It’s not just for railroads, or auto unions. It seems to have come to the Writers Guild of America. The WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers appear to have reached a tentative agreement, wanting only fleshing out the details and then a WGA rank and file vote.
The tentative agreement appears to include these items:
The lede’s lead sentence leads into it.
Everybody knows that US households’ savings soared after the pandemic struck, as the combined effects of checks from the government and fewer opportunities to spend swelled wallets.
Increasing household savings is, in almost all cases, good since we Americans don’t keep a big enough cash cushion against unexpected exigencies, anyway. There was, though, one key area, one Critical Item, that did—and does—represent quite a large opportunity legitimately to spend: paying down the student debt held by one or more members of a household.
Kurt Knutsson has some ideas for doing this. Luddite that I am, I question a couple of his going-in assumptions, at least as his suggestions apply to my case. Start with his subheadline:
Fix deadzones, speed up slow spots, and make your wireless internet signal reach farther
I have an ordinary-sized, one-story, wood frame, single-family home. I don’t have deadzones or slow zones (I’ve walked signal-assessors around my house). I don’t want my WiFi signal to reach farther, either; that would take the signal even farther outside my house, even farther past my city lot boundaries, making it even easier for wardrivers to capture, or for others to (try to) piggyback off my WiFi Internet connection (despite the several security precautions I’ve taken).
Our Progressive-Democratic Party President, Joe Biden, is at it again. On the possibility of a Federal government partial shutdown due to a lack of a budget—which Biden distorted as being a complete shutdown—he had this threat regarding our military:
Let’s be clear. If the government shuts down, that means members of Congress and members of the US military are going to have to continue to work and not get paid….
This, of course, is false, or should be. There is plenty of revenue coming in to the Federal government under existing tax law to continue paying the Federal debt, Medicare and Social Security outlays, DoD expenses and military salaries, and on and on.
Betsy Morris, a writer based in San Francisco, has a number of questions that serious people should answer before using (legitimately medicinal) experimental drugs. Her questions are from her article (from which this post’s title came) in Friday‘s Wall Street Journal. As a serious person (don‘t laugh so loudly), I have answers.
The UAW objects to American car manufacturers having temp workers on the payroll.
The use of temporary factory workers at the Detroit car companies has long rankled the United Auto Workers union, which wants fewer of them and a faster path to full-time status.
Never mind that
Automakers say they need the flexibility that temp workers provide, especially as they manage a tricky and costly transition to electric vehicles and confront the ups and downs of factory production.
Shawn Fain, UAW union boss, is extending his threat to Ford, GM, and Stellantis, the three major American car companies against which he’s taken selective strike action, a selectivity he’s said he’s using to maximize current damage to the companies.
…what the union calls a “stand up strike,” in which specific locals are asked to go on strike at their facilities. The union has said that strategy will give it flexibility in escalating the strike incrementally up to a potential nationwide strike if negotiations do not deliver sufficient progress in its view, and will make it harder for the auto companies to predict its next move.
Prince William is royally frustrated with the pace of “climate” solutions and wants them developed and executed faster.
For now, we’re quite keen on the scale…when we scale up [solutions], how can we have the biggest change? For me, that’s something I haven’t quite cracked yet, is “how do we scale faster?”
I’m impatient with all this. You guys provide the product…the inspiration, the solution, my role is to get you as big, as fast, and as scalable as possible…. We’ve still got some work to do on that.
Boston University has laid off some 15 staffers of the university’s Center for Antiracist Research. BU’s School of Social Work Clinical Assistant Professor and faculty lead for education and training at the Center for Antiracist Research, Phillipe Copeland, claims that’s violence.
This act of employment violence and trauma is not just about individual leaders. It’s about the cultures and systems that allow it to occur. And too often rewards it. Antiracism is not a branding exercise, PR campaign or path to self-promotion. It is a life and death matter[.]
Yakima is a city in central Washington, and its Progressive-Democratic Party mayor, Janice Deccio, claims she’s being harassed since the release of her 911 call regarding some petition signature gatherers who were gathering at a Walmart. Yes, the mayor made an emergency call over petitioners gathering signatures and exercising their 1st Amendment right to petition government.
Her call:
There’s some far right-wing petitioners at Walmart, and they don’t—they’re not leaving. Walmart has asked them repeatedly to do so, and the police have not taken them off the premises.