Triggered, First thing in the morning! Yeah!

After years of working in corporate America, there are a few things that really trigger me.

One of those things is Emails with the words, “Mandatory”, “Comply”, “You Must”, “Required”, and my favorite is “Compliance is Mandatory”.

You see, these words or phrases never herald good news for any employee.

The term; “Mandatory Overtime” Only occurs in corporate email in the Summer when you’re planning a vacation, or in Fall/Winter before Thanksgiving or Christmas. That’s been my experience, your milage will vary.

Much like COVID’s 10 days to slow the spread there’s always a time component. Corporations always start with 30 days but all the employees know that’s complete bullshit. Whatever failures in planning that led to “Mandatory Overtime” in the first place are cumulative failures that cannot be resolved in 30 days and are much more likely to require 90 to 120 days.

But the HR department and management in general, lie in hopes of not having a bunch of people simply walk off the job.

Invariably Paid Time Off will be impacted and your employer will be looking for some kind of proof that you have a trip planned or are going in for surgery. The last company I worked for even added penalties if you were sick during Mandatory Overtime. They also had one guy drop dead at his desk because he was so terrified of losing his job, he neglected to seek medical assistance for a heart attack. Instead, he drove to work and died at his desk. Did the company relent? Hell NO! There were also miscellaneous people who went out on stress leave never to return.

If you’re a salaried employee, mandatory overtime actually reduces your hourly wage because you get no bonus or incentive to put in those hours. Usually, salaried employees don’t have enough “time in position” to benefit from stock options either. So even if the company succeeds due to salaried employees accepting their reduction in pay, there isn’t any long term benefit to them. But the executives see huge bonuses, and get plenty of accolades, even though they weren’t included in the “Mandatory Overtime” edict.

Having been in exactly the position above more times than I can count. The word “mandatory” has become a triggering word to me.

Over the years, “Comply”, “Compliance”, and “Must” have also become triggers for similar reasons.

“You must comply with the new standard”, means that you as an employee will have to set aside time to attend training. Often that time is supposed to be given to the company during some kind “lunch and learn” but the truth is you’re still working even though you’re not technically on the clock. After all, “this new training is for your benefit,” uh right…

If the training is from HR, it’s not for your benefit, it’s so the company can cover their ass.

Training of this type often includes: Sexual Harassment Training, New policies, (I assume new pronoun usage these days), Cheapening of Insurance, or Workplace Safety.

All of these sound like great things, until you read the fine print when you sign that you’ve taken the “Training”. 99% of my experience is that HR is making modifications to the terms of your employment and providing a mechanism that allows any perceived slight to be grounds for termination. Couple that with so called “Zero Tolerance Policies” and well being a white male… You’re screwed!

HR is not the employee’s friend and hasn’t been for decades.

Which leads me to my triggering this morning.

The California EDD sent an email that says in part;

Urgent: You Must Verify Your Employment or Self-Employment for Your PUA Claim

“Even though your Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits have ended, federal rules require you to provide documentation to prove that you were, or planned to be, self-employed or employed at some point between 01/01/2019 and 11/15/2020.”

They start the email by SHOUTING my name because apparently, the state of California doesn’t know how to use lower case.

They direct me to the State of California’s shitty website which is always a pain in the ass to log into, and is in fact, such a pain in the ass that I stopped using it, opting instead for snail mail.

Triggered though I am, I’m curious to know what the hell EDD is talking about and what kind of documentation they’re asking for, so I try to log in anyway. Don’t they already have all that documentation? It should be in their files.

The login inevitably fails and I’m locked out of the account for an hour. What’s new? EDD couldn’t program their way out of a one bit puzzle.

In this particular case it also looks like they’ve changed or updated their login page and are now showing me a security picture of a die and a comment that says 1997 Chevy.

This leads me to wonder if the login is fucked up or if someone has been playing around at stealing my account. Neither would surprise me with California EDD.

As an aside, I’ve applied to work for California EDD on several occasions since it’s obvious they could use someone testing their shitty software. They, like every single other potential employer, promptly ignored my application.

Honestly, at this point I’d be happy with a response from any potential employer that said literally, “Fuck off you piece of shit!” At least then I’d know where I stood.

While EDD was sending me money, I felt compelled to respond to their shit. Technically since they were paying me, I considered myself an employee. But now that they’re not sending me money, and I’m still unemployed…

I’m much less inclined to go out of my way to deal with them.

I’ll wait another 30 minutes and try again. If I still am unable to log into the web site I’ll have to decide to ignore them, or contact my state representative’s office. In the past the representative’s office has been the only way to make headway with the EDD.

I hate having to involve them in this bullshit but I may have no choice.

Hey it worked for Obama…

Just a few months ago President Biden said, “vaccine mandates are not the role of the federal government.”

Sort of like when President Obama said, “If you want to keep your doctor you can,”

We all know how both of those statements turned out.

The OSHA requirements regarding President Biden’s vaccine mandate have been published.

For a President who keeps telling us things are going to get better, that the supply chain will be fixed, that employment figures are going to get better, and everything will be happy happy joy joy, his actions sure don’t seem to be taking the United States in those directions.

At this point, any company who has less than 100 workers is likely to keep their employee number exactly where they are. So no additional jobs there.

Workers who for whatever reason don’t want to be vaccinated or share their vaccination status with their employer are in a really shitty position. They can either be fired on Jan 4 2022 or they can submit to a violation of their privacy and their bodily integrity to keep their jobs.

This is not freedom of choice. I don’t care how the media paints it, this is blackmail pure and simple. This is coercion and it is in direct violation of the Nuremberg Code.

The argument can be made that the COVID vaccines are in fact not vaccines, but are instead therapeutics. This argument has some merit in that the vaccines are not preventing infection, they are not conferring immunity, and their effectiveness is very short acting. Unlike say the smallpox, measles, or polio vaccines.

There’s been a lot of conflation using smallpox, measles, and polio vaccines as examples of why you should get a COVID vaccine. But let’s be realistic. Smallpox, measles, and polio vaccine confer lifelong protections against those diseases.

It’s become blatantly obvious that this is not the case with the COVID vaccines. Which means the COVID concoction is a therapeutic. It lessens the severity of the infection, but does not provide immunity.

Otherwise why would the vaccinated still have to wear masks to protect themselves? You could even argue that the COVID vaccines are on par with Hydroxychloroquine, Monoclonal Antibodies, Ivermectin, or the host of other therapeutics used in other countries. Lets not forget the 6 month booster shots either.

That starts to sound more and more like therapy, not a vaccine doesn’t it?

Smallpox, polio, and measles don’t require any additional safeguards post vaccination do they? Discussing these tried and true vaccines in the same breath with the COVID vaccine is a false equivalence.

The Biden mandate goes on. If you don’t want to take the vaccine, you must be tested once a week and you have to foot the bill for the testing, not the employer, not the government who is demanding this onerous procedure.

You, the employee, the taxpayer, the person just trying to pay your bills and put food on your table. Plus you’ll be masked up at all times in your workplace.

This is another example of blackmail perpetrated on the American People by the American Government.

As an aside, it is demonstrative of the criminality of the American Government and an excellent example of why this government is teetering on the knifes edge of failure.

Mind you, if the American government fails… The American Experiment is over. God only knows what that looks like… The nation states of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, all fighting among themselves for resources?

The OSHA mandate just keeps on giving. The employer will be fined $14,000 for each “violation” of the mandate with increasing fines for each infraction. There are also supposed to be OSHA inspectors presumably popping in for spot checks at random intervals. Can you say graft?

Hey OSHA inspector… Here’s a couple of grand. Just call our operation good and you’ll get two grand every month, just between us okay.

Do not labor under any illusion, graft as described, won’t or can’t happen. Ask any construction crew about building inspections, or corporation about current OSHA inspections. This shit is going on all the time. But the stakes will be higher now. The OSHA COVID police will have plenty of incentive, and leverage to demand payoffs.

$2000, today Mr Corporation, or $14000 every time I come to see you. You pick!

Smart business people will choose the $2000 and roll it into the cost of doing business.

You can’t blame the business people either. No one wears or keeps their mask on properly, or all the time. An OSHA inspector, at any time could walk through a building and note people taking their masks off for a variety of innocent or necessary reasons. Blowing their noses, asthmatics taking a hit from their inhalers, a diabetic needing to eat a little snack at their desk to keep their blood sugar normal, etc.

The OSHA inspectors will be shooting fish in a barrel, eventually they’ll realize that all the have to do is walk into the owners office with their clipboard, and walk out 30 seconds later with a wad of cash. Easy Money!

But Biden and OSHA estimate that this blackmail will result in 23 million more people getting “vaccinated”.

All the while, unvetted “refugees” or border crossers are allowed to move freely throughout the country will no vaccination requirements at all.

So President Biden tell us again how we’re going to have a land of milk and honey, with supply disruptions that your mandates only exacerbate? When businesses will be constantly disrupted by inspections? When your mandate dictates the firing of people adding to unemployment?

All this over a virus that 99% of the population survives, and over a vaccine that the CDC’s own data shows has the single highest contribution to the VAERS database practically ever?

Mr President with all due respect to your office… Sir, you need to resign. Your administration is more dangerous to America, her people, and prosperity, than almost anything short of a nuclear war.

Holy Hanna! Great Payday for illegals!

This is one of those articles that you say to yourself has to be from The Onion, or some other satire site.

But it’s not. The Wall Street Journal has an article here where they’re describing the latest Biden boondoggle.

The administration is floating a plan to give illegals who were affected by the “Remain in Mexico” plan up to $450,000 dollars per person.

If you’re talking about a single parent and a child… $900,000 dollars just for walking across the border. It could be more…

It could also be less, but the fact remains that’s more money than the majority of American citizens earn, working their asses off, in 10 years. You know, the union guys Biden loves so much, the average working stiff, the fast food person, Joe’s ice cream vendor… You get the picture.

Hey Kamala! I think I found your root cause of illegal immigration. People have figured out that America is loaded with suckers whose government just gives away taxpayer’s money!

Our Tax Dollars hard at work. Uh, yeah, good job Joe.

I can see that some of these people may be due some kind of compensation if the conditions they were subjected to warrant it, maybe…

But I always come back to the same fundamental questions.

Did you know that crossing the border without permission was illegal?

If you did, (as evidenced by your hiring a smuggler,) then why did you cross?

Although, I’d sneak into Mexico if I thought the Mexican government would pay me $450,000 dollars in compensation.

$450,000… Wow, that’s 7.5 times what I last made in a year. Meaning, I could ride that 450,000 comfortably for 7 years and not have to worry about working to pay my bills until I was eligible to retire. God, that would be a comfort since apparently I’m too old, and the wrong color to work at all these days.

Screw White privilege, I want some of that Brown privilege!

Throw me in a cage for a few months… PLEASE! For that kind of money there’s not a lot I wouldn’t do. Especially since I’d bet it’s going to be tax free.

With ideas like this, how can the Biden Administration wonder why they’re being booed, their polling numbers are underwater, or why #FJB or “Let’s go Brandon” have become prevalent?

Washington D.C. is full of Dumbasses!