The Biden/Harris administration’s incompetence is on full display this week. Just in time for the election.
You won’t believe why the victims of Hurricane Helene are not getting any help from the government.
And we enter day 3 of the longshoreman’s strike. That’s a loss of about $12 billion.
Are You Kidding?
According to the Associated Press:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency can meet immediate needs but does not have enough funding to make it through the hurricane season, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Wednesday.
The agency is being stretched as it works with states to assess damage from Hurricane Helene and delivers meals, water, generators and other critical supplies. The storm struck Florida last week, then plowed through several states in the Southeast, flooding towns and killing more than 160 people.
Mayorkas was not specific about how much additional money the agency may need, but his remarks on Air Force One underscored concerns voiced by President Joe Biden and some lawmakers earlier this week that Congress may need to pass a supplemental spending bill this fall to help states with recovery efforts.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”
Hurricane season runs June 1 to Nov. 30, but most hurricanes typically occur in September and October.
That is their excuse for people not having power, water, food, or communications for a week? Is that the excuse they are going with for the lack of response to the Maui fire and the chemical spill and explosion in East Palestine, Ohio?
https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-helene-congress-fema-funding-5be4f18e00ce2b509d6830410cf2c1cb
They Are Proving Why We Need Automation
According to CNN:
The dockworkers striking up and down the East Coast are, culturally and geographically, a world apart from the Hollywood actors and writers who staged a four-month walkout last year. But their protests share a common core principle: They don’t want bots taking their jobs.
It’s a fight you can expect to see playing out a lot more as advanced automation and AI creep into virtually every workforce.
The strike that began early Tuesday is about two main issues: wages and automation. Around the ports, workers can be seen wearing signs that read “robots don’t pay taxes” and “automation hurts families.”
They’re fighting a trend that port operators largely want to see accelerate: more cranes and driverless trucks shuttling goods from container ships, with fewer humans around demanding compensation.
Of course, the economics of automation aren’t so simple. While research shows automation has obvious benefits, like lower operating costs and fewer human-related errors, port automation does not, on its own, significantly improve performance, according to a 2018 McKinsey report.
Automated ports “are generally less productive than their conventional counterparts,” and the return on their significant capital investments falls short of the industry norm, according to industry leaders surveyed by McKinsey. (The report does note, however, that “careful planning and management” can overcome those challenges.)
Still, automation is clearly a trend, and US shipping executives seem to be eyeing modern ports in China, Singapore and Europe with envy.
“The rest of the world is looking down on us because we’re fighting automation,” said Dennis Daggett, executive vice president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, outside the Port of New York and New Jersey Tuesday morning. “Remember that this industry, this union has always adapted to innovation. But we will never adapt to robots taking our jobs.”
The dockworkers’ concerns are legit.
Automation won’t end the need for human labor completely, but it will significantly reduce the number of bodies needed on payroll, just as it has done in many industries, including auto manufacturing and mining. One report from the Economic Roundtable found that automation eliminated 572 full-time roles at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in 2020 and 2021.
The longshoremen’s union is demanding a $5-an-hour increase in pay in each of the six years over the course of the next contract and “airtight” language that the ports won’t introduce automation “or semi-automation.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/dock-workers-strike-automation-nightcap/index.html
This is How We Win
According to Fox News:
Boise State University administrators owe a coffee shop owner $4 million after a jury unanimously ruled the school officials violated the woman’s First Amendment rights in a conflict over her public support of law enforcement.
The jury awarded Big City Coffee owner Sarah Fendley $3 million for lost business, reputational damage, mental and emotional distress and personal humiliation, in a decision reached Sept. 13. Jurors awarded her an additional $1 million in punitive damages from the school’s former vice president of student affairs.
Fendley originally sued the university for $10 million after she closed her campus shop in October 2020, according to local reports, arguing administrators conspired to retaliate against her for expressing pro-police views on social media.
A lawyer for the administrators denied any retaliation, and accused Fendley herself of trying to get the university to infringe on students’ speech rights.
Big City opened an on-campus location in September 2020, on the heels of the nationwide police reform protests that followed George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis. Fendley’s support for law enforcement — she displayed a thin blue line sticker near the door of the shop’s downtown Boise location — immediately stoked anger among student activists, according to the suit.
“I hope y’all don’t go there if you truly support your bipoc peers and other students, staff and faculty,” one student posted on Snapchat after the shop opened. The acronym BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous and people of color.
A screenshot of the post was shared with Fendley, who responded to it with her own public Facebook and Instagram posts explaining her support for police, the Idaho Statesman previously reported. At the time, she was engaged to a former Boise police officer who had been paralyzed in a gunfight with a fugitive.
University administrators hastily called a meeting with Fendley, worried about the social media “firestorm” her post had created, according to the suit. Defendant Alicia Estey secretly recorded much of the meeting, the Statesman reported, but the recording cut off before the conversation ended, and both sides disputed the outcome.
Free Her? Really?
According to the New York Post:
Susan Smith, in prison for the cold-blooded 1994 murders of her two young sons, has a parole hearing in just six weeks — and family members say that she has come up with at least four arguments she will make as she makes her bid for freedom — including that she’s been (mostly) well behaved in prison.
“She believes she might be a free woman in less than two months,” a relative told The Post.
“And she’s hoping that [the parole hearing] will go her way. She’s put all her hopes in that basket, and she’s manifesting her freedom.”
The Post has learned that Smith, 52, plans to argue that she grew up in a sexually abusive household that skewed her understanding of right and wrong. “She has a different moral compass than other people, because of her trauma,” the relative said. “It really did a number on her.”
Secondly, Smith wants to argue that she was not in her right mind as a young mom — and that she may have suffered from undiagnosed mental illness.
She was a 22-year-old mom when she let her car roll into John D. Long Lake in Union County, South Carolina, with her boys — 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander — still strapped into their car seats.
It’s an argument Smith has used before. “I am not the monster society thinks I am,” she wrote in a letter from jail to reporters at The State in 2015.
“Something went very wrong that night. I was not myself. There was no motive as it was not even a planned event. I was not in my right mind.”
Smith will also bring up the fact that she was disciplined in 2000 for having sex with two guards while behind bars. She has always maintained that the sex was not consensual, due to the differing power dynamics.
“I was a victim,” she told a friend on the outside in 2023, according to documents obtained by The Post. “I had sex with them both because I didn’t feel like I had a choice.”
Finally, Smith plans to argue that she has turned her life around behind bars. According to records obtained by the Post, she has held down a steady job and has had no disciplinary actions against her in nearly a decade.
However, she has had several infractions — including in 2010 and 2015 — for having narcotics or marijuana behind bars.
“She’s grown into a mature woman,” the family member tells the Post. “And she thinks she can thrive outside of prison.
This Will Fix Everything
According to the Post Millennial:
Seattle Police will no longer respond to calls from alarm companies unless there is supporting evidence of a crime.
According to a Sept. 13 letter from interim Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr, beginning Oct. 1, SPD will only dispatch officers to calls from alarm companies if there is supporting evidence of a crime, such as audio, video, panic alarms, or eyewitnesses that a person is illegally entering or attempting to enter a residence or commercial property.
Rahr wrote in the letter, “With depleted resources, we cannot prioritize a patrol response when there is a very low probability that criminal activity is taking place.”
SPD has lost over 700 officers since the Seattle City Council began defunding the department in 2020 in response to the riots that rocked the Emerald City following the death of George Floyd.
The Seattle 911 Center receives approximately 13,000 annual residential and commercial burglary alarm calls from monitoring companies and according to Rahr, most of those calls are due to an “unintended sensor trip by a homeowner or business employee,” while others are the result of “old or failing equipment.”
In 2023, less than 4 percent of the calls were confirmed to have a crime associated with them that resulted in an arrest or report being written.
Washington Alarm told KOMO News, “The verified response policy has been tried and rejected numerous times including by cities such as Dallas, Texas, and San Jose, California. It goes against best practices established through a collaborative effort by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Sheriff’s Association.”
The new policy will affect over 75,000 alarm sites in Seattle as 911 response times have continued to grow in the city. Additionally, SPD is still seeing more separations than new hires and is at its lowest staffing levels since the 1950s while Washington is dealing with the highest rates of burglary and auto theft in the US and is the state most affected by retail crime.
It’s That Time of the Year
According to the New York Post:
Pop-up Halloween retailer Spirit Halloween has endured controversy after a holiday product angered some customers.
According to Norfolk, Virginia-based WAVY TV, customers complained about the retailer selling a punk rock “bullet belt” accessory as part of a “prep school” costume online and in stores as recently as last week. A spiked bracelet, plaid school girl tie, and other accessories were on the same display in a photo taken by WAVY reporter Keagan Hughes at one of Spirit Halloween’s Virginia Beach locations.
A gold bullet belt was selling for $9.99, while the punk rock bullet belt was selling for $14.99 online, the outlet reported.
Some shoppers felt the product was distasteful because it was marketed as part of a student costume, in light of school shootings across the country.
“I don’t like it,” one shopper told WAVY. “I have three children that go to school, and I just heard about the shooting that just happened. And it’s scary, even though it’s a costume. Regardless, that’s just not [it]. They shouldn’t be making fun of these shootings and guns and stuff. It is a big deal.”
Another mother named Vanessa said she didn’t feel like it was an overreaction to be upset about the costume accessory.
“I know people always say everyone’s so sensitive,” she said, “but it’s really not, because a lot of children are dying because of the school shootings, and you’re putting it where the school-like outfits are at. Like, that’s just wild to me.”
Four people were shot and killed by a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, Georgia, earlier this month.