Five Months In!
From the Press of Atlantic City:
NJ unemployment claims fall, as $600 federal weekly supplement about to end
The number of new unemployment claims in New Jersey declined for the second straight week, the state said Thursday, as the $600 federal weekly supplement entered its final week.
The total number of claims filed in New Jersey now tops 1.4 million, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said.
…
The $600 federal subsidy that has been added to unemployment payments ends with this week’s payments but will be made on eligible claims for the weeks ending April 4 through July 25 for those claims approved at a later date, according to the department.
There are proposals to extend the federal subsidy, but the two major parties differ on the best approach. Democrats would extend the $600 through January 2021. Republicans want to provide lower benefits because many workers make more on unemployment than they would if they returned to work.
The state has distributed more than $7 billion in $600 weekly federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation to 1.1 million claimants since the program began the week of April 4, it reported.
Frist
NJ Real Estate and Portuguese 20th Century Government Report
Gold broke $1900
Fighter jet just flew low overhead. Thought it was thunder at first
AP,
He is entertaining and truthful at the same time.
Somehow methinks this is not going to go over well…..
“Fugitive Chinese biologist who ‘lied about her links to the military’ is taken into US custody after Beijing harbored her inside their San Francisco consulate
Juan Tang, 37, was arrested and taken into custody in Sacramento County
She’s accused of lying about military links on a visa application to work in the US
Tang is one of four scientist living in the US accused of lying
The allegations came as U.S.-China relations continued to deteriorate .”
China is done. The virus was the last straw.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/the-i-in-iphone-11-now-stands-for-india-made/articleshow/77135725.cms
D-Fens,
Guess Foxconn can’t build a plant in America due to child labor laws.
Salute the flag for American corporations.
grim,
If by some chance my post went into moderation and you can release, thank you.
If not, here are the two links I was trying to post without any excerpts.
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/26/14857
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article?fbclid=IwAR2V1hPqN0WKb2kXVExP_1UE9ARvru6mtPZvZN0w1jx0S3l3fXLhxMP_bXs
Later I’ll have more to say about Senhor Salazar, butbthis morning I just want to relax and enjoy my coffee, with this hilarious “profile” of Elon Musk and Grimes, by the inimitable Maureen Dowd:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/style/elon-musk-maureen-dowd.html
“He had thought about designing his own “aspirational masterpiece of a house,” but decided that it would take bandwidth away from his work “getting people to Mars and environmental sustainability and accelerating stable energy.”
I can’t even, but kinda love it.
3b,
Not the 60’s shades of dark web access to the Pope. But if they are a spade, you got to call it. You got 4 super conservative catholics (Thomas, Roberts, Alito & Kavanaugh).
Their shared view point has more in common with the ongoing conversation here about Latin/Iberian (and all catholics with many fascist) dictators than with the believes of the founding fathers, which majority were freemasons and anti-catholic church secret controls.
3b says:
July 24, 2020 at 9:32 pm
Catholics on the Supreme Court?? Wow! Shades of JFK in 1960, with a hotline to the Pope.
Re Catholic, I’ll say this, we should be very careful to avoid anti-Cathicism as well.
Many of the people most persecuted by these regimes were members of the clergy.
I fundamentally don’t buy into a conspiratorial view of history.
Power corrupts, it is said, that is why the framers were wise in choosing a peaceful transition of power by elected representatives as the only way to go.
Good bless America! Have a great weekend ya!
AP,
Sure, they were the liberal clergy. The ones doing the prosecution were the super conservatives. As an example Opus Dei was created by a spanish priest in the late 30’s. Always linked with Franco and Fascism. Very, very anti anything to do with democracy or personal freedoms.
Many decades ago, I had the unfortunate experience of having a holiday party conversation with a guest of this background and I could not believe what I was hearing, it was an SS member in a suit.
One of the big issues of Cuba that Castro fought against was not just big US corporate interests, but also heavy fascist influence thru the catholic church, as most Cuban priest pre-Castro were spaniards. Cuba had 3 social groups – The very small old spanish landed gentry (big supporters of this group), the small businessman US linked class (they were the swing vote and with Castro at the beggining), and the majority poor working class (biggest Castro supporter).
Calling,
Just need to very strongly state that anti-Catholicism is not an acceptable view to me. Not saying you are promoting it, but just to make sure we are all on the same page.
The early to mid twentieth century was an interesting time because after the disaster of WWI all countries in Europe had to reinvent themselves. There was a fork on the road. Many people crafted “creative” forms of State, like the Fascist and otherwise Corporatist states, like Salazar I might add.
“Sure, they were the liberal clergy. ”
Exactly my point is that Catholicism or Catholics deserve respect and protection, and shouldn’t be lumped with the actions of some ….misguided, harmful regimes.
Calling a spade that’s BS, and bigoted. You assume their conservatism flows from their Catholicism. What about the prior conservative justices that were not Catholic. If there were conservative/orthodox Jews on the SC would you say the same?
Man, you really gotta go back to Colonialism, I’m afraid.
The Catholic Church at the time was in bed with the monarchy, and after so many Monarchies fell during WWII, there was a “masterplan” at the time to perpetuate the Colonial system, hold onto the African colonies, etc
An American style democracy was not something get felt they needed or wanted. It was easier for them to invent a state+church monstrosity that could take care of all needs of the populace by command.
Why waste time with Democratic niceties when youbare certain that G-d is on your side and you know better? Plus those reds are worse, right?
The founders were smart: separation of state and church with complete religious freedom.
Correction “after WWI” and not II.
AP Which monarchies? The only real monarchy left in Europe was Austria Hungary. Germany was a monarchy for less than 50 years and it was not Catholic. I
Am doing some research on Portugal now and it was a mess prior to Salazar. Have not read enough yet to make a final determination. As for Spain, it did not look good for democracy if Franco was defeated either. The communists as they did in other countries paid lip service to democracy and they would have eliminated democracy.
Hey 3b, yeah it was a chaotic time everywhere, not just in Portugal. The Portuguese monarchy had been taken down in that time period as well. In Brazil it had been a bit earlier but the same Military+Church alliance took the lead against more democratic elements almost immediately.
My point is if these dictatorships were by no means inevitable or “the lesser evil” they were part of a deliberate program. That goes way back and connects all the way back to the days of the Slave Trade and the Atlantic Colonial Trade system as a whole.
This is by no means a Catholic thing, in my view. Probably every group that has held on to power for very long has suffered from this type of grandiose thinking.
AP More research on my end needed, but I am not convinced the communists would not have taken over. Nothing to do with the prior slave trade or monarchy.
Question at the time in Europe Communism or right wing dictatorship, both bad, question is who was worse. The leftist regimes have killed far more than the right wing regimes, and China, and North Korea, and Cuba are still in existence.
3b, this is the relativism I’m arguing against.
Think of it this way: if you are a free born man in either Portugal under Salazar, Soviet Russia, or say Chile Pinochet.
You could be thrown in a policy Gulag exactly the same way on all three scenario for simply writing an article saying “You know maybe this Democracy thing is not so bad”.
If those regimes were truly just worried about Stalin, they could have eliminated that threat and stopped there. But they went further, much further. Dangerously further.
In the case of Portugal, I must be fair, I’m sure there were many well intentioned people as part of the regime. True believers. They truly believed that a “new type” of dictatorship was the best path for their country.
Those days remind me a lot of today. It was a chance of Era from the sorta Victorian old-world order, to something new an strange, with new mass communications technologies like the radio.
The reason why it matters today, is because everyone has hopefully been exposed to the horrors of the Gulag, but there are folks who would like to pass Pinochet and Salazar as “kinda good guys” which couldn’t be further from the truth.
AP That would be true, but unfortunately it’s not the reality, sometimes it’s the lesser of two bad options. As for the horrors of the gulag, they are alive and well in China and no one says a word.
3b, it’s fine to agree to disagree. My point is that it wasn’t a “lesser of two bad options”. There were many options. This is factually based on evidence and testimony.
Republican ideals had been widely known and cherished.
Those people read the founding fathers and we’re fighting for a republican democratic system.
The state that you call “lesser of two” is the State that destroyed their young Democracy, not the reds.
And then they went much further than that, implementing policies that treated their population as unphalbetized cattle. It was a sick scene, my man.
There were two bad guys and tons of good guys, one bad guy wins, and kills all the good guys along with his original bad guy enemy. You understand?
Just to rile you up:
Pinochet killing people and violating political freedim: bad
Pinochet allowing market reforms, a more stable currency, privatization, and setting the stage for South America’s wealthiest economy: good.
Chileans today are better off than Brazilians, Venezuelans, Argentinians, Colombians, etc. Allende and his people were going the wrong direction.
Similarly, Lee of Singapore violated many people’s rights. But not as many rights violations as the commies he beat out politically would have done, and he helped Singapore become S.E. Asia’s most prosperous and stable nation.
Commies by their nature plan massive rights violations and rule by force. Their rule is a “crime against humanity” whatever vague meaning that phrase has.
No One, it doesn’t rule me at all. I am getting a chance to reflect and refine my ideas in this conversation, and I thank each of you that have thrown in!
I hope everyone takes this in the same spirit I do, learning together and breaking the monotony of this endless quarantine.
“Chileans today are better off than Brazilians, Venezuelans, Argentinians, Colombians, etc. Allende and his people were going the wrong direction.”
Probably false. Chile is in very dire straights. The regime not only made no significant improvements to the economy, it incurred on so much debt that they are still paying it to today at very high interest rates.
There’s no positive outcomes of the Pinochet regime, none. Not even the trains ran on time.
“Their rule is a “crime against humanity” whatever vague meaning that phrase has.”
The meaning is not vague. It is an important concept in international law. The difference is that these crimes threaten the very fabric of humanity. You can unleash so much evil on the world that it “clogs the arteries” of our common existence.
AP: I am not arguing that, I am saying it would not have survived at the time, the communists ultimately would have taken over in both Portugal and Spain.
AP Chile today is one of the most prosperous and stable country in Latin America today, that is a fact. Does it have problems, yes especially income inequality. But it is overall doing well in comparison to the rest of the continent.
Look at the disaster of Venezuela.
3b,
“the communists ultimately would have taken over in both Portugal and Spain.”
Today the historic evidence points to this statement being false. This is the line that the regime widely propagandized though. They loved having a veneer of respectability but we’re rotten to the core.
“Chile today is one of the most prosperous and stable country in Latin America today, that is a fact.”
No, not a fact. It is very unstable. There were protests there recently that made BLM look like the Thanksgiving Day parade.
You are trying to paint a deceiving picture that the regime increased political and economic stability. It didnt at all. It created incredible fractures and debt, nothing else.
As I said before, without Pinochet’s betrayal Allende would have been able maintain a democratic republic. If Pinochet had been a real man, he would have helped his buddy Allende push back the commies and keep Democracy going, but he wasn’t.
WTF happened to Maureen Dowd? She used to be a real writer. Now she is reduced to writing this cloying garbage.
AP says:
July 25, 2020 at 12:25 pm
Later I’ll have more to say about Senhor Salazar, butbthis morning I just want to relax and enjoy my coffee, with this hilarious “profile” of Elon Musk and Grimes, by the inimitable Maureen Dowd:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/style/elon-musk-maureen-dowd.html
AP. I am highly inclined to trust No One’s opinions on international economies in Latin America and Asia. He is either well researched or literally has on-the-ground data.
Chile is literally one of the only places to invest on that continent.
Argentina has the stunning distinction of being the only sovereign credit to go from investment grade to junk. Quite an achievement Speaks volumes
Chi, I am willing to be schooled, but I’ll tell you that I’ve travelled those parts and one of my best friends is a soy trader so I hear stuff.
Chile is not a good investment destination yesterday, today or for a while. Not saying it’s not possible to make money of course it is, but it is by no means a thriving economy or a success story.
Chi, “WTF happened to Maureen Dowd? She used to be a real writer. Now she is reduced to writing this cloying garbage.”
Ha. I still love her style. Snarky as heck : )
AP, you are making lots of statements not grounded in fact. On Portugal
1. The first republic was on the road to bankruptcy, when a country defaults on it’s debts you will have a serious crisis on your hands.
2. You had left wing and right wing parties who were actively trying to subvert the burgeoning democratic republic. While Salazar was center right, he expelled both(Facists and Communists) and banned both parties as they were responsible for the instability
3. Under the so called democracy the church was assaulted, looted, and harassed, anti-catholic laws were passed. Clergy was targeted and killed in the streets by “Republicans” and the clergy was stripped of their citizenship.
4. The threat of communism was real in the 20’s and 30’s especially in failed states, the communists were such a menace in the republic public support was behind the right wing parties when the republic collapsed.
5. Economically the country faired much better under Estado Novo(post war GDP growth averaging nearly 6% a year), than before and after, the relative GDP did not recover to it’s 1973 level until 1991, which was particularly bad because Portugal was in the process of losing the wars against her colonies in 1973 which had a big toll on the economy.
6. The Soviets had people on the ground in the 1920’s in both Portugal and Spain, 3B’s post is grounded in reality which is with all the instability both the left and the right saw an opportunity to grab power, they were playing for keeps, if the right had lost the left was headed to a communist dictatorship
7. The situation was far more lax under the Salazar regime than in the USSR or true Facist countries. People were free to leave, most often subversives were reprimanded, fined, jailed or otherwise punished. Political prisoners killed/disappeared etc measure in the hundreds not millions. For example the largest secret police prison had capacity for 4000 people and was open from 1936-1954, a horrible place but there were only 32 people killed over 18 years.
8. Fear of Stalin was the driving force behind the repression, these people saw communists behind every corner, the surveillance state, the detention camp in Cape Verde was for jailing communists.
9. Prior to Estado Novo 80% of Portuguese were illiterate, how do you have a successful democracy when the vast majority of your population cannot read or write? The elections were being decided by people who had little knowledge of policy or even what was going on in the government.
We can talk about Spain as well, the “Republicans” again were not really interested in a democracy. During the Republic political violence was the norm, the civil war broke out because left wing paramilitaries murdered the opposition leader in parliament. Again a different time and place, you had parties which had politicians but each party also generally had it’s own paramilitary groups. In an environment like this democracies do not survive, you will see a lot of revisionist history about Spain in the period but the facts remain. Franco was a bad guy, he was absolutely ruthless and had a huge body count, he was also a far less capable leader, as his expertise was relegated solely to the military.
Where is the evidence that points to anything other than both Spain and Portugal falling to the communists?
JCer, c’mon now you’re assigning me homework, brother?
Just kidding, it’s fair:
1. True. But I never said otherwise. It was a real crisis
2. This is such a critical point. He did eliminate the “other bad guys” but implemented a regime that was arguably just as bad or worse.
3. The right move to make in this case is to declare a state of emergency, remove the anti-cletical elements and NOT start a 40 year oppressive dictatorship full of political Gulags and censorship. No excuse
4. Yes, it was real, but it was also uses as a cover to implement oppressive regimes that were functionally similar in the sense that both hates human rights and freedom
5. Economically the regime was a disaster. At the end of it, Portugal barely had basic Sanitation. The regime treated the peasants like cattle. There was so much illiteracy, on purpose to avoid giving the peasants ideas, that Portugal is still dealing with cultural deficits because of the brain drain
(More soon, but yeah you’re still 100 percent wrong!)
2. The proper move would be to attack anti-cleticalism within the constitutional framework they had in place. If a state of emergency needed to be called so be it. Doesn’t justify a dictatorship though.
3.
6. The left was on the ground true. But the main source of instability was the traditional alliance between Military and Church. The reds were a major problem, yes. But it was used as cover for a regime practically just as bad. The right option at the time was robust parlamentarism with American style Capitalism.
7. False. This is relativizing brutal oppression, social mind control, complete lack of Freedom. No one on their right mind wants to live as cattle. The only thing you could do under Salazar is to smile and say “yes, sir” “ya, master”
8. False. There was generalizes persecution of even the smallest of thoughtcrimes. If they only persecuted reds it would be one story, but the historic evidence disproves this. This is pure propaganda and historians know this
9. The regime purposely kept people illiterate JCer! There were no social advance, only retrocess only delay, only pain and suffering, a disgrace.
JCer, I want to really thank you for being a great convo partner. If it want for the pandemic I would love to GTG in person, share a Pastel de Nata and talk this over a cup of coffee!
Re where is the evidence.
There you really twisted yourself into a knot : )
The evidence is in actual history: in actual facts it fell to the Military+Church and NOT the reds!
The actual historic evidence, all of it, points to what actually happened: the Estado Novo hated democracy independent of any red threat. They created the state they wanted and loved.
The revisionism+regime propaganda won’t help you here.
“Hi, I arrested and killed your son, and did some things to your daughter just to teach your family a lesson. But hey we beat back Stalin so aren’t we the best?”
One last post then I’m taking a break unless someone @s me.
Imagine someone is trying to break into your house (Stalin) and you call the cops (the military) then they arrest the bad guy, but then moves in with your wife and wears your slippers. That’s Salazar.
Ok, I said I’d take a break but I need to clean the blog’s palate a bit from all this politics stuff!
Why don’t we celebrate Sunday on Disco Church?
Love is the message: https://youtu.be/p4wpRkcV9Ds
Millennials skipping NJ and moving to Connecticut and the Catskills. They believe WFH is here to stay.
Video from CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/07/24/new-york-city-urban-exodus-housing-real-estate-suburb-connecticut-catskills-orig.cnn-business
AP: I am going to bow out of this argument after this. But two points again. I said Chile is the most successful and stable in Latin America today that is a fact. I acknowledged it has issues. Spain from all my research on it probably would have fallen to the communists due to all the instability. History has shown this in other countries. And the leftists , particularly the communists were committing atrocities just like the right. With out knowing that much about Portugal, at the time I would gather it was pretty similar.
One final point Latin America on a whole has been unstable since independence, and they have fought some nasty wars with each other.
3b, no worries. I think we already went around the block on this topic so we can leave it at that.
I do think that the more you learn about the topic the more you will find that the “lesser evil” argument is pure BS and excuses.
But yeah we covered this topic enough for this week at least!
AP makes me miss the Great Pumpkin. At least he was confidently wrong and obsessed about topics of somewhat relevant to the board.
Instead this is like some course in neocolonialism studies taught by an obsessive adjunct lecturer at a community college. The students mostly don’t care, and those that do care already understand the subject better than the would-be teacher. Making it a waste of everyone’s time.
I’m only responding when folks @ me, No One.
My stuff is based, relevant and on topics. Perhaps over your head.
AP: Sometimes the lesser of two evils is the only choice in the real
world. And we will leave it at that.
3b, agreed on leaving it at that!
Interesting perspective on how WFH could evolve. Author is well regarded in the search industry.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/07/25/op-ed-more-companies-will-offer-remote-work-at-price-of-staff-job.html
Are you trying to prove me right? Thanks. Go to the 2:25 mark and explains my exact position…I just called it 7 years out in 2013. Buy low in the city right now, and as economy improves, it will become valuable to new demographic groups.
As for the idiots moving to the Catskills…that might last. They should do a documentary on them, teaching people why city people can’t survive in the Catskills year round.
juice box says:
July 26, 2020 at 8:27 am
Millennials skipping NJ and moving to Connecticut and the Catskills. They believe WFH is here to stay.
Video from CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/07/24/new-york-city-urban-exodus-housing-real-estate-suburb-connecticut-catskills-orig.cnn-business
Pelosi is on face the Nation. God that woman is insufferable.
When the hell are all these soon to be octogenarians going to die or just GTFO of the way.
FWIW,
From your article:
“The pandemic was just the tipping point.
Even after stay-at-home restrictions are eased, and even if somehow we dodge the second wave of the virus that is widely predicted to emerge this fall, there are so many people unemployed that a V or even a U bounce-back of the job market is nearly impossible.
According to Heidi Shierholz, the former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor and current director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, if we succeed in restoring “a million jobs a month — which would be absolutely unheard of — it would still take almost two years to get back to where we were.””
Does anyone think? The reason the economy is hurting so bad, and why those businesses are failing and those jobs aren’t returning… WFH shut down the economy. It absolutely destroyed it. Killed energy demand all the way to restaurant supply lines. So if anyone is claiming that WFH is working, take a F’ING look at the ECONOMY. Enough with this nonsense. It’s terrible for the economy.
Some historians argue the Spanish Civil War was the true start of WWII.
“We can talk about Spain as well, the “Republicans” again were not really interested in a democracy.”
Some argue Japanese aggression way back in early 30’s was.
Yes, that’s how you have a strong economy…where people sit home and spend no money all day.
leftwing says:
July 26, 2020 at 10:46 am
Pelosi is on face the Nation. God that woman is insufferable.
When the hell are all these soon to be octogenarians going to die or just GTFO of the way.
Soon to be? Born: March 26, 1940 (age 80 years), Baltimore, MD
leftwing says:
July 26, 2020 at 10:46 am
Pelosi is on face the Nation. God that woman is insufferable.
When the hell are all these soon to be octogenarians going to die or just GTFO of the way.
When the hell are all these soon to be octogenarians going to die or just GTFO of the way.
You mean like Crypt Keeper Karen?
https://bit.ly/3f3yqMX
Someone supporting Trump and complaining about Pelosi as the face of the nation.
One can really see how the educational system has failed.
Btw time is ticking. Trump will either lose mightily or resign to avoid losing.
Which will it be??
When the hell are all these soon to be octogenarians going to die or just GTFO of the way.
You mean like Crypt Keeper Karen?
https://bit.ly/3f3yqMX
Jesus, you can tell she was a lifetime sociopath.
Even if you don’t like Trump, you know he’ll be gone one day in the near future. Pelosi and McConnell, they will never go away.
FabMax and co run out for some errands….
https://twitter.com/maxnesterak/status/1287166965807710209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1287166965807710209%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnypost.com%2F2020%2F07%2F26%2Fcouple-wears-swastika-face-masks-at-walmart-in-minnesota%2F
My prediction for Trump’s resignation is after Labor Day, but before Halloween.
Bill Stepien’s campaign maneuver to a fake “Law and Order” to avoid having to talk about the Virus’s body count is not working. Sending in the goons at DHS Statsi to try to start, augment trouble and make it look like Trump is on top of it is backfiring on several front.
Is pissing off the vets, the civil rights crowds, the libertarians, the southern right wing – (they are realizing that it could be Biden’s goon coming into their red areas forcing people to wear mask), and just about anybody else with decency and expectation of better behavior from elected officials.
Remember, is Bill Stepien. This is the weanie that gave and executed the idea of blocking the GWB to make Christie look good, but it ended his career. Same thing is going to happen again.
By late September, the Virus’s butcher’s bill will be over 2500 a day; the 2nd or 3rd lockdown on its way; the markets will be downhill; in short nothing will look good.
The one thing is that different countries that want to affect the election’s results actually are on different sides of the rope. China and Iran want Trump gone, Russia wants him re-elected.
Relative to the earlier Kapernick discussion. As a life long Jets fan, I am satisfied with the trade of Jamal Adams, the only currently recognized superstar on the Jets. He is a distraction and difficult to enjoy watching. At bottom, sport is entertainment. The Jets were going to be a better team in 2020, even with this deletion, but due the structure of the NFL, they are likely to post a worse record than their 7-9 of 2019, because of difficulty of their schedule. Throw in the COVID risk, and getting two first rounders and a third was a tremendous deal for a strong safety. I hate to have this attitude, but it underlines was a waste of space Kapernick is. I also believe I am being philosophically consistent as well as pragmatic.
what a waste
WSJ Editorial
We’ve been gratified this week by the outpouring of support from readers after some 280 of our Wall Street Journal colleagues signed (and someone leaked) a letter to our publisher criticizing the opinion pages. But the support has often been mixed with concern that perhaps the letter will cause us to change our principles and content. On that point, reassurance is in order.
In the spirit of collegiality, we won’t respond in kind to the letter signers. Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility in any case. The signers report to the News editors or other parts of the business, and the News and Opinion departments operate with separate staffs and editors. Both report to Publisher Almar Latour. This separation allows us to pursue stories and inform readers with independent judgment.
It was probably inevitable that the wave of progressive cancel culture would arrive at the Journal, as it has at nearly every other cultural, business, academic and journalistic institution. But we are not the New York Times. Most Journal reporters attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle, and our opinion pages offer an alternative to the uniform progressive views that dominate nearly all of today’s media.
As long as our proprietors allow us the privilege to do so, the opinion pages will continue to publish contributors who speak their minds within the tradition of vigorous, reasoned discourse. And these columns will continue to promote the principles of free people and free markets, which are more important than ever in what is a culture of growing progressive conformity and intolerance.
More importantly, every day closer to the election and as Biden looks like he will make it.
The bureaucracy at DHS-Statsi and many other federal agencies are going to start backing down and ignore orders from Trumps minions, as they realize that any decision they make will look really bad on 1/21/21. So they will be hitting the brakes hard on anything Trump orders.
DHS-Statsi Wannabes, already know they are goners. That is an agency that is going to be ripped apart. Retired Senator Barbara Boxer, wrote a op ed on how it was her worse legislative mistake, as no safeguards were put in when this defect national police force was created, and no one expected a Trump.
WSJ
Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All
Projects take longer. Collaboration is harder. And training new workers is a struggle. ‘This is not going to be sustainable.’
By Chip Cutter
July 24, 2020 11:10 am ET
Four months ago, employees at many U.S. companies went home and did something incredible: They got their work done, seemingly without missing a beat. Executives were amazed at how well their workers performed remotely, even while juggling child care and the distractions of home. Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc., among others, quickly said they would embrace remote work long term. Some companies even vowed to give up their physical office spaces entirely.
Now, as the work-from-home experiment stretches on, some cracks are starting to emerge. Projects take longer. Training is tougher. Hiring and integrating new employees, more complicated. Some employers say their workers appear less connected and bosses fear that younger professionals aren’t developing at the same rate as they would in offices, sitting next to colleagues and absorbing how they do their jobs.
Months into a pandemic that rapidly reshaped how companies operate, an increasing number of executives now say that remote work, while necessary for safety much of this year, is not their preferred long-term solution once the coronavirus crisis passes.
“There’s sort of an emerging sense behind the scenes of executives saying, ‘This is not going to be sustainable,’” said Laszlo Bock, chief executive of human-resources startup Humu and the former HR chief at Google. No CEO should be surprised that the early productivity gains companies witnessed as remote work took hold have peaked and leveled off, he adds, because workers left offices in March armed with laptops and a sense of doom.
Tape helps to enforce distancing measures at the Chef Robotics office.
“It was people being terrified of losing their jobs, and that fear-driven productivity is not sustainable,” Mr. Bock said.
Few companies expect remote work to go away in the near term, though the evolving thinking among many CEOs reflects a significant shift from the early days of the pandemic.
“You can tell people are getting fatigued,” said Peter P. Kowalczuk, president of Canon Solutions America, a division of copier and camera giant Canon Inc., which employs about 15,000 people across the country.
Mr. Kowalczuk, who worked for months out of a bedroom in his home, went back to Canon’s U.S. headquarters in Melville, N.Y., in early July. Now, no more than 50% of the company’s employees are coming into work at the 52-acre office campus, which features two ponds and a walking trail, and typically includes more than 11,000 staffers in a single building.
Returning is voluntary, Mr. Kowalczuk said, and requires answering a series of health questions on an app the company created, called Check-In Online, before getting approval to drive in. The company has also blocked off desks to allow for greater distancing, stepped up cleaning and created a rotating schedule so that staffers come in on alternating weeks.
“We’re really a face-to-face business,” he said. “I don’t think offices are dead.”
The nature of what some companies do makes it tough, if not impossible, to function remotely. In San Francisco, startup Chef Robotics recently missed a key product deadline by a month, hampered by the challenges of integrating and testing software and hardware with its engineers scattered across the Bay Area. Pre-pandemic, they all collaborated in one space.
Problems that took an hour to solve in the office stretched out for a day when workers were remote, said Chief Executive Rajat Bhageria. “That’s just a logistical nightmare,” he said.
Chef Robotics had little choice but to make do. Its office space could not accommodate all eight full-time employees and allow for distancing. For a while, Mr. Bhageria invited four people in at a time, on a voluntary basis, to work together.
“We tried it,” he says. “It’s just not the same. You just cannot get the same quality of work.”
Chef Robotics moved in mid-July to a new office in the South of Market neighborhood with double the square footage, better ventilation and non-communal restrooms.
Teams physically building a product need to be together, Mr. Bhageria said. “There’s this thrill of being a little hacky group of people, on a shared mission, in a startup, with little money, eating pizza and ramen.”
The Boston-based video technology firm OpenExchange, which helps run large, online conferencing events, is going a step further to bring employees together. Workers on the company’s European team said they could benefit from some in-person interaction during this time of huge growth at the company. So in late July, OpenExchange is renting a house in the English countryside, with about 15 bedrooms, so many of its employees can live and work together, while still distancing. In some cases, family members are coming along.
It’s important to have people in a room and see body language and read signals that don’t come through a screen, says Mark Loehr, the CEO, noting the event is optional. “They’re going to do their work there—modestly, individually, sometimes in group rooms—but try to meet together for breakfast, lunch and meals,” he says. “And maybe out on the lawn, just to know each other.”
One benefit of working together in person, many executives said, is the potential for spontaneous interactions. Mary Bilbrey, global chief human resources officer at real-estate giant Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., returned to her Chicago office in early June, as the company reopened its spaces. She noticed that she was soon having conversations with peers that wouldn’t have happened in a remote set up—a discussion sparked by a passing question in the hall, for instance. “They weren’t going to think about scheduling a 30 minute call to do it,” she said.
Commercial real-estate firms like JLL stand to benefit from a widespread return to office work. For now, the length of most office leases means that most companies are unlikely to move away from physical offices immediately. The majority of U.S. office leases are eight years or longer, according to an analysis by credit-rating agency Moody’s Investors Service. In an early July report, analysts noted that they didn’t expect an exodus from offices, despite popular claims that offices were now dead.
More companies now envision a hybrid future, with more time spent working remote, yet with opportunities to regularly convene teams. CompuCom Systems Inc., the IT service provider owned by Office Depot, may institute “core hours” for its employees, similar to office hours that professors hold on college campuses. The idea under consideration is that teams would agree to come together for a limited time on certain days of the week to bounce ideas off each other, collaborate and strategize, says CompuCom president Mick Slattery. Online education provider Coursera expects half of its 650 employees to work “blended” hours once the pandemic passes, with staffers spending three days a week in the office and the rest remote, says Chief Executive Jeff Maggioncalda.
The toll of extended work-from-home arrangements is likely to affect career development, particularly for younger workers, several executives said. At Stifel Financial Corp., which employs more than 8,000 people around the world, junior employees learn how to underwrite deals or develop pitch books by sitting beside more experienced colleagues and watching them work, said Chief Executive Ronald J. Kruszewski. That’s hard to do remotely.
“I am concerned that we would somehow believe that we can basically take kids from college, put them in front of Zoom, and think that three years from now, they’ll be every bit as productive as they would have had they had the personal interaction,” said Mr. Kruszewski.
In March, Stifel transformed from eight group trading desks to more than 180 separate trading locations. Dozens of staffers fanned out to smaller office locations in Connecticut and New Jersey, and some people set up work-from-home stations using secure cloud technologies.
Mr. Kruszewski said the company didn’t miss a beat, but when the pandemic has passed, or there are viable treatment options, employees will be recalled from their alternative locations.
“Our traders need to be together,” he said, adding that, at a broader company level, employees benefit from interaction. “We’re missing things, and that will become more evident over time.”
And then there’s the challenge of training employees who began work after the pandemic began and have had to work remotely from the start. At Discover Financial Services, thousands of new call-center workers and other employees have come on board since March, said Andy Eichfeld, chief human resources and administrative officer.
Most of those new employees have never worked in a Discover office. Customer-service agents who once got six weeks of in-classroom training now must learn the information remotely. They don’t have the same casual day-to-day opportunities to ask more experienced workers for help or advice that they would if they were working in the same office, even as the company has tried to connect people virtually. New employees in marketing and analytics roles haven’t been able to quickly pick up company jargon and shorthand in meetings, leaving some of them lost.
“If you were physically on site, you might have someone physically whispering, ‘Hey, that means this.’ We don’t have that here. So, it’s taking longer for the new employee to understand what’s happening,” he said.
In a recent company survey, less than a third of Discover employees said they want to work from home permanently, though many said they would like the flexibility to do it sometimes, which the company plans to offer. Without the interactions that define office life, Mr. Eichfeld worries that Discover’s culture will gradually fray, which is why he’s eager to get workers back together once it is safe.
“It was easier to go remote fast than most people would have ever imagined,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it’s great.”
WSJ WFH article in moderation….. will attempt to post it piecemeal.
WSJ
Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All
Projects take longer. Collaboration is harder. And training new workers is a struggle. ‘This is not going to be sustainable.’
By Chip Cutter
July 24, 2020 11:10 am ET
Four months ago, employees at many U.S. companies went home and did something incredible: They got their work done, seemingly without missing a beat. Executives were amazed at how well their workers performed remotely, even while juggling child care and the distractions of home. Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc., among others, quickly said they would embrace remote work long term. Some companies even vowed to give up their physical office spaces entirely.
Now, as the work-from-home experiment stretches on, some cracks are starting to emerge. Projects take longer. Training is tougher. Hiring and integrating new employees, more complicated. Some employers say their workers appear less connected and bosses fear that younger professionals aren’t developing at the same rate as they would in offices, sitting next to colleagues and absorbing how they do their jobs.
Months into a pandemic that rapidly reshaped how companies operate, an increasing number of executives now say that remote work, while necessary for safety much of this year, is not their preferred long-term solution once the coronavirus crisis passes.
“There’s sort of an emerging sense behind the scenes of executives saying, ‘This is not going to be sustainable,’” said Laszlo Bock, chief executive of human-resources startup Humu and the former HR chief at Google. No CEO should be surprised that the early productivity gains companies witnessed as remote work took hold have peaked and leveled off, he adds, because workers left offices in March armed with laptops and a sense of doom.
Tape helps to enforce distancing measures at the Chef Robotics office.
“It was people being terrified of losing their jobs, and that fear-driven productivity is not sustainable,” Mr. Bock said.
Few companies expect remote work to go away in the near term, though the evolving thinking among many CEOs reflects a significant shift from the early days of the pandemic.
“You can tell people are getting fatigued,” said Peter P. Kowalczuk, president of Canon Solutions America, a division of copier and camera giant Canon Inc., which employs about 15,000 people across the country.
Mr. Kowalczuk, who worked for months out of a bedroom in his home, went back to Canon’s U.S. headquarters in Melville, N.Y., in early July. Now, no more than 50% of the company’s employees are coming into work at the 52-acre office campus, which features two ponds and a walking trail, and typically includes more than 11,000 staffers in a single building.
Returning is voluntary, Mr. Kowalczuk said, and requires answering a series of health questions on an app the company created, called Check-In Online, before getting approval to drive in. The company has also blocked off desks to allow for greater distancing, stepped up cleaning and created a rotating schedule so that staffers come in on alternating weeks.
“We’re really a face-to-face business,” he said. “I don’t think offices are dead.”
The nature of what some companies do makes it tough, if not impossible, to function remotely. In San Francisco, startup Chef Robotics recently missed a key product deadline by a month, hampered by the challenges of integrating and testing software and hardware with its engineers scattered across the Bay Area. Pre-pandemic, they all collaborated in one space.
Problems that took an hour to solve in the office stretched out for a day when workers were remote, said Chief Executive Rajat Bhageria. “That’s just a logistical nightmare,” he said.
“You can tell people are getting fatigued,” said Peter P. Kowalczuk, president of Canon Solutions America, a division of copier and camera giant Canon Inc., which employs about 15,000 people across the country.
Mr. Kowalczuk, who worked for months out of a bedroom in his home, went back to Canon’s U.S. headquarters in Melville, N.Y., in early July. Now, no more than 50% of the company’s employees are coming into work at the 52-acre office campus, which features two ponds and a walking trail, and typically includes more than 11,000 staffers in a single building.
Returning is voluntary, Mr. Kowalczuk said, and requires answering a series of health questions on an app the company created, called Check-!In Online, before getting approval to drive in. The company has also blocked off desks to allow for greater distancing, stepped up cleaning and created a rotating schedule so that staffers come in on alternating weeks.
“We’re really a face-to-face business,” he said. “I don’t think offices are dead.”
The nature of what some companies do makes it tough, if not impossible, to function remotely. In San Francisco, startup Ch5f Robotics recently missed a key product deadline by a month, hampered by the challenges of integrating and testing software and hardware with its engineers scattered across the Bay Area. Pre-pandemic, they all collaborated in one space.
Problems that took an hour to solve in the office stretched out for a day when workers were remote, said Chief Executive Rajat Bhageria. “That’s just a logistical nightmare,” he said.
Ch5f Robotics had little choice but to make do. Its office space could not accommodate all eight full-time employees and allow for distancing. For a while, Mr. Bhageria invited four people in at a time, on a voluntary basis, to work together.
“We tried it,” he says. “It’s just not the same. You just cannot get the same quality of work.”
Ch5f Robotics moved in mid-July to a new office in the South of Market neighborhood with double the square footage, better ventilation and non-communal restrooms.
Teams physically building a product need to be together, Mr. Bhageria said. “There’s this thrill of being a little hacky group of people, on a shared mission, in a startup, with little money, eating pizza and ramen.”
The Boston-based video technology firm OpenE6change, which helps run large, online conferencing events, is going a step further to bring employees together. Workers on the company’s European team said they could benefit from some in-person interaction during this time of huge growth at the company. So in late July, OpenE6change is renting a house in the English countryside, with about 15 bedrooms, so many of its employees can live and work together, while still distancing. In some cases, family members are coming along.
It’s important to have people in a room and see body language and read signals that don’t come through a screen, says Mark Loehr, the CEO, noting the event is optional. “They’re going to do their work there—modestly, individually, sometimes in group rooms—but try to meet together for breakfast, lunch and meals,” he says. “And maybe out on the lawn, just to know each other.”
One benefit of working together in person, many executives said, is the potential for spontaneous interactions. Mary Bilbrey, global chief human resources officer at real-estate giant Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., returned to her Chicago office in early June, as the company reopened its spaces. She noticed that she was soon having conversations with peers that wouldn’t have happened in a remote set up—a discussion sparked by a passing question in the hall, for instance. “They weren’t going to think about scheduling a 30 minute call to do it,” she said.
Commercial real-estate firms like JLL stand to benefit from a widespread return to office work. For now, the length of most office leases means that most companies are unlikely to move away from physical offices immediately. The majority of U.S. office leases are eight years or longer, according to an analysis by credit-rating agency Moody’s Investors Service. In an early July report, analysts noted that they didn’t expect an exodus from offices, despite popular claims that offices were now dead.
More companies now envision a hybrid future, with more time spent working remote, yet with opportunities to regularly convene teams. CompuCom Systems Inc., the IT service provider owned by Office Depot, may institute “core hours” for its employees, similar to office hours that professors hold on college campuses. The idea under consideration is that teams would agree to come together for a limited time on certain days of the week to bounce ideas off each other, collaborate and strategize, says CompuCom president Mick Slattery. Online education provider Coursera expects half of its 650 employees to work “blended” hours once the pandemic passes, with staffers spending three days a week in the office and the rest remote, says Chief Executive Jeff Maggioncalda.
The toll of extended work-from-home arrangements is likely to affect career development, particularly for younger workers, several executives said. At Stifel Financial Corp., which employs more than 8,000 people around the world, junior employees learn how to underwrite deals or develop pitch books by sitting beside more experienced colleagues and watching them work, said Chief Executive Ronald J. Kruszewski. That’s hard to do remotely.
“I am concerned that we would somehow believe that we can basically take kids from college, put them in front of Zoom, and think that three years from now, they’ll be every bit as productive as they would have had they had the personal interaction,” said Mr. Kruszewski.
In March, Stifel transformed from eight group trading desks to more than 180 separate trading locations. Dozens of staffers fanned out to smaller office locations in Connecticut and New Jersey, and some people set up work-from-home stations using secure cloud technologies.
Mr. Kruszewski said the company didn’t miss a beat, but when the pandemic has passed, or there are viable treatment options, employees will be recalled from their alternative locations.
“Our traders need to be together,” he said, adding that, at a broader company level, employees benefit from interaction. “We’re missing things, and that will become more evident over time.”
And then there’s the challenge of training employees who began work after the pandemic began and have had to work remotely from the start. At Discover Financial Services, thousands of new call-center workers and other employees have come on board since March, said Andy Eichfeld, chief human resources and administrative officer.
Most of those new employees have never worked in a Discover office. Customer-service agents who once got six weeks of in-classroom training now must learn the information remotely. They don’t have the same casual day-to-day opportunities to ask more experienced workers for help or advice that they would if they were working in the same office, even as the company has tried to connect people virtually. New employees in marketing and analytics roles haven’t been able to quickly pick up company jargon and shorthand in meetings, leaving some of them lost.
“If you were physically on site, you might have someone physically whispering, ‘Hey, that means this.’ We don’t have that here. So, it’s taking longer for the new employee to understand what’s happening,” he said.
In a recent company survey, less than a third of Discover employees said they want to work from home permanently, though many said they would like the flexibility to do it sometimes, which the company plans to offer. Without the interactions that define office life, Mr. Eichfeld worries that Discover’s culture will gradually fray, which is why he’s eager to get workers back together once it is safe.
“It was easier to go remote fast than most people would have ever imagined,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it’s great.”
you lost a small bit of the article, but so be it
This opinion piece was one of the main quoted reasons for the WSJ reporters’ letter to
the publisher. I am not stating my support or refutation. I’m just posting it.
OPINION
COMMENTARY
The Myth of Systemic Police Racism
Hold officers accountable who use excessive force. But there’s no evidence of widespread racial bias.
By Heather Mac Donald
June 2, 2020 1:44 pm ET
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist. On Friday, Barack Obama tweeted that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal.’ ” Mr. Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal,” in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts.”
Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home.” That echoed a claim Mr. Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz denounced the “stain . . . of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement during a Friday press conference. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.
This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.
In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued—a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day. This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.
The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police,” they concluded.
A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police.
The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilization-destroying violence. If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighborhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.
The Minneapolis officers who arrested George Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics. But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.
Ms. Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of “The War on Cops,” (Encounter Books, 2016).
Cheers! Lifelong jets fan!
I LOVE THIS GM. The draft is stacked with high end talent next year. Good time to be a Jets fan. Got rid of a problem for top dollar. That’s how you do it.
chicagofinance says:
July 26, 2020 at 1:08 pm
Relative to the earlier Kapernick discussion. As a life long Jets fan, I am satisfied with the trade of Jamal Adams, the only currently recognized superstar on the Jets.
WSJ is my go to source. I love how they didn’t pussy out and give in to the bs. They have more than earned the 20 dollars a month from me for their subscription.
Also, says a lot that they are the first media source to call out the WFH movement as bs. Good job, WSJ. Always professional.
chicagofinance says:
July 26, 2020 at 1:11 pm
WSJ Editorial
WSJ is my go to source. I love how they didn’t pu$$y out and give in to the bs. They have more than earned the 20 dollars a month from me for their subscription.
Also, says a lot that they are the first media source to call out the WFH movement as bs. Good job, WSJ. Always professional.
chicagofinance says:
July 26, 2020 at 1:11 pm
WSJ Editorial
Pumps Did you read the whole article? Or just the pieces you liked ?
I am going to ask you one last time. You are a teacher, and will always be one at your age, so why are you, who never worked in corporate America, and rely only on hearsay or articles you read, but have never, ever worked in corporate America, why do you hate it so much, why so much hostility? It does not affect your career in any manner. So again why do you a history teacher hate WFH and all the positives in spite of the negatives that it will bring for thousands of people. No BS, no deflection, answer the question?
Why don’t we start we you first. Why do you care so much about WFH? Also, why are you he’ll bent on north jersey real estate becoming cheap? Why do you only see failure for the nyc metro area economy?
Why do I have to work for a corporation to have a voice in WFH? Why?
You always accuse me of making calls based on my single family home in Wayne. Seriously though, what does my personal have to do with my calls when I have been consistently correct with my calls? I could understand if I was wrong, but I’m f’ing correct, so what does my house have to do with it. I was correct.
And weren’t you the one calling me an idiot for taking the position that the suburbs are not dead a few years ago? Guess who was correct? Suck it.
Pumps Typical. You walked right into it. I knew you would not answer the question, because you and I and this whole board so why you are so hysterically against it. And why do I care about WFH, well that’s pretty easy moron, I am in corporate America and so are my kids. You of course are not. But nevertheless we all know why you hate it, in fact you just proved it.
Based on your way of thinking, why is WSJ putting out article highlighting the flaws of WFH and why it will not work. They must have bought property in the area and are protecting their asset. That’s exactly what you do to me.
Your kids could have bought a nice cheap property in the suburbs of nj, but you prob told them to rent or buy in the city. Good advice. Good luck getting a decent property in north jersey now for cheap with no competition. It’s time to push up the price.
Pumps, read this, carefully.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/18/jamie-dimons-warning-for-the-us-economy.html
Pumps :Still won’t answer the question, and deflect and diversion. If you had any critical thinking skills you would even come to the conclusion that all of your rah, rah cheerleading for high prices in this area is biting you in the ass. Yeah , pumps up the price, so it can fall further!!
Here is some Louis C.K. to help you through this weather…… hopefully you are boozing it up….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BRTWVXjWnI
FWIW: So no health benefits, no 401k, everyone pretty much on their own if what this article states turns out to be reality. Very gloomy I would say.
Humor (FabMax Edition):
https://youtu.be/Of4o7Oyya_k?t=398
Do you understand that WFH is the source of this economic gloom? That’s why businesses are failing and people are out of work. Their normal economic activities have been locked away in a house. A city can’t be a city. So why would you advocate the long term position of WFH? See what it’s doing to the economy or are you blind?
3b says:
July 26, 2020 at 3:47 pm
FWIW: So no health benefits, no 401k, everyone pretty much on their own if what this article states turns out to be reality. Very gloomy I would say.
He knows better than anyone that the fed will not let it crash. Just stop, Jaime. I heard this one before.
Pumps BouncesChecks says:
July 26, 2020 at 2:51 pm
Pumps, read this, carefully.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/18/jamie-dimons-warning-for-the-us-economy.html
Pumps: no it’s not. God you are such a simpleton! You think we all go back to the office except, you as you don’t work in an office but somehow are an expert, and it all goes back to normal?? Get a clue!!
“Someone supporting Trump and complaining about Pelosi as the face of the nation.
One can really see how the educational system has failed.”
Uh, yeah. It certainly has.
You have ZERO reading comprehension dumbass…At every juncture I criticize Trump, and certainly do not support him.
Pathetic behavior.
“A mini-golf complex got flooded with hundreds of kids after a mass parent drop-off, who then started wreaking havoc when they couldn’t get their money back … so say cops, anyway.”
https://apple.news/AcSTE1gRfTMiD_nJGPIj3LQ
5:40 and here I thought your username was just ironic.
It’s the hockey position he played.
ExEssex says:
July 26, 2020 at 8:42 pm
5:40 and here I thought your username was just ironic.
8:58 – ahhhhh. I see.
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I don’t know that besides Eddie anyone on here really supports Trump, Trump is a moron. That being said from a policy perspective, a lot of what he’s done is less damaging than the democratic platform, he at least properly has identified and drawn attention to China(not that he’s had any success rectifying the situation, he has no idea how to effectively use any policy tools he might have at his disposal and instead of bringing the CAN/EU/UK/SK/JP into the effort to rein in China he assaulted them as well…big mistake he needed to isolate China as much as possible).
That being said the Democrats platform scares me especially in the face of a recession/depression. Right now it looks like Trump will lose which I think might be a mistake, 4 years of Trump ham fisting it without control of the House is likely our best bet, Biden and co. don’t evoke any confidence and worse than that the policy they want will destroy any economy we have left. There is a long time between now and November, if they can keep the focus off Biden and on Trump it’s all over for Trump. America now knows who he is and he isn’t good, he’s an infomercial huckster.
Lmao
“It’s telling to see these pudgy #Antifa androgynes scream and shove cops in the manner they are used to screaming and shoving their hippie parents. Then they have that stunned look when the cops, instead of calling TIME OUT, slam them to the ground and arrest them”
Let’s go Ranger! Can’t wait!!
chicagofinance says:
July 26, 2020 at 8:58 pm
It’s the hockey position he played.
Autocorrect is annoying! Say it with me…
The struggle of quarantining in your weekend home is real, people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/realestate/coronavirus-second-homes-.html?referringSource=articleShare
Welcome to CT millenials,
“Bridgewater Associates has laid off several dozen employees across the company this month, an unusually large cut at the world’s largest hedge-fund firm.
The layoffs affected Bridgewater’s research department and client-services team as well as among its recruiters. The cuts also affected the firm’s “audit groups” that assess the performance of employees in various departments, and its “core management team”—a management training program conceived by founder Ray Dalio. Bridgewater veterans of more than 15 years”
Pumpkin on the Spanish civil war, that is actually a fairly accurate assessment. You had the Germans and Italy backing Franco and the USSR backing the Republicans, it was a proxy war being faught on Spanish soil, even the US was secretly supporting the Republicans. The foreign armies were essentially testing their militaries, new technology and techniques as well as getting a feel for their enemies. Given how badly the Republicans were beaten I suspect the Germans were feeling a lot better about their prospects in a war with the Soviets. It was a nasty conflict where 500k people were killed and there were a wholly disturbing number of atrocities committed by both sides.
Very interesting, and I thought well balanced and insightful article at Slate comparing the BLM and Me Too movements.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/black-lives-matter-me-too-cancel-culture-blacklash.html
Couple of good quotes:
” As with Me Too, it may also seem as if the “rules” suddenly changed to punish and pathologize behavior Americans used to tolerate and even embrace. The scope of behavior that ought to be seen as sexist expanded under Me Too. The scope of conduct that ought to be considered racist is presently expanding.”
“Many Americans are changing the ways they weigh evidence and process information from different sources—maybe forever.”
I can’t stomach 30+ year career politicians telling me that the guy that was a TV gameshow host 5 years ago and just came to politics is the reason the country is so messed up.
Any of you that believe Trump is the reason for the country’s systemic problems is far dumber than I ever imagined, and I imagined many of you being really dumb.
Home, I agree that if anyone thinks that Trump is the cause of the problem they are pretty off the mark.
Trump voters were “left behind” by both Bush and Obama is my view, not completely but to a serious enough degree that they turned to something “more creative”.
Be on the lookout for the Durham indictments, before the end of 2020. It is going to cast a very wide net, and capture both sides of the aisle.
SX, 1’m l1bertar1an as currently def1ned in Amer1ca (1e, ‘r1ght’ lean1ng, n0t s0c1al1st l1bertar1an).
0r, 1f m0re palatable, 1’m s0c1ally l1beral (1n the class1cal sense 0f l1beral1sm) and f1scally c0nservat1ve.
(Self def1ned Amer1can l1berals have as much 1n c0mm0n w1th class1c l1beral1sm as a ch1mpanzee has 1n c0mm0n w1th an 1ntellectual.)
Alth0ugh 1 p0ssess ne1ther 1 c0uld very eas1ly hang a G@dsden flag 0uts1de my h0me wh1le carry1ng an ACLU membersh1p card 1n my wallet.
As such DJT and H1llary/B1den are equally c0ntempt1ble t0 me.
Th0se are my p0l1t1cal pr0n0uns :) H0pe that helps.
And yeah, the handle relates t0 h0ckey.
Cheers.
Homeboken: I have said the same thing since the beginning. Trump is not the reason the country is a mess, it’s as you say in large part why he was elected. Now there is a legitimate argument he has made some things worse and he has, but the Democrats will be back and what we are in the promised land? The people who voted for Trump would in my opinion have voted for Bernie. I would have voted for him too, in the hopes it would have scared the crap out of the bought and paid for special interests on both sides.
“Be on the lookout for the Durham indictments, before the end of 2020. It is going to cast a very wide net, and capture both sides of the aisle.”
Clock seriously running out. With a Biden administration all this goes away.
“The people who voted for Trump would in my opinion have voted for Bernie.”
A majority of Americans voted for populism…DJT + Bernie.
A major party ignores that fact at its own peril.
MIT Technology Review
“It’s too late to stop QAnon with fact checks and account bans
Twitter and Facebook won’t be able to deal with the “omniconspiracy” without “rethinking the entire information ecosystem.”
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/26/1005609/qanon-facebook-twitter-youtuube/
0r, 1f m0re palatable, 1’m s0c1ally l1beral (1n the class1cal sense 0f l1beral1sm) and f1scally c0nservat1ve.
I think this defines me, as well.
Francis Fukuyama: ““A lingering epidemic combined with deep job losses, a prolonged recession, and an unprecedented debt burden will inevitably create tensions that turn into a political backlash—but against whom is as yet unclear.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-dilemma-of-covid-19s-second-wave/ar-BB17aqJ2
AP,
That’s the part I don’t understand. Destroying the economy based on a virus that is not really a killer. I’m not a doctor or scientist, just my thinking process based on what I see. Should we really be shutting down the economy for this? Who cares if the cases go up..are people dying at a high rate?
July?!
I’m starting to look at these tech companies based on human nature. They also have an incentive to push this. Makes their products more valuable, just saying…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-keep-employees-home-until-summer-2021-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-11595854201?st=ghj9ofs8twsbtti&reflink=article_copyURL_share
Why doesn’t google then let nyc schools use their space in NYC? And do it for free..
WALL STREET JOURNAL
THE WORK-FROM-HOME SHIFT SHOCKED COMPANIES—NOW THEY’RE LEARNING ITS LESSONS
CHRISTOPHER MIMS
July 25, 2020 12:00 am ET
A shift potentially as monumental as the movement of workers into factories during the Industrial Revolution has swept the globe, only this transition happened in months, and moved people in the opposite direction—back home. Despite its speed, we’re still in the earliest stages of the Work-From-Home Revolution, and it could take years or even decades of trial and error to get right.
The number of Americans working solely from home has at least doubled, and possibly tripled, since before the pandemic. At its peak in early May, 52% of employed Americans reported always working from home, and another 18% reported sometimes working from home, for a total of 70%, according to a survey by polling firm Gallup. That represents more than 100 million people in the U.S. alone. In the week ending July 12, the total declined to 53%. Even that is significantly higher than the 43% of workers who reported working from home at least part time in 2016, the last time Gallup asked Americans about their work-from-home habits.
Many of those workers aren’t going back anytime soon. A survey of corporate leaders conducted by Gartner on June 5 found that in the future, 82% plan to allow remote working at least some of the time; 47% said they intend to allow full-time remote work going forward. A recent Microsoft survey of managers yielded the same result: 82% said they will have more flexible work-from-home policies after the pandemic.
Sidekick offers an always-on tablet aimed at startups and other small teams that want constant communication among co-workers.
Sidekick
This shift has yielded an avalanche of data and insights into the habits and technology workers are using to stay productive. They paint a portrait of firms scrambling to use the equipment and software on hand—laptops, phones, internet connections and cloud services—while also rapidly discovering and adopting new technology.
Zoom Video Communications
had 10 million daily meeting participants in December; four months later, it had 300 million.
Companies are quickly learning lessons about the varied necessities of remote work, from appropriate tools to new styles of management. Fortunes may be won or lost as innovators and upstarts bet on what best suits a homebound workforce. Perhaps the biggest lesson is that we’re in the middle of a gigantic, unplanned experiment, and companies need to continue to try new things while rapidly discarding what doesn’t work.
Lesson 1: Use the tech you have
Global IT spending patterns reveal two apparently contradictory trends. April and May saw an uptick in consumer spending on laptops and related work-from-home gear. However, the overall 2020 sales forecast for laptops is gloomy—down 14% since 2019, says John-David Lovelock, a vice president and chief forecaster at Gartner, Inc. Despite that immediate post-pandemic bump in spending, “sales are going to be dead for the rest of the year,” he says. Whatever people bought for their home offices doesn’t make up for what businesses didn’t buy this year, amid huge drops in demand in many industries, from airlines and hospitality to heavy industry, manufacturing and retail.
Many companies that were reluctant to spend on their workers opted for a previously obscure subset of the cloud computing market: “desktop as a service.” This technology means employers can give their workers whatever laptops are on hand, then have them connect to a more powerful remote computer to run necessary software. Microsoft Corp.,
Citrix Systems Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s
Amazon Web Services all offer desktop as a service, and the category will double in sales between 2019 and 2020, to $1.2 billion, says Mr. Lovelock.
Lesson 2: People crave contact
One thing that makes going remote so challenging is that personalities and job functions are so diverse, and the tools people use need to reflect that. But companies might not immediately know what those tools should be, or how to stitch them into workflows. In pair programming, a practice gaining in popularity, coders sit together at a single computer to bring more intellectual firepower to challenging problems. During the pandemic, many have turned to Tuple, a screen-sharing app originally developed by three coders who wanted to solve their own remote-work problems. Even those who have returned to the office continue to use it, says Tuple’s chief executive.
Although many remote communication tools were in wide adoption before the pandemic, purpose-built hardware to facilitate this style of work is fairly new. Zoom, for instance, just announced its first dedicated at-home videoconferencing system, a 27-inch monitor with microphones and wide-angle cameras.
Sidekick, a startup fresh out of the Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator, offers an always-on tablet aimed at startups and other small teams that want constant and spontaneous communication among co-workers, as if they were sitting together all day long.
Once workers have found their individual work-from-home rhythms, managing them requires different sorts of communication, says Julien Codorniou, vice president of Workplace from Facebook Inc., which is used by Walmart, Starbucks, Chevron and many other multinationals.
His customers have discovered that over-communicating is important when everyone is remote, because online communication only conveys a fraction of what people pick up in person. “Before Covid, I’d say they were doing one big live all-hands meeting every month, and it became every week or every day,” he adds.
Lesson 3: The workday is changing
Most employers surveyed haven’t seen any drop in productivity during this period in mass work from home, says Elisabeth Joyce, a vice president in the Gartner HR practice. This makes sense when you consider that one benefit of skipping the commute is that those drive-time hours are now more available for calls and meetings.
The nature of meetings has also changed, since they’re now happening on software like Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams, which saw daily active users rise from 32 million in early March to 75 million in April. Data from within these services provides a unique view of how work is changing.
Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365, a division that includes Teams and Office, says Microsoft Teams saw a 15% to 23% increase in usage between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. A similar rise occurred between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. The number of chats happening on weekends increased more than 200%, he adds.
Lesson 4: To attract talent, you might need some new perks
Some companies are spending big to equip workers stuck at home, especially knowledge workers. Firstbase is a startup that charges companies a flat monthly fee—on average, about $120—per employee to equip newly homebound workers with an ergonomic chair and desk, microphone, laptop and second monitor. Before March, there were 600 companies on Firstbase’s waiting list, now there are more than 4,000, says company founder and chief executive Chris Herd.
Firstbase’s clients range from early-stage startups to publicly traded companies, some with particular (and at times extreme) requests intended to retain employees and keep them as productive as possible. Some clients opt for sending each employee their own coffee machine and coffee-bean subscription, but one client asked about the possibility of providing employees with Peloton bicycles. Another, an exchange-listed tech company, “supplies a specific item to all their employees that was strange to us,” says Mr. Herd. He declined to elaborate.
Lesson 5: Take it slow
Almost overnight, work morphed from a place people go to a thing people do. The mobile and cloud-based technologies that made our jobs bleed into our nights and weekends also eased the transition to full-time work from home. But for many, the shift has been too abrupt.
“I think we are just going way too fast,” says Mark W. Johnson, co-founder and senior partner of the strategy consulting firm Innosight. Many companies are moving quickly to adopt individual technologies, without considering the interdependencies between employees, managers and those tools, he adds. “Companies will have to pivot their workforce system a few times before they get it right.”
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What has surprised you most about working from home? Join the conversation below.
As states and countries reopen for business, most companies are settling into a hybrid mode of work, where at least some people come to the office some of the time, says Gartner’s Ms. Joyce. This is even harder to manage, because employers have to figure out how everyone can communicate at the same level, whether they’re home or at the office, she adds.
Evidence that hybrid work is a new norm can be seen in the use of conference-room videoconferencing systems that had been abandoned during the early stages of the pandemic. Microsoft says it sees workers using them again, indicating that people are back in the office, communicating not just with other offices but also, presumably, with colleagues who remain at home.
The mass shift to remote office work presents opportunities for innovation and rethinking the nature of work the likes of which we haven’t seen in a generation. But this terrifically big hairball of a challenge to productivity and work-life balance is one that companies will be untangling for decades to come.
Hi Pumpkin, those economic outcomes are all but inevitable at this point, just the degree. As per Jamie Dimon’s post yesterday.
The gist of that quote was that the inevitable political backlash is still a toss up in terms of how it will land. I think the man is making sense.
The question is what is the right path to lasting, sustainable, effective resolution to these problems?
I don’t have a strong opinion yet about what is the proper opening process, the situation is changing too much and there’s too much conflicting information.
Hi Pumpkin, those economic outcomes are all but inevitable at this point, just their degree. As per Jamie Dimon’s post yesterday.
The gist of that quote was that the inevitable political backlash is still a toss up in terms of how it will land. I think the man is making sense.
The question is what is the right path to lasting, sustainable, effective resolution to these problems?
I don’t have a strong opinion yet about what is the proper opening process, the situation is changing too much and there’s too much conflicting information.
You nitwit,
Is not destroying the economy. Is rebuilding the economy and society along new paradigms that takes the virus present pandemic and future endemism into account.
To get from here to there, requires imagination and relinking social bonds along very old and new ways, which the present social and economic popular ideology of the moment “neoliberal economics/corporatist globalization” does not want any changes.
Ergo, populism – Sanders -what does he wants?, Medicare For All. You will need Medicare For All to deal with the virus eventually. First because of the great financial hole of destruction is going to create with the present health system. Finally, because only M4A will be able to finance the equivalent of Virus Hospitals, going back in time think TB Sanitariums.
In short, is a new world, that need new ideas and ways of doing things, and the sclerotic octogenarians locust boomers are standing on the way of progress wearing their MAGA hats and the adult diapers.
The good thing nature is taking care of them. The virus hit big time in the famous “The Villages” central Florida adult community. By the time it slows down Florida’s mean age will have become 20 years younger.
The Great Pumpkin says:
July 27, 2020 at 9:50 am
AP,
That’s the part I don’t understand. Destroying the economy based on a virus that is not really a killer. I’m not a doctor or scientist, just my thinking process based on what I see. Should we really be shutting down the economy for this? Who cares if the cases go up..are people dying at a high rate?
AP,
I feel bad for the kids, more so than myself. We are really f’ing life up. Took a simple happy way of life and are transforming it to a complicated sad way of life. Tech change came too f’ing fast, before we could even understand the negatives. Now it’s just rapidly f’ing up people’s lives and economies.
From that Wsj article above:
“Almost overnight, work morphed from a place people go to a thing people do.”
Holy crap that is scary. They own you. That’s what this says.
Another quote from that article:
“This makes sense when you consider that one benefit of skipping the commute is that those drive-time hours are now more available for calls and meetings.”
Oh right, more work for same pay?! Get the f’k out of here. Think about your kids future before we set them up for this type of life.
Hi Monday, I like the part of your post where you talk about social bonds and innovative thinking to resolve our problems and create new way.
I don’t really like the part about finger printing a specific generation (ageism?) and callous sentiment about old folks dying. That weakened your position considerably.
It’s not? Then how come the economy went to sh!t under peak WFH conditions? It totally f’ed the economy. People don’t spend. They wear the same f’ing clothes, barely take care of themselves, and do absolutely nothing to spur economic activity under these conditions.
Monday RelaityCheck says:
July 27, 2020 at 10:15 am
You nitwit,
Is not destroying the economy. Is rebuilding the economy and society along new paradigms that takes the virus present pandemic and future endemism into account.
It doesn’t have to be inevitable. F’ing leftist media made people terrified of the virus. Making wild claims of 10% or higher death rates. So wrong. They didn’t need to shut it down. It makes no difference. How can you be afraid of a virus with .06 death rate? How?
AP says:
July 27, 2020 at 10:02 am
Hi Pumpkin, those economic outcomes are all but inevitable at this point, just the degree. As per Jamie Dimon’s post yesterday.
Other than being hijacked and devolving into farcical witch-hunts I don’t see many parallels between BLM and metoo. In fact I see major disconnects.
Based on a few observations I think we’ve hit the final stage for BLM. This thing is imploding.
AP: you are too polite for these threads. This site is the NJ RE Report, not the WI RE Report.
I would submit Monday Relaitycheck is closer to the standard address here.
Watched a roaring 20’s 2.0 economy go to hell on bs. Really bad leadership across the globe that panicked, when they shouldn’t have.
China made the world panic too. Not telling anyone what is going on and just shutting down their city without information. They dropped the ball from the start.
Chi, I need a place I can have a conversation without too much mouth-breathing. Can this be the place? I think I know the answer and it is a big yes.
Truth – me too is for real victims.
BLM – is for people that play victim for TV.
Really despicable how the metoo movement was totally abandoned when it came to the supporters doorstep.
BLM is the cause du jour. 1 year from now, it will be something else.
Truth, the author of that article also found major disconnects. It’s a good article to check out, even if you don’t agree.
Here is your metoo. Listen to the voice change right at the word “very.”
Some are “very” good at this.
This one lost her job also.
https://youtu.be/Xe69ViSkrXc?t=408
“s0c1al1st l1bertar1an” now that’s an Oxymorn.
Libertarians dive for the cover of Classic Liberalism when they need to hide the inherent selfishness of their views.
Classic Liberalism is a rejection of the monarchy, Theocracy and Dictatorships. Its the embodiment “of the people, by the people, for the people”.
Libertarians, reject any government that looks to tax them, especially if there is a welfare component. “I don’t care if you don’t have boots, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps!”
“I have an injury, I need medics.”
Be careful you who you believe.
https://www.ibtimes.sg/racist-karen-hits-asian-man-restaurant-tells-cops-shes-being-attacked-when-told-wear-mask-47709
Phoenix: I thought Karen’s were typically middle age, I guess there are younger ones as well.
Watching the scenes of more protesting in NYC over the weekend. I guess all those tourist shops won’t be selling NYPD/FDNY shirts any more. From heroes to villians.
11:16 careful grouping firemen in with police.
People who hate cops probably like firefighters.
The suspect in the fatal shooting of a Black Lives Matter protester in Texas over the weekend has been released from custody after telling investigators he fired in self-defense after the demonstrator pointed a gun at his vehicle. Garrett Foster (left and top right with his fiancee Whitney Mitchell), 28, was identified by police as the victim of the Saturday night’s shooting in Austin. His wheelchair-bound fiancee Whitney Mitchell, also 28, choked back tears as she led hundreds of marchers through downtown Austin on Sunday to the street were he was killed (bottom right). Foster was shot three times as he approached a vehicle with an AK-47 slung across his chest during a march in the city on Saturday night. On Sunday, Austin police said they interviewed the driver who had turned himself in after fleeing the scene. The man claimed he fired his handgun after Foster pointed his assault rifle at his car. Police, who declined to identify the driver, released the man as they continue their investigation. ‘We are heartbroken over the loss of Mr. Foster last night,’ Austin Police Chief Brain Manley told reporters Sunday. ‘It is actively being investigated and ongoing in conjunction with the Travis County district attorney’s office.’
Garrett – had video interview from that day he was killed, of why he was carrying at the BLM protest in Houston.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=PJVTB9pXxe8&feature=emb_logo
3b,
They can be younger I guess. But one thing is for sure, when you want to be a hero or be looked at as one, it’s easy to be baited.
Lie, crocodile tears, play victim, call Heroes in Blue, They will do their Hero shit and you have problems on your hand.
Hope you have video. And even then, don’t expect them to look or listen, they don’t have to, you just follow their orders. Jackboots.
Juice,
That video is misleading. You know I’m pretty much as strong as a gun rights activist as you’re going to find on this form But it’s very unclear if this was a “good” shoot.
The official information so far is that the five shots fired are from the motorist himself. The three remaining shots or from a third party who fired a response to the guy with the rifle being shot by the motorist. The individual killed is said to a fired no shots.
This is where things get really messy.
The guy in the car was just traversing the roadways have some video show. He made a turn into protesters on the road, arguably a very stupid decision. A protester claimed he was hit by the car and all the nearby protests are swarmed him. The gentleman with the rifle probably thought he was coming to protect someone. The guy in the car probably thought he was going to get shot so he fired first. The car speeding away was then fired at by a third person.
The motors has a good chance I’m walking away from this legally unharmed. The real question is going to come down to the social media profiles, things he said online or other people, and if any better information comes out in the form of video showing that the guy with the rifle did not actually point it at him as is being claimed by the motorist.
It’s all going to come down to two things. Arguing the intent of the motorist traveling into that group of people, and if individual who’s killed who had the rifle pointed it at the motorist or not. And of course being able to prove any of this.
The guy who fired the shots at the retreating car could be in for a lot of trouble.
Eff my spelling and grammar. Sorry for voice to text.
The guy who fired the shots at the retreating car could be in for a lot of trouble.
Unless it was a cop.
Whoever decided to call his bluff Probably was someone with a LEO background based on the skill. That ain’t Hollywood.
US Policy towards China is now regime change. No more working deals. China only seems to want abusive deals.
Re: “misleading” – His interview to me sounded to me like he was looking for trouble.
“They don’t let us march in the street anymore” Yet he was doing it anyway, and by his own admission escalating by bringing a rifle.
“arguably a very stupid decision” – Swarming anyone in Texas is a stupid decision, as we all know they are armed to the teeth down there.
Driver would be charged in New Jersey for sure.
LOL! Driver couldn’t even be in possession of his firearm (if it was a handgun) outside his home unless he was on the way to a range according to NJ law. Let alone load it or fire it.
“Driver would be charged in New Jersey for sure.”
I’m not sure how comfortable I am with anyone carrying heavy weaponry into a protest. Not very comfortable, I guess.
I mean what the royal f…
Stop and frisk was for their own good…lefty politicians told them otherwise.
“Through Sunday, shootings were up 73 percent in NYC. There have been 745 so far this year.
Homicides rose by 29 percent; so far there have been 227 people killed.”
https://twitter.com/migold/status/1287797685194375168?s=21
D-FENS – a white guy holding the AK-47 in the ready position at a BLM rally in NJ would have been arrested or perhaps even taken down by the police after everyone in at that BLM rally (you know the defund the police folks) would have called 911 in a panic.
The first duty of a CCW is avoidance. Followed by de-escalation.
Firing is essentially failure of these principles, even if it was justified or necessary at the time.
Engaging/agitating the protestors with a car makes him the aggressor. That is the first hurdle he needs to clear. To prove he was not the initial aggressor. You can’t claim self defense if your the aggressor.
Then proving the guy with the rifle provoked the motorist is the next hurdle. Having a rifle is not enough to warrant self defense. He needs to demonstrate that he believed his life was reasonably in danger.
Being approached by got with a bad attitude does not warrant self defense. Rifle pointed at him does.
https://twitter.com/AlexMarlow/status/1287819819874758656?s=20
@AlexMarlow
·
45m
WATCH LIVE: American Doctors address COVID-19 misinformation w/ press conference.
Wife was just talking to a Chinese friend who has relatives in Chinatown in NYC (she lives in NJ). She said there’s a big upturn of racism and crime there lately, of the black on Asian variety. Muggings and robberies are up, because they know Asians tend to have money and police have been told to stand down or reduce action against certain kinds of criminality. That’s her interpretation.
I wonder, does Comrade DiBlasio consider these “hate crimes” or perhaps he turns a blind eye to this as self-service reparations?
The friend says she doesn’t feel safe when visiting Chinatown. Of course the newthink counselors say “feeling unsafe” in such situations is a sure sign of racism. Maybe DiBlasio’s friends or relatives sell anti-racism therapy sessions to fix that.
Operation Warp Speed!
This summary report of human rights in China is worth reading for those interested.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2020
Doesn’t sound like a strategic partner for countries that care about individual rights and personal freedom.
My family used to go to Chinatown once a week in the 80s. I remember hopping over homeless people sleeping left and right. There was a jail right there and the inmates had open windows. They would spit outside them. I remember being 6 and hearing a guy from a few stories above saying “if I was down there right now, I’d rob that family” to his cellmate.
Ironically, in my early 20s, my idiot cousins got into a fight at a NYC bar and they got sent there. When we picked them up we were like…all the years walking by this jail, we didn’t expect you to be in it.
How long before the NYC italian mafia makes a resurgence?
The disconnect between De Blasio and the NYC Police Union is causing serious problems for the city, it seems. This has been going on since the beginning of his term, more or less. Remember when the entire force turned his back on him. That was …ugly.
Ap,
Do you really believe in lefty positions when it comes to the govt and economy? Have you not seen enough harm from it in your lifetime?
Honest question…
Pumpkin,
Real conservatives and real liberals both have good points and views. Radical right and radical left are out of their gourd.
Real classy party busted in NJ this weekend.
$1,000 prize for the tweaking contest, free food and “jungle juice”. Organizers were located in Newark, and over 700 showed up at their “Mansion Party” in Jackson Township.
Fox News: New Jersey police break up 700-person ‘Mansion Party,’ charge 3 with violating coronavirus orders.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-jersey-police-coronavirus-mansion-party?cmpid=prn_newsstand
AP I agree 100 percent.
In other news Siemens announced today that all
employees throughout the firm will be permitted to work two
to three days a week from home. The number of days will be up to the employee. This will be on a permanent basis. Siemens has locations in Cranford NJ and NY among others in the country.
God Bless America, where no one has to live under tyrant’s boot. Or with someone’s knee on your neck.
RIP Congressman John Lewis.
Re Garrett Austin shooting:
You guys keep referring to the protestors…those are rioters.
Your 1A right to protest does not extend you the authority to block the public way, unless you do so via a permit and traffic is redirected by law enforcement. Blocking a public road makes you a rioter.
Next, surrounding a man’s car with a large crowd, armed with one visible AK-47, is an aggressive group of rioters.
This may have happen in Austin which is a blue island but Texans don’t fck around with this nonsense.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Home,
No, blocking a road makes you a misdemeanor offender. This is one where the 2A folks will have to tie themselves into Pretzels to justify both sides.
On a similar note with Portland. The Barr is ratcheting things up under a false narrative and using CBP and ICE to deliver. Here is an interesting piece.
https://twitter.com/karlhigley/status/1287831329661386764
My view is that the right wing Boga boys are the ones trying to burn the courthouse and the feds are feeding that, to justify the escalation.
“NJ would have been arrested or perhaps even taken down”
And this is why Gun Control works, this level of escalation does not get to happen here. I get the whole Bad guy with an illegal gun. But the hard reality is that those illegal weapons are coming from states with lax controls.
Federal Gun laws Now.
The bigger priority now is de-escalating the protests/riots.
People are getting hurt or killed and this needs to simmer down.
Mitchell McConnell’s eulogy for Congressman Lewis was awesome. Very respectful and dignified.
AP,
A fuse was lit and a fire started.
This one ain’t going out easy.
Gonna have to let it burn until all the fuel is gone.
This is why you don’t do this. Idiots.
Fabius,
That was an interesting piece alright.
Personally I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them.
Tres Hombres: https://youtu.be/oHCVGYBa22c
Fab – you seem to have already claimed the blocking of a public road and surrounding a car with weapons as a misdemeanor. It is not, you are wrong.
There is a clear photo, which I will find, that shows Garrett’s finger inside the trigger guard and the muzzel raised at the vehicle.
Seriously, f that guy. If that is me in the car, I may not be firing back, but I am taking all 5200 pounds of my V8 and flooring it until I feel safe. My concerns for the rights of rioters does not extend past my own safety. If you think there was any way out of that situation, where the driver isn’t hurt or property damaged, I’d love to hear it.
Again – maybe the driver was looking for a fight, he got one and he not only came out alive, he won’t be charged with anything. That’s Texas for you. Not Portland, Not Minneapolis, Not NYC. Texas.
Good thing there aren’t any hospitals on the east side of Manhattan…I’m sure all these people would move aside when an ambulance needs to use the FDR, right?
Rioters, all of these people. Not protestors.
https://twitter.com/JFNYC1/status/1287570573925715968?s=09
Following the example of the Civil Rights protesters, the focus should be on positive measures and reforms, and on improving the lives of the Black community, not attacking property.
Having said that looking at the video homeboken posted above, I worry about large numbers of unemployed people in our streets with nothing to do. Which is what appears to take place in the video. Very concerning.
re “large numbers of unemployed people in our streets with nothing to do”
Unemployment rate in the Bronx is 25%
Queens 21.8%
Brooklyn 20.5%
Manhattan 16%
All those young people with nothing to do, no work, no play….but protest for Marxist ideals led by the Mayor of course, who will allow protests as long as they don’t come for him.
Fab: And if it’s the left wing boys, trying to burn the courthouses will you condemn it, or explain it away? All indications point to left wing protestors trying to burn it.
Oh man, do we need to go there again? I didn’t see any red flags among the protesters so what are you even on about?
I realized something, a hypothesis, people who blame things on “the boomers” have daddy issues, and people who blame things on “woke millennials” probably have issues expressing their feelings to their children.
I said this in response to Juice, not 3b:. “Oh man, do we need to go there again? I didn’t see any red flags among the protesters so what are you even on about?”
Juice, my point was that if there’s too many unemployed people, and to your point with no fun, it has nothing to do with protest anymore.
3b, you’re right. Makes no sense to shoot fireworks against a Federal building. Just doesn’t.
Last post, then another break : )
I tell you, there are loads of mentally ill people on the street right now. It’s a problem. We all need chill a bit. My honest opinion.
The left is trying every which way to spin the Portland riots. Bringing out fat old housewives when all else failed.
None fit the narrative. Unless of course you go down the rabbit hole far enough to believe the fake protesters were organizing years in advance. Andy ngo was Covering antifa Portland anarchists for years, and they nearly killed him for it.
These people are no right wing hoax. You only need to look to Austin to see the escalation. It’s inevitable until someone from the left denounces the violence.
Election 2020:
A co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign vividly described how she feels about choosing between Biden and President Trump — likening it to only having to eat half a bowl of excrement.
“It’s like saying to somebody, ‘You have a bowl of s–t in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still s–t’, ” Sanders co-chair Nina Turner told The Atlantic.
Down in LBI this week – This area seems to have turned into hardcore MAGA country.
Homes along the beach, more Trump 2020 flags and Don’t Tread on Me flags than I can keep count. Makes sense I guess, given the wealth associated with a beach front home.
But also seeing A LOT of Trump shirts/hats out and about. This is NJ still right?
Ap when is joe Biden going to emerge from his basement and tell all of the rioters to stand down. How many more is he going to watch get killed before he’s seen enough?
Should also mention – I have seen ZERO Biden 2020 flags or DNC shirts. Literally zero and I have been looking.
So in one weekend in nyc, 11 black people have died from gun shots…yet cops are the problem and white people. Look in the mirror.
homeboken says:
July 28, 2020 at 6:55 am
Good thing there aren’t any hospitals on the east side of Manhattan…I’m sure all these people would move aside when an ambulance needs to use the FDR, right?
Rioters, all of these people. Not protestors.
https://twitter.com/JFNYC1/status/1287570573925715968?s=09
Truth, maybe Biden should. Maybe he should.
We need to separate the wheat from the shaff
Make excuses for bad people. You really don’t understand the gangster/thug life mentality.
“Having said that looking at the video homeboken posted above, I worry about large numbers of unemployed people in our streets with nothing to do. Which is what appears to take place in the video. Very concerning”
Sh1t google, Facebook, Twitter all blocked this
D-FENS says:
July 27, 2020 at 3:25 pm
https://twitter.com/AlexMarlow/status/1287819819874758656?s=20
@AlexMarlow
·
45m
WATCH LIVE: American Doctors address COVID-19 misinformation w/ press conference
Oh and by the way, when I said separate the wheat from the chaff, not in unmarked vans please. And let’s have journalists (and observers if needed) allowed full access to verify exactly what’s going on.
Excess force is also a major problem, needless to say
Authorities say a driver turned onto a barricaded Congress Avenue, where a crowd of protesters against racial injustice had gathered, about 9:50 p.m. Saturday and honked his horn. Foster was carrying an assault-style rifle, which is legal in Texas under open carry laws, and approached the car.
…
However, witnesses told the American-Statesman that the driver appeared to drive into the crowd and came to a stop when the vehicle hit a temporary barrier erected to block traffic from the street.
https://www.statesman.com/news/20200727/texas-law-gives-no-simple-answer-in-garrett-foster-killing-at-austin-protest
I take ‘barricaded’ to mean it was done so by the police. But I guess it could have been by the protesters in some form or fashion. But if it was closed off by the police, does that change anything?
I’m not into conspiracy theories, but this whole virus thing has been bizarre. It’s all over the place.
D-FENS says:
July 28, 2020 at 8:57 am
Sh1t google, Facebook, Twitter all blocked this
AP – re”it has nothing to do with protest anymore”
Been like that for a while now, young people know the odds are they will neither get sick at all or die from Covid-19, lots of videos of the dance parties during protests etc, protest is the ONLY excuse to get out from under the thumb of a governor or mayor hell bent on stopping anyone from socializing.
Since Congress wants them back working they are going to lower the $600 a week in government cheese this week to a flat $200 through September as part of the HEALS act.
Most middle eastern countries have high unemployment and large population of yout-s. Like the yout-s in Brooklyn.
Juice: Dems say the Reps plan is a non starter. They want the 600.00 to continue through Jan 2021.
3b – I mentioned this last week, Congress supposed to be done Friday until Sept 7th to go to their retreats and conventions, it might stretch a few more days and they will end up meeting exactly where they want them at $400 instead of $200 about 70% of income replacement instead of 100%.
Anecdotal my cleaning lady’s business went under, the workers all are all on the beach collecting as they are making more and don’t want to go back for various reasons besides being scared of getting Covid, the incentive to work $ is not there if they collect 100% income replacement for the rest of the year.
They know their base will turn on them right before the election.
3b says:
July 28, 2020 at 9:44 am
Juice: Dems say the Reps plan is a non starter. They want the 600.00 to continue through Jan 2021.
Keep that free money coming, but don’t open up the economy.
Full court press propoganda on all social media plaforms today claiming the medicine doesn’t work. They cite effectiveness in “hospitalized patients”.
The treatment should be as a prophylactic or given early in outpatient use in lower doses. It’s so fcucked up… they’re not allowing any dissenting opinions on social media.
The Great Pumpkin says:
July 28, 2020 at 9:21 am
I’m not into conspiracy theories, but this whole virus thing has been bizarre. It’s all over the place.
D-FENS says:
July 28, 2020 at 8:57 am
Sh1t google, Facebook, Twitter all blocked this
Juice: I want the 2,000.00 a month though end of the year for everybody; that was a proposal floating around a while ago.
Truth,
Andy Ngo another James O Keefe wanaabe. Manipulate the situation to fit your narrative. If you want to follow a real Journalist who has been following the Far Right in the North West for years, try Dave Neiwert.
Ever stop to think why this is Portland and Seattle? Not like we are short of fireworks and Fed buildings in NY, Trenton or Philly.
AP,
If you want to take this back to the Civil Rights and protesting for positive reform, then it mirrors, Kent State, Little Rock, Selma. Do I need to go on?
West coast attracts lefty radicals. Lot of hippie type out there. Look at what happened in Seattle with the environmental activists out there..
Just understand they are all anarchists. (The rioters)
“Ever stop to think why this is Portland and Seattle? Not like we are short of fireworks and Fed buildings in NY, Trenton or Philly.”
Joyce,
As I mentioned, this all comes down to proving who surrendered the right to self-defense first by becoming the “aggressor”.
I was not aware that Texas allows for lethal defense of property. Not surprised, but not aware. That may help the motorist as his bar for lethal defense after being surrounded is lower.
It will really all hinge on what actually happened and the motivation behind him driving onto that street.