunion workers. His administration’s ban on almost all non-compete agreements will most likely both increase entrepreneurial efforts and give America’s workers a wage boost of more than $500 a year. And, yes, the names of workers killed in workplace accidents are back on OSHA’s front page. Nothing highlights the difference between Trump’s & Biden’s attitudes toward working Americans better than how they both handled overtime compensation. Trump abandoned an Obama administration initiative to double the salary threshold under which salaried workers would be eligible for mandatory overtime pay. Biden’s administration didn’t just restore the Obama-era rule; it raised the threshold to just over $56,000 annually ... [But] a recent review of databases tracking Democratic candidate statements, social media posts and campaign ads during the 2022 election revealed relatively few House and Senate candidates emphasized kitchen table economics or Biden legislative achievements like the infrastructure bill or the Inflation Reduction Act. That is borderline political malpractice. These issues and achievements mean a lot to voters. But they won’t sell themselves. People, I’ve learned over decades of reporting on these issues, lead busy lives: They don’t spend their days thinking about political gains and losses. They are upset about inflation and the rising cost of living but aren’t aware of what Biden — or any politician, really — is doing (or not doing, when it comes to Trump) to make their financial lives better." #Biden #Trump #Election2024 #OSHA #NLRB #SEIU #noncompetes #overtime #WorkerRights #unions #Fightfor15

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So I went to vote today in our primary election, and something happened. I tell you at the start that this is kind of an involved, in-the-weeds story, but I hope you’ll read it anyway. Because I think it illustrates how 99.9% of the time when something goes wrong with voting, it’s because good people with good intentions make a mistake. It’s NOT because of vote fraud. New Jersey had its primary today for Senate, House and other offices. No great controversies, but I wanted to do my civic duty, particularly because my wife was on the ballot: She’s running for a seat on our county’s Democratic committee (two candidates for two seats, so she was effectively unopposed).. So we walked into our polling place, and the poll workers there said they’d had some trouble with the voting machine, but we still checked in and started to fill out our ballots. It’s the kind of machine where you take a paper ballot, mark who you’re voting for and feed it into the machine. That’s when I saw it. “Hey, Christa,” I said to my wife, “why is your name not on here?” Because it wasn’t, and it should have been. Her name had been on the sample ballot we received in the mail ahead of the election - but the actual ballot I was about to cast had two different names listed as candidates for Democratic committee members, not her name. We pointed that out to the poll workers, and it quickly became clear what had happened: These were the wrong ballots. They were for a DIFFERENT polling place and district nearby, with different people running for that district’s slots on the county committee. A poll worker had picked up, and had been using, a stack of ballots for the wrong district. That was why the machine was on the fritz - it was being asked to accept ballots that didn’t fit the proper specifications for that polling place. My wife hopped on the phone to the Board of Elections and county committee members to alert them to the situation - some votes might have to be invalidated - while the poll workers tried to sort through what was going on and what they should do. Within maybe 15 minutes, the problem was resolved. The correct ballots were located, I cast my vote (including for my wife), the machine accepted my ballot. and I went home satisfied. I saw all of this happen with my own eyes - the discovery of the problem, the attempts to alert people to it, the resolution. No one tried to hide anything. No one got angry. Everyone did their best to figure out what was going on and how to remedy it. No fraud or other underhandedness. It was a relatively low-stakes primary election, true, so there was less reason for fraud to begin with - but if you dig below the surface of virtually any voting problem, what you’ll find is human error and Murphy’s law, not fraud. So if and when certain people start yammering about how the 2020 election was “stolen,” or how the 2024 election is going to be “rigged” - try to remember this, and use your common sense. Feel free to share.

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What a time in U.S. history. Last month, poll results released by Morning Consult / Bloomberg indicated that half of voters in swing states fear violence around the upcoming election. Sizeable proportions also expressed concern about the potential impact of misinformation, foreign interference, and voter fraud. Can we step back from the precipice? I sometimes feel I’ve been talking my entire adult life about our world’s descent into chaos and uncertainty—into an era marked by new divisions, fears, and existential threats. It’s a topic I discussed in detail in The New Megatrends (book available on Amazon, published by Random House Penguin). Perhaps especially in the U.S., so many of us feel unmoored and even hopeless—eager for change but not at all certain how best to achieve it or whether it ever will come. As I’ve had the privilege these past few months to talk with people across several states and every political orientation, I’ve become even more convinced that the solution to what ails us as a country can’t be left to chance. We all need to claw our way out of our information bubbles and talk—really talk—to people who are nothing like us. I have found it immensely heartening to discover that the headlines about polarization and hate aren’t telling the full story. Dig deeper, and you’ll find plenty of Americans across the political spectrum who want the same things and are eager for a chance to contribute to rational solutions. Let’s stop letting the polls and pundits define who we are. #citizenship #polarization #change #newmegatrends

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Fact-checkers serve as the referees of democracy in 111 countries, according to our new fact-checking census from the Duke Reporters’ Lab (https://lnkd.in/dQX47qA9). But the number of reporting and research teams that call out political lies and disinformation is plateauing -- exactly at the time when the world needs fact-checkers most.

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A recent survey conducted by Morning Consult has shed light on the nuanced and sometimes divisive opinions among American voters regarding abortion policies. The findings indicate a complex landscape of beliefs, with significant variations across political affiliations and demographics. #AbortionPolicyDebate #StateAutonomyOnAbortion #PoliticalDivideOnAbortion #TrumpAndAbortionPolitics #VoterOpinionsOnAbortion #RoeVWadeReversalReactions #AbortionRightsResponsibility #BidenVsTrumpAbortionHandling #PublicOpinionOnAbortionLaws #IVFAccessAndAbortionDebate

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