Have you noticed how long it take a first class letter to get where you mail it? Or how much it now costs? I do not understand why Biden has not dealt with DeJoy, an appointee of criminal Trump, who owns a company which is in competition with the Postal Service.
USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Credit: YouTube screengrab
US Postal Service (USPS) employees are sounding the alarm over postmaster general Louis DeJoy’s 10-year plan to gut the agency, saying it will put people out of work and delay mail service for millions of Americans.
According to the Guardian, DeJoy — whom then-President Donald Trump appointed to head the USPS in 2020 — is in the midst of enacting a 10-year plan to consolidate mail sorting facilities dubbed “Delivering for America,” which he claims will reduce costs. As of December 2023, there are currently 30 mail processing facilities that are being considered for consolidation, which the Guardian estimates could cost 25 jobs per consolidation. DeJoy is ultimately aiming to consolidate approximately 400 over the course of the strategic plan.
“It will eliminate jobs, good jobs,” said Pennsylvania Postal Workers Union president Mike Stephenson. “It’s one more process in the 10-year plan that DeJoy put in when Trump appointed him to destroy the postal service.”
While Democrats have repeatedly called for DeJoy’s ouster as […]
The Western states are experiencing growing water difficulties, and yet they continue to ship out a high percentage of their water in the form of alfalfa a water intensive crop. It is an aspect of the water issue that has received almost no consideration in corporate media, but it is going to affect millions of people. We, as a country, just are not thinking about water in a comprehensive way.
Alfalfa hay is a water-intensive crop, and exporting it is equivalent to exporting precious groundwater.Credit: Jack Richardson
Water is life. It’s also big business. In our November + December 2023 issue, Mother Jones dives into the West’s deepening water crisis—and the forces behind it, from historic drought to short-sighted policies to corrupt lawmakers and the special interests they serve. Read the full package here.
About a decade ago, having depleted their own ancient aquifers to grow livestock feed, some wealthy Middle Eastern nations, along with China, began tapping into the largely unregulated aquifers of drought-stricken American states. Notably, megafarms in the Arizona desert and in other Western states have been exporting vast quantities of precious groundwater in the form of alfalfa hay.
Even without the exports, unchecked growth and industrial-scale farming across the nation are draining this finite resource more rapidly than it can be replenished. States, meanwhile, are doing an abysmal job of managing it—Arizona, for instance, has even encouraged exports of its groundwater. Here’s a brief timeline of that situation, based on original reporting from Reveal. For a deeper dive, listen to their podcast, […]
Richard Fry, Senior Researcher - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
In the 1970s when I was a part of several academic futurist research groups the big issue on all of them was over-population and lack of resources. So much for academic futurism. The reality is we do not have a sustainable birthrate. That is more people die than are born. Women are also having children later than their mothers did, and fewer children. More than that as this report describes, men are marrying later, and a quarter of them haven’t married at all by the time they are 40. White evangelicals are hysterical about immigrants replacing them when, in fact, there are millions more open jobs than there are workers. We need immigrants to maintain our economic system. And did you know that 44.8% of Fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants or their children. You probably work for an immigrant or their child and your wellbeing depends on their creativity and ingenuity.
Marriage has long been a central institution in the lives of Americans. In 1980, just 6% of 40-year-olds had never been married. But people born from the 1960s onward have been increasingly delaying marriage, and a growing share are forgoing it altogether.
While many unmarried 40-year-olds are living with a romantic partner, most are not. In 2022, 22% of never-married adults ages 40 to 44 were cohabiting.
The share of 40-year-olds in 2021 who had never married varied by the following demographic characteristics:
Gender: A higher share of men than women had never married.
Race and ethnicity: Black 40-year-olds were much more likely to have never married than Hispanic, White and Asian 40-year-olds.
Education level: 40-year-olds without a four-year college degree were more likely to have never married than those who had completed at least a bachelor’s degree. One-third of those with a high school diploma or less had never married, compared with 26% of those with some college education and 18% of those with a bachelor’s degree or more education.
Paul Sonne and Rebecca R. Ruiz, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan:
Here is the first fact-based assessment of what has actually happened in Russia as a result of Western Companies leaving. It looks like Putin outplayed the West, at least in the short term. But I must say, those Western corporations did the right thing morally. In the interest of full disclosure when Putin came to power I sold, I believe to KGB operatives, probably Putin-connected, the two companies I had created during the Soviet era, and have never regretted that. What saddens me is that thanks to the morons in the Republican Party who oppose aid to Ukraine, it looks like all this will have been for naught. The MAGAt Republicans in the House just don’t seem to understand what happens if Ukraine loses this war because they did not get the needed assistance from the U.S. and the other Western countries. It will change the course of history in a very sad way if that happens. Hopefully, Biden will find a way to get the aid to Ukraine.
Businesses seized by Putin’s government to their benefit. Credit: The New York Times
Soon after Russian troops invaded his country, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, made a plea to Western companies: “Leave Russia,” he said. “Make sure that the Russians do not receive a single penny.”
Hundreds of companies answered the call. Politicians and activists predicted that it would help strangle the Russian economy and undermine the Kremlin’s war effort.
President Vladimir V. Putin had other plans.
Mr. Putin has turned the exits of major Western companies into a windfall for Russia’s loyal elite and the state itself. He has forced companies wishing to sell to do so at fire-sale prices. He has limited sales to buyers anointed by Moscow. Sometimes he has seized firms outright.
A New York Times investigation traced how Mr. Putin has turned an expected misfortune into an enrichment scheme. Western companies that have announced departures have declared more than $103 billion in losses since the start of the war, according to a Times analysis of financial reports. Mr. Putin has squeezed companies for as much […]
Florida is a state with all kinds of problems that are not being properly addressed, including it is almost impossible in many areas to buy home insurance. None of that seems to matter to MAGAt De Santis and his colleagues. What they are focused on, obsessed with one could say, are pronouns. This is what is going on in the state.
The lawsuit challenging Florida’s law restricting pronouns in schools is the latest legal pushback against several key polices created by state GOP leaders recently to strengthen parental rights and remove “wokeness” from classrooms, moves criticized by opponents as unfairly targeting the LGBTQ+ community. Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/ AP
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — Three Florida teachers sued state and local officials in federal court Wednesday seeking to overturn a new law forbidding employees from using pronouns in schools that differ from their sex at birth.
The group, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, contend that the law passed by state Republicans and lauded by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year amounts to sex discrimination and violates their constitutional rights, putting them at risk of losing their educator credentials — or jobs — for being “who they are.”
Filed in Tallahassee, the lawsuit is the latest legal pushback against several key polices created by state GOP leaders recently to strengthen parental rights and remove “wokeness” from classrooms, moves criticized by opponents as unfairly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
