Monthly Archives: October 2020

Labor Rights

Posted on by
Reply

Whose rights are they, anyway?

Last Thursday, a California First Appellate District court upheld a State district court’s order that Uber and Lyft must reclassify their gig drivers as actual employees and so must add to their labor costs with benefits, paid leave of various sorts, payroll taxes, and so on. Never mind that this will reduce gig-oriented companies’ ability to recover from the State’s Wuhan Virus-related lockdowns and cost thousands of Californians access to additional income.

The time is fast approaching when it’ll be most useful for Uber, Lyft, and other gig-oriented businesses to leave California altogether.

It gets worse. As Uber noted in part,

…rideshare drivers will be prevented from continuing to work as independent contractors….

Indeed. The California court’s order (and AB5, the State statute that originally levied the classification requirement) go far beyond restricting gig-oriented businesses.

They’re attacks on gig workers themselves by denying them control over their own labor and the price and other parameters under which they’re willing to market their labor. The ruling and the statute convert those who wish to work in California into labor wards of the State’s government.

Almost like they’re State plantation laborers. But it’s all good, though; it’s for the workers’ own good.

The court’s opinion can be read here.

Alphabet’s Fact Checking

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign team ran a campaign ad featuring a poor, downtrodden bar owner whose business was in the wind due to the Wuhan Virus (my term, not the ad’s) related lockdowns that shut businesses like his. In the ad, the bar owner blamed the situation on President Donald Trump.

The ad ran on YouTube during some Sunday football games.

There’s a problem, though:

[T]he [bar owner] is actually a wealthy tech investor who made contributions to the former vice president’s campaign. He also supported Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders that kept businesses shuttered longer.

Why blame Alphabet for this? YouTube is wholly owned by Google; Google is wholly owned by Alphabet. Alphabet is the MFWIC of this organization. The ad wouldn’t have run without YouTube‘s carefully considered checking and approval, that checking and approval is completely controlled by YouTube‘s controlling organization, Google, and Google‘s approval process is completely controlled by Google‘s controlling organization, Alphabet.

That’s sort of how the position of Boss works.

Plainly, Alphabet is carefully selective of the facts it chooses to “select.” The blatant censorship on display here is yet another reason to withdraw Alphabet‘s Section 230 exemption and further, to treat it like the publisher—equal time for all views, for instance—that the company insists on being, in deed if not word.

Progressive-Democrat Hypocrisy

Posted on by
Reply

Again.

California’s Progressive-Democrats have been busily rewriting election laws to help their party “ballot harvest.”

In 2016 California [Progressive-]Democrats passed a law allowing anybody, including paid campaign operatives and political parties, to collect and return mail-in ballots. Two years later [Progressive-]Democrats prohibited “disqualifying a ballot solely because the person returning it did not provide on the identification envelope his or her name, relationship to the voter, or signature.”

And

[Progressive-]Democrats boasted that they used ballot harvesting to flip seven House seats in California that year including four in Orange County. Before this year’s March primary, hospitality unions threw a “ballot party” for workers outside of Anaheim hotels.

This election season, Republicans have decided to take them at their law. Even worse, according to the Progressive-Democrats,

[Republicans have] also learned to harvest ballots more efficiently by setting up drop boxes at shooting ranges, churches, gun shops, and GOP offices. The boxes, which are locked and supervised, received permission from the site hosts.

Oh, the Progressive-Democrat hue and cry over being challenged in accordance with their own book, Alinsky style. They’re accusing Republicans of voter suppression. And they’re actually serious in their accusation.

As the WSJ put it near the end of its editorial,

When Democrats harvest ballots, they are increasing voter access. When Republicans do it, it’s cheating. Glad we cleared that up.

Election Interference

Posted on by
Reply

Here we go.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says expects the social media giant will impose fewer restrictive rules on content following the conclusion of November’s presidential election.

After having used is restrictive rules on content to suppress Conservative speech, posting, and post-sharing. After having explicitly and deliberately “restricted” posts related to the Biden father and son influence peddling in Ukraine and the People’s Republic of China as reported by the New York Post.

“Once we’re past these events, and we’ve resolved them peacefully, I wouldn’t expect that we continue to adopt a lot more policies that are restricting of a lot more content,’ Zuckerberg said, according to BuzzFeed News.

Translation: “Once Biden is elected, I wouldn’t expect that we continue to adopt a lot more policies that are restricting of a lot more content,” because he will have achieved the purpose of his interference.

It’s hard for Zuckerberg’s interference in our election through his Facebook company to get any more blatant than this.

Making a Mockery

Posted on by
Reply

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) claims that

[O]ur Republican colleagues have made such a mockery of the Supreme Court confirmation process, we are not going to have business as usual here in the Senate….

Here’s what Schumer is doing to illustrate his point:

  • forced a vote on a measure that would ban the Justice Department from arguing against the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
  • invoked the rarely-used “two-hour rule,” which governs when committees can meet when the Senate is in session, at one point preventing the Senate Intelligence Committee from meeting
  • move[d] to bring up a vote under the Congressional Review Act and force Action on a resolution to undo the Trump administration’s gutting … of the Community Reinvestment Act
  • Schumer then motioned to adjourn the Senate until after the presidential election
  • appealed that ruling [that his motion to adjourn was out of order] and then motioned to table his own appeal, essentially putting up a motion in opposition of his own effort to close down the Senate

Then Schumer said this:

This is the most rushed…most partisan, least legitimate Supreme Court nomination process in our nation’s history—in our nation’s entire history—and it should not proceed.

Never mind that moving at the speed of business rather than at the glacial pace of politics is not at all rushed, but simply a matter of efficiency, of eschewing dithering or delay for the sake of delay—like the forgoing.

Never mind that, to the extent the present Supreme Court nomination process is partisan, it’s because Schumer is blocking partisanship in the process, refusing to allow Party take any serious part in the Senate’s Constitutionally mandated advise and consent role in confirmation.

No, with deliberately obstructive moves like these, Schumer personally is preventing business as usual in the Senate, including its confirmation business; he personally is making a mockery of the entire Senate. And so are his fellow Progressive-Democrats, who are going along with his nonsense.