Biden / Harris Focused Discussion

[Endus]

No, the weird part is how you keep twisting yourself into this pretzel with the posts.

I shouldn’t have to spend an exhaustive amount of time on my phrasing just so you personally don’t take it wrong.

When I said that the jobs of the unions wasn’t to take the country down, you know exactly what I meant so stop pulling a tehdang trying to take it wrong on this.

This is weird how you have twisted so differently on this. Has your account been hacked or something?

Do we need to spell everything out in exact legalese for you to understand what we mean even though, after all the time we have been here and the context of the material it should be obvious our intent?

@gondrin
Agreed

The point is I take a hell of a lot of issue with the idea that a railroad worker strike would "take down the nation". The railroads refusing to play fair with their workers is what's forcing that issue. And yet, everyone seems to blame the workers, not the railroads. That the workers considering strike action is somehow a threat, rather than a symptom of inequity. It's a pretty disturbing framing.

[gondrin]

The point is I take a hell of a lot of issue with the idea that a railroad worker strike would "take down the nation". The railroads refusing to play fair with their workers is what's forcing that issue. And yet, everyone seems to blame the workers, not the railroads. That the workers considering strike action is somehow a threat, rather than a symptom of inequity. It's a pretty disturbing framing.

The reason why is the fact that the average person is the US makes less, has less benefits and the like and when they hear the whole thing is over sick days, they tend to look at the workers and blame them, especially when they got nearly everything else they wanted. 24% raise. $5000 bonus and other things.

Most people will look at that and state, "You know, what the hell are they complaining about. They get PTO, I do not. They are getting a 24% raise, I only got 3%(or none)." And other things. They only look at the skin-deep thing and won't look any deeper at what it takes to do the job.

Like my job. I got a whole $0.50 raise. A bit less than 3%. However, I am not going to say people shouldn't fight for more. They most certainly should. The average person though, they are going to look at how they are doing and will look at what the workers got and wonder why they are complaining.

[Milchshake]

Another big deal for people that are into public lands. Biden announces his intentention to establish the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument, which in the Mojave language means “Spirit Mountain.” That this is being done by working with the tribes is also a critically important advancement in how we think about the public lands, given that the entire concept of the public lands rested on stripping tribes from the land. This was also a big last goal of Harry Reid, so it honors his legacy too.


President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced he will establish a new national monument across a vast landscape on southern Nevada’s border with California to protect an area sacred to 12 Native American tribes and rich with big horn sheep, Joshua tree forests, desert tortoises, ancient petroglyphs and other unique features.

The 450,000-acre monument will be located on federally owned property overseen by Bureau of Land Management Land in Clark County, Nevada, including most of the point in Nevada’s southern shape.

Covering an area 15 times the size of the city of San Francisco, it will connect multiple wilderness areas, preserves and parks in California and Nevada, including Mojave National Preserve to the west and Lake Mead National Recreation Area to the east.

The largest national monument that Biden has established so far during his presidency, the area will be named the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument, which in the Mojave language means “Spirit Mountain.”

“Look, there’s so much more, there’s so much more that we’re going to do to protect the treasured tribal lands,” Biden told a group of tribal leaders at the White House Wednesday for a tribal nations summit. “When it comes to Spirit Mountain and surrounding ridges and canyons in southern Nevada, I’m committed to protecting this sacred place that is central to the creation story of so many tribes that are here today.”

[Fugus]

The point is I take a hell of a lot of issue with the idea that a railroad worker strike would "take down the nation". The railroads refusing to play fair with their workers is what's forcing that issue. And yet, everyone seems to blame the workers, not the railroads. That the workers considering strike action is somehow a threat, rather than a symptom of inequity. It's a pretty disturbing framing.

Not specifically the railroad strike, its the industry shutting down period, regardless of reason would do massive damage to the nation as a whole. That isn't up for debate.

And if you think we are blaming the workers, you haven't been paying attention to us at all. You are right, refusing to pay the workers is the issue and should be addressed. An even bigger issue is HOW to address it without taking down the nation as a whole.

The issue isn't our framing of it as we have spelled that out to you repeatedly, the issue on this is how YOU are trying to claim we are phrasing it even when we have told you repeatedly we aren't.

When we mentioned it in monetary values, we included the damage to the citizens in that, you missed that point.
When we mentioned the damage to the nation from letting the railroads shut down, you took it as us attacking the workers, when we weren't.
And so on.

Listen, WE ARE NOT ATTACKING THE WORKERS WE ARE ATTACKING THE INDUSTRY AS A WHOLE AND HOW IT FUNCTIONS".

The railroad refusing to pay their workers IS a problem, the nations citizens getting massively damaged is also a problem. That's the disconnect you can't seem to understand on this. As I said before, I gladly support unions but this is an industry that shouldn't be in the hands of the private sector to begin with which creates this massive catch 22.

It would be like if the police departments around the nation all collectively (Local, State and Federal) decided to go on strike at once and when we complained about the risk and damage it would cause the nation without having police only for you to respond how we aren't thinking about it from the police officers side as well. We can see it from both sides here man.

[Attackrabbit]

Listen, WE ARE NOT ATTACKING THE WORKERS WE ARE ATTACKING THE INDUSTRY AS A WHOLE AND HOW IT FUNCTIONS".

Then you should be for the workers using their power to go on strike. It's pretty much the one tool workers actually have that makes people wake the fuck up and listen and change how industries are run.

[Fugus]

Then you should be for the workers using their power to go on strike. It's pretty much the one tool workers actually have that makes people wake the fuck up and listen and change how industries are run.

Reread everything I have posted, mentally process it and then come back with a response relevant to those posts.

[Attackrabbit]

Reread everything I have posted, mentally process it and then come back with a response relevant to those posts.

Yup, done so and it would appear you don't think the workers should strike.

You keep saying it should be worked out without striking because it would hurt everybody but unfortunately it seems working it out other ways got pretty much nowhere. If a strike by them would hurt 'everybody' maybe 'everybody' should be out there pressuring their reps etc to get these obviously utterly essential workers their sick days so they don't have to strike.
I agree as an essential part of infrastructure it should be nationalised and then maybe the workers would get a better deal but I can't see something that easy to paint as 'communism' happening anytime soon in the USA

[Shadowferal]

I'm thinking self-driving technology is coming sooner or later for this industry.

[Breccia]

I'm thinking self-driving technology is coming sooner or later for this industry.

I can't think of a reason why not, trains are kind of limited where they can go. It's not like they can pull over into some lady's yard and run donuts.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Ok, as far as grocery store stock levels go, the average bigger store will have around 20 - 25 days worth of product on the shelf to sell. Some will sell out faster than others but that is the general gist of it. As far as backstock levels, that is about 5 - 8 days worth total between everything. Places like Wal-Mart that have their own warehouse network may have a couple of weeks more stock on hand but not much more then 45 days at best.

If there is a panic buy for everything, that number drops extremely fast down to a few days at best. We see this during a hurricane warning or other large scale events like that, especially during COVID. In Ohio, if they call for snow, first thing people do is stock up on a ton of stuff and the store I work for will run out of things until it gets another truck.

Mind you, this is only for frozen and dry prepackaged goods. Bread, refrigerated or otherwise perishable fresh goods like produce, there will be roughly 2 weeks at the longest before spoilage. This doesn't include vacuumed sealed cheeses and things of that nature. Those would go with the dry good/frozen timeframe.

Source? Myself. I've worked in grocery retail for over 20 years.

Stores do not keep a large amount of goods on hand. Just enough to last about a month total if there isn't replenishment.

So yes, if there is a major disruption in the supply chain that involves getting raw materials to manufacturing to make food, you better believe people will panic quickly and start to hoard stuff.

Yes, we've seen time and again that people will hoard resources even if they don't need to. Which is exactly what would happen if the railroads shut down. People would hoard resources, and probably even try to turn a profit by reselling for massive markup. We literally see this every time there's a run on the stores and a supply issue to the area.

- - - Updated - - -

The reason why is the fact that the average person is the US makes less, has less benefits and the like and when they hear the whole thing is over sick days, they tend to look at the workers and blame them, especially when they got nearly everything else they wanted. 24% raise. $5000 bonus and other things.

Most people will look at that and state, "You know, what the hell are they complaining about. They get PTO, I do not. They are getting a 24% raise, I only got 3%(or none)." And other things. They only look at the skin-deep thing and won't look any deeper at what it takes to do the job.

Like my job. I got a whole $0.50 raise. A bit less than 3%. However, I am not going to say people shouldn't fight for more. They most certainly should. The average person though, they are going to look at how they are doing and will look at what the workers got and wonder why they are complaining.

And this. A lot of people in the nation see the compensation that rail workers get, the benefits, etc. Realize they don't even have half of what rail workers get (salary wise and benefits wise) and their sympathy kind of drops a ton when the threat is to shut down the nation for sick days. It's just the reality of the situation.

[Shadowferal]

I can't think of a reason why not, trains are kind of limited where they can go. It's not like they can pull over into some lady's yard and run donuts.

You may recall another poster who would rant against unions while being in one himself. I was one (among others) that was always in favor of unions.
But this...this is different. It's one thing to harm a company's bottom line, it's another to fuck up the country. Especially to a point that Joe Average is going to look harshly on the situation. That's damaging to the very idea of unionized labor.

[Templar 331]

I'm thinking self-driving technology is coming sooner or later for this industry.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-revi...swire-12062022

They're pushing for it. :/

I can't think of a reason why not, trains are kind of limited where they can go. It's not like they can pull over into some lady's yard and run donuts.

True, but there needs to be a person at the helm to ensure there isn't a bug in the system. Which happens ALL THE TIME. I've rode with several engineers who have told me their TO (trip optimizer) couldn't get an accurate reading one the location of the train. When that happens we have to call a 1-800 number and get a code to manually operate the system. One engineer was told by the call center that his train was showing in Arizona when he was in Georgia!

You also have road crossings that don't have automated crossing guards. Now if someone were to get hit at one of these crossings someone needs to be on the engine to see it happen and call for emergency services. Knock on wood I haven't had to make one of these calls and I hope I never have to but I've had WAY to many close calls.

[Shadowferal]

Based on a 2015 analysis, the Army reduced its rail force structure by 70 percent to a single 180-person 757th Expeditionary Rail Center

Lets not give the president any reason to recall that 70%.

[Flarelaine]

I'm thinking self-driving technology is coming sooner or later for this industry.

We already have a self-driving metro line in a shitty Eastern European country. The tech is there. I suppose it may need to mature a bit as there are more possible complications on open tracks but it really is a matter of commitment.

[RampageBW1]

I got a question; during prisoner swaps between two countries (in this case, USA and Russia) would the President need to sign off on the exchange?

Because I don't think this will be good in the long term for the Democrats (or, at the very least, the Biden administration):
https://news.yahoo.com/griner-bout-w...130827148.html

Oh yes, lets exchange a very notorious arms dealer for a basketball player, that is totally a fair exchange!

Yes, it is good Brittney is coming home, but the price paid was too great IMO.

(While I say it's "good" she is coming home, but in the context, I think it'd be better if she stayed in prison in Russia over giving up an Arms Dealer in exchange)

[Shadowferal]

I got a question; during prisoner swaps between two countries (in this case, USA and Russia) would the President need to sign off on the exchange?

Yep!
Absolutely.

[BigToast]

I got a question; during prisoner swaps between two countries (in this case, USA and Russia) would the President need to sign off on the exchange?

Because I don't think this will be good in the long term for the Democrats (or, at the very least, the Biden administration):
https://news.yahoo.com/griner-bout-w...130827148.html

Oh yes, lets exchange a very notorious arms dealer for a basketball player, that is totally a fair exchange!

Yes, it is good Brittney is coming home, but the price paid was too great IMO.

(While I say it's "good" she is coming home, but in the context, I think it'd be better if she stayed in prison in Russia over giving up an Arms Dealer in exchange)

I'll go the extra step and say it's good she is coming home "without quotes." A US citizen detained by Russian in an obvious political stunt by Putin is good. Hopefully we can bring more political prisoners home. They are not "basketball players" or whatever, they are Americans.

[RampageBW1]

No one would have literally cared if she were arrested in any other country. "But it's a political stunt!" True, but that does not make this deal any less stupid.

[BigToast]

No one would have literally cared if she were arrested in any other country. "But it's a political stunt!" True, but that does not make this deal any less stupid.

Sure people would have cared. Maybe it would have gotten less coverage, but political prisoners such as Griner (and Paul Whelan, who hopefully will get more attention as a result of this and come home soon also) are nothing new and deals like this have been struck for decades. I find it bizarre that people argue against bringing political prisoners home.

[Kaleredar]

No one would have literally cared if she were arrested in any other country. "But it's a political stunt!" True, but that does not make this deal any less stupid.

American prisoners arrested under dubious circumstances in adversarial foreign countries have a non-zero record of winding up dead in that country.