2016 archive
Solidarity Reimagined 0
One day those who have been seduced by the snaring economy will realize that they have been duped.
While they work for pittances, Silicon Valley reaps the premium and sucks them dry. It’s bubblelicious.
I carried a union card for 24 years.
Shortly after I started at my first employer, my job became a union job and my pay went up because I was no longer without protection. (I won’t go into the technical details of why this happened–it had to do with “deferred agreements” and stuff like that there).
When I got promoted into a non-union job, I continued to pay my union dues and maintained my seniority as a fall-back. When the time came that I needed a fall-back (my whole office and all the persons in it in Wilmington, Delaware, got offed), it turned out that I didn’t need to exercise my seniority rights, as I fell back into another industry. Nevertheless, those rights were there and I could have used them to put bread on the table had the other opportunity not come along all on its ownsome.
I never had to avail myself directly of the union’s services, because the union had already fought to protect me; I benefited from the sacrifices of persons who were willing to die for workers’ rights. I appreciated those protections, and, the more I learned about labor law, the more I appreciated them. I appreciate them still.
The union made my life better.
“Right to work” laws are in truth “right not to get paid fairly” laws and are one of the most successful cons in American political and labor history.
Image via Juanita Jean.
Afterthought:
In the phrase, “everyone is an entrepreneur,” methinks “entrepreneur” is “exploited” misplet.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite to your little sister.
The bullet grazed the girl’s right armpit, Green said.
And, in more news of the polite . . . .
“Words Mean What I Want Them To Mean” 0
At The Nation, William J. Astore considers the vocabulary of endless war. One might say that his article is an extrordinary rendition of enhanced obfuscation techniques.
A snippet:
The Snaring Economy 0
When “sharing” is a business, it’s not “sharing.”
It’s a business.
(snip)
A change of the law voted through parliament in January has obliged tenants to get permission from their landlords before putting their flat on Airbnb.
But according to reports in France, it’s the first time a tenant has been ordered to compensate the landlord.
Authorities in Paris, which is the world’s number one city for Airbnb rentals, have long tried to crack down on illegal rentals on the home-sharing site.
If I were a landlord, I’d want to know when a tenant was running a business out of my property also. I don’t know anything about French insurance practices, but I got a dollar to a croissant that the insurance company would want to know that you’ve turned your home into a boarding house.
Plus Ca Change, Flail the Bern Dept. 4
Eight years ago, as Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination fell behind Barack Obama’s, I gave forth a screed* in which I suggested that, as hope for her campaign faded, she had begun acting like a jerk. (People sometimes do that when they start to lose hope in a cause. My two or three regular readers also know that, in my opinion, she has redeemed herself in her subsequent conduct.)
In an eerie reprise of history, the role is reversed and it is now her opponent who is acting like a jerk.
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*I haven’t done a screed for a long time. I think I got them all out of my system in this blog’s youth.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness rides again.
KSP said a boy was dismounting from his horse and the .22 caliber pistol he was carrying fell from the holster and hit the ground. The gun discharged, injuring the boy’s mother Jereen Stamper, 39.
You may ask, “Why is a 12-year-old packing heat on a horse trail?” It’s the NRA dream: every city, Dodge City; every hill, Boot Hill.
“The Birds” 0
Shorter Reg Henry: Hitchcock had nothing on this campaign.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Jackie does a capsule history of the Republican southern strategy and, along the way, she decodes de code.
Break Time 0
Off to drink liberally.
“If You Can’t Google It, It Must Not Be” 0
Remember the University of California at Davis campus cop who egregiously pepper-sprayed a group of peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors a couple of years ago?
Well, UC-Davis doesn’t want you to, so it tried to make it go away. The Sacramento Bee has the documents:
The payments were made as the university was trying to boost its image online and were among several contracts issued following the pepper-spray incident.
Some payments were made in hopes of improving the results computer users obtained when searching for information about the university or Katehi, results that one consultant labeled “venomous rhetoric about UC Davis and the chancellor.”
Much more at the link.
By the by, if you follow the link in the first sentence, the money does not appear to have been well-spent.
Asides:
Because I pay attention to stuff like this, I know that the most common technique used by the outfits that promise to cleanse your on-line reputation is not to make bad stuff go away, because they can’t. It’s to fabricate promulgate a bunch of good stuff, hoping that it pushes the bad stuff off the first page of search results, because most persons don’t look beyond the first page.
Also, remember that, with rhetoric, “venomous” and “accurate” are independent variables.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 2
Surround your offspring with politeness.
Officer Colendula Green said a woman was waiting to be seen about 9:30 a.m. at Merit Health Central Medical Center when she went to a vending machine with her daughter, Green said. The woman dropped her purse and a gun inside went off, Green said.