LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Monday, May 10, 2021

People Who Don't Work From Home Both Lose Their Jobs and Are To Be Forced to Take Jobs

      . . . .  "It’s Been Hard Not to Roll My Eyes”  and  "Pay A Living Wage Or Flip Your Own Damned Burgers."

....Many of these workers resent that people upset over being asked to return didn’t display the same concern for the safety of those who have been there all along. And they wonder why they’ve been left out of so much of the national narrative about what this year has been like for workers. They haven’t been stuck at home baking bread or going stir crazy from being cooped up with family members; they’re out risking their lives working with the public and/or in close quarters with colleagues every day, and they feel invisible in much of the conversation about pandemic life. More than anything, they’re deeply, deeply exhausted....




Goes right along with this WaPo's story about yet another expanding restaurant owner,  thinking we should all 'weep for me', unable as he and the industry are, at finding enough people to work in their intolerable conditions, for pennies and no bennies. 

The comments, which number, last time looked, hit nearly two thousand, are about 99.09 contemptuous of these guys.



I am particularly am contemptuous because this where the financial speculation industry, capitalists in general and rethugs in particular always point when pronouncing that 'people don't want to work and prefer collecting massive government benefits.  So make unemployment illegal!"  See: South Carolina, etc. Same states passing Jim Crow voting repression laws, who have 'right to work' / no right to unionize laws, etc. Also, recall these are the states that made it illegal for labor, i.e. African Americans, to leave neighborhoods and states and go elsewhere for work outside of sharecropping and domestic work.

https://money.yahoo.com/south-carolina-cancels-federal-unemployment-benefits-212914813.html

https://abcnews.go.com/US/south-carolina-montana-declining-federal-unemployment-funds-huge/story?id=77553102

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/montana-south-carolina-ending-participation-in-fed-unemployment-programs.html

Why are they weeping though?  They've gotten what they've been howling about for decades: deportation and anti-immigration.  They promised then wages here would go up -- A Good Thing!  Now they have it, and yet, yet, yet, persist in whining ... about wages going up.

In the meantime the restaurant industry, i.e. owners and landlords, has gotten billions in federal  relief. Not to mention whole transfers of public, tax-payer owned property, for absolutely zero payment – nor do they even clean the messes their covid sheds make in the gutters, streets and on the sidewalks, where, of course pedestrians, blind people and people in wheelchairs can’t even navigate a path -- again, capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich.  This also reminds me a great deal of England and Europe in wake of the 14th centuries first three great waves of pandemic Bubonic Plague, passing laws to keep prices for wages for labor and prices of commodities exactly what they were prior to the Plague, even though so many had died (which contributed greatly to all sorts of social mobility upward for non-aristos in the 14th and 15th centuries).

And ya, there is, and will be, inflation of up the wazoo, due to choked, interrupted, halted supply chains for absolutely everything, everywhere in the world, along with some damned bad harvests due to not only pandemic, but catastrophic weather.  It's going to get quite bad, one may think indeed, if judging by historical periods in which pandemic coincided with bad harvests and labor shortages -- while war continued, unabated.

Homo Saps are too stupid to survive.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And GD!  Americans Will Lose Unemployment Benefits If They Turn Down Jobs, NPR SAYS Biden Says, just now.

Except Biden said NO SUCH THING. Not even in the text NPR posts under that headline.  Shame, Shame, SHAME! on NPR.  Gods I loathe NPR.

Biden, in his Monday remarks to reporters, pushed back on the suggestion that funds from the progressive relief package were being abused in any meaningful way and encouraged employers to offer competitive wages to court Americans back into the workforce.

"My expectation is that as the economy comes back, these companies will provide fair wages and safe work environments, and if they do, they'll find plenty of workers. And we're all going to come out of this together and better than before," he said.

"No one should be allowed to game the system."

Biden said that while he took allegations of fraud seriously, the government could not "turn our backs" on those who had lost jobs as a result of the pandemic. He placed the blame for the sluggish state of the national economy on his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, who Biden said "bungled" his handling of the virus and its fallout.

"We'll insist that the law is followed with respect to benefits. But we're not going to turn our backs on our fellow Americans. Twenty-two million people lost their jobs in this pandemic through no fault of their own. They lost their jobs to a virus, and to a government that bungled its response to the crisis and failed to protect them," Biden said.

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME on NPR.




But it's still hard to take, hearing Biden say that anybody offered an appropriate job must take it or lose benefits.  How does he get to decide what is an appropriate offer?  So it will be the chiseling, cruel restaurant owners.  Shame on you too, Biden.

No comments: