Tag: Politics

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Democracy is at stake or so we are told. America’s two largest political parties are going to nominate aging unpopular candidates as their nominees. The Republicans because they think they were cheated and want revenge and the Democrats because, well, I don’t know why. I am told there is no one better. For many voters, this means, it could come down to flip of the coin which is frightening when you consider the very close races that decided the elections in both 2016 and 2020.

But not to worry, Trump will be a convicted felon by election day. Or not. I don’t know why people think the courts would save the day. Have these people ever dealt with courts? I know it has been loads of fun watching Trump getting frustrated by these court appearances but this is the type of ordeal that Trump was made for.

Trump has been using the courts his entire adult life to gain advantage and he understands the key to winning is delay. He knows how to wear people down until his nemesis surrenders and makes a deal. Now Trump has even a better option than a deal. If he delays long enough and wins the presidency, he can pardon himself.

The Democrats argue that the best response to Trump is Joe Biden. I wish I shared their confidence because Biden trails Trump in the polls. Biden is in trouble because many people think he is too old to be president. This could be handled easily by putting the old boy out there on the campaign trail. But someone is keeping him off and this would be fine if it helped. But it doesn’t. It’s a no win position. If Biden makes public appearances he looks old and if he doesn’t make appearances people think he is hiding because he is too old.

Don’t worry. Joe is saving it for the Fall. I am not sure why Biden will be better in the Fall because his problem is a perception of being old. He isn’t recovering from an illness and can expect to be in better shape after a short rest, he will, in fact, be even older in the Fall. Unfortunately, while Biden is comfortably resting,Trump is grabbing all the press — good, bad, or indifferent. Trump may be crazy but he is certainly visible and Trump likes being visible. He thrives on it. So, perhaps the Democrats nominating a candidate who has to save it for the fall isn’t the appropriate choice for such a rigorous undertaking as running for president.

People are saying that Trump is cornered now and has nowhere to run. This seems to be wishful thinking by the powers that be and a continual mistake that people make when dealing with Trump. In 2016, the Republican Establishment assured us that there is no way Trump could be nominated. Well, he was. The Democrats gave us Hillary Clinton who they assured us was the candidate who could defeat Trump. She wasn’t. Trump was impeached once. He laughed that one off. He slyly instigated violence on January 6. He denied everything and told us that we got it all wrong and began rewriting the history of the day. His supporters backed him. He was impeached again. Almost the entire Republican party got in line to say that nothing actually happened despite what they said to the contrary on January 6.

Trump has survived some very heavy fire and is relatively unscathed. At this point, I have more confidence that Trump has a better understanding about what is going on than the doyens in the press and government. Trump is constantly being underestimated which is sad for a man so dangerous. Just because they think a man is an uncouth idiot doesn’t mean everyone else agrees with them. This continual confidence that Trump is finally on the ropes displays a stunning amnesia of recent history. Trump has beaten his betters time and again and they don’t seem to realize it. Which is more than a little disconcerting.

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I try to ignore the Trump family as much as humanly possible but they just are too difficult to ignore. They are always out there doing something, saying things and making people crazy. Sometimes you just have to break down and comment on what they are doing, knowing full well that they love every moment of attention they are getting. Good or bad, attention is attention and, for some reason, the Trump family love getting it and I apologize now for giving it to them. Forgive me but I must comment about something Trumpish.

The Trump men love to appraise women’s looks and then give their usually unflattering appraisal particularly if the woman is a political opponent (see Donald Trumps thoughts on Rosie O’Donnell and Carly Fiorina if you need some examples). Trump’s namesake Donald jr. got into the act recently with his unkind comparison of Michelle Obama to a football linebacker.

Oddly, he comments that this is a joke which was a lame way of trying to protect himself from criticism that he knew would be heading his way. He was joking. Ha ha. Right. Got it. Though I have to wonder would if his wife or sister would think it was funny to be compared to a linebacker? If he is just being funny that is. I am sure they would get the joke, right? They know his sense of humor best after all.

It’s the type of joke you would expect from a 12 year old boy trying to impress his friends by making fun of the smartest girl in the class. It is mean-spirited joke. The interesting thing for me, is that it was more important for Donald jr. to amuse his juvenile friends than to be a decent human being. He relishes in the hurtful nature of the joke.

You would think that the son of man who is running for president would understand this and not post this type of joke on social media. Of course, he is free to post whatever he damn well pleases, that he can’t discern what is appropriate and inappropriate is the problem. In Donald jr.’s mind, it is perfectly OK to publicly demean a woman’s looks.

That neither Trump seems worried about that is concerning.

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The two parties seem intent on nominating incredibly unpopular people as their candidates for president. For the Trump Republicans, this is at least understandable. They want revenge and there is some passion there to get it. The Democrats, on the other hand, just can’t be bothered to come up with someone better than Biden. It’s too dangerous. Let’s stick with a known winner. Don’t rock the boat, everything is fine. Shut up and get in line seems to be the campaign slogan.

It’s not even that I dislike Biden. I don’t. I just don’t think he is the leader for this particular moment and, to say, we don’t have anything better is depressing. In this whole vast country of 330 million plus people, we can’t come up with an alternate to Joe Biden? If this is true, then the Democrats are in deep trouble. If all you got is Joe Biden, then well, the future is rather bleak.

And, I really hate to have to say this, because it should be obvious but, for some reason, no one seems to care, Biden is polling badly against Trump. Let’s think about this for a moment. Between two very unpopular candidates, Biden is getting out polled by Donald Trump. Millions of people, forced with a terrible choice between two candidates they don’t like, are choosing Trump. Trump the insurrectionist, the serial liar, the hawker of tennis shoes, the butt of comedians jokes for all the stupid things he says, this man is out polling Joe Biden.

If Biden was polling better against Trump, I would say right Joe is the answer. But he isn’t. Then I think, who am I to argue with the experts who gave us President Hillary Clinton. They have a proven record of success, maybe they are seeing something that I just can’t see. I should just relax, leave it to the experts. They know what they are doing. Right?

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Laura Perrins is complaining about the end of our meritocracy. A common worry among Conservative thinkers everywhere. Diversity is ruining our institutions which now disregard talent and ability for skin color and gender. She remembers a day when only the best got their positions through their efforts, talents and intelligence. 

Wait. Perrins believes that we had a meritocracy. Really. Think about it. There was a time when people didn’t consider race and gender and only made decisions based on who was the best person for the job. The trouble is, as I cast my mind back in history in order to understand her point, I couldn’t find much evidence to support her contention. When exactly did the Western World have a meritocracy?

Never is the answer if you are having trouble coming up with a response despite what conservative thinkers are saying. It pains me to have to point this out but in the good old days, both gender and race were a very important consideration on who got the job. People of color and women were eliminated from consideration from the start. How this can be considered a meritocracy is beyond me.

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Well, it is certainly reassuring that Governor Abbott realizes that shooting migrants is against Federal Law. And, just as a helpful reminder for Abbot, it is also against God’s law. It is right there in the Ten Commandments. I thought it was against Texas Law too but, who knows, I am willing to risk being wrong here and say it is. I apologize if I am wrong.

I am sure in a week from now, after the media make a big media storm about this, rightfully in this instance, and Abbott’s political analysts assess the damage done, he might even apologize. But only if absolutely necessary. Honestly I don’t think that Abbott wants to shoot migrants. He is dealing with a difficult situation that nobody really has the answer to and he wants to make political hay. Abbott was careless. He was thinking about the problem and not that the vast majority of migrants are actual flesh and blood human beings.

So, he found himself thinking out loud and it popped into his head that the only way for this problem to end is for the migrants to disappear and an easy way to make that happen is shooting them. Then, knowing this sounded awkward, he tried to reassure his audience that, of course he can’t actually murder anyone because the Feds would arrest him. Which is not reassuring at all. It sounds very much like the only thing stopping him from mowing down migrants is the thought that he wouldn’t do well in prison and not his own strong moral values. Abbott’s tone is shockingly dehumanizing and that is worrisome.

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In a disturbing trend, businesses, particularly in the slaughtering animals industry, are continually being caught using underage workers. This has happened before (see here and here) and it seems to be gaining ground. Some Republican controlled states are trying to make it easier for businesses to hire underage labor. These aren’t jobs working at movie theaters or restaurants, these are jobs using dangerous machinery and the Florida law wants to allow up to eight hours of work. Sixteen year olds working full time and going to high school. This could be about 2/3 of their day. Tired workers using lethal machines, sounds like a good idea to me. I don’t think that most adults would perform well under these circumstances much less a 16 year old. But never mind, protecting children isn’t the concern here, cheap labor is.

The fact that these businesses continue to get caught is enlightening about their motives. These businesses are making a clear business decision. It is cheaper to break the law and pay the fines than it is to pay higher salaries. Since these are conscious decisions, it undermines the notion that these are God-fearing people making innocent mistakes. These are, in fact, criminal enterprises – knowingly breaking the law to their advantage.

If you needed any more proof regarding the criminality of these businesses, Exclusive Poultry, one of the businesses fined for hiring the underaged, also broke other labor laws. They underpaid their worker’s wages. This can’t be shrugged off as some error in HR. This is a conscious decision made by the managers in the firm to rip off their employees and, more telling, is it would have to involve people up and down the food chain. I believe this is called a criminal conspiracy.

From this I can surmise the following:

  1. Fines for labor violations are too small to have any detrimental effect on business. That so many businesses, particularly in the meat packing industry, continue to do business despite seemingly large fines suggests that they weighted their options and paying the fines was the cheaper one. In order to discourage people from breaking the laws, like with any law, the punishment has to be a high price to pay. Right now, these fines are just a more economical choice for these law breaking businesses which only encourages them to break the law.
  2. Wages need to be higher to attract qualified adults. These are dangerous jobs. People are risking life and limb to perform them. What adult labor is saying is that businesses are not paying enough for them to take this risk. In a functioning capitalist society, this is when higher pay works. Businesses clearly have the money to pay higher wages but paying government fines is a better deal.
  3. This brings me to the Republican Party. The party of family values and protecting children from books and transexuals. They are also the party, at least in Florida, willing to let 16 years work a full eight hour shift and then go to school. How can an adult be doing both well much less a 16 year old. So when you hear Republicans babbling on about protecting children — just remember no child has been killed by a transvestite reading them a story but several have been killed in workplace accidents. Which means that an awful lot of energy that the Republican party is expending on transvestites is wasted while a very real danger to children is being ignored.
  4. None of this distinguishes modern business enterprises. They are either evil or incompetent. This isn’t a few errors. There are multiple infractions involving multiple laws. Given their incredibly weak defense, these businesses are criminal and thus evil.  But, to be fair, let’s consider incompetence. They are unable to vet potential employees to see if they meet the minimum age requirement for a dangerous job. This happens a lot so they aren’t just bad at it, they are so bad that they are unable to follow the law. If this is the case, and this is what these businesses would have the public believe, then why should the public believe they are capable of following the health standard requirements for slaughtering animals or employee safety laws.  So while incompetent may absolve them of criminality, it isn’t particularly reassuring about their business practices. It would certainly make me a little suspicious. It also opens us up to a third option that they could be both evil and incompetent. The most frightening and dangerous combination of all.

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Mark Tapscott at the Epoch Times reports that, according to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR), Unions spent $25 billion dollars on 2022 election. Which is really kind of remarkable because Federal Elections Commission (FEC) reported that the total amount of money spent on political campaigns was 8.9 billion dollars. You might have spotted a glaring difference between the two organization’s figures. I certainly did.

Why the difference? First, and this is pretty important, the NILRR is anti-union. They want to demonize the union movement so they fiddled with the figures to make the actual 54 million labor spent on 2022 campaigns $25 billion. After this little switcheroo, the relative modest spending becomes outrageously large, especially with the untampered figures from corporations. $25 billion says unions are this powerful behemoth who have an endless supply of money to force their collectivist ways on the poor employers of America.

How did $54 million become $25 billion? NILRR’s much broader interpretation of union political spending can be found here: “the bulk of unreported political power is wielded by government union officials. They’re armed with the monopoly power to negotiate salaries, pensions, and hiring practices for entire swaths of federal, state, and local government workers. This makes monopoly bargaining in the public sector, by its very nature, political.” So, everything a union does is political and, therefore, must be included in political spending. Voila, you now have a rich monster with billions to spend facing those poor corporations who are just trying to run their business.

It’s a blatantly unfair comparison. Why isn’t the same standard applied to corporate spending? In non-union shops, which is close to 90% of all American worker’s experiences, the companies have this same monopoly power to negotiate salaries, pensions and hiring practices. When there are no unions, the worker is on his own and the company has all the power. Does the NILRR consider the money spent on Union Busting as political spending? Technically, I am sure it isn’t but by the NILRR broad definition of political spending, it definitely should be.

I am confident that when you add up all the Corporate Spending on salaries, benefits, HR policies and union busting, there would be a much higher amount of money for corporate political spending. Then we can talk political spending for both Corporations and Labor. Until then I think the FEC’s figures on money spent directly on political campaigns is the only fair way to appraise political spending. It gives a much different story about who is spending more money than Tapscott and NILRR.