A certain politician speculated that if asked, most Americans would say they were better off four years ago. Is that accurate? Let's examine a few statistics:
Mar Jan
2021 2024
Unemployment rate 6.4% 3.7%
Labor Force Participation Rate 62.5% 62.5%
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The inflation rate was 1.5% in March of 2020 and stood at 2.9% in January of 2024. Bear in mind that the inflation rate was 9.1% back in March of 2022. That's a decrease of over 300% from then to now.
Our democracy is in jeopardy. If #TFG wins the presidency, it may be the last presidential election ever. Take notice of AZ Senate Concurrent Resolution 1014. It proposes to take away the right of the presidential election results to determine who will be awarded the state's 16 electors. It has only a snowball's chance in hell of coming to pass. However, it shows that the politicians who are part of the MAGA crowd would be happy if Trump were to become a dictator.
I did not spend 10 years of my life in the military for someone to usurp our 200+ year democracy.
I was ruminating this morning after my morning shower. It is to honor everyone who is serving or has served in the U.S. miliary. No one questions our honoring of Sadao Munemori. You can read his Medal of Honor citation here. He was part of the 442ns Regimental Combat Team, a unit made up almost exclusively of Japanese-American men. What made Army PFC Munemori unique among his unit is that he was the only Japanese-American to be awarded his Medal of Honor during or immediately after World War II ended. However, the fact that his family was interned by the U.S. during the war was something he shared with others in the 442nd.
No one thinks twice about our honoring of CAPT John Sax, USMC. He was killed in a training accident in 2022.
No one thinks twice about honoring a USAF LTCOL that I served with at Homestead Air Force Base. His military legacy was to crash an F-4 fighter jet right after take-off. He failed to ensure his jet had full tanks of fuel.
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The question on my mind is whether or not those who served and became traitors to our nation should be honored on this day? Take the case of McKinley Nolan. He was serving in Vietnam on 11/22/1967 with the 1st Infantry Division when he slipped away from his unit and turned himself over to the Viet Cong. The Pentagon classified him as a defector. Should he be honored among other veterans today?
How about Martin James Monti? During WWII he defected to the Nazis with a stolen aircraft. He volunteered for duty with the SS. Should his service be honored today?
One more. Charles Robert Jenkins was serving as part of the U.S. Army unit that patrolled the Korean Demilitarized Zone. He deserted his post and defected across the DMZ. Do we honor him?
I do not have an answer to this question. Maybe you have one.
Yet again, people fail to understand how Freedom of Speech works
Ryna Workman, who identifies as non-binary is a student at NYU Law school. Before writing about their situation, I want to go back in time for a moment. Back to a 2012 video that went viral.
That's Adam Smith behind the wheel of this drive thru trip. A trip that altered the course of his life. When he got back to his office at a medical device company, he learned that the backlash caused by the outrage generated by his video was immense. He was fired from his $200,000 CFO job and in the process lost stock options worth $1 million.
Some defended his video as protected free speech.
Ryna Workman had been offered a job by a prestigious NYC law firm. That offer was withdrawn after Ryna had written a column in a school newsletter that was described by some as an "incendiary pro-Hamas" statement.
Some have defended their column as protected free speech.
The reality is that the First Amendment protects speech from government infringement. Not from consequence from private individuals and employers. Even when speaking/writing while not officially representing one's employer, there is no protection from a consequence being applied in response to one's statements/writings.
I bumped up against a similar issue a few months ago. A local television news operation wanted me to do an on-camera interview on a news story related to my primary career. I was willing to do it. However, I am well-aware of my employer's policies involving contacts with the media. I told the news producer I'd need to clear this with the media relations department of my employer. Clearance was not granted. I refused to do the interview. Not because I am a "goody-two-shoes" type. Because I was not going to put my employment at risk.
New York is an at-will employment state. Even if Ryna Workman's employment had already begun, under that legal doctrine, the law firm could fire them at any time for any reason that does not involve illegal discrimination.
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Bill Ackman is the CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management. A hedge fund that has $18.5 billion in assets under management. He has...well, let's let his tweet speak for itself:
This is a tough one. Doxing is wrong. On the other hand, should the members of the organizations that signed onto the letter Mr. Ackman reference avoid responsibility for their choice to sign? Why should students who are members of groups that signed the letter who do not agree with their group's choice to sign?
If I am a member of a group that takes a position I do not support, I need to either shut up and remain a member of the group, or speak out in opposition to the support and ultimately choose whether or not to remain a member of said group.
On the other hand, I wholly support the choice of the Wexner Foundation to withdraw financial support from Harvard itself. They have every right to do so. Their decision is based on Harvard's response to the letter referenced above.
Other colleges and universities will also take hits for their responses to the actions/words of students who support the atrocities of Hamas.
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It is easy to take a political position. To sign a document as a member of an organization.
I am in shock. I actually agree with something Rep Lauren Boebert said.
She is right that our nation's system of budgeting is broken and has been for a long time. A 1990 law set the first Monday of February as the date by which the President must submit their budget proposal to the Congress.
President Clinton's first budget proposal was 66 days late. President George W Bush's first budget was 63 days late. President Obama's first budget was 94 days late. President Trump managed to get his first budget in only 38 days late. President Biden set an all-time record for tardy submission of a budget with it having been 116 days late. This year, President Biden's budget was submitted on March 9th. That was 31 days late.
It is not entirely a president's fault that we've been governing by continuing resolutions since 1997. Nor it entirely the fault of the president that we have not had a balanced budget for over 20 years. The proposal submitted by the president is a blueprint that changes very much after its submission.
Nonetheless, there are hard deadlines involved here. The budget of the United States runs from 10/1 to 9/30 each year. When a month or two or three is removed because the president's proposal is not submitted when it is due, it makes the process more strained.
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How can we fix these problems? There are no consequences for a president who submits their budget late. What consequences could be imposed? Loss of a day's pay? Something else?
What consequences could be imposed on the members of Congress who do not enact the full budget (it is made up of 12 separate appropriations bills) on time? If it were my call, members of Congress would lose a full day's pay AND benefits for each day the budget is not passed by the deadline.
How much time does Congress waste on crafting continuing resolutions because they cannot pass a budget on time? Goodness knows that the propensity for a number of members of Congress focus much more time on social media than on the real issues.
Seems like it was 30 or more years ago when I wrote here on a nearly daily basis. As I write this, it has been more than two months since my last published blogs. I cannot promise to go back to nearly daily entries, but I will strive to write more frequently.
I worked an 8-hour day yesterday at a nonstop, breakneck pace. I am utterly exhausted. I will probably go back to bed.
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In case you missed this news item, Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert was unceremoniously ejected from a performance of a musical. You can read all about it here. She and her campaign manager both denied that she had been vaping during the performance. There is just one problem with those denials.
Faced with irrefutable evidence that she had been vaping, she issued a statement regarding the incident.
You can read about her apology here, but I am focused on just one section of what she said.
I see two issues with Boebert's denial of recollection of the vaping.
One is that she was reprimanded several times about the vaping.
Two is that if at age 36 her short-term memory is that at the age of 36, having short-term memory that bad calls into question her ability to serve in political office.
We must make sure, legally, that this is her last term in office.
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Before I comment on the recent comments made by Sean Penn about how Will Smith's slap of Chris Rock; I feel the need for transparency and disclosure. I attended the same high school as Mr. Penn. He was class of 1978, I was in the class of 1977. I barely knew him.
He had a lot to say about what transpired in 2022 when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock's face after Rock made light of Smith's wife. Here is an excerpt from that interview:
After winning his second Oscar for “Milk” in 2009, Penn remarked, “I want it to be very clear that I do know how hard I make it to appreciate me.” This is a true statement. His face is now crimson; a vein in his neck tightens like a rope pulled taut. “I don’t know Will Smith. I met him once,” Penn says. “He seemed very nice when I met him. He was so fucking good in ‘King Richard.’” He lights another in an unchained melody of American Spirit cigarettes. “So why the fuck did you just spit on yourself and everybody else with this stupid fucking thing? Why did I go to fucking jail for what you just did? And you’re still sitting there? Why are you guys standing and applauding his worst moment as a person?"
My problem with what Mr. Penn said are these words:
”Why did I go to fucking jail for what you just did."
The problem with that statement is that Smith's slap of Chris Rock is nothing like what Penn did in 1987 when he was sent to jail for 60 days (he only served 33 days).
In April of 1987 during filming of the movie Colors, Sean Penn had an encounter with an extra. He objected to the extra photographing himself and Robert Duvall. He swore and spat at the extra. When the extra spat back, Penn punched him several times in the face. No way of knowing how bad the assault might have been had members of the film crew not intervened and pulled Penn off of the extra. The extra was treated for cuts and bruises at an emergency room and released.
Then there is the fact that Penn's jail stint was not based solely on that incident. On Memorial Day of 1987, Penn was stopped by police officers on suspicion of drunk driving after he ran a red light. He failed the field sobriety test and the breathalyzer test. His lawyers negotiated a plea deal where the actor pled guilty to reckless driving.
Add to that the fact that when Penn attacked that movie extra, he was on probation at the time for allegedly assaulting a man he said had tried to kiss Madonna (married to Penn at the time). Penn pled not guilty and got a year of probation for that incident.
In 1985, Penn pleaded no contest to allegations he had attacked two journalists trying to take a picture of Madonna.
So, in 1987 when Penn assaulted that extra, he'd already been charged for two alleged attacks within the last two years. What about Will Smith? Had he ever been arrested for an alleged assault? The surprising answer is, yes! But that was in 1989 and the charges were dropped.
Analysis: Will Smith, with no criminal history in recent decades slaps Chris Rock. Sean Penn, on probation at the time and multiple prior recent arrests punches out a movie extra and then goes to jail on that charge along with a plea deal for reckless driving charges. Sorry Sean, Will Smith did not do what you did.
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General Motors Chair and CEO Mary Barra's 2022 compensation was $29.8 million. This is a hot topic since the United Auto Workers union has gone on strike against the Big 3 U.S. automakers.
As I have written here before, compensation is a function of the employer's perceived value of the labor being performed.
GM claims the average salary of an autoworker is just over $80,000 per year. They claim total compensation for these workers is $96,000. Using the larger number for employee compensation, Ms Barra is paid over 300 times the average autoworker salary.
Has GM profited that much during Ms Barra's tenure? Let's look.
Net income has been up and down during her tenure, but grew by 320% from 2014 to
2022. Meanwhile, Ms Barra's compensation grew by 178% during the same period. Seems like a decent increase in her pay based on results achieved. That is how shareholders think. Is it valid?
Again, compensation is a function of the perceived value of the labor. My personal opinion is that her compensation is too high. How much of the net income increase is the direct result of how Ms Barra rn the company? How much would GM have to pay to hire another CEO to replace her? How much of the changes in net income is tied to how our economy is performing?
Another facet of this analysis is how valuable is the labor performed by the autoworkers to the company? Like it or not; without them, no automobiles will be made.
Should there be a direct correlation between the pay of the CEO and the pay of the lowest compensated employees? How would you cap CEO pay in light of the pay of a cashier? 100 times? 50 times? The average annual salary of a GM cashier is $29,000.
Would qualified people take on the position as Chair and CEO of GM for $2.9 million? For half that amount?
The salary inequities within the Big 3 automakers look really bad to the general public. They are bad. What happens when enough of us are so offended by CEO pay that we boycott their products?
Do you have a solution for this disparity? I don't.
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Drew Barrymore choosing to resume production of her talk show while the WGA and SAG/AFTRA are on strike is a slap in the face of every member of those unions.
Donald Trump says he will testify in his own defense in at least one of his upcoming trials. The odds of that happening are about the same as a manned landing of astronauts on the sun.
Seattle Police Officer Daniel Auderer should be suspended for his outrageous comments after another officer ran over a young woman, killing her. Actually he should be fired, but that's not likely to happen. Read the story here.
Today's instance of irony - Donald Trump calling Joe Biden "cognitively impaired" as he warns that Biden may start World War II.
Was is wrong for actress Drea De Matteo to become an OnlyFans content creator after her refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine? Not in my opinion. You do what you need to do, within the law, to feed and house your loved ones.
Someone please help Jann Wenner remove his feet from his mouth?
The first five numbers are the 2022 profit/operating income of the top five studios in Hollywood. Respectively, they are Netflix, Warner Brothers, NBC/Universal, Sony and Paramount. Source: The Hollywood Reporter.
The range shown below those numbers is what The Hollywood Reporter estimates is the salary range for Studio Chiefs.
Businesses making hundreds of millions annually and apparently; it isn't enough for them. They want to earn a larger piece of the entertainment pie on the backs of the actors and writers. The people who generate the movies and TV series that allow them to earn those gigantic profits. AI is never going to replace the performers who bring in the audiences. Can AI write as well as the members of the WGA? Not in mind.
Full disclosure here: I am a writer. I am not a member of the WGA because there is no union for people who write in the very narrow niche where I eke out a small side income from each year. I tried screenwriting but my works never generated any commercial interest. I prepare income tax returns as my primary source of income.
In doing tax returns, my client base includes producers, directors, performers and writers. I don't need anyone to tell me just how widely compensation paid to these people varies. I see their incomes. I see how mightily some of them struggle to survive on their meager incomes.
It is true that studios pay a small group of motion picture actors huge salaries. According to Screenrant.com, Tom Cruise earned $100 million from Top Gun: Maverick. It is just as true that some actors toil in front of the cameras and net peanuts in terms of pay.
These studios are so focused on maximizing their profits that they are not above stealing the ideas of others. Oh, you want an example. Okay, let's look at the lawsuit Buchwald v Paramount. You can get the details of the alleged theft of Mr. Buchwald's work here. One note from that tale of avarice. Paramount presented accounting evidence that Coming To America generated $288 million in revenue, but failed to turn a net profit; as defined by Mr. Buchwald's agreement with the studio.
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If the studios were wise, they would compromise, turn slightly smaller profits and this could all be over. They are not that wise though.
So what is the answer? Perhaps it is found in what happened 104 years ago. In 1919, as studios were tying to merge all production companies and to lock in exhibitors to a series of five-year contracts, four of the biggest names in the entertainment industry got together and formed United Artists.
Suppose 20 of Hollywood's most successful actors and others got together to something similar. They would not have much difficulty in raising the money to compete against the current studios. They could adopt a philosophy wherein the use of AI would be minimized or eliminated. They could make films and TV shows and pay living wages to the performers, writers and others without whom movies and other content could not be made.
July 4, 2023 is our nation's 247th birthday. Cellebrating the day when We the People declared we were free of a monarch who sat on a throne on the other side of the world's second largest ocean. Much has changed in the nearly 2.5 centuries since. Much has changed in just the last decade.
The level of partisan political acrimony is at one of the heights rarely reached in thatn 247 year history. One man's rhetoric only further enflamed the already high tensions between the two dominant political parties. If you disagree, perhaps we should ask Heather Heyer. Or Ashli Babbitt. Brian Sicknick. Roseann Boyland. Wait, we cannot ask them. Heyer was murdered during a peaceful protest of a white supremacy rally. The others died during the January 6, 2021 insurrection. For those who deny that it was an insurrection, let us examine the definition of the term
"Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto"
That is the legal definition of insurrection within federal law.
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We are caught up in a conflict. Perhaps we should call it what it is, a war. A war for control of our government. A struggle to reduce and ultimately remove our freedoms. We are witnessing attempts at voter suppression not since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Only the illegality of a poll tax is stopping Republicans from instituting them. Not all Republicans are white supremacists. But all white supremacists are Republicans or they support the agenda of the Republican party.
To be crystal clear, it is not illegal to hold white supremacist beliefs. It is not illegal to peacefully rally in support of white supremacist beliefs. But it is illegal to do some things in support of those beliefs. Such as plotting to kidnap the govenor of Michigan. I could list the mass shooting incidents where the investigation deterined thatthe motive was right-wing beliefs, but that's a very long list. Here are just a few.
Colorado Springs night club shooting (shooter motivated by anti LGBTIA beliefs) - November 2022
Buffalo supermarket shooting (shooter motivated by white supremacists) - May 2022
Atlanta spa shooting (shooter motivated by Christian fundemantalist beliefs) - March 2021
In pointing the violence of those on the right (not all people on the right, but far too many), we cannot ignore the violence actions of those on the left. I'm not going to list the actions perpetrated by those on the left. What I will mention are the results of a study by the University of Maryland. It showed that violent actions by the left are 45% less likely to result in fatalities. That being said, violence on either side is wrong."
Violence on either side is wrong. It is the rising level of violence on both sides that is so concerning.
LLLLLL
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Are we independent? I see attempts to outlaw things that shouldn't be concerning. I do not belief that a drag show library reading is an attempt to create new members of the LGBTIA communities. Christianity is not the official religion of this nation, in spite of the beliefs of some Christians. English is not the official language of the United States, but that does not stop a seemingly endless stream of bigots from screaming "Speak English" at people who are conversing in other languages.
It is 2023 but racial hatred contines. Two black men have filed a $400 million lawsuit alleging that Rankin County Mississippi deputies assaulted two black men inside the home where they lived. Rather than describe the actions of the officers, you can read about them here.
I have written about this before. A dozen years before we saw the video of the late Rodney King being beated by LAPD officers after a pursuit, police officers stopped an insurance salesman named Arthur McDuffie. He'd led them on an 8 minute high-speed pursuit before he . He was driving with a suspended license. When he stopped, they beat him to death. The officer who had lied on the initial statement he wrote, recanted. He testified that McDuffie had swung at him. That does not justify what transpired.
Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno was the lead prosecutor when five of the eight officers invoved in the beating were tried. They were acquitted by an all-white uy after only three hours of deliberations. In the rioting that resuled in the Overtown and Liberty City areas of Miami.
Like it or not, the animus exists today. We are less free because of it."
We are less independent today that we were when I was born.
