Where Were Your Candidates on Labor Day?

 

Celebrated Labor Day with workers in Detroit and Pittsburgh—both cradles of the American labor movement.

Every person in our nation has benefited from the work of our brothers and sisters in the labor movement. pic.twitter.com/PhI3fD26He

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 3, 2024

Mine was working. 

I don't know where Trump was, but wherever JD Vance was, he was Tweeting unadvisedly. 

This man may have worked a service position once according to his book (and probably does not have it still on his resume), but he has demonstrated no feeling for working people. He's used to no-show jobs. Just like he doesn't show up to vote for working people. 

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

 

(A post also to be known as "Republicans in Disarray.) 

I don't know why I'm leading with the story that a resolution from Matt Gaetz drafted September 15th was found under a baby changing table in the restroom underneath the House floor.  I guess it's because of my astonishment that we didn't hear about such a resolution like, Friday. And who left it behind? Maybe Gaetz himself, setting up the changing table with a couple parallel o' grams of Bolivian Borax to chase away the Floridian palmetto bugs in his high-rise skull? I know Gaetz was opposed to McCarthy even being Speaker like he was a new stepdad threatening to be the boss of him. 

And of such drama is the current House GOP currently made. They can't pass a resolution on Pentagon spending. None of them know what they want. They want to cut the spending. They want to fund border defense. They want to strengthen the defense but maybe not fund aid to Ukraine (the Moscow Marge Caucus, I guess you'd call it). Kevin McCarthy can't count votes and he doesn't count in uniting his troops. And I seriously don't know who is supposed to be Speaker for the GOP if McCarthy isn't. Scalise? Maybe they don't want nobody to be the Boss of Them. 

They just want to shut down the government for no good reason and impeach the Democratic president for no good reason the year before the presidential election? Is that so wrong?

(YES?)

What it means is they can't govern. But take heart!

Um, Trump is the leader of their party and a hapless fuckwit, also, too. It seems like, while in my heart of hearts I wanted Trump's document investigation to reveal selling secrets or something very dire, the bare reality is Trump just apparently took boxes of paper to save trees, because clearly, there were clean bits you could still use. All of this lovely notepaper for grocery lists and whatnot--says a Mar-a-Lago employee. 

And the material is back in the hands of the government to review with his peculiar Sharpie handed seismic handwriting and all. He also obstructed justice by telling his secretary she didn't know anything about the boxes she saw, just like nobody was supposed to know about all the boxes. Of all the stupid, stupid things. 

And the Trees Didn't Even Do Anything Wrong (UPDATED)

 

Quick shoutout to the good people at @UniversalPics for trimming the trees that gave our picket line shade right before a 90+ degree week. pic.twitter.com/aZvvPYQ23i

— Chris Stephens (@ChrisStephensMD) July 17, 2023

So here's an image that got me hotter than July sun on blacktop: these studio sonsofbitches pruned the trees. Were they even their trees to prune? (Maybe not, it looks like they might have been the city's trees.) And is this even the time of year you would normally do that? (Yeah, I dunno about that, you guys.) 

Now, leave out the whole level of mental motherfuckery you would need to possess to even decide "I know what, let's just take a little bit of natural coolness away from the picketers as if that's going to make them not want to resolve this strike in a way that lets them afford to live in the town they work" or anywhere else and shit like that, but also says "and if the trees die, they die." 

Now I'm not arborist, I'm not, I know it. I had fig trees, and they weren't meant for my area of the northeast. They got wrapped but still didn't survive a deep freeze. My grape vines do alright I guess. But that there looks like deliberate and unseasonable butchery for dramatic effect.

They should leave drama to the artists and then pay them for it. And if they screwed with the city's trees trying to strike break, they ought to pay for that, too. That image of those trees is just stark stupid miser shit. 

UPDATES: Why looky here! Apparently, the city had nothing to do with the pruning mess, and that's an unfair practices violation in addition to the city investigation.  Looks like some FA is going to be followed with FO.

Good. 

UPDATE: They got fined all of $250 by the city?

The History of Labor Day

Greeting fellow workers! Hope you treated yourself and considered your value today!

UPDATE: Did you know approval and appreciation of unions is on an upswing? My personal guess is it has a lot to do with COVID-19 when we collectively experienced crises related to the fragility of our employment status, the need for health benefits and paid leave, and absolutely treacherous workplace safety. Work is political. People work to earn a living, but work is not one's whole life. Supporting your fellow workers to make workplaces better improves productivity and helps the business thrive by decreasing turnover, burnout, and improving employee service. It's a good thing!

UPDATE: We often talk about how the labor movement put an end to child labor (conditionally) but the labor movement also protects aging workers by making retirement more comfortably possible. 

Note--an important part of the end of child labor is free, compulsory education. A free and fair society means that our children have the means to grow up and fend for themselves because they have the knowledge to do so. A free and fair society means we don't write off people because they are no longer productive workers. 

Labor Day: Is It A Crime?

 

The $7.25 minimum wage can’t pay all the bills in any state https://t.co/wTk5JHdYNQ

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) September 7, 2021

We talk sometimes about "working for a living", so I just want to interject that working doesn't always provide a living. It provides the barebones of existing, maybe feeding oneself and ones' kids, inadequately, going into soul-disrupting debt at times, relying on various kinds of assistance at others.

Does Grover Norquist Think Government is Free?

I screen-capped this instead of embedding because some of the responses to this inanity are pretty damn good, and maybe Norquist will realize he's wrong and delete it--but all the criticisms still stand. The first assertion "Those who run our government do not pay taxes" is just silly if he means that "politicians do not pay taxes" because we know that from the President of the US on down, they do. So that's just plain wrong.

The second line: "Politicians and government workers are paid more in your tax dollars than they pay in" is also crap--they are paid a salary and benefits that they work for. Taxpayers are their customers. And they pay a share of their income in taxes--not unlike other people, but just like other people. Using Norquist's construction, it's almost like he's implying that people should work for the government for free.

Pick up trash, fight crime, process tax returns or drivers license applications or even defend our country in war--for free? Who is doing this for free?

It is true that with benefits and civil service protections for employment, government workers may have more security than private sector employees--but that's because we're unionized.  If any worker thinks they like a better deal, tell you what? Organize. But in the meanwhile, pretending that government workers are getting a cushy deal where they get paid tax money for nothing is absurd.

Once again, this is the worldview of a person whose ideas about taxes is resentment over a bite out of his ice cream cone as a little child. Grow up, Grover.

This is How Working People Get Screwed--Hostess-Style

So, this is a nice ball of suck for people who worked for Hostess Brands, Inc:

Hostess Brands Inc. said it used wages that were supposed to help fund employee pensions for the company's operations as it sank toward bankruptcy. 

It isn't clear how many of the Irving, Texas, company's workers were affected by the move or how much money never wound up in their pension plans as promised. 

After the company said in August 2011 that it would stop making pension contributions, the foregone wages weren't put toward the pension. Nor were they restored. 

The maker of Twinkies, Ho-Hos and Wonder Bread filed for bankruptcy protection in January and shut down last month following a strike by one of the unions representing Hostess workers. A judge is overseeing the sale of company assets.

For those who still want to blame the unions--it wasn't that the unions demanded exorbitant, lush pensions--oh hell, no. The scheme was actually that Hostess workers deferred pay raises on the understanding that money was going into the pension fund.  It just wasn't.

Surely there will be some people who read about how management still paid themselves bonuses while the company was failing, and want to blame union thuggery for thinking that the ability of a oompany to fulfill promised obligation to the people who do the work meant anything. Shouldn't they have baked for the love of cake, and not promised compensation?

The people who would say this do not understand their Class War.

So, the GOP in Wisconsin went and did it.

The tactics that have been used all along in this union-busting debacle in Wisconsin have been overtly anti-democratic and bullying.  From the opening salvo a month ago when Governor Walker threatened to use the National Guard to clamp down on any demonstrations over his proposal to end collective bargaining rights for state workers--

what we've been treated to since has been a spectacle of unfairness and over-reaching.  There's this. And this. And this. And this. So why in the world would anyone be surprised that Governor Grabby and the Gross Old Party resorted to this?

Wis. GOP bypasses Dems, cuts collective bargaining

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- The Wisconsin Senate succeeded in voting Wednesday to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public workers, after Republicans outmaneuvered the chamber's missing Democrats and approved an explosive proposal that has rocked the state and unions nationwide.

"You are cowards!" spectators in the Senate gallery screamed as lawmakers voted. Within hours, a crowd of a few hundred protesters inside the Capitol had grown to several thousand, more than had been in the building at any point during weeks of protests.

"The whole world is watching!" they shouted as they pressed up against the heavily guarded entrance to the Senate chamber.

All 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois nearly three weeks ago, preventing the chamber from having enough members present to consider Gov. Scott Walker's "budget-repair bill" - a proposal introduced to plug a $137 million budget shortfall.

The Senate requires a quorum to take up any measures that spends money. But Republicans on Wednesday took all the spending measures out of the legislation and a special committee of lawmakers from both the Senate and Assembly approved the revised bill a short time later.

Note to Teabaggers--this is what something being "rammed down people's throats" actually looks like.  And this is also what actual freedoms being taken away looks like, courtesy of the Republican party. And this is what very justifiably angry people with purpose look like. They aren't being bussed in by astroturf groups and treated to the stirring support of Joe the Plumber, a folk hero who once...asked then-candidate Obama a slightly contentious question. They have the support of people who demonstrated in all 50 states, and they have been sent pizza and water by people not just here in the States, but all over the world.

I just don't see how this can stand.

Happy Labor Day--

The President gave a pretty darn good speech today:



It's like a little "State of the Union" to the people to whom it matters most, about the things that matter most to them--which means, Dear Reader, me and you. We have somebody in office who knows about work and workers. And that's a good thing--think about it--

What ever we do, by working at it, we are affecting the nation's economy. Maybe the recovery hasn't totally hit the unemployment figures yet, but I'm hopeful, because I think a strategy is in place that values business and work as the path to success. (Why no, that *doesn't* sound like Marxism at all....)