Archive for November 2012
Hey Nevada! Glad you voted for Reid and Obama?
Another one from the Elections Have Consequences Department, restaurants in Nevada close to throwing in the towel:
“I don’t know what secret [the politicians] know, where they just assume we can write them a check,” said Sam Facchini, owner of Metro Pizza in Las Vegas.
“We can’t pay for this. Most of us [restaurant owners] operate on a thin margin and trying to stay in compliance [with the law] will make things much tighter.”
The biggest concern restaurant owners have with the law — commonly referred to as “Obamacare” — is Section 1513, the Employer Mandate. Going into full effect in January 2014, it requires businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to provide federally “qualified” health insurance or pay penalties of up to $2,000 per employee.
Nevada will be hit hard, according to the Nevada Restaurant Association, since the state’s restaurant industry is the second highest contributor to state taxes and employs nearly 150,000 people.
Oddly, given the way voters “armed themselves with information” during the 2012 elections, I have the feeling the Nevada electorate won’t even notice until the pink slips arrive. Even then, they’ll probably just blame the “Evil Capitalist” restaurant owners.
Yeah, color me jaded.
It’s all the fault of you filthy Americans – again
Yeah, all you capitalist consumers and your greedy gift giving on the holidays, it’s all your fault. If you’d just quit buying things, people wouldn’t be dead today. (At least not by fire. Starvation maybe…)
Seems to be what the scowling beardscratchers at The Philadelphia Inquirer and ABC News [Warning - the ABC News link opens an explosive and obnoxious auto-playing commercial video that can't be stopped, mute speakers first] are saying in their respective columns:
Sunday, November 25, 2012Over 100 people died in Bangladesh so that Black Friday could live
People pushing and shoving at the Wal-Mart and shooting each other over parking spaces were not the real outrage of this year’s epic Black Friday, now known as Black Thursday/Friday. This is a horrific tragedy:
Yes, it was a horrific tragedy, but laying on the guilt kinda think with the headline, no?
And from Brian Ross (yes, THAT Brian Ross):
Fire Kills 112 Workers Making Clothes for US Brands
Nov. 25, 2012The 100-plus workers who died in a fire late Saturday at a high-rise garment factory in Bangladesh were working overtime making clothes for major American retailers, including Wal-Mart, according to workers’ rights groups.
Officials in Bangladesh said the flames at the Tazreen Fashions factory outside Dhaka spread rapidly on the ground floor, trapping those on the higher floors of the nine-story building. There were no exterior fire escapes, according to officials, and many died after jumping from upper floors to escape the flames.
As firemen continued to remove bodies Sunday, officials said at least 112 people had died but that the number of fatalities could go higher.
The Tazreen fire is the latest in a series of deadly blazes at garment factories in Bangladesh, where more than 700 workers, many making clothes for U.S. consumers, have died in factory fires in the past five years. As previously reported by ABC News, Bangladesh has some of the cheapest labor in the world and some of the most deplorable working conditions.
So lets see the tags on Brian Ross’ sport coat.
Of course, have to get the obligatory shots in at WalMart:
The Bangladeshi garment factory where more than 100 people died in a fire this weekend has connections to huge multinational retailers, including Wal-Mart, C&A, and KiK, according to documents on the factory owner’s website.
Wal-Mart appears to have warned the factory last year about “violations and/or conditions which were deemed to be high risk,” though it’s unclear whether Wal-Mart continued to work with it since then.
In other words, the allegation is out there, now WalMart has to come clean, or else. Another boycott?
You know, these people will do what we here in the US did, eventually, and start cracking down on safety in the workplace. It happened here after similar fires tragically took lives and sparked outrage, it’ll happen there too. They don’t need US leftists dictating terms that put people in already in poverty out of work and into the ranks of the starving.
Related articles
A wee bit o’ Kipling
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
In order to improve their handwriting Victorian children would copy out sayings, principles and proverbs from the top of a page, thus copybook headings.
This accomplished two things: improved handwriting and memorization of useful information.
Kipling includes three examples in the poem:
“Stick to the Devil you know.”
“The Wages of Sin is Death.”
“If you don’t work you die.”
Funny how men refuse to learn from their past.
h/t Nice Deb
Related articles
- The Gods of the Copybook Headings – Rudyard Kipling (tarpon.wordpress.com)
It’s over – Hostess Cakes: created by capitalists and killed by socialists
Looks like mediation between Hostess and the union failed:
Hostess Brands announced on Tuesday night that despite the help of a mediator, it had failed to reach a new labor agreement with the bakery workers union – and union officials said the company had indicated it would proceed with plans to liquidate.
“It’s over,” said David Durkee, secretary-treasurer of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union.
I guess the union members would rather be out of a job than take a cut. Correct me if I’m wrong, but union members on strike don’t get unemployment benefits. So what would be the point of taking the hard-line in negotiations?
Twinkies and Ding Dongs might live!
At least that’s the news story breaking now:
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Twinkies will live to see another day.
Hostess Brands Inc. and its second largest union agreed on Monday to go into mediation to try to resolve their differences after a bankruptcy court judge noted that the parties hadn’t gone through the critical step. That means the maker of the spongy cake with the mysterious cream filling won’t go out of business yet.
Maybe the union will be more realistic with their demands now that they’ve seen the abyss?
I’ll believe it when I see them on the shelves.
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The Hostess closing hits home
When a Hostess truck breaks down in our area, we get called to bring their truck back to their yard. The manager on duty was always good for a box of Ding Dongs for our driver. We used to get called. No more.
Some Sonic Drive-In restaurants we’re forced to close temporarily due to a lack of buns. The ripple spreads.
A brand we all grew up with, killed by union greed.
Related articles
- Twinkies, Ho Hos & Ding Dongs Are Dunzo! Hostess Says It’s Going Out Of Business!!! (pinkisthenewblog.com)
Teamsters Union learns what we already knew about Card Check
Without the secret ballot, bad things happen:
[my emphasis below]
In September, one of its major unions, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, voted narrowly to accept a new contract with reduced wages and benefits. The Bakers’ union rejected the deal, however, prompting Hostess management to secure permission from a bankruptcy court to force a new concession contract on workers.
The Teamsters union, which represents 7,500 Hostess workers, has been sharply critical of the smaller Bakers’ decision to strike, saying it was forcing the company to the cusp of liquidation. The Teamsters said Thursday that the Bakers’ union should hold a secret ballot on the company’s offer, rather than the voice votes that were held in union halls around the country that authorized the decision to strike.
“It is difficult for Teamster members to believe that is what the [Bakers' union] Hostess members ultimately wanted to accomplish when they went out on strike,” said the Teamsters’ statement.
I’m gonna miss my Ding Dongs.
Crossposted to Unified Patriots
Related articles
- Hostess Closing for Good (money.cnn.com)
Thank you IDF, for the use of your CAT bulldozers in Iraq 2003
Don’t know if they’ll ever see this, but I’d like to offer thanks to Israel and the IDF.
When we were prepping for the Iraq invasion, one of the things the MEF wanted from its Seabees was to cut holes in the berm separating Iraq from Kuwait. The berm stretched for over 120 miles and consisted of two separate dirt berms with a high-voltage electric fence in the middle. On the Iraqi side, the base of the dirt berm included a tank trap which was basically a deep trench that a tank would get stuck nose down in.
The Israeli Defense Force loaned us a few armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozers, each with a hand-written message inside. Scrawled with a Sharpie, each message said basically “TO USMC From Israel With Love” and included the name given the dozer by the IDF troops. The one I got to play with was called “Irma”.
“Irma”
Anyway, the way it ended up actually going down (best laid plans, and all that) you can read here. The dozers were never used in combat, because we had nothing big enough to haul them with, and we didn’t want to destroy them racing through the desert on their tracks. All the tank haulers were otherwise occupied hauling…tanks. Go figure.
