Earlier introductory Crabgrass post. Political dimensions of Trudeau having a minority government with Sikhs politically positioned in Canadian politics were mentioned in a half-hour AJ video segment, online at the end of this online AJ item.
There appears to be a Sikh diaspora desiring a Sikh independent homeland nation within a part of India that had been Sikh dominated over historical time.
Recent prior major Indian history, per Wikipedia, and history.com, involves things from the 1980s which went unmentioned within the AJ video discussion (as well as within accompanying AJ text).
Indeed, there is a history dating back prior to British colonizing India. See, also, BBC here.
The situation of the shooting in British Columbia can touch and impact economic relations between Canada and India, and there is impact on US policy.
Understanding the range of impacts leads to a perspective on the seriousness of what is going on in Canada, now. It is worth knowing more. It goes beyond a mere expatriate from the Indian subcontinent being shot. It hinges upon who was shot. And who did the shooting, who instigated it.
There is a political insurgency against education as handled by professionals who know what they are doing. In Minnesota. With help from their friends, cohorts, kindred minds, or whatever. The webpage
by its footer shows a peek at who is behind the curtain.
This WILL thing is a Wisconsin right-wing propaganda operation. Milwalkee Journal Sentinel, from July 2016, Scott Walker days, notes:
Conservative legal group announces states' rights initiative
Republican
Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch speaks Monday in support of a new effort by
the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty to combat what it sees as
federal government overreach as the group's president Rick Esenberg
(right) and director of the new center Mario Loyola listen. Credit: Associated Press
Madison — A conservative law firm that helped defend
Gov. Scott Walker's union bargaining repeal announced a national effort
Monday to protect the rights of states and limit those of the federal
government.
The Center for Competitive Federalism — an initiative of the
Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty — will bring lawsuits and
issue advocacy and research reports to promote state sovereignty, its
leaders announced at a news conference at the Capitol.
The effort "will allow the voters of Wisconsin and the diverse
communities of the state of Wisconsin to be able to regulate themselves
and to be able to live the way that they were meant to live under the
(U.S.) Constitution, according to their preferences and not the
preferences imposed by distant bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.," said
Mario Loyola, a WILL senior fellow and the center's new director and
head of research activities.
In 2016, WILL announced the launch of the Center for Competitive
Federalism, a national effort to bring lawsuits and conduct research to
promote state sovereignty.[5]
That same year, the organization filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn
Wisconsin's Unfair Sales Act, also known as the minimum markup law,
which prevents companies from selling products below cost.[6][7] In 2017, it filed a lawsuit in the Wisconsin Supreme Court Koschkee v. Taylor arguing that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) issued regulations without the approval of the state's governor and the Wisconsin Department of Administration, thus violating the REINS Act. It was seen as an attempt to limit the power of Governor Tony Evers,
then the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Though Evers's
role was nonpartisan, he had announced he would challenge Republican Scott Walker for the governorship.[8] In June 2019, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4–2 in favor of WILL, determining that DPI could not make administrative rules without approval of the governor.[9]
In September 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Wisconsin, WILL filed lawsuits to stop a face mask mandate in Wisconsin.[10]
In March 2021, the conservative-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court, on a
4–3 vote, struck down the statewide mask mandate, saying that Governor Tony Evers had violated state law by extending his emergency orders, including the mandate, beyond the initial 60-day emergency mandate.[11]
In October 2020, a progressive legal group, Law Forward, was founded in Wisconsin as a counterbalance to WILL.[15]
Wisconsin Elections Commission lawsuit
In
2019, WILL sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission for not removing
from the voter rolls 234,000 Wisconsin voters who were flagged as having
potentially moved and who did not respond to a mailing.
Paul V. Malloy, the presiding circuit court judge in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, ruled in favor of WILL, purging the voters.[16] The Wisconsin Elections Commission filed suit in federal court to halt the contested purging.[17] Acting on behalf of the state's Elections Commission, which deadlocked 3-3 on the matter, Wisconsin Attorney GeneralJosh Kaul joined the appeal to stay the removals ordered by Malloy.[18]
The Elections Commission estimated that the voter verification process
would take from one to two years to complete prior to initiating any
action to remove those former voters, the accuracy of whose
registrations still remained unresolved.[19]
On January 2, 2020, WILL said it asked the circuit court to hold the
Elections Commission in contempt, fining it up to $12,000 daily, until
it advanced Malloy's order.[20]
The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard the case about the purging of the
voter rolls on October 4, 2020, but was not expected to make a decision
before the November election.[21]
The Democratic Party argued that the purge targeted voters living in areas favoring Democrats.[17]
On January 12, 2020, Malloy found the three Democrats on the stalemated
six-member Elections Commission to be in contempt of court, ordering
them each to pay a fine of $250 daily until they complied with his
order. Malloy urged speedy implementation of his order, saying, "We're
deadlocked, time is running and time is clearly of the essence."[22] The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
examined the list of voters subject to being purged because they were
presumed to have moved and found that about 55 percent of those
registrants had been domiciled in municipalities that had been won by Hillary Clinton
in the 2016 general election. Those were mainly from Wisconsin's
largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison, as well as other college towns.[23]
In 2016, Trump had carried Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes.
After the contempt order was issued by Malloy, a stay issued later that
day by the state Supreme Court upheld his purge mandate.[23] That finding was subsequently reversed by an appeals court, but WILL appealed its decision to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.[24] In the April 7, 2020, election, voters ousted incumbent Daniel Kelly, a conservative Supreme Court justice, who had been appointed by Governor Scott Walker. Kelly had been thought to be a possible swing vote in the Court's deciding the case.[25]
In April 2021, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in a 5-2 ruling that
the Wisconsin Election Commission should not remove from its rolls
voters flagged as possibly having moved, as local municipal elections
officials rather than the state election commission should be tasked
with removing voter registrations. Of the 69,000 people flagged by the
elections commission as being "likely movers", none voted in the 2020
presidential election. No voters were removed from the voter rolls while
the legal fight was pending.[26]
That was not in the report. It was an added thought. The report notes:
Microsoft’s Copilot-branded AI assistants will provide a unified
experience across operating systems, applications and devices, Microsoft
CEO Satya Nadella said Thursday at an event in New York. As an example,
Microsoft showed how a user can ask Copilot to find a flight booking
from text messages.
[...] The Office product, unveiled in March, has been in testing with about
600 customers and will cost $30 per user a month on top of what most
business customers already pay. The product lets workers uses data from
the web as well as a company’s internal information, to do things like
analyze spreadsheets, generate slide shows and predict future business
issues.
Microsoft announced the Windows product in May, saying it
would be accessible from a PC screen taskbar button that opens a side
panel customers can use as an assistant. The tool lets one copy and
paste text, as well as rewrite, summarize and explain content, among
other tasks. Windows users can also ask the Copilot questions as they
can with the Bing AI chat.
Thirty bucks per user per month, for paperclip redux? How is Linux doing these days? Linux, without Cortana. Without OpenAI. Without a built in Chatbot.
ChatGPT4 passed the bar exam? I want to see it try a case. Link.
I want to see it represent Hunter Biden.
I want to see it investigate Hunter Biden. Put it on both sides of the Hunter Biden paradox. I want to see it testify to Republicans with an agenda against it.
I want to see it decide the best of the current batch of Republican presidential wannabes, how it makes comparisons, how it would investigate histories on the web. Microsoft, headlong into attempted justification of the billions it pumped into OpenAI, might be barking up a wrong tree, making decisions on sunk costs.
Under Dwight Eisenhower the tax rate on the highest-income Americans
was 91% and roughly a third of American workers were unionized.
And
Republicans largely accepted that state of affairs. In a letter to his
brother, Eisenhower wrote, “Should any political party attempt to
abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor
laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again”; while
there were a few conservatives who thought differently, “their number is
negligible and they are stupid.”
Beginning in the 1970s,
however, the Republican Party increasingly came to be dominated by
people who did want to roll back the New Deal legacy.[...] Why didn’t
Republicans pay a big political price for their hard right turn? Largely
because they were able to offset the unpopularity of their economic
policies by harnessing the forces of religious conservatism and social
illiberalism — hostility toward nonwhite Americans, LGBTQ Americans,
immigrants and more. [...]
But
eventually the forces that economic conservatives were trying to use
ended up using them. This wasn’t something that suddenly happened with
the Trump nomination; people who think that the GOP suddenly changed
forget how prevalent conspiracy theories and refusal to acknowledge the
legitimacy of Democratic electoral victories already were in the 1990s.
The current dominance of MAGA represents a culmination of a process that
has been going on for decades.
And for the most part, Republican
politicians who probably weren’t extremists themselves went along. For a
while this may have been because MAGA was still delivering the
right-wing economic goods. Bear in mind that despite all the talk of
“populism,” Trump’s main policy achievement was a big cut in corporate
taxes. But non-extremist Republicans also, and increasingly, gave in out
of fear — for their careers and perhaps even their safety.
It’s
to Romney’s credit that he finally reached his limit. But he did so very
late in the game — a game that people like him basically started.
When the Clintons moved to embrace the Republican economic agenda in large measure, Republicans panicked. If George W.H. Bush [and running mate Willie Horton] could not keep in power, panickville touched ground.
Son Bush, worse but reelected?? What did that tell the party? Play the marginal voters they had, co-opt their Angst, and have them controlled and voting in lockstep. After all, what did the Dems offer such fringe players? They were locked in.
Soon the fringe organized and ousted those thinking they owned and ran their prols.
Q happened. MTG and LB and Gaetz happened.
Romney? Sidetracked. While he at least made no Sarah Palin miscue, who/what did he inspire (and - some may suggest Paul Ryan WAS a Sarah Palin error).
Romney simply inspired distrust of his Bain Capital take no prisoners background. Adding Paul Ryan, generously speaking toward Mitt, was - how wise, how reassuring? That he thought Ryan would help his chances was as strong an indictment of his judgment as was his schmoozing Netanyahu.
Add to that a haughtiness endemic to too many of those who grow up in privilege, what's to like about Mitt Romney unless you're a Mormon? He has all the charm and warmth of a Jarad Kushner or Rudy G. He's leaving, the mess will belong to others.
(Elon calls it X, yet keeps the twitter web address so everybody's set bookmarks keep it as regularly in play as before the rename. Elon doubtlessly has an explanation beyond helping folks who've saved links for it not being - X.com.)
State and national politicians have come out to support union workers, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, U.S Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor), U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Twp.) and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).
President Donald Trump rally in Battle Creek, Dec. 18, 2019 | Andrew Roth
Former
President Donald Trump’s plans to skip the second GOP presidential
candidate debate and head to Michigan to meet with striking autoworkers
isn’t going over well with the United Auto Workers (UAW) top official.
“Every fiber of our union is being
poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches
people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers,” UAW President Shawn
Fain said. “We can’t keep electing billionaires and millionaires that
don’t have any understanding what it is like to live paycheck to
paycheck and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems
of the working class.”
Labor speaks. Former President Donald John Trump seems to face a headwind in trying to use the UAW. They saw him in action for four years. They see him in an attempt to use them. They have other aims than to give him a photo-op. They accept endorsement of their strike by those in politics who appear sincere in support.
FURTHER: Two other MinnReformer items, labor related, here and here. Also, this, about a report on labor matters in Minnesota:
Minnesota jobs have recovered to pre-pandemic levels, [...] according to a release from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
Minnesota’s labor force participation
rate — the number of working-age people who are employed or looking for
work — held steady at 68.5%, about six percentage points higher than
the national average.
For every unemployed person in Minnesota, there are two open jobs, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
That means employers are struggling
to fill open positions, and demographic trends have company leaders
worried that the problem will continue to worsen.
A shrinking portion of Minnesota’s population is working-age, according to a report
released Monday by data analytics firms, Presbyterian Homes and
Services and Minnesota Business Partnership, a trade group representing
Minnesota’s biggest companies.
And, the number of people moving out of Minnesota is outpacing migration into the state.
There’s also a growing disconnect
between the characteristics of Minnesota’s workforce and the jobs that
are in-demand. Most Minnesotans have an education beyond high school,
but the jobs that are projected to be in highest demand, like personal
care assistants and retail workers, require only a high school diploma.
Currently, 28% of Minnesotans 25 and
older have no higher education, while 45% of the labor demand is for
jobs that only require a high school diploma, according to the report.
And while 16% of Minnesota adults have an advanced degree, only 4% of
open jobs require that level of education.
The jobs projected to be in highest demand over the next 10 years are also some of the lowest-paid.
The report points to several ways to
bring people into the workforce and keep them there. Increased
productivity via automation and digitization, flexibility and
accommodations, immigration and training could help solve the problem.
An idea for attracting workers that is notably absent from the report: Raising wages.
[italics added] To avoid confusion, yet with some uncertainty, the reading Crabgrass gives is that the closing two paragraphs of item reporting refers to the report from the Minnesota Business Partnership, and not from anything released by the State agency, DEED. It just feels right to guess who'd be inattentive to raising wages as an option; DEED; or others.
The Business Partnership item begins, "Ask the leader of any business, regardless of industry or size, to name the biggest challenge facing their business today, and they’re likely to cite difficulty finding enough workers." At 50 pages in length, Crabgrass did not study the report.
Strange. Somewhere in a 50 page analytical item one might expect decent commentary about the link between worker attraction and wages. In a propaganda item, possibly not. Again, Crabgrass did not study the MN BP item. Readers may wish to.
FURTHER: Thinking it worth some effort, here is the lead page from that 50 pager.
click the image to enlarge and read
It says, "That’s why the Minnesota Business Partnership, Presbyterian Homes & Services, and SullivanCotter partnered with Lightcast on this report,[...]" and the page footer, right side, "LIGHTCAST."
Bullshit is as bullshit does, and the Crabgrass opinion is that LIGIHTCAST does not cast the MN BP in a good light. Propaganda is what it is. A webinar premised on a 50 page thingy which at its SECTION 4 declines to explore the link between pay level and filling a job, while at that SECTION 4 touting, "1. GET MORE PEOPLE INTO THE WORKFORCE, AND KEEP THEM THERE," seems to a degree, propagandistic. Dilute the labor pool and you can pay less is something you do not need a PhD in economics to comprehend; particularly if you're in the labor pool, and not the hiring pool. Opinions can differ, but I don't really like some things . . .
And, surprise, the UAW is striking for better pay. Tell that to LIGHTCAST, as a possible part of their webinar. The day after that webinar, UAW may strike another plant or two.
While serving as president, Trump
essentially took a neutral stance during the UAW’s last strike against
one of the Detroit Three — its 2019 action against General Motors that
lasted 40 days. The Republican did not go to the picket line.
“Here we go again with General Motors and the United Auto Workers. Get together and make a deal!” he tweeted on Sept. 15, 2019.
The previous year, in May 2018, Trump issued Executive Order No. 13837
that hurt a union’s ability to represent workers by preventing union
stewards from using official time to aid employees in preparing or
pursuing grievances.
This time, the UAW is fighting for
increased wages, a 32-hour work week and better pension benefits, among
other issues such as an end to tiered compensation between workers with
different lengths of service.
Biden, Dems and unions slam Trump
President Joe Biden, a Democrat who defeated Trump in the 2020 election, blasted his former opponent.
“Donald Trump is going to Michigan
next week to lie to Michigan workers and pretend he didn’t spend his
entire failed presidency selling them out at every turn,” Ammar Moussa,
spokesperson for Biden-Harris 2024, said. “Instead of standing with
workers, Trump cut taxes for the super-wealthy while auto companies
shuttered their doors and shipped American jobs overseas.
“He’s said he would’ve let auto
companies go bankrupt, devastating the industry and upending millions of
lives. That’s why Trump lost Michigan in 2020 and his MAGA [Make
America Great Again] friends further decimated the Michigan Republican
Party and cost them 2022. No self-serving photo op can erase Trump’s
four years of abandoning union workers and standing with his ultra-rich
friends.”
Biden has not announced plans to
visit with striking workers, although several of his allies, like U.S.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, have done so.
On Tuesday, U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell
(D-Ann Arbor) and Haley Stevens (D-Waterford) joined Michigan Democrats
for a press call slamming GOP former president Donald Trump’s
“anti-worker record following reporting” of his planned visit to
Michigan next week.
Both speakers highlighted how Trump’s
“MAGAnomics” [Make America Great Agenda] agenda “hurt autoworkers,
incentivized companies to ship jobs overseas, and lined the pockets of
billionaires and big corporations at the expense of Michigan’s middle
class.”
The call also spotlighted the “stark
contrast” between Trump and President Joe Biden —”who has a proven
record of being the most pro-union president in history and a
demonstrated history of standing up for workers,” according to a press
release issued by the Michigan Democratic Party.
[image omitted]
“Trump was one of the most
anti-worker presidents this country ever had. He showed us what he
really stands for when he said he would have let the auto companies go
bankrupt in 2008,” said Dingell. “The last thing Michigan’s autoworkers
need right now is more empty promises or kerosene on a fire. So while
President Trump’s gonna try to come in and erase his history … I think
that Michiganders are going to know what the record was and will reject
his anti-worker agenda.”
Stevens argued that Trump did little to address negotiations between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Detroit Three.
“He signed into place a tax law that
gave billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest and did hardly
anything, if close to nothing, for the middle class,” Stevens said. “I
find this disrespectful to the men and women of the UAW on the picket
line right now. Donald Trump can take his politics elsewhere.”
United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters General President Mark McManus also threw shade on a Trump strike visit.
“When Donald Trump was first elected
president, he invited me into the White House during the first days of
his administration and promised that he would pass the largest
infrastructure bill in generations. He claimed to be a builder, just
like us. But after four years, one thing was clear: when it comes to the
bread and butter issues our members care about – fair wages, safe job
sites, and the ability to retire with the dignity we earned – Donald
Trump is just another fraud.”
What Minnesota needs is a webinar on when it comes to the
bread and butter issues union members care about – fair wages, safe job
sites, and the ability to retire with the dignity they've earned - be there or be square.
And the one Dem politician saying Biden has been the best president for unions, if you think about it that might be true over my lifetime, very young, Truman, and then onward, two Bushes and a Raegan, and to make it false we should have elected Bernie, over Biden, or, sooner or later, might it be AOC time?
FURTHER: This is important. Some readers may already have spotted a less than total rabid embrace of organized labor at Crabgrass, while most may not have.
Yet it is necessary to my self expectations to explain myself - Bob Kroll and the Minneapolis police union were so misguided that the federal government had to step in and mandate reasonableness at the same time that the George Floyd murder inspired most of the State to view that union as a diseased entity for what it embraced and fostered. Then, the Iron Range focus upon jobs at any cost, including the likely sacrifice of earth's integrity in Northern Minnesota for a temporary handful of sulfide mining jobs shows ignorance, and disdain toward the remainder of the nation for one job more, and the Tom Bakkian attitude of leverage begetting privilege over time grew harsh judgment from many populist progressives aside from Crabgrass. Other than those two 21st Century adverse examples, unions have not had past power in the nation, and Crabgrass believes that factor has lessened rather than enhanced fairness in the nation's apportionment of economic wealth and benefit.
