Jennifer Bamberg (In These Times) reports:
On the first day of freezing daytime temperatures and blustery snow storms across the Quad Cities, Phil Janecek — an inspector at the John Deere Parts Distribution Center in Milan, Illinois, and strike captain at this picket line — received a screenshot of a United Auto Workers press release. It said the company had made its last tentative agreement (TA) to the negotiating team and included “modest modifications” to the second offer made November 2.
Later that night, Janecek and his team of six strikers, who hail from United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 79, were assigned picket duty. They gathered around glowing 55-gallon burn barrels and took shelter from the sleet and wind in a shanty built with reclaimed materials. They talked about the fact that they’d be voting on another TA on November 17, much sooner than they thought they would be. The members were determined to outlast the harsh Midwestern winter, but it looks like the company can’t outlast the strike.
The company’s third offer comes after 90% of the workers voted no on the first TA, and the second was struck down three weeks later by 55%. The second TA doubled the raise proposed in the first contract from 5% to 10%, eliminated the proposed third tier (which would have made new hires ineligible for the company’s pensions), and increased workers’ pensions overall. The company called it the “best and final offer,” but this strike has been years in the making, and the list of demands stretches far beyond those proposals. Strikers out on the picket line talked about wanting an overhaul on what some called a broken grievance process and a broken incentive pay program, better retirement for everyone (currently the two-tier system separates pre-1997 hires and post-1997 hires), and increased wages.
Josh Saunders is a committeeman in Zone 4, UAW Local 865 in East Moline, Illinois. His job is to handle grievances, like the fact that employees don’t receive a hardcopy of their pay stubs, and, according to him, the electronic kiosks that the company provides for workers to view and print their paystub is inadequate. “So there’s wage theft going on,” he says. “Whether or not it’s intentional, I guess that’s up for debate. But people are getting paid wrong. (The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment but, if it does, this piece will be updated.).”
Then there’s the “incentive” program CIPP (pronounced “kip”). CIPP stands for Continuous Improvement Pay Plan. It’s a complicated piece rate formula that determines bonuses according to increased departmental performance. As an incentive to speed up production, employees are offered quarterly bonuses on top of their regular hourly wages (maintenance workers are excluded from this program). Management sets a performance expectation, and when workers exceed 115% of that production goal, funds are put into a CIPP account. But when workers fail to meet those targets, money comes out of the account. As long as workers meet that 115% goal, the baseline for production increases by 2% every six months. “You’re always working harder and harder and harder,” said one worker in Milan. “But every time they give you a dime they make $10,000,” said another.
Next week is Thanksgiving. If you haven't made a new dish by Friday -- to test it out ahead of time, probably don't make it for Thanksgiving. And some of us may have other issues -- such as weather. CNN reports:
Thanksgiving is just over a week away, but holiday travel will start as early as Friday for some.
Please read Ava and C.I.'s "Media: Passing (race and sexuality)" which grabs together three apparently different films to underscore their commonalities. This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Tuesday:
Tuesday, November 16, 2021. Joe Biden continues to fail and to blunder, the western press continues to lie about the Iraqi election.
In yesterday's snapshot, we noted that the media was determined to lie and that the American people were not going to buy it. Their lives are being hurt by inflation.
On yesterday's BREAKING POINTS, Krystal and Saagar dealt with the realities that are impacting Americans and how MSNBC can't get honest.
Joe Biden clearly isn't up for the job of president -- and that's only a surprise if you're brain dead. He couldn't handle himself in the debates. He had to be hidden away to keep the country from laughing at him and grasping how out of it he truly is. President George HW Bush gets sick and throws up on an overseas trip and the US press can't stop covering it (and shouldn't have stopped covering it) but Joe farts in from Prince Charles and Camila ("It was looooong and it was foul," is the quote I got) and the US press doesn't even want to go there. They continue to whore for him and lie for him -- they're Samantha Bees, not reporters. That failed wanna be 'comic' announced to Dan Rather that she wasn't going to do jokes about Joe. She needed to 'support' him. Because that's what a propagandist does, not what a comic does. TBS needs to pull the plug on her awful show -- no one is watching anymore, the bad ratings have only gotten worse.
We're not even a full year in and Joe's a failure. The press tries to distract with features on Kamala Harris. Kamala isn't the president of the United States. She's the vice president. But they think going after her makes it look like they're a functioning press. No, it only makes them more pathetic. We all know the vice presidency is a ceremonial office.
Yesterday, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following:
Washington, D.C., November 15, 2021 — The Committee to Protect Journalists today expressed concern about the harmful precedent set by recent Federal Bureau of Investigation raids on the homes of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and his associates.
According to media reports, the FBI seized O’Keefe’s cellphones during a November 6 raid on his home in Mamaroneck, New York, as part of a court-ordered investigation into the theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden, U.S. President Joe Biden’s daughter. In a statement, Project Veritas wrote that authorities also raided the apartments and homes of other current and former members of the organization, and confiscated unspecified materials.
Project Veritas acquired the diary in 2020 but turned it over to law enforcement, those media reports said.
Founded by O’Keefe in 2011, Project Veritas is a nonprofit group that conducts exposés on groups it perceives as left-leaning, and has amplified disinformation on topics including COVID-19 vaccines and alleged election fraud, according to the independent nonprofit fact-checking group First Draft.
“While we do not endorse some of the tactics Project Veritas employs, the FBI’s recent raids on the organization’s founder and his associates represent a concerning overreach by law enforcement,” said CPJ U.S. and Canada Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “The government must provide a clear link between members of Project Veritas and alleged criminal activity before searching their homes for information about source material. Conducting raids without this kind of link sets a dangerous precedent that could allow law enforcement to search and confiscate reporters’ unpublished source material in vague attempts to identify whistleblowers.”
Some pages of the diary were published on a right-wing blog during the 2020 U.S. presidential election campaign, according to those news reports, which said that the Justice Department under the Trump administration first opened an investigation into the theft.
On a November 10 letter to U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in New York, lawyers representing Project Veritas stated that the outlet had received the diary lawfully, the New York Times reported. On November 11, Torres ordered prosecutors to pause their “extraction and review of the contents” of O’Keefe’s phones, according to Politico.
When CPJ called the FBI for comment, a representative who answered requested that CPJ submit questions via email. CPJ emailed questions to the bureau’s New York office but did not immediately receive any reply.
A representative from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York told CPJ via phone that the office could not comment on the case.
Your tax dollars at waste. Ashley Biden is just a little girl -- a little 40-year-old girl.
Is it a sex diary? That's what DC speculates. Filled with nasty, dirty secrets -- written by a grown woman. The family gets trashier and trashier, yes.
But the reality is that we have clear evidence of Joe Biden's abuse of power.
The diary may or may not have been stolen. That family isn't exactly known for thinking clearly and gathering all their items when doing drugs.
But even if it was stolen? That's not an FBI matter.
That Joe Biden is abusing the FBI right now is alarming. It shows that he does not respect boundaries. It demonstrates that, with regards to his children, he will dictate to the FBI what they will and will not do.
Anyone see the problem there? Or have we all forgotten that son Hunter is under criminal investigation by the FBI. So if Joe's going to misuse the FBI for his daughter's diary are we really supposed to believe that he's not misusing them with regards to the criminal investigation of his son? It really seems like it's time for a special counsel. Joe should probably try to get ahead of that and announce one now instead of waiting for the mid-terms. If current polling holds, there may be a shift of power -- and even without the polling, remember, that is the historical pattern.
Joe Biden is not new to the federal government. He damn well knows that the FBI is not to be misused to find your oversexed daughter's embarrassing diary that she probably lost herself while on a cocktail of various chemicals.
It's an abuse of power. It's a huge overreach. And the use of the FBI to raid a journalist's home qualifies as an impeachable offense.
It is a gross abuse of power.
A high crime.
Maybe it's time for Joe to resign and let Kamala assume the presidency?
Margaret Kimberley Tweets:
Yep, Joe did promise that. Of course, career politician, Joe Biden's promises have always been meaningless.
The American people are in need and Joe Biden refuses to deliver. He had a lot of promises to make before he took the presidential oath. He just doesn't keep his word. Unlike most presidents, there should have been no surprises for Joe who spent decades in the US Senate and eight years as vice president of the United States. Yet he can't accomplish anything to help the people. All the lairs who whored for Joe are as responsible as is Joe himself.
And the press, so quick to 'examine' (discredit) Tara Reade continues to apply that intrusive and biased eye to Joe himself . They refuse to do their job.
They are far from alone.
ARAB NEWS carries embarrassing garbage:
The UN Security Council on Monday praised Iraqis for their commitment to democracy in the face of “dynamic security challenges,” and congratulated the Iraqi government and Independent High Electoral Commission for what it termed “a technically well-managed and generally peaceful election” in early October.
The council’s statement came in the wake of a report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Iraq’s electoral process and the role played by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq. The UN mission was praised by the council for its “objectivity” in supporting the government and IHEC in pursuit of “genuinely free and fair Iraqi-led, Iraqi-owned elections.”
Iraqis went to the polls last month to elect members of parliament amid protesters’ calls to stop endemic corruption and improve living conditions.
Is that what the US government said?
"The UN security council said it!" No, don't be an idiot. The US controls the Security Council. If the UN General Assembly issued a statement, I'd love to hear that. It's an independent body. The SEcuirty Council is not independent and it is a joke.
It's cute how they feel the need -- over a month after the October 10th election -- to issue a statement. Were they working the street corners all this time? Too busy with tricks to issue a statement until now?
THE NATIONAL also embarrasses itself but good for whichevber reporter refused to put their name to the piece (it carries no byline).
The elections were not successful. A vast number of people -- security forces -- were prevented from voting. Shame on media whores who can't tell the damn truth.
I don't like the militias. I never have. But I'm not going to lie and pretend like they weren't disenfranchised. You either tell the truth or you don't. The decision the weekend before the elections to refuse to allow most militia members to vote with the rest of the security forces was disenfranchisement. They are part of the security forces. That's not my judgment call. The Iraqi government made them part of the security forces (a move I strongly objected to). That settled it. But they didn't like the prime minister and so the electoral commission barred them form the day of early voting knowing that meant that they couldn't vote. (On October 10th, they would be deployed around the country to protect polling stations. You can't do that and also vote in your own district.)
By lying about this, the western press is just convincing Iraqis that the press is lying about other things.
The disenfranchisement is not in question. It happened. It happened in public. Most Americans probably don't know about it -- such is the US media -- but the Iraqi people do know. And those outlets that are dishonest about this basic fact are not going to be believed about other things.
They know you're lying and you're just sinking deeper into lies. It's no wonder the number of Iraqis who eel the election was fraudulent has grown in the last few weeks.
Instead of reality, we get The Whore of Baghdad herself, Jane Arraf, writing whorish prose about how Afghans have it good in Iraq. You know who has it good in Iraq? A fat American who's managed to whore for decades from Iraq. CNN encouraged her to do so in the 90s -- as Eason Jordan admitted on the pages of THE NEW YORK TIMES, that is how CNN maintained its presence in Iraq throughout the 90s and early '00s. Jane Arraf is in a country on fire and instead of 'reporting' on that, she's writing garbage that no one asked for and that no one needs. She's truly a whore.
New content at THIRD:
- Media: Passing (race and sexuality)
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- NPR, stop the racism (before you break our hearts)...
The following sites updated:
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Sonia Manzano: The Power Of Writing2 hours ago
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Media malpractice10 hours ago
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Rittenhouse10 hours ago
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