Category: Uncategorized

Not Enough Bullets

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By agreeing to pay penalties without admitting wrongdoing, the pharmaceutical companies that flooded the United States with opioids will be able to deduct billions from their taxes as a result.

Needless to say, the laws involving this need to change, pronto:

Four companies that agreed to pay a combined $26 billion to settle claims about their roles in the opioid crisis plan to deduct some of those costs from their taxes and recoup around $1 billion apiece.

In recent months, as details of the blockbuster settlement were still being worked out, pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson and the “big three” drug distributors — McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health — all updated their financial projections to include large tax benefits stemming from the expected deal, a Washington Post analysis of regulatory filings found.

The Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal Health said earlier this month it planned to collect a $974 million cash refund because it claimed its opioid-related legal costs as a “net operating loss carryback” — a tax provision Congress included in last year’s coronavirus bailout package as a way to help companies struggling during the pandemic.

The deductions may deepen public anger toward companies that prosecutors say played key roles in a destructive public health crisis that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year. In lawsuits filed by dozens of states and local jurisdictions, public officials have argued that the companies, among other corporate defendants, flooded the country with billions of highly addictive pills and ignored signs they were being steered to people who abused them. 

Gee, you think that allowing these companies to turn their malevolent activities into tax breaks might be a bit controversial? 

………

All four firms disavow any wrongdoing or legal responsibility. The companies have said they produced government-approved prescription pills, distributed them to registered pharmacies and took steps to try to prevent their misuse.

U.S. tax laws generally restrict companies from deducting the cost of legal settlements from their taxes, with one major exception: damages paid to victims as restitution for misdeeds. Still, Congress has placed stricter limits on such deductions in recent years, and some tax experts say the Internal Revenue Service could challenge the companies’ attempts to deduct opioid settlement costs.

Harry Cullen, a Brooklyn-based activist who has worked to hold drug companies accountable for the epidemic, said it is “incredibly insulting” that companies would try deduct the settlement payments. “As if they are donating it to these people who they harmed in the first place.”

I would also note that the entire “No admission of guilt” settlement regime needs to end.

When the end result is, “No harm, no foul, pay 15% of what you made thought your evil deeds,” these companies will continue to do harm to society.

And He’s Gone

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When I suggested that Biden aide TJ Ducklo should be fired for his abusive behavior to a reporter, I did not expect this to happen, but now the former Assistant Press Secretary has resigned.

His behavior was indefensible, so it wasn’t:

White House deputy press secretary TJ Ducklo has resigned, the day after he was suspended for issuing a sexist and profane threat to a journalist inquiring about his relationship with another reporter.

In a statement on Saturday, Ducklo said he was “devastated to have embarrassed and disappointed my White House colleagues and President Biden”.

“No words can express my regret, my embarrassment and my disgust for my behavior,” he said. “I used language that no woman should ever have to hear from anyone, especially in a situation where she was just trying to do her job. It was language that was abhorrent, disrespectful and unacceptable.”

It is the first departure from the new administration, less than a month into President Joe Biden’s tenure, and comes as the White House was facing criticism for not living up to standards set by Biden himself in their decision to retain Ducklo.

During a virtual swearing-in for staff on inauguration day, Biden said “If you ever work with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I will fire you on the spot. No ifs, ands or buts.”

Ducklo was suspended for a week without pay on Friday after a report surfaced in Vanity Fair outlining his sexist threats against a female Politico journalist to try to suppress a story about his relationship, telling her “I will destroy you”.

Thoughts and prayers, I guess.

It’s Now Boris’ England

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Yes, it is

It appears that the British National Health Service has decided to issue do not resuscitate orders for learning and developmentally disabled patients with Covid-19, because the UK was never properly de-Nazified at the end of the 2nd World War, I guess.

It’s something that I take kind of personally, since I have a nephew who, if he lived in the UK, would be subject to this sort of bigotry:

People with learning disabilities have been given do not resuscitate orders during the second wave of the pandemic, in spite of widespread condemnation of the practice last year and an urgent investigation by the care watchdog.

………

The Care Quality Commission said in December that inappropriate Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) notices had caused potentially avoidable deaths last year.

DNACPRs are usually made for people who are too frail to benefit from CPR, but Mencap said some seem to have been issued for people simply because they had a learning disability. The CQC is due to publish a report on the practice within weeks.

The disclosure comes as campaigners put growing pressure on ministers to reconsider a decision not to give people with learning disabilities priority for vaccinations. There is growing evidence that even those with a mild disability are more likely to die if they contract the coronavirus.

………

Younger people with learning disabilities aged 18 to 34 are 30 times more likely to die of Covid than others the same age, according to Public Health England.

Most people would call this horrifying, but I imagine that the Tories consider this an unintended benefit, because it reduces costs.

Trump Acquitted in Impeachment Trial*

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So, Donald Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial, by a vote of 57-43, which means that 7 Republicans voted to impeach.

It’s clear that he was guilty as hell, but the Senate Democrats decide not to call witnesses, after the House managers wanted to call witness because, Chris Coons (D-DE) was planning a hot date with his wife for Valentines day, (also here). seriously? 

Former president Donald Trump was acquitted Saturday of inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, becoming the first president in U.S. history to face a second impeachment trial — and surviving it in part because of his continuing hold on the Republican Party despite his electoral defeat in November.

That grip appeared to loosen slightly during the vote Saturday afternoon, when seven Republicans crossed party lines to vote for conviction — a sign of the rift the Capitol siege has caused within GOP ranks and the desire by some in the party to move on from Trump. Still, the 57-to-43 vote, in which all Democrats and two independents voted against the president, fell far short of the two-thirds required to convict.

The tally came after senators briefly upended the proceeding by voting to allow witnesses — only to reverse themselves amid Republican opposition and following hours of negotiations with House Democrats and Trump’s defense team.

I am not exaggerating about the Valentines day thing:

During the Senate break after the witness vote Saturday, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) twice came into the managers’ room off the Senate floor, according to multiple Democratic sources. Coons pressed House Democrats to relent, saying their quest for witnesses would cost them Republican votes to convict and maybe even some Democrats.

“The jury is ready to vote,” Coons told the managers, according to a senior House Democratic aide. “People want to get home for Valentine‘s Day.”

Coons is up for reelection in 2026, and it would do well for Democratic voters to remember his bit of rat-f%$#ery during the impeachment.  

If wants to spend every valentines day with his wife, he can get himself a job that he is better suited to.

*I sure picked the wrong month to stop swearing.

Linkage

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Speaking of cutting people new assholes, I actually designed parts for a tool that actually does this:

I Don’t Care that He Has Cancer, Just Fire Him

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Biden Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo crossed some very bright red lines in his objection to reporting on his personal relationship with Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond.

The bullying and misogyny shown against Politico reporter Tara Palmeri* is completely beyond the pale.

Threatening to “destroy” her and saying that she was acting out of jealousy because of some man that Palmeri, “Wanted to F%$#” is grounds for firing, particularly for someone whose title has the words “Press Secretary” in it.

Also, quite frankly, even with his stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis, the Biden administration cannot let this slide:

A White House official tried to quash a story about his relationship with a reporter by issuing threats and using derogatory language to another reporter pursuing it, according to two sources familiar with the incident. In a sympathetic profile Monday, People revealed that White House Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo is dating Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond, who covered the Joe Biden campaign. But behind the scenes, Ducklo had previously lashed out at Politico reporter Tara Palmeri, who was reporting the story, exhibiting behavior that led to tense meetings between the Washington news outlet’s editors and senior White House officials.

After Vanity Fair published this account, the White House announced that Ducklo would be suspended for one week.

The confrontation began on Inauguration Day, January 20, after Palmeri, a coauthor of Politico’s Playbook, contacted McCammond for comment while one of her male colleagues left a message for Ducklo, according to the sources. Ducklo subsequently called a Playbook editor to object to the story, but was told to call the Playbook reporters with his concerns. But instead of calling the male reporter who initially contacted him, Ducklo tried to intimidate Palmeri by phone in an effort to kill the story. “I will destroy you,” Ducklo told her, according to the sources, adding that he would ruin her reputation if she published it.

During the off-the-record call, Ducklo made derogatory and misogynistic comments, accusing Palmeri of only reporting on his relationship—which, due to the ethics questions that factor into the relationship between a journalist and White House official, falls under the purview of her reporting beat—because she was “jealous” that an unidentified man in the past had “wanted to fuck” McCammond “and not you.” Ducklo also accused Palmeri of being “jealous” of his relationship with McCammond. (Palmeri had no prior relationship or communication with McCammond before calling her to report on the Playbook item, which was a story that she was assigned and had not independently pursued.)

………

Palmeri declined to comment. Psaki and Ducklo did not immediately respond to requests for comment. After publication, Psaki issued a statement: “TJ Ducklo has apologized to the reporter, with whom he had a heated conversation about his personal life. He is the first to acknowledge this is not the standard of behavior set out by the President. In addition to his initial apology, he has sent the reporter a personal note expressing his profound regret. With the approval of the White House Chief of Staff, he has been placed on a one-week suspension without pay. In addition, when he returns, he will no longer be assigned to work with any reporters at Politico.”

………

Ducklo’s alleged response to Politico’s reporting raises serious questions about behavior that is tolerated in the Biden White House. “I am not joking when I say this: If you are ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. No ifs, ands, or buts,” Biden said during a virtual swearing-in of appointees on his first day in the White House. Playbook highlighted those remarks on January 21 under the heading “Biden Sets Standard for Professional Behavior,” and asked, “Serious question on our minds this morning: Does this standard apply to how mid-level press aides treat reporters?”

What to do here is very simple.  You fire him.

I understand that you want to do right by him, he has been a good soldier, and he has stage 4 lung cancer that has metastasized, but as a matter of integrity, this is a promise that Biden should keep.

As a matter of tactics, he is toxic for the next few years anyway.

If you want to thread the needle, and he is getting cancer treatment, promise to keep covering his insurance.

As an aside, with Medicare for All, this would not be a problem.

*I never thought that I would have to defend a reporter from Tiger Beat on the Potomac. (TBOTP)

Tweet of the Day

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While I am generally opposed to bitcoin, I make an exception for South Florida. Miami is the rightful home of everything fraudulent, weird, and sleazy. And I say this with love. https://t.co/7erEwDjSDK

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) February 12, 2021

This succinctly sums up both the current cryptocurrency craze and south Florida.

As Zathras would say, “But at least there is symmetry.”

A Free State First

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Maryland has become the first state in the nation to enact a tax on online advertisements.

They had to override a veto though, because Governor Larry “Rat-F%$#” Hogan vetoed the bill, because he promised no new taxes ever.

Revenue is to be dedicated to education:

Maryland today became the first state in the nation to impose a tax on digital advertising revenue, overriding an earlier veto from the governor and incurring the wrath of piles of Big Tech businesses that are all but guaranteed to sue.

The bill (PDF) levies a state tax of up to 10 percent on the annual gross revenues of all digital advertising aimed at users inside Maryland state. Proceeds from the new tax are explicitly earmarked to go into an education fund dedicated to improving Maryland public schools.

“Right now, they don’t contribute,” the bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Bill Ferguson (D) said of the bill. “These platforms that have grown fast, and so enormously, should also have to contribute to the civic infrastructure that helped them become so successful.”

Both chambers in the state’s General Assembly, its Senate and its House of Delegates, approved the bill by wide majorities last year. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed the bill in May, but it had sufficiently high support in both chambers of the legislature to pass a veto override, and both houses approved the veto override this week.

It will work on a sliding scale, with larger companies, like Google and Facebook, paying up to 10% of gross revenue from the portion of their ads from Maryland, which constitutes about 1.8% of the US population.

………

A coalition of small and medium businesses and trade groups launched a coalition last year to lobby against the tax. The group, which bills itself as Marylanders for Tax Fairness, argues that the tax will “place an unnecessary and undue burden on the state’s entrepreneurs and job creators.”

Yadda, yadda, yadda,

The internet economy wants not to pay taxes.

F%$# that.

………

Among the coalition members are not only several Maryland-based businesses and organizations, including several local Chambers of Commerce, but also most of the large tech-related trade groups. All of the usual suspects who represent advertising, Internet, tech, telecom, or media firms are on the list, including the Internet Association, the IAB, the NCTA, and TechNet. Those four groups represent every online firm from Amazon to Zillow and just about any brand you can name in between.

The stakes for all the firms involved may go well beyond Maryland. Other states, including high-population New York, are considering similar advertising revenue bills of their own.

I’m not sure what the right rate is, though I do support an aggressively progressive tax.

Someone Gets It

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Only a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for someone at a major political publication, even a liberal one like The Nation, to suggest that IP protections need to be relaxed for the good of society, and now we are seeing this.

IP law is literally for the public interest, in the US at least, as is explicitly stated in Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution, “To promote the progress of science and useful arts.”

IP is not property, it is a way to benefit society, not a way to allow rent-seeking to dominate our society:

The explosion of inequality over the past four decades is appropriately a major focus of the political agenda for progressives. Unfortunately, policy prescriptions usually turn to various taxes directed at the wealthy and very wealthy. While making our tax structure more progressive is important, most of the increase in inequality comes from greater inequality in before-tax income, not from reductions in taxes paid by the rich. And, if we’re serious about reversing that trend, it is easier, as a practical matter, to keep people from getting ridiculously rich in the first place than to tax the money after they have it.

While the Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump tax cuts all gave more money to the rich, policy changes in other areas, especially intellectual property have done far more to redistribute income upward. In the past four decades, a wide array of changes—under both Democratic and Republican presidents—made patent and copyright protection both longer and stronger.

………

The effect of these changes was to transfer money from the bulk of the population to the relatively small group of people in a position to benefit from them, either because of their skills in software, biotechnology, and other areas, or because of their ownership of stock in companies that benefit from these rules.

The upward redistribution of wealth arising from intellectual property (IP) is typically disguised in public debates as being the result of “technology.” But blaming technology attributes it to an impersonal force. When we point out that it is due to intellectual property, we make it clear that inequality is a policy choice.

………

By my calculations, the amount of money transferred from the rest of us to those in a position to benefit from IP comes to more than $1 trillion annually. This transfer comes in the form of higher prices for prescription drugs, medical equipment, software, and many other products. This amount is almost half the size of all before-tax corporate profits, and roughly one-third larger than the current military budget. In other words, it is real money.

Intellectual property does serve an important economic purpose in providing an incentive for innovation and creative work. But we can make patent and copyright monopolies shorter and weaker while still supporting innovation and creativity, instead of going the route of longer and stronger, as we have actually done over the past four decades.

………

Most of the public money goes to finance basic research, but sometimes the government supports the actual development process, as was the case with Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine. The government paid Moderna $483 million for its research and Phase 1 and 2 trials. It then coughed up another $472 million to cover the cost of Phase 3 trials. Incredibly, the Trump administration still allowed Moderna to have patent monopolies on its vaccine, even though the government had covered the development costs and taken the investment risk. If the vaccine had proven to be ineffective, the government would have borne the cost, while Moderna still would have been paid.

………

We need to keep this example in mind as the Biden administration develops its foreign policy agenda, especially its relationship with China. Biden has already complained about China’s stealing “our” intellectual property. This sets the stage for potential conflicts that are not at all in the interest of the vast majority of the American people.

………

While there may be cases where the failure to honor intellectual property can cost some middle-income jobs (for example, if China uses technology to which Boeing has patent rights), the impact is likely to be comparatively small. Arguing that we should protect Boeing’s IP on this basis would be like arguing that we should not tax Jeff Bezos because reducing his income could lead him to lay off some well-paid servants. The benefits that the relatively affluent and very wealthy get from IP protections are vastly greater than the higher wages that some workers may get as a result of working for Boeing or another company with large IP claims.

………

The rules on intellectual property are a major part of the story of upward redistribution of the past four decades. Contrary to what is typically claimed, they have likely been a major obstacle to technological progress, especially in the areas of health and climate technologies. It would be tragic if the protection of IP was a major cause of a cold war with China. It would be even more tragic if progressives were leading the charge.

The author, Dean Baker, has been saying this for years, and now he is getting a real hearing on this in the court of public opinion.  Huzzah.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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Better, but still not good initial unemployment claim numbers, 793,000 claims:

The labor market is offering signs the economy is starting to mend from a steep winter slowdown.

Worker filings for unemployment benefits—while still high—decreased to 793,000 last week, well below an early January peak that exceeded 900,000. Employers resumed hiring in January after payrolls fell at the end of 2020, and job openings picked up, driven by growth in industries that have weathered the pandemic relatively well.

………

One catalyst for the recent labor market improvement is the latest round of government aid, including small-business loans intended to help employers keep and rehire workers, said Ms. Markowska. Another is the relaxation of pandemic-related business restrictions in California and the Northeast.

………

Unemployment filings remain above the pre-pandemic peak of 695,000, pointing to the long road ahead for the recovery. About 4.5 million Americans were collecting unemployment benefits through regular state programs in the week ended Jan. 30. So-called continuing claims are well below pandemic highs but still more than double the levels seen a year ago.

………

Many workers are experiencing long spells of joblessness. About 4.8 million Americans who exhausted their regular state benefits were drawing on extended benefits through one of the federal pandemic programs in the week ended Jan. 23, a jump from 3.6 million a week earlier. 

At the very least, Biden and the Democrats, unlike Obama in 2009, recognize the risk is in doing too little, and not too much to ameliorate the situation.

Not This Sh%$ Again

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Once again, we have hand wringing from the “Very Serious People” that a declining population is the end of the world.

This time; it’s China, and this time, according to the appropriately hysterical tech reporter, population decline will destroy the country.

In fact, they don’t say HOW this would destroy the country, it just self-evidently bad.

While it is true that having more elderly people and fewer working age people places demands on the funding of old age benefits, if there are fewer working age people, their pay goes up, because there is a smaller supply of labor.

That is why (as I have not infrequently noted) the black death was followed by skyrocketing wages and productivity from most of the population of Europe.

The continued drop in new births is a ticking time bomb for Beijing. Fewer births means less labor force supply, which in turn adds to the pressure on a pension system that relies on contributions from the working population. China had 254 million elderly residents aged 60 or above in 2019, according to the statistics bureau—that’s 18% of the whole population of 1.4 billion.

That number is expected to expand to 300 million by 2025, according to China’s ministry of civil affairs. Some research suggests a bleak conclusion: China’s state pension scheme could run out of funding by 2035 due to the shrinking workforce. That would be a huge issue for the Party, whose top priority is to maintain social stability.

The workers’ pension payments go up by 10%, and their wages go up by 20%, and everyone, wins, except, perhaps for Foxconn and its ilk, who see wage pressures cut into their profits.

Certainly, there are accommodations to be made, like making the workplace friendlier to older workers in addition to increasing taxes, but it’s not the end of the world.

Something that Trump Got Spectacularly Right

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For decades, the Fed comported itself as an expert witness for deficit hawks on Capitol Hill.

Now, under the leadership of a Republican banker, the Fed is using its technocratic credibility to bolster big stimulus (and marginalize Larry Summers)https://t.co/LyyZxcssS8

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) February 11, 2021

Because he is NOT an Economist

Specifically, he put Jerome Powell in charge of the Federal Reserve, whose background is as an investment banker rather than an economist, and because of this, he has not dedicated himself to fighting invisible mythical inflation preemptively, nor has he attempted to create prosperity by invoking the equally mythical confidence fueled austerity fairy.

It turns out that there is a profession more useless than that of the investment banker, it is that of the economist.

While Trump always found him too hawkish on monetary policy, he has been the most dovish Fed chair in at least 30 years, largely because he is not comparing penis size with other economists:

For most of the past four decades, the Federal Reserve has comported itself as a corroborating witness for deficit hawks on Capitol Hill, and a security system for anti-inflation paranoiacs on Wall Street.

In the late 1970s, stubbornly high inflation taught the central bank that the conflict between its dual objectives — to promote full employment and price stability — was fiercer than it had previously thought. Specifically, the Fed decided that it would need to preemptively cool the economy when unemployment got too low, so as to snuff out inflationary spirals before they took hold. This was because tight labor markets allowed workers to hold their employers hostage to unreasonable wage demands; with no reserve army of the unemployed to draw new hires from, bosses were forced to placate existing staff. Thus, employers ended up overpaying their workers and then trying to compensate by overcharging consumers. Workers, being consumers themselves, responded to such price hikes by extracting even higher wages from their employers, causing employers to enact even more extortionate price increases, setting off a vicious inflationary cycle. Therefore, central banks had to proactively preserve slack in the labor market — both by slowing economic growth through interest-rate hikes when unemployment got too low, and by encouraging Congress to rein in deficit spending lest it spur excessive demand for labor.

………

But times have changed — and so has the Fed.

Under Jerome Powell, the central bank has brought American monetary policy into belated alignment with federal law and empirical economics. Instead of attempting to preempt high inflation by sustaining a cushion of unemployment, Powell has waited for inflation to actually show itself before deliberately cooling the economy, a posture he has justified by emphasizing the myriad economic and social benefits of maximizing employment.

As a result, the Fed’s role in America’s fiscal policy debates has flipped. This week, Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan took on some friendly fire from center-left economists Larry Summers and Olivier Blanchard. While both endorsed the necessity of significant stimulus spending, they suggested that Biden’s package was excessively large, and would risk “overheating” the economy — which is to say, the stimulus would risk injecting more demand into the economy than the nation can satisfy, given the size of its labor force and the productive capacity of its capital stock. And when demand outstrips supply, the result is inflation.

On Wednesday, the Fed effectively intervened in this debate on Biden’s behalf. In remarks to the Economic Club of New York, Powell argued that America’s actual unemployment rate is not 6.3 percent (as official data suggest) but 10 percent, once classification errors are accounted for; that it will take “continued support from both near-term policy and longer-run investments” to restore maximum employment; and that had the pandemic not intervened, there is “every reason to expect that the labor market could have strengthened even further without causing a worrisome increase in inflation.” That last statement is key. Not only does it suggest that Powell believes the U.S. economy can support an unemployment rate significantly below the 3.5 percent we saw in early 2020, the statement also implicitly rebukes the Congressional Budget Office’s official estimate of how much more demand the economy can accommodate without overheating. Which is significant, since Summers built his “overheating” argument around the CBO’s (historically unreliable) estimate of that figure.

………

The Federal Reserve’s authority over monetary policy — and technocratic credibility on questions of spending — gives it considerable power to shape the economic paradigm within which democratic politics operates. In the late 1970s, the central bank used this power to consolidate a reactionary turn in American economic policymaking. In 2021 — under the leadership of a Trump-appointed, Republican investment banker — it is doing its darnedest to consolidate a progressive one.

IMHO, Trump got it right by mistake, but he got this one very right.

Not Sure What to Say About This Passing

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Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, has died at 78.

A self described, “Smut peddler and 1st Amendment activist,” he was profoundly sleazy, but a significant part of the judicial precedent on free speech.

Also, where the rubber met the road, he had integrity, arguing against the execution of the man who shot and paralyzed him, and famously offered a million dollar bounty on sexual misconduct of members of Congress.

I have mixed emotions about him.

Oh, Yeah, Before I Forget

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Trump’s Crack Impeachment Lawyers Misspelled ‘United States’—Again

Former President Trump’s legal team seems to think proofreading is overrated. 

Hardly a week after submitting a legal brief for Trump’s looming Senate impeachment trial that misspelled the words “United States,” they made exactly the same blunder again on Monday in the pre-trial brief laying out their defense.

The 78-page brief referred to the country Trump used to lead as the “Unites States” on page 7. While falling short of perfect, the misstep still marked something of an improvement from their last go, when the team screwed up the name of the country twice, including on the first page.

“President’s Trump speech on January 6, 2021, was not an act encouraging an organized movement to overthrow the Unites States government,” the new document reads.

This is so surreal that Salvador Dali is shaking his head.

Amazon Union Vote in Alabama Proceeds

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Despite Amazon’s calls for a delay, and in person voting, the NLRB has ruled that the vote to unionize its Bessemer, Alabama warehouse is beginning now via mail.

Truth be told, Alabama is one of the least union friendly states in the nation, both by law and by culture, but it appears that Jeff Bezos and his merry band of psychopaths have been awful enough for long enough that there is a decent chance that the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) will win this.

Of course, even if they do, I expect Amazon to keep this in court for years: 

It might be the most tracked shipment in Amazon history: 5,800 mail ballots are being sent out to the union-eligible workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, fulfillment center on Monday. In the coming weeks they’ll be used to decide the largest US union election at the 26-year-old company, the country’s second-largest employer. It’s an unlikely vote, coming from an unlikely site, but if the labor organizers win, the Bessemer warehouse, not yet a year old, will become the country’s first unionized Amazon facility and potentially a bellwether for the industry nationwide.

Alabama isn’t exactly known as a hotbed of labor organizing; it’s a right-to-work state with a union membership rate of 8 percent, nearly three points below the national average (itself near an all-time low). The Birmingham suburb of Bessemer, however, has a deep history of strong unions that haven’t been shy about striking. The Amazon facility sits atop land once owned by US Steel, a major employer in the region until the industry’s decline in the latter half of the 20th century. Workers at the mills there belonged to United Steelworkers, the largest industrial union in North America.

These days, the state is home to 12,000-plus poultry workers represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. When the pandemic hit, the RWDSU became a regular feature of local news reports about the safety protections it won for its workers. The group from Amazon who first contacted the RWDSU over the summer included workers who had been union members at previous jobs; some had friends and family in the RWDSU. “I truly believe that if we win,” says Joshua Brewer, an RWDSU organizer in Alabama who’s working on the Bessemer campaign, “it will be because grandparents and uncles and parents talked to these young folks who work out here and said, this helped me, and it’s a good thing.”

Employees at Amazon fulfillment centers are tasked with retrieving products from miles of shelves and quickly packing them into boxes that eventually make their way to customers’ doors. Part of the job stress, workers say, stems from the company’s highly automated tracking system. Cameras blanket the warehouses, and the company’s Time Off Task (TOT) system tracks every second workers aren’t picking, packing, and stowing to meet quotas, or “make rate.” Too much TOT is grounds for termination. Workers fear that if a family member falls ill or some bad lunch meat necessitates extra bathroom breaks, that could be it for their job. Human frailty seems “like a kink in their system,” says Brewer. Grievance procedures, which would allow workers due process and union representation in responding to discipline, rank high on workers’ list of demands, as do more frequent, scheduled rest periods.

I really hope that they win, but Amazon is going to the wall over this, so I am pessimistic.

16 Tons

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Musical Accompaniment

Legislators in Nevada are proposing legislation to allow tech companies to create their own company owned towns. 

Needless to say, the morons suggesting this needs to read up the history, or at least listen to the damned song.

It’s like they looked at the New Hampshire Town that went libertarian and was infested by bears, and said, “Here, hold my beer”.

If you’ve got enough money, acres upon acres of undeveloped land and an “innovative technology,” you soon could form a new local government in Nevada.

………

According to a draft of the proposed legislation, obtained by the Review-Journal but not yet introduced in the Legislature, Innovation Zones would allow tech companies like Blockchains, LLC to effectively form separate local governments in Nevada, governments that would carry the same authority as a county, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and justice courts and provide government services, to name a few duties.

Sisolak pitched the concept in his State of the State address as his plan to bring in new companies that are at the forefront of “groundbreaking technologies,” all without the use of tax abatements or other publicly funded incentive packages that had previously helped Nevada bring companies like Tesla to the state.

During his speech last month, Sisolak specifically named Blockchains, LLC as a company that had committed to developing a “smart city” in the area east of Reno that would run entirely on blockchain technology, once the legislation passes.

Run a f%$#ing city on blockchain?

Yeah, like that is going to end well.

Even without the dubious history of the company town.

………

The draft language of the proposal says that the traditional local government model is “inadequate alone to provide the flexibility and resources conducive to making the State a leader in attracting and retaining new forms and types of businesses and fostering economic development in emerging technologies and innovative industries.”

It adds that this “alternative form of local government” is needed to aid economic development within the state.

Yes, by all means, let the grifters from block chain and the like dictate the form of government.

Given the dubious history of company towns, and the fact that their test case is for a company that doesn’t actually make anything (blockchain, seriously), does not bode well.

You Cannot Blog Without Memes

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The Original


The Final Frontier


Meme2

Bernie Sanders showed up at the inaugeration as ……… well ……… Bernie Sanders, in a coat and mittens that he has worn for quite some time and a high order meme detonation occurred:

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a fierce advocate of fair wages and a former presidential candidate who lost the Democratic nomination to now-President Biden. And thanks to his practical clothing choices he is also now the center of a seemingly endless flood of altered pictures that dominated some corners of the internet in the hours after Mr. Biden’s socially distanced inauguration on Wednesday.

Amid the dark suits and bright coats dotting the Capitol steps, Mr. Sanders was photographed sitting masked, cross-legged and bundled up in a bulky coat and mittens against the frigid weather in Washington, D.C. Soon after, the image, taken by the photographer Brendan Smialowski for Getty Images, began to circulate on social media inserted into a wide array of photographs and scenes from movies and artworks.

On a day all about Mr. Biden, it was in some ways appropriate that Mr. Sanders, whose strongest political support in the presidential race came from young voters, would nonetheless be the star of the day’s biggest meme by doing nothing but sitting and crossing his arms. In their primary competition, Mr. Sanders enjoyed a significantly larger online following than Mr. Biden, especially among those who often communicate through memes.

Though other memes starring Mr. Sanders were often used to say something — he wore what appears to be the same coat in a 2019 fund-raising video in which he is “once again asking for your financial support,” a line that has been repurposed in a litany of ways — there was no such deeper meaning to the newest meme. Instead of using his image to make an argument, he was simply placed into new contexts, with his pose, outfit and expression themselves serving as the joke.

Just a quick note, if you think that those mittens are fabulous, and they are, don’t contact the teacher who made them as a gift asking for some, she has a day job.

BuzzFeed News reported that Mr. Sanders got his mittens from Jen Ellis, a second-grade teacher in Essex Junction, Vt., who made gloves on the side. She said she sent him a pair after he lost a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

Ms. Ellis tweeted that the mittens were made from repurposed wool and lined with fleece.

In an interview with CBS, Mr. Sanders laughed off the attention.

“In Vermont, we dress, we know something about the cold,” he told Gayle King. “And we’re not so concerned about good fashion. We just want to keep warm. And that’s what I did today.”

The reason that  this meme has exploded is because, as Bradley Whitford notes, “They know he would have worn exactly the same thing if he had won the presidency. “