Tag Archives: jobs

Accesses to Classified

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SecDef Pete Hegseth has revoked the security clearance of Frank Kendall, ex-President Joe Biden’s (D) Secretary of the Air Force. Kendall had been quoted in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal as saying that the Air Force One jet gifted to President Trump by the Qatari government lacks the defensive capabilities of the traditional jets that fly the president.

Kendall is all wide-eyed innocence.

“I’m mystified,” Kendall said in a text message when asked for comment. “I’ve been extremely careful to not say anything that could be classified, and as far as I know I have not said anything classified.” He added, “So far no one has told me what I’m supposed to have revealed.”

Revealing the defensive capabilities of the aircraft flying as Air Force One is perfectly jake?

This is Kendall pretending to not understand the requirements of OPSEC. Or he’s cynically standing on the legalist distinction between classified material vs OPSEC material. That’s assuming, generously, that he didn’t reveal actual classified information—and I would be amazed if information regarding the military capabilities of our President’s transport aircraft were unclassified.

It’s good that Kendall has lost his accesses. More retired or resigned officials should lose their accesses.

The problem could be mitigated greatly if all employees, government or private, automatically lost their clearances as well as any other accesses when they leave the job in which they had those credentials. This needn’t be stigmatic; it should be routine: those people no longer have any need for a security clearance, and so it’s automatically revoked.

It’s Not about Fair Wages

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A letter-writer to The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section seconded the editors’ editorial on unions and their Leftist push. The letter-writer had this in support:

Instead of focusing solely on issues like wages and benefits, union representatives demanded that the company allow different pronoun pins. They also demanded that the company cover abortion and gender-affirming care in its health plans, which the company already did.

Both the letter-writer and the editors, though, were a bit wide of the mark.

Pronoun pins and demands for far Left perks that already exist aren’t moves toward improving workers’ lot. These are moves whose sole purpose is to achieve and demonstrate union power and control for the sake of that power and control. The labor force of any particular business that is targeted by a union are merely pawns in the union’s emphatic exercise.

Driverless Trucks and Good Paying Union Jobs

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Keith Hernandez, of Teamsters Local 727, doesn’t like driverless trucks.

Driverless trucks endanger good-paying jobs and the communities that rely on them… he says. And

Automation would remove the real-world, first-hand experience and knowledge drivers gain on the road.

No, they wouldn’t and don’t. All that “real-world, first-hand experience and knowledge” is contained in the computers that operate the autonomous vehicles. Delivery drivers are my friends and sales people, as Hernandez also claims? They may well be friendly, even friends, but that’s wholly outside of and separate from their role as drivers. And, no, neither the UPS driver, nor the FedEx, nor Amazon—nor even the Door Dash driver nor the pizza delivery guy are salesmen and women. They don’t pitch me, and I wouldn’t be interested if they did.

Driverless trucks, though, to the extent they succeed in safe, efficient, speedy delivery actually will reduce costs to consumers by taking the labor cost out of the picture. And if they don’t succeed, the truck drivers will continue to thrive in their own right.

No, leave it to a union man to take this tack. Your money belongs to the union. If it can’t get your money by forcing dues payments, it’ll try to get it by featherbedding into unneeded jobs, driving up your costs.

Self-Serving and Dishonest

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The Chicago Teachers Union wanted to raise dues on its Chicago membership to the tune of an additional $800 per year. They claimed they wanted the additional money for

win[ning] a majority of the first 21 person fully elected school board

and

resources to fund a statewide millionaires tax campaign

Union management doesn’t care that their own union bylaws say

…our dues are not used for political purposes—so our PAC relies on extra contributions from our members to support progressive candidates….

The CTU’s dues and its PAC are entirely separate from each other. So why raise dues in order to fund political purposes? Because CTU’s management is that dishonest and that contemptuous of union members’ intelligence.

It turns out that CTU members are not as dumb as their Betters think they are. The dues increase was voted down by roughly 3:2.

Members will need to be actively vigilant, though, these Betters have shown their colors, and they’ll be back with more attempts, or they’ll simply weasel-word their way around the members’ No and go ahead, anyway. This is, after all, Chicago.

Couldn’t Possibly Be

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It seems that more than 3 million folks once getting “Federal food aid” have stopped getting that aid. This is due, primarily, to tighter work requirement restrictions:

Under the new rules, able-bodied adults aged 18 to 64 without children under 14 must work, volunteer or participate in approved job-training programs for at least 80 hours a month. The previous age limit for work requirements was 54, and allowed exemptions for adults with children under 18.

Naturally, the Left is engaging in its manufactured angst over this.

Colleen Heflin, a professor at Syracuse University who studies food insecurity, said larger state drops like Arizona’s were “beyond anything we’ve ever seen.” Heflin said she was concerned it would result in vulnerable Americans not getting enough to eat.
“These large state drops in SNAP caseloads represent a fundamental restructuring of the food-assistance safety net,” she said. “We should expect to see a surge in food insecurity and its related negative consequences at new levels.”

Of course. The large drop couldn’t possibly be an indication of the bloat in the program and the number of ineligible folks taking the aid “beyond anything we’ve ever seen.”

And there’s Bruce Meyer, a University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Professor, who accidentally let that cat out of the Leftists’ bag:

Most of the people who are getting food stamps are needy. When you’re cutting that many people, you’re probably cutting into some people who really do need the benefits.

It certainly should be “most,” and it should be far more than just that. Only cutting “some” who really need the benefits is a strong indicator of the amount of bloat that’s been present.