Category: FAIL

30 June 2021, 6:07 PM

The Solution to this Problem is Democratic Legitimacy

Didier Reynders, the European Union’s justice minister is arguing that challenges to EU law on the basis of national law threaten to break up the organization.

That nations in the EU are taking these steps is no surprise. The EU has no democratic legitimacy.

It has been, since its origins as the European Coal and Steel Community, a profoundly undemocratic institution.

The European Parliament is about as ineffective as the Roman Senate under Caligula,^* and posesses far less power than said august Roman institution.

Ordinary voters still have a voice in their local government and in their local judiciary, while they have none (by explicit design) in the EU.

As such challenging EU dictum through the local courts is a logical, and likely popular, strategy, particularly in the face of German hegemony within the The European Commission:

The EU’s justice commissioner has vowed to fight back against a proliferation of legal challenges and rulings by member states that have attacked the supremacy of EU law, warning that they could destroy the union itself.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Didier Reynders said that this increased questioning of the primacy of EU law — and the right of the European Court of Justice to have the final word — created a “spillover effect” that had emboldened others to follow suit.

In a sign of the perceived threat, the European Commission this month launched legal proceedings against Germany in response to an explosive ruling by its constitutional court last year that the ECJ had acted beyond its competence in a case related to European Central Bank bond-buying.

This ruling is actually an artifact of German hegemony. Bashing the lazy and profligate south has been a winning electoral strategy in Germany since the adoption of the Euro as a currency.

The next big legal challenge Brussels is bracing for is a decision by the Polish constitutional tribunal, which could come on July 13, on whether certain elements of the EU’s treaties are compatible with the constitution. The case, brought by Poland’s nationalist government, is regarded by legal experts as the most serious challenge yet to the EU’s legal order.

If the EU, and the Eurocrats, fail to realize that without political legitimacy through meaningful democratic processes these problems will only get worse.

Democracy is inconvenient, and a pain in the ass sometimes, but absent a muscular application of this concept to EU governance, the EU may cease to exist.

^*The real history of Caligula appointing his favorite horse, Incitatus, to the Roman Senate is actually saner than is commonly represented. He threatened to appoint the horse to the Senate in order to demonstrate just how dysfunctional the body was.

It was a prank intended to humiliate the Senate.

29 June 2021, 6:03 PM

Tweet of the Day

Among the worst parts of climate anxiety is knowing full well that when the Earth ends up literally just being one giant ball of fire, the final tweets will be Republicans insisting there’s no climate crisis & Dems saying they can’t do anything because of the parliamentarian.

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) June 28, 2021

The use of the word “Literally” here is accurate.

28 June 2021, 8:27 PM

Toyota USA Needs a Major Management Shakeup

This car model from Toyota has taken on a new meaning. pic.twitter.com/dNLMI9GhnC

— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) June 28, 2021

Best Tweet on the Subject

Because the car manufacturer leads in campaign donations to members of the “Sedition Caucus” since January 6.

I understand the need for companies to spread the campaign donations around, I’ve always felt that the current system is more extortion than it is bribery, but you can donate to Republicans without being the single most aggressive of people who supported the insurrection at the Capitol:

Nearly three-dozen corporate PACs have donated at least $5,000 to Republicans who objected to certifying the 2020 election, yet Toyota leads by a substantial margin.

………

By the numbers: Data compiled by the left-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington show Toyota gave $55,000 to 37 GOP objectors this year.

That equates to a quarter of the bloc that voted to nullify President Biden’s win after the Capitol siege.

Toyota gave more than twice as much — and to nearly five times as many members of Congress — as the No. 2 company on the list, Cubic Corp., a San Diego-based defense contractor.

The Japanese automaker’s donations this year included a February contribution to Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican who has been one of Congress’ most vocal election conspiracy theorists. According to an organizer of the “Stop the Steal” rally prior to the Capitol attack, Biggs also helped put on that event, a charge Biggs has denied.

What they’re saying: “We do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress solely based on their votes on the electoral certification,” a Toyota spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Axios.

This is a bummer.

I have a 2004 Toyota Prius with about ¼ million miles on it, and I like the car, I consider it my midlife crisis car,^* but it is getting long in the tooth, and it’s getting to be time to find a replacement.

I WAS considering a newer Prius, possibly a Prime plug-in, but I try to avoid buying from companies with stupid and psychotic management. (It’s actually it’s a REMARKABLY high bar to clear with American management these days.)

Any recommendations from my reader(s) for a decent reliable high MPG car not from Toyota?

^*Yeah, a 2004 Prius as my midlife crisis car. I am the dullest motherf%$#er on the face of the earth.

28 June 2021, 6:23 PM

Boeing Still Cannot Make Aircraft

The FAA has announced that it is delaying certification of their new 777X variant because of design maturity and potentially disastrous problems with its control systems.

Everyone employed at Boeing’s Chicago headquarters beyond the janitors and secretaries need to be fired ……… and into the sun:

In yet another blow to Boeing, the Federal Aviation Administration last month formally denied the jet maker permission to move forward with a key step in certifying its forthcoming giant widebody airplane, the 777X.

In a sternly worded letter dated May 13, which was reviewed by The Seattle Times, the FAA warned Boeing it may have to increase the number of test flights planned and that certification realistically is now more than two years out, probably in late 2023.

That could push the jet’s entry into commercial service into early 2024, four years later than originally planned.

Clearly, someone at Boeing decided to, “Take off their engineer hat and put your management hat on,” with predictable results.^*

Boeing is suffering death by MBA.

………

The FAA cited a long litany of concerns, including a serious flight control incident during a test flight on Dec. 8, 2020, when the plane experienced an “uncommanded pitch event” — meaning the nose of the aircraft pitched abruptly up or down without input from the pilots.

Boeing has yet to satisfy the FAA that it has fully understood and corrected what went wrong that day.

After all the troubles with the 737 MAX, you think that they would have that one at the top of their, “To Do” list, but in their rush to meet schedule, and to move production to a non-union facility, they screwed the pooch AGAIN.

“The aircraft is not yet ready,” [local FAA manager Ian] Won wrote. “The technical data required for type certification has not reached a point where it appears the aircraft type design is mature and can be expected to meet the applicable regulations.”

An FAA official, who asked not to be identified in order to speak freely, said the drag on 777X certification is now “the subject of a lot of attention” at high levels both within the agency and at Boeing.

The FAA got burnt by Boeing with the 737MAX, and they are now dubious of Boeing’s claims.

The reputational damage to the Seattle aircraft manufacturer from its rampant managerialism is ongoing and an existential threat to its continued viability as a going concern.

^*This is a paraphrase of a comment made to Thikol engineer Roger Boisjoly by an unnamed manager when he warned of the danger of launching the Space Shuttle Challenger in very low temperatures.^†

^†For those who don’t know your history, the o-rings in the solid booster failed, and the Challenger blew up.

24 June 2021, 6:02 PM

The 3rd World Welcomes Florida

If you are thinking that sh%$ like buildings falling down for no reason is a symptom of 3rd world dysfunction, then the the collapse of a condominium tower in Surfside, Florida is a pretty good indication that something is very wrong in Florida, though my guess is that this is not isolated to the sunshine state:

After the dust had settled and the fog of incredulity had lifted, Soriya Cohen had only prayer and hope and questions — lots of questions — about the abrupt and violent collapse of a 12-story oceanfront condominium tower in Surfside early Thursday morning.

First and foremost in Cohen’s mind was the whereabouts of her husband, Brad Cohen, whom she had not seen or heard from since part of the Champlain Towers South Condo came crashing down, wiping away 55 units in mere seconds.

Brad Cohen was inside one of those units on the 11th floor along with his brother, Gary Cohen, said Soriya Cohen, when the building collapsed at 1:23 a.m., the time that Miami-Dade Fire Rescue first responded to a call for help at the condominium tower. Soriya Cohen had spent the night with their daughter at a different building in neighboring Miami Beach.

………

It will likely be months or even years before engineers and other experts know exactly why a part of the Champlain Towers South came crashing down.

Before those answers are found, search and rescue crews will continue the painstaking work of picking through a mountain of rubble, looking for even the faintest signs of life that might be buried inside the two-story-high pile of debris.

More than 20 hours after the partial collapse, the death toll remained unknown. Officials confirmed at least one death, and said 35 survivors were pulled from the wreckage, with 10 injured persons treated at the scene and at least two transported to a hospital.

Miami-Dade County police said as many as 99 people are reported missing. There were 102 people from the building who had been accounted for. The part of the tower that collapsed held 55 units. The remainder of the 136-unit tower remained standing, though residents have been evacuated.

………

Security camera footage of the collapse looked eerily similar to a controlled demolition, minus the flash of explosives. One side of the tower buckled first before more of the structure collapsed into a pile of rubble. The cause of the collapse is unknown, though one building expert deemed it “an oddity of biblical proportions” for the 40-year-old structure to fall unexpectedly.

Climate change driven rising water tables, typically Floridian lax building codes and enforcement, and general poor maintenance are the likely causes.

Still this is profoundly 3rd world sh%$.

RisingRead more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article252324218.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article252324218.html#storylink=

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article252324218.html#storylink=cpy

15 June 2021, 7:28 PM

Dying to PWN the Libs

Correlation of Biden vote share and adult Covid vaccination rate is now at .847. (CDC data) pic.twitter.com/J2hQHKYUIH

— Seth Masket (@smotus) June 14, 2021

Think of it as evolution in action.

14 June 2021, 7:30 PM

Why Hasn’t This Been Done?

The Biden administration has at this point failed to nominate a replacement for the relentlessy corrupt Ajit Pai as chairman.

To quote the movie, Ocean’s Eleven, “You had ONE job.”

President Joe Biden’s failure to break the Federal Communications Commission’s 2-2 partisan deadlock is reaching a “critical point,” 57 advocacy groups wrote in a letter to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris Friday.

Nearly five months after his inauguration, Biden has not yet nominated a Democratic FCC commissioner to fill the empty fifth slot. Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel has been leading the commission as acting chairwoman, but she lacks the majority needed to do anything opposed by the FCC’s two Republicans, such as reinstating net neutrality rules and reversing former Chairman Ajit Pai’s deregulation of the broadband industry. Even a step like raising the FCC’s broadband-speed standard—which hasn’t changed in over six years—will likely require a party-line vote because Republicans prefer a low speed standard for the FCC’s annual report on how many Americans lack modern broadband access.

In early April, over 100,000 people signed a petition urging Biden to quickly break the FCC deadlock. Advocacy groups are frustrated that they are still waiting. Why Biden is taking so long is unclear.

“Given the legislative calendar and the diminishing number of days for hearings and confirmation votes, we have reached a critical point to guarantee the agency charged with ensuring affordable communications access can do its work during your administration,” the groups wrote in their new letter.

This is an, “Own Goal,” and. to quote someone who is not named Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

We don’t want to wait until 2023, when, following 2 years of ineffectual action by Congressional Democrats leads to both the House and the Senate being flipped, when Mitch McConnell will dictate who can be put in that post.

9 June 2021, 6:28 PM

Just Shut Them Down

The Federal Reserve has been forced to warned Deutsche Bank that it is money laundering again.

The fix for this is very simple: Lock them out of the US, because they are not going to fix this.

This is BCCI with a German accent:

The Federal Reserve told Deutsche Bank AG in recent weeks that the lender is failing to address persistent shortcomings in its anti-money-laundering controls, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Fed’s frustration has escalated to a point that the bank could be fined, the people said.

Deutsche Bank has poured massive resources into addressing repeated shortcomings and penalties related to allowing suspect transactions. The Fed told Deutsche Bank that instead of making progress, the German lender with a large Wall Street presence is backsliding. The regulator has said that some of the anti-money-laundering control problems require immediate attention, according to the people.

………

The Fed’s harsh words contrast with the bank’s message that it has worked diligently to improve its systems and has put most of its legal troubles in the past.

The Fed’s latest warning comes four years after it classified Deutsche Bank’s U.S. operations as being in “troubled condition,” a rare rebuke for a major bank. In May 2020, it issued a fresh admonishment over the bank’s money-laundering controls.

………

Deutsche Bank is Germany’s largest lender and as a dollar clearing bank regulated by the Fed, is a major player in global financial transactions.

Shut down their dollar clearing operations. Problem solved, and the Germans can deal with following their own “No Bailouts” advice that they foist on the rest of the Euro Zone.

9 June 2021, 6:15 PM

Moron

I’m not a big fan of the people that Barack Obama appointed when he was President, Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner particularly comes to mind, but generally they were light-years ahead of anyone that Trump appointed.

There is one exception though, and it’s a big one, because Jerome Powell, who Donald Trump appointed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve to replace Janet Yellen, is immeasurably better than the now Treasury Secretary.

Much as she did as Fed Chair, Secretary Yellen is reacting to non-existent inflation, and calling for rate hikes.

Powell, the first non-economist Fed Chair in Decades, gets it in a way that economists don’t:

Starting in 2018, President Trump harangued and hammered Fed Chair Jerome Powell to end Quantitative Tightening and to cut interest rates, and Powell buckled and did his infamous “180.” And now suddenly – unless this gets walked backed again tomorrow – we’ve got the opposite. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an interview with Bloomberg News on Sunday that higher interest rates would “actually be a plus for society’s point of view and the Fed’s point of view.”

Under Fed Chair Yellen, the Fed hiked interest rates five times, starting in December 2015. Yellen departed in February 2018 as Trump had refused to reappoint her, and instead replaced her with Powell. At the time, the sixth rate-hike was already baked in for the March 2018 meeting. She is no stranger to rate hikes.

Now Yellen – presumably with the backing of President Biden – is supporting Powell on rate hikes, which is a dramatic shift from the prior administration.

I will reiterate something that I have said many times, “If you have a problem, the conventional wisdom is ALWAYS wrong, because if it were right, the problem would already have been fixed.”

Janet Yellen is relentlessly conventional, which means that she is relentlessly wrong.

9 June 2021, 6:04 PM

Consider the Source

The second most contemptible Democratic think tank in Washington, DC, Third Way, has an analysis of why Democrats performed poorly in the 2020 elections, and it comes down to the fact that Democrats stand for nothing.

When one considers the source, a group who has fought for years to ensure that the Democratic Party stand for nothing, this is telling:

In the months since the Democrats’ underwhelming performance in last year’s election, we’ve more or less been able to figure out why the party did so poorly despite a historically unpopular opponent and the two world-historical crises he presided over.

………

Surprise, surprise: a new 2020 postelection autopsy comes to many of these same conclusions — conclusions that observers on the Left have been stressing for months, pulling their hair out as the Democratic Party’s CIA caucus sought to publicly put the blame on the party’s handful of socialists, and popular, commonsense ideas like Medicare for All. But what genuinely is a surprise is who authored this particular autopsy: Third Way, the corporate- — especially Wall Street– — funded think tank that exists to shape Democratic policy for the benefit of tycoons like the Kochs.

………

Finally, there was the decision to cancel in-person canvassing, at the same time that the GOP launched a furious door-knocking and voter registration effort. “Many of those included in this analysis said in hindsight Democrats could have been on doors safely in more places — and Democrats would have won several close races if they had gone back on the doors either sooner or in a more robust way than they did,” states the report. This point was made repeatedly on the record by a host of the party’s leading lights after the election and was almost certainly responsible for not just the drop in support among Latinos but for the Republicans’ crucial triumphs at the state level.

Silly rabbit, the consultants don’t get their vig with door to door canvassing, and their payday is WAY more important than winning elections.

This is yet another confirmation of the Harry S Truman quote, “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.”

8 June 2021, 6:02 PM

Google Adsense Does it Again

More crap advertising.

I don’t understand how Google™ Adsense™, given the enormous amount of data that they have on me, would think that I care one whit about dating Christian singles.

I’m married, and I’m Jewish.

If I were to troll some group looking for illicit hookups, I’d go with J-Date, but I don’t f%$# around.

I’m just an ordinary guy with ordinary tastes, “4 sets of identical twins, 2 gallons of Cool Whip, 5 quarts of chocolate syrup, 2-1/4 pounds of strawberries, satin sheets, a magnum of champagne, a trapeze, and a python.”

No link for my reader(s), because if you want to troll a Christian web site, I don’t want it to be tracked back to me.

Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google^™ Adsense^™.

5 June 2021, 7:29 PM

Today in Hack Journalism

The New York Times has an article about how how some drivers are trying to form a cooperative to compete with Uber and Lyft.

There are a lot of obstacles that this effort faces, but this paragraph is full of fail:

………

The Drivers Cooperative, which opened for business in New York this week, is the most recent attempt. The group, founded by a former Uber employee, a labor organizer and a black-car driver, began issuing ownership shares to drivers in early May and will start offering rides through its app on Sunday.

The cooperative has recruited around 2,500 drivers so far and intends to take a smaller commission than Uber or Lyft and charge riders a lower fare. It is an ambitious plan to challenge the ride-hailing giants, and it faces the same hurdles that tend to block other emerging players in the industry: Few have the technical prowess, the venture capital dollars or the supply of readily available drivers to subvert an established company like Uber.

(emphasis mine)

Clearly there are network effects, Uber and Lyft have a pool of drivers as well as customers who use theri apps, and both of the gypsy cab company firms have sufficient VC money to operate for years at a loss. (In fact neither appears to have a path to profitability)

However, the claim that operating a ride share firm requires any significant technical prowess is false, and does not withstand 5 minutes of examination.

The creation of apps with review capabilities has been old school for over a decade.

Claiming that there is a need for specialized “technical prowess”, is a humbug, and it pisses me off.

The innovation of Uber and Lyft were never technical, but regulatory.

Their innovation was that the two firms found a way to break the law and bulldoze authorities into acquiescence, not any technical innovation.

5 June 2021, 5:42 PM

Finance Ruins Everything

Case in point, the hacking of the MTA in New York City, which was caused by lapses at a private equity (PE) owned software firm.

PE is not about building a good company, long term success, or security. It’s about pump and dump, and security is a cost that you can cut to juice your numbers before they sell out the company.

It’s all pump and dump:

Oh look, a hack of the New York subway system.

A hacking group believed to have links to the Chinese government penetrated the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s computer systems in April, exposing vulnerabilities in a vast transportation network that carries millions of people every day, according to an M.T.A. document that outlined the breach.

These hacks are becoming commonplace, but it’s not just because everything is connected to the internet. It turns out, hackers got in through commercial software.

To gain access to the M.T.A. and other systems, the hackers took advantage of vulnerabilities in Pulse Connect Secure, a widely used connectivity tool that offers workers remote access to their employers’ networks.

Pulse Connect Secure is owned by Ivanti, a software roll-up owned by private equity firms Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. and TA Associates. I’ve written about the dangers of private equity owning cybersecurity firms – Solar Winds was such a case. (In fact, Thoma Bravo partners – which owns Solar Winds – continues to snap up cybersecurity and compliance firms such as Proofpoint.)

I’ve gone through job reviews on Glassdoor and Indeed, and Ivanti seems to be a typical PE roll-up, ruining the product quality, offshoring jobs and firing people, and just generally destroying enterprise value. Here’s a typical review.

PE takeovers are frequently followed up by the collapse of the firms (usually) after the PE pukes have gotten their vigorish.

We really need to change bankruptcy laws so that these crooks aren’t able to leave someone else holding the bag.

3 June 2021, 6:23 PM

Nuclear Power, Meet Blue Screen of Death

I’ve written about Bill Gates plans to create a sodium cooled fast breeder reactor before.

Well, they (Warren Buffet is involved as well) have now selected a location for the prototype reactor.

I have a number of problems with the reactor in addition to Bill Gates’ involvement:

Molten sodium will leak, and it is highly flammable, and is potentially explosive. (The history of sodium cooled reactors is universally horrible)
The reactor uses 20% Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU), which enriched is enough to make a bomb. (You can at levels in excess of 10% enrichment)
By design, it produces large amounts of Plutonium. (Traveling Wave Reactor)

Needless to say, I am not sanguine:

Power companies run by billionaire friends Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have chosen Wyoming to launch the first Natrium nuclear reactor project on the site of a retiring coal plant.

TerraPower, founded by Gates about 15 years ago, and power company PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, said on Wednesday that the exact site of the Natrium reactor demonstration plant was expected to be announced by the end of the year.

Small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels to traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.

“Regarded by some,” Huh?

Maybe if your last name is, “Strangelove.”

………

“This is our fastest and clearest course to becoming carbon negative,” Wyoming’s governor, Mark Gordon, said. “Nuclear power is clearly a part of my all-of-the-above strategy for energy” in Wyoming, the country’s top coal-producing state.

This statement is absolutely false. The construction of time for reactors is measured in decades, while wind turbines go up in a few months.

If we need to move now, pretty much any other power source is online faster.

The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system’s power output to 500MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1bn.

The molten salt energy storage, but using mechanical storage like pumped water is simpler, cheaper, and more efficient.

About the only thing more terrifying than Bill Gates starting up a bunch of nuclear reactors, he’s alreay half way to a bond villain, would be if Comcast were to be running those plants.

2 June 2021, 6:09 PM

Wimp

It appears that Donald Trump shut down his blog, because not enough people were clicking in to his musings.

I’ve been blogging since 2007,^* and I’m not giving up.

In fact, I think that I have missed fewer than 10 days since I’ve started blogging.

To be fair, if I did not have this outlet for my unsolicited opinions, I am certain that Sharon^† would have murdered me long ago:

Former president Donald Trump’s blog, celebrated by advisers as a “beacon of freedom” that would keep him relevant in an online world he once dominated, is dead. It was 29 days old.

Upset by reports from The Washington Post and other outlets highlighting its measly readership and concerns that it could detract from a social media platform he wants to launch later this year, Trump ordered his team Tuesday to put the blog out of its misery, advisers said.

On its last day, the site received just 1,500 shares or comments on Facebook and Twitter — a staggering drop for someone whose every tweet once garnered hundreds of thousands of reactions.

It should surprise no one that delicate snow-flake Donald Trump threw a tantrum about not being treated like a king.

What a prima donna.

^*Holy sh%$. That’s almost 14 years. I need to get a life.
^†Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

1 June 2021, 6:37 AM

Of Course They Are

Hoocoodanode?

After making nice to the drivers in order to get Proposition 22 passed, Uber and Lyft have reversed their employee friendly policies, because their drivers are disposable, and they have no more need to make nice with them.

This outcome was completely predictable:

Last year, the ride-hailing service Uber gave its drivers unprecedented control over their fares and working conditions.

The goal was to win drivers’ support for Proposition 22, through which Uber and other gig companies aimed to rewrite California labor law in the companies’ favor.

The firms’ pitch was that the ballot measure would preserve the “flexibility” in hours and earnings that their workers valued, and that they said would be threatened unless the labor law was changed.

Uber’s new options seemed to make that flexibility more real: The company gave drivers more latitude to set their own fares, and more visibility into the trips they were offered before deciding whether to accept them.

Proposition 22 was passed by an overwhelming margin in the November election. Since then, some drivers say, Uber has taken the flexibility options away, and even cut the drivers’ income on many trips.

Lyft executives raised the same alarm during a Wall Street conference call after the firm released its first-quarter financial results on May 4.

Driver advocates have greeted these remarks skeptically, noting that the firms could attract more drivers quickly by improving their pay.

………

But when California codified labor rules to mandate that such workers receive all the benefits of employees, Uber, Lyft and other gig companies drafted Proposition 22 to exempt their drivers, delivery workers and others from the employment rules and allow them to be classified as independent contractors.

After a campaign in which the companies spent more than $200 million, a national record for a ballot measure, Proposition 22 passed with nearly 60% of the vote.

“A huge part of their Proposition 22 campaign was to get the drivers on their side,” says Veena Dubal, a labor law expert at UC Hastings College of the Law and a critic of Uber and Lyft. “So they rolled out these things they knew that drivers would be excited about and would make them feel independent. And of course they’ve thrown them away.”

………

Support for the bill has been waning since organized labor took a closer look at its terms. They discovered that it would bar workers from striking or taking any other job action and forbid local governments from imposing a minimum wage for gig workers.

………

Uber also has sharply cut drivers’ pay for trips originating at Los Angeles International, San Francisco and San Diego airports. At LAX and San Diego, drivers say, they now receive 32 cents per mile, regardless of the distance traveled.

That’s down from about 60 cents before the passage of Proposition 22, drivers say. It’s also well below the 56 cents per mile that the Internal Revenue Service has set as the deductible cost of ownership of cars driven for business use, counting fuel, maintenance, insurance and wear and tear.

It’s like the tale of the scorpion and the frog, it’s in their nature.

You should not be surprised when it stings you.

31 May 2021, 6:07 PM

Candace Owens is the Worst Minstrel Show Ever

It’s not fair to mock Candace Owens for not knowing Lee Harvey Oswald was a marine.

In her defense, she is a moron. pic.twitter.com/fFVMG8xli0

— JDP (@petee224) June 1, 2021

Candace Owens who has gone from not particularly talented actress to right-wing joke, just doubled down on the joke part.

You see, an internet prankster sent a (real) picture of a (real) US Marine to various right-wing figures, asking them to wish a happy memorial day on behalf of his (fake) grandfather.

It was a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald, a man who every US Marine would condemn, even if he had not shot JFK, because he also defected to the USSR.

Candace Owens was in high dudgeon about this, claiming that it was disrespectful to Photoshop his picture into a photo of a US Serviceman.

Of course, anyone who knows who Oswald was should know that he was (a pretty horrible, twice court martialed) US Marine.

You can object to the prank, I find it hilarious, but claiming that it is a Photoshop is beyond stupid.

I guess that this is what comes from a decade or so of channeling Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (Aka Stepin Fetchit).

It rots the mind.

30 May 2021, 7:46 PM

Boeing F%$#s Up Again

Boeing will be delaying delivery of new 787s because of new safety issues.

Once again, Boeing’s MBA driven culture has led to it cutting corners, and the FAA has called foul.

It appeared that faith based safety procedures are not looked upon favorably by the regulatory authorities:

Boeing Co. has halted deliveries of its 787 Dreamliners, adding fresh delays for customers following a recent five-month suspension in handing over the aircraft due to production problems, people familiar with the matter said.

Federal air-safety regulators have requested more information about Boeing’s proposed solution to address the previously identified quality lapses, these people said.

………

A Boeing spokesman said the company was working in a timely and transparent manner to provide regulators with more information related to undelivered 787s. The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday confirmed that Boeing had halted Dreamliner deliveries, saying that the plane maker needs to demonstrate that its proposed inspection method complies with federal-safety regulations.

There are statistical methods to validate these procedures, it’s just that Boeing couldn’t be bothered to take the time, because there were union members to be laid off.

………

The FAA launched a review of Boeing’s Dreamliner production last year and has increased scrutiny of its 737 MAX manufacturing operations following earlier factory slip-ups.

As part of its Dreamliner scrutiny, the agency has recently requested more information about the plane maker’s proposed method for addressing quality issues using a system that would allow for targeted checks of newly produced aircraft, rather than broader inspections of more areas, people familiar with the matter said. Boeing’s proposed method is based on a statistical analysis of data.

Until Boeing can satisfy the FAA’s requests, the agency is requiring Boeing to perform the broader inspections, which are more time-consuming and labor-intensive, these people said.

Many of the 787 quality lapses involve tiny gaps where sections of the jet’s fuselage, or body of the plane, join together. Problems have emerged in other places, too, including the vertical fin and horizontal stabilizer at the tail. Such gaps could lead to eventual premature fatigue of certain portions of the aircraft, potentially requiring extensive repairs during routine, long-term maintenance.

This is a problem with composite structures. Unlike aluminum, things need to fit exactly, since you there is very little flexing to accommodate tolerance stack-up.

You have to get these shims right, or you get point loads, which are death to composites.

………

Boeing has reduced output of the Dreamliner to five a month after shuttering assembly at its Everett, Wash., plant near Seattle and focusing production at North Charleston, S.C. It had built up a backlog of around 100 finished planes by the end of April, and had hoped to deliver most of them by the end of the year.

Yes, the South Carolina plant, which (by their own admission) they opened just to punish and weaken the union, which has poor training, poor morale, and poor safety procedures.

The management at Boeing does not know how to make airliners, and holds the people who do in deep disdain, and it shows.

When do the crashes start?

My bad, they already have.

28 May 2021, 8:35 PM

Tweet of the Day

These are not the Tweets of the day:

The real poetry will come when the self-interested narcissist who weaponised falsehood realises he cannot inflict damage on the other self-interested narcissist who weaponised falsehood, because he undermined truth-telling as a functional quality in political discourse.

— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) May 26, 2021

These are the two Tweets before the Tweet of the day.

The Tweet of the day is the one following, which I am quoting and Bowlderizing, because it reads, “It’s like Aesop’s Fables for c%$#s,” and I just don’t feel comfortable dropping the “C-Bomb” on the blog.

It is, however a perfect metaphor for Boris Johnson former senior political advisor, Dominic Cummings, testifying against the PM’s handling of the pandemic.

The man who made fecklessness the new normal in British politics is now complaining that Boris Johnson is a feckless git.