ANTI-SEMITES, REGULATORS, BARISTAS AND TRAINERS
Attacking Jews: Nothing To Do With Anti-Semitism
A man comes all the way for Britain to take a rabbi and several congregants hostage in a synagogue. He rants about Jews who control Biden, claims that America only cares about Jewish lives. Trained by a group that specializes in training Jews what to do if taken hostage, the rabbi notices that the terrorist is becoming increasingly unsettled, watches for an opportunity, hurls a chair at the hostage-taker, and leads the others out through a side door.
The report in most papers is that the hostages were rescued by a team sent down to Texas from Virginia, and that the special FBI agent reported the hostage-taking “was not specifically related to the Jewish community”, providing the media headline.
The FBI later retreated from that position, but meanwhile the two errors – that the Jews were passive victims “rescued” by outside authorities rather than active self-reliant hosta who escaped, and that the incident had nothing to do with anti-Semitism – were the story most people saw, with the exception of readers of The Washington Post, who got it right according to Bret Stephens, reporting on all of this in the NYT.
Regulators Embrace Change: Dressing and Headlights
For decades the federal government has protected consumers from “economic adulteration” by prohibiting food suppliers from updating their French dressings to comport more with what consumers wanted to use to decorate their salads. It has now declared those regulations “outmoded, ineffective, … excessively burdensome” to the relief of members of the Association for Dressings & Sauces and, says Ken Albala, described by the NYT as a food historian and professor at the University of the Pacific. Food companies can now jigger the recipes to make the orange sauce more attractive to consumers who prefer delicate salad greens.
No such luck with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), promulgated and enforced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It is always “a step behind” the rest of the world when it comes to headlight technology. Motor Trend reports that “When America was stuck with sealed beams, the world has moved on to replaceable bulbs. When the world was taking advantage of LED lights, America was restricted to halogen lights. …Using an LED replacement bulb is both illegal and typically results in crappier lighting” when installed in the housings provided by auto manufacturers. So change the housing? Nope, that’s an illegal modification according to FMVSS.
The infrastructure bill calls for review of these rules, which would bring the U.S. more up to date. “As history has shown, staying up to date is another matter” says Motor Trend.
Coffee Nerves For Starbucks Execs
Starbucks opened its first store in super-liberal Seattle, located in a county that gave Joe Biden 75% of its votes, up a bit from Barack Obama’s 70%. It has no employees. As the company puts it, “We call our employees partners because we are all partners in shared success…. We make sure everything we do is through the lens of humanity…. We are committed to … inclusion, diversity, equity….”
In practice that means young, educated workers dominate the 230,000 employees in Starbucks’ 9,000 U.S. stores. The company pays an average of $17 per hour, provides full tuition at Arizona State University, is reasonably generous about hours, and is proud that it provides medical, dental and vision coverage at a cost to employees far below what workers shell out at other retail companies.
It also means that many of its staff are fans of Bernie Sanders and other “progressive” politicians. The workers leading the organizing campaigns in various stores don’t seem to be demanding more money. They want more of a say, a voice. After all, they are “partners”, and partners with Sanders’ Social Democratic view of the relative control workers and owners should have in setting corporate policy.
And perfect candidates for union membership. Those employees are enabling unions to win representation elections in a growing number of stores. One employee-organizer told the NYT that he learned his skills working for Bernie’s campaign. The company is resisting the unions not, it says, because it is anti-union, but because it is pro-partner. It reckons its liberal, young customer base would be offended if it took a strong stand against the unions. It must be assuming that these liberal customers will not balk at covering rising prices that might result from union-imposed work rules and pay scales.
Gentle Words Bring Health. Proverbs 15:4
Clients of one physical therapist/trainer are not growing old. They are “gaining age”. Nicer.