Franken – Legislation

CALIFORNIA – THEY ARE AT IT AGAIN!

AB2932

32-Hour Workweek Bill

Presented as a bill to allow California employees to work fewer hours each week, Assembly Bill 2932 by Assembly members Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) and Evan Low (D–Campbell), would require all businesses in the state with 500+ employees to redefine a full-time workweek to 32 hours instead of 40 hours.

AB 2932 exempts union businesses and public employees.

• Any hours worked by an employee over 32 hours would be considered overtime. The bill would require significant changes to overtime rules.
• The bill would require the employers to pay employees at the same rate of pay as their current 40 hour week, meaning employees will be getting a raise. AB 2932 prohibits an employer from reducing an employee’s regular rate of pay as a result of this reduced hourly workweek requirement.
• This is a backdoor minimum wage increase without having to vote on one.” 

From:  California Globe By Katy Grimes, April 13, 2022

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I have money to wager that if this bill becomes law,  the ink from the Governors signature won’t be dry before ALL Public Employees will be demanding the same deal for them.  And, you can expect Union Employees to follow right on their heels.  You can also be assured that Hourly Workers for smaller employers will start demanding the same 32 hour work week in the name of “Equity”. 

Want to take me up on my wager?

California’s Democratic Controlled Legislature is hard at work on a plan to turn California into a 32 hour workweek State.  They seem to come up with these ideas without ever thinking them through and believe everything can be paid for by the Tooth Fairy.

Knowing how the hearts and minds of California’s Legislators work, I am sure they will promptly and rapidly acquiesce to a Public Employees demand for a 32 hour workweek.  After all, the Public Employees and their unions represent a large percentage of the Democratic Legislators voter base. 

Further, the members of California’s Legislature may be fiscal morons but even they know you cannot expect work requiring 40 hours of labor a week to be done in 32 hours.  Fortunately for the Public Employees there is an “easy fix”.  The State Legislature will simply authorize the hiring of the additional workers to fill in the 20% reduction in hours being worked now,  and,  raise taxes to cover the cost of the increased  payroll and benefits.  

The only other option would be to reduce hours of service to the public for places like the Department of Motor Vehicles etc..  You can be sure that is not going to happen.  The one thing we can take for granted is that Bureaucracies never get smaller.  They only grow larger.

For the private sector and those who work for an hourly wage, and for their employers, the 32 hour week in the “new” “Utopian” California, the options are less “Rosie”.  Private Employers and Companies cannot raise taxes to pay folks 40 hours of pay for 32 hours of work.

Some employers may simply choose, if fiscally possible, to simply cut their operations to a 4 day week business or, cut the hours of their current employees to 32 hours  a week (at their current hourly rate) and then hire additional, perhaps part time, employees (at that same hourly rate) to make up the other 8 hours of work needed to stay in business and still stay within their payroll budgets.  Remember, these are hourly, not salaried, employees. These employers live in the “real world”.    Private employers have to stay within fixed payroll budgets or go out of business.  No “Taxpayer Tooth Fairies” to raise taxes on.

The “good” news for their employee’s is that they will only be going to their “regular” job 32 hours a week.  The “bad” news is they will need that extra day to find a part time job to help make up for the lost income from that other 8 hours they used to work at the “old” job.  Ah, life in California!

If this passes it means California can expect a further “Exodus” of more businesses and their workers to other states with a more employer friendly work environment. 

Over my years of writing on these subjects I have come to wonder what happens to often well intentioned people who get into legislative office and then seem to forget what it is like in the “real” world of trying to run a business, provide jobs and services and stay within a budget so you can continue doing so. 

It seems like once they get elected and go to work at the Capitol or other offices, somebody drags them off into a back room and gives them “Stupid Pills” and they lose the ability to think about the (maybe) unintended consequences of their actions.

Bob Bandy April 2022

Chinese President Xi Jinping & Russian President Vladimir Putin

Photo: BBC News

Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to believe that he has formed a mutually beneficial and long term relationship with President Xi Jinping of China.

Business Insider.com had even referred to their relationship as a “Blossoming Bromance” in a July 2019 article.

In recent months, before the Ukraine Invasion by Russia, the Chinese and Russians signed huge wheat, coal and oil deals worth more than 100 Billion Dollars to the Russians.

Would it be just conspiratorial conjecture to suspect that the crafty Chinese President “outfoxed” the Russian President by tacitly approving the invasion, and subsequent near genocide of the Ukrainians.  Letting the never popular Russian President become one of the most despised and never to be trusted leaders in the world and now an outcast among civilized nations?

Did President Xi all along just look at President Putin as a “goose” to be fattened and then harvested to serve the expansion of China’s Empire?

Where else among civilized nations can the killer of civilians, whole families, children, even babies, turn to after an unprovoked, barbarous invasion and slaughter of innocents?

I suspect that as time passes Russia will descend into little more than a client “state” of China. A resource rich “goose” to feed the growing needs of China. 

It is more China’s way to use “client states” to do their “dirty work”.  Places like North Korea, as an example, and now perhaps Russia.  In the process China just smiles and practices “plausible deniability”.

Lest you think I am engaging in just wild speculation, consider the following:  China is a brutal, totalitarian country and its citizens have no human or civil rights.  Having said that, can you name for me one “foreign” country China has sent its armies to invade in the last 200 years.  They have used their armies to ruthlessly quell rebellions in many of China’s provinces but not other nations.  Before World War II Japan invaded China but China never invaded Japan.

What China does is acquire influence and power in foreign lands by buying and investing in the resources of foreign nations.  For example:  China became the largest buyer of milk products from New Zealand.  New Zealand expanded milk production by dairy farmers borrowing money to increase their herds to meet China’s growing demand.  Then China cut off buying the milk products.  Many of New Zealand’s dairy farmers could no longer pay the bank loans and filed for bankruptcy.  Chinese “investors” bought up the bankrupt dairy farms.  Chinese “investors” are buying up land, mineral resources and businesses around the world, including here in the United States.  In this way China expands its Empire and influence without ever firing a shot.  Smart like a fox.

Rulers like Vladimir Putin invade places like Ukraine, destroy its infrastructure, severely damage its resources, kill and alienate its citizenry and then takes charge of a country that despises him and is in ruins. This also creates fear and loathing in other nations who understand they could be the next target of aggression.   This is not smart like a fox. It is the actions of a power mad Barbarian.

Tell me, am I wrong?

Bob Bandy – March 2022

Valdimir Putin

HISTORY is replete with the record of Barbarian killers.  Whether they titled themselves as “Emperor”, “King”, “The Great Khan”, “Attila the Hun”, “President” or some other fancy title, they all have a record of filling the annals of time with the deaths of thousands, tens of thousands and often millions of innocent people just trying to live out their lives and care for their children.

Vladimir Putin is not the first, and, unfortunately will likely not be the last of these soulless killers of humanity.

I find myself laying awake at night, my mind haunted by a televised image of a sorrowful man sitting beside a table on which lays a dead child covered with a bloodstained sheet.  The child was killed because of the ambition of Vladimir Putin.  I grieve with this man and the people of the Ukraine and I am tormented with a desire to find a way to stop this kind of madness.

Like many others, I find myself praying that the barbarism and killing will stop.

Following World War I the League of Nations was formed with the intent of making sure another such war would never happen again. Adolph Hitler put that dream in the dust bin of history and is responsible for the death of seven million Jews and so many others.  But, he is not alone in the reign of Barbarians.  Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin and numerous others have caused the death and misery of millions upon millions of humans.

The United Nations was formed following World War II.  It to, has failed in so many ways.  The most it seems to do is issue “Non-Binding Resolutions” of condemnation.  Like wagging your finger at a two year old for breaking his siblings toys with no other consequences.

It has been reported that the United States is sending Vice President Kamala Harris over to Europe.  Maybe to give them another geography lesson on how the Ukraine is located right next to Russia and remind them that our President might need to go “toe to toe” with Putin again as he said he had done in a statement while on the campaign trail.  I am sure this will be every bit as effective as the “Non-Binding Resolution” from the United Nations has been.  With Vice President Harris in charge what could possibly go wrong?

Back in 2009 when one of our political parties was accusing the other party of “pulling the plug” on Grandma’s Heath Care,  I wrote a satirical piece  suggesting the United States would do well to “Pull the Plug” on the United Nations and ship it off to another country before dropping our membership. The message of the article was that the United Nations was no more than a Toothless Tiger which had become mostly a sounding board where other countries, after taking our Foreign Aid money voted against the U.S. whenever possible.

Different era, different tyrants and dictators.  Same “Toothless”  United Nations.

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PULL THE PLUG

September 2009

Bob Bandy

Drawing by Syl Mateo

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Dictator names and nations have changed but not the ineffectiveness of the United Nations.  What a waste.  Sad.

Bob Bandy – March 2022

The following article reprinted from the Philadelphia Trumpet – March 2022 – by Joel Hilliker is one of the best Synopsis of exactly what America has done, and is doing to itself that I have read anywhere.  It is both eye opening and a frightening piece of carefully documented concise, articulate commentary on the subject.   Bob

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photo: google

THE GREATEST NATION ON EARTH?

FACE REALITY: YOU ARE NO LONGER IN IT.

By Joel Hilliker – January 19, 2022

Do you believe America is the strongest country in the world? It’s time to open your eyes: You are living in the post-American world.

The United States has enjoyed the world’s largest economy for about two lifetimes. But depending on the measurement, China has already surpassed it, or is about to. It is building a sprawling trading network that encompasses more than 140 nations. Recently, it signed an agreement with virtually every nation in Latin America and the Caribbean that helps it replace the United States as the region’s top trade partner. The plan covers almost all aspects of life, from learning Chinese to mining to exploring space, for more than 680 million people in 33 countries—and is plainly aimed at taking over America’s backyard.

Such are the deals China is securing that enable it to flood the world with inexpensive exports and thus amass mountains of cash. This wealth it reinvests in foreign countries, then uses this as leverage to gain control of their resources and infrastructure. China is building a global empire, quickly and relentlessly. Meanwhile America, opposed to tyrannies but war weary, relies on economic weapons, freezing regimes like Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Venezuela and Cuba out of diplomacy and trade. China, itself a tyrannical regime, is happy to welcome them as they rush into its arms. It just signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Iran that will flood the Islamist terrorist state with cash, as well as providing military training, weapons development and intelligence sharing that could upend the Middle East’s balance of power.

THEY ARE AT IT AGAIN

BEATING THE DRUMS OF EQUITY

WHENEVER the efforts of our politicians fail to produce the results of their campaign promises, and their schemes and plans just produce more debt and inflation, they seem to always fall back on a demand for “Equity”; defined by them as “Equal Outcomes” for all citizens.  Or, in their dreams, everybody has the same amount of “stuff”.  They compound their rhetoric most often by claiming that anything less than full “Equity” is somehow “unfair”, “racist”, “unjust” or pick a similar negative term.  It seems their goal is to make us all equally poor, except for them, the ruling class. 

Congress has a congenital habit of exempting themselves from the legislation they impose on we lowly tax payers.  Example: The “Affordable Care Act”.  It did not apply to Congress or their staff.

Under our Constitution it is clear that what the goal for American’s is, and should be, “Equal Opportunity”. 

OPPORTUNITY AND EQUITY ARE NOT THE SAME

Opportunity is a noble goal and we should all strive for that.  Among human beings, Equity of outcome is not possible and, I would argue, neither a reasonable nor a desirable target.

OPPORTUNITY CREATES WEALTH

EQUITY CREATES POVERTY

Some eight years ago, back in February of 2014 I wrote an article, somewhat “tongue in cheek”, on this subject.  It is reprinted below:

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FIXING INCOME INEQUALITY

The government says it wants to “fix” the problem of unequal pay and income.  They say too few are paid too much (the evil rich) while too many are not paid enough (victims of the rich).  The goal of the government is to equalize pay for all citizens.

Based on the governments track record of “fixing” things like the War on Poverty, our Public Education System, the Postal Service, Amtrak, and the growing National Debt, I am not sure we want them to try to “fix” income equality.  Or anything else.

I have a vision of what a likely government “fix” will look like.

First they will establish what is a reasonable amount for everyone to be paid. For sake of  this discussion lets say they decide on $60,000 a year.  That would be $5,000 a month.

Here is a plan that I am sure would appeal to every bureaucrats heart.  All residents of the United States of working age (18?) would receive a “salary” of $5,000 per month from the government who would function as the payroll department for all employers.  A “single payer” system under complete control of the government and IRS.   We could all become cogs in the wheel of the Proletariat masses.

Don’t worry, if you like your current job, you can keep it.  That’s a promise.

Your education does not matter.  Your age does not matter.  Race, religion, political party, type of work, skill level, work ethic, level of responsibility, or experience. None of these matter.  Unions could be eliminated, you wouldn’t need them.  No merit or performance pay, everybody gets paid the same.  Movie stars, Presidents, Barbers, Plumbers, Soldiers, Dog Catchers, Burger Flippers, Brain Surgeons, etc.

Visualize a Baseball Team under this system.  The owners, the managers, star players, beginning players,  bat boys, groundskeepers, peanut vendors, everybody gets exactly the same pay.

As desirable as this sounds in providing equal pay for all of us it would have the added benefit that the IRS could withhold their “fair share” before we see our paycheck with no need for us to ever file an annual return.  Who could possibly object to such a fair and equitable solution?   Consider this,  we would all get paid the same no matter how lousy a job we do.  Just like members of Congress.

If every citizen received the same amount of pay every month, do you think we would all have the same bank account at the end of the year?  Or would some have a fat bank account, another a new car and still another a giant hangover?

Perhaps governments next task is to require equal outcomes for all of us?  It should be easy.  A plan to devolve all of us to the lowest common denominator.  Call it government approved cookie cutter equality.

An American melting pot filled with glassy eyed, average room temperature IQ automatons.

Bob Bandy – (reprinted) February 2022

LIVING IN AN IDIOCRACY

First, and in full disclosure, I must admit that I was once a smoker.  I gave up smoking  many years ago when my daughter who was some eight years old, looked up at me with those beautiful, big brown eyes she inherited from her mother, and said:  “Daddy, will you quit smoking for me”.  I did.

So, I don’t come to this discussion with perfectly clean hands, but, the United States Army disciplined into me that a smoker does not throw their cigarette butts on the ground.  If no ash tray is available you “field strip” them and put them in your pocket till a proper waste receptacle is at hand.

Having said these things, I heard on the news yesterday that California is in the process of prohibiting the discarding of filtered cigarette butts.  Just the filtered kind.  The proposed fine for doing so would be $500 per incident.  It seems that the genius’s in charge of this scheme have figured out that used cigarette filters are a health hazard. 

But, not to worry, if you are homeless or live in one of California’s homeless encampments it will still be legal to urinate in merchants doorways,  defecate on/in the public sidewalks and gutters, dispose of used narcotics needles and all manner of other trash anywhere, at will,  with no penalty or fine. 

It will also be permissible to pilfer and  steal from nearby stores (as long as you keep the theft on any one trip to below $950) with only the possibility of a misdemeanor ticket.  And, by the way, their shopping carts are free.

In addition, rioting, looting, burning and destruction of public and private property will still be ignored legally as long as you do it in the name of a “Progressive” or “Liberal” cause as championed by the main stream media. 

Under our current leadership, California is becoming a trash ridden, Insane Asylum without the usual rules, order and discipline you find in such a place.  It is like we have put the residents of such an establishment in charge of maintaining public law and order.

I am of the opinion that if America really wants to defeat whatever enemies it has, all we need do is export to those enemies California’s brain dead Legislature and Governor, Gavin Newsome.  Then somehow put California’s leaders in charge of our enemies economies and legal system.  That ought to do them in. 

Bob Bandy – January 2022