Hypocrite labor unions are exempt from the very same local minimum wage laws that they helped to pass
Labor unions are responsible for passing local minimum wage laws in cities all over the U.S.
But in many of these cities, unions are exempt from the very same minimum wage laws that they helped to pass.
According to this article from the Washington Examiner, hypocrite unions are exempt from the local minimum wage laws in Chicago, Illinois, SeaTac, Washington, and Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, as well as the California cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Long Beach, San Jose, Richmond, and Oakland.
Why would unions support the passage of local minimum wage laws while simultaneously getting exemptions for themselves?
Something sinister must be going on. I don’t trust anyone who isn’t willing to live by the same rules that they expect everyone else to live under.
Apparently, the equal protection clause doesn’t apply to liberal hypocrites.
Shame on unions for not living by the same rules that they expect everyone else to follow.
Where in the world did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez get the idea that three people (as opposed to one) were killed at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia?
This is a link to a tweet by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
And this is a link to an archive of the tweet.
Here’s a screen capture of the tweet:
The tweet states (the bolding is mine):
You were forced out of the Trump Admin for saying white supremacists were “not the problem” days before Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville killed 3 people.
Pretty sure we’re on the right side of history if you’re my opposition.
This is not about atrocity. It’s about how we get there.
Three people?
Where did Ocasio-Cortez get the idea that three people were killed at that event?
The Washington Post, the New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, NPR, PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN all reported that the death toll was one, and that the name of that person is Heather Heyer.
Where exactly does Ocasio-Cortez get her news from?
Of course, this is not nearly first time that I have reported on Ocasio-Cortez being ignorant of commonly known, basic facts that have been widely reported in the news.
She doesn’t know that the judiciary is one of the three branches of the federal government.
She thinks the U.S. has 500 million people.
She thinks there is no upper-middle class in America.
She thinks you’ll never need a funeral if we adopt single payer health care.
She doesn’t know the difference between the defense budget and a one year increase in the defense budget.
She thinks the unemployment rate distinguishes between people who have one job and people who have two jobs.
She thinks the Constitutional requirement for the President to be at least 35 years old only applies to men.
Anyone who regularly reads mainstream news sources would know the true facts about all of those things.
So I really do wonder where it is that Ocasio-Cortez gets her news from.
Something called the “Good Country Index” ranks the U.S. at #38 in “Science and Technology,” while the #1 country in that category is the Ukraine
This is the link to wikipedia’s article on something called the “Good Country Index.”
For the year 2017 (the most recent year available), in the category called “Science and Technology,” the U.S. is ranked all the way down at #38.
Meanwhile, the #1 country in that same category is the Ukraine.
Those two facts are enough to tell me that the “Good Country Index” has no credibility whatsoever.
If you’re interested in other indexes that do have a lot of credibility, I recommend these three:
California Women’s March cancels upcoming event for being “overwhelmingly white”
The California chapter of the Women’s March has canceled an event that had been scheduled for next month, because it would have been “overwhelmingly white.”
The group’s official statement on the cancellation says (the bolding is mine):
“The local organizers are continuing to meet and discuss how to broaden representation in the organizing committee to create an event that represents and supports peoples who live here in Humboldt. Up to this point, the participants have been overwhelmingly white, lacking representation from several perspectives in our community… Instead of pushing forward with crucial voices absent, the organizing team will take time for more outreach. Our goal is that planning will continue and we will be successful in creating an event that will build power and community engagement through connection between women that seek to improve the lives of all in our community.”
Video from Atlanta shows store employee assaulting customer for wearing pro-Trump shirt
This brand new video from Atlanta, Georgia, shows a store employee assaulting a customer for wearing a pro-Trump shirt. The assault occurs at 0:36
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65b7YuGOYMw
The way that Planned Parenthood treats its pregnant employees is cruel, illegal, and extremely hypocritical
The New York Times just published this article, which is titled, “Planned Parenthood Is Accused of Mistreating Pregnant Employees.”
The article cites numerous examples of how Planned Parenthood has given absolutely horrible treatment to its pregnant employees.
Not only are these actions on the part of Planned Parenthood cruel, some of them are also illegal, and all of them are extremely hypocritical.
If there’s any one organization that should treat its pregnant employees with kindness and respect, as well as obeying the laws regarding pregnant employees, it’s Planned Parenthood.
Here are some excerpts from the article, along with my own comments:
Ms. Hairston told the human-resources department for Planned Parenthood’s clinic in White Plains, N.Y., that her high blood pressure was threatening her pregnancy. She sent the department multiple notes from her nurse recommending that she take frequent breaks.
Managers ignored the notes. They rarely gave her time to rest or to take a lunch break, Ms. Hairston said.
“I had to hold back tears talking to pregnant women, telling them to take care of their pregnancies when I couldn’t take care of mine,” she said. “It made me jealous.”
That is just downright plain mean.
Planned Parenthood… has been accused of sidelining, ousting or otherwise handicapping pregnant employees, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees.
In interviews and legal documents, women at Planned Parenthood… described discrimination that violated federal or state laws — managers considering pregnancy in hiring decisions, for example, or denying rest breaks recommended by a doctor.
These are the exact same kinds of illegal treatment of employees that left wing feminists have always claimed to be against. The fact that Planned Parenthood did this to its own pregnant employees is inexcusable, illegal, and terribly hypocritical.
… at Planned Parenthood, the country’s leading provider of reproductive services, managers in some locations declined to hire pregnant job candidates, refused requests by expecting mothers to take breaks and in some cases pushed them out of their jobs after they gave birth, according to current and former employees in California, Texas, North Carolina and New York.
Most Planned Parenthood offices do not provide paid maternity leave
How many zillions of times have left wing feminists said they were in favor of paid maternity leave? And can anyone name an organization that is more left wing feminist than Planned Parenthood? I dare say that these pregnant employees would have been treated far better if they had been working at one of the conservative, right wing, for-profit corporations that left wing feminists are always accusing of being “sexist” and “misogynist.”
A dozen lawsuits filed against Planned Parenthood clinics in federal and state courts since 2013 accused managers of denying workers rest periods, lunch breaks or overtime pay, or retaliating against them for taking medical leave.
Managers have discriminated against pregnant women and new mothers, according to interviews with the current and former Planned Parenthood employees and with organizers from the Office and Professional Employees International Union, which represents some Planned Parenthood workers.
In Miami, one current and two former employees said that women at a Planned Parenthood office were scared to tell managers they were pregnant. One of them said that, in conversations with supervisors, colleagues would often volunteer that they were not planning on having children or were gay or single.
“It was looked down upon for you to get pregnant,” said Carolina Delgado, who worked in the Miami office until 2012. “I don’t think that any supervisor had to literally say it for us to feel it.”
Apparently, Planned Parenthood would rather spend money fighting lawsuits than treat its pregnant employees with respect. Absolutely disgusting.
A former hiring manager at a Planned Parenthood in California said that when internal promotions came up, supervisors openly debated whether candidates were likely to get pregnant in the near future and preferred those who were not. They declined to hire one pregnant woman and to promote one new mother, the employee said. (Under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, it is illegal to consider whether a job candidate is or will become pregnant.)
The former manager said her colleagues felt they couldn’t afford to promote someone only to lose them for several weeks.
Completely despicable. It was left wing feminists who fought so hard to pass the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in the first place. How dare they violate the very same law that they expect everyone else to obey.
49 of Planned Parenthood’s 55 regional offices — which each manage a set of local clinics — do not provide paid maternity leave
89% of Planned Parenthood’s regional offices do not give paid maternity leave to their employees. So why do they even call themselves “Planned Parenthood” in the first place?
Tracy Webber, the former director of clinical services in White Plains, sued the organization for pregnancy discrimination in 2009, saying she had been fired four weeks after giving birth. Planned Parenthood settled for undisclosed terms.
Planned Parenthood fired an employee because she became a parent? That’s mean, and it’s illegal, and especially, it’s the height of hypocrisy.
A woman who worked at Planned Parenthood’s New Rochelle, N.Y., clinic and who declined to be named said in an interview that, when she got pregnant last year, managers ignored her doctor’s note recommending frequent breaks. Her manager asked her to delay her maternity leave and, after she gave birth, pressed her to return early.
The fact that Planned Parenthood ignored a doctor’s note from one of its own pregnant employees makes me wonder about the quality of the medical care and advice that Planned Parenthood gives to its own clients.
A medical assistant at the same clinic was fired in May 2018, the day she returned from maternity leave, according to a former human resources manager who oversaw the clinic. Jonas Urba, the woman’s lawyer, said she reached a confidential resolution with Planned Parenthood.
Once again, Planned Parenthood fired one of its employees because she became a parent. This kind of behavior by Planned Parenthood is extraordinarily hypocritical.
When Ms. Hairston asked for regular breaks, including 30 minutes for lunch, her supervisors brushed her off. Ms. Hairston said she sent multiple notes from her nurse at Full Circle Women’s Health to the regional office’s human resources department, stating that the extra breaks were medically necessary. No one responded, and nothing changed, according to Ms. Hairston and the former human resources manager.
Ms. Hairston’s hands and feet swelled; the clinic’s plastic gloves no longer fit. Her blood pressure got so high that her doctor put her on bed rest when she was seven months pregnant.
She returned to work on strict orders to not work more than six hours a day and to take regular breaks. One day in March, she worked a much longer shift. She soon became so sick that her doctor told her to go back on bed rest. A few days later, on March 23, she went to the hospital. Doctors performed an emergency C-section. She was 34 weeks pregnant.
When she had been on maternity leave for eight of the 12 weeks guaranteed by the Family and Medical Leave Act, Planned Parenthood’s human resources department called her multiple times and urged her to return to work early, Ms. Hairston said. She emailed the department and said she felt “discriminated against.” She resigned in June.
So this is how Planned Parenthood treats pregnant women. This is astoundingly horrendous. Shame on Planned Parenthood for treating women the exact opposite of the way Planned Parenthood tries to depict itself in its publicity material.
So, there you have it. Planned Parenthood is mean to its pregnant employees, it breaks the very laws that it claims to support, and it apparently has no interest in helping its female employees who “plan” to become “parents,” despite that being the organization’s very name.
New York Times: Planned Parenthood Is Accused of Mistreating Pregnant Employees
Not only are these actions on the part of Planned Parenthood cruel, some of them are also illegal, and all of them are extremely hypocritical.
If there’s any one organization that should treat pregnant employees with kindness and respect, as well as obeying the laws regarding pregnant employees, it’s Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood Is Accused of Mistreating Pregnant Employees
Employers that champion women face accusations of discriminating against their pregnant workers, showing how widespread the problem is in American workplaces.
December 20, 2018
As a medical assistant at Planned Parenthood, Ta’Lisa Hairston urged pregnant women to take rest breaks at work, stay hydrated and, please, eat regular meals.
Then she got pregnant and couldn’t follow her own advice.
Last winter, Ms. Hairston told the human-resources department for Planned Parenthood’s clinic in White Plains, N.Y., that her high blood pressure was threatening her pregnancy. She sent the department multiple notes from her nurse recommending that she take frequent breaks.
Managers ignored the notes. They rarely gave her time to rest or to take a lunch break, Ms. Hairston said.
“I had to hold back tears talking to pregnant women, telling them to take care of their pregnancies when I couldn’t take care of mine,” she said. “It made me jealous.”
Discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers remains widespread in the American workplace. It is so pervasive that even organizations that define themselves as champions of women are struggling with the problem.
That includes Planned Parenthood, which has been accused of sidelining, ousting or otherwise handicapping pregnant employees, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees.
In interviews and legal documents, women at Planned Parenthood and other organizations with a feminist bent described discrimination that violated federal or state laws — managers considering pregnancy in hiring decisions, for example, or denying rest breaks recommended by a doctor.
In other cases, the bias was more subtle. Many women said they were afraid to announce a pregnancy at work, sensing they would be seen as abandoning their colleagues.
Some of those employers saw accommodating expecting mothers as expensive and inconvenient. Others were unsympathetic to workers seeking special treatment.
At Natera, which sells genetic tests for pregnant women, two former employees, Melissa Blain Johnson and Judit Rigo, said they were demoted while on maternity leave. Ms. Johnson, who has sued Natera, also said that she was left feeling like a “guinea pig” when her boss suggested that she and another pregnant employee pose as patients and get genetically tested by a rival company.
“Ms. Johnson’s employment at Natera was not influenced inappropriately by her pregnancy or subsequent maternity leave,” said Anna Czene, a Natera spokeswoman. “The same was true for Ms. Rigo.”
At Avon, which calls itself “the company for women,” two employees in a cosmetics-testing lab have sued for being forced to handle toxic chemicals while pregnant. A marketing executive, Caroline Ruiz, also said she was fired four days after announcing her pregnancy.
Paige Cali, a spokeswoman for Avon, said the company “strongly denies claims of discrimination.”
At Mehri & Skalet, a progressive law firm suing Walmart for pregnancy discrimination, three lawyers have accused a founding partner, Cyrus Mehri, of mistreatment. Heidi Burakiewicz said Mr. Mehri pressured her to return early from maternity leave. Sandi Farrell was told to participate in a performance review during her leave, and when she asked to postpone it she was fired. Taryn Wilgus Null said Mr. Mehri questioned her child care arrangements in a performance review after she returned from leave.
Mr. Mehri said he strongly denied the accusations and that no one was mistreated after giving birth. He said that Ms. Burakiewicz’s allegation “is a lie, plain and simple,” that Ms. Farrell had performance problems and that Ms. Null, now a lawyer at the Justice Department, misinterpreted his comments.
And at Planned Parenthood, the country’s leading provider of reproductive services, managers in some locations declined to hire pregnant job candidates, refused requests by expecting mothers to take breaks and in some cases pushed them out of their jobs after they gave birth, according to current and former employees in California, Texas, North Carolina and New York.
Most Planned Parenthood offices do not provide paid maternity leave, though many let new mothers take partially paid disability leave.
“I believe we must do better than we are now,” Leana Wen, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “It’s our obligation to do better, for our staff, for their families and for our patients.”
Ms. Wen said the organization was investigating the allegations of pregnancy discrimination reported by The New York Times. The organization also is conducting a review to determine the cost of providing paid maternity leave to nearly 12,000 employees nationwide.
Vincent Russell, the regional chief executive who oversees the office where Ms. Hairston worked, denied her accusations.
While Planned Parenthood’s clinics and regional offices brought in about $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2016 — half from private donations and half from the government, to reimburse treatment provided to Medicaid patients — conservative lawmakers routinely threaten to kill its taxpayer funding. With their finances precarious, the clinics pay modest salaries to the employees who provide health care — abortions, cancer screenings, prenatal care, disease testing — to 2.4 million mostly low-income patients every year.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has its headquarters in Manhattan. The clinics that serve women are run by 55 regional affiliates with their own chief executives and human resources policies. They receive some money and support from headquarters.
Tight budgets sometimes created punishing workplace conditions, employees said. A dozen lawsuits filed against Planned Parenthood clinics in federal and state courts since 2013 accused managers of denying workers rest periods, lunch breaks or overtime pay, or retaliating against them for taking medical leave.
Managers have discriminated against pregnant women and new mothers, according to interviews with the current and former Planned Parenthood employees and with organizers from the Office and Professional Employees International Union, which represents some Planned Parenthood workers.
In Miami, one current and two former employees said that women at a Planned Parenthood office were scared to tell managers they were pregnant. One of them said that, in conversations with supervisors, colleagues would often volunteer that they were not planning on having children or were gay or single.
“It was looked down upon for you to get pregnant,” said Carolina Delgado, who worked in the Miami office until 2012. “I don’t think that any supervisor had to literally say it for us to feel it.”
Dannette Hill, Planned Parenthood’s head of human resources, said that most parents who work in the Miami office have been promoted after returning from leave.
A former hiring manager at a Planned Parenthood in California said that when internal promotions came up, supervisors openly debated whether candidates were likely to get pregnant in the near future and preferred those who were not. They declined to hire one pregnant woman and to promote one new mother, the employee said. (Under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, it is illegal to consider whether a job candidate is or will become pregnant.)
The former manager said her colleagues felt they couldn’t afford to promote someone only to lose them for several weeks.
Financial pressures also explain why 49 of Planned Parenthood’s 55 regional offices — which each manage a set of local clinics — do not provide paid maternity leave. Employees in about 20 of those regions can use short-term disability to earn a portion of their salaries while on leave. The New York headquarters provides six weeks of paid parental leave.
Last year, Christine Charbonneau, who runs the regional office in Seattle, asked her human resources department to find out how much it would cost to cover maternity leave for the region. The estimate: $2 million a year. That is the entire annual budget of some clinics.
Ms. Charbonneau’s office, which oversees 27 clinics in the Northwest, generates $77 million a year in revenue. But states like Washington and Idaho have cut government funding in recent years. Paying for maternity leave, Ms. Charbonneau said, could force her to close clinics.
“It is easy to accuse someone of hypocrisy if you’re not the one trying to find $2 million out of thin air,” she said. “You try to be the Planned Parenthood that donors expect, and yet it is unattainable.”
Planned Parenthood’s policies, though, can make it hard for employees to scrape by after giving birth.
In August, Marissa Hamilton, an employee at Planned Parenthood in Colorado, gave birth to a baby boy. He was eight weeks premature, weighed less than four pounds and spent weeks in neonatal intensive care. The office doesn’t provide paid maternity leave.
In September, she started a fund-raiser on GoFundMe. On the appeals page, Ms. Hamilton wrote that she was under financial strain because “On top of medical bills I cannot work.” She set the goal at $15,000. So far she has raised $1,995.
Multiple Planned Parenthood executives said in interviews that they were eager for The Times to publish an article about the lack of paid maternity leave because they hoped it would lead to changes in the organization’s policies.
Ms. Hairston, the former medical assistant, took the job in 2015 because she believed in the group’s mission. “Planned Parenthood helped me give women a voice to do what they wanted with their bodies,” she said.
Ms. Hairston, 27, counseled women who wanted abortions and checked up on those carrying to term. She said she rarely took lunch and often spent 10-hour shifts on her feet.
She figured that there would be no better place to work while pregnant than a clinic that dealt with expecting mothers every day.
But Planned Parenthood’s Westchester County clinics, overseen by a regional office in Hawthorne, N.Y., had a history of issues with pregnant employees.
Tracy Webber, the former director of clinical services in White Plains, sued the organization for pregnancy discrimination in 2009, saying she had been fired four weeks after giving birth. Planned Parenthood settled for undisclosed terms.
A woman who worked at Planned Parenthood’s New Rochelle, N.Y., clinic and who declined to be named said in an interview that, when she got pregnant last year, managers ignored her doctor’s note recommending frequent breaks. Her manager asked her to delay her maternity leave and, after she gave birth, pressed her to return early.
A medical assistant at the same clinic was fired in May 2018, the day she returned from maternity leave, according to a former human resources manager who oversaw the clinic. Jonas Urba, the woman’s lawyer, said she reached a confidential resolution with Planned Parenthood.
The former human resources manager, who requested anonymity, said that executives assumed that when a pregnant worker brought in a doctor’s note, it was an excuse to work less. People who took sick days were perceived as lacking commitment.
“All the individuals identified in the article were treated fairly and equitably, free of any discrimination,” said Mr. Russell, the head of Planned Parenthood’s Hawthorne office.
When Ms. Hairston asked for regular breaks, including 30 minutes for lunch, her supervisors brushed her off. Ms. Hairston said she sent multiple notes from her nurse at Full Circle Women’s Health to the regional office’s human resources department, stating that the extra breaks were medically necessary. No one responded, and nothing changed, according to Ms. Hairston and the former human resources manager.
Ms. Hairston’s hands and feet swelled; the clinic’s plastic gloves no longer fit. Her blood pressure got so high that her doctor put her on bed rest when she was seven months pregnant.
She returned to work on strict orders to not work more than six hours a day and to take regular breaks. One day in March, she worked a much longer shift. She soon became so sick that her doctor told her to go back on bed rest. A few days later, on March 23, she went to the hospital. Doctors performed an emergency C-section. She was 34 weeks pregnant.
When she had been on maternity leave for eight of the 12 weeks guaranteed by the Family and Medical Leave Act, Planned Parenthood’s human resources department called her multiple times and urged her to return to work early, Ms. Hairston said. She emailed the department and said she felt “discriminated against.” She resigned in June.
“I didn’t get into the medical field to be treated like this,” she said.
The last she heard from Planned Parenthood was a letter asking her to donate money. She threw it in the trash.
France3, a French media outlet, has altered a photograph of a protest to change an anti-Macron sign into a pro-Macron sign
France3, a French media outlet, has altered a photograph of a political protest sign to make the message on the sign the exact opposite of what is actually on the sign.
The original sign (if translated to English) says, “Macron Resign.”
But France3 removed the word “resign,” thus changing the meaning of the sign from anti-Macron to pro-Macron.
A spokesperson from France3 said this alteration was due to “human error.”
I’m not buying that. How do you “accidentally” use Photoshop (or whatever they were using) to cover up part of a sign?
Here’s the original, unaltered photograph of the sign (all photos are from this link):
And here’s the altered photograph of the sign:
And here are the two versions side by side
Video: Getting revenge on package thieves with a glitter bomb and fart spray
After someone stole a package from this guy’s porch, the owner created a booby trap for the thief. It contains a glitter bomb, fart spray, multiple cameras, a microphone, and a GPS tracking device.
I watched and enjoyed the entire 11 minute video, but if you only want to see the multiple times the booby trap goes off on the different thieves, skip to 5:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxhDk-hwuo
Rebecca Watson: The CDC can take my cookie dough out of my cold, dead, E. coli-infested hands
This is one of the reasons why Rebecca Watson is one of my favorite liberals. She uses statistics to explain why you can ignore the government’s warning against eating raw cookie dough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8meTpecIt0M
Huffington Post falsely says the reason blacks murder other blacks is because of “systemic racism”
Huffington Post just published this article, which is called “The Quiet Crisis Killing Black Women.”
The article talks about a black woman who was murdered by her boyfriend.
Instead of blaming the boyfriend for the murder, Huffington Post blames it on “systemic racism.”
Here’s an excerpt from the article. The bolding is mine:
In the U.S., black women face higher rates of domestic violence than do women of all other races, except Native women. In Dallas County, the most likely type of person to be killed by a romantic partner is a black woman, age 20 to 29, just like Delashon. Black women are four times more likely than their white peers to be murdered by a boyfriend or girlfriend, and twice as likely to be killed by a spouse. And they are seven times more likely to be slain while pregnant than white women.
Experts say this is not because black men are more violent. Rather, black women are more vulnerable to domestic violence due to a constellation of factors, including high rates of poverty, lack of access to resources and systemic racism within systems designed to help victims of abuse.
And there you have it.
According to Huffington Post, it’s not the murderer’s fault that this woman was murdered.
Instead, the blame gets placed on “systemic racism.”
Also, this is not the first time the boyfriend violently abused the girlfriend. The article cites multiples examples of previous abuse. There were multiple witnesses. But they, as well as the victim, didn’t want to testify due to a strong belief in “Stop Snitchin’.”
They actually sell this t-shirt. (Image from this link.)
What a horrible fashion choice!
Anyway, the article’s subtitle is:
“Dallas police say Delashon Jefferson, 20, was fatally shot by her boyfriend after years of abuse. Could her death have been prevented?”
Could her death have been prevented?
What a ridiculous question to ask.
Of course her death could have been prevented.
If the witnesses and the victim had been willing to testify against the violent boyfriend, then he would have been in jail, instead of being out of jail and murdering the victim.
I guess the witnesses and the victim didn’t want the violent boyfriend to be in jail because that, too, would have been an example of “systemic racism.”
Woman takes mitochondrial DNA test to find out which African tribe she descends from, and is horrified to find out that her mitochondrial DNA is of “non-African lineage”
In the first five minutes of this video, this woman goes on and on about how happy and excited she is because she just got back the results of her mitochondrial DNA test. She took the test because she wanted to find out which African tribe or tribes she is descended from. A person (male or female) inherits Mitochondrial DNA solely from their mother.
After five minutes of joyous anticipation, she finally opens the envelope and looks at the results.
She is absolutely devastated to find out that her mitochondrial DNA is of “non-African lineage.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5u_jTzwbL0
In Pittsburgh, idiot protestors are falsely claiming that it’s too hard for poor people to buy a ConnectCard that costs one dollar, and is sold at more than 100 locations
I live in Pittsburgh, PA.
I’m a regular rider of our mass transit system, which is called Port Authority Transit (PAT).
A few years ago, PAT adopted a new program where riders could pay their fare by swiping a card which is called the ConnectCard. The card is available at more than 100 locations, including every Giant Eagle (our city’s biggest supermarket chain), every Goodwill store, the downtown PAT office, and many other areas all over the city. Pretty much every bus route goes by a place that sells the ConnectCard.
The card costs one dollar. Riders can electronically put as much of their own funds as they want on the card. Then when they ride the bus, they pay the fare by swiping their card, instead of paying cash.
In order to encourage riders to use the ConnectCard, PAT offers a discount on fares. A cash fare costs $2.75. People who pay with their ConnectCard get a 25 cent discount.
A transfer (a person’s second ride within a three hour period) costs $2.75 if they pay in cash, but only $1.00 if they use their ConnectCard.
Thus, a round trip within three hours costs $5.50 for someone who pays in cash, vs only $3.50 for someone who uses their ConnectCard. That’s a discount of two dollars for using the ConnectCard. And the card only costs a dollar.
Thus, the very first time that a person uses their ConnectCard to make a round trip in under three hours, the card has more than paid for itself.
Even if someone has eight hours between trips, that’s still a savings of 25 cents per trip, meaning that the card will pay for itself after only two such round trips.
Despite this, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently published this article, which says that there are protestors who are complaining that it’s “unfair” to poor people that PAT gives these discounts to people who use the ConnectCard.
Now please keep in mind, as I already said, the card only costs a dollar, and it more than pays for itself the very first time you use it for a round trip that’s under three hours.
And as I said, the card is available at a huge number of places along bus routes.
Despite this, the protestors whined that it was “unfair” to poor people that people who paid in cash had to pay higher fares.
The article said the protestors were worried about the “upfront costs” of buying the card.
And the protestors said it was too hard to get to locations that sell the card.
What a bunch of idiots.
The only thing that’s preventing these protestors from getting a ConnectCard is their irrational insistence on viewing themselves as victims of a problem that does not exist.
If the protesters had spent their time buying a ConnectCard instead of protesting, their “problem” would be solved.
Anyone who rides the bus has access to more than 100 locations where they can purchase a ConnectCard.
Every Giant Eagle and every Goodwill sells them.
Since the protest took place downtown, the protestors could have gone a very short distance (by walking or riding the bus) to Port Authority’s Downtown Service Center to buy one.
Protestors’ concerns about “upfront costs” are unfounded, as the card only costs a dollar, and it pays for itself almost immediately.
The article also said that this issue was especially hard on “single mothers.” Well, whose fault is it that they are “single mothers” in the first place? Just like with people who refuse to get a ConnectCard, “single motherhood” is a case of victimhood taking the place of personal responsibility.
Let’s consider two groups of people in the U.S. The first group has a poverty rate of 2%. The second group has a poverty rate of 76%.
The first group consists of people who followed all three of these steps:
1) Finish high school.
2) Get a full-time job.
3) Wait until age 21 and get married before having children.
The second group consists of people who followed zero of those three steps.
Among people who follow all three of these steps, the poverty rate is 2%.
Among people who follow zero of these steps, the poverty rate is 76%.
(My source for that information is this article, which refers to this PDF, and the relevant data is on page 15 of the PDF. The study uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau.)
Despite this, social justice warriors want us to think that “single mothers” living in poverty are somehow innocent victims, instead of people who have free will.
The solution to almost all poverty is to follow the three rules listed above.
And the solution to not having a ConnectCard is to buy one.
Scott Adams: How Google is Ruining my Life for Political Reason
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qMXDGFzLzo
Ballot harvesting: “We’re offering this service, but only for people who are supporting the Democratic Party”
The activity in the video below is called “ballot harvesting,” and it’s 100% legal in California, where this was filmed.
The state sends ballots to every registered voter. When people engage in “ballot harvesting,” they go to voters’ houses, offer to “help” them fill in their ballot, and then offer to mail their ballot for them.
At 0:43 in this video, the woman who is doing the “ballot harvesting” says:
“We’re offering this service, but only for people who are supporting the Democratic Party”
I don’t know if that particular part is legal.
But it sure doesn’t seem ethical to me.
And it’s certainly hypocritical for a party that is always saying it wants to count “all” the votes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s-9Q_N09H0
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just violated House Ethics rules when she threatened to use her Congressional power of subpoena against someone who criticized her
According to this news article that was just published by CNN, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted the following:
I have noticed that Junior here has a habit of posting nonsense about me whenever the Mueller investigation heats up.
Please, keep it coming Jr – it’s definitely a “very, very large brain” idea to troll a member of a body that will have subpoena power in a month.
Have fun!
Ocasio-Cortez is threatening to use her power as a federal lawmaker to punish someone who exercised his first amendment right to free speech.
Such a threat is a violation of House Ethics rules.
The Congressional Committee on Ethics states:
https://ethics.house.gov/campaign-activity/campaign-contributions-and-contributors
Members and staff are not to take or withhold any official action on the basis of the campaign contributions or support of the involved individuals, or their partisan affiliation. Members and staff are likewise prohibited from threatening punitive action on the basis of such considerations.
In California, bottle recycling is mandatory, except when it’s illegal
California requires people to recycle their empty bottles.
However, this recent news article from the Merced Sun-Star says that three people have been charged with “recycling fraud” in California, because the bottles they recycled were “smuggled” into California from Arizona. The bottles from both states are physically identical to each other, but the price paid for the bottles is higher in California than in Arizona.
In the private sector, this kind of behavior is completely legal, and it’s called “arbitrage.” This is what wikipedia says about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage
Arbitrage
In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices.
This video shows an example of legal arbitrage. In the video, a guy goes to a bunch of Wal-Marts, buys up every copy of Monopoly for Millennials for $19.82 each, and sells them online for three times that price:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FknkqT5tHK8
What that guy in the video did is 100% legal.
But for some strange reason, the people who sold bottles from Arizona in California were breaking the law.
Even though the bottles that they sold were real bottles, they were charged with “fraud.”
And even though the bottles from Arizona were physically identical to the bottles from California, they were charged with “smuggling.”
It’s completely ridiculous that this is illegal.
The people who bought Monopoly for Millennials from that guy in the video don’t care where it came from. As long they get what they paid for, they are happy.
But for some weird reason, politicians seem to think that there is some inherent difference between bottles from California and bottles from Arizona.
In the real world, the only difference is the price. There is no physical difference between the bottles.
If recycling bottles was truly a good idea, then California would be happy to recycle bottles from Arizona, just like the customers who bought Monopoly for Millennials from that guy in the video were happy to buy what they bought. If the item in question is truly valuable, then the buyer won’t care where it came from.
Therefore, for California to mandate bottle recycling in some cases, while outlawing it in other cases – even though the bottles involved in both cases are physically identical to each other – is absurd.
Here’s a clip from “The Bottle Deposit” from season 7 of Seinfeld, where Kramer and Newman try to make money by recycling bottles from New York in Michigan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGJZcHgqX1g
Homer Simpson’s ignorance of New Mexico’s statehood is now being replicated by multiple real life government employees in Washington D.C.
When I read this recent news article, it reminded me of this joke from The Simpsons. In 1993, during the season 5 episode “Boy-Scoutz ‘n the Hood,” Homer was shown to not know that New Mexico was a U.S. state. Here’s a video of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3jYO0TKcm4
When I was searching for that video, I found out that The Simpsons had later recycled that same joke with Mr. Burns seven seasons later in the episode “Homer vs. Dignity,” which I had never seen, because it aired several years after I had stopped watching new episodes due to the series having jumped the shark. Here’s a video of that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEJzXbqyU8A
Anyway, the recent news article talks about how a citizen of New Mexico had applied for a marriage license in Washington D.C., but the government clerk was not willing to accept the man’s New Mexico driver’s license as proof of U.S. citizenship. The clerk said that the man would need a passport.
Such ignorance among a government employee who handles these kinds of things is inexcusable.
And how is it even possible for an adult who lives in the U.S. to not know that there is a U.S. state called New Mexico?
It was funny when Homer Simpson – a fictional character – displayed such ignorance.
But it’s pathetic to be coming from a real life employee of the Washington D.C. government.
To make it worse, when the clerk went to ask a supervisor about this, the supervisor was also unaware that New Mexico was a U.S. state. The supervisor also said that the man would need a passport.
All together, it took a whopping 20 minutes until one of the multiple government employees in the department was finally willing to admit that New Mexico was indeed a U.S. state.
Couple forced to prove that New Mexico is a state while applying for marriage license
November 29, 2018
LAS CRUCES — Gavin Clarkson, a recent candidate for New Mexico secretary of state, experienced a one-of-our-50-is-missing moment earlier this month when applying for a marriage license in the nation’s capital.
Clarkson, who lives in Las Cruces, and his then-fiancée visited the District of Columbia Courts Marriage Bureau on Nov. 20 to apply for a marriage license.
But, once there, the couple encountered a small problem, Clarkson said. The clerk wouldn’t accept Clarkson’s driver’s license — from New Mexico — as proof of his identity. Rather, the clerk, who mistakenly believed Clarkson was a foreign citizen — said he would have to provide an international passport to get the marriage license.
After Clarkson objected, the clerk went to check with a supervisor, who confirmed Clarkson would need a passport.
“You know you are from flyover country when you are applying for a marriage license, give them your New Mexico driver’s license, and they come back and say: ‘My supervisor says we cannot accept international driver’s licenses. Do you have a New Mexico passport?'” Clarkson posted on Facebook recently.
Repeat attempt
Speaking with the Sun-News about the incident, Clarkson said the clerk went back to check a second time about whether she could accept a New Mexico driver’s license as proof of identify. After that, the personnel finally concluded New Mexico was in fact a U.S. state and accepted his driver’s license along with the application.
Clarkson, who has called New Mexico home since 2012, said he’s heard about the state’s residents experiencing such incidents when traveling, but “it was the first time it happened to me.”
“She thought New Mexico was a foreign country,” he said of the clerk. “All the couples behind us waiting in line were laughing.”
Clarkson’s wife, Marina, immigrated from Argentina in the 1990s, becoming a legal permanent resident and then a naturalized U.S. citizen. She speaks English fluently, though she has a slight accent. But the clerk complimented Clarkson, not Marina, on how well he spoke the language. He said his wife was in disbelief, wondering: “Why are you complimenting him on his English?”
‘It was a comical moment’
The incident took about 20 minutes altogether, and the clerk kindly apologized for the error, Clarkson said. While it was an annoyance at the time, looking back, he and his wife see the humor in it. The couple’s wedding ceremony — which also took place in Washington, D.C., where his wife lives — took place without any problems.
“Everything else went fine, but it was a comical moment in the whole process,” he said.
Notably, Clarkson is also an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation. If he’d shown that ID to the marriage bureau, he said, it could have cleared up the confusion over his identity.
“Apparently it would have been easier if I’d shown her my tribal ID,” he said.
The D.C. courts system acknowledged the staff error in response to a call from the Sun-News.
“We understand that a clerk in our Marriage Bureau made a mistake regarding New Mexico’s 106-year history as a state,” said Leah H. Gurowitz, director of media and public relations for D.C. Courts, in an email. “We very much regret the error and the slight delay it caused a New Mexico resident in applying for a DC marriage license.”
Not alone
Clarkson is not alone in his experience applying for a marriage license. In a regular feature dubbed “One of Our 50 is Missing,” New Mexico Magazine for years has documented with comedic flair New Mexicans’ frustrations and trials in trying to persuade non-New Mexicans across the country — and sometimes the world — that New Mexico is in fact one of the 50 U.S. states.
The Clarksons have since celebrated their wedding with a reception in Texas, where Marina’s family live; they plan to also have a reception in New Mexico.
Since the Nov. 6 election, Clarkson, who was the GOP’s nominee for New Mexico secretary of state, said he’s been in “recovery mode,” but he’s keeping his options open about what he’ll do next. He does plan to stay in New Mexico.
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 