Sorry I didn’t get this one out sooner, I was on a code sprint this past week and just haven’t been able to focus on it. Also, on a personal note, this was a hell of a rough broadcast to do, technically, because I had the wise idea to update my laptop before the show and naturally this broke things. Brilliant! Regardless, enjoy.
Corrections
uhh, so, I did some more research and it turns out you can’t “legally smoke pot at work”.
Can employers prohibit use of cannabis during meal or break periods?
Yes, employers may prohibit cannabis during “work hours,” which for these purposes means all time, including paid and unpaid breaks and meal periods, that the employee is suffered, permitted or expected to be engaged in work, and all time the employee is actually engaged in work.
Such periods of time are still considered “work hours” if the employee leaves the worksite.
Adult Use Cannabis and The Workplace (pdf)
it gets worse:
Can employers prohibit use of cannabis during periods in which an employee is on-call?
Yes, employers may prohibit cannabis during “work hours,” which includes time that the employee is on-call or “expected to be engaged in work.”Can employers prohibit cannabis possession at work?
Yes, employers may prohibit employees from bringing cannabis onto the employer’s property, including leased and rented space, company vehicles, and areas used by employees within such property (e.g., lockers, desks, etc.).
This information just makes all the more salient our point towards the end of the episode on how disconnected these sorts of policies are from the reality of the origins of cannabis prohibition and drug-use-criminalization in the first place. Because of this, they come off as self-contradictory — employers are allowed to forbid use of cannabis, but only allowed to enforce these requirements under very specific circumstances. This only hightens the already combative nature of the relationship between worker and boss.
Thankfully, they stopped short of defining the homes of people who work-from-home as the “workplace”:
For remote employees, can employers prohibit use in the “worksite”?
The Department of Labor does not consider an
employee’s private residence being used for remote work
a “worksite” within the meaning of Labor Law Section 201-
D. However, an employer may take action if an employee
is exhibiting articulable symptoms of impairment during
work hours as described above and may institute a
general policy prohibiting use during working hours.
I feel that it’s also important to note that the state of New York is an at-will employment jurasdiction.
The FBI’s “Honest Mistake”
- EMN Clip on FBI “honest mistake” [2m30]
- MMN usadidnothingwrong.mp4 [1m23]
…and commentary etc
ToxMap courtesy ProPublica
- 3:13 Means TV segment
https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/
Alabama Miners Are Still on Strike After 8 Months
Last week, more than 500 coal mine workers picketed in New York City, joined by a diverse army of other labor movement members and supporters. The mine workers, who extract coal for steel production, are now in the eighth month of their strike against Warrior Met Coal in Brookwood, Alabama. Their aim is to force Warrior Met to restore the pay, benefits, and schedules they had before their previous employer, Walter Energy, declared bankruptcy and auctioned off its assets in 2016.
On Thursday, the mine workers marched to the headquarters of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and Warrior Met’s biggest shareholder. After the rally, five United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) members and the union’s president, Cecil Roberts, sat down in the street and refused to move. The six were handcuffed by the New York Police Department and arrested for their act of civil disobedience.
The striking workers brought their picket to the middle of Manhattan because they have been barred from gathering outside the Brookwood mines. On October 27, a Tuscaloosa County circuit judge issued a temporary restraining order stopping all UMWA picket activity at Warrior Met. The injunction, which has been extended through November 15, blocks strikers from gathering within 300 yards of any mine entrance or exit.
That’s a huge restriction. As Haeden Wright, president of the UMWA auxiliary for two of the striking locals, explained to Jacobin, moving the pickets three football fields back from the mines “could put you on a completely separate road from Warrior Met property.” In in an interview with Jacobin, labor scholar Steve Striffler called the restraining order “an unconstitutional act that effectively takes away the miners’ right to free speech and assembly at the conflict’s most important sites.”
The injunction is the apparent product of an aggressive campaign by Warrior Met to spread the misleading narrative that UMWA members are engaging in violence and vandalism on the picket lines. Labor journalist Kim Kelly reported that Warrior Met hired the public relations firm Sitrick and Company to “neutralize the opposition” and “reframe the debate” around a strike that has garnered local and national support despite embarrassingly insufficient coverage from the corporate media.
The injunction, Striffler says, is the latest evidence of “local government siding with coal companies” — a tradition with deep roots in coal country. But the tradition of cross-racial miner solidarity has roots that run just as deep, and the union miners and their families have held strong thus far despite the most recent effort to break their collective power.
The Origins of the Strike
Warrior Met Coal was formed in 2015 to purchase the remains of Walter Energy. The same year, a federal bankruptcy judge ruled that Walter Energy and its successor could disregard the bankrupt company’s commitments to miners and their families. In a bid to save jobs and retiree benefits, the UMWA agreed to a subpar contract mandating profound sacrifices. The workers’ understanding was that if they helped the company out of its financial straits, they would be made whole in the next contract.
The immediate concessions were enormous: Worker pay was slashed between $6 and $8 an hour, bringing it below the industry standard for unionized miners. Health insurance was downgraded from 100 percent coverage to an 80/20 system with massive out-of-pocket costs — no small concern in one of the country’s most physically hazardous occupations, with high rates of life-altering injuries and more than 10 percent of long-term miners suffering from black lung. Workers saw their pensions exchanged for threadbare 401(k)s. They lost most of their overtime pay, all but three holidays, and thirty minutes of paid lunch time. (Warrior Met miners eat their lunch underground in some of the deepest coal mines in North America, near dangerous methane gas and coal and silica dust.)
To make matters worse, Warrior Met implemented inhumane scheduling practices. Workers could take up to three days off if a loved one died, but under the company’s “four-strike” policy, a fourth day off was cause for termination. Haeden Wright said that workers like her husband, Braxton, “could be scheduled seven, ten, twenty days straight” with shifts sometimes stretching as long as sixteen hours. Such schedules add deadly, unnecessary risks to an already high-risk profession and prevent miners from seeing their children and other loved ones.
Companies in coal mining and other forms of resource extraction are particularly vulnerable to takeover by private equity firms like BlackRock, because as the UMWA’s director of communications and governmental affairs, Phil Smith, explained to Jacobin, “the entire industry is distressed.” When management decisions are made in Manhattan boardrooms, it’s that much easier to ignore the needs of the workers whose toil makes BlackRock and its peers so valuable. So, although the Brookwood miners delivered Warrior Met from ruin, producing “ungodly amounts of coal” and billions in profit, they were nonetheless told they had no right to demand a return to their previous contract. Consequently, on April 1, around 1,100 of them walked off the job.
While the work stoppage has cost Warrior Met dearly, the company continues to enjoy a highly profitable quarter thanks to increased demand for American metallurgical (“met”) coal resulting from trade tensions between Australia and China.
Government-Business Collusion
From the start of their strike, the UMWA miners have faced collaborative opposition from Warrior Met and local and state government. An earlier court injunction limited the size of pickets, first to six strikers at any given outpost, then upon appeal, to ten. The mines’ remote locations made it easier for strikers to be threatened with physical danger.
Multiple brazen vehicular attacks on picketers were caught on video, but nevertheless dismissed by Alabama law enforcement. Miners and their family members have been injured and even hospitalized as a result of these “company-inspired” hit-and-runs, yet when the UMWA filed unfair labor practice charges with the regional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) office, the charges were dismissed.
According to UMWA’s Phil Smith, in addition to the vehicular attacks, strikers have seen brandished firearms and death threats on the picket lines. Local and state police have made no effort “to follow up on any of that.” Meanwhile, Alabama troopers have been escorting replacement workers (scabs) to and from the mines on the public’s dime — acting, in Smith’s words, as “Warrior Met’s security apparatus.”
The lopsided state response has created a situation in which strikers and their families logically believe they must defend themselves. According to both Smith and Wright, the alleged instances of striker violence that Warrior Met has pushed out through local outlets were all in response to provocations, mainly by management. “There is no question,” Smith said, “that the [temporary restraining order] was issued in the shadow of a highly-edited video put out by the company that purports to show unprovoked actions by UMWA strikers. The premise of that video is false.”
Striffler put it simply: “This restraining order simply goes too far, is unconstitutional, and is designed to break [the] strike.”
Picket lines are rarely characterized by cross-class congeniality. If playing nice was effective in conflicts with cutthroat bosses, strikes would not be needed in the first place. But whatever grievances they choose to air, striking workers are entitled to their First Amendment freedoms. As Cecil Roberts aptly put it, the Constitution protects workers’ right to “stand on the side of a road and call a scab a scab.”
Why the Warrior Met Strike Matters
National outlets are finally beginning to cover the Warrior Met strike, but they have been extremely slow to acknowledge the seriousness of what’s happening in Alabama. In recent years, the corporate media has tended to treat coal miners as relevant purely as a potential source of red votes, should Democrats demand substantive climate legislation.
Even left-leaning publications have seemed to shy away from a story involving the four-letter word: coal. Never mind that the metallurgical coal miners in Brookwood are arguably part of a renewable energy supply chain, considering they extract coal that is sent to China to make steel for windmill parts.
But regardless of how their labor is used, when employees in extractive industries attempt to check their bosses’ power, they are standing up for all of us. Private equity firms like BlackRock are happy to bet on the markets and burn through workers’ bodies and the climate alike when it suits their bottom lines. While courts, police, and capital align to crush the striking UMWA miners, we’d all do well to ask the question Florence Reece posed melodically back in 1931: “Which side are you on?”
On the Ground With the QAnon Believers Who Flocked to Dallas for the Grand Return of JFK Jr.
QAnon true believers gathered en masse on Tuesday morning in anticipation of the return of Camelot — namely, of John F. Kennedy, Jr., the lush-haired scion and former George publisher who was killed in a plane crash in 1999. The crowds chose to meet in Dealey Plaza and lined themselves around the large white “X” that marks the spot where his father, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963. Dozens wore Tiffany Blue, a color associated with the Kennedy clan, as well as shirts that read “TRUMP/JFK JR 2020.”
That John F. Kennedy, Jr., is set to return is a belief set forth by proponents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which postulates that Donald Trump is lying in wait to destroy a secret cabal of blood-drinking, child-sex-trafficking members of the liberal elite. Dozens of QAnon supporters started gathering in AT&T Discovery Plaza in downtown Dallas last night to commemorate the glorious return of JFK Jr. — a man who, again, it must be emphasized, has failed to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide for over two decades.
The renaissance of JFK Jr. is an increasingly popular cornerstone of the QAnon conspiracy theory, though it has historically been something of a fringe belief in the movement. The theory postulates that JFK Jr. has been in hiding for years and will eventually reveal himself as Trump’s running mate for the 2024 election, a belief that stems from a poster claiming to be JFK Jr. who contributed to an 8chan thread in 2018. Some proponents of the theory also believe that Vincent Fusca, a former sales manager in Pittsburgh, is secretly JFK Jr. in disguise, despite the fact that Fusca is inches shorter (and honestly, considerably less good-looking) than John F. Kennedy Jr. QAnon influencer Juan O. Savin has also been “suspected” to be JFK Jr. in “disguise.” Platforms like Etsy and Amazon have also been called out for selling merch promoting the idea that JFK Jr. is still alive and will return as Trump’s running mate, and many supporters at the Dealey Plaza event were photographed wearing such merch.
My latest for @RollingStone details how some JFK Jr. truthers have surmised that Keith Richard is, in fact, JFK Jr.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/qanon-rolling-stones-mick-jagger-keith-richards-1253314/
@stevanzetti (Nov 6)
Despite JFK Jr. failing to materialize at Dealey Plaza and the Rolling Stones concert on Tuesday, QAnon-pilled JFK Jr. Truthers are STILL gathering in Dallas. Today, they’re making the shape of a Q at Dealey Plaza.
UPDATE: the situation with JFK Jr. Truthers at Dealey Plaza has, believe it or not, taken an even more bizarre turn. They’ve now gathered into a single line and are one by one approaching a man with a bird on his shoulder who appears to be giving them individual directions.
- 4:39 Means TV segment
Eric Adams can get hecked
this sweet summer child thinks guns cause crime. what~~
Look at his plan for combatting crime. Pay attention to what he says because none of this goes at the problem. It just reinforces a police state.
Eric Adams’ “Safety” Plan
Lower Crime Through Precision Public Safety
By saving money through technology and efficiency, and using it to fund targeted initiatives that reduce serious crime, I will more effectively deploy resources while ensuring that police do the real police work needed to get the bad guys and prevent crime in the first place.
He says he will do that by
- Being laser-focused on violent crime—especially guns.
- Reinventing the anti-crime unit as an anti-gun[^anti-gun] unit, using cops with the skills and temperament to balance community relations and catch the bad guys.
- Civilianizing areas of the NYPD that don’t need to be staffed by cops.
- Shifting detectives and other officers from low-crime areas to crime hot-spots when surges occur.
- Strengthening handgun laws so that New York City residents are not put at risk by lax laws in other counties and municipalities.
Target gun violence.
The number one driver of crime spikes in the city right now is gun violence. We must reverse this troubling trend, fast by using coordinated tactics, smart policing and cooperation between agencies and with the community.
[^anti-gun]: Any legislative action that bills itself as anti-gun is inherently going to be unconstitutional, since the constitution guarantees us the right to keep and bear arms. Then again, tell that to the “well armed militia” known as the Black Panthers.
He goes on to say that he will
- Reinvent the anti-crime unit as an anti-gun unit, hiring officers with the skills and temperament for this kind of intense, on the ground police work by removing overly aggressive cops and by targeting known shooters with precision policing tactics. (🙄)
- Prevent guns from coming in through our bus and train stations with spot checks like the ones we use in subway stations.
- Work with the Port Authority to strengthen security at city entry points, implementing spot checks and coordinating anti-trafficking initiatives.
- Fully fund the City’s Crisis Management System and allow for more centralized coordination between law enforcement, community groups and our hospitals.
- Improve communication and coordination between CMS and NYPD to prevent retaliatory violence once a shooting has occurred.
- Convene citywide clergy leaders and law enforcement officials to partner on public safety initiatives in hotspots.
- Form a Tri-State commission[^interstate] to formulate policy proposals that would stop the flow of illegal handguns into our communities.
- Coordinate a multi-state East Coast compact to share information on dirty gun dealers and potential traffickers to make up for a lack of federal response.
- Significantly increase funding to the City’s Office to Prevent Gun Violence.
[^interstate]: this clearly exceeds the bounds of not only a Mayor’s power in the local administration, but also the state of NY. Interstate commerce is explicitly a federal matter.