Monthly Archives: September 2023

Greedy UAW

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The United Automobile Workers Union, per its president Shawn Fain, is threatening to strike the three automakers GM, Ford, and Stellantis (nee Chrysler) simultaneously after midnight Thursday (as I write Thursday midday). The union is demanding

  • 36% pay raises over the next four years
  • raises to correspond to the cost of living
  • an end to tiered-wages for factory jobs
  • a 32-hour work week with 40 hours of pay
  • pension increases

Some of those would seem legitimate, or at least open to discussion, and typical union wants that most employers could find some sort of agreement on. The pay raise demand is egregious, and the demand to be paid for hours not worked is simply greedy, glorified featherbedding.

Furthermore, the strike is a direct attack on the companies’ ability to function at all: by the design and purpose of the strike, it closes the businesses and prevents it from earning any revenue. From that, it closely approaches extortion. In the present case, the UAW plans to maximize the damage they intend to inflict with what Fain is calling a “Stand Up Strike:”

“…keep the companies guessing as to where and when the next local walkout would be,” Fain said.

The car companies need to stand tall and refuse to negotiate as long as the union holds this metaphorical gun to their heads.

Aside from that, in a world where unions weren’t given special considerations—they’re even exempt from antitrust law, even though they have a monopoly on workforces in union shops and in unionized industries like the auto manufacturing of Michigan—such overt attacks would invalidate any contract to which management is coerced into agreeing.

Update: The UAW has, indeed, struck all three automakers, one major plant each. The union has shut down GM’s Wentzville, MO, plant, a 4.25 million sq-ft facility that was producing mid-size trucks and full-size vans under the GMC and Chevrolet brands; Stellantis’ Toledo, OH, 3.64 million sq-ft facility that was producing Jeep Wranglers and Jeep Gladiators; and Ford’s Wayne, MI, 5 million sq-ft facility that was producing Rangers and Broncos.

Party Primary Debates

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, Jr, is unhappy—rightfully so IMNSHO—about the lack of Progressive-Democratic Party primary debates, seeing the lack—again rightfully so—as Party’s move to protect President Joe Biden (D) from having to make a coherent case for his nomination.

However.

If Kennedy, Marianne Williamson, et al., were serious about this, they’d hold a series of debates between themselves (among the several of themselves?), and debate not only each other, but an empty chair placed prominently on the stage that represents Biden.

But, But—Bidenomics is Working

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That’s the claim of President Joe Biden (D) as he insists our eyes are lying, and we should believe him, instead. These two lede paragraphs say otherwise:

Surging inflation gobbled up household income gains last year, making 2022 the third straight year in which Americans saw their living standards eroded by rising prices and pandemic disruptions.
Americans’ inflation-adjusted median household income fell to $74,580 in 2022, declining 2.3% from the 2021 estimate of $76,330, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. The amount has dropped 4.7% since its peak in 2019.

It’s true enough that the Biden inflation runup has ebbed, but it’s still nearly double what it was in the fall before he took office. It’s also true that, over the last couple of months, wage increases have been greater than current inflation.

We still have, though, that overall shrunken income, and it’ll be a long time before that recovers. Recall the income loss during the Obama-Biden years post-Panic of 2008, a loss which lasted for several years, until roughly 2015. Keep in mind, too, that even with the lower inflation today than the Biden peak, the prices us ordinary Americans pay remain badly elevated. What we pay for critical items like food and energy—items typically excised from inflation measures because they’re so “volatile”—still is 16% higher than when Biden took office.

There’s this tidbit, too:

Total [Federal tax] receipts are down 10%, year over year, owing to slower growth….

But ’twas a famous victory, by Biden and his cronies. Over truth and the facts, but not over reality and the straits our economy truly is in.

The House Impeachment Inquiry

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Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R, CA) has announced an impeachment inquiry to look, formally, into allegations of President Joe Biden’s (D) misbehaviors. The press, lately exemplified by the august editors of The Wall Street Journal, keeps nattering on about the following:

Formally opening an inquiry puts more legal force behind House subpoenas to investigate the President’s role in promoting the Biden family’s business connections to shady foreign firms.

While I agree with the concept of the impeachment inquiry, I do have a couple of questions about that more legal force behind House subpoenas bit, especially since the press never supports that claim.

  1. What Constitutional clause or statute creates this increased legal force?
  2. On the assumption such a clause or statute exists, who will enforce the subpoenas? The Biden/Garland DoJ certainly will not; that entity, and the Obama/Lynch DoJ before it, have already refused to enforce far too many House subpoenas.

First He Disrespects our 9/11 Fallen

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He didn’t deign appear at the 9/11 site on 11 September of this year—he lay over in Alaska on his way back from Vietnam instead of pressing on to New York. Then he lies about being at the site the day after the attack.

Ground Zero in New York—I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building. I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell. It looked so devastating. Because of the way you—from where you could stand.

Just the News pointed out Biden’s lie—he was in DC for a Senate session—and Biden himself presaged his lie in his 2007 book Promises to Keep in which he wrote that he:

arrived in Washington on Sept. 11 after a plane hit the Pentagon and that he saw the smoke from that crash….

The New York Post exposed more of Biden’s lie:

the 80-year-old president also claimed he saw the fireball caused by the plane that struck the Pentagon in northern Virginia from Washington’s Union Station, when his own book says he merely saw “a brown haze of smoke.”

As bad as Biden’s lying is, he insults our intelligence with the blatancy of his lies: he really thinks we’re that grindingly stupid enough that we believe him.