The $15 An Hour Wage Discussion

 There is this great article I picked up today....entitled: "Why a One Size-Fits-All Federal Wage Makes No Sense."  I'll lay out the site over here.  It's written by Martha Njolomole.  Great piece and I recommend a read.

It lays out two basic issues.  

First, State by state, and city by city.....it's crap.  A guy making $15 as minimum wage in NY City....is marginally living, while the guy in some place like Dothan, Alabama is living in fairly decent status.  I didn't use the word luxurious....but you could go a long way in Dothan with $2,400 a month.  The situation in NY City, Boston, or Burbank....wouldn't match up with Dothan lifestyle.

This is something that I've remarked about a great deal as I've traveled across Europe, the US and the globe itself over the past twenty-odd years.

A guy working at McDonalds in west Texas....given the minimum wage of $15, with no state tax....could live in a very happy status.  

But then we come to second issue that is written about in the article....all work isn't even.  An entry-level kid....sixteen years old....isn't at the same status of of a twenty-two year old guy with four years of Piggly Wiggly clerk status.  You start talking about background, maturity, willing nature, inability to learn beyond a certain level.....it's hard to say that America really deserves this one-size-fits-all pay status.

I've had a total of two part-time professions in my life, after I left the farm.  Neither were jobs that held for a life-time of work.

I worked for roughly four months in 1978 as a Tiger Air loader....at the Frankfurt Airport.  I'd show up around 6 PM with a couple of Air Force guys who wanted part-time work.  

Huns would show us the two-dozen steel pallets laid out and we'd move cargo onto them....then strap them down.  Sometimes it was Italian-made shoes....sometimes it was French-made bras.  Occasionally, there would the twenty-odd animal crates that you'd stack up for pets being shipped.  On rare occasions, there would be an expensive car.  

Around 11 PM, the plane would land.  We had three hours to get everything off, and reload it.  By 2 AM, it was supposed to be reviving up and getting out to the runway.  Our job officially ended at that point....eight hours.  We were led to the central office....paid in cash (no paperwork, no taxes)....around the sum of what would be today 80 Euro (figure $100 roughly).  I did this once a week....for about two months, then skipped a few weeks, returned to another two months.  

It was no-brainer work....it was extremely critical on timing.  Everything had to be done and ready by the 11 PM arrival.  They needed dependable folks to show up....avoid sloughing off, or delaying that 2 AM take-off.  

The second part-time occurred in Tacoma, Washington....for about three weeks.  It was strictly a Saturday night event...at some warehouse....to stack gear for Monday morning pick-ups.  Ten bays were laid out.....I worked with a second guy and did a full ten hour bit for $6 an hour (that was 1980).  

There is no way of balancing things and saying x-number of people are deserving of $15 an hour, and that x-number are too immature, too unreliable, or too stupid.  

I sat and watched an interview around five years ago....a guy had a decent business of making ceramic beer mugs.  His little factory probably generated around a-million dollars in sales each year.  He needed around fifteen people to show up on time.  He had ten older employees who could handle the demands and the low stress environment.  The other five positions were constantly being filled with new folks who were never dependable or capable of passing the drug-test (yes, he'd gone to mandating that as part of the job-requirement).  Around every month or two, he'd miss a contract demand....because these two guys never showed up for work, or this guy slept through the afternoon. 

It's a total waste of time to size up this $15-an-hour gimmick and think that it'll resolve issues.  It'll just take a number of messy problems now, and flip them into even weirder problems in five years.  

If you lived in some town like Houston and started to notice more than 30,000 folks who were continually hired-up and fired in sixty-to-ninety day cycles, and the state unemployment office was now forced into paying fairly incompetent and crapped-out people....somewhere in the range of $15 an hour to be unemployed....how do you think that will work?  

All fifty states are going to have some problem to occur in five to seven years, with unemployment 'pits' and a fairly high cost of paying off people who just can't work at the level required.  For the guys and gals who will support this mechanism?  More state taxes coming down the road.  

The National Guardsmen Landscape in DC

 I would suggest that five landscapes now exist for what you see in DC, with the Guardsmen:

1.  It just looks an awful lot like the Baghdad 'Green-Zone'....oddly enough was a 4 square mile area, which is what the current secure area of DC amounts to.

Guardsmen over the age of thirty-five probably remember the Green Zone and did some time there in their youth.

They too....left duty and slept in warehouses/older hotels at the end of their duty-day.

2.  The landscape gives this image of President Biden/Congress/Senate existing.....only, if the Guardsmen are there and protecting them.

3.  A lot of this script resembles the safety concerns of locals in Kent, Ohio in April/May of 1970.  Local cops were not of a sufficient number to protect the business zone of Kent, and disturbances reached a point where the governor of the state was called upon to deploy Guardsmen to protect the city and the campus.

4.  Another segment of this script resembles May, June and July of 1932, where the Bonus-Army riot occurred.  Note, it was the US military that was called in to settle that mess, and caused Hoover to be voted out of office in November.

5.  If you looked at things on 4th/5th of January....what idiot in charge of security of the Capital building would not have increased security, putting up barriers, and ensuring all days were locked and secured?  This looks more like a mall-guard assembly of people instead of actual law enforcement.  Then you bring the Guardsmen in to be what the Capital Police could never be? 

I will suggest this...if we come to May and 7,000 Guardsmen are still in DC, with the suggestion that a 3,500 number of Guardsmen will not go away in 2022 until 3,000 new/extra Capital Police are hired and in place....there's something seriously wrong with trust in Congress or the leadership authority of the nation.

If the new Capital Police of 2023....resemble a group of jackboot Green-Zone thugs, with 50-cal weapons and armored vehicles parked around a dozen areas of the DC Green-Zone?  Something will be seriously wrong with the new democracy that we have.  

What is this Putin Mansion?

 Around two weeks ago, pictures finally emerged of this fantastic mansion that had been built over on the Black Sea area, and is rumored to be Putin's personal mansion.

So to the facts:

1.  At some point between 1999 and 2009, work started on this piece of property.  Some comments did get out in 2010, but they were mostly dismissed.

2.  The rumored owner of the building?  Alexander Anatolyevich Ponomarenko.  You probably never heard of the guy, but he's fairly well off and done business in the building/operation of sea ports, runs some banks, and built a couple of profitable airports.  

3.  Money spent on the house?  Some people openly suggest a minimum of one billion dollars.  Some even suggest up to around $1.3-billion.

4.  How long have people actually known about the mansion?  Well....at least a decade, but it just never got into the mainstream news.  

So the question is....is it really Putin-property, or someone else's property?  Zero proof other than various folks bickering about this whole discussion. 

If you asked me if this fits Putin's style?  I'd say no....he likes the big open landscape and probably would prefer a luxurious cabin situation in the middle of some national park area.

So this might all be some fake scandal accusation?  Maybe.  But this is how wild and crazy speculation goes in Russia today.  

Atlanta 'Hammers'?

 Some weird activist group started up a trending topic yesterday....with the death of former Braves great, Hank Aaron.  His nickname during his career....'Hammer' of course.  

Since Braves is considered bad form, the subject group suggested that the Atlanta team rename itself....the Atlanta Hammers.

Odds of this happening?  Ten years ago, I would have said 1-percent chance.  Today, I'd say it's near 40-percent.

The thing about this as the name and symbol of the team?  Well....if you go and type 'hammer' into google....you tend to get a symbol of a hammer and sickle (the Communist brand).

The symbiology through history of the hammer?  It's supposed to mean sacrificial efforts were made....affecting society and culture.  You gave up something of value and signficance....to get something that you thought was of more value (usually it wasn't).

The Braves name?  This goes back to the 1870s, when some Cincinnati baseball folks packed up and left for the east coast.  Arriving in Boston, they found interest in a team, but this ran through several decades of varying economic success and different names being used.  

At some point in 1898....the team caught on fire and had a 102-47 record....which if you did the statistical average, it's one of the impossible records possible.

The team fell apart in 1901, when the league agreed to a second Boston team in the local area.  Fan support dropped by a substantial amount.

From a period of 1900 to 1913....the changing names soon-to-be-the-Braves team was crap.  At some point in 1912....the name 'Braves' started up and by 1914....the luck of the team had changed, in an odd way.

The 1914 season has the Braves in last place at the end of the first 22 games.  Somewhere around the halfway point of 1914....they were around 26 wins and 40 losses.  Then some crazy action occurred, and the team wrapped up the season at the top of the National League.  It's one of those stories talked about on a rare basis, and no one jumps into the season....where the Braves go onto the World Series and defeat the A's.

From that point on....they were the Boston Braves.  

Babe Ruth, a member of the Braves?  No one mentions this much, but in 1935....the Yankees traded Ruth away.  Ruth came to the Braves and played a brief 28 games, then retired from baseball (not even making it to the mid-way point).  That season for the Braves?  One of the worst of all time, with only 38 total wins at the end of the season.  

If this goes to a name-change...to the Hammers?  I suspect it'll be around for three or four seasons, and the players will mostly all agree that Hammers doesn't work and everyone is using the stupid hammer-and-sickle symbiology for fake team t-shirts.  

Roberts Out, Leahy In?

 As the impeachment business maneuvers forward....Chief Justice Roberts said 'no'.....he would not participate.  Reason given?  None so far.

If I were to speculate....he sees a number of issues over the case.  The biggest is that you are dealing with a sitting President, which the Constitution seems to suggest it's not possible to do this.  I would imagine he thought about the end-result, and this being challenged to the Supreme Court, and that Thomas-guy would rip his creditability to the ninth-degree.

So why Leahy?  I sat and looked over the 50-odd Democrats in the Senate.  Around one-third of them hold a law degree....but if you asked how law have they actually practiced....most would admit less than ten years.  In Leahy's case?  He hasn't actually practiced law since 1974-timeframe.  Nearing fifty-plus years without a single court case?  Then you get some judge role?

I might suspect that when they openly discussed this 'who would run this show'....it was probably fewer than three volunteers, and one of them probably was either a farmer in life, or some music-teacher.    

There will be an initial round of questions thrown at Leahy.....asking if he's ever been a judge, and the answer is 'no'.  

Obviously, he's there to limit entry of challenges by the Trump lawyer, and to make this more of a guaranteed win for the Democratic cause.

The discussion that the vote will be held in secret?  That came up yesterday, and it's being discussed now.  Secret ballots?  This kinda sounds like Bolivia or Ecuador.  On that count, it'll be challenged as well.

The fact that Leahy is 80 years old?  Well....I would suspect around the 7th consecutive day of the 'show'....he'll be stressed out and completely run-down.  

One can laugh about this 'show', but it'll be discussed for the next hundred years.

The Mogadishu District?

 This came up today, and it's one of those stories to make you wonder about things.

The acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security (Ken Cuccinelli) made this comment over last week (after events of the 6th).

In some interview on Fox News....the journalist was interviewing Ken and wanted to hype that the 25k National Guardsmen were way more than currently servicing in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

Ken kinda agreed with her, then said it was basically the equal of a Army division.  Most former Army guys would let you know that when you start talking about a division....that's usually an invasion force and it's meant for real serious business. It's not a force for door-guard duty.  

Then he came to this odd piece of information about the request for Guardsmen.....House Speaker Pelosi wanted him to make sure they were armed with "crew-manned machine guns".  

I paused over that.

Typically, that kinda means that folks are in APC's or HUMVEEs.....with 50-cal guns, M249 guns, M-60s, or MG-338s.  For plain raw killing power, with three or four HUMVEEs set up like this....you could take down a thousand unarmed protesters real quick.

Did Pelosi even know what "crew-manned machine guns" were?  I have my doubts, and it was probably on some 3x5 inch index card that she was reading off, or she saw it on some war documentary.

Sounding like a Mogadishu-scenario?  Well....yeah.  Or maybe some Iraqi 'Green-Zone'.  

What's likely to come in the months ahead?  I think Pelosi will somehow get the President to authorize the Capital Police to have APCs, small armored vehicles, and a reactionary Capital Guard force of a thousand men available. 

In simple terms....this will look like some banana republic in South America and tourists will be scared of the landscape in DC.

How did Ken react to the request?  Nothing else was asked, and he kinda skipped the rest of this discussion.  Based on what I've seen in video action from the 20th....the Guardsmen had M-16s only.  

You just get the impression that things in DC are not that sane or safe, and the last place you ought to allow your kid or school group to 'tour'.....is the DC area.  

Who was QAnon Really?

 What QAnon reminds me of?

Back in the 1930s....the Ovaltine company invented this 'secret-ring society', where cryptic messages were passed around about Ovaltine (via radio) and you needed the decoding booklet to know that the message really was all about, and the secret ring.

You felt kinda important...even at nine years old....having the ring...listening to the secret message, and then decoding it.  

Here in this case (2016 to 2020) it simply went up 100 notches to the modern technology level, and the QAnon head group was probably three or four retired CIA officers working for some Biden-team lobby group...pretending to hand out secret messages in supporting the Trump agenda.

All fake?  No....just not the type of 'brand' or 'message' that most people would hook onto and feel as truthful.