The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[Frelga]

And it's often pointed out that in the real world, the characters of Friends wouldn't be able to afford their lifestyle even with roommates.

And I think successful young people are underrepresented on social media like Twitter, because they are busy having a life in the real world. I don't mean a crypto bro type of successful, just having a job, friends, hobbies.

[N.E. Brigand]

If President Biden's Uncle Bosey was eaten, it was likelier to have been by sharks than by cannibals, although the latter possibility can't be completely ruled out.

[N.E. Brigand]

The only non-union Volkswagen plant in the world was located in Tennessee.

Until the day before yesterday when workers there voted -- over the warnings of several Republican governors -- to join the UAW.

Apparently it's been decades since this happened in a U.S. auto plant.

President Biden has issued a statement applauding this news.

(Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says: "Solidarity IS the strategy.")

- - - - - - - - - -
Meanwhile, White House correspondents find it boring to work during the Biden administration.

(Edited to correct date and add AOC quote.)

[N.E. Brigand]

The only non-union Volkswagen plant in the world was located in Tennessee. Until the day before yesterday, when workers there voted -- over the warnings of several Republican governors -- to join the UAW. Apparently it's been decades since this happened in a U.S. auto plant. President Biden has issued a statement applauding this news. (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says: "Solidarity IS the strategy.")

Here's an interesting short interview with a formerly anti-union worker at this plant who voted last week to unionize.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Federal Trade Commission just voted (3-2) to ban non-compete agreements. That's an arrangement reached between a company and an employee that prohibits the employee from working for the company's competition for some period of time after the employee leaves the company. The FTC's ruling applies not only to all future arrangements (of which there will be none, once the rule takes effect in 120 days) but also to all agreements currently in place except for senior executives. Two years ago, President Biden urged the FTC to take this step. Republican-aligned pro-business groups are sure to file lawsuits to challenge today's ruling.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I doubt the new rule with survive legal challenges, sadly. Not with the Roberts court.

[N.E. Brigand]

I doubt the new rule with survive legal challenges, sadly. Not with the Roberts court.

That's the world we live in.

[N.E. Brigand]

The H1N1 bird flu outbreak that has infected cattle in eight U.S. states (plus cats and one human) has revealed some policy flaws: the USDA requires bird flu to be reported when it infects fowl but not when it infects other animals. And in general, there needs to be more coordination between the UDSA, CDC, and other agencies.

[N.E. Brigand]

The conservative-leaning New York Post (and other outlets) are reporting today on good news from President Biden for consumers:

"Flyers may soon get a break over canceled flights — including instant refunds — thanks to new Department of Transportation rules."

The article specifically mentions that this is the work of "The Biden administration" (those are the story's first three words) and includes video of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explaining that per "the new Department of Transportation mandates, airlines must issue full cash refunds automatically rather in response to customer requests — including when flights are canceled or significantly changed — when baggage return is significantly delayed and when customers do not receive inflight amenities like Wi-Fi for which they had paid ... 'without headaches or haggling.'"

[N.E. Brigand]

The judge in the other of Hunter Biden's federal cases -- the one in Delaware -- also has ruled against Hunter's motions to dismiss. As before, this seems to have been expected by most expert observers. But in my opinion, she says something egregiously wrong: "Defendant's claim is effectively that his own father targeted him for being his son, a claim that is nonsensical under the facts here." By the logic of that statement, Donald Trump would be correct to say that President Biden is targeting him. However, all the evidence we have indicates that President Biden has kept to a hands-off approach to Dept. of Justice investigations -- as he should. And the argument that Hunter Biden had made was that U.S. Attorney-turned-Special Counsel David Weiss scuttled his office's original agreement with Hunter and brought charges because of pressure from Republicans in Congress which resulted in Weiss and his family being threatened.

I haven't read much more of this decision by Judge Maryellen Noreika, but I see from commentary on it that Noreika made another notable error. She wrote that "Defendant has published a book about his life, where he admitted that his firearm was taken from him at some point after purchase and it was discarded (along with ammunition) in a public trash can, only to be discovered by a member of the public." This is cited to explain why the prosecution is reasonable and shouldn't be tossed for being selective. But what she writes actually isn't true. Hunter did not write about that in his book.

[N.E. Brigand]

"Biden Just Saved the 40-Hour Work Week" (The New Republic).

April 23 marked a defining moment for the Biden administration, a watershed of multiple significant actions to protect the interests of working people. We know, from Michael D. Shear of The New York Times, among others, that Biden has been on a tear lately “to try to shore up his support among key constituencies” with regulatory actions. But it’s not clear whether the convergence, on a single day, of these specific policy announcements—most but not all of them from the Labor Department—was planned or merely coincidental.

The individual components were announced by the Biden administration and covered by the press as isolated and wholly independent. If the timing was coordinated, I’d have expected the White House press office to draw attention to it. But Democratic presidents tend to fear antagonizing too directly the people that Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican!) called “malefactors of great wealth.” Maybe that explains the silence. In any event, April 23 was a sort of Black Tuesday for management. I hope Democrats have the good sense to let working-class voters in on this secret because, as I argued recently (“Yes, Joe Biden Can Win the Working Class Vote”), Biden can’t secure a second term with college graduates alone.

Working in management myself, I did inform my supervisor and our human resources director this week about the fourth of these moves, and I posted about the third here. The four actions that the column highlights are (1) an initiative to "pressure pension fund managers to require companies in their portfolio not to contest union drives" (and offset countervailing moves by certain states to punish companies for recognizing unions); (2) a determination that financial professionals are required to act as fiduciaries, i.e., to put clients' interests ahead of their own on retirement accounts (in a way that should be harder for a court to strike down, as happened with a rule the Obama administration put in place in 2016); (3) a rule that forbids non-compete agreements (as I mentioned here); and (4) the column's main subject: an increase in the minimum salary that must be paid to employees whose job descriptions otherwise exempt them from overtime pay for working more than 40 hours in a week.

The federal requirement for overtime pay after 40 hours of work has been in place since 1940 and by 1975, 65% of salaried U.S. workers were eligible for overtime pay. But over the next 28 years, the federal government stopped increasing the salary threshold. To keep up with inflation, it should have been $28,109 in 2003, but it was $8,060. George W. Bush's administration finally increased it that year to $23,660, but "that was a poverty wage even two decades ago, and because of changes to the duties test, the net effect was that an estimated six million workers lost overtime coverage." When Barack Obama's administration proposed a new increase in 2015, only 8% of salaried U.S. workers were eligible for overtime. Obama increased it to $47,476 the next year and added automatic raises based on inflation. That would have increased the number of eligible salaried workers to 33%, but a court blocked it and Donald Trump's administration opted not to appeal. The Trump administration did increase the threshold to $35,568 in 2019 (but without the requirement for further increases based on inflation).

What President Biden's administration has just announced is an increase of the threshold to $43,888 this July and $58,656 next January, with requirements for increases every three years starting in 2027.

[N.E. Brigand]

President Biden has announced "$6.1 billion in student debt cancellation for 317,000 borrowers who attended the Art Institutes," which were a collection of somewhat shady for-profit universities across the that existed from 1969 to 2023.

[N.E. Brigand]

If you were once arrested, but the arrest was then expunged, are you required to answer yes when completing a legal document that asks if you were ever arrested? I think the answer should be no, because to me an expungement means the arrest never existed, and I think I'd hold that position consistently whether the person answering the question was a Democrat or a Republican. Anyway, Kristen Clarke, who heads the civil rights division at the Dept. of Justice, answered the way I would when responding to a questionnaire during her confirmation process. It turns out she was arrested more than 15 years ago during what she characterizes as a domestic dispute caused by her violent ex-husband (police not infrequently arrest all parties in such incidents). Republicans are calling for her head. I think they really just hate women. But I'm not sure the Dept. of Justice, where she works, would let someone off the hook who answered a question this way.