Last night a New York Army National Guard medical Black Hawk helicopter on a training run crashed in a field a couple of miles from my house. All three crewmembers died. My wife is pretty sure she heard it go over the house shortly before the crash.
This got me thinking about what we’ve been asking of our state’s National Guard in the past year. In addition to helping to secure the Capitol (New York sent over 1,000 soldiers), they’ve been helping with COVID relief by manning health checks at airports, staffing drive-up testing sites, assembling test kits and helping with warehousing and logistics.
I don’t have a larger point, just that they’ve been doing a lot, at great personal risk, and I think it’s been taken for granted.
Open thread.
Mike in NC
Washington Post has an article on how Biden redecorated the Oval Office using items from the White House collection. Removed the armed forces flags that Trump humped every day as he imagined himself to be a dictator who could order “his” generals to do anything he wanted.
pat
I can’t get over the sight of dozens of National Guard members lying side by side on the floor of the Capitol. I wonder how many will take the covid back home.
Baud
I believe Kent was interested in the NOAA.
Baud
Baud
TaMara (HFG)
I hate hearing that – a tragic loss to the family and community.
My family members that are/were in the National Guard have always expressed they’d rather be doing things locally than being used as IED fodder overseas.
They take great pride in helping their communities during times of crisis.
AndoChronic
I used to be Navy Aircrew, with one truly scary inflight emergency under my belt where I thought how much was in my SGLI and who my beneficiaries were, and every time I hear about any aircraft crash really I can just imagine the terror they experienced and it saddens me. R.I.P.
Baud
National Guard work for a living, so of course they have been taken foe granted.
germy
Horrible.
clay
@Baud: Some will probably chafe at that, but the guy got elected to restore norms, and not firing the FBI director is a norm.
germy
J R in WV
The National Guard (along with the various services’ Reserve forces) are just like all the serving members of the military services. Long periods of boredom and routine training, punctuated by brief moments of sheer terror as someone once said, wisely. Those moments of terror are when the heroes show up, as we saw on the afternoon of the 6th, which will live forever in the halls of infamy.
I’m really grateful for all those serving in the Guard/Reserves, and I hope that wearing masks kept those troopers safe while protecting our national capitol from danger over the past couple of weeks. Also hoping hard that the organizers of that treasonous plot are identified, arrested, tried and punished in front of the whole nation as soon as possible.
Also, I told Wife for weeks that the reason the previous administration had not turned anything over to the transition regarding Covid-19 vaccination was that there was nothing to turn over, nothing whatsoever.
And now, sadly, I was correct, they didn’t even bother to attempt to form even a shitty strategy, no planning, nothing at all. Which should be felony murder in my small angry mind! But IANAL so what do I know? How I feel is all I can speak to right now. Felony murder it is from here!
germy
Where’s George?
raven
It’s one of the oddities of my odd life that I spent half of my tour in Vietnam in one of the eight guard units that got called up for the King assassination and were subsequently federalized and sent to the war. The 107th Signal Company had one death during the tour, a trooper who broke his neck diving in a swimming pool at Long Binh.
Anyway the 107th was from Providence, RI and I’ve gone up there for a couple of reunions. It’s good to see some of the guys but the unit was strange in that, when they hit country, small teams of 4 or 5 guys got sent to small signal installations to run commo there. The guys who stayed at the main camp were pretty clannish and it made sense since they all knew each other well back in the world. Here’s the funniest thing to me. These guys that attend these reunions are largely conservative but there was a big table covered with newspaper article about how they took the government to the Supreme Court, had hunger strikes and resisted going as much as they could. I chose not to focus on this and just had a good time visiting and going on a fishing trip the morning of the reunion,
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@germy: I saw those the other day. The damage that her parents have inflicted on that young woman will require years of therapy and will probably never be fully overcome. Very sad. (And I do mean “parents” – it takes two to create such a toxic environment.)
Also, people who work with children and parents tell me its very hard to get CPS to intervene where there isn’t clear documented physical abuse.
WaterGirl
@germy: People keep posting this, but I find it confusing.
How/when did Claudia Conway go from being a blond 16-year-old to suddenly looking 5 or more years older, with long dark hair, tossing her hair around like someone who wants to be the next social media star?
Is that the same person?
raven
40 Years Ago: Bardstown National Guard unit attacked in Vietnam (it’s now 51 years)
Kent
@Baud: Interesting news on NOAA. I don’t know any of those names mentioned in the Washington Post article. But I trust they will get good people back into running the agency after the pollicization of the Trump years. The whole thing became a shit show under Wilber Ross. I was disappointed to see the governor of Rhode Island appointed Commerce Secretary, but if she just lets NOAA run itself and maintains the budgets that would basically match what most other Dem administrations did in the past.
I expect it will largely be a sea of white faces. For whatever reason, people of color rarely go into marine sciences. When I worked at NOAA in Washington DC in the 1990s and early 2000s it was the most segregated place you ever saw. A sea of white professional staff and scientists with advanced scientific degrees from around the country, with a largely Black clerical staff from local DC, and a largely Hispanic custodial and maintenance staff who came in at night.
Feathers
@WaterGirl: Yep. Having really shitty parents will have you looking older fast. As to looking like a wannabe social media star: if social media is what you have to fight back against your parents, you are going to mold yourself to be what that world reacts positively to, often unconsciously.
The sad thing is there aren’t many resources to help her if she isn’t being neglected or physically harmed. At that income level, I’d suggest an artsy boarding school, but pandemic.
sab
@TaMara (HFG): That’s true of the Guardsmen I know. They signed up in order to serve and to help.
Baud
MisterForkbeard
@WaterGirl: I’ll admit it threw me too. When you look at her facial structure they’re the same person.
But the video where she’s on her bed recording is what she really looks like, and the videos with dark hair and makeup are after she’s made up – and I suspect shortly after a visit to the salon. Because hair doesn’t tousle that way without significant effort, and the color is definitely new.
Baud
@Kent:
Historical biases play out in odd ways sometimes.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: First mistake. Wray’s been doing all the right things and making the right noises and arresting the shit out of the insurrectionists, so that’s all good, but I know goddamn well we have Democrats capable of doing all those things, so fire this man already.
Kent
@WaterGirl: I’ve raised 3 teenage girls, two of whom are still teenagers. As much glee as one might get from seeing vile national figures get taken down on video, I’m loath to give too much weight to this sort of thing. They clearly have some family dynamics and issues to work out and I’m sure having it posted all over social media doesn’t help.
We had a high-strung bi-polar type daughter and her middle school and HS years involved lots of screaming, door slamming, defiance, self-abuse, and endless stress for all involved, including various therapists and even some interaction with the courts. It can just be an exhausting nightmare no matter what you do or don’t do. So I’m honestly not interested in seeing tiny tiktok snippets of someone’s family life.
Feathers
@Kent: @Baud: University science departments that treat intro courses as speed bumps designed to weed out students unsuited to become star PhD students need to be burned to the ground. Structuring work around group projects also must end, because that turns into asshole white dudes driving out everyone except other creepy boys. Harvard doubled the number of women computer science major by reshaping their intro programming class to actually teach fucking computer programming rather than weed out people who hadn’t been hacking for years already.
Kent
He cannot simply be fired without cause. The FBI director is not a traditional political appointee position. It is a fixed 10-year term. Biden must have legitimate cause to fire him. The last two fired FBI directors had cases built against them from within the DOJ. They weren’t just fired like an ordinary cabinet secretary. Clinton fired William Sessions but only after both Bill Barr (AG for Bush) and Janet Reno (AG for Clinton) did investigations and found wrong-doing and lapses of judgement. And, of course, Trump fired Comey, but only after he brow-beat Rod Rosenstein into signing a determination that Comey had shown poor judgement in handling the Clinton emails and such. Obviously it as a fucking pretext, but they did invent the pretext. Trump didn’t just fire him out of the blue like he did all his other cabinet officials that he fired during his administration.
For Biden to fire Wray would require a similar investigation and finding of wrong-doing by Biden’s AG who is Merrick Garland. I expect with all that is on their plate right now, getting Merrick Garland to gin up justification for firing Wray is pretty low on the list of priorities. Even if he could convince Garland to even do it.
patrick II
@The Moar You Know:
Hunter Biden is under investigation. It is tough to fire Wray as long as that is ongoing.
Added
In addition to what Kent said.
jonas
@Baud: My understanding is that FBI director is now appointed to 10 year terms and aren’t considered political appointees that come and go with each new administration the way the AG does, for example. That’s supposed to make them more apolitical, but of course only if you adhere to democratic norms. That didn’t survive first contact with Trump
ETA: or what Kent said.
VeniceRiley
Thank Guard! Helicopters are flying oil leaks. I’m sorry for their families.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: yup. Not a doubt in my mind that KAC is as nasty a piece of work at home as she is on camera but this is some complicated stuff– after all this drama started a few months ago, there was a moment when the daughter tweeted at somebody, somebody IIRC parroting the child’s own claims of abuse, and she tweeted something like, LOL you know nothing, my mom is my best friend.
MisterForkbeard
@The Moar You Know: I’m less worried about this. I really don’t want Biden to do that unless he has an ironclad reason to do so, or he’s going to face calls for an independent investigator because that’s what happened to Trump.
Wray has been generally fine, though the pre Jan6th preparation and the post-6th response have been… lacking. I give some credit to Trump there. But if I were Biden I’d keep him in until the IG has something to say about it, which might very well be the case.
jonas
@Kent: Thanks for saying this. I can definitely relate.
Kent
It’s not just that. Talented people of color with interest and aptitude in the sciences just tend not to go into oceanic and atmospheric sciences for several reasons. First, it is a low-paying and low-employment field compared to other STEM areas like medicine and tech. And second, most of the top oceanography programs are at places like University of Washington and Oregon State, which are pretty white to begin with. It is the same reason why you don’t see many people of color in say….forestry. I’m a UW grad and I bet if you went and looked at the profile of applicants to the UW School of Oceanography vs the UW School of Medicine or UW School of Engineering you will see a dramatic difference. Top black, Asian and Hispanic students just aren’t as interested in the low-paying environmental science fields.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Was thinking the same thought last night. He may not be libel for all of the COVID deaths but he sure is for the vast majority of them. His inaction, lies, and even his general incompetence all allowed a few hundred thousand deaths.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: yup, again. Wray has a lot of explaining to do, especially about 1/6, but we from what I’ve seen I doubt he was a culprit. And Biden has an entire freaking cabinet, including confirmation-required deputies, to get past a fifty-fifty Senate that has an impeachment and (I hope) a whole lot of investigative hearings coming up
Ruckus
@germy:
In cahoots? Not giving a damn? Oblivious?
raven
@AndoChronic: I have a friend who was navy Air Sea Rescue. He trained for 6 years and never got the chance at a live rescue. If you read “The Great Deluge” by Doug Brinkley about Katrina the Coast Guard Rescue people and Wal Mart are the only two outfits that really shone.
raven
@sab: The ones I knew signed up to avoid the Nam.
karen marie
I’m surprised to not see a post or even a comment about Mike Flynn’s brother – also a general – Charles – being “in the room” when the urgent request from the Capitol to the Pentagon requesting the National Guard was denied.
Apparently, there has been stonewalling and denial that Gen. Charles Flynn took part in that decision.
I want to know who else was “in the room” and who put them in charge of the decision.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
If the person is not incompetent and willing to do the proper job, this is one thing that Joe doesn’t have to do in the first week, out of a thousand that he does need to do. Not everyone is traitor, even if they worked for shitforbrains.
sab
@Feathers: Boarding school, artsy or not, is certainly not the place for messed up teenagers.
Matt McIrvin
@J R in WV: If the reports about Kushner are right… he got a team (perhaps an unqualified team of cronies, but a team) together to come up with a plan to control COVID, they had one that would certainly have been far better than nothing…
and it just got tossed in the circular file, because of the belief that this would mostly hit blue states and they might as well let blue-state governments take the hit. It was malice, as rikyrah always says.
I’m sure the vaccination story is similar.
patrick II
@Kent:
Over at lgm there is a post about Biden firing Trump’s head of the CFPB. Even though the original act called for a longer term, Biden is allowed to do so because of a Supreme Court ruling that said the longer, independent term was an encroachment on the executive’s power. What is different about the power to fire Wray?
sab
@raven: That was fifty years ago.
ETA: I agree with you about them back then.
raven
@sab: And some of us have long memories.
Calouste
@Kent: If you come from a poor(ish) background, you’re not going to risk the one shot you have to get out of that (and the student debt it incurs) on a field that doesn’t pay that much above a non-degree job. Speaking from personal experience here.
Anya
@Baud: I think Biden was hoping that Trump would fire Wrey but he hunkered down down and kept himself out any notice so Trump forgot that he existed.
The positive is that Wrey is not a sanctimonious, showboating douche like Comey so he won’t make a lot of headlines.
Kent
@patrick II:
I’m not a big expert on this stuff. But FBI director is a hugely more high-profile job than house counsel for the CFPB. Other than the fact that Wray was appointed by Trump, I’m not sure what cause or reason that Biden really has to fire him at this point. And I’m sure he doesn’t need the monster political and media shitstorm that would result were he to do so. I expect Merrick Garland will keep a close reign on the DOJ and the FBI.
I’m not saying I’d rather see someone else. I most definitely would. I’m just not sure that the political calculus at this moment points to that being a top priority in which to spend political capital. Especially if Wray is doing a competent job.
Poe Larity
Grover Norquist’s older brother is acting Secretary of Defense.
No wonder I didn’t sleep well last night.
Baud
rikyrah
@karen marie:
yes…who was in that room?
Anya
I feel so sorry for the aircrew national guards. Such a shock to their loved ones. Such a tragedy.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: Was not aware of that. Thank you. That’s really unfortunate news.
patroclus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There will be zero investigative hearings about anything until the Senate passes an organizing resolution forming the committees. Which McConnell is currently filibustering because he demands a promise not to terminate the filibuster for legislative matters as part of the “compromise.” Which Schumer is unwilling to give. Senator Merkeley just said on MSNBC that the only ways around this are 60 votes (not likely) or reconciliation which would take at least 6 weeks to gin up from the Floor.
The Moar You Know
@VeniceRiley: Buddy of mine was a helo crew chief for his entire Army career. Said the time to panic was not when fluids were leaking, but when they stopped – because that meant you were in deep shit as you were out of that fluid.
jeffreyw
@sab: The ones I knew about that joined up with the Guard did it to avoid Viet Nam. During basic training one of the things you did to get into the mess hall for meals was to shout your service number at the NCO. It was a steady stream of boots hollering “RAxxx..” or “US xxx.. ” with an occasional “NGxxx”. I heard a ‘cruit ask “what does NG stand for”? The DI answered, “It means Not Going”.
Kent
Yep. Trust me, it is a point of considerable discussion and hand-wringing in a lot of natural resource science programs like oceanography and forestry. The fact that they have a hard time attracting students of color. In some ways those are sort of dilettante fields like say…Art History or Ethnomusicology. It is a long academic grind without much payout at the end so one has to be fairly privileged to begin with to even think about those fields. When I advise students I tell them to think long and hard about pursing those kinds of careers, especially if they want to get ahead in life.
There is no good answer. But the result is that those end up being pretty white fields. Go to any academic conference in the marine or atmospheric sciences and it is mostly a sea of white faces
And it isn’t just kids from poor families. Your typical Asian-American family is going to be fairly unamused if their top STEM wiz kid decides to turn down med school or computer science to go into ocean or atmospheric science.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m surprised it’s happening so quickly. I missed that the Senate had voted on the waiver, and apparently the House is voting very soon. I remain somewhat ambivalent, but I’m trusting Biden to have made this choice for good reasons, and I don’t think it’s fair for Austin to have to pay for the failed Mattis experiment.
The Moar You Know
@Ruckus: I’ll buy the “not a traitor” part – to an extent – but accepting a government job in the Trump administration should result in termination as soon as legally possible and a lifetime ban on government employment. Everyone knew what he was from day one.
How the fuck are we going to fix this country if there are not consequences for going along with those trying to destroy it?
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I am ambivalent as well. It would be bad to reject the first AA Secretary of Defense but also, we don’t want to start a trend where we have recently retired generals as SoD. But I get that it’s a tough call for senators.
The Moar You Know
@patroclus: World’s easiest problem to fix: handle it like McConnell would. Promise you won’t get rid of the legislative filibuster, and then as soon as he assents, get rid of it anyway.
Only potential problem might be that McConnell might sue for copyright infringement.
trollhattan
@germy:
Somebody might want to investigate that new flowerbed in the backyard.
piratedan
@karen marie: i commented on that last night. There’s a WP article and Rachel even mentioned it yesterday.
Part the the plan? antipathy to the Capitol Police? Just all kinds of really shitty speculation should follow… especially with the Pentagon lying about it.
Kent
One of my best friends and dive partners was a Coast Guard rescue pilot in Alaska. We owned and ran a dive boat together in our spare time. That is some seriously bad-ass work. To roll out of bed and kiss your wife goodbye at 2 am to fly into a raging storm in the North Pacific to pluck fishermen out of the water. He was the pilot who made this rescue https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0049B1VU4/ and many others.
patroclus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s going quickly because McConnell is allowing (most) nominations to go through on unanimous consent (on getting to the Floor with votes on the actual nominations). And is allowing the committees to hold confirmation hearings based on unanimous consent.
sab
@jeffreyw: See comment #45. Then v now.
Raven
@jeffreyw: and the smattering of ER! Donnie Anderson of the Packers was ER in my basic outfit in 66.
Bill K
A heartfelt thanks to all the Guardsmen.
SoupCatcher
@jeffreyw: My dad, who went into the California National Guard in 1962, said that they were all a bunch of screw ups until the last year he was there, at which point they started getting rich kids.
patroclus
@The Moar You Know: No. The keeping of the filibuster would be written into the organizing resolution and would last for the entire Session (two years).
MisterForkbeard
@The Moar You Know: In this case, McConnell is basically saying that Democrats have to pony up on not banning the filibuster before he’ll allow a vote to go forward. They’d have to write it into the rules of the Senate.
trollhattan
@jonas:
I suspect the FBI’s behavior/non-actions before January 6 will become a topic investigated during congressional hearings and Mr. Wray might find himself Comey’d out of office for his “leadership”.
patrick II
When Trump fired Comey, Comey had served nearly four years of his ten year term. That action not only rid Trump of Comey but effectively turned a republican head of the FBI into a fourteen year term since Comey would normally be leaving in 2013 and Wray not until 2017. At best,Wray should leave in 2013.
piratedan
@MisterForkbeard: Be nice to have Chuck say, you want the filibuster? Then you get it, the old one, you stand on the floor and speak… and when you’re done, you’re done.
Sebastian
@The Moar You Know:
Wray should have resigned already, considering the Battle Flag of the Confederacy flew in the Capitol and the VPOTUS and Speaker were almost executed on his watch.
gvg
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: It varies by state and time. It’s not a national service, its 50 states, all a bit or very different. I was a Foster mom. I saw some of the inside in Florida. There aren’t enough fosters. It’s a tough emotional job and in Florida you lose money unless you are a medical foster parent which is for serious medically impaired children and is a lot of work with training. Anyway, because there aren’t enough foster parents, CPS is slow to take kids from their bios without significant proof of harm because they don’t have anyplace safe to put them. We were licensed for two, but were always getting calls to take more, allowing an exception if we wanted it, because they needed someplace, anyplace to put them. The people working the phones have babys in the office and can’t go home till they find a place to out them late at night…You know it’s bad when you routinely get calls for kids 3 counties away even while you get them for close by.
Things get worse when financial times get bad too. It stresses adults who…beat their kids more.
So the agency can’t take too many, they have to keep an eye on their space and totals and budget…See some problems here? They didn’t make this situation, tax payers do honestly.
In addition decades of trying different things and studies show that a lot of times, kids grow up disfunctional in foster care, somewhat worse than staying with relatives. It’s hard to find the best solution. A good foster family especially if it leads to adoption may be best but then you lose a foster home because it’s full. My sister adopted my nephew. We couldn’t both adopt him but I love him and mothered him too.
I could say a bunch more which aren’t exactly relevant to Claudia except to say the agency is almost certainly shortstaffed, underfunded and she probably doesn’t meet the standard for the really serious stuff they have to intervene in. Not that she has it good, just…..there is a whole lot even worse out there.
People need to know more about it, and be willing to pay taxes.
Raven
The guard now is much more lie regular army. They got shafted with the back door draft.
jeffreyw
@sab: Sure, that all changed when they send Guard units to Iraq, .
Michael Cain
@Kent:
My son’s girlfriend does work at both NOAA and NCAR in Boulder, Colorado. PhD in climatology from the U of Oklahoma. (For a while, one of her hobbies was chasing the big thunderstorms on the plains, although not trying to get under them like some teams.) Doesn’t pay nearly as well as most Boulder jobs that require a STEM PhD. Interestingly, when Trump made moves to cut the work on the big climate models, the Dept of Defense signed some sizeable contracts to keep the work going. DOD described it as “weather” work rather than “climate” work — blink, blink, nudge, nudge — because there’s a huge overlap in the code. And at least among the actual military folks, anticipating climate change is a big thing.
Lyrebird
That’s so sad. We’re right by a different Guard base several hours from you. Glad to know even though it’s awful news.
@TaMara (HFG): I don’t know if any of those family members would have wanted to or did watch the Delaware send-off of Biden. Good to see more recognition there at least.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: I give no weight to it at all. Claudia isn’t stupid or without resources, which is something most kids can’t claim. She could easily get out if she needed to, and force her parents to pay for it all and the courts would absolutely go along with it. There are probably a slew of misguided people lining up to “help” her in doing just that.
Far as I can tell, she is just as shitty and manipulative as her mom and dad, and I trust none of them.
sab
@The Moar You Know: I am not a parliamentarian, but I thought they set the rules at the beginning of the two year term and were then stuck with them for tje diration.
catclub
Ever been to NRL – Naval Research Laboratory?
Leto
@Raven: this is part of the Total Active Force concept that’s 1 part we don’t have enough troops to do the missions we’re tasked with and 1 part failed Bush policy wrt Afghanistan/Iraq. I spent the majority of my career active duty side, with the last two years NG. I have thoughts about the whole enterprise but I feel like I’ve said my part about this in previous threads, and Adam has detailed some of my same concerns, though on the strategic rather than operational/tactical level.
catclub
@trollhattan: I was just thinking I am already impatient for the full Mueller report to be released.
VOR
@patrick II: Let’s look at FBI Director history, shall we?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_the_Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation
2017- now: Christopher Wray, Republican.
2013-2017: James Comey, Republican
2001-2013: Robert Mueller, Republican
1993-2001: Louis Freeh, don’t know, but GHW Bush nominated him for a Judge so will assume Republican
1987-1993: William Sessions, Republican
1978-1987: William Webster, Republican
1973-1978: Clarence Kelley. Nominated by Nixon so will assume Republican.
1935-1972: J. Edgar Hoover
I’ve left out a handful of Acting Directors. But it looks like we have never had a Democrat serve as FBI Director unless you are counting J. Edgar Hoover, who was originally appointed as head of a predecessor Bureau of Investigation by Coolidge.
sab
@Leto: Regular Army kids ( my stepsons’ best friends) I knew who went to Iraq and national guardsmen ( neighbors) I knew who went to Iraq all agree that the Army people were pretty well trained for combat and the guard were absolutely not.
Only 1970s guardsman I knew anything about was a guy my dad worked with in Ohio. His active duty involved riding convoy for scab trucking convoys during a Teamsters strike (active shooting involved) and a couple of weeks later Kent State. His unit fired. He said none of his training prepared him for either, but he was trained for disaster relief ( Xenia tornado, and the usual floods.)
BRyan
@raven: my brother-in-law went into the Guard after his Nam tours, back in the “one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer” NG commitment days. And stayed with it, so he ended up in Afghanistan after 9/11. (Kudos to Jim.) And it may have been unusual, but I doubt he was the only one for whom that was true.
Steve in the ATL
@sab:
Labor law is such a fun field! I’m negotiating with different Teamster outfits right now, but since it’s virtual they can’t shoot me.
raven
@BRyan: He may have been US and still had a commitment when he ETS’d. There is no such thing any universal truth about why people did what they did. There were plenty of us, in fact most of us, in Vietnam that were “safe” by all measures and that’s always true about the military in war.
sab
@Steve in the ATL: We had an interesting story a few years back. My niece’s boyfriend worked for the company, a bakery, as a baker. The union negotiator and the management lawyer actually got into a physical brawl with punching and pounding on both sides. A great moment in American labor law.
raven
@Leto: Well, I was just a lowlife EM who thought it was all horseshit and that has no bearing on my respect for the individuals who actually served. I also respect the people who stood up and said NO. People who bought their way out, that’s a horse of a different color.
Kent
Wow, that is 30+ years in the Guard (1970-ish to 2000-ish)
NeenerNeener
Dropping by a dead-ish thread to say I think I saw on Twitter that George and KellyAnne no longer live together and she’s got the house and kids.
sab
@Steve in the ATL: My stepson used to be a Teamster. We liked that he got both a turkey (from the company) and a ham (from the union) at Christmas.
He didn’t think much of unions then.
He has changed his mind since covid has stressed out his company. They are booming, but they can’t keep up with the demands.
patrick II
@VOR:
It’s seems to have criteria similar to choosing the head of the RNC.
CatFacts
My condolences to the families of the National Guard members who were killed.
I hope Claudia Conway can find someplace her mother isn’t yelling profanity at her.
BRyan
@Kent: without verifying the dates, I’ll say you’re probably right — he was 55 when he got sent to afghanistan. Not really how he expected things would be going at that stage of his life.
Steve in the ATL
@sab: a turkey and a ham? Nice!
Even though I represent management, I think it’s critical that labor has rights as well. Unions can be incredibly aggravating, and are an added burden of time and money to the company, but they can also be incredibly helpful to people who don’t the skills and abilities to represent or defend themselves.
I will not, however, defend police unions!
Chris Johnson
@Kent: I follow the Lincoln Project folks quite a bit, and that leaves me with the notion that it’s quite possible for Republicans to not be Trumpists. It’s possible for Wray to not be a Trumpist: just because he benefited from the appointment doesn’t automatically make him a traitor.
I’m gonna hope that if Biden is NOT going after him, there’s some chance that he’s not a traitor and that he might even be eager to show quality by turning against the traitors after they have lost power. (before would have been nice)
Chris Johnson
@The Moar You Know: I’d want to know how explicitly they knew or accepted they were working for Putin. Some of them obviously were traitors. Some of them seem to have been jockeying for position, knowing that the government was still going to be there after the traitors (who were also obvious incompetents) were gone. That’s slimy, but I don’t think it’s exactly the same thing as aligning with the traitors.
Feathers
@Steve in the ATL: I worked at a business school. I remember one professor, who was certainly not pro union, telling a student to remember that managements got the union they deserved.
When Barney Frank was working for the City of Boston, he once said that police and fire should either get unions OR civil protections, but not both. They needed to choose because to have both was just an ungovernable mess. Neither system was ever intended to overlap with the other.
Steve in the ATL
@Feathers: the saying in the field, which is mostly correct, is that “companies that have unions are companies that deserve unions!”
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
A lot of agencies are normally rather independent, they are not strictly political driven but are functional agencies. Sure shitforbrains has screwed up most of them, but I’d bet not all of them. And yes having “your person” in charge gives you more control. But, and it is a huge, round but, not every thing has to, or even can be changed day one. This is Joe’s first full day, and with such a shitty transfer it can not be done in one day.
sab
@Steve in the ATL: Join you wholeheartedly on police unions.
My husband is from a union family. I am from a middle management family. We are both very pro-union, with some issues.
My mother was rabidly anti-union for her first sixty-five years. Then she changed her mind completely. My dad never gave it much thought because science and art history are so much more fun.
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
Back in the early 1970s we flew into Key West from Miami, on plain old propeller driven aircraft, as the Key West airport is very small. Half the seats were facing backwards, and you could see oil running, drooling even, on the engine cowlings.
I asked a flight attendant about that oil, and she answered the same — if we don’t see oil running on the engine cowling, that’s a problem. OK, you fly on this fling gadget every day, I’m not going to worry if you don’t worry. And it did get us in and out of Key west while I was stationed there.
sab
@Steve in the ATL: I have worked most of my career in smallish acounting firms. Not conducive to unionizing. I cannot think of one year in the last thirty-five where they didn’t screw me over big time on hours or benefits. Got me out of the pro-management side pretty quickly.
Ruckus
@raven:
Buddy was in the Marines, trained as a aircraft electronic tech, sent to nam and did his 13 as a company clerk, because he could type. Said he carried his loaded M-16 everywhere, never fired it.
citizen dave
@VOR: “But it looks like we have never had a Democrat serve as FBI Director…” Good post, VOR. I don’t know anything about how, if at all, one’s politics interacts with FBI business (I’m guessing they are supposed to be independent, like the judiciary or Federal Reserve), but on its face this is patently ridiculous.
Not to mention not a single woman.
This needs reforming. Add it to the list. I can’t wait until Cole posts all of the problems we sent him and the plan for solving everything.
J R in WV
@VOR:
Well, you know, J. Edgar almost had to be a democrat, he was a gay cross-dresser, after all~!~
Right? ~!~
IIRC he used to get gowns from one of the more famous film and stage stars back in his day… when she no longer planned to wear them.
sab
@Steve in the ATL: Am I unduly naive? I think there was a point where unions and management were on the same page with different Venn diagrams for analysis.
I don’t think unions and management are on the same page because management is not on the same page as the company. So the union goes nuts because why not. Nobody cares about company survival anymore.
dnfree
The role of the National Guard has changed massively since 9/11. We knew young people who joined after graduation from high school in 1999, planning to participate during college. Those young people found themselves in Afghanistan and Iraq for lengthy durations, with no real warning that was a possibility when they enlisted.
I used to get in arguments with people about GW being in the national guard. They’d say it showed his patriotism and I’d tell them that in those days getting a coveted spot in the national guard was almost a guarantee of getting out of being draft and actually serving in Vietnam.
Wapiti
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rayne, at Emptywheel blog, had a good argument for the waiver. Basically, American business is grossly disproportionately white male at the executive level. If Biden wants a SecDef of color, he needs a former general, because there are few very paths in our society where a person of color can get the executive experience that the SecDef needs.