MeToo...Nanny State?

The MeToo movement is all the rage today, introduced by actress Ashley Judd in her famous “Nasty Woman” speech on the Saturday after the 2017 inauguration...written by a high-school student. The target of the women's angst/hysteria is men, the devils. Here is a piece on the subject written in March 2010:

The “Nanny” State in Spades!

It’s been sad in recent years to watch individual non-society-threatening freedom being eroded in this country, both individually and collectively. People have to buckle up in their cars whether they want to or not. Owners of establishments who don’t wish to disallow smoking therein must do so anyhow. Or…they must hire and fire not on the basis of job-requirements but on the basis of quotas, never mind the extra expense involved, usually passed on to the consumer.

This isn’t to say there shouldn’t be laws to protect citizens from other citizens, such as those relating to speed restrictions on roads or to the requirement that drivers be sober and not distracted. Without laws governing societal conduct, there would be anarchy, so this isn’t about extreme libertarianism.

The third example above is a case in point with reference to freedom. Wal-Mart has a distribution facility in London, Kentucky, in which there are about 900 employees plus another one hundred contracted truck-drivers. In this huge warehousing operation, employees must be able to do heavy lifting. Anyone who has ever lifted a hundred-pound bag of spuds knows what this means. Since this is the case, Wal-Mart attempted to hire people it felt could do this job, the ultimate decision apparently being to employ mostly men for the quite obvious reason that, collectively, men are considerably physically stronger than women.

In some areas, women are mentally stronger than men, but at this facility the premium was placed on physical strength. A while back, a lady charged discrimination when she applied for a job at this facility and was turned down, she said, just because she was a woman. Well, yes…that might have been the case, not hard to believe. It’s perfectly obvious that if two employees instead of one are needed to heft a hundred pounds of spuds when one man can do it alone, the cost to the company for labor goes up to be passed on to the consumer while also thereby degrading the company’s competitive position in the marketplace, not to mention its responsibility to its shareholders.

So…the lady sued Wal-Mart nearly 10 years ago and the settlement just came down but only after it had become a class-action suit just ripe for any woman who could make a similar charge, real or imagined, to get in on the action. Wal-Mart settled for $11.7 million to be divvied up among all these ladies and any others who can still get in on the windfall, along with $250,000 in “administration costs.” One can only guess at what the real winners received – the lawyers – but they probably got a third of the stash, at least.

In other words, Wal-Mart could not conduct its business in the most efficient way possible but had to do business according to the way the government decides is “fair,” recognizing diversity as paramount in hiring, not the satisfying of qualifications for employment, in this case, physical strength. The next step in the process could be that inevitable “back injury” for which the company insurance must be responsible or – much better – a woman’s lawsuit in the interest of collecting a gazillion bucks for the ruination of her ability to make a living, also real or imagined.

Suppose a man applies for a job in Wal-Mart’s office but can neither type nor use a calculator. Will he be hired? Of course not, even though virtually no physical strength is required! He simply lacks the proper qualifications. Does anybody care about that? Of course not, since nobody gives a fig and men don’t cry! They just go looking somewhere else.

There’s a beautiful irony in all of this. Wal-Mart employs about 1.4 million workers, of whom 63% are women, even though they make up only 50.7% of the population. According to diversity-think, men are entitled to 49.3% of the jobs but hold only 37% of them. Why is that? Men are walking the streets these days looking for work at the same time Wal-Mart is discriminating against them…actually owing them 690,200 jobs but giving them only 518,000. Now…is that fair?

Living in a “nanny state” is no fun, but the progressives are determined to make this country into one so profoundly and correctly diversified that government will regulate everything and every service. People will become robots, except for those at the top, of course. Just ask Wal-Mart. In the meantime, all you men walking the streets…FILE THAT LAWSUIT! Some 172,000 of you are ENTITLED!

And so it goes...again!
Jim Clark

Nostalgia

A bit of nostalgia crops up occasionally, one such just now. Perhaps memories will be prodded by this blog of March 2010, written in the second March of Obama's first term to be compared to the second March of Trump's current (first?) term.

DNC Memorandum #10

From the office of Governor Tim Kaine, convener, 01 March 2010

***First, a word of apology for not advancing the regular monthly memorandum for February, though I had it scheduled for Feb. 29 but was advised that the day did not exist (little joke there). Recent days have been frantic, what with advising the president on his state-of-the-union address, explaining how those thoughtless interlopers crashed the first state dinner and beat their gums with the president, and later working with the president on teleprompter protocols that would guard against the use of terms such as corpse-man, Marine Corpse, and Peace Corpse. For those who have just graduated an Ivy League school, the word is corps, pronounced as the middle of an apple is. The rumor that the president said he mispronounced the word twice just to see if people were awake is not true and Rahm Emanuel said he would not do it again. A diversity-aware red/yellow/black/white paper will be issued soon to explain why the White House social secretary who staged the state dinner was disallowed to testify in Congress account executive privilege even though Attorney General Holder and Congressional democrats are still trying to drag in Bush colleagues Rove and Miers, also given executive privilege a while back.

***The latest rumor that Green-peace, Nader’s Raiders, NOW, Smokers Anonymous, and the nasty Congressional republican caucus have joined in exploring impeachment possibilities account the president’s continuing to smoke is untrue. Nader, speaking for the entire cabal that never was and never is and never will be, flatly denies any such effort and has insisted that these groups will not meet again. The president has explained that trying times call for extreme measures and that cigarette smoke clears not only his sinuses (especially the menthols) but also clears his head, citing as an example his smoking a complete carton the day before his Berlin speech in 2008 and winning over all of Europe to the concept that community-organizing is the very best preparation for being president. Pressperson Robert Glibs (okay…Gibbs, still a small joke there) has also explained that the president is not a threat to health-care-related expenses since he will die before getting so old that he will cost millions per month surviving into senility and actually is doing the country a favor by saving money. Caution: The DNC official position is that only idiots smoke for any reason other than head-clearing and that, even then, only geniuses qualify.

***Please be advised that in answer to questions about the president’s high-normal cholesterol condition you are to change the subject if possible; however, if the matter is beaten to death, simply say that Bush had good cholesterol, a condition that made him a poor president, and that President Obama is therefore risking his life (artery plaque-buildup, for recent college graduates) in order to be a good president. The rumor that Senator Kerry has offered one of his Purple Hearts to the president in honor of this sacrifice (if he can find one, that is…still looking along the fence over which he threw it in 1970) is untrue. Anyone finding a medal will be given a week’s vacation in Juarez but will have to furnish his/her own bodyguard.

***The health-care conference on 25 February was a huge success and staffers are reminded to use this lie in all contacts. Be careful in visual presentations not to use pictures/comments of Speaker Pelosi or Majority Leader Reid, who, sitting near the president, may or may not have been affected by the smell of Marlboro Menthols on the president’s clothes…allergies and all that. Senator Reid appeared as whining and Speaker Pelosi appeared as not being all-there at all. In sum, they didn’t help the cause and even furnished proof that the health-care panels enacted already in the legislation might have to rule adversely someday in any question as to spending money on their survival. In any case, do not – repeat – DO NOT use the term “trillion” in your presentations, since that scares the little people who don’t understand the vice president’s thesis concerning the proper way to use more and more spending in order to avoid bankruptcy. Rather, use some form of “billions” or, better, “thousands,” not that it actually matters much to the great unwashed, “Joe the Plumber” types.

***The president has begun his campaign for 2012 and White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina will be campaign manager. At least, this is the latest poop, not the usual kind but the propaganda kind, although it’s all pretty much the same. The campaign will be run out of Chicago and not the Capital for obvious reasons. It’s well-known that John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960 on the back of the Chicago vote in which even more dead people than were enumerated in the cemetery records voted. In fact, former president Chester A. Arthur voted in Chicago even though he was born in Vermont, lived in New York, died in November 1886, and was a republican.

***Homeland Security Chief Napolitano has informed the DNC that she’s heard staffers using the terms terrorism and kill with reference to the Ft. Hood massacre perpetrated by Major Hasan. This has offended some Muslims, especially those close to the Rt. Rev. Dr. Honorable Imam Louis Farrakhan, whose help in the Chicago campaign is absolutely vital since living humans (and a multitude of cats and dogs) also vote in Chicago, so the massacre is to be described now as people breath-challenged by a man-caused disaster. Anyone violating this directive will be sent for attitude-adjustments to Senator Durbin’s indoctrination facility, though it is not to be called the Durbin Gulag and Killing-Field Center, as some around the bottled-water keg and non-trans-fat, non-hamburger (eating grease okay if Senator Biden does), non-hotdog, non-dairy-product-of-any-kind, non-chocolate, non-smoking (smoking okay if Obama lights up), veggie-fortified, yogurt-enhanced snack-bar and body-mass-chart, carbon-cap-graph, endangered-species-obituary-wall-chart, blue/red-state-map, and Bush-dart-board have been heard to do. Senator Durbin has explained that he meant only the American GIs in Iraq and Guantanamo (called Bush cowboys) are like Nazi Storm Troopers and Stalin’s “whoopee killers,” not the GIs President Obama has sent to Afghanistan (called peace-keepers). Napolitano is demanding a kinder and gentler FEMA, beginning with the proper verbiage.

***Until further notice, Congressman Rangel is not only not in prison but is still chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. In view of the tax practices (or non-practices) of Treasury Secretary Geithner, the Ethics Committee is viewing Rangel’s mistake of a few hundred thousand dollars (who’s counting these days anyway?) as a mere slip of a pen by his chief clerk, who doesn’t understand Spanish real-estate contracts (or even English ones) and has accepted blame for all non-payments and lies, alleged, of course. Also, no money has been found in Rangel’s deep-freeze among the chicken wings, which proves that he’s far more ethical than former congressman Jefferson, who, at last report, was eating KFC smuggled into the Big House, where he’ll be living for a few more years.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark