Month: March 2020

Remember When Billionaires Come For New Stadiums

Companies can not stay in business if their expenses exceed their revenue. Companies create jobs but to stay afloat, especially in unexpected times of crisis like we are going through, they may be forced to cut staff if they are closed. That is tragic, albeit understandable. But the world of professional sports has a situation that we all should keep in mind.

America’s love affair with sports has created a situation where owners and players make a lot of money. And Thinking Man can understand if people decide that they can’t do something that causes them to lose money. But in unusual times like these, it is heartwarming to hear of players and owners who are offering to pay salaries for laid off stadium workers, for example. Continue reading “Remember When Billionaires Come For New Stadiums”

An Oregon Union Reacts To The Pandemic

The state of Oregon has a law that forbids self-service gas stations. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union has long worked against allowing self-service stations so that they could create job for their members.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown issued an order that temporarily suspended that prohibition, allowing gas stations to be self-service and not requiring an attendant. It came amid reports that some pump attendants were ill and some feared coming to work at a job that puts them in contact with many members of the public each shift.

The Union opposed the temporary change.

Presidential Politics and the Pandemic

The outbreak of the the COVID-19 virus has been all consuming, both in the news and in our daily lives. As new hot spots pop up across the country, perhaps no place has been harder hit than New York. Governor Cuomo has raised the alarm and earned credit for his calm demeanor in the face of unprecedented trials.

The consuming nature of news of the virus has had the political side effect of putting the presidential campaign on the back burner. Since becoming the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden has fallen from the news. Not because of anything he has or hasn’t done but simply because there seemingly is no time for anything else in the news. Continue reading “Presidential Politics and the Pandemic”

Pandemic Relief and Politics As Usual

President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanual,  was well known for saying “Never miss an opportunity to take advantage of a good crisis”. This was no more true than in the recent pandemic relief bill. Continue reading “Pandemic Relief and Politics As Usual”

And Meanwhile, Workers Suffer

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi yesterday announced her own ‘pandemic relief bill’. Among the items included in the bill was money for the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, solar and wind tax credits, having taxpayers pay for prior student debt and other items in the billions of dollars that have nothing to do with the current pandemic.

This is what Pelosi thinks is most important?

With businesses forced to close and having to lay off workers, claims for unemployment benefits are projected to reach 5 million this week. Even knowing that, Pelosi thinks that it is worth it to hold up crisis relief funding to try to get money items unrelated to the current pandemic, things that she has been advocating long before anyone heard of coronavirus but unable to get passed.

If we want to have a debate on those items, that’s good and let’s have it in due course. But don’t try to promote your agenda at the expense of holding up critically needed help for people who now have no jobs because of government mandated orders to close businesses that employ them. If you really want to help the working class, then quit trying to promote an agenda at their expense and while people are suffering.

Are Diseases Racist?

At today’s press conference to give an update on the pandemic, the President referred to the disease as the ‘China virus’. A reporter asked if that was racist, because it was called the ‘China virus’.

The answer, “No, because it came from China.”

The reporter persisted, and said that the President ‘thought’ it came from there but suggested that we don’t know for sure where it came from. The reply, “No, we don’t ‘think’, we know where it came from.”

But, wait, they weren’t done. At least two more reporters asked questions about the implied racism of the President.

Is that really one of the important issues at hand in dealing with this crisis? Or do these reporters, who supposedly have college degrees, really not understand that ‘Chinese’ means that it is from China?

We should watch out. The next press conference will probably have questions around paying reparations for such terrible racial slurs through  history of pandemic health as the Spanish Flu and the German Measles.

 

Help the Country vs. Help the Ego

The stock markets like stability. Instability makes people take their money somewhere else that they think may be safer (or at least less risky). And as our economy has changed over the last two decades, the stock market is increasingly important to all segments of the US population since most people now have a 401(K) or an IRA. Stock ownership is not just primarily for the more affluent, as it once might have been.

Similarly, business owners like the ‘known’. Business conditions that are unstable or that may change in unpredictable ways make them nervous and fearful of investing in technology and additional jobs.

The stock market averages have plunged almost 30% in the past 2 weeks, prior to recovering a bit on Friday when some averages gained back 6-9%, in the first sign that the financial crash may be stabilizing.

What the markets and the economy need is a steady hand, and a consistent policy to address the current crisis, which is largely the result of the total unknown of how the current coronavirus pandemic will affect us and the economy. Continue reading “Help the Country vs. Help the Ego”

Why Elizabeth Warren’s Campaign Never Caught On

Elizabeth Warren, the junior senator from Massachusetts, announced this week that she was ending her run for President. Warren’s campaign never really caught on.

While running for President, Warren lost her home state of Massachusetts.  Well, lost is a kind word. She finished third and did not get even a quarter of the vote. And she did better in Massachusetts than she did anywhere else.

So why was she in the news so much in the last year, and why did that not translate into votes? The explanation is actually pretty easy. Continue reading “Why Elizabeth Warren’s Campaign Never Caught On”