Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Jobless Claims Finally Fall Below Pre-Pandemic Record

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There were 684,000 initial claims, less than the pre-pandemic peak of 695,000.

Yes, this is unmitigated good news:

Jobless claims fell to their lowest level of the pandemic last week as stronger hiring and consumer spending drive a U.S. economic revival.

Worker filings for unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, fell to 684,000 last week from 781,000 a week earlier. Claims are now at the lowest point since mid-March of last year, before lockdowns triggered millions of layoffs. They are also below the pre-pandemic high of 695,000, a threshold not crossed for 52 weeks.

“The recovery is really hitting full steam again, and all of the conditions will be in place for a real, explosive liftoff in the summer when hopefully we’ve reached a higher vaccination threshold,” said Julia Pollak, labor economist at jobs site ZipRecruiter.

………

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal this month raised their average forecast for 2021 economic growth to 5.95%, measured from the fourth quarter of last year to the same period this year, from a 4.87% projection in February’s survey. The higher figure would mark the fastest such pace in nearly four decades, following a steep downturn last year.

If these predictions are accurate, this is a blistering pace of economic growth.

What, Elon Broke the Law? Pshaw!

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The NLRB has ruled that Tesla has openly and repeatedly broken labor law in its anti-union drives.

Seeing as how the car company has been killing and injuring its workers while offering them free frozen yogurt, they pretty much have to break the law to keep the unions out:

Tesla has been ordered to correct its unlawful labor practices, and its supremo Elon Musk must delete a related tweet from three years ago.

In a ruling issued on Thursday, the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) concluded that Tesla violated federal labor law in its efforts to discourage workers from unionizing. It directed the company to cease various anti-union actions and policies like claiming workers would lose benefits if they vote for union representation.

The NLRB found that Tesla violated labor law by coercively interrogating employees, threatening them with the loss of stock options if they supported unionization, and enacting unlawful policies like a confidentiality agreement that banned speaking to the press.

The ruling directs the vehicle maker to offer to rehire plaintiff and former employee Richard Ortiz and pay him lost wages, and to strike unlawful disciplinary information from the record of both Ortiz and another employee, Jose Moran.

It further requires Tesla to rescind portions of its 2016 confidentiality agreement that disallow lawful union-related activity under Sections 7 and 8 of the National Labor Relations Act, which the NLRB acknowledged “protects employees when they speak with the media about working conditions, labor disputes, or other terms and conditions of employment.”

The decision also directs self-styled “Technoking” Musk to delete a May 20, 2018, tweet because it implies workers must give up their stock options if they unionize.

I still think that the only to get the lawbreaking to stop is to frog-march Elon Musk out of his offices in handcuffs.

 

Remarkably Toxic Individuals

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It turns out that only 12 people are responsible for the overwhelming majority of anti-vaxx content online.

It really is amazing what a few horrible people can do:

They’ve been dubbed the “Disinformation Dozen”: 12 individuals or organizations are tied to up to 65 percent of anti-vaccine content circulating on major social media networking sites, according to an analysis of popular anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter.

………

The report accuses Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who was banned from Instagram last month — Joseph Mercola, Ty and Charlene Bollinger — whose Twitter accounts were briefly suspended at the beginning of the pandemic — Sherri Tenpenny, Rizza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, Sayer Ji, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins of spreading disinformation and claims that their social media accounts “have repeatedly violated Facebook and Twitter’s terms of service agreements.” And the CCDH has receipts — the report is full of screenshots of “example violations” that range from misleading to antisemitic.

It’s not a surprise.  The past few years have shown us the potential effects of a few toxic individuals in the right (wrong?) places.

It Just Gets Better and Better

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People don’t fear Andrew Cuomo any more, and so more and more people are dropping a dime on his corrupt behavior. Case in point, people are now telling reporters that Cuomo arranged for family members and close associates to get special access to Covid-19 testing.

We are going to see more and more of this: 

As the coronavirus pandemic swept through New York early last year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration arranged for his family members and other well-connected figures to have special access to state-administered coronavirus tests, dispatching a top state doctor and other state health officials to their homes, according to three people with direct knowledge of the effort.

As part of the program, a state lab immediately processed the results of those who were tested, the people said, even as average New Yorkers were struggling to get tested in the early days of the pandemic because of a scarcity of resources. Initially, the lab was capable of running only several hundred tests a day for a state with 19 million residents.

The use of state resources to benefit people close to the governor raises serious ethical questions, experts said. New York law prohibits state officials from using their positions to secure privileges for themselves or others.

Drip, drip, drip. 

Cuomo’s career is toast, and only bad thing about this is that it did not happen a decade ago.

Headline of the Day

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Amazon Denies Workers Pee in Bottles. Here Are the Pee Bottles

—Vice

What a surprise, the PR department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Amazon lies through its teeth.

They claim that their workers are well treated, and are free to take pee breaks, which is belied by the pictures of pee bottles in Amazon trucks and warehouses.

Amazon claims its workers don’t pee in bottles; defenders say it’s an urban legend. But these photos sent to me by a former driver for a former @amazon contractor called Synctruck in a California facility suggest strongly otherwise. https://t.co/hp4zCqOxRO pic.twitter.com/StHNvV9B1x

— Ken Bensinger (@kenbensinger) March 25, 2021

A memo specifically telling workers to remove their urine bottles at the end of a shift

What’s more, Amazon actually has posted notices telling workers to clean up their urine bottles at the end of a shift. (See attached Tweet)

They demand a schedule that allows no time to pee, and it is impossible to make schedule unless you pee in a bottle, because it’s (at least) 15 minutes to find and use a bathroom and return to deliveries.

In a just world, Jeff Bezos would be sentenced to a life of working for ……… Jeff Bezos.

One of the responses to that tweet is telling:

And yes, I know, that Crassus did not actually die in this manner, though he was almost as contemptible as Bezos:

The first ever Roman fire brigade was created by Crassus. Fires were almost a daily occurrence in Rome, and Crassus took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department, by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the firefighters did nothing while Crassus offered to buy the burning building from the distressed property owner, at a miserable price. If the owner agreed to sell the property, his men would put out the fire; if the owner refused, then they would simply let the structure burn to the ground. After buying many properties this way, he rebuilt them, and often leased the properties to their original owners or new tenants.

This is an attitude toward public service that I am sure Jeff Bezos would admire.

It’s Called “Doing Your Job”

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Mitch McConnell is now threatening to make Senators stay in town if there are any meaningful changes to the filibuster.

We pay Senators $174,000.00 a year in salary, and they are in for 3 days a week.

If they have to stay near for a quorum call or the like, they still are not the most overworked blokes out there.

Also, one of the proposals requires that the people supporting a filibuster, i.e. Mitch’s evil minions™, would have to stay in town, not the Democrats.

Muck Fitch:

A Senate operating in the “nuclear winter” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell promises if the filibuster is eliminated is one in which lawmakers face incessant roll calls and other inconveniences turning their comfortable lives into a living hell.

Why it matters: In employing apocalyptic language to warn about a “scorched-earth” response, the Kentucky Republican is trying to scare Democrats away from the tool they’re considering to break through the GOP’s own political obstinance.

Oh, dear, making it so that Senators need to remain nearby.

What a f%$#ing horror.

Finally, Someone Suggest Breaking Out the Handcuffs

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Someone states the obvious, that if you want to rein in tech giants, start treating them like the criminals that they are. 

Between criminal violations of anti-trust laws, violations of wiretapping laws, securities law violations, and conspiracies to violate laws and regulations (Uber, AirBnB, etc.) these guys should be subject to arrest, trial, and imprisonment”

On March 25, the CEOs of Google, Facebook, and Twitter will once again testify before a committee of the House of Representatives, this time about the spread of disinformation on their platforms.

………

Fortunately, there are two options to buy time, neither of which requires congressional action. It merely requires the government to apply regulatory tools that do not get used frequently, namely subjecting business executives to felony prosecution.

The first option is an antitrust case against Google led by the attorney general of Texas that alleges a price fixing conspiracy in digital advertising. The complaint names Facebook as a co-conspirator. Price fixing falls under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, significant because it does not require proof of harm. The attempt itself is a crime. And if, as has been alleged, there is evidence of an agreement for mutual legal defense, there may be a second count. When appropriate, executives can be subject to felony prosecution, punishable by up to three years in prison. Google denies any wrongdoing.

………

The second option would be a securities fraud investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. For a decade or more, journalists have reported evidence of overstated user counts and advertising views by internet platforms. They assert that a material percentage of advertising clicks are manufactured by fraudsters exploiting the lack of transparency in digital advertising. The opacity of all digital ad platforms relative to traditional media and Google’s dominance of digital ad infrastructure have prevented a thorough accounting.

………

Securities law requires public companies to report accurate numbers. For internet platforms, user count and ad views are key to investor sentiment, the latter an essential revenue driver. If ad views are overstated, then revenues must also be overstated. If the overstatement occurred over many years, with the knowledge of the executives, then the SEC has the option to pursue a felony case, creating legal jeopardy for senior executives who may face prison time. Such cases are not common, but the circumstances surrounding internet platforms certainly warrant a thorough investigation.

While it has not been a common practice to use felony cases to reform an industry, these are extraordinary times. The goal is not to put executives in jail, but rather to create incentives for good faith negotiation with corporations whose behavior poses a threat to society and the authority of the government.

It used to be common practice to use felony cases to reform an industry, just look at the prosecutions, and long jail sentences in the 1930s, see the fate of Richard Whitney, former head of President of the NYSE.

He was not the only one.

………

The Biden administration wants to restore faith in government. Its aggressive actions to distribute Covid vaccines and pass the American Recovery Act are important first steps, but not enough. Directing executive branch agencies to enforce the antitrust and securities laws against flagrant violators would be welcome next steps. Doing so against Google and Facebook would begin the process of reforming an industry that continues to act recklessly.

I know I say this a lot, but I want to see them frog-marched out of their offices in handcuffs.

A Return to Normalcy

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I am referring, of course to the the mass shooting in Boulder Colorado today. 

Of course it was in Colorado, you had Columbine, Aurora, Aravada, Aurora again, and now Boulder.

It appears that mass shooters are to Colorado what Florida Man is to Florida.

Please, let’s set about to prying their guns from their cold dead hands.

Almost forgot, thoughts and prayers:

A gunman killed 10 people at a King Soopers in Boulder on Monday afternoon, the latest in a grim litany of mass shootings in Colorado — this one including among its victims a police officer who was first to respond to reports of shots fired at the grocery store.

The suspect was taken into custody, but there were few answers in the following hours. Officials said it would take days to investigate the large crime scene and to notify families that their loved ones had been killed.

………

A gunman killed 10 people at a King Soopers in Boulder on Monday afternoon, the latest in a grim litany of mass shootings in Colorado — this one including among its victims a police officer who was first to respond to reports of shots fired at the grocery store.

The suspect was taken into custody, but there were few answers in the following hours. Officials said it would take days to investigate the large crime scene and to notify families that their loved ones had been killed.

It’s Colorado, so my guess is that their response will be to ……… loosen gun laws even further.

Seriously, just f%$# the NRA.

It’s OK if You Are a Republican (IOKIYAR)

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Remember disgraced former Missiouri Governor Eric Greitens>?

He resigned after credible allegations emerged of rape, blackmail, and other sexual misconduct with hid hair stylist.

In fact, impeachment proceedings had begun by the time he resigned.

Well now, he is looking to run for the US Senate to replace retiring Senator Roy Blunt.

He seems to think that the aforementioned crimes just don’t make a difference, talk about chutzpah:

Former Missouri Republican Gov. Eric Greitens on Monday announced a bid to replace retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

Greitens’s announcement came nearly three years after he resigned as governor amid mounting scandals, including allegations that he photographed a woman nude without her consent in an effort to conceal an extramarital affair.

Despite the scandals, Greitens has floated a Senate bid for weeks, even before Blunt announced his retirement earlier this month. On Monday, he made his decision official.

“I have been so encouraged by the people of Missouri that I am happy to announce tonight that I am running for the United States Senate to continue serving the people of Missouri,” Greitens told Fox News’s Bret Baier.

 Also, he is a Jew, so in addition to being a narcissistic psychopathic megalomaniac, he is a, “Shanda fur die Goyim,” an embarrassment to Jews around the world for his behavior.

It makes him a perfect Republican though.

Linkage

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Leopard Seal tries to show NatGeo photographer how to eat a penguin.  It did not go to said seal’s satisfaction.

“Mishandled?” The Term is “Rioted.”

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At the New York Times, they are describing the response to Black Lives Matter protests by the police as, “Mishandled.”

This is patently wrong, and IMHO deliberately misleading.

The brutality of police in confronting what were largely non-violent protesters were police riots.

Their behavior was deliberate and premeditated:

For many long weeks last summer, protesters in American cities faced off against their own police forces in what proved to be, for major law enforcement agencies across the country, a startling display of violence and disarray.

In Philadelphia, police sprayed tear gas on a crowd of mainly peaceful protesters trapped on an interstate who had nowhere to go and no way to breathe. In Chicago, officers were given arrest kits so old that the plastic handcuffs were decayed or broken. Los Angeles officers were issued highly technical foam-projectile launchers for crowd control, but many of them had only two hours of training; one of the projectiles bloodied the eye of a homeless man in a wheelchair. Nationally, at least eight people were blinded after being hit with police projectiles.

Now, months after the demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police in May, the full scope of the country’s policing response is becoming clearer. More than a dozen after-action evaluations have been completed, looking at how police departments responded to the demonstrations — some of them chaotic and violent, most peaceful — that broke out in hundreds of cities between late May and the end of August.

In city after city, the reports are a damning indictment of police forces that were poorly trained, heavily militarized and stunningly unprepared for the possibility that large numbers of people would surge into the streets, moved by the graphic images of Mr. Floyd’s death under a police officer’s knee.

The police were prepared.  Their goal was to create violence, and some property damage, in an attempt to discredit protestors, and to a significant degree, they succeeded.

This was malice, not ineptitude. 

 

Iawn, Pa Un Ohonoch Chi Sydd Wedi Bod Yn Ffycin Defaid? *

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It appears that as a result of Covid-19, efforts to reduce the population of feral goats has been curtailed, and so feral Llandudno Goats have been running rampant over portions of Wales. 

Is it just me, or does anyone else have an image of some poor bureaucrat trying to convince goats to wear a condom?

The goats of the Great Orme headland in Wales were a worldwide sensation during the first Covid lockdown last year after they were pictured roaming brazenly around the deserted streets of nearby Llandudno.

This year there has been a population explosion of the kashmiri goats in their north Wales headland home after the Covid crisis forced countryside wardens to cancel a planned contraception campaign.

………

Sally Pidcock, warden of the Great Orme country park, said there were estimated to be about 30 billy goats – the males are the ones that tend to travel – at large Llandudno and roughly 150 less adventurous males, plus females and kids, back on the Great Orme.

Pidcock said a campaign to give contraceptive injections to nanny goats last summer had to be postponed because of Covid. “It means there are more kids being born on the Great Orme now than there would have been,” she said. As long as Covid allows, a contraceptive vaccination campaign will take place this summer.

We live in strange times.

*This is Welsh for, “Which one of you boys been f%$#ing the sheep?

バカにつける薬はない*

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In response to raucus partying and a refusal to engage in proper social distancing, Miami Beach has announced a curfew.

Who could have possibly known that a bunch of drunk college students on spring break would take of their masks and swap bodily fluids?

The answer to this question is, “Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together.” 

One day after the spring break oasis of South Beach descended into chaos, with the police struggling to control overwhelming crowds and making scores of arrests, officials in Miami Beach decided on Sunday to extend an emergency curfew for up to three weeks.

The officials there went so far as to approve closing the famed Ocean Drive to all vehicular and pedestrian traffic from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. — the hours of the curfew — for four nights a week through April 12. Residents, hotel guests and employees of local businesses are exempt from the closure.

The strip, frequented by celebrities and tourists alike, was the scene of a much-criticized skirmish on Saturday night between at-times unruly spring breakers who ignored social distancing and masking guidelines, and police officers who used pepper balls to disperse a large crowd just hours after the curfew had been introduced.

The restrictions were a stunning concession to the city’s inability to control unwieldy crowds of revelers that the city and the state of Florida aggressively courted amid the continuing coronavirus pandemic.

Florida, man.

*Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.” Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.

Quote of the Day

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What explains the clampdown mania among liberals? The most obvious answer is because they need an excuse. Consider the history: the right has enjoyed tremendous success over the last few decades, and it is true that conservatives’ capacity for hallucinatory fake-populist appeals has helped them to succeed. But that success has also happened because the Democrats, determined to make themselves the party of the affluent and the highly educated, have allowed the right to get away with it.

—Thomas Frank in The Guardian

He’s right. 

The modern Democratic Party, particularly under Clinton and Obama, was hostile to organized labor, and favored finance and international labor arbitrage over the well-being of the average working American.

How Convenient

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It turns out that Purdue Pharmaceuticals conducted an in-depth probe of the Sackler family, but they are refusing to release the results. 

If the results exonerated anyone, they would been in a press release:

Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, conducted what may be the most extensive investigation yet of the Sackler family, exploring whether they committed crimes or financial improprieties, but the company has kept most of its findings secret.

In a bankruptcy filing late Monday, the drugmaker acknowledged hiring attorneys, forensic accountants and other financial experts to probe members of the family who own the company and profited billions from opioid sales.

According to the filing, the team searched for evidence of wrongdoing by the family, reporting to a special committee of Purdue’s board between April 2019 and earlier this month.

Yet in its filing, Purdue Pharma chose to reveal almost nothing of what investigators uncovered, a decision that infuriates opioid activists and some government officials.

“They’re still trying to cover up the facts,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who has sued the company and it owners, in a statement.

“Purdue’s disclosure filing says it paid its lawyers for a 22,000-hour investigation of the Sacklers, but it doesn’t disclose any of their findings,” she added.

First, the Sacklers decided to become drug pushers, and when they got caught, the Sacklers decided to loot the company before declaring bankruptcy. 

Once again, I think that the best way to deal with this is to apply the Billy Ray Valentine principle, “You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.”