Vance

Daily Kos -   In 1969, the first no-fault divorce law in the United States was signed by a divorced former actor turned governor of California, Ronald Reagan. Over the next forty years, no-fault divorce laws spread across the United States, with New York being the last state to sign on, in 2010. These laws ended a period in which any party filing for divorce had to not simply give some reason for the dissolution of marriage—like adultery, cruelty, or abuse—but also provide evidence to support these claims. Some couples would even risk faking adultery or subject themselves to unnecessary moves to achieve a divorce. In many cases, women facing domestic violence would be blocked by the financial or social costs of mounting a case for divorce, or forced to stay with abusers by judges who didn’t accept their pleas.

The result of no-fault divorce was immediately visible, not just in an increase in divorce but also in a sharp decrease in domestic violence. States where no-fault divorce laws were passed saw around a 30% drop in domestic violence between 1976 and 1985. In addition, the number of women murdered by domestic partners decreased by 10%. Even suicide among women declined once no-fault divorce made it possible to dissolve failed marriages without an extended legal fight and public shame...

As Salon reports, Vance has been among those with the harshest view of divorce, taking a position that might sound extreme even to extremists. Speaking to an audience at Pacifica Christian High School in Southern California, Vance called no-fault divorce “one of the great tricks … that the sexual revolution pulled on America.” According to Vance, ending marriages that were “maybe even violent” somehow harmed the children more than suffering through those violent marriages... As for Donald Trump, who—well, both of his divorces had a cause: Trump’s adultery. So that’s okay to conservatives. 

Common Dreams - A former venture capitalist whose Senate campaign and push to become Republican nominee Donald Trump's running mate were propelled by billionaire cash postured as an ally of the U.S. working class during his speech Wednesday night at the GOP's convention, where he accepted the party's vice presidential nomination. "We're done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street. We'll commit to the working man," said Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who made millions working in Silicon Valley—including for billionaire Peter Thiel's company Mithril Capital—and later started his own venture capital firm, Narya.

"We need a leader who's not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man, union and nonunion alike," said Vance (R-Ohio), an opponent of landmark legislation that would strengthen workers' organizing rights and a leading advocate of an ostensibly pro-labor bill that—as one analyst put it—would empower corporations "to fend off union organizing drives by setting up their own internal labor organizations, AKA company unions."

Vance also cast Trump, a billionaire himself, as a hero to the working class despite his record of gutting labor protections and stacking federal courts and agencies with rabid opponents of organized labor. 

"President Trump's vision is so simple and yet so powerful," Vance gushed Wednesday night. "Together, we will protect the wages of American workers."

"He's a former venture capitalist backed by billionaires. He has ties to Big Pharma. He's raked in Big Oil cash. He has an awful record on worker rights. He will sell out workers in a heartbeat."

Following the Republican vice presidential nominee's speech in Milwaukee, the AFL-CIO wrote on social media that "if JD Vance were pro-worker, he would have supported the PRO Act."

"But he didn't—he opposed it, and introduced his own legislation to allow corporate bosses to create their own sham unions," the labor federation added.

By the AFL-CIO's tally, Vance has "voted with working people" 0% of the time as a senator—lower than the Republican average of 3%.

Politico - [Silas] House, the Appalachian Studies chair at Berea College in Kentucky, one of the premier thinkers in and about the South and a bestselling writer in his own right, considers Hillbilly Elegy offensive and inauthentic. He sees it, and saw it from the start, as not a memoir but a treatise that traffics in ugly stereotypes and tropes, less a way to explain the political rise of Trump than the actual start of the political rise of Vance... “He’s dangerous. So is his book,” House said about Vance ...

“When I criticize it, sometimes conservatives accuse me of wanting to keep it out of readers’ hands,” he told me Thursday. “I want to make it clear that I am in no way saying the book should be banned or anything remotely like that. But I am saying that I hope people who read it seek historical and cultural context. Every family story has value, but I wish he’d told that story without generalizing an entire place and people to fit his agenda.”